Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake Page 41

  Alexeii Serovski held his pistol tight in his fist. It was clear to him now that all aboard this submarine was not as it should be. The main hatch had been closed and, at times, he had the definite sensation of motion. Yet there seemed to be almost no one aboard the vessel.

  He had heard voices and he had been uncertain of their speech. And as he had approached nearer to the sound, the voices had vanished. Logic dictated that the command center of the submarine would be near the central portion of the ship and probably on one of the upper levels.

  He made his way in that direction now, his pistol as ready as he was… .

  Jason Darkwood set the course on auto and left the navigation station hurriedly, the Island Classer at flank speed now. “Gimme the chair, Sam—hang loose,” and he slid into the command chair as quickly as Aldridge vacated it. He needed touch with the rest of the ship and rapidly. If the Reagan had received his distress signal and code phrase, they still wouldn’t rendezvous with the Island Classer’s present course for several minutes, and the last thing Bacon had gotten off the hailing frequency was that the pursuing four Island Classers were preparing to fire unless he killed all engine power.

  “Aft Torpedo Room—anybody down there?”

  “I am, sir—this is Hornsbey.”

  “Private Hornsbey—listen carefully and I’m going to give you a procedure to follow in order to verify that all our torpedo tubes are dry and to ascertain their exact status. Now—do exactly as I tell you and remember, if

  you open a torpedo tube and the other end is open, we’re in deep shit—right?” “Yes, sir.”

  “Good—here’s what I want—” “Stop!”

  Darkwood turned the chair around 180 degrees. There was a Russian officer with a handgun standing between computer and sonar stations near the periscope array. “Who the hell are you?” Darkwood snapped in English, not thinking that fast.

  “I am Captain Alexeii Servoski of the Elite Corps of the Committee for State Security of the Soviet Union, under command of Hero Marshal Vladmir Karamatsov. You are under arrest!”

  “Your English is very good. And you are also out of your mind. Shoot me, mister, and this submarine goes to the bottom because I’m the only man on board who can command her. Miss me and put a bullet hole into one of the instrument packages and we might be as good as dead as well. And what the hell kind of uniform is that? And who’s this cockamamie Karamatsov character?”

  The Soviet officer’s face became livid with rage and Darkwood threw himself out of the chair and toward the man. “Sam!” The pistol discharged and Darkwood felt a burning sensation across his rib cage, and heard something electronic pop behind him as his left hand closed over the gunhand wrist and his right fist hammered forward. With pain across his ribcage the roundhouse punch wound up a short right jab. But Aldridge was there the next instant, and the Soviet officer’s body was ripped away from him and slammed into the overhead like a rag doll at the mercy of an angry child.

  “All right! Don’t kill him. We might get something out of him.” Darkwood’s right hand came away from his left side covered with blood. “Ohh, wonderful! Great.” He half walked, half lurched into the command chair. “Hornsbey—you still there?”

  “Yes, sir, Captain—what happened?”

  “We had a visitor—stand by—get right back to you.”

  He pushed the button for engineering. “Major Tiemerovna—Natalia. Do you know a Captain Servoski? “

  “Servoski?”

  “Something like the KGB Elite Corps or some such nonsense? And something about a Hero Marshal something—began with a K I think?”

  “Serovski!”

  “If the reactors are all under control and Mr. Rourke and Corporal Harkness can handle engineering, why don’t you duck up here for a sec and check out this guy. Okay?”

  “Yes—okay.”

  “Great—look forward to it. Bridge out.” He cut back to the aft torpedo room. “Okay, Hornsbey—you ready?” “You betchya, sir.”

  “Go ahead—inspire me with confidence.” As he started telling Hornsbey the procedure to follow, he realized that if he didn’t get a torpedo or two ready to go pretty quick, he and everyone else aboard was in genuine trouble.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Otto Hammerschmidt and the others had gone. Maria Leuden was beside her. The mortar bombardment of the first camp had stopped more than an hour ago and Captain Svetlana Grubaszikova’s “women” were massing for attack. And what had happened to her husband and brother?

  She worked the bolt of the M-16 and charged the chamber, leaving the selector on safe for the moment. Maria had an M-16 as well. She liked this girl and Michael loved her, whether he knew it or not yet. And she trusted to Maria’s good judgment that if Michael didn’t know it, he soon would. If any of them survived this thing alive.

  “I think they are going to attack us.” Maria commented.

  Annie smiled at her. “I think you’re right.” “I wonder if Michael is all right—and your husband too, of course.”

  Annie didn’t know what to say.

  Grubaszikova’s people were definitely getting ready to move—and not to a different neighborhood. She moved the M-16’s selector to auto.

  “Where is Otto?”

  “Getting into position down there—I hope—be ready, Maria.”

  “What will they do to us if they win?” “Since you wouldn’t want to know, the logical thing is to keep them from winning. Hang in there, Maria.”

  “I will—yes.”

  Annie debated if one really decent shot—if she’d had her father’s Steyr-Mannlicher SSG sniper rifle it would have been a different story—but if one decent shot could take out Grubaszikova. If only her father could have been behind that rifle. She felt tears welling up into her eyes. He was dead, they all felt. They never really said that he was, but they all felt it. Michael and Paul didn’t want to believe it, and maybe it was a sign of their strength that even though inside them somewhere they did believe it they still kept looking for him. But she would have known, somehow, somehow.

  Annie moved her selector back to safe.

  Battle would come soon enough.

  Her father had to be alive.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna had asked Commander Darkwood for his knife as soon as she had reached the bridge. He had been sitting at what looked like a navigation station, Sam Aldridge in what would have been the command chair, his feet resting on Serovski’s chest.

  She had noticed too that Darkwood was wounded and, against his protests, had knelt beside him at the navigation station, utilized the first-aid kit from the bulkhead nearby, and seen to his wound, quickly but adequately.

  “We should be rendezvousing with the Reagan in a couple of minutes. Don’t worry, major—we’ll get out of this.”

  “You remind me of John Rourke,” she told him. For her, it was the ultimate compliment she could give any man besides John Rourke.

  “Your eyes remind me of my mother’s eyes. They were blue like that. Doctor Rourke’s a very lucky man.”

  “Everyone misunderstands—he is married.”

  “We all have problems.”

  “His wife is a wonderful person and he loves her a great deal. He was never unfaithful to her with me.” Why was she telling this almost total stranger this?

  “Then he must be a man of iron will, your Doctor Rourke.”

  She felt her cheeks warming again. “Your wound isn’t deep—but you could use having a doctor take a look at it.

  “Know anybody who’s any good?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. That man under Sam’s feet— you know him?”

  “He was sent by my husband as his delivery boy.” She looked at Serovski, set down the medical kit, and picked up Darkwood’s fighting knife.

  “Your husband.”

  “The most evil man on earth, I think.”

  “He’s a marshal? That’s an old Russian ter
m for a general, isn’t it?”

  “He has an army. If an alliance between the Russians you fight and my husband becomes reality, then …” She couldn’t finish it.

  Darkwood seemed to be thinking. “Major—Natalia. Listen. Do you think you could persuade our friend to tell us where he’s supposed to meet your husband? I mean, after all—your husband’s apparently expecting an Island Class submarine. This very one. Such an important man. I guess I was thinking, if we make it out of this alive, it might be a real nice gesture on our parts if we didn’t just leave your husband standing there waiting—for his ship to come in, so to speak.” And Jason Darkwood grinned at her.

  Natalia stood up, the knife in her fist. “Sam—hold him down for me.”

  “My pleasure, major,” Aldridge responded.

  There was fear in Serovski’s hard eyes. It was justified, she felt, as she knelt beside his face and touched the knife to his throat.

  It was perfectly justified.

  “Where are you supposed to bring me, captain?”

  “Comrade major—have you no loyalty?”

  “I have loyalty—but unlike your loyalty, it is not misplaced. This is a very fine knife, and I imagine it is very sharp. And if you know me by reputation, you know that I am very good with a knife. Either tell me where you are to meet Marshal Karamatsov and when, or we will both find out together just how sharp this very knife happens to be.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  She shifted the knife to her left hand and her right hand reached down to his crotch and found the zipper at the front of his uniform.

  “No!”

  She started to reach inside his pants and he screamed like a woman. “Wait! Please! I will tell you!”

  “Where and when?” She drew her hand back but brought the knife to his throat.

  “The Island of Chinmen Tao in the Formosa Strait— the rendezvous was to be …”

  “Look at your watch,” she ordered.

  He raised his left wrist. “About four hours—Chinmen lao.

  Natalia moved the knife. “Quemoy,” she said softly. H they could trap Vladmir, then kill him. If …

  It would have been slow going with the trucks filled with the internees from the death camp, but by now, certainly, Han had reached the J-7V and used its radio to call in help. And by now, help would be coming. Perhaps a large German force, or perhaps only some German aircraft lifting in Chinese troops.

  The mortar bombardment would start, softening them up, but they would have to be very careful of the range because, despite Captain Grubaszikova’s bravado, Annie knew, the last thing the Russians wanted was to explode the trucks loaded with the deadly gas.

  And she had a sudden flash of inspiration. “Maria— you and Ma-Lin. Get the others together and get them to barricade themselves immediately around the gas trucks.”

  “But if the trucks are hit, Annie—”

  “If the trucks are hit, any men in the vicinity will be affected anyway. But the nearer we all are to the trucks, the more careful the Russians will have to be with their fire. Just do it.”

  “What about you?” Maria Leuden asked.

  Annie looked at the girl and smiled. “I’ll be right along.” If she could hold to this position long enough,

  Grubaszikova would lead her female soldiers up the hill. And once Grubaszikova was in range of the M-16 and Annie’s abilities … “I’ll be with you before you know it,” Annie told her.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  John Rourke sat at the engineering station, the Wayne’s Engineering Officer, a pretty Eurasian-looking woman named Su Lin Davis, having left the bridge to personally supervise the monitoring of the Wayne’s portside reactor, a problem she described as “a stuck gauge most likely.” It had freed up a chair and John Rourke, determined not to leave the bridge, had needed a place to sit. Common sense and his own medical experience, the miraculous healing techniques of the Doctors at Mid-Wake notwithstanding, dictated that he was doing too much too soon after such a serious operation.

  On one level of his consciousness, he monitored the activity of the bridge. The Reagan was ten minutes ahead of the Wayne in terms of reaching the fleeing Island Class submarine commandeered, it seemed, by Captain Jason Darkwood. The Reagan and the Island Classer, as they were generally called, would rendezvous in less than a minute, it appeared from the last communication between the Reagan and the Wayne.

  Transmissions being sent by the stolen Island Classer were still being effectively jammed by the pursuing Soviet submarines, and so there was no definitive word as to whether or not Natalia had indeed been freed.

  On a second level of consciousness, John Rourke saw to his weapons. The Life Support System X made for him five centuries before by Texan Jack Crain was as perfect as ever. The sheath had suffered in the saltwater bath it had gotten when Rourke had been taken unconscious into

  the waters of the Soviet lagoon, but it was restorable. The same could be said for the double Alessi shoulder rig for the twin stainless Detonics .45s. The leather was a little dry and stiff, but would be serviceable for the time being and, with careful work, would be restorable to full functional efficiency. The sheath for the little A.G. Russell Sting IA black chrome was somewhat the worse for wear as well, blood and salt water having been a bad mixture as a leather dressing, but the knife was in excellent condition and this sheath as well could be restored. The Milt Sparks Six-Pak was in similar condition.

  All told, Rourke thought, smiling ruefully, his equipment was in the same or better shape than himself at the moment, functional but requiring some restoration… .

  Lang had sufficient presence of mind, despite his lack of skill, to summon Darkwood to the sonar station and for that Darkwood was grateful. “I don’t know what the noise is, sir, but it seemed to come from all four of those Island Classers that are doggin’ us.”

  Darkwood took the headset and listened, then checked the visual interpretation displays on Lang’s computer consoles. “You may not know shit from shoe polish about sonar, but thank God you thought to ask. Four wireguides.”

  Darkwood crossed to the navigation station in three strides and threw himself down behind the console. “Sam—relay these orders to Engineering.” There was one chance against four wireguides in a vessel that couldn’t outrun them. “Fifteen degrees right rudder and maintain full flank speed. Stand by for rudder changes.” His eyes jumped from the forward video display and the plot. They were alongside the volcanic vent which was the source of geothermal energy for the Soviet domes and for Mid-Wake. And the only chance was to take the Island Classer into the vent. “Rudder amidships and all back one third.” He worked the diving planes down. They were nearing the vent now. “Fifteen degrees left rudder and

  back to all ahead full.” There was a pinnacle of rock rising almost directly ahead of them. “Rudder amidships. All stop. Blow auxilliary tanks one, three, two, and four now! Ten degrees right rudder. All ahead full—now, Sam—tell ‘em!” What he was doing was like skimming a rock off the water, he hoped. There were many ponds in the living modules of Mid-Wake, and little boys grew up skipping rocks or pennies off their surface, and he’d always been very good at it. But he had never tried it with a submarine. “Ten degrees right rudder.” He could hear the hull scraping against the upthrusting rock, feel the drag, and then there was a lurch and the Island Classer was moving up and ahead. “Rudder amidships, back one third.” He worked the diving planes again, the vent opening before them. “Fifteen degrees left rudder. AH stop. Ten degrees left rudder.” The submarine was settling into the vent. The composite video display looked like a laser light show, volcanic sediment rising in showers of spray and bursts of color. “Five degrees right rudder, all ahead two thirds. Tell Engineering to advise me if hull temperatures reach into the danger zone. Rudder amidships and all ahead full. Sonar—what’s the story on those four wireguides?”

  “Looks like they’re still on our tail, Captain. But my sonar is going nutso. There’s noise every
where.”

  “Keep your fingers crossed those four wireguides are having the same difficulty.” The Island Classer rocked violently to starboard, a brilliant flash of light from the portside of the ship washing over the composite video display, Darkwood nearly sliding out of his chair. “Sam—tell Engineering to talk to me.”

  He could hear off the speaker. “This is Natalia—if I’m reading the scanners correctly, we’re not taking in water.”

  He hoped she was reading the damage scanners correctly.

  The vent widened and he ordered, “Five degrees right rudder,” taking the Island Classer dead center along the vent’s course. “Rudder amidships. Sonar—how’s the wireguide situation?”

  “Nothing, sir—oh-oh.” “What’s ‘oh-oh’ mean?”

  “Four more sounds like the ones before—maybe they just launched four more after us, Captain.”

  If the Russians were insane enough to risk a nuclear detonation in the vent that supplied both their cities with geothermal power, it was a drastic measure. And drastic measures required drastic countermeasures. “Communications—anything from the Reagan?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “Good—get the hell out of that chair and slide over to the weapons station quick. I need direct control of the cluster charges and now, Bacon.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Sam—alert the aft torpedo room that on my signal I want all four aft tubes launched simultaneously. Bacon— you at the weapons station?”

  “Sure am, sir.”

  “Get ready to fire the ship’s entire compliment of cluster charges on my signal.” “Arming now, sir—I think.”

  “That’s right, fill me with confidence, Bacon. Be ready. Sam, tell Engineering that I want them monitoring all damage-control scanners until I say otherwise. Sonar—what’s the story?”

  “The remaining three out of the first four wireguides are right on our tail, sir—about a hundred yards off the stern. The other four wireguides are moving faster. About another hundred yards back.”