by Matt Rogers
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You’re probably in shock. None of this feels real. But I need you to be clear with me for the next minute. I’m not a threat. Can you do that?’
The guy nodded.
‘What happened last night?’
‘I…’ the guy started.
‘You don’t need to guess. Just tell me exactly what you personally saw. There can be gaps. It doesn’t matter.’
‘It was late. We were running through the system checks for today. We’d been picked as the crew ages ago. As part of the official government program. We were told what was happening. With the U.S. Navy. So we were all nervous. We knew the world would be watching. We knew how important it was … you know, for history. So we didn’t want to screw anything up. So we were … probably too focused on our jobs. We weren’t paying attention to anything else.’
‘And then?’
‘I don’t know. Chaos. There were men everywhere. I recognised most of them. They’d been guarding the construction for as long as I could remember. As it was nearing completion the crew had been allowed aboard to get familiar with the ship. So we always had to go past these guys to get to the ship. They’d frisk us down. You know. I always thought it was too much. What were they guarding it for? There was never any threat. And then suddenly on the night before the big day they were all aboard, cramming the hallways, threatening people with weapons.’
‘Did you make any calls?’
The guy shook his head, eyes wide, throat constricted. ‘No. It all happened so fast. They’d planned it. Suddenly they were everywhere, and there was nothing we could do. We all thought it was a joke at first. Guns pointed at us. Didn’t seem real. And then … then it started to sink in. And they kept us up all night at gunpoint. We weren’t allowed to move a muscle. And they kept telling us, over and over again, that we were to follow everything exactly according to plan. It’s just … no-one could know they were aboard.’
‘So they maximised confusion.’
‘Uh … yeah.’
‘Effective. How long until you’re scheduled to meet up with the convoy?’
‘First contact is in fifteen minutes. There’ll be choppers circling above filming. For the news. You know…’
King went pale. ‘Fuck. I have to go.’
‘What about me?’
‘See where I came from, just then?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Get inside that gap, put your head down, and pretend you’re somewhere else.’
‘Where are you going?’
King held up the rifle. ‘Where do you think?’
‘Who the fuck are you, anyway? American?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How’d you get on board? Is that what all the screaming and gunfire was?’
King muttered, ‘That usually happens when I get involved.’
‘How many have you killed?’
‘Not enough.’
‘What—?’
King held up a hand. ‘Go hide. You said I’ve got fifteen minutes?’
‘Yeah. Wait … until what? What are they going to do?’
‘Nothing good. Go hide.’
He laid a hand on the man’s shoulder for reassurance, gave him a confident nod, and then took off in the direction of the wheelhouse.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
58
Slater stumbled through identical passageways with no idea where he was headed. He glimpsed a flash of movement in the far distance, barely perceptible underneath the failing emergency power supply. The lights flashed on and off at random, ruining his sense of direction, only adding to the confusion. All around him the icebreaker rumbled, picking up momentum, moving forward with renewed vigour.
Closing in on something.
Slater knew what was coming.
For some reason, he figured he was instrumental in stopping it. Even though he could barely string a thought together for longer than a few seconds. Even though the dread seeped through him, letting him know the odds were against him. Even though any time he spent lingering on the consequences of Magomed succeeding sent terror through his bones.
Magomed.
It had to be him, up ahead.
But why?
Why was he down here?
Slater pressed forward, dragging one leg behind him, trying to still his rapidly increasing heart rate. He sensed the familiar panic attack rising again, like a fist clenching tighter and tighter around his vital organs, seizing them in place. The concussion. Still there. Heightening emotions. Increasing volatility.
He paused for a beat, staring at the floor, placing his hand against the wall to steady himself. Then he regained his bearings and kept walking, kept hurrying, kept wincing through the agony.
As he passed by an open doorway, completely oblivious to his surroundings, an old man watched him go by.
59
Magomed crouched low in the bowels of the icebreaker, serenely calm despite the carnage unfolding all around him. His men were dying in scores. He heard their screams. He heard the gunshots.
The mercenaries who’d proven fiercely loyal, following his every command, were now falling like dominoes to an unseen force. At first he’d thought they would be hesitant to embrace what he wanted, but as he revealed the depths of his desires their eyes had unanimously lit up with anticipation. He’d screened them well. They were men with broken souls, plucked from the wasteland of the Kamchatka Peninsula in the aftermath of Vadim Mikhailov’s grisly demise. With the collapse of the mine operation, the money had dried up.
Magomed had plenty of that.
And no need for it anymore.
Because he was going overboard not long from now.
He’d never wavered on that promise to himself. It had never been up for debate. Getting cast aside from the political system had shattered what little motivation he had left. He’d already been skating on thin ice at the tail end of his career, flirting with the dangerous dark hole of nihilism. So plunging the U.S. and Russia into an ugly modern war was obviously the logical next step. It would destroy the comfortable, secure positions his disgusting co-workers had forged for themselves, destroying the insulation.
Casting them out into the wilderness.
They’d be torn from their palaces, thrown into the street or murdered for their privileged positions. Magomed considered the utter lawlessness that would ensue. Nuclear fallout. A wasteland. A complete demolition of the existing hierarchy. It stilled his nerves. It steeled his resolve.
So when he sensed someone on his tail, and looped back into a spare room to assess his pursuer, he wasn’t surprised when Will Slater stumbled recklessly past the open doorway, heading nowhere in particular.
Completely out of sorts.
Magomed grinned.
Perfect.
Everything was going according to plan, despite the carnage unfolding this very moment above deck. None of that mattered. It was the reason he’d recruited far more mercenaries than necessary. They were expendable. Cannon fodder. All he needed was to intercept the Navy warships and get the crew to set the icebreaker’s aim straight.
And once that happened, there was nothing these intruders could do.
Because one of them was barely holding onto consciousness, and the other couldn’t possibly pilot an icebreaker on his own.
Not without the crew.
So he let Slater go. Magomed had a gun, but he didn’t know whether the other hostile had doubled back. If he was being stalked, then an unsuppressed gunshot was the last thing he wanted. So he allowed the man to careen left and right, ricocheting off the walls, hurrying down the passageway.
Heading out of sight.
He lifted a modified satellite phone to his ear, designed to bypass the signal jammer he’d implemented the previous night to prevent outside interference, and connected a call he’d been expecting at any moment.
‘We see you on our sonar,’ an American voice said on the other end of the line. ‘Any problems on
your end?’
‘None,’ Magomed said. ‘Proceed as planned.’
‘You have the co-ordinates?’
‘Of course.’
‘We’ll meet up in five minutes,’ the American said.
Someone important in the U.S. Navy.
An admiral, maybe.
Magomed had forgotten the details.
Nothing seemed to matter when he knew he was about to die.
‘Perfect,’ Magomed said. ‘Allow us to lead the way.’
‘Of course,’ the American said, mirroring Magomed’s own words. ‘We look forward to it. We can see the Mochnost from here. It looks beautiful.’
‘It’s an amazing ship. I can’t wait for you to see it up close.’
In a rare moment of humanity amidst official protocol, the Navy sailor paused and said, ‘Do you think this will really help fix the problems?’
‘I hope so. It would be a great weight off all our shoulders.’
‘Yeah. I’ve got a wife. And a kid. A baby girl. She’s nearly one. I don’t want the world going to shit … you understand? I hope this is the first step, man. We shouldn’t be fighting.’
‘Of course,’ Magomed said, feeling nothing. ‘Wait for us to get into position. Then we will lead you through the Bering Strait.’
‘Can’t wait.’
Magomed ended the call.
Then he made another one.
To one of the mercenaries above deck. The most ruthless of the bunch. He’d selected the guy based on psychological vetting. He’d planned this well in advance. He knew there could be no hesitation when he gave the command. The only option was ruthless action, especially this close to the finish line.
And once this happened, there was no going back.
The final stretch.
The end game.
It went through. A sharp click. Answered with silence.
Magomed said, ‘How close?’
The man said, ‘A few minutes. There’s trouble up here.’
‘How many of them?’
‘One.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘He’s … very good.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Fuck if I know.’
‘Are you on course?’
‘We see the convoy. They’re waiting.’
‘The largest warship.’
‘In the middle.’
‘Aim for it.’
‘The crew might not … comply.’
‘You know what to do.’
‘And then?’
‘Kill every last one of them. Then there’s no chance of salvation.’
‘Understood. I’ll do it now.’
‘Hurry.’
‘Will I be compensated?’
‘As we discussed. I wired two million USD to your account in the Caymans this morning.’
A pause. A deep inhale. A rattling exhale.
Then a laugh. Despite the circumstances. Despite the war aboard.
A true madman.
‘Good,’ the man said. ‘I’ll slaughter all of them myself, then.’
‘Do it fast.’
‘Already on it. The men are making them line up with the warship now.’
‘Good,’ Magomed said, and ended the call.
When he looked up, Will Slater was there.
With a gun barrel pointing squarely between Magomed’s eyes.
60
Slater caught the final snippet of conversation before he barrelled into the room with his Makarov drawn and raised, but that was enough.
He saw what lay in front of him through swimming vision. Reality pitched left and right, tipping his perspective, accompanied by all the unfamiliar woozy sensations of being wrenched off-balance by nothing but the damage in his own mind. He steadied himself against the table — this room below deck was some kind of makeshift office.
Magomed stood on the other side of the cramped space, and watched with a noncommittal expression on his face.
‘Cancel that,’ Slater hissed through clenched teeth.
His aim wavered, but he didn’t need any kind of precision or accuracy from this distance. Even though his condition made the Makarov’s barrel droop a few inches in each direction as the room swayed around him, Slater didn’t allow himself to get perturbed by it. Magomed had a semi-automatic pistol slotted into the appendix holster at his waist. Even though Slater felt he was skirting a fine line, perilously close to being a walking zombie, he knew he could pull the trigger the second the old man reached for his gun.
So that wasn’t an issue.
Their current course, however, was more of a problem.
Slater said, ‘Did you hear me?’
‘I heard you.’
‘And?’
‘And you think threatening to shoot me is going to make me call it off?’
‘You say you’re ready for death,’ Slater said. ‘But I don’t think you are.’
A final attempt. He didn’t believe his own words. But maybe there was a hope of cracking through a facade he didn’t imagine existed.
And he was right.
It didn’t.
Magomed just smiled.
‘You don’t think so? You think I was bluffing?’
‘You’re too narcissistic to be a martyr.’
‘Sounds like you know an awful lot about me.’
‘Cancel the fucking orders.’
‘No.’
‘I’ll kill you, right here.’
‘Okay.’
‘Three…’
Magomed said nothing.
‘Two.’
Magomed said nothing.
‘One.’
Magomed said nothing.
The old man crossed his arms over his chest, and raised an eyebrow. Almost bemused. Slater found it wholly unnerving. The Makarov’s barrel began to shake. He wasn’t in immediate physical danger — if the icebreaker smashed into the warship, he figured he’d live through the impact. But the utter helplessness threw him off, the quiet smugness of the old man standing across from him with nothing behind his eyes.
‘You really don’t care,’ Slater said.
‘Shoot me.’
‘Not yet.’
‘I’m not a narcissist. For once in your life you got something wrong. I couldn’t care less what happens to me. Why don’t you take a minute to actually think about why I’m doing this?’
But Slater couldn’t do that. Because he couldn’t concentrate on anything. He could barely maintain the jigsaw of puzzle pieces in his head making up his current consciousness, fitting together poorly, a jumbled mess.
All the pieces rattled and torn apart by Ruslan Mikhailov’s boot the previous night.
‘Well?’ Magomed said.
Slater didn’t respond.
‘What personal gain will I get from pulling this off? Tell me.’
Slater didn’t respond.
‘You don’t think I’ve got it in me to be a martyr?’
Slater didn’t respond.
Magomed looked into his eyes and said, ‘Fuck this world. Fuck everything about it.’
Then he jerked forward.
Slater flinched. Through the distorted goggles of his concussion he bit at everything.
He recognised it was a fake, but he recognised too late.
Magomed lunged off the mark, taking a violent step forward, and Slater pumped the trigger once. The bullet spat out of the barrel like an angry bull and smashed through the old man’s delicate forehead. It came out the back of his head a few milliseconds later, creating a gaping exit wound, spraying blood across the far wall. The old man’s legs gave out and he slumped to his knees, a perfectly cylindrical hole resting an inch above his eyebrows.
His body, already lifeless, hovered there for a single moment.
Kneeling on the spot.
Back straight.
Hands by his side.
A sick smile plastered across his dead face.
He’d died happy.
Fulfilled.
And that was the worst part.
Because it hadn’t been Slater’s choice. Magomed had made that decision himself. He’d never intended any harm by the lunge. It was a simple fake designed to elicit an overreaction. And it achieved what it set out to do. Maybe in a more composed state Slater would have recognised what Magomed was trying to do instantaneously. Maybe he would have held back. Refused to let the old man achieve his voluntary suicide.
The system had broken him. The exact details of what had happened to Magomed in office, and during his subsequent short-lived retirement, had died with the man. But they’d made him vengeful, bitter, wallowing in a pit of his own misery. He’d set to work forging this grand scheme, connecting a myriad of moving parts to align the largest icebreaker in the world with a convoy of U.S. Navy warships, for no ulterior reason whatsoever. He just wanted to spread anarchy. Tear the men from power that had cast him out of the system he’d devoted his life to climbing.
Shit, Slater thought.
Because there was nothing more uncontrollable than someone who didn’t give a shit what happened to them. There were no sensitive details to handle. There was no money or power to collect at the end of the rainbow. There was just a blissful death, knowing he’d left the world in as much chaos as he could feasibly manage from a man in his position.
Slater stared down at the corpse in a trance, realising Magomed had accomplished everything he’d set out to accomplish.
It hasn’t happened yet.
Those four words pierced through the fog around his brain, and he nodded to himself. He stepped forward. Reached down and scooped up the satellite phone. The call had disconnected. He redialed the last number Magomed had called, figuring the only attempt he had left was to impersonate the old man as best he could.
It dialled.
And rang.
And rang.
And rang.
And then it cut out.
No answer.
The contingency plan. When orders were given, communications ceased. That way there was no room for unnecessary repetition. And it also eliminated the chance of anyone compromising the schedule. Like Slater was trying to do right now.
He gripped the satellite phone in white knuckles, and the reality of the situation sunk in. He stared down at the grimy digital screen, only the size of a thumbprint, displaying a multitude of menu options in Russian. He gulped back apprehension. He couldn’t speak the language. Fingers shaking, he tried to navigate through the phone. It proved disastrous. He bogged himself deeper in menus and sub-menus, getting nowhere close to anything productive. The icebreaker shook underneath him, and he gripped the table with a clammy hand.