by Nina Bruhns
He rolled his head away. “Nyet.” He murmured something that was more recognizably Russian.
“He’s saying something about the SD card,” Clint said, wrapping a sheet around Nikolai’s middle to bind the wound. “We have to get him up on deck. I’m no doctor, but the bullet seems to have missed the vital organs. He may have cracked a rib though. Either way, he should get to a hospital. He’s lost a lot of blood.” Clint tied off the sheet and Nikolai moaned again.
She tugged the IDA mask all the way down over his face. “Sweetheart, we’ve got to go. Can you hear me?”
Under the bug eyes of the mask, his lashes fluttered up and he looked at her. They softened. “Julie? Is that you?”
“I’m right here,” she said and smiled, though she knew he couldn’t see it under her respirator. “Clint, too. We’ve come to get you out of here.”
He swallowed and winced with pain. “Varnas?”
“He’s dead,” she told him gently. “I’m so sorry.”
His eyes closed briefly. “I’m not.”
“It was him?” Clint asked when she was too surprised to respond right away. Varnas?
“Da,” Nikolai said. “Everything.”
Clint nodded. “Understood. All right. Let’s get you on your feet, Skipper.”
Once he was up, he limped to the desk, gathered up a few things, and put them in a leather satchel. She took it from him to carry.
“My papers,” he said, and she nodded.
As slowly and gently as possible, with one on each side supporting him, they walked him to the ladder. At the bottom they stopped to let him rest.
He leaned his back against it and groaned. “Damn, this hurts.” His breath came in gasps, his hands were clammy, and there was a fresh ring of scarlet blooming in the white of the makeshift bandage.
She couldn’t look at his pain-drawn face without wanting to let him lie down until he felt better, so she checked her watch. Time was running out. It had been ten minutes already. Hopefully their IDA filters would last until they got on deck.
She sensed something was different around them. She cocked her head and listened. And realized what it was. The submarine was eerily quiet. No engines. No voices. No mechanical noises. Even the sound of the air filtration had ceased. Everyone must be up on deck already, awaiting rescue, all systems shut down for the abandonment.
For one frightening moment, she imagined they’d all left without the three of them. Her nightmare come true. But then the overhead speakers squawked out another announcement, and she breathed a little easier.
“Hell. We need to hurry,” Clint said. He pointed down. Yellow-green tendrils were licking at their shoes.
Nikolai straightened away from the ladder, putting his hand on her arm to steady himself. “Liesha, do you have the SD card?”
“Yes. Don’t worry, I won’t lose it.”
He grasped the handrail. “No. You don’t understand. You must get rid of it.”
“What? Nikolai, no way. It’s what I came to—”
“Varnas said”—he winced against a wave of pain as he lifted himself onto the first rung—“they know it’s you. They’ll arrest you if you have it in your possession.”
She watched his difficult climb, her mind in a whirl. She knew very well what that meant. “Okay,” she said, following him up. “We can decide what to do with it when we get up on deck.”
He grunted again, but didn’t argue.
It must have been excruciating for Nikolai to climb the ladder, but somehow he managed it.
“You go up,” he told her when they got as far as the central post. They were headed for the closest access to the outside deck, the forward torpedo room hatch. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Hell, no,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
She knew as captain he must have a certain protocol to follow when abandoning ship. He had to get the boat’s official logbook, for instance, and add it to the notebooks in the satchel she was carrying for him. Who knew what else.
“You are one damn stubborn woman,” he muttered, and she couldn’t help smiling as she helped him over to the cupboard where the ship’s logs were kept.
“Yeah, and that’s why you love me,” she said jokingly.
But there was no joke in Nikolai’s gaze when he turned back to her, logbook in hand. He gazed down at her through the ridiculous orange insect mask, his own eyes dark like the midnight sea. Behind the many shadows she saw in them—the pain of his wound, and the anger at Varnas’s betrayal, the frustration of losing his boat, and the powerlessness over his career—she saw something else, as well.
Something meltingly warm and wonderfully good and absolutely right.
“Yes, Julie Yelizaveta Severina,” he said in his deep, incredibly romantic voice, “that is why I love you. One of the many reasons.”
“Oh, Nikolai,” she whispered, her heart turning over in a drowning ache. “I love you, too. So much.”
She desperately wanted to throw her arms around him and hold him close, but she didn’t dare for fear of hurting his wound. She couldn’t hug him. She couldn’t even kiss him, because of the stupid respirators covering their faces.
This was not how she’d imagined declaring her true love for the man of her dreams.
But somehow she knew he was smiling.
“We should go up,” he said, but suddenly she didn’t want to. In minutes they’d be torn apart, and God knew if they’d ever see each other again.
“Yes,” she said. And fervently wished they hadn’t wasted so much of their time being suspicious of each other . . . when they could have been making love.
33
“Julie.” It was Clint, striding into the central post. Hell. She’d forgotten all about him.
“We’re ready,” she said and reluctantly turned away from Nikolai.
To her amazement, Clint was wearing a thick, black wetsuit and carrying a mask, flippers, snorkel, and a small dry bag. With his IDA still on, he looked like a space alien straight from Roswell.
Wide-eyed, she took him in. “Clint. What the heck?”
He cleared his throat. For the first time in her memory his stance was uncertain, for all his broad, muscular height. “Julie, I know I haven’t been all that forthcoming with you on this trip. But I’ve told you what I could, and it’s all been the truth.”
She nodded, wondering where this was going. “Okay. I believe you.” She looked at Nikolai and after a hesitation, he nodded, too.
“I can’t get on that Chinese submarine,” Clint said simply, with no other explanation. “So I’m going to jump off here.”
She sucked in a breath of shock. “And do what? Swim?”
He made a face and shrugged. “Fresh out of helicopters.”
“Are you freaking insane? That water’s freezing! And it’s got to be twenty miles to Attu Island!”
He lifted a shoulder. “I’ve faced worse. I used to be a SEAL, you know. And this Russian Arctic gear is aces. I like my chances. Better than on that Chinese sub, anyway.”
She was appalled. “Hello! I’m a spy, too. What can they do to you that they can’t do to me?” She didn’t actually want to think about what they might do to her. “Hell, you don’t even have the SD card.” She grasped Nikolai’s arm. “Nikolai, tell him he’s crazy. He can’t possibly—”
“Milaya,” Nikolai interrupted, leaning his butt against a console with a tight groan, “I think you’re missing his point.”
She blinked, looking from him to Clint. “I am?”
Clint’s respirator sighed. “Let me have the card, Julie. I’ll take it safely back to D.C. and make sure Langley gets a copy.”
She stared at him, speechless. Was he kidding?
“Help me out, here, Skipper.”
Nikolai gave a soft grunt and said, “It’s that or throw it into the sea, Liesha. You’ll never get it past the Chinese. It’s not worth your life to try.”
“The captain’s right,” Clint sa
id somberly. “Trust me, they’re going to put you under a microscope before they let you go. You don’t want to be caught within a mile of that data card. I’m the only shot we have of saving the intel on it for our side.”
Her chest squeezed with the dismal knowledge that after going through all this, after having the damn thing in her freaking pocket, she was going to fail in her mission after all.
Unbelievable.
But she also realized his assessment of the situation was probably correct.
The question was, did she trust him to keep his word?
Hell, did it actually matter?
No, not really.
At least if she gave the SD card to Clint, the information on it would be used to keep her country safe. That was the most important thing. Not who brought it home to which agency.
With a resigned sigh, she dug deep in her pocket and pulled out the thumb-sized card. After holding it in her hand for a short moment, she handed it to him.
“Please, just do me a favor and steer clear of sharks and polar bears while you’re out there,” she said.
His eyes smiled back at her. “That’s a promise.” He tucked it into his dry bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Now, let’s get you both up on deck before you miss your ride.”
“Right.” Suddenly she remembered something. “Hang on. Give me thirty seconds.”
She ran to the locker where the foul weather gear was kept and flung it open. She grabbed Nikolai’s greatcoat off its usual hook, and also the coat he’d given her. Then she reached for his mother’s wolf fur hat. She wasn’t about to let him leave this boat without that.
She helped him on with his coat and slipped on hers, but when she went to put the fur ushanka on his head, he pressed it back into her hands.
“You keep it, milaya moya.”
“Nikolai, no, I couldn’t . . .”
“I want you to have it,” he insisted, and his voice went soft. “To remember me by.”
Tears stung her eyes as she held the fur hat she knew meant the world to him. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I’ll treasure it always. But Nikolai, even without this beautiful gift, there is no chance I will ever forget you.”
“Come help me with Captain Romanov!” Julie called as she helped Nikolai climb painfully from the hatch.
She ripped both their IDAs from their heads and he breathed in big gulps of clean, fresh air. It smelled wonderful and tasted better, all salty and chilly. It was good to be out in the wind and the sun.
It was good to be alive at all.
He was so exhausted he could barely drag himself up onto the deck. As they’d previously arranged, she made an embarrassing fuss over him, and he moaned and groaned loudly—mostly as a diversion so Walker could pop up from the hatch in his scuba gear and tank and sprint over behind the sail out of sight. But for Nikolai’s part, the groans were real enough.
“I still can’t believe he’s doing that,” she murmured after Walker had slipped over the side and dropped into the tin gray sea. “The man is out of his mind.”
At the moment, Nikolai would gladly have traded places. His side throbbed like the devil, his head was spinning like a whirligig, and it felt like a giant hole was being carved from his chest.
Because it was.
Julie had given him a heartbreakingly lovely smile when she’d put on his mother’s ushanka just now, but she would be taking so much more than a wolf fur hat away with her when they parted.
She’d be taking his heart, as well.
“Kapitan! Thank goodness you’re all right.” It was Yasha hurrying over to help them. “Kvartirmyeister Kresney has been frantic with worry about Miss Severin ever since she went to find you. But our gracious Chinese hosts refused to permit anyone to go down to search for either of you. The gas was too dangerous, they said.” He scowled and said something so rude that Nikolai grinned despite his pain, inside and out.
“I’ll live,” Nikolai assured him. “Though admittedly I’ve felt better.”
And it only got worse.
The rubber raft was already full to overflowing, the last of his crew barely fitting into it. So Nikolai and Julie had to wait for them to be deposited on the 093 and the dinghy to come back. The Chinese sailors wouldn’t let any of his men stay behind with them.
Nikolai had a very bad feeling about this.
Julie was reading his mind. “I wonder if they’ll drive off and leave us here,” she mused.
He refrained from an ironic laugh because it would hurt too much. “Wouldn’t be surprised.” He took her hand. “Good thing Walker called in the cavalry.”
She whipped him a surprised look. “When did he do that?”
Nikolai closed his eyes and smiled. He was lying on his back on the cold, wet deck, but it actually felt better than standing up, and better by far than sitting. He could feel her penetrating stare. “He had Danya send a signal via radio to his people moments before the communications array got hit by that RPG. Apparently he informed them of Ostrov’s condition and his suspicions that we’d be targeted. Killer instincts, that guy.” He hated to admit it.
A scowl creased her forehead. “So wait. You’re saying the Americans know about all this? That someone is coming for us?”
“It was before the attack, and he didn’t request extraction specifically. But they’ll surely send the Coast Guard to do a flyby to check on our condition. Possibly the Russians, too, since the scientists are probably screaming bloody murder by now because we haven’t picked them up yet. The Chinese will be forced to report the attack and the rescue. And therefore not leave us stranded.”
Unless, of course, they planned to kill him and Julie and dump their bodies into the ocean.
He opened his eyes and found her staring at him intently. “And when did he tell you about this?”
“Just before we came up on deck.”
“Why, the little bastard,” she muttered.
“Not so little,” Nikolai said.
“So he knew there’s a good chance we’ll be picked up by the Americans and the SD card would have been safe with me! All we’d have to do is stall until they show up and wave a white flag or something!”
He took her hand. She was sitting cross-legged on the wet deck next to him, bundled up in the oversized coat and his mother’s hat down to her eyebrows. Her cheeks were red from the wind . . . or perhaps from anger. She’d never looked so beautiful.
“We can’t be sure of that,” he said, kissing her fingers. “I’m glad you gave it to him. If anything happened to you . . .” The thought frightened him as nothing else ever had. “I would be forced to do things to that Chinese captain I’m presently in no condition to do.”
Her gaze met his, and she smiled softly. “Oh, Nikolai,” she murmured. “What’s going to happen to us?”
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “Come here.”
He tugged on her hand and she lay down next to him, curled up against his good side. He turned his head and they kissed. An achingly tender, bittersweet kiss.
“Come with me,” she whispered. “When they come to get me, come with me to America.”
“Dorogaya, you know I—”
“No, listen. Walker promised if I gave him the SD card he’d have the navy bring you over. Well, I gave him the card, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but—”
She looked so damn crestfallen his heart squeezed more painfully than his wound.
“Don’t you want to come? To be with me? I know we’ve only known each other a few days, but—”
“Of course I want to be with you,” he assured her, hanging on to her hand, wishing all his feelings would flow through that connection so she’d know how deep his emotions went. “I don’t care how little time we’ve had. The few minutes I’ve spent with you have been the happiest in my life. I love you, Liesha, and I’d give anything to spend every day I have left on earth with you.”
Her fingers touched his cheek with the warmth of a lover. “Then come. Please?
Think of the cherry trees, and the Pushkin statue.”
God, how he wanted to say yes!
But how would it be possible?
“The Main Naval Command, and the FSB, they’ll never allow me to leave Russia. You have to know that.”
“Then don’t go back. When the Americans come for me in their ship or their helicopter, I’ll tell them to take you, too. That I won’t leave without you.” She smiled, her fingers trailing over the stubble on his jaw. “You know I can do it.”
He didn’t doubt it for a second. He gazed at her, a crazy hope blossoming in his chest. Cherenkov would probably send someone to assassinate him, but being with her for even a little while might just be worth it.
“You can meet my mother, and your American family, too. We could—”
He frowned. “What?”
Her face froze. Consternation swept across it. “Oh, my God! I totally forgot!” Her voice cracked on the last word. She yanked her hand back, curled her fingers into a ball, and pressed it to her mouth.
His pulse kicked up. “Forgot what? Liesha, what did you mean, my family?”
“Oh, Nikolai.” Her eyes suddenly blazed with tears. “I’m so sorry I—” And distress. “I only found out last night, after you . . . after I . . . spoke with my boss. He told me, and I—”
Nikolai stilled, his whole body becoming weightless. What could her boss possibly have told her about his family?
Except he already knew.
“Told you what?” he quietly asked.
She rushed on. “I was coming to find you this morning, to tell you, I swear. But that’s when I was— And after that, there was never a—”
“Tell me what?”
The blur of words halted. A tear crested her lashes. “About your mother.”
He grasped her shoulder, wincing at the pain it caused him to cant his body toward her. His fingers dug into her flesh. “What about my mother?” he asked, his voice bordering on a low growl.
“She was American. She worked for CIA.”
Jesus, God. So it was true.
“And you have family in New York.”
For an endless, stunned moment he couldn’t move. Then he fell back onto the deck, his spine hitting the hard metal ribs of the deck, but he barely noticed the impact.