The Good Spy

by Jeffrey Layton

  “Sorry. It was easy. I just used differential pressure to push water into the chamber.”

  “No one else thought of that. You’re a genius.”

  Although just over an inch of steel separated them, they were a world apart. His body remained highly pressurized.

  “Would you like more water? I’ll recharge the hose again.”

  “I’m good.”

  Yuri stored the last discharge in the rubber booties he’d cut from his dry suit, both cradled in his crotch. He sat cross-legged next to the hatch.

  He still used the face mask to breath heliox, removing it only to use the intercom. Once he dropped below the equivalent pressure of fifty feet of seawater, he’d switch to pure oxygen.

  The real danger, however, resided in the escape trunk’s carbon dioxide–rich environment. Without an efficient way to flush out his exhaled breath, other than partial releases during stage changes, the CO2 had risen to a lethal level. As long as Yuri remembered not to inhale too deeply when using the intercom, he’d be okay.

  “How much decompression time do you have left?” Laura asked.

  Yuri checked his dive computer, removed the mask, and depressed the intercom switch. “About thirty hours.”

  “And then what?”

  “I must stay with the crew to help make sure they return home safely.”

  “But I don’t want you to leave.”

  “I know. We’ll find a way—somehow.”

  Laura left the control panel and was directed to Yuri’s bunk, in need of a nap. Unlike the other built-in accommodations aboard the submarine, Yuri and Viktor’s quarters were an afterthought. Instead of vertical stacked bunks, the sides of both freestanding beds butted against the pressure casing. Sound-absorbing insulation with a fiberglass coversheet isolated the beds from direct contact with the inner hull’s steel ribs and plates. That section of the casing was cut open to install the recompression chamber and then welded shut.

  A metal locker separated the two beds. It had two hinged doors, one on top of the other. Laura couldn’t resist investigating. She opened the top unit first. Taped to the inside of the locker door was a color photograph of a cute twenty-something redhead holding a toddler in her arms.

  Her heart sank. He has a family!

  Laura raced through the locker’s contents. It contained assorted clothing, including a military uniform, two pairs of shoes, one pair of polished leather boots, and an electric shaver along with other toiletry items. Finally, at the base of the locker, she found a cardboard box filled with photos of Viktor Skirski and his family.

  Yuri’s half of the locker contained similar items as Viktor’s but no photographs of loved ones on the door. Laura did find a leather packet containing official documents with a photo of Yuri in uniform, part of his credentials as a Russian Naval officer. That’s when Laura discovered he was two years younger than she was.

  The only obvious personal item was a leather-bound Bible in Russian. Stored inside the back cover she came across a faded black-and-white photograph of a young couple in full wedding apparel—the groom in a Soviet Army uniform, standing arm-in-arm at a garden setting.

  Yuri’s parents, she’d guessed.

  Behind the wedding photo, Laura discovered a color snapshot of sixteen-year-old Yuri and a distinguished elderly man. They sat in the cockpit of a small sailboat, both grinning.

  The only family Yuri ever mentioned was his grandfather, Semyon.

  Laura returned to the bed and lay on her side, nauseous again; it came in boiling waves radiating upward from her belly. She placed a wastebasket next to the bunk, just in case.

  She wanted to tell Yuri about the pregnancy but decided to wait. Right now, it would just complicate matters.

  Laura shifted her head, burrowing into the pillow. She turned a bit more and sniffed the pillowcase, savoring Yuri’s scent. She smiled and shut her eyes.

  * * *

  Stay awake! Ken Newman ordered himself as he fought to remain conscious.

  He would have drowned by now without the lifejackets, and his dormant U.S. Navy training.

  After he jumped overboard, the ebbing tide carried him southward while the Hercules continued to motor north. He watched in alarm as his would-be killers turned the workboat around and backtracked. It took them several more minutes to figure out how to operate the spotlight. They gave up thirty minutes later.

  Don’t fall asleep! Ken commanded while pumping his inert legs. For over two hours, he had tracked diagonally with the current. The nearest shore was somewhere to the west.

  As he had done during BUD/S Hell Week, Ken struggled to keep his eyes open, not wanting to fail yet again. But his senses were numbed. The chilled seawater had transcended into a gentle caress, lulling him into a stupor—hypothermia’s delicious delusion. Falling asleep would end his life.

  His eyelids fluttered before rolling shut. His head slumped to the side. Supported by two bulky lifejackets, his immobile body now hung vertically as it drifted with the current.

  A dagger-like pain exploded in Ken’s right shinbone. It instantly woke him. Another searing flash erupted from his left knee.

  What’s happening?

  Still buoyed by the lifejackets, he reached into the predawn blackness probing with both hands.

  Rocks!

  CHAPTER 80

  The leak started with a trickle. The background racket from the engine and turbo generator masked the tiny hiss. Six minutes later, the pinhole fissure in the hatch seal eroded exponentially. The high-pitched screech jolted Yuri awake.

  He checked the pressure gauge: the escape trunk was losing pressure at a prodigious rate. He’d just passed his next decompression stage change—two hours ahead of schedule.

  Yuri kneeled over the lower hatch. The residual ring of bloodstained seawater encircling the hatch had disappeared. He cranked on the hatch-locking mechanism, hoping to squeeze the rubber gasket farther. But the outflow continued unabated. The seal had been scheduled for replacement during the Neva’s last inspection, but that task along with countless other maintenance work had been canceled due to the submarine’s pending retirement.

  Yuri activated the intercom mike. “There’s a leak in here. Add more pressure!”

  He repeated his call twice but received no response. The conscript assigned to monitor Yuri was taking an unauthorized break in an adjacent compartment.

  Yuri used his dive knife to cut away one of the lead weights from his dry suit. He slammed it against the escape trunk’s steel casing.

  * * *

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  “Kakógo chërta!”—What the hell—roared Captain Borodin.

  The CCP watch officer responded, “Sir, it’s coming from aft.”

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  Borodin grabbed a microphone to call the sonar room, when a female voice speaking English blasted from an overhead speaker, “We need help back here. Yuri’s going to die if we don’t do something now!”

  It took Captain Borodin seventy-two seconds to reach Compartment Six. He stood at the base of the escape trunk, his heart galloping. Laura handed him the microphone. A cluster of crew, including the derelict sailor, milled about at the base of the trunk, unsure what to do.

  Borodin activated the mike. “Yuri, what’s going on?” He spoke in Russian.

  “The seal on the hatch is blown. It’s venting.”

  “Stand by, I’m going to check it out.”

  Borodin handed the intercom mike back to Laura and clambered up a ladder to the base of the hatch. He grabbed the lower locking wheel with both hands and applied everything he had. The wheel rotated a few degrees. No change. High-pressure air continued to vent.

  He dropped back down and faced the conscript assigned to watch Kirov: “How long ago did this happen?”

  The young man stared at the deck in shame.

  Borodin reached for the microphone. “Yuri. We can try adding pressure to the trunk, but that leak isn’t going away.”

 
“I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. What’s your pressure?”

  “I’m down to two point one bars.”

  “You feel anything yet?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good.” Borodin’s forehead wrinkled. “What pressure were you at when this started?”

  “About four bars.”

  “Okay, start venting the trunk. We’ll get the chamber prepped for you.”

  “Stephan, I want you to do it!”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”

  On his knees, Yuri unlocked and pulled open the inner hatch. Captain Borodin looked up from below; Laura stood at his side, her face lined in worry.

  “Come on, Yuri!” commanded Borodin. “The chamber’s ready.”

  Yuri made it down the ladder before he collapsed, his injured left leg buckling. As Borodin and two sailors lifted Yuri, his head spun. He vomited.

  CHAPTER 81

  “Is he going to be okay?” asked Laura as she huddled with Captain Borodin next to the recompression chamber. She could see Yuri through a viewport.

  He lay on a mattress on his left side with eyes closed; sweat pooled on his forehead. The Neva’s medic knelt next to Yuri, taking his blood pressure.

  “Yuri okay,” Borodin replied with his limited English. “I think we get him recompressed in time.”

  It had been a chancy six minutes in all—the time it took to pick Yuri up from the deck, manhandle his near deadweight bulk through the narrow hatch of the recompression chamber, seal the hatch, and then charge the chamber with compressed air. During that entire process, the medic remained at Yuri’s side, to keep him from aspirating vomit.

  The three minutes that elapsed from closing the chamber hatch to pressurization were an agony for Laura. Yuri shrieked as the expanding helium bubbles circulating in his bloodstream and tissues wreaked havoc. The mini-mines targeted his joints.

  Once the chamber reached four atmospheres—equivalent to about one hundred feet of seawater—the attacks subsided. Exhausted, Yuri lost consciousness.

  “How long will he have to stay in there?” Laura asked Borodin.

  The captain picked up a clipboard and consulted a Deep Blowup nomogram. He ran his finger across the chart. “Yuri has about fifty-six hours ahead of him in chamber.”

  “But he’d already spent over thirty hours in decompression.”

  “When hatch seal fail, we must throw out original schedule. Yuri start over.”

  Laura said, “Can I go inside and help? I’ve had first aid training.” She’d already observed how the chamber’s airlock worked, allowing the transfer of personnel and supplies into and out of the chamber.

  “Maybe later. Yuri in good hands.” He gestured to the porthole and the medic inside. “Dimitry know how to care.”

  An overhead speaker blared out a message in Russian.

  Borodin retrieved a nearby intercom mike and exchanged words with the caller.

  Laura watched as Borodin’s brow wrinkled and the inflection of his voice altered.

  He hung up the microphone. “I return to command center. Stay here, please.”

  He sprinted up a stairwell.

  * * *

  “What’s it doing?” asked Elena.

  “It’s still hovering. But it just dropped something into the water. I can see a cable hanging down.” Nick stood next to Elena with a pair of binoculars held to his eyes.

  They were in the Herc’s wheelhouse; it was late morning. The workboat lumbered northward six miles from shore; it just passed Nanaimo, one of Vancouver Island’s largest cities.

  The Canadian military helicopter hovered just above the water surface about half a mile west of the Hercules.

  “What do you think they’re doing?”

  “I have no idea.”

  * * *

  Although Nick did not recognize the threat, the Neva’s chief sonar operator did. He called the captain.

  “Where is it now?” asked Captain Borodin. He stood next to the senior technician, out of breath from his dash from the recompression chamber. The boat was at ultra quiet mode with the power to the propeller cut. The Neva drifted ninety meters below the surface. Four hundred meters ahead, the Hercules pulled away.

  “Still a kilometer out, Captain.” The sonar operator concentrated on the tones broadcasting from his headphones. He also studied the graphical display on his console. “Still no pinging. They must be listening.”

  The heavy beat of rotors on the sea surface altered the Neva’s sonar tech to the helicopter’s presence. The technician also heard the splash of the helo’s dipping sensor unit when it entered the water.

  It was unlikely the helicopter’s passive sonar would hear the Neva’s minuscule sound output. On the other hand, should the sonar unit’s active mode be triggered, all bets would be off.

  “Captain, he’s retracted the probe and is moving off.”

  Borodin sighed but his blood pressure continued to spike. The Neva had become prey.

  Another helicopter patrolled the Strait of Georgia thirty kilometers farther south, near the City of Vancouver. Configured for antisubmarine warfare, both rotor aircraft operated from a Canadian Forces Base at Comox on Vancouver Island.

  A cutting edge U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon antisubmarine jet from NAS Whidbey also prowled the southern end of the Strait of Georgia. Two additional patrol craft, soon to be mothballed propeller-driven P-3C Orions, traversed the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Whidbey Island to the Pacific Ocean.

  * * *

  It took several hours for the impact of Ken Newman’s aborted radio call to make its way up the military chain of command. A staff analyst on watch at the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon took the call. The Navy lieutenant commander had already read the sighting report of the Barrakuda. It didn’t take her long to piece together the possibility. She reported her findings to the officer in charge of the NMCC, suggesting that the rogue sub had not returned to the Pacific after all. The U.S. Army major general concurred.

  Ordered to investigate, NAS Whidbey dispatched a pair of EA-18G Growlers to Point Roberts, but the jets reported nothing suspicious. Later in the morning, antisubmarine warfare patrol aircraft from NAS Whidbey started patrolling the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Southern Strait of Georgia. About the same time, Canadian forces began to deploy.

  To defuse public reaction to the flurry of military activity, NAS Whidbey prepared a press release announcing a joint U.S. and Canadian naval training exercise and then e-mailed it to local media outlets throughout western Washington and southern British Columbia.

  To protect killer whales that also hunted in the same waters, the allied forces had orders to limit the use of active sonar. High-powered sonar pulses could only be used after a suspected target was identified by passive measures.

  * * *

  Unaware of the Neva’s resurrection, the FSB team continued to survey the Southern Strait of Georgia. This afternoon they worked the southern approaches to the passage, north of Sucia Island. With no further contact from their local coordinator—Elena Krestyanova—or any sign of the Hercules, Captain Dubova carried out her orders. But everything was about to change.

  The Russian special operators watched the P-8A Poseidon eject another cylinder from its belly. A tiny parachute deployed, retarding its descent. It splashed into the water.

  Lieutenant Karpekov turned to face his boss. “That’s the third one so far. I don’t think it’s on a training mission.”

  “They’re obviously looking for something,” Captain Dubova replied.

  “Maybe they know about the Neva.”

  “Maybe.”

  Based on the Boeing 737 airframe, the brand-new U.S. Navy patrol plane dropped sonobuoys throughout Dubova’s search area. Designed to detect sounds generated from submerged submarines with passive sonar, the sonobuoys radioed their findings back to the P-8A for analysis. The stinger at the tail end of the aircraft also housed sensitive magn
etic anomaly detection equipment. The MAD gear could sniff out ferrous-based hulls under hundreds of feet of seawater.

  Captain Dubova and her assistant watched as the jet climbed in the distance and took another wide turn to the right.

  “Looks like it’s getting ready for another run,” commented Karpekov.

  Dubova agreed. The Poseidon was about to commence a new survey track that would be even closer to their current position.

  “We’re done here, Grigori. Reel in the fish.”

  “We heading back to Bellingham?”

  “Yes, we need to get out of here before we attract interest.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Dubova’s orders were explicit: Avoid detection at all cost.

  CHAPTER 82

  The Neva surfaced. Only the sail and the upper half of the rudder assembly protruded above the water.

  Although the sun had set twenty minutes earlier, the partial surfaced condition represented a precautionary measure. The reduced radar cross-section disguised the hull’s true length.

  The ESM mast detected three distant radars, each probing the tranquil waters north of Vancouver. It also picked up several encrypted military radio frequencies.

  Captain Borodin stood in the bridge well on top of the sail. The usual compliment of watch-standers occupied their stations. The Hercules drifted about a hundred meters off the starboard bow, its silhouette barely visible.

  Borodin held the microphone to the portable radio set. The twin remained aboard the Hercules. He triggered the Transmit switch. “I know this is supposed to be a secure circuit but just the same, I’d like you to come to me. I can’t leave for obvious reasons.”

  “All right, Captain,” Nick Orlov replied, “send your raft over.”

  * * *

  Orlov and Borodin were alone in Captain Tomich’s cabin. Borodin summarized Yuri Kirov’s predicament.

  “Fifty more hours!” Nick exclaimed, flustered. “I don’t know if we can wait that long.”

  “We have no choice. Yuri will die if we deviate from the new decompression schedule. It may even take longer than planned.”

  “We’ll just have to wait and then make the transfer.”