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Synopsis
"The excitement never stops . . . high adventure at its very best." --New York Times bestselling author Gayle Lynds
In the icy waters of the northern Pacific, a top-secret mission threatens to explode into a nuclear crisis . . .
A Russian military spy sub lies marooned in American waters near the U.S.-Canadian border. Yuri Kirov, a seasoned security officer, is in charge of the crew's safety--and the operation's success. His only hope is to make a death-defying underwater escape, reach shore undetected, and convince a total stranger that the fate of the world depends on helping him. For software engineer Laura Newman, it's not an easy choice. But with two Russian spies tailing them, and tensions escalating between superpowers, one wrong move could trigger unthinkable devastation.
In the tradition of Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October, this electrifying novel of espionage is a gripping tale of danger, courage, and daring decisions.
Includes an exciting excerpt from the next Yuri Kirov thriller, The Forever Spy.
In the icy waters of the northern Pacific, a top-secret mission threatens to explode into a nuclear crisis . . .
A Russian military spy sub lies marooned in American waters near the U.S.-Canadian border. Yuri Kirov, a seasoned security officer, is in charge of the crew's safety--and the operation's success. His only hope is to make a death-defying underwater escape, reach shore undetected, and convince a total stranger that the fate of the world depends on helping him. For software engineer Laura Newman, it's not an easy choice. But with two Russian spies tailing them, and tensions escalating between superpowers, one wrong move could trigger unthinkable devastation.
In the tradition of Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October, this electrifying novel of espionage is a gripping tale of danger, courage, and daring decisions.
Includes an exciting excerpt from the next Yuri Kirov thriller, The Forever Spy.
Release date: March 1, 2016
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Print pages: 496
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
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The Good Spy
Jeffrey Layton
Kirov plowed into the gloom. The firestorm deep inside his right shoulder raged but he hung on. He’d lost all sensation below the left knee—it was just dead meat. If the unfeeling crept into his other limbs he was doomed for sure.
He focused on the captain’s orders: “Get to shore. Call for help and then coordinate the rescue. Don’t get caught!”
He was the crew’s only hope. If he failed, they would all perish.
The diver propulsion vehicle surged against the aggressive tidal current. As he gripped the DPV’s control handles with both gloved hands, his body trailed prone on the sea surface. Hours earlier he’d exhausted the mixed gas supply, which forced him topside where he used a snorkel to breathe.
The chilled seawater defeated his synthetic rubber armor. His teeth chattered against the snorkel’s mouthpiece. He clamped his jaws to maintain the watertight seal.
Shore lights shimmered through his face mask but he remained miles from his destination. The DPV’s battery gauge kissed the warning range. When it eventually petered out, he would have to transit the passage on his own, somehow swimming the expanse in the dark while combating the current.
Two grueling hours passed. He abandoned the spent DPV, opening the flood valve and allowing it to sink. He butted the tidal flow until it turned. The flooding current carried him northward.
He swam facedown while still breathing through the snorkel. As he pumped his lower limbs, his good leg overpowered its anesthetized twin, forcing him off course. He soon learned to compensate with his left arm, synchronizing its strokes with his right leg.
The joint pain expanded to include both shoulders and elbows. The frigid sea sapped his vigor to near exhaustion.
While staring downward into the pitch-black abyss, he tried not to dwell on his injuries or his weariness—or the absolute isolation, knowing he could do nothing to mitigate them. Instead, his thoughts converged on the mission. They’re counting on me. Don’t give up. I can do this; just keep moving.
He continued swimming, monitoring his course with the compass strapped to his right wrist. An evolving mantle of fog doused the shore lights he’d been using as a homing beacon. For all he knew, the current could be shoving him into deeper waters.
Maybe at dawn he would be able to get his bearings. Until then, he would plod along.
I wonder where the blackfish are now.
During a rest with fins down and a fresh bubble of air in his buoyancy compensator, he heard dozens of watery eruptions breach the night air as a pod of Orcinus orcas made its approach. Sounding like a chorus of steam engines, the mammals cleared blowholes and sucked air into their mammoth lungs. The sea beasts ghosted by at ten knots. Their slick coal-black hulls spotted with white smears passed just a few meters away from his stationary position.
The killer whales ignored him. They had a mission of their own: pursuing the plump inbound silver and chum salmon that loitered near the tip of the approaching peninsula. At first light, the orcas would gorge themselves.
There was no time to be afraid; instead, he marveled at the close encounter. Oddly, the whales’ brief presence calmed him. He was not alone in these alien waters after all.
Time for another check.
He stopped kicking and raised his head. He peered forward.
Dammit!
Still no lights and the fog bank oozed even closer.
Where is it?
He allowed his legs to sink as he mulled his options. His right fin struck something.
He swam ahead for half a minute and repeated the sounding.
I made it!
“Stop struggling or I’ll cut you!”
Pinned by the intruder’s bulk on the hardwood flooring, Laura complied when she felt the knife tip on her throat.
He sensed her capitulation and withdrew the blade. He rolled off Laura onto his knees but kept his eyes on her. He stood. The blade remained in his right hand.
“Get up,” he ordered, offering his free hand as an assist.
Sunlight poured through the waterside windows. Laura sat in the dining room chair, still wearing the bathrobe. Gray duct tape anchored her wrists and ankles to the chair. The intruder was in the adjoining living room. He’d just built a fire in the stone fireplace. The cedar kindling crackled to life.
Laura observed her captor. Standing at least an inch over six feet, he had a muscular build, slate-gray eyes, and dense jet-black hair cut short. His angular face sprouted several days’ worth of black stubble. She guessed his age around her own—early thirties.
Laura watched as he shed the diving apparel. He piled the gear onto the hardwood floor next to a window. He wore cobalt-blue coveralls under his neoprene dry suit.
Obviously injured, he favored his left leg as he moved about. He hobbled into the dining room.
That’s when Laura decided to confront him.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“Just stay quiet.”
“Who are you?”
“No one.”
“Where did you come from?”
“Stop asking questions.”
“Why were you in diving gear?”
More tape secured a dishcloth he’d stuffed inside Laura’s mouth. It encircled her head in two orbits, restraining her shoulder-length auburn hair. If she turned too far, hair at the nape of her neck pulled viciously. She had to sit statue-stiff, peering at a blank wall.
But she could still see him—out of the corner of her left eye.
Laura’s captor was about twenty feet away on the sofa by the fireplace. After a thirty-minute catnap, he sat upright and stretched his arms. He picked up her smartphone from the coffee table. He must have discovered it on the nightstand in her bedroom. There were no other working telephones in the rental.
He keyed the phone, studying the screen. Laura guessed he was running a search. A couple of minutes later, he dialed.
“I’d like to speak with the security officer,” he said.
There was a trace accent but Laura couldn’t place it.
He was mute for a minute before responding, “Yes, I want to report an accident.”
The call lasted ten minutes. None of what he said made any sense to Laura. Some doctor had been in an automobile accident and was in a Seattle hospital. And he’d asked for a “security officer.” What was that about?
The intruder nodded off again, his head slumping forward.
What is this jerk up to?
It was almost noon. Laura’s spine ached and her limbs cramped, but her bladder demanded relief. She couldn’t hold it much longer.
“Heyyyy!” she blurted in spite of the gag.
His eyes blinked open.
She called out again, louder.
He stood and shuffled toward her.
“What is it?” he asked. Now his accent sounded Eastern European.
Laura mumbled.
He leaned forward and pulled down a section of tape covering her mouth.
She spat out the dishcloth and met his eyes. “Please—I need to use the bathroom.” Her frail voice transmitted a palpable quaver.
“Bathroom?”
She gestured with her head, ripping half a dozen strands of hair anchored by tape.
He spotted the open door near the base of the stairs. “Oh, you need to use the toilet.”
“Yes, please.”
He replaced the gag and then limped to the bathroom. After inspecting its interior, he returned to Laura where he withdrew his dive knife from a scabbard lying on the nearby coffee table. He sliced the tape that anchored her arms and legs to the chair. She stood as quickly as her cramped muscles would allow.
With the knife still in his right hand he said, “You can use it but the door stays open. And don’t touch the window.”
Laura nodded her understanding and made a beeline for the bathroom. He followed.
She walked inside, immune to the embarrassment. Laura was thankful to be alive.
“A loha,” he said, speaking into the cell phone. “I’d like Laura Newman’s room.
“That’s right, Laura Newman. From Redmond . . . Washington State.
“Hmm, she’s not registered . . . you know, she might be using her maiden name, Laura Lynn Wilson. Could you check that for me?”
Half a minute passed. “No luck there, either. Well, I guess I got some bum info. Thanks.”
Ken Newman had already called fourteen hotel and condominium resorts on Kauai, and as on his last call, he’d failed. There were nearly twenty more to go.
He’d searched the Web for an hour, compiling a list of candidates. He concentrated on four- and five-star establishments; he knew his wife’s preferences. He would check the remaining resorts but didn’t expect the effort to yield anything.
Ken called from his Spartan studio apartment in Bellevue, sitting at the kitchen table. Dirty dishes overfilled the sink, sports magazines and newspapers littered the coffee table, and a two-foot-high pile of soiled clothing occupied a corner by the window. They’d been living apart for four months. The previous morning a King County sheriff’s deputy had served him with the breakup papers and a temporary restraining order.
But Ken wasn’t done.
Laura had changed cell phones so he’d called her secretary this morning, ignoring the no contact order. Ken learned that Laura had flown to Kauai for a two-week vacation. He had no reason to doubt the secretary’s storyline but remained suspicious.
Ken retrieved a coffee mug from the table. As he sipped, he planned.
Tonight he would drive to Sea-Tac and cruise the huge parking garage’s aisles. If Laura had parked her silver BMW 7 Series at the airport, he’d know that she’d fled. If he didn’t find it, she might still be around.
“Why are you doing this to me?” Laura asked.
“Just cooperate and you’ll be fine.”
Laura again sat in the dining room chair, her wrists and ankles re-taped to the chair’s mahogany armrests and legs. An eight-place black marble table occupied the room. The view of the beach and the water’s edge—just steps away—was dazzling.
Sweat beaded across Laura’s brow. Her captor stood at her side, a half-full water glass in hand. She leaned forward and took another gulp, draining the glass.
Her thirst satisfied, she said, “Thank you.”
He was about to reseal her mouth when Laura turned her head to the side. “Please, don’t gag me. My stomach’s bothering me; I might vomit.”
“All right, for now I won’t but keep quiet. I need to rest.”
“I will—I promise.”
Laura watched as he made his way back to the connecting living room; his limp had worsened. He lay down on the sofa facing the fireplace. Searing heat radiated from the fresh charge of fuel.
He’d turned up the home’s gas furnace to maximum, too, roasting Laura.
What’s wrong with him?
He hobbled onto the timber deck, dragging his useless lower left leg. The mid-afternoon sky was cloudless, allowing the sun to bathe his body; it had been weeks since he’d last felt its touch.
Water lapped at the rock revetment fronting the home. In the distance, a mammoth ship steamed northward, its decks overflowing with hundreds of shipping containers.
Although no longer chilled to his marrow, he remained unpleasantly cool. A wool blanket from a bedroom encased his shoulders and upper torso. He also shed the jumpsuit, replacing it with the civilian clothing he’d carried during the ascent. The waterproof bag leaked, soaking the blue jeans, black long sleeve shirt, running shoes, and other gear. He discovered the home’s laundry room, where he washed and dried the garments.
He unconsciously shook his head, still amazed that he had survived. It could have been much worse. The bends could have just as easily killed him, or he could have succumbed to hypothermia.
Why had God spared him?
His mother had sparked his early belief, but her guidance ceased after his twelfth birthday and his faith withered. Nevertheless, his impermeable armor of disregard now had a couple of chinks in it. Surviving the sinking came first. His solo escape followed.
He again wondered why he was alive when so many others were not.
His thoughts dissolved as something caught his eye far in the distance. The floatplane cruised northward up the inland sea, about two hundred meters above the water. He couldn’t help but think that it probably passed right over the Neva.
Seven nautical miles to the southeast and over seven hundred feet below the surface, the Neva’s crew was oblivious to the Kenmore Air charter. The beat of the Beaver’s propeller penetrated the water but never reached the stranded submarine.
Underwater sounds rarely travel in a straight line. Instead, they refract or bend due to varying temperature, salinity, and pressure. On this afternoon, the only sounds that the Neva’s passive sonar sensors registered were biologics.
The thirty-four-year-old slightly balding and fleshy engineering officer left the central command post and entered the sonar room. Catapulted to acting-captain status nearly forty hours earlier, he hoped for good news.
“Anything new?” he asked the sole inhabitant of the compartment. Packed with electronic gear from the deck to the overhead, the space contained three consoles.
“No, Captain,” said the technician, a man in his early twenties sitting in the center console.
They spoke in their native tongue—Russian.
The tech removed his earphones and flipped a switch on his console, activating a bulkhead speaker. The sound of bacon sizzling on a grill broadcast throughout the compartment. “Still the same biologic we’ve had all day long—fornicating shrimp.”
“Anything else?”
“I did pick up a ship’s propeller. Merchantmen most likely headed to Vancouver.”
“How about small vessels?”
“No, sir, nothing like that. In our degraded condition, they would need to be close by for our remaining sensors to register.”
The commanding officer nodded. He’d anticipated something more encouraging. The diver should have made it to the shore by now. Still, it was early.
“Captain, how’s the scrubber repair going?”
“It’s working again. CO-two is stabilized.”
“Good . . . that’s good.” The sonar tech scratched the stubble on his chin. “And the reactors?”
“We’re still bailing out muck. We might be able to test a heat exchanger in a few hours. Once circulation is reestablished, we should be able to restart Unit Two.”
“That will help a lot.”
“Yes, it will.”
Neither man wanted to ask the ultimate “what if” question: What if they couldn’t restart the reactor?
Programmed to prevent a core meltdown, the computer controlling the reactor would automatically squash the chain reaction if the coolant system were not adequate. Without the heat generated by the fission process, there would be no steam. Without steam, the generator would not turn. Without the generator, there would be no electrical current to run the ship’s oxygen maker. And without fresh oxygen, they would all die.
Laura and her captor sat at the kitchen table, facing each other. They sipped tea from mugs, having just finished dinner—scrambled eggs and fried potatoes that he’d prepared.
Although Laura’s hands were free, her ankles remained bound. But she no longer sweltered; he had dialed back the furnace and the fireplace.
Laura had read somewhere that establishing a personal relationship with a captor helped in hostage situations. She decided to test the theory.
“My name is Laura. May I ask yours?”
He took a sip of tea. “John.”
“Your leg, it looks like you really injured it. Do you need help with it?”
“It’s fine.”
“I live in Redmond; I’m just renting this place.”
No response.
Laura racked her brain to formulate another question that would not alienate him. Her demands during their initial encounter had resulted in the gag.
“I’m a software engineer,” she offered.
“You write programs?”
“Sometimes, but others in my company write most of the code. My job is to coordinate and assemble the software we develop.”
“John” leaned back in his chair and said, “You’re a manager?”
“I am.”
“How many do you supervise?”
“There are about six hundred programmers and engineers in my division.”
He returned his chair to its normal position and cocked his head to the side. “You own this company?”
“I’m one of four principals. We have just over two thousand employees.”
“What software do you write?”
“Mostly business applications with some science-based work.”
He said, “You must make a lot of money.”
“I do well.”
“Were you raised in Seattle?”
“No. The Bay Area.”
His brow wrinkled.
“You know, San Francisco Bay.”
“Oh, yes.”
“I grew up east of the bay in a city called Castro Valley.”
“Ah, you’re a California girl.”
“I was.”
“Tell me about your parents.”
Laura expected the inquiry. It always came up with someone new. “I was adopted as an infant. My birth mother was Caucasian; my birth father was African American. I’ve never met them.”
“Your parents—who adopted you—white or black?”
“Caucasian.”
“What was it like for you growing up, with your father’s blood?”
He was direct, if anything.
“Great. No real problems.”
Laura skirted the truth, not wanting to revisit past hurts.
“Where did you receive your university education?”
“Caltech—California Institute of Technology.”
“Oh, I know that school.” He shifted position in his chair. “How did you end up in the software business?”
“Well, assembling computer code is like solving a puzzle. I’ve always enjoyed working on things that make you think. You know, like chess and math games and . . .”
Laura and John continued their dialogue. She had just mentioned her soon-to-be ex.
“You came here to get away from him?”
“Yes, my attorney served him with the divorce papers on Monday.”
“He doesn’t know you are here?”
“Absolutely not. Even my office doesn’t know I’m here.”
Laura regretted her last statement, knowing she’d revealed too much. “My attorney knows where I am; we’ve been communicating daily.” True to a point. She’d received one e-mail from her Seattle lawyer verifying Ken had received the court filings.
Laura folded back the bathrobe from her right shoulder and pulled up the sleeve of her T-shirt, revealing a nasty bruise. “He’s vicious when he drinks. He hit me a couple of weeks ago. But never again.”
“The man is a pig. He should be in jail.”
“I just want him out of my life.”
Laura sat on the couch in the living room, her wrists tied in front and her ankles still bound.
Laura’s captor worked at the dining room table; “John” had been at it for over an hour. Electronic parts harvested from a living room AM /FM stereo receiver covered the tabletop. A stainless steel pressure cooker and a telephone handset completed the parts collection, both taken from a locked cabinet in the pantry that he had pried open with his knife. The cabinet contained personal items of the homeowner.
Laura had been tempted to ask what he was doing but refrained, believing the less she knew the better off she’d be.
Since their initial encounter with the knife, there had been no additional threats and he hadn’t touched her, except for the restraints. Even so, Laura remained wary. He could turn on her.
Still she had hope, sparked by their dinner conversation. His interest in her background came across as genuine. He asked additional questions about her birth parents, but Laura simply repeated that she’d never met them—truthful yet evasive. She had a complete file on her birth parents.
Just remain calm, Laura self-ordered. I can get through this. He’s going to slip up sometime and I’ll escape.
Captain Lieutenant Yuri Kirov looked up from the worktable to check his prisoner. She remained on the sofa about twenty feet away. He had used rope from the garage to bind her this evening. He’d exhausted most of the roll of duct tape that he’d discovered earlier in a kitchen drawer.
Yuri watched as she leaned against the sofa cushion, eyes shut.
Despite her tousled hair, lack of makeup, and the unpretentious bathrobe, Yuri found Laura Newman alluring—an exotic blend of Scandinavia and equatorial Africa.
Laura had inherited her Nordic birth mother’s high cheekbones, full ripe lips, azure eyes, and russet hair. Her father’s tall willowy frame, broad nose, and cocoa skin, all linked to his distant Bantu ancestors, complimented her mother’s genes.
Yuri wondered what it was like for Laura growing up chocolate in a black and white world. In Russia, biracial children often had a tough life. Maybe it was easier in the USA.
He considered asking more questions about her family but thought better of it. He could not afford personal involvement. Laura represented a liability that he might be forced to eliminate for the sake of his submates.
Yuri turned back to the table and picked up one of the speakers. He inserted the woofer inside the pressure cooker and ran the connecting wire from the speaker through the relief valve opening in the lid. He set the lid on the pan and rotated it, engaging the rack-and-pinion lock mechanism.
Perfect!
The nearly full moon illuminated the vast inland waterway for miles, its surface silky smooth this early morning.
Yuri Kirov sat at the aft end of an aluminum skiff, guiding it southward. He had swiped the boat and its trailer from the yard of a neighboring beach house. It was early November and the owner, like those of most of the other homes along the seashore, had departed for the season.
Before locking out from the Neva, he’d memorized the bottom coordinates from the sub’s inertial navigation system. Using the GPS unit in Laura’s iPhone, he retraced his path. Yuri glanced at the digital display of the smartphone. He cut the outboard engine.
Yuri lowered the device into the water. It was an odd creation consisting of a kitchen pressure cooker filled with stereo radio components connected to an extension cord.
Yuri submerged the contraption just three meters. Any deeper and the seals he’d fashioned might fail. If the gadget flooded, his efforts would have been for nothing.
It took five minutes to connect the additional gear. He used the battery from Laura’s BMW to energize the system. He’d discovered the sedan in the garage.
Yuri checked his wristwatch: 12:59 A.M. It was time. They should be listening. But what if it didn’t work? What then?
He ignored his doubts and pressed the Transmit switch on the makeshift microphone—a hybrid constructed from the telephone handset he’d found. He spoke in English, using a pre-arranged code: “Alpha to Bravo, testing, one two three.”
The hydrophone broadcast into the deep. His voice propagated downward at over fifteen hundred meters per second. He repeated the call eight times at fifteen-second intervals.
Four minutes after the first transmission, a black one-meter-diameter globe surged to the surface in a flurry of bubbles.
Laura peeked through the curtains, searching for movement on the dimly lit beach below.
Her captor left two hours earlier. Instead of binding her to a dining room chair, he’d used an upholstered chair in the upstairs master bedroom. He lashed her wrists and ankles to the chair’s frame with rope.
She could move just enough to maintain circulation in her limbs but not enough to loosen the bounds. For the present, she’d given up trying to escape.
John hadn’t bothered with a gag. Instead, a single layer of duct tape sealed her lips. She could grunt muted words but nothing coherent. Even if she could have screamed full throttle, no one was around to hear. He’d made that point to her more than once.
Before heading downstairs, he’d informed Laura that he would be gone for several hours. She had no choice but to wait for his return.
From her second-story perch, Laura could see the moonlit beach through a narrow gap in the draperies. She’d watched him struggle to drag the twelve-foot skiff onto the beach; the man had only one good leg. He launched the runabout and motored into the darkness.
Laura wondered what he was up to, and why was he doing it in the middle of the night?
As Laura sat, occasionally peering through the window, she thought of her husband. He was up to something, too. But what?
Laura feared Ken as much as she feared her captor, maybe more. Just two weeks earlier, he had shown up at Laura’s house unannounced. Reeking of whiskey, Ken knocked Laura to the floor and attacked her with his size 11 Florsheims. He fled before the cops arrived.
Laura vowed that he would never touch her again.
As she peeked through the curtain, Laura again wondered about her captor.
Where did he go?
“Can you hear me?” asked Yuri Kirov.
“Yes, your signal is five-by-five.”
“Five-by-five here, too.”
Yuri grinned. Direct voice communication had been his goal. He’d just accomplished that task—speaking with the submarine’s acting commanding officer, Captain Third Rank Stephan Borodin.
The Neva bristled with high-tech communication devices, but to use them required the submarine to be under way, not marooned on the bottom.
After signaling with his makeshift hydrophone, requesting deployment of the very low frequency radio antenna buoy, Yuri connected with his shipmates. He accomplished that task by coupling a pair of wires he’d harvested from the stereo set to the buoy’s cable; he cut through the armored outer sheath and spliced the wires to an internal VLF radio receiving circuit. He attached the other end of the stereo wires to the telephone handset—now disconnected from the hydrophone. After the Neva’s communication officer energized the cable, Yuri could speak with Borodin. It was a crude arrangement but it worked.
“Are the reactors still offline?” Yuri asked.
“Yes. We’re still fighting that damn muck. It’s as if we sucked in half of the bottom.”
“What about the batteries?”
“Bad. We’ve got everything powered down, except the radio compartment.”
Yuri knew what that meant: no lights, no heat, and foul air.
Borodin continued, “We’ve got enough battery power left for a restart. But if that fails, we’ll be profúkat’.” Down the toilet.
“You’re still working on the seawater intakes, right?”
“Of course. Dima and his boys are mining that crud as we speak. Unit One is hopeless. But if we can unplug a condenser, we’ll be able to fire up Unit Two.”
“Okay, I understand.” Yuri chose his next words with care. “I’m working on getting us help, but it’s going to take a little time.”
He included himself by using the word us, even though he’d escaped from the underwater tomb.
“What kind of help?”
“I’ve made contact with our embassy in Washington.”
“They can’t do anything. Or won’t, once they know what happened.”
“I won’t reveal everything. Only what they need to know.”
“I don’t know about that. According to our orders we’re supposed to be dead.”
“That’s only if we were caught, but the Americans and Canadians are in the dark.”
“What can the embassy do anyway?”
“I don’t have any answers for you yet. It’s going to take awhile to sort out.”
Yuri refrained from informing Borodin that he’d yet to talk with anyone that could offer help. His cryptic call to the embassy represented a first step in a convoluted and risky process of informing his superiors of the Neva’s fate.
As a military intelligence officer, Yuri had been schooled in the “dos and don’ts” of operating in North America. Use of the telephone was discouraged. The FBI routinely monitored phone calls to and from the Russian embassy and its consu. . .
He focused on the captain’s orders: “Get to shore. Call for help and then coordinate the rescue. Don’t get caught!”
He was the crew’s only hope. If he failed, they would all perish.
The diver propulsion vehicle surged against the aggressive tidal current. As he gripped the DPV’s control handles with both gloved hands, his body trailed prone on the sea surface. Hours earlier he’d exhausted the mixed gas supply, which forced him topside where he used a snorkel to breathe.
The chilled seawater defeated his synthetic rubber armor. His teeth chattered against the snorkel’s mouthpiece. He clamped his jaws to maintain the watertight seal.
Shore lights shimmered through his face mask but he remained miles from his destination. The DPV’s battery gauge kissed the warning range. When it eventually petered out, he would have to transit the passage on his own, somehow swimming the expanse in the dark while combating the current.
Two grueling hours passed. He abandoned the spent DPV, opening the flood valve and allowing it to sink. He butted the tidal flow until it turned. The flooding current carried him northward.
He swam facedown while still breathing through the snorkel. As he pumped his lower limbs, his good leg overpowered its anesthetized twin, forcing him off course. He soon learned to compensate with his left arm, synchronizing its strokes with his right leg.
The joint pain expanded to include both shoulders and elbows. The frigid sea sapped his vigor to near exhaustion.
While staring downward into the pitch-black abyss, he tried not to dwell on his injuries or his weariness—or the absolute isolation, knowing he could do nothing to mitigate them. Instead, his thoughts converged on the mission. They’re counting on me. Don’t give up. I can do this; just keep moving.
He continued swimming, monitoring his course with the compass strapped to his right wrist. An evolving mantle of fog doused the shore lights he’d been using as a homing beacon. For all he knew, the current could be shoving him into deeper waters.
Maybe at dawn he would be able to get his bearings. Until then, he would plod along.
I wonder where the blackfish are now.
During a rest with fins down and a fresh bubble of air in his buoyancy compensator, he heard dozens of watery eruptions breach the night air as a pod of Orcinus orcas made its approach. Sounding like a chorus of steam engines, the mammals cleared blowholes and sucked air into their mammoth lungs. The sea beasts ghosted by at ten knots. Their slick coal-black hulls spotted with white smears passed just a few meters away from his stationary position.
The killer whales ignored him. They had a mission of their own: pursuing the plump inbound silver and chum salmon that loitered near the tip of the approaching peninsula. At first light, the orcas would gorge themselves.
There was no time to be afraid; instead, he marveled at the close encounter. Oddly, the whales’ brief presence calmed him. He was not alone in these alien waters after all.
Time for another check.
He stopped kicking and raised his head. He peered forward.
Dammit!
Still no lights and the fog bank oozed even closer.
Where is it?
He allowed his legs to sink as he mulled his options. His right fin struck something.
He swam ahead for half a minute and repeated the sounding.
I made it!
“Stop struggling or I’ll cut you!”
Pinned by the intruder’s bulk on the hardwood flooring, Laura complied when she felt the knife tip on her throat.
He sensed her capitulation and withdrew the blade. He rolled off Laura onto his knees but kept his eyes on her. He stood. The blade remained in his right hand.
“Get up,” he ordered, offering his free hand as an assist.
Sunlight poured through the waterside windows. Laura sat in the dining room chair, still wearing the bathrobe. Gray duct tape anchored her wrists and ankles to the chair. The intruder was in the adjoining living room. He’d just built a fire in the stone fireplace. The cedar kindling crackled to life.
Laura observed her captor. Standing at least an inch over six feet, he had a muscular build, slate-gray eyes, and dense jet-black hair cut short. His angular face sprouted several days’ worth of black stubble. She guessed his age around her own—early thirties.
Laura watched as he shed the diving apparel. He piled the gear onto the hardwood floor next to a window. He wore cobalt-blue coveralls under his neoprene dry suit.
Obviously injured, he favored his left leg as he moved about. He hobbled into the dining room.
That’s when Laura decided to confront him.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“Just stay quiet.”
“Who are you?”
“No one.”
“Where did you come from?”
“Stop asking questions.”
“Why were you in diving gear?”
More tape secured a dishcloth he’d stuffed inside Laura’s mouth. It encircled her head in two orbits, restraining her shoulder-length auburn hair. If she turned too far, hair at the nape of her neck pulled viciously. She had to sit statue-stiff, peering at a blank wall.
But she could still see him—out of the corner of her left eye.
Laura’s captor was about twenty feet away on the sofa by the fireplace. After a thirty-minute catnap, he sat upright and stretched his arms. He picked up her smartphone from the coffee table. He must have discovered it on the nightstand in her bedroom. There were no other working telephones in the rental.
He keyed the phone, studying the screen. Laura guessed he was running a search. A couple of minutes later, he dialed.
“I’d like to speak with the security officer,” he said.
There was a trace accent but Laura couldn’t place it.
He was mute for a minute before responding, “Yes, I want to report an accident.”
The call lasted ten minutes. None of what he said made any sense to Laura. Some doctor had been in an automobile accident and was in a Seattle hospital. And he’d asked for a “security officer.” What was that about?
The intruder nodded off again, his head slumping forward.
What is this jerk up to?
It was almost noon. Laura’s spine ached and her limbs cramped, but her bladder demanded relief. She couldn’t hold it much longer.
“Heyyyy!” she blurted in spite of the gag.
His eyes blinked open.
She called out again, louder.
He stood and shuffled toward her.
“What is it?” he asked. Now his accent sounded Eastern European.
Laura mumbled.
He leaned forward and pulled down a section of tape covering her mouth.
She spat out the dishcloth and met his eyes. “Please—I need to use the bathroom.” Her frail voice transmitted a palpable quaver.
“Bathroom?”
She gestured with her head, ripping half a dozen strands of hair anchored by tape.
He spotted the open door near the base of the stairs. “Oh, you need to use the toilet.”
“Yes, please.”
He replaced the gag and then limped to the bathroom. After inspecting its interior, he returned to Laura where he withdrew his dive knife from a scabbard lying on the nearby coffee table. He sliced the tape that anchored her arms and legs to the chair. She stood as quickly as her cramped muscles would allow.
With the knife still in his right hand he said, “You can use it but the door stays open. And don’t touch the window.”
Laura nodded her understanding and made a beeline for the bathroom. He followed.
She walked inside, immune to the embarrassment. Laura was thankful to be alive.
“A loha,” he said, speaking into the cell phone. “I’d like Laura Newman’s room.
“That’s right, Laura Newman. From Redmond . . . Washington State.
“Hmm, she’s not registered . . . you know, she might be using her maiden name, Laura Lynn Wilson. Could you check that for me?”
Half a minute passed. “No luck there, either. Well, I guess I got some bum info. Thanks.”
Ken Newman had already called fourteen hotel and condominium resorts on Kauai, and as on his last call, he’d failed. There were nearly twenty more to go.
He’d searched the Web for an hour, compiling a list of candidates. He concentrated on four- and five-star establishments; he knew his wife’s preferences. He would check the remaining resorts but didn’t expect the effort to yield anything.
Ken called from his Spartan studio apartment in Bellevue, sitting at the kitchen table. Dirty dishes overfilled the sink, sports magazines and newspapers littered the coffee table, and a two-foot-high pile of soiled clothing occupied a corner by the window. They’d been living apart for four months. The previous morning a King County sheriff’s deputy had served him with the breakup papers and a temporary restraining order.
But Ken wasn’t done.
Laura had changed cell phones so he’d called her secretary this morning, ignoring the no contact order. Ken learned that Laura had flown to Kauai for a two-week vacation. He had no reason to doubt the secretary’s storyline but remained suspicious.
Ken retrieved a coffee mug from the table. As he sipped, he planned.
Tonight he would drive to Sea-Tac and cruise the huge parking garage’s aisles. If Laura had parked her silver BMW 7 Series at the airport, he’d know that she’d fled. If he didn’t find it, she might still be around.
“Why are you doing this to me?” Laura asked.
“Just cooperate and you’ll be fine.”
Laura again sat in the dining room chair, her wrists and ankles re-taped to the chair’s mahogany armrests and legs. An eight-place black marble table occupied the room. The view of the beach and the water’s edge—just steps away—was dazzling.
Sweat beaded across Laura’s brow. Her captor stood at her side, a half-full water glass in hand. She leaned forward and took another gulp, draining the glass.
Her thirst satisfied, she said, “Thank you.”
He was about to reseal her mouth when Laura turned her head to the side. “Please, don’t gag me. My stomach’s bothering me; I might vomit.”
“All right, for now I won’t but keep quiet. I need to rest.”
“I will—I promise.”
Laura watched as he made his way back to the connecting living room; his limp had worsened. He lay down on the sofa facing the fireplace. Searing heat radiated from the fresh charge of fuel.
He’d turned up the home’s gas furnace to maximum, too, roasting Laura.
What’s wrong with him?
He hobbled onto the timber deck, dragging his useless lower left leg. The mid-afternoon sky was cloudless, allowing the sun to bathe his body; it had been weeks since he’d last felt its touch.
Water lapped at the rock revetment fronting the home. In the distance, a mammoth ship steamed northward, its decks overflowing with hundreds of shipping containers.
Although no longer chilled to his marrow, he remained unpleasantly cool. A wool blanket from a bedroom encased his shoulders and upper torso. He also shed the jumpsuit, replacing it with the civilian clothing he’d carried during the ascent. The waterproof bag leaked, soaking the blue jeans, black long sleeve shirt, running shoes, and other gear. He discovered the home’s laundry room, where he washed and dried the garments.
He unconsciously shook his head, still amazed that he had survived. It could have been much worse. The bends could have just as easily killed him, or he could have succumbed to hypothermia.
Why had God spared him?
His mother had sparked his early belief, but her guidance ceased after his twelfth birthday and his faith withered. Nevertheless, his impermeable armor of disregard now had a couple of chinks in it. Surviving the sinking came first. His solo escape followed.
He again wondered why he was alive when so many others were not.
His thoughts dissolved as something caught his eye far in the distance. The floatplane cruised northward up the inland sea, about two hundred meters above the water. He couldn’t help but think that it probably passed right over the Neva.
Seven nautical miles to the southeast and over seven hundred feet below the surface, the Neva’s crew was oblivious to the Kenmore Air charter. The beat of the Beaver’s propeller penetrated the water but never reached the stranded submarine.
Underwater sounds rarely travel in a straight line. Instead, they refract or bend due to varying temperature, salinity, and pressure. On this afternoon, the only sounds that the Neva’s passive sonar sensors registered were biologics.
The thirty-four-year-old slightly balding and fleshy engineering officer left the central command post and entered the sonar room. Catapulted to acting-captain status nearly forty hours earlier, he hoped for good news.
“Anything new?” he asked the sole inhabitant of the compartment. Packed with electronic gear from the deck to the overhead, the space contained three consoles.
“No, Captain,” said the technician, a man in his early twenties sitting in the center console.
They spoke in their native tongue—Russian.
The tech removed his earphones and flipped a switch on his console, activating a bulkhead speaker. The sound of bacon sizzling on a grill broadcast throughout the compartment. “Still the same biologic we’ve had all day long—fornicating shrimp.”
“Anything else?”
“I did pick up a ship’s propeller. Merchantmen most likely headed to Vancouver.”
“How about small vessels?”
“No, sir, nothing like that. In our degraded condition, they would need to be close by for our remaining sensors to register.”
The commanding officer nodded. He’d anticipated something more encouraging. The diver should have made it to the shore by now. Still, it was early.
“Captain, how’s the scrubber repair going?”
“It’s working again. CO-two is stabilized.”
“Good . . . that’s good.” The sonar tech scratched the stubble on his chin. “And the reactors?”
“We’re still bailing out muck. We might be able to test a heat exchanger in a few hours. Once circulation is reestablished, we should be able to restart Unit Two.”
“That will help a lot.”
“Yes, it will.”
Neither man wanted to ask the ultimate “what if” question: What if they couldn’t restart the reactor?
Programmed to prevent a core meltdown, the computer controlling the reactor would automatically squash the chain reaction if the coolant system were not adequate. Without the heat generated by the fission process, there would be no steam. Without steam, the generator would not turn. Without the generator, there would be no electrical current to run the ship’s oxygen maker. And without fresh oxygen, they would all die.
Laura and her captor sat at the kitchen table, facing each other. They sipped tea from mugs, having just finished dinner—scrambled eggs and fried potatoes that he’d prepared.
Although Laura’s hands were free, her ankles remained bound. But she no longer sweltered; he had dialed back the furnace and the fireplace.
Laura had read somewhere that establishing a personal relationship with a captor helped in hostage situations. She decided to test the theory.
“My name is Laura. May I ask yours?”
He took a sip of tea. “John.”
“Your leg, it looks like you really injured it. Do you need help with it?”
“It’s fine.”
“I live in Redmond; I’m just renting this place.”
No response.
Laura racked her brain to formulate another question that would not alienate him. Her demands during their initial encounter had resulted in the gag.
“I’m a software engineer,” she offered.
“You write programs?”
“Sometimes, but others in my company write most of the code. My job is to coordinate and assemble the software we develop.”
“John” leaned back in his chair and said, “You’re a manager?”
“I am.”
“How many do you supervise?”
“There are about six hundred programmers and engineers in my division.”
He returned his chair to its normal position and cocked his head to the side. “You own this company?”
“I’m one of four principals. We have just over two thousand employees.”
“What software do you write?”
“Mostly business applications with some science-based work.”
He said, “You must make a lot of money.”
“I do well.”
“Were you raised in Seattle?”
“No. The Bay Area.”
His brow wrinkled.
“You know, San Francisco Bay.”
“Oh, yes.”
“I grew up east of the bay in a city called Castro Valley.”
“Ah, you’re a California girl.”
“I was.”
“Tell me about your parents.”
Laura expected the inquiry. It always came up with someone new. “I was adopted as an infant. My birth mother was Caucasian; my birth father was African American. I’ve never met them.”
“Your parents—who adopted you—white or black?”
“Caucasian.”
“What was it like for you growing up, with your father’s blood?”
He was direct, if anything.
“Great. No real problems.”
Laura skirted the truth, not wanting to revisit past hurts.
“Where did you receive your university education?”
“Caltech—California Institute of Technology.”
“Oh, I know that school.” He shifted position in his chair. “How did you end up in the software business?”
“Well, assembling computer code is like solving a puzzle. I’ve always enjoyed working on things that make you think. You know, like chess and math games and . . .”
Laura and John continued their dialogue. She had just mentioned her soon-to-be ex.
“You came here to get away from him?”
“Yes, my attorney served him with the divorce papers on Monday.”
“He doesn’t know you are here?”
“Absolutely not. Even my office doesn’t know I’m here.”
Laura regretted her last statement, knowing she’d revealed too much. “My attorney knows where I am; we’ve been communicating daily.” True to a point. She’d received one e-mail from her Seattle lawyer verifying Ken had received the court filings.
Laura folded back the bathrobe from her right shoulder and pulled up the sleeve of her T-shirt, revealing a nasty bruise. “He’s vicious when he drinks. He hit me a couple of weeks ago. But never again.”
“The man is a pig. He should be in jail.”
“I just want him out of my life.”
Laura sat on the couch in the living room, her wrists tied in front and her ankles still bound.
Laura’s captor worked at the dining room table; “John” had been at it for over an hour. Electronic parts harvested from a living room AM /FM stereo receiver covered the tabletop. A stainless steel pressure cooker and a telephone handset completed the parts collection, both taken from a locked cabinet in the pantry that he had pried open with his knife. The cabinet contained personal items of the homeowner.
Laura had been tempted to ask what he was doing but refrained, believing the less she knew the better off she’d be.
Since their initial encounter with the knife, there had been no additional threats and he hadn’t touched her, except for the restraints. Even so, Laura remained wary. He could turn on her.
Still she had hope, sparked by their dinner conversation. His interest in her background came across as genuine. He asked additional questions about her birth parents, but Laura simply repeated that she’d never met them—truthful yet evasive. She had a complete file on her birth parents.
Just remain calm, Laura self-ordered. I can get through this. He’s going to slip up sometime and I’ll escape.
Captain Lieutenant Yuri Kirov looked up from the worktable to check his prisoner. She remained on the sofa about twenty feet away. He had used rope from the garage to bind her this evening. He’d exhausted most of the roll of duct tape that he’d discovered earlier in a kitchen drawer.
Yuri watched as she leaned against the sofa cushion, eyes shut.
Despite her tousled hair, lack of makeup, and the unpretentious bathrobe, Yuri found Laura Newman alluring—an exotic blend of Scandinavia and equatorial Africa.
Laura had inherited her Nordic birth mother’s high cheekbones, full ripe lips, azure eyes, and russet hair. Her father’s tall willowy frame, broad nose, and cocoa skin, all linked to his distant Bantu ancestors, complimented her mother’s genes.
Yuri wondered what it was like for Laura growing up chocolate in a black and white world. In Russia, biracial children often had a tough life. Maybe it was easier in the USA.
He considered asking more questions about her family but thought better of it. He could not afford personal involvement. Laura represented a liability that he might be forced to eliminate for the sake of his submates.
Yuri turned back to the table and picked up one of the speakers. He inserted the woofer inside the pressure cooker and ran the connecting wire from the speaker through the relief valve opening in the lid. He set the lid on the pan and rotated it, engaging the rack-and-pinion lock mechanism.
Perfect!
The nearly full moon illuminated the vast inland waterway for miles, its surface silky smooth this early morning.
Yuri Kirov sat at the aft end of an aluminum skiff, guiding it southward. He had swiped the boat and its trailer from the yard of a neighboring beach house. It was early November and the owner, like those of most of the other homes along the seashore, had departed for the season.
Before locking out from the Neva, he’d memorized the bottom coordinates from the sub’s inertial navigation system. Using the GPS unit in Laura’s iPhone, he retraced his path. Yuri glanced at the digital display of the smartphone. He cut the outboard engine.
Yuri lowered the device into the water. It was an odd creation consisting of a kitchen pressure cooker filled with stereo radio components connected to an extension cord.
Yuri submerged the contraption just three meters. Any deeper and the seals he’d fashioned might fail. If the gadget flooded, his efforts would have been for nothing.
It took five minutes to connect the additional gear. He used the battery from Laura’s BMW to energize the system. He’d discovered the sedan in the garage.
Yuri checked his wristwatch: 12:59 A.M. It was time. They should be listening. But what if it didn’t work? What then?
He ignored his doubts and pressed the Transmit switch on the makeshift microphone—a hybrid constructed from the telephone handset he’d found. He spoke in English, using a pre-arranged code: “Alpha to Bravo, testing, one two three.”
The hydrophone broadcast into the deep. His voice propagated downward at over fifteen hundred meters per second. He repeated the call eight times at fifteen-second intervals.
Four minutes after the first transmission, a black one-meter-diameter globe surged to the surface in a flurry of bubbles.
Laura peeked through the curtains, searching for movement on the dimly lit beach below.
Her captor left two hours earlier. Instead of binding her to a dining room chair, he’d used an upholstered chair in the upstairs master bedroom. He lashed her wrists and ankles to the chair’s frame with rope.
She could move just enough to maintain circulation in her limbs but not enough to loosen the bounds. For the present, she’d given up trying to escape.
John hadn’t bothered with a gag. Instead, a single layer of duct tape sealed her lips. She could grunt muted words but nothing coherent. Even if she could have screamed full throttle, no one was around to hear. He’d made that point to her more than once.
Before heading downstairs, he’d informed Laura that he would be gone for several hours. She had no choice but to wait for his return.
From her second-story perch, Laura could see the moonlit beach through a narrow gap in the draperies. She’d watched him struggle to drag the twelve-foot skiff onto the beach; the man had only one good leg. He launched the runabout and motored into the darkness.
Laura wondered what he was up to, and why was he doing it in the middle of the night?
As Laura sat, occasionally peering through the window, she thought of her husband. He was up to something, too. But what?
Laura feared Ken as much as she feared her captor, maybe more. Just two weeks earlier, he had shown up at Laura’s house unannounced. Reeking of whiskey, Ken knocked Laura to the floor and attacked her with his size 11 Florsheims. He fled before the cops arrived.
Laura vowed that he would never touch her again.
As she peeked through the curtain, Laura again wondered about her captor.
Where did he go?
“Can you hear me?” asked Yuri Kirov.
“Yes, your signal is five-by-five.”
“Five-by-five here, too.”
Yuri grinned. Direct voice communication had been his goal. He’d just accomplished that task—speaking with the submarine’s acting commanding officer, Captain Third Rank Stephan Borodin.
The Neva bristled with high-tech communication devices, but to use them required the submarine to be under way, not marooned on the bottom.
After signaling with his makeshift hydrophone, requesting deployment of the very low frequency radio antenna buoy, Yuri connected with his shipmates. He accomplished that task by coupling a pair of wires he’d harvested from the stereo set to the buoy’s cable; he cut through the armored outer sheath and spliced the wires to an internal VLF radio receiving circuit. He attached the other end of the stereo wires to the telephone handset—now disconnected from the hydrophone. After the Neva’s communication officer energized the cable, Yuri could speak with Borodin. It was a crude arrangement but it worked.
“Are the reactors still offline?” Yuri asked.
“Yes. We’re still fighting that damn muck. It’s as if we sucked in half of the bottom.”
“What about the batteries?”
“Bad. We’ve got everything powered down, except the radio compartment.”
Yuri knew what that meant: no lights, no heat, and foul air.
Borodin continued, “We’ve got enough battery power left for a restart. But if that fails, we’ll be profúkat’.” Down the toilet.
“You’re still working on the seawater intakes, right?”
“Of course. Dima and his boys are mining that crud as we speak. Unit One is hopeless. But if we can unplug a condenser, we’ll be able to fire up Unit Two.”
“Okay, I understand.” Yuri chose his next words with care. “I’m working on getting us help, but it’s going to take a little time.”
He included himself by using the word us, even though he’d escaped from the underwater tomb.
“What kind of help?”
“I’ve made contact with our embassy in Washington.”
“They can’t do anything. Or won’t, once they know what happened.”
“I won’t reveal everything. Only what they need to know.”
“I don’t know about that. According to our orders we’re supposed to be dead.”
“That’s only if we were caught, but the Americans and Canadians are in the dark.”
“What can the embassy do anyway?”
“I don’t have any answers for you yet. It’s going to take awhile to sort out.”
Yuri refrained from informing Borodin that he’d yet to talk with anyone that could offer help. His cryptic call to the embassy represented a first step in a convoluted and risky process of informing his superiors of the Neva’s fate.
As a military intelligence officer, Yuri had been schooled in the “dos and don’ts” of operating in North America. Use of the telephone was discouraged. The FBI routinely monitored phone calls to and from the Russian embassy and its consu. . .
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