Countdown to Midnight, page 36
“See if you can raise Lariat One, Tony,” Flynn called down to McGill. Squinting against the hellish, flickering glare, he stared ahead through the smoke, trying to find the quickest path through this sea of fire. “Tell ’em that we could sure use a lift. And ASAP.”
They all knew escaping aboard this lifeboat was only a means of staving off the inevitable for a little while longer. With that Russian submarine lurking nearby, they were doomed.
Through his headset, Flynn heard the other man start calling over the radio, enunciating clearly in a calm, measured tone. “Dragon Team calling Lariat One. Dragon Team calling Lariat One. Do you read me? Over—”
Aboard BS-64 Podmoskovye
A Short Time Later
“Sir! Small surface contact! Off the starboard bow! Range four thousand meters!” one of the two sailors posted as lookouts yelled.
Nakhimov looked in that direction. There, barely visible in all the drifting smoke and dazzling flame, he caught a brief glimpse of a small orange boat crossing behind the stern of the sinking Gulf Venture. One of the lifeboats from the tanker, he realized immediately. So there were a few survivors after all. He focused his binoculars on the distant craft, only to see it vanish again—hidden from view by the much larger burning, listing ship. He leaned over the intercom. “Sonar! Do you have the new contact?”
“Negative, Captain,” he heard his sonar officer say apologetically. “The breaking-up noises from that tanker are drowning out anything else in the immediate area.”
No great surprise, there, Nakhimov realized. His passive sonars were deafened by the horrific din created by huge pieces of machinery inside the Gulf Venture’s hull tearing loose and the pounding roar made by millions of gallons of seawater flooding into its ruptured compartments.
Then he shrugged. The lifeboat couldn’t get far. Not up against Podmoskovye’s greatly superior speed, even with the submarine still riding on the surface. He bent down and snapped out the necessary helm orders. They would circle around the sinking ship. Once they were on the other side, they’d have a clear line of fire and be able to get a sonar fix to guide on. And even a single torpedo ought to suffice to reduce that tiny lifeboat to a few torn shards of orange plastic floating on the sea.
A few minutes later, Nakhimov heard one of his lookouts exclaim, “There the tanker goes!”
He turned his gaze toward the Gulf Venture in time to see its two broken halves sliding fast into a boiling cauldron of froth and foam. The Zuljanah rocket, still securely clamped to its launch gantry, vanished from sight. In moments, nothing remained to be seen but a blazing ring of oil-fueled fires and drifting pieces of debris.
“Air contact dead ahead!” the other lookout suddenly screamed. “It’s crossing our bows only a few thousand meters off!”
Nakhimov whipped around in shock. There, roaring in low over the surface of the ocean, he saw a large twin-engine aircraft. The floats fixed to the ends of its high wing showed that it was amphibious, a seaplane capable of landing on and taking off from the water. It was flying straight toward the tiny lifeboat—already descending even lower as it came in to make a landing. “Sonar, this is the captain! Can you get a fix on that small surface contact yet?” he growled.
“Negative, sir,” his sonar officer admitted. “The noises made by the sinking tanker still obscure everything else.”
Nakhimov swore under his breath. Zhdanov would never forgive him, he realized, feeling an ice-cold shiver of fear run down his spine. His only chance of escaping the wreckage of the Russian president’s cherished Operation MIDNIGHT had been to ensure that no one escaped to report what Moscow and Iran had been planning. And now he’d failed, even at that.
Numbly, he watched the float plane touch down and taxi over to the wallowing lifeboat.
Lariat One
A Short Time Later
Laura Van Horn glanced back from the cockpit of the Viking Aircraft CL-415. Originally designed as a firefighting aircraft, the Canadian-made seaplane had a narrow aft compartment. It was crowded now with the Dragon Team’s survivors and a small cadre of qualified merchant marine officers, more of the Quartet Directorate’s part-timers. They were on this flight out from Bermuda in case Flynn and his men had been able to take the Gulf Venture intact. Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of the two severely wounded men being laid carefully across the seaplane’s deck. A former combat medic who’d signed on with Four was already hard at work on Tadeusz Kossak. “Everybody on board?”
“We’re all here,” Flynn replied. He sounded exhausted. “Alain and Mark didn’t make it.”
She nodded tightly, holding her own regret under wraps for the moment. “Then strap in,” she ordered. “This takeoff might be a little rough.”
“Compared to being shot at, hacked by axes, blown up, torpedoed, and diving head-on into a bunch of flames?” Hynes said carefully. He shrugged. “I’ll take it.”
“We were inside a lifeboat when we dove into that fire,” Flynn reminded him, with a weary grin. “So it’s not quite as bad as you’re making it sound.”
Inside, her heart beat a little faster. So Nick was still himself where it counted, she thought warmly, despite how battered, tired, and sad he looked right now. Hiding her own smile, Van Horn swung back to her controls and pushed her engine throttles forward. Slowly, the big seaplane picked up speed, bouncing across shallow waves as it roared ahead. Twin plumes of white foam and spray lengthened behind her floats. At last, she pulled back strongly on the yoke.
With a final sharp jolt, the CL-415 broke free of the ocean and climbed away—gaining altitude fast. She banked sharply back to the west and flew high over the Russian submarine, which had turned after her in vain pursuit during her takeoff run.
Hundreds of feet below the surface, the environmental sensors inside the Zuljanah rocket’s warhead obeyed Hossein Majidi’s last commands. As the torn remains of the Gulf Venture plunged into the ink-black Atlantic depths, they detected rapid changes in pressure and temperature. Milliseconds later, critical relays inside the sinking weapon closed . . . and the five-hundred-kiloton bomb detonated.
Several miles behind the speeding twin-engine seaplane, a huge flash as bright as the noonday sun suddenly erupted beneath the surface of the sea. Seconds later, an enormous column of water—hundreds of yards across—erupted like a volcano, soaring thousands of feet into the air before slowly collapsing back in on itself. At the same time, a massive, tsunami-like wave roared outward from the center of the blast, racing across the ocean at hundreds of miles an hour.
Caught broadside by a shockwave with pressures far beyond human comprehension, the Podmoskovye was crushed flat in the blink of an eye, along with its entire 135-man crew. And when the blast-created tsunami arrived, the submarine’s twisted wreckage was casually tossed aside like a crumpled beer can caught in the surf. Carried along for some miles, it finally sank below the surface, spiraling around and around as it plummeted into the abyss.
As it rippled outward from the detonation point, the shockwave’s power fell off rapidly, but even miles from the center, it was still strong enough to hurl the seaplane into a left-hand spin. Thrown suddenly out of control, the CL-415 corkscrewed down out of the sky.
Watching the ocean and sky whirling across her cockpit canopy with dizzying speed, Van Horn reacted instantly. One hand slammed both engine throttles back to idle. The only way out of this spin was to get her plane’s nose down and fly out it. Powering up would only make things worse, since it would tend to raise the aircraft’s nose. Next, she brought her ailerons to their neutral position, and applied right rudder to reduce the CL-415’s rolling and yawing movement as it twisted down out toward the sea.
Her final move was the most counterintuitive of all. Even though it felt as though they were falling straight out of the sky, she shoved her yoke forward—deliberately lowering the seaplane’s nose to reduce its angle of attack. For long seconds as they kept spinning, she was afraid her various measures weren’t going to work, at least not in time to stop them from crashing into the Atlantic.
But then the spin slowed and finally stopped. With her aircraft back under control, Van Horn quickly zeroed out her rudder, pulled back gently on the yoke, and carefully added power to level out the heavy twin-engine seaplane only a few feet above the white, foaming sea. Breathing heavily, she regained altitude and flew on.
At a thousand feet, she risked a glance over her shoulder into the cramped passenger cabin behind the cockpit. “Everybody okay?” she called out cheerfully.
Shaken, Flynn and the others slowly disentangled themselves from where they’d been thrown. Hynes looked at her reproachfully. “You know, ma’am, when you said that takeoff would be a little rough, I figured you were just exaggerating.”
“Mea culpa,” she said with a crooked grin. “But that little joyride wasn’t entirely my fault.” She banked the CL-415 around so that they could all see the vast seething cauldron below. “When you guys set out to sink a ship, you sure don’t screw around.”
Flynn whistled softly, staring at the foaming turmoil below. He shook his head in astonishment. “I guess not.” He looked back at her. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That we just saw that Russian warhead go off?” Van Horn said. “Uh-huh, that’s what I’m thinking.” Her expression turned serious. “And, Nick?”
“Yeah,” he said absently, still watching the ocean boil below them.
“I’m damned glad it went off out here. And not over the United States,” she said softly. “You and your guys did good today. Really good. No one died in vain.”
Having made her point, Van Horn turned back to the west and advanced her throttles to full power. The thundering roar of the two big Pratt & Whitney turboprops grew louder. She’d seen the grave look on the medic’s face while he kept working on the seriously wounded Tadeusz Kossak. The sooner she got them all back on the ground, the happier she would be. She’d lost two of her Quartet Directorate comrades that day. She wouldn’t lose any more. Not if she could possibly help it.
Epilogue
Secure Conference Room, National Defense Management Center, Moscow
A Short Time Later
Nervously, President Piotr Zhdanov lit another cigarette. He took a single deep drag and then, viciously, ground the cigarette to ash on the polished table in front of him. For a time, he stared down at his hands before looking up again to glower at the group of senior military officers and government officials arrayed around the conference table. “Well?” he grated out. “What the devil is going on?”
Now there was a foolish question, Pavel Voronin thought with carefully concealed contempt from his place beside the older man. Zhdanov knew full well that no one in this subterranean room had any more information than he did at this instant. Fragmentary signals from the Podmoskovye had indicated that something had gone badly wrong in the final stages of MIDNIGHT. But for long minutes now, there had been only silence from the submarine. And so far, all efforts to reestablish contact with Nakhimov and his crew through Russia’s network of military communications satellites had failed.
A secure phone buzzed sharply next to Gennadiy Kokorin, the elderly minister of defense. He picked up. “Yes?” Slowly, his face turned pale. “I see,” he said at last. “I’ll relay the news to the president.” He hung up and looked at Zhdanov. “Piotr, our EKS missile warning satellites have just detected an underwater nuclear detonation in the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Show me!” Zhdanov snapped.
Kokorin murmured to one of his aides. The younger officer input commands on his computer. In response, an icon appeared on the large digital map displayed on the wall screen. It matched the last known location of both their strangely silent nuclear submarine and the Gulf Venture.
For a long, almost unbearable moment there was absolute silence in the room as Zhdanov and Voronin absorbed the catastrophic news. Somehow, their carefully laid and intricate plan to cripple the United States and permanently alter the balance of power in both the Middle East and the world itself had been wrecked.
At last, the president turned his baleful gaze toward Kokorin. “Signal the Forty-Second Rocket Division to stand its missiles down,” he snarled. “There will be no ‘retaliatory’ nuclear attack against Iran.”
Kokorin nodded gravely. “Yes, Piotr.” He cleared his throat. “Do you have any other orders for us tonight?”
Zhdanov turned pale with barely suppressed rage. “Only one.” He gestured curtly toward the exit. “Get out. All of you. Now.” He swung his head to Voronin. “Except you, Pavel. You will stay.”
Ah, Voronin thought calmly. The moment of maximum risk. The moment of truth. He kept his countenance while all the rest of them filed out the room.
When they were alone, Zhdanov stared icily at him. “Well?” he demanded. “What now?”
Aware that he was now on very dangerous ground, Voronin projected an air of complete confidence. “True, the destruction of the Podmoskovye is a blow, but our navy has more such submarines in its arsenal, does it not? And wars, after all, cannot be fought and won without casualties.” He looked straight at the older man. “Today, we may have lost a hand,” he continued coolly. “However, the great game goes on. Our enemies were lucky this time. But they have to be lucky every time. We do not.”
Slowly, Zhdanov nodded. MIDNIGHT was not the only aggressive scheme Voronin had proposed. In the undeclared shadow war that he and the younger man’s Raven Syndicate were now waging against the United States and its allies, the side on offense had the edge. Sooner or later, one of their deadly covert operations was bound to penetrate the West’s defenses. His mood shift was apparent.
Privately, though, despite his outwardly calm demeanor, Voronin felt a wave of cold rage welling up deep inside. The failure of MIDNIGHT had cost him dearly—in money, in the loss of many of his most experienced and best trained agents, and, most bitterly of all, in prestige. His enemies in Zhdanov’s inner circle would undoubtedly try to use this setback in a bid to discredit him. For now, he was confident of his ability to retain the president’s trust, but he knew only too well that Russia’s ruler had limited patience with those whose promises went unfulfilled. Before that day came, it was vital that he hunt down whoever was responsible for inflicting this unexpected defeat on him. He would hunt them down, he vowed . . . and then he would destroy them utterly.
Avalon House, Winter Park, Florida
A Few Days Later
Close beside the Spanish-style mansion used as a headquarters for the Quartet Directorate’s American station, a simple stone column rose at the center of an elegant, carefully maintained garden. Loosely modeled on those put up after the Second World War by veterans of the British Special Operations Executive to honor their fallen comrades, the pillar bore only an inscription— “They Gave Their Lives So That Others Might Live”—and a list of names. Two new ones had been engraved: Alain Ricard and Mark Stadler.
Now Nick Flynn, Laura Van Horn, and Gwen Park stood in a solemn line, facing Fox. They each held a glass of whiskey.
“We fight our battles in secret,” Fox said quietly to them. “Without acclaim. Without cheers. Without parades. And without public honors.” He looked somber. “What we accomplish is known to us alone. As are the losses we bear, painful though they are. This is our burden. And a heavy burden it is.”
Flynn nodded and saw the others doing the same.
“But we bear it nonetheless,” the older man continued gently. “Because the inscription this pillar carries is the truth. We risk our lives—and sometimes lose them—not for money or medals, but for the freedoms and lives of others, others we may never even know. We do it, because it must be done.” He raised his glass. “To fallen friends and comrades!”
“To fallen friends and comrades!” Flynn said firmly, echoed by Van Horn and Park.
With one quick motion, they all drained their glasses, to the very bottom, and then hurled them against the base of the pillar, where they shattered. The glittering fragments of other such final toasts, made over the course of many years and decades, gleamed in the sunlight there.
Later, sitting with Flynn and Van Horn on the tiled veranda that ran the length of Avalon House’s lakeside, Fox briefed them on the fallout thus far from their daring raid against the Gulf Venture. “To date,” he said dispassionately, “the news of an underwater nuclear blast in the middle of the Atlantic has been kept from the public and the press.”
Flynn nodded. That wasn’t surprising, in a way. Their battle occurred far outside the normal shipping and air traffic routes, so there were no witnesses to the massive explosion. “What about the sub the Russians lost?”
“Moscow has reported the apparent sinking of its converted ballistic missile submarine, the Podmoskovye,” Fox told him. He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “But they’re blaming the loss on a probable torpedo accident during the Northern Fleet’s most recent peacetime naval exercise.” He smiled thinly. “As part of the cover-up, Zhdanov has ordered a massive search and rescue operation in the Arctic waters off Russia’s northern coast . . . to ‘find Captain Nakhimov and his gallant sailors.’ Naturally, of course, their efforts haven’t succeeded in turning up any trace of the missing submarine.”
“Naturally,” Van Horn said with disgust.
Flynn leaned forward. “What about our own government?” he asked curiously. “They must know that a warhead went off.”
Fox nodded seriously. “They do. And the entire intelligence community and the whole of the defense and political establishments have been scrambling to try to figure out what just happened. Without any success . . . as yet.”
