Suddenly, a man appeared around a corner carrying a gun. When he made the mistake to raise it a few inches, the lead SEAL dropped the man with two shots to the chest.
The two women in the Situation Room gasped, as did a couple of the non-military men.
“Breech the bridge,” came an unknown voice over the comm.
One of the SEAL members opened the hatch while another threw in a flash bang. Seconds after the disorienting flash bang, the team rushed into the bridge.
Another man holding a radio in his left hand, pulled a gun with his right hand, and was dispatched instantly. The man crashed to the metal deck, the radio and gun bouncing away.
A man in uniform raised his hand and said loudly in English, “I am Viktor Drugov. Captain of this ship. What gives you the right to board my vessel?”
The SEAL team leader grasped the captain by his jacket and shoved him into his raised seat. “Sit down, captain.”
“You have no authority,” the captain said.
With a calm voice, the SEAL team leader explained how they suspected this ship had a nuclear weapon destined for a terrorist organization in South America.
“This is ridiculous,” the captain said. “We are carrying only oil industry equipment.”
The SEAL team leader got a message over his headset, but had to ask for the man to repeat. Finally, he nodded understanding and sent three of his men to the main storage hold that took up most of the ship from behind amidships to the bow.
Now, Bradford watched as three of the SEALS made their way down ladders and through passageways. The other two kept the captain and another young sailor company on the bridge.
Dmitri Vladimirovich Samsonov first understood that something was wrong when he could no longer reach the submarine Kolpino with his SAT phone while in his stateroom. Which meant the sub was running below the surface now, unavailable for ordinary communications. That wasn’t the main problem, though. While he was trying to make a call back to Moscow, the power on the ship suddenly went out. Then he looked at his SAT phone and realized it too was not working. Based on his military experience, only one conclusion could be drawn. Someone had blasted them with an EMP burst.
Grabbing his 9mm Makarov from under his pillow, Dmitri headed out of his stateroom. The battery-operated lanterns placed strategically along the passageway lit his path toward the communications room. He needed to see if the entire ship was in the dark, or just this area. But if his hunch was correct, the ship was in deep trouble. Dmitri could no longer hear the normal noises associated with standard shipboard operation — the constant roar of the diesel engines, the flow of air through the vents, and other indistinguishable noises.
When he got to the communications room, a younger man was trying desperately to get his equipment to work.
“What has happened?” Dmitri asked the young sailor.
Frightened, the young man turned sharply in his chair and shook his head. “I don’t know, sir. The radio was on a moment ago, but then everything went to hell. Just turned off and stopped working. Even the lights don’t work.”
Dmitri found a hand-held radio sitting in a charger and twisted the dial to turn it on. Then he switched to an emergency frequency and suddenly heard all kinds of chatter from various locations on the ship.
Pushing the talk button, Dmitri said, “This is First Officer Dmitri Vladimirovich Samsonov. Status. One at a time.”
The first man said he was in the engine room when the ship’s engines suddenly stopped running. He had tried everything to restore power, to no avail. The second man was in ship’s hold, one of the military security personnel.
“Do not give your status over this open line,” Dmitri warned the soldier. “I will come to you.”
The third man was on the bridge with the captain. They were not sure what was happening, but the captain had ordered him to arm himself in case it was pirates trying to board the ship. Then there was a sharp blast that shocked Dmitri. That blast was followed by two shots, and the sound of the radio bouncing off the deck before going dead.
Dmitri turned to the young communications sailor. “Do you have a weapon?”
“No, sir.”
“Come with me.”
The young man hesitated.
“Now,” Dmitri said through a clenched jaw. “Follow me.”
Tension in the CIC was high as they watched the SEAL team move through the merchant ship, dispatching anyone who was foolish enough to pull a weapon on them.
Commander Wockovich tried to maintain some semblance of cool, but it was getting harder by the minute. Despite the submarine running silent, his sonar operator was still able to keep track of the location of the Kolpino. Currently the Russian Kilo-class sub had dropped to a depth of twenty meters and circled around behind them, while the McGrath was slowly circling a small area, as if they were still searching for a lost sailor. To keep up the ruse, Wockovich had ordered a small launch into the water to aid in the search.
The intelligence officer turned to the skipper and said, “Sir, the Kolpino is slowly rising.”
“They’ll be deploying their comm buoy,” the captain said. “We expected this.”
“They’ll be able to communicate with the merchant ship,” the XO, Lt. Commander Rita Carlson said.
This had to happen soon enough, the captain thought. The Russians always had the ability to communicate with their leadership through Extremely Low Frequency and Super Low Frequency, but the captain’s goal was to not let the Russians get a warning to the merchant ship. “Once they go online with their comm, let them know we have a sailor in the water. Then let’s try to jam their ELF and SLF.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the intel officer said.
If nothing else, Wockovich reasoned, his crew was getting a great lesson in how to deal with this newest Russian sub. They would be able to bank the data from this encounter and forward this info to the rest of the sub fleet.
Wockovich glanced up at the screen to see the progress of the SEAL team. They had taken the bridge, detaining the captain of the ship. Now, three men were making their way to the hold. So far, they had been forced to kill two men, and had taken no casualties.
But now the men came upon a hatch that was locked. One man set charges while the other two watched their backs. Then the three of them backed off and a couple of seconds later a loud percussion could be heard, followed by a cloud of smoke as the three men rushed through the hatch.
Gunfire erupted in a chaotic few seconds. One of the SEALs hit the deck, but he quickly said he was all right. His vest had taken the hit.
Another team member made sure the two men who they had encountered were both dead, kicking away the weapons of the soldiers. Then the petty officer in charge of this three-man team scanned his head around the inside of the hold.
“Are you catching what I’m seeing?” the SEAL asked nobody in particular.
Wockovich sure as hell was. “Is that an SS-20 Saber?” the captain asked fleet command.
“We need closer pictures,” came a disembodied voice. It could have been from the SEAL chain of command or from the White House Situation Room. Either way, the petty officer got closer, pulled out his digital camera, and started shooting photos of the missile and the transporter erector launcher.
A second SEAL also started shooting images while the third man on the team watched their backs.
“Make sure to shoot serial numbers,” the voice demanded.
In the CIC, the intel officer turned to the captain and said, “Sir, that’s not a standard SS-20. It appears to be a modified, newer version.”
“Are you sure it’s nuclear,” the voice asked.