The Faithful Spy

by Jeffrey Layton

  Yuri triggered the intercom speaker. “Let me know when you’re set and I’ll flood the chamber.”

  Shtyrov extended the thumb of his right gloved hand. Yuri observed the signal from the newly installed observation porthole—a thick slab of acrylic that filled a four-inch-diameter hole in the side of the chamber. Yuri had insisted on the installation of the viewport and the intercom prior to starting the mission.

  “Flooding,” Yuri announced.

  He flipped a switch, triggering a pump that transferred water from internal tanks into the chamber. Soon Shtyrov was completely submerged. He equalized pressure and opened the bottom hatch. Yuri watched as Shtyrov lowered the acoustic recording cylinder through the hatchway. He used a line lashed to the unit to prevent it from free-falling. The Spetsnaz operator then made his exit.

  Yuri remotely sealed the bottom hatch and dewatered the chamber, pumping the water back into the internal side tanks.

  He was next.

  * * * *

  Yuri stood inside the pressure chamber. The water level was waist high and rising. Clad head to toe in a black dry suit and equipped with a rebreather backpack and a buoyancy compensator, he appeared ready for a spacewalk. The flooding water reached his chest. He pulled up his right arm and checked the control panel lashed to the neoprene covering just above his wrist. The breathing gas and CO2 scrubber were in the green. The water reached his neck. Yuri tried to breathe normally but remained apprehensive, waiting for complete immersion. His dive mask gripped his face and gas flowed through the mouthpiece, but leaks were always possible. The claustrophobic chamber didn’t help either. There was barely enough room to turn around, let alone adjust his gear if needed.

  No leaks, Yuri thought as the water surged past his head. Thank you, Lord!

  With the chamber filled, Yuri’s hooded head bounced against the overhead. Too much air!

  He reached up with a gloved hand and pressed a valve on his buoyancy compensator, releasing a stream of bubbles. He descended, his fin-tipped feet landing on the bottom hatch.

  Yuri and the Spetsnaz divers did not use traditional weight belts to counter the buoyancy of their dry suits and to provide a quick escape to the surface in an emergency. Instead, lead weights placed in pockets sewn inside their neoprene suits provided ballast. If they had an accident, the Russian Navy did not want the corpses of their underwater spies floating to the surface.

  Yuri turned to the side and peered through the lens of his facemask at the chamber porthole. Tumanov was on the other side. Yuri signaled thumbs up with both hands. He dropped to his knees and turned a gate valve, hearing a slight hiss as the pressure inside the chamber equalized with the exterior water. Next, he triggered the release mechanism of the bottom hatch. It rotated away, revealing a black hole. Yuri removed the diver propulsion vehicle from its mounting on the side of the chamber. It was slightly negative. He flipped a switch on the control panel. The LED display lit up. He scanned the readings. All systems were normal. Turning to the cargo stowed on the deck next to the open hatch, he removed the Remora from its lashings and held the underside close to his facemask. The indicator light broadcast a faint green.

  Good, everything’s working. Yuri slipped the Remora into an open mesh container with a tether connected to the diver propulsion vehicle. He next clipped a second line attached to the DPV to a D-ring on his chest harness. He took one last look at the porthole and again signaled thumbs up to Tumanov. Yuri dropped the DPV and the Remora through the hatch. He followed, sinking fins first.

  Yuri hovered just above the bottom as the beam from his handheld dive light pierced the gloom. His fins kicked up a silt cloud from muddy bottom sediments. He checked the depth gauge strapped to his left forearm. Sixteen meters—fifty-two feet.

  He rotated three-sixty. Shtyrov and Dobrynin had already departed for the south side of the entrance channel to the Port of Qingdao. Yuri’s mission would take him along the north side of the channel.

  He pulled on the tether to his underwater ride, retrieving the four-foot-long by one-foot diameter aluminum cylinder from the bottom. He grabbed hold of the DPV’s handgrip, a metal bar that extended about a foot above the ducted propeller housing. Yuri triggered a switch on the handgrip, energizing the diver propulsion vehicle’s control panel. The screen mounted on top of the handgrip displayed compass heading, water depth, speed, and battery capacity. After verifying the DPV was operational he cinched in the Dacron line reducing the tether to about three feet in length. The second line securing the Remora stretched out behind Yuri.

  He turned to the side and aimed his light at the P-815. The minisub loomed in the background. Knowing Tumanov and crew were watching with the underwater video system, he waved an arm. Yuri switched off the dive light, which produced instant gloom. He would rely on the DPV’s LED compass display for navigation. He checked the heading and verified the course. Now ready, Yuri engaged the electric drive.

  The DPV lunged ahead. With both hands gripping the handle bar, Yuri hung on. Propeller wash jetted under his elongated form as he sped northeastward at four knots. The Remora, also tethered to the DPV, trailed several feet behind his fins. Virtually silent, the DPV’s battery powered electric motor towed Yuri and the Remora with ease. Designed to minimize cavitation, the propeller generated a minuscule sound print.

  Despite the DPV’s stealth, Yuri fretted. Acoustic sensors might detect the noise as he closed in on the sub base. He also worried about the P-815. Once he departed, the mini would ground out on the bottom and wait for the divers to return. A homing signal transmitted by the minisub’s nav sonar mimicked the clicks of a short-finned pilot whale. Receivers attached to the rebreather backpacks that all three divers wore would guide them back to the rendezvous point.

  On paper, it was a doable exercise. Each team would install their special equipment on the bottom and return to the P-815. The mini would then reconnect with the Novosibirsk.

  But it could all turn to crap in a heartbeat. This Yuri knew from experience. Rebreathers could fail, forcing a diver to the surface. A DPV could peter out too soon, stranding a team. Underwater listening devices might detect extraneous noise from the electric drive of a DPV. Even respirations could give away the divers. And magnetic anomaly detectors might discover the P-815. Despite the demagnetization of its steel hull, a faint signature remained.

  If a diver suffered a gear casualty or hostile surface forces began searching, their orders were unambiguous: Depart from operations area immediately. Rendezvous with the P-815 and promptly leave Qingdao harbor.

  Yuri relaxed his grip on the handle bar, transferring the hydraulic drag of his body from his arms to the chest harness line that connected with the DPV. The tether now took the burden of hanging onto the underwater tug as it towed Yuri east. He checked the DPV’s heading display. He remained on course.

  Yuri planned to continue for another ten minutes on the same compass course at four knots. He would then carefully ascend to the surface to verify his location. It was slack high tide, but residual currents still surged through the bay. He would take a GPS fix and adjust course as needed to home in on the entrance to the Qingdao Naval Base.

  * * * *

  Shtyrov and Dobrynin reached the head of the harbor inlet thirty-five minutes after locking out from the P-815. Their actual destination differed from what they had told Yuri and the others aboard the minisub. Instead of installing the recorder in the entrance channel to the Qingdao base, they diverted to a commercial waterway located to its south.

  On their journey to the Port of Qingdao’s Middle Harbor, they encountered a massive barge with a clamshell bucket dredge. Illuminated by racks of floodlights, the dredge worked around the clock deepening the navigation channel that served the commercial harbor. The Russian divers welcomed the racket from the operation, which masked their penetration.

  While Dobrynin remained on the bottom next to the package, Shtyrov a
scended. He eased his head out of the water. His wrist compass told him he was facing north. Through his facemask, he observed half a dozen fishing boats and workboats moored to floating docks about 150 feet away, their hulls silhouetted by pole-mounted lights on the adjacent jetty. He kicked his fins, rotating one-eighty. A collection of large vessels, a hundred to three hundred feet in length, lined the wharf along the southern edge of the waterway. Just beyond the wharf, Shtyrov spotted several high-rise towers, each blazing with hundreds of lighted windows.

  Govnó! The presence of the twenty- to thirty-story residential apartments stunned Shtyrov. He had expected only port facilities.

  Are we in the right location?

  Shtyrov lifted his right arm out of the water, allowing the GPS unit strapped to his forearm to take a fix. It took about a minute for the device to synchronize with three of the constellation of Russian navigation satellites that orbited over the north Pacific. We’re right on. Shtyrov understood the need to relocate the package from the naval base to the commercial harbor area—the chance of discovery was substantially less. Nevertheless, the reality of the real-world conditions did not sit well with him.

  Don’t think about it—just do your job.

  He took a last look at the surroundings before descending.

  Shtyrov joined Chief Dobrynin on the bottom, thirty feet below the surface. Dobrynin’s dive light illuminated the work area, its beam angled down. Shtyrov issued a hand signal, directing his assistant to proceed. Using a spade he carried with his dive gear, Dobrynin began excavating a hole. The top half foot of the bottom consisted of muck—silty sediments with the consistency of mush. Below that layer, however, the soil was hardpacked clay. It was slow going with the mini-shovel. Moscow dictated that the unit must be covered by at least fifty centimeters (twenty inches) of firm soil.

  Shtyrov checked his watch. They should have departed by now. He reached down to his right calf and removed a dive knife. He signaled to Dobrynin to take a break. With both gloved hands gripping the handle of the knife, Shtyrov jammed the stainless-steel blade into the bottom of the hole.

  Ten minutes later, the Spetsnaz operators completed their work and departed.

  * * * *

  Yuri surfaced to check his bearings in the entrance channel to the Qingdao Naval Base. The ten-story-high harbor surveillance tower was about a hundred yards away. Located on the north side of channel, the observation post marked the landward end of the rock jetty that protected the waterway from waves generated in the northern reaches of Jiaozhou Bay. Yuri hugged the bottom as he crept further into hostile waters. He dialed the DPV back to just two knots. Despite the thermal long johns and jumpsuit he wore under the rubber dry suit, the cold penetrated. He shivered.

  As he continued east along the north side of the channel, Yuri noticed the gradual change in ambient light conditions. The gloom eased into a gray tone.

  Floodlights—I’m close!

  A row of pole lights just beyond the harbor tower illuminated the 1,200-foot-long naval base wharf. Earlier, Yuri had noted the destroyer moored at the west end of the quay.

  Yuri had just slowed to one knot when he heard the high-pitched whine of propellers chopping water. The racket commenced without warning.

  Patrol boat!

  Adrenaline surged into his bloodstream, fear displacing the cold within heartbeats.

  Yuri powered down. He sank to the bottom and waited. The din escalated. He looked up but could see nothing through the gloom. The noise peaked and receded.

  Whatever produced the noise had moved on, heading west in the navigation channel.

  Thank you, Lord!

  Relieved, Yuri was about to continue when he noticed his breathing rate. He was gulping gas from the rebreather. Slow down! His noisy respirations could give his position away.

  Yuri paced his breathing, thankful there was no stream of exhalation bubbles that could reveal his presence. About a minute later, he powered up the DPV. It should be around the corner ahead.

  * * * *

  Shtyrov guided his DPV west in Jiaozhou Bay, cruising just above the bottom at three knots. Dobrynin followed ten feet behind, towed by his own propulsion unit.

  The acoustic receiver attached to Shtyrov’s rebreather backpack relayed the relative heading of the P-815’s homing signal to an LED display strapped to his right forearm. He estimated they had another twenty minutes before reaching the minisub.

  * * * *

  Yuri rose from the depths at a glacial pace, his head oozing above the water surface.

  There you are!

  The submarine was about a hundred feet away. The Type 095 nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine occupied the south side of a floating pier that extended seaward from a steel bulkhead. Security floodlights illuminated the exposed hull. Yuri did not observe personnel on the pier or on the sub’s casing. Nevertheless, he suspected human eyes and myriad electronic sensors guarded the warship. Releasing a short squirt of air from his buoyancy compensator, he submerged and dropped forty feet to the bottom, where he switched on the DPV. At minimum power, it towed him northwestward at a snail’s pace until he passed into the sub’s night shadow.

  Now directly under the hull about midships, Yuri switched on his dive light using the low illumination setting. He disconnected the tether to the DPV, allowing the propulsion unit to settle to the bottom. On his knees in the mud, Yuri extracted the Remora from the tow bag and used the dive light to illuminate its control panel.

  Good, everything’s okay.

  He pulled open a plastic guard that covered the Remora’s activation switch, then used his gloved right index finger to activate the device. The Remora’s legs snapped outward from the main cavity. Still holding the huge crab lookalike by the rim of its outer shell covering, Yuri closed the switch guard and set the Remora onto the seabed.

  Its ten appendages went to work. Within seconds, it burrowed into the bottom.

  Yuri waited another minute to verify the gadget had deployed correctly. Satisfied, he proceeded with the second element of his mission. After removing the infrared flash camera from a thigh pocket of his dry suit, Yuri spent fifteen minutes photographing the underside of the 095 hull taking shots of the ducted propeller assembly, various hull-through valve fittings, sonar arrays, and torpedo tubes.

  After completing his spy work, Yuri reattached the DPV’s tether to his chest harness and grabbed the unit’s handle bar. He switched off his dive light and squeezed the DPV’s throttle. Heading toward the main channel at two knots five feet above the bottom, he checked his watch. Dammit, I’m late. He goosed the throttle, increasing his speed by fifty percent.

  Yuri had travelled about one-third of a mile when it happened. The collision knocked him off course. Before he could react, the DPV plowed into the bottom, dragging Yuri with it.

  Something had slammed into his right shoulder. Collecting his bearings, he was relieved to find he had retained the mouthpiece to the rebreather, and he still had gas. His facemask remained in place but had lost its watertight seal. He cleared the flooded mask and switched on his dive light. The diver propulsion vehicle’s battery gauge indicated a quarter charge remained. He checked the depth gauge on his left forearm—14.5 meters deep. Yuri next scanned the homing readout unit strapped to his right forearm. The screen was blank.

  Govnó!

  Yuri used a hand to manipulate the readout display, hoping to reset the unit. No joy. The impact to the rebreather had damaged the sonar receiver attached to the backpack’s outer casing, rendering the unit deaf. He was about to restart the DPV when a grayish black hulk blasted by, just inches from his head. It disappeared into the murk within a heartbeat.

  What’s that? He aimed the dive light’s beam at the creature’s path. Nothing, not even a bubble trail.

  Yuri commenced a three-sixty scan, rotating his body while hovering just above the bottom.

>   It came back for another pass and this time Yuri blasted it with the light beam. The quarter-ton sea lion broke left, passing just a couple of feet away. You bastard!

  Knowing what he now faced, Yuri considered his options.

  He knew that both Russia and the United States employed marine mammals for anti-diver warfare. Dolphins, seals, and even sea lions guard high-value naval facilities. Trained to use their hunting skills to pummel and sometimes bite subsurface intruders, the militarized creatures are the ultimate underwater guards. There are not supposed to be any bio-sentries here!

  Yuri and the Spetsnaz operators had checked with the GRU regarding marine mammal activity at all the PLAN fleet anchorages. The latest intelligence reports suggested that China had not yet deployed biological-based weapons. Sea lions also were not common to the waters offshore of China.

  This guy must be a rogue—maybe he thinks I’m a rival.

  A new revelation flashed. Damn—maybe he’s looking for a mate.

  Yuri pulled up the DPV and steadied himself. He aimed the dive light ahead.

  All right, you son of a bitch, make your move. At the edge of the light cone, Yuri caught a glimpse of the enormous bull as he skirted by. Yuri placed the light on the bottom, its beam still directed in the same direction. He retreated to the left five feet and waited.

  The sea lion commenced another pass, homing in on the light. Yuri timed it perfectly, driving the DPV full throttle into the sea lion’s mid-torso. Startled but not injured, the interloper raced away.

  Yuri hoped the inquisitive creature would leave him alone. He checked his watch. Oh God.

  Yuri powered up the DPV. He had no choice but to retrace his path using reserve course procedures. I hope they’re still there!

  Chapter 48

  “Where is he?” Lieutenant Tumanov said.

  Spetsnaz operator Shtyrov looked at the watch lashed to the forearm of his dry suit. “He should have returned fifteen minutes ago.”