"So you have found it. What now?" she demanded.
"This," said Remo.
His toes were curled over the edge of the boat's deck. Remo tightened his leg muscles. He shot up in the air, slicing at an angle that brought him parallel to the waves. Chiun did the same.
Ten yards out, both men cut sharply downward. Without disturbing a single drop of water, the two Masters of Sinanju disappeared beneath the gentle waves of the Caribbean.
IN THE BELLY of the submarine Novgorod, Captain Gennady Zhilnikov watched through his night-vision scope as the two men jumped from the deck of the fishing boat.
For a moment they seemed to soar like birds before they dropped like stones. Together they vanished below the surface.
They certainly couldn't hope to catch the Novgorod. Already they would have fallen behind. Even the boat from which they'd jumped was having trouble keeping pace with the submarine.
"What do they think they are doing?" Zhilnikov asked, puzzled.
"Shall we sink her, sir?" his executive officer asked, thinking Zhilnikov was referring to the fishing boat that had obviously seen their periscope.
"What? No. Target another scow. Any one. It does not matter."
The order went down for another torpedo to be loaded. Another random scow was targeted. Zhilnikov was about to give the order to fire when the sea erupted with a noise so terrible it rattled the captain's molars.
The horrible wrenching noise came from somewhere above his head. It was the sound of tearing metal. The noise reverberated down the length of the Novgorod, trailing off at her giant propellers.
In all his many years at sea Captain Zhilnikov had never heard such a sound. It was as if Poseidon himself were squeezing the submarine in his mighty hand.
"What did we hit?" Zhilnikov snapped.
Frantic men checked instruments, surrendering to frightened confusion. "Nothing, Captain!" Zhilnikov looked up. The ceiling had never seemed so low or fragile. The echo of terrible sound was rolling back up along the metal shell.
"What the hell was that?" the Russian captain whispered.
For some reason his normally logical mind summoned up boyhood images of sea monsters that could drag helpless vessels to a watery grave. He banished the childish thought as soon as it occurred to him. He was on a vessel built by the powerful Soviet Union. There were no ships to match his in the area.
Captain Zhilnikov's confidence returned. He knew in his proud Russian heart that no animal or sea serpent was strong or foolish enough to challenge the mighty Novgorod.
REMO WASN'T QUITE SURE at first the best way to break a submarine. He figured anything that would get the water from the outside inside would do the trick.
He and Chiun had followed the lowering periscope down to the Novgorod. The Russian submarine was a huge dark shape gliding only a dozen yards beneath the waves. At about twenty knots it was easy for the two Sinanju Masters to keep pace.
A wall of displaced water pressed hard against them as they made their way down to the conning tower.
Once inside, the tower protected them from the surging water. They found the hatch-like an oversize manhole. Their fingers searched for a flaw, a lip, anything that could be used for a handhold.
They found what they needed at the front where the hatch hadn't been properly set in the frame. It was just the slightest misalignment in the airtight frame.
Remo jammed his fingers into the opening. Steelhard fingertips jimmied a gap wide enough for his hands.
Remo ripped once, hard.
The reinforced metal screamed in protest as Remo peeled the hatch back like the lid on a can of sardines. Water flooded in through the mangled hatch door.
Both men let the water take them. The water surge drew them down the tower and to the inner hatch. The dark tower interior was like working in a phone booth with the glass painted black. The inner hatch had the kind of handle Remo was used to. A round wheel sat at the center bulge of the hatch.
When Remo grabbed it and tried to give it a spin, the locked wheel stubbornly refused to budge. Remo's exertions thus far had done little to exhaust his oxygen supply. His concern was for his teacher, who, at one-hundred-plus years, would be feeling the effects by now.
He glanced at Chiun. The old man had been studying the hatch for hinges or flaws. When he felt the pressure waves of Remo's stare, Chiun looked up. Through the murky water, Remo saw the look of angry annoyance that creased the old Korean's brow. Beyond that there was no sign of strain on his parchment face.
Chiun raised a hand in impatient warning before returning attention to the hatch. Remo joined him. There were no handholds. There was only one option open to them. It was Chiun who attacked first. A bony fist struck hard steel. Then another. Remo joined in. First right, then left, then repeat. One Sinanju Master built up a rhythm that the other would shatter. The vibrations caused invisible cracks deep in the forged steel. The bowed metal shell dented, then buckled.
When the edge lifted, Remo reached in and yanked up the metal. He felt the pop of a breaking lock. And with a protesting scream, the hatch began to creak up.
CAPTAIN ZHILNIKOV HEARD the rush of seawater from where he stood beside the ladder to the conning tower. A former Russian navy lieutenant had raced with him to the spot from which the first sound of tearing metal had come. A half-dozen sailors formed a nervous line back to the bridge, where the executive officer awaited orders from the captain.
The Novgorod was already coming about. They were heading back out to sea. When the steady drumbeat on metal began to sound directly on the other side of the hatch, Zhilnikov felt his blood run cold.
"What is it, sir?" asked the ashen-faced lieutenant.
"Are we full about?" Zhilnikov snapped.
The question was shouted down the line. The Novgorod was passing beneath moored and burning scows in the long arc that would take them out into deeper water.
The pounding at the hatch intensified. The vibrations felt as if they would rattle the sub apart. "Weapons at the ready!" Zhilnikov shouted, not believing he was giving such an order.
Sailors raised pistols to the hatch. One raised an old Kalashnikov rifle.
The hatch began to bow inward.
The pounding abruptly gave way to a few brief moments of unnerving silence. The men watched the hatch with dread.
Then came another horrible sound of tearing metal like the first that had lost the Novgorod her outer hatch.
With a pop that hurt Zhilnikov's eardrums, the inner hatch seal broke. Water sprayed down on the shocked, upturned face of Captain Zhilnikov.
Jumping from the flood, Zhilnikov wiped stinging salt water from his eyes. When he looked back up, the hatch was tearing upward.
"Have we cleared the scows!" Zhilnikov bellowed.
The answer couldn't come quickly enough. Another, final tear of metal and the hatch ripped free. A high-pressure waterfall began surging through the tower. The deck around his ankles flooded with frothing seawater.
Zhilnikov was thrown back by the surge. "Surface, surface!" Captain Zhilnikov screamed over the roar of the rushing water. Veins in his neck bulged. His eyes were wild as he stumbled in ankle-deep water.
"Weapons ready!" he shouted to the nearby men. "Whatever comes through that hatch, shoot it on sight!"
And through the flood and the fear, Gennady Zhilnikov watched the water for the first slithering tentacle of the unholy beast that had torn his mighty Russian ship to pieces.
PETROVINA BULGANIN'S fishing boat had tracked the fleeing renegade submarine as far as the first line of moored garbage scows. Petrovina was watching on the bridge when the big sonar blob sped beneath the scows and was gone.
She slammed a hand on a console.
"Dammit," she snapped. "Can you follow them in?"
The fishing boat had already been forced to cut speed.
A fire raged on a half-submerged scow directly in front of them. The water was thick with floating trash, the air with acrid smoke. Someone was s
houting something unintelligible through a bullhorn from one of the Mayanan fireboats.
"No,'' Vlad Korkusku replied. "The scows are too tightly packed. And according to the radio, some in the middle are panicking and trying to force their way out. We would be crushed if we tried to maneuver between them."
The fishing boat was coasting into a slow, wide turn. There was nothing Petrovina could do. She left Korkusku and his men on the bridge and went back out on deck.
Orange flames brightened the dark sea. She saw nothing but more spreading garbage and an oil slick that shone like silver in the flickering light. No sign of Remo or Chiun.
Petrovina was certain they were dead. She had no idea what they thought they were doing when they jumped into the sea, but if they thought they could force the Novgorod to stop or surface, they were out of their minds.
The American might have demonstrated amazing abilities before, but they were mere tricks compared to stopping a Soviet-era nuclear submarine. And the old man? Well, it was all simply ludicrous.
Her slender fingers gripped the rail. Jaw clenching, she dropped an angry fist against the wood.
It was infuriating! To think she had come so close to the thing she had been sent to stop, only to lose it. It was ridiculous that she'd allowed Remo to force her out here. Ridiculous that Vlad Korkusku and his men had been so easily cowed by the American. This wasn't Petrovina's fault. Her record in her short professional career had been without a blemish until now. It would have remained so if she had been given Institute personnel to work with. Every woman who worked for the secret agency was a professional. Not like men. They were like Remo-always out to prove their masculinity. Or like Korkusku, always demonstrating his lack of the same. She was beginning to understand the wisdom of Director Chutesov.
Petrovina was growling at the sea when her angry eyes spotted sonmthing strange.
She was looking back toward the scows. The fishing boat had turned completely about and was puttering slowly in the direction from which it had come. As her gaze drifted across the waves a dozen yards behind the small boat, the reflection of fire began to rise into the air.
That was impossible, of course. The water was bulging, swelling up from below. That could only happen if...
Her eyes widened.
"Faster!" Petrovina screamed.
The SVR man at the throttle dutifully followed her command even as another agent monitoring the sonar began to shout excitedly.
"It is back! Directly behind us!"
The fishing boat raced ahead, barely avoiding the leviathan that was the surfacing Novgorod.
The conning tower was first to appear. It sliced slowly through the water, like the dorsal fin of a dying shark.
Water poured from the tower, churning the sea a frothy white. Almost as fast the main deck broke the surface.
The fishing boat had sped ahead and came quickly back around. The small craft bounced against the waves rolling off the sub. Excitement gripping her belly, Petrovina held tight the railing of the fishing boat.
"Korkusku! Get down here with weapons!" They were parallel to the Novgorod. The sub was nearly at a full stop.
Vlad Korkusku and his fellow SVR agents ran to join Petrovina on the deck. When she saw the wrenches and hammers they'd plundered from the boat's tool chest, she fixed the men with a gimlet eye.
"The American threw our guns away," Korkusku explained sheepishly. "He said trusting Russians to know how to use guns properly is like trusting Russians to know how to use democracy properly." Petrovina spun back to the sub. The Novgorod just sat there.
There was a short, tense moment during which all Petrovina could do was stare helplessly.
There it was, as big as life. And what could she do about it? Throw a net over it? Drag it back to shore?
As she pondered impossible options, something suddenly launched from the submarine.
Petrovina gasped.
For a terrible instant she thought the stolen submarine might have been stocked with more than just torpedoes. But as quickly as the thought came, she dismissed it.
A nuclear missile would not be launched from the conning tower of the submarine. Nor, she realized, would it scream in blind terror as it flew into the air.
The flying thing, which Petrovina now realized was a Russian sailor, was quickly joined by a second and a third. The sailors continued to pop from the tower like champagne corks. They made distant little splashes amid the garbage.
When the supply of rocket-charged men stopped shooting skyward, a head popped into view above the tower. When Petrovina saw who it was, her jaw dropped.
Standing on the conning tower of the submarine Novgorod, Remo Williams offered a friendly little wave.
"Hey, Natasha," he called. "How okay are Russians with the high-seas concept of finders keepers?"
"Do not let him have another toy,'" called Chiun's disembodied voice from down below. "He already has an airplane he hardly ever plays with."
Chapter 21
The breaking dawn over Long Island Sound found Dr. Harold W. Smith hard at work behind his desk. The first report had come in after midnight. Thanks to the increased media presence in Mayana, it had turned into an all-night news explosion.
A decommissioned Russian nuclear submarine had been stolen and set loose on civilians in the Caribbean. After a terror-filled night, the sub and its crew had somehow been captured. They were being held by Mayanan authorities.
In any other age it was a news story that would have wrested control of the airwaves from anything else. But the news of the twenty-first century played differently.
It was now early morning and the hard overnight news of the Russian submarine was being set aside, overtaken once more by human-interest puff pieces. On the newscast Smith was watching, the submarine story was supplanted by an update on a frivolous story out in California. From what Smith saw, it was some nonsense about a cat in a storm drain. There was apparently a growing sinkhole that had collapsed part of the street and had swallowed up three fire trucks and a police car. Smith didn't like cats and didn't think such a story had a place on any broadcast, especially when there was serious news to be told.
It was another sign of the changing times. A grave danger had presented itself in South America. Already there were many world leaders on the ground in Mayana. Others were on the way. The last update from the White House was that the President of the United States still planned to attend the Globe Summit. There was carnage in the Caribbean, fires still blazing out of control, a renegade Russian submarine responsible far sinking more than a dozen defenseless commercial vessels and killing an undetermined number of innocents, and the news media was opting to sweep it all aside for a story about a wet pussycat.
Leaning across his desk, Smith switched the channel on his old black-and-white television. The knob had cracked a few years back. There was now masking tape wrapped around it to hold it together.
For a few seconds he jumped back and forth between three newscasts. They were all covering the cat story. He finally gave up, snapping off the TV in disgust.
Smith assumed Remo and Chiun had something to do with the capture of the Novgorod. He had phoned Remo's hotel room several times during the night. The phone rang and rang with no answer. Eventually he gave up.
It would be easier for Smith to contact Remo than it would be for Remo to call in. The blasted Mayanan phone system was the problem. The national phone company was a Byzantine disaster of an analog system, rotary phones and party lines: Only recently had the government-subsidized phone company purchased its first modern fiber-optic cables. From what Smith had read, those seemed directly connected to the Vaporizer project. For what reason he had no idea, but many miles of the latest high-tech cables had been part of that project's budget. There was no indication that fiber-optic lines had been used anywhere else in the country.
It was like dialing out of the Dark Ages. Ordinarily for a small nation like Mayana, the system would be more than sufficient. But wit
h the Globe Summit beginning later that day and so many international guests in the country, the lines had only gotten increasingly tangled.
Thanks to the CURE mainframes, Smith didn't have a problem clearing a line into the country. But if Remo was trying to call out on a land-based phone line, it could be days before he managed to get hold of Smith.
With a sigh of weary impatience, Smith turned his attention to his computer monitor. He had accessed an old American surveillance satellite during the night. At first the pictures he received had been little more than a black screen. Here and there were glowing fires. For a time he had watched with alarm as the number of fires increased.
With the coming of gray dawn the fires were fading. From above, the hundreds of scows in the Caribbean were lined up as neatly as Kansas wheat fields. In the wide view the rough coast of Mayana and some of the mountains above New Briton were becoming visible. The image extended up beyond the Vaporizer site.
Already a row of trucks could be seen crawling up into the hills from the harbor. They had been loaded overnight. In spite of the previous night's events, the government was doing its best to conduct business as usual.
Smith admired their tenacity. But he still could not shake his nagging doubts about the technology. Something on the screen caught his attention. "Odd," Smith mused.
He was squinting through his spotless glasses when there came a soft rap at his door. Frowning, he checked the time display in the corner of his screen. It was still too early for Mrs. Mikulka to be at work.
"Come in, Mark," Smith called. He returned his gaze to his computer as Mark Howard stepped into the office.
"Good morning, Dr. Smith," the assistant CURE director said, a touch of questioning concern in his voice as he noted Smith's attire.
The older man's gray suit jacket was draped over the back of his chair. He was working in his shirtsleeves, his tie still knotted tightly at his protruding Adam's apple. The only time Smith removed his jacket at Folcroft was when he worked late into the night, and then only rarely.
Smith noted his assistant's tone. "It is not time for our morning meeting," he said blandly. As he spoke, he half stood, shrugging his jacket back on. Brushing the sleeves, he sat back down.
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