The Good Spy

by Jeffrey Layton

  No; Laura already had plenty of her own money.

  Ken gulped another slug of whiskey and refocused on the man who had humiliated him.

  I’m going to get that son of a bitch—somehow!

  CHAPTER 61

  “Oh my God, there he is!” Laura shouted.

  “Fantastíeskij!” ‘Nick said.

  They both stared at the video monitor. Yuri had just popped through the hatch, reentering the torpedo room.

  He swam toward Little Mack’s camera and flashed the thumbs-up signal with his left hand.

  Laura teared up.

  Nick checked his wristwatch: Yuri was three minutes late. Knowing every minute counted at such an extreme depth, Nick’s stomach tightened. Hang in there, Yuri—you can do it!

  * * *

  “What do you think he’s doing, Captain?”

  “I’m not sure. But from the racket he’s making, he’s obviously hammering on something.”

  Captain Borodin and the Neva’s senior chief petty officer stood at the bottom of the pressure casing next to the bulkhead that separated Compartments Three and Two. The noise originated from the forward compartments.

  “He must be working on the bilge system,” Borodin said.

  “For the vent?”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  Yuri caught his breath—not so easy to do with a rebreather, especially at his depth. He was back in the first compartment and straddled a fat bilge pipe, the same one from Compartment Two. He clamped his knees and inner thighs vise-like around its circumference.

  Yuri studied the inspection port. About four inches in diameter, the port projected upward nearly two feet from the bilge pipe. Unlike the port in Compartment Two, this one had a steel cover plate secured by bolts. He had removed five of the six bolts. But the remaining bolt wouldn’t budge because of corrosion. Since he’d stripped off the corners of the bolt head with the socket, he had no choice but to use brute force.

  Using a cold chisel from the tool bag, he pried the head back, exposing the bolt shaft.

  Partially rested, Yuri again inserted the chisel under the bolt head and swung the hammer. As in a slow motion video, the hammer landed on target and a dull “clang” rang through the compartment. He swung again, and then again.

  After the eighteenth impact, the bolt head detached. He removed the cover plate, completing installation of the vent system.

  The inspection port was just forward of a check valve built into the bilge discharge line that fed the defunct forward bilge pump system. With the port now uncovered, seawater displaced by high-pressure air from Compartment Two could flow into Compartment One and vent to the sea by the open torpedo tube. The check valve would be critical to the Neva’s rescue; it allowed one-way flow only, from Compartment Two into one. Otherwise, the second compartment could re-flood after ascending and send the Neva back to the bottom.

  * * *

  Laura turned away from the television monitor to stand and stretch her back. She walked to the nearest railing and peered northward. The Point Roberts peninsula was blacked out, but in the background, a shimmering luminous glow diffused upward into the evening sky.

  Vancouver, she concluded.

  “He’s back again!” Nick called out.

  Laura raced back to the monitor.

  Yuri had just swum into camera view; its lens remained aimed at the closed bulkhead door between Compartments One and Two.

  “What’s he doing?” Nick asked.

  Laura sat back down and craned her neck for a better view. Yuri hovered next to the bulkhead, his gloved right hand turning a handle.

  “He’s closing the equalization valve.”

  “Then he must have made the new seawater vent.”

  “Right. He’s almost done!”

  “That’s fantastic.”

  Laura was so relieved that she cried again.

  * * *

  After closing the valve, Yuri verified that the bulkhead door remained sealed. He turned around. The dual floodlights mounted above Little Mack’s camera shone into his eyes. He reached out with both arms and aimed his gloved thumbs up.

  * * *

  “There’s the signal!” Laura said.

  “Right,” agreed Orlov.

  Laura reached for the ROV’s control panel. She flipped a switch, dimming Little Mack’s floodlights. She waited a second before switching the lights back on. She repeated the signal a second time, and then a third.

  * * *

  Yuri waved at the camera. He checked his dive computer. Oh no! He should leave now but needed confirmation first.

  * * *

  Laura lowered the makeshift loudspeaker overboard. “Okay, Nick,” she said, “give the signal!”

  He pressed the Transmit key on the mike. “Attention. Attention. Attention,” he shouted in English. Using the code that Yuri and Captain Borodin concocted, Nick said, “Commence Alpha. Commence Alpha. Commence Alpha.”

  Nick repeated the signal at fifteen-second intervals for the next two minutes.

  * * *

  Compressed air blasted into Compartment Two.

  Yuri remained inside Compartment One, half a deck level above the sealed doorway. He swung the hammer, aiming it at the bulkhead. A sharp “clang” rang out.

  Yuri used the hammer’s acoustic rebound as a crude measure of the dewatering progress. With his left arm still looped around the torpedo rack as an anchor, he swung the hammer again half a foot lower. A dull “thud” broadcast from the impact.

  The water level inside the second compartment had already dropped a meter.

  Yuri again checked his computer.

  Dammit, I’ve got to get out of here now!

  * * *

  “There he is again!” Nick said.

  “Oh my gosh!”

  Nick and Laura stared at the video screen. Yuri’s upper body was on full display. He gave the double thumbs-up again, then pointed forward and swam out of view.

  “He must be heading back,” Nick offered.

  “I hope so.”

  “Do you think it worked?”

  “I don’t know, I think—” Laura stopped talking. She noticed that one of the digital displays in the upper right-hand corner of the video display had changed. After Yuri freed Little Mack and Laura parked it on the deck next to the hatchway, the depth reading hardly moved. It crept from 718 to 719 feet, the result of the now flooding tide. But in the last few minutes, the reading had changed to 702 feet.

  She pointed to the screen. “Look—the depth numbers are decreasing—it must be going up!” The display changed again: 700 and a few seconds later 698.

  “It’s really working—it’s coming up!” Nick proclaimed, grinning.

  Laura remained uneasy. Yuri had told her it might take hours to break the suction. Why was it moving so quickly now?

  * * *

  Yuri didn’t check his depth gauge or computer as he worked his way through the torpedo room debris, using Little Mack’s tether as a guide.

  Arriving at torpedo tube five, he slipped off his backpack and held the rebreather with his right hand. With the dive light strapped to his left wrist, he swam into the opening.

  He was startled at the sudden rush forward. Without thinking, he pulled his legs up, forcing his back hard against the top of the tube and knees onto the bottom. The rubberized surface of his dry suit jammed against the tube lining, stopping him cold.

  What’s going on?

  The seawater displaced by the air rushing into Compartment Two had only one outlet. When Yuri wedged himself inside the opening of the tube, trying to figure out what had changed, his bulk dammed off the flow.

  Just as Yuri made the connection, the back pressure increased and the friction bond between the cylinder and his dive suit started to erode.

  No longer able to fight the flow, Yuri released his legs and dipped his head down.

  The broken rail guide that had snagged Viktor was just ahead.

  Watch out for that thi
ng, he warned himself.

  CHAPTER 62

  Yuri squirted from the torpedo tube like a champagne cork. He tumbled head over fins, barely hanging on to the rebreather backpack.

  When he stopped, his heart raced and he breathed at an accelerated, dangerous pace. Thanks to the wristband, he still had the dive light. He pulled the rebreather over his shoulders and strapped it on. He rotated in place, following the light’s beam as it pierced the ink-black waters, desperate for a landmark.

  The light captured the mass of the Neva’s bow eight meters away. He realized that he’d sunk several meters below tube five. He directed the light downward, looking for the bottom—nothing.

  What’s going on? He pulled up his depth gauge: two hundred and six meters. Govnó!

  Yuri pumped his legs, sprinting upward to catch the rising hull. The Neva had slipped free of the bottom muck with ease.

  With every ballast and trim tank empty, and with seawater discharging from Compartment Two as compressed air continued to flow into it, the submarine ascended uncontrollably toward the surface. For every ten meters of rise, the pressure inside the first and second compartments reduced by one atmosphere. The pressure reduction allowed the gas bubbles in both compartments to expand further, which expelled even more seawater through tube five.

  At its current rise rate, the Neva would break the surface in less than ten minutes. Yuri had just three minutes to save his life.

  * * *

  With Nick Orlov at her side, Laura remained fixated on the video monitor. Perspiration beaded on her brow as she concentrated. Her right hand worked the joystick control.

  Little Mack backtracked, following its tether. The ROV had just entered Compartment One—the torpedo room. Before making the dive, Yuri asked her to retrieve the underwater robot in case he needed it in the future.

  “Reel in more of the cable,” Laura ordered.

  Nick reached down and rotated the cable reel, pulling in three meters of the Little Mack’s pencil diameter fiber-optic tether. “How’s that?”

  “Take in a little more—five feet.”

  “Okay,” Nick said, mentally converting to meters.

  Laura adjusted Little Mack’s alignment, directing its floodlight to illuminate the pathway ahead. The neutrally buoyant yellow tether snaked inside the passageway. Filled with equipment and debris, potential snags abounded.

  God, don’t let me screw this up!

  * * *

  Yuri pulled the hatch shut and locked it in place. He reached down and yanked off his fins, letting them sink. With his hands grasping the ladder rungs he worked his way down the flooded chamber into the aft escape trunk.

  He located the purge controls and activated the system. High-pressure air surged into the chamber, expelling the seawater.

  As the chamber evacuated, Yuri held on to a ladder rung with both hands. After being weightless, the sudden load of his dive dress caught him off guard.

  He made it—barely!

  While the Neva made its premature rise to the surface, Yuri scrambled to reach the escape trunk before the submarine ascended too far. By the time he dropped through the hatchway, the Neva had risen thirty-eight meters—125 feet. Because of his extended bottom time, Yuri’s body only just tolerated the unplanned ascent.

  * * *

  Captain Miller’s heart skipped a beat, startled by an obnoxious high-pitched alarm that wailed from the Hercules’s instrument panel. He stood at the helm.

  “What’s that?” asked Elena. She sat on the bench seat at the aft end of the wheelhouse.

  “That can’t be right,” Miller muttered, staring at the indicator light.

  “What’s wrong?” Elena asked, now at his side.

  He pointed to the depth sounder. “This thing’s screwed up. It has a shallow water warning feature; I set it to ten fathoms for when we head back in, but it says we’re in shallow water.”

  “What do you mean ‘fathom’?”

  He converted, “Sixty feet.” He turned off the alarm and switched the sounder’s scale to feet. It displayed 52.

  “But it’s much deeper out here than that.”

  “Of course—over ten times.” Miller’s forehead wrinkled. “It must be on the fritz.”

  Elena studied the digital display: it read 48 feet. She glanced at a backup depth sounder mounted adjacent to the primary unit; its digital display flashed 47 feet. “But what about this other one?” she asked, pointing.

  Miller leaned forward, his eyes squinted and his brow furrowed. “That can’t be right.” He looked back at the primary; it now read 42 feet. “What the hell?”

  Miller pressed the Reset button on the primary. The screen blinked blue and refreshed, reporting 39 feet. The backup unit read 38 feet.

  Miller checked the GPS display. He glanced at the NOAA chart on the adjacent plotting table, his hands raised in frustration. “We’re right where we’re supposed to be—I don’t understand what’s wrong with these echo sounders.”

  Elena checked the nearest depth finder. It read 27 and switched to 26.

  Elena shouted, “Vot der’mó!”

  “What?”

  “Hang on to something!” Elena yelled as she grabbed the handrail next to the helm.

  Miller turned away from the chart table, puzzled at Elena’s warning. Her hands were white-knuckled on the stainless steel grab bar.

  “What are you doing?”

  Before Elena could respond, a colossal shudder shook the Hercules from stem to stern and the deck flipped on its side. It took all of Elena’s strength to hang on.

  Captain Miller fell onto his back and slid headfirst down the fifty-degree incline toward the pilothouse’s port wing door. His skull smacked the steel door frame with a sickening thud.

  * * *

  Just before midnight, Yuri remained standing inside the Neva’s dewatered aft escape trunk with the rebreather apparatus still strapped to his back. He removed his face mask but continued to breathe through his mouthpiece. Without warning, a monstrous “clang” rang out. A heartbeat later, he crashed against the steel chamber’s wall. He absorbed most of the impact with his outstretched arms, but his forehead nicked a pressure gauge, ripping his eyebrow.

  Stunned by the impact, he unconsciously spat out the mouthpiece. Pressurized with air, the escape trunk’s nitrogen content had the equivalent of a ten-martini lunch.

  Yuri picked up the mouthpiece and inhaled. To his relief, the rebreather still worked. He didn’t want to think about what might have happened if it had smashed into the steel wall.

  With his left palm compressing the wound, he pushed the intercom button with his right hand. He heard the buzzer as it announced his presence on the escape trunk’s console three meters below his feet. No one answered his call.

  Yuri had no idea what had occurred. For all he knew, the Neva had crashed back on the bottom, mired even deeper in the muck.

  The gash bled profusely. Yuri pressed the open wound, yet blood seeped around his hand. The ring of residual seawater encircling the sealed hatch at his feet turned crimson.

  CHAPTER 63

  DAY 14—SUNDAY

  Laura Newman straddled the bulwark as freezing seawater rushed over her body and poured into the open aft deck. The Hercules lay hard over on its port, almost half-capsized.

  The frigid water shocked her body and shortcircuited her ability to reason. She reverted to survival mode: Don’t let go!

  Nearly submerged, Laura hung on with her hands and thighs clamped to the steel wall that rose three feet above deck level. With her neck awash, she struggled to breathe. She’d already inhaled a mouthful, gagging in the process.

  Laura shut her eyes waiting to go under, sensing that she would have to abandon the vessel to save her life.

  When she opened her eyes, the sea had dropped half a foot. She looked to her right, back toward the main cabin. The lights were still on.

  A few more seconds went by. The water continued to retreat.

  After the Hercules
had nearly righted itself, Laura slid over the top of the sidewall and plopped onto the deck. She landed on her hands and knees, splashing through a wedge of trapped water about a foot deep.

  Her teeth clattered and she took short quick breaths.

  She had survived, but survived what? She wasn’t sure.

  The Hercules listed just five degrees. The scuppers at the base of the port bulwarks continued to drain.

  Laura crossed her arms over her chest and shivered. She peered aft at the open deck. The ROV’s control console and video monitor were jammed up against the port bulwark, both units smashed and waterlogged. The tattered end of the ROV’s tether trailed from the drum reel bolted to the afterdeck of the Hercules. Little Mack remained on the bottom. Laura had guided the robot out of the torpedo tube but in the aftermath of the collision, the tether sheared.

  What happened? Laura wondered. And where’s Nick?

  Laura stepped to the port and looked seaward. Nothing. She crossed the deck to the starboard side. A huge dark form lurked low in the water about a hundred feet away. Residual light from the boat’s cabin and wheelhouse revealed the Neva’s hull—350 feet in length.

  “Oh dear Lord,” she said, “Yuri did it!”

  * * *

  Like Laura, Elena marveled at the Neva’s resurrection. She stood on the starboard bridge wing. Captain Miller remained inside the wheelhouse, unconscious and sprawled on the deck.

  The Neva’s fin rose a dozen feet above the hull. The forward end had a vertical face but the aft section sloped downward like a turtle’s back.

  Both vessels drifted.

  While gripping the guardrail, still overcome by the magical presence of the behemoth, Elena noticed movement on top of the fin.

  * * *

  Captain Borodin stood alone on the bridge. The rest of the four-man observation party waited below for permission to join him.

  He inhaled deeply. The salty fragrance of the evening air was a welcome respite from the manufactured environment of the pressure casing.

  Anxious to be topside, he didn’t bother with his sea coat. He embraced the chill.