As the OOD passed his orders on to the diving officer, Nikolai glanced over to make sure Julie was still okay and upright in her seat.
Overhead, the klaxon sounded and 1MC blared out its warning, “Dive! Dive!”
Their eyes met. Hers were wide and anxious. He smiled reassuringly, trying to let her know she’d be okay. He’d keep her safe, come what may.
He just hoped to hell he could make it true.
“Dive! Dive!”
Julie’s heart stalled when she heard the loud squawk from the overhead speaker. The words were in Russian, but she didn’t need a translator to know what the urgent syllables meant.
This was when she was supposed to have died
. All alone in the dark as the icy waters swept through the storage room in the sail, dragging her down into the depths of the fathomless ocean with no way of saving herself.
God
.
Had it really been Clint who did this to her? She didn’t believe it. If for no other reason than that he’d had ample opportunity last night, as she’d made her phone call, to push her off the edge of the deck. He’d clipped her safety harness to the toe-rail; he could have left it unfastened and merely tipped her off. In the confusion of the celebration no one would even have noticed. No. It wasn’t him. Which meant whoever it was, was still out there.
And still able to get to her.
She squeezed her eyes shut and took several deep breaths to calm her racing heartbeat.
No. It was okay.
She was okay
. No one was going to get to her. She wouldn’t drown.
She
hadn’t
drowned. Nikolai had saved her in time.
And she wasn’t going to drown now, either.
Ostrov
was
not
going to implode, or sink, or whatever submarines did when they sprang a leak. Nikolai would never take the crew on this exercise if he had a single doubt that they’d be able to come up again from the frigid black abyss below.
The steaming liquid in her tea glass tilted off kilter and she felt the subtle shift of the deck under her as the vessel slipped below the ocean surface. She grabbed the edge of the console, but no one else in the busy command center even seemed to notice the slight change in the angle of their upright stances.
The blare from the overhead speakers cut off and, as if a switch had been flipped, the compartment went eerily silent. After days of running full tilt under the power of the smelly, noisy diesel engines, the intense quiet of the submarine using its electric motors was almost unnerving. It was like going from the cacophonous streets of summer Manhattan to the winter silence of a snowy Vermont wood.
She popped her ears at the increasing heaviness of the atmospheric pressure—or maybe she was just feeling the marked jump in tension in the cramped space. Was it her imagination, or was it getting darker, too?
Even the voices of the men were abnormally hushed as they concentrated with almost palpable intensity on their instrument panels and monitors. She’d never seen them so focused on task. Or were they all just avoiding her gaze? Did they think she was bringing the boat bad luck?
Was it one of them who’d tried to kill her
. . . ?
She forced her thoughts away from the harrowing incident and watched Nikolai as he strode from station to station, checking everything, having short exchanges with his men. His expression seemed to vacillate between forbidding and . . . oddly, almost eager.
It was as though he and the crew were all waiting for something to happen. Something other than preparing for a routine dive. . . .
Abruptly Julie sat straight up in her chair, at once suspicious. She shot a glance over at the sonar repeater screen. Her heartbeat slammed.
There, on one edge of the cascading image, she recognized the snowy blip of a contact.
A ship? A whale? The Chinese sub returning . . . ?
She set down her tea, peeled off her blanket, and caught Nikolai’s arm as he strode past on his way to the navigation table. “Nikolai, what’s going on?”
He stopped, hesitated a beat, then said, “We just passed the twelve-mile limit, leaving American waters. And the 093 is back.”
She worried her lower lip. Great. So Clint was right. It
hadn’t
gone away. But . . . “Surely they won’t try anything, will they?”
“You mean besides harassing us?” Nikolai shook his head. “That would be pretty damn stupid.”
“Yeah. I guess. . . .” But she still felt doubtful. As did Nikolai, obviously.
Especially after what had just happened to her. She desperately wished she could talk with James Thurman at Langley. Get his opinion.
Get some help.
“The Chinese are anything but stupid,” she added in a murmur, hoping to convince herself they really
weren’t
planning anything.
Thank God the SD card was still in her possession, wrapped in a tissue and transferred safely after her shower to her coverall pocket. If her assailant had searched her for it, he hadn’t checked her jeans coin pocket. Which, to her—though she could be wrong—pointed to a non-American as the culprit, since she’d noticed foreign jeans seldom had that convenient feature. But it would be the first place an American would look.
Her boss was going to be thrilled at the news she’d succeeded. But even before finding the micro data card, she’d planned to borrow Clint’s phone on Attu and ask Thurman if he’d learned anything about the Chinese sub situation, from one of their assets in China perhaps.
It was weird, but this whole thing was beginning to feel like a setup to her. An elaborate trap of some kind.
And yet, that made no sense.
Could it be the SD card was a plant? A fake? But then why try to kill her? She needed to get a look at what was on it. But how could she read the thing with neither her laptop nor her sat phone?
“Why do you think the 093 is back?” she asked Nikolai, returning to the present.
“Obviously,” he said stonily, fiddling with a dial on a neighboring console, “the captain is a slow learner.”
Something about his tone made alarm zip through her. Oh,
hell
. She sprang to her feet and grasped his other arm. “Nikolai. What are you planning?”
But just then a commotion broke out in the passageway just outside the central post, and she never got an answer.
“Kapitan!”
The call was shouted over a string of angry protests ground out in English. A furious spate of Russian cut the protester off.
Julie and Nikolai swung to the sounds at the same time. Both their mouths dropped open when they saw who was being dragged into the compartment by the fuming
starpom
and an irate
kvartirmyeister
.
Clint Walker
.
Julie couldn’t believe her eyes.
But . . . how? Clint was supposed to be on Attu Island with the scientists!
“Clint!” she exclaimed in surprise. “What are you doing still on board?”
Nikolai’s hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed off her questions. Then he barked out something in Russian, which produced a storm of scowls and exclamations from Misha and
Starpom
Varnas.
She wished to hell she could understand what they were saying.
The half dozen crewmen in the room were all glancing from Varnas to Walker to Julie and back again. Their expressions grew more thunderous by the second.
She didn’t need a translation for this, either. They believed he was the one who’d tried to kill her.
Doubt suddenly assailed her. Had she been wrong about him? Had he been her attacker, after all? Was her judgment so off?
Her body, still humming with dread from the morning’s ordeal, felt weightless and unreal. She was tempted to creep behind Nikolai and simply hide from the uproar. To give up and just let him protect her.
She wasn’t cut out for this deadly brand of deception! She couldn’t take much more of it.
But then Clint’s eyes captured hers. They were also filled with questions. “Julie,” he said below the ongoing Russian debate, “what the hell is happening?”
He seemed genuinely clueless. Then again, how could she possibly know what was real and what was lies with him any more than with Nikolai?
She swallowed. And asked, “Clint, did you just try to kill me?”
He froze in what looked like pure shock. Then he pressed his lips together, shook his head, and said, “No. I didn’t.”
Just that. No arguments, no indignation, no panicked explanations.
And that, more than anything, convinced her he was telling the truth. All at once she noticed his disheveled appearance, as though he’d been rousted out of bed in the middle of the night. Except it was nearly eleven o’clock in the morning. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen him all day. . . .
As if reading her gaze and the doubts behind it, he said, “I overslept. Like I was dead. I
never
oversleep.” He gave her a penetrating look.
She realized Nikolai was standing with his feet apart, fists on his hips, staring down at her.
“What?” she asked.
“
I’ll
conduct this interview, if you don’t mind.”
“He didn’t do it,” she stated.
Nikolai’s eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”
“He didn’t try to . . . kill me.”
“And you know this how?”
She could have gone into all the reasons, but she only shook her head. “I just know.”
Nikolai jetted out a short breath, then looked around at his men. He clipped out an order and they all reluctantly turned back to their instruments and monitors. Then he turned to face Clint. “If it wasn’t you, how do you explain this?” He dug in his pocket and held up the ivory bear claw.
Clint instinctively checked his wrist. A murderous expression crept across his face. The woven leather thong he always wore there was gone. “Find my band and you’ll find your attacker,” was all he said.
Nikolai studied him closely, then put the ivory totem back in his pocket. With a gesture, he indicated that the
starpom
and Misha should let Walker go.
Varnas immediately objected, which Nikolai shut down with a harsh word.
They let Walker go.
Nikolai jerked his head toward the watertight door. “
Starpom
, continue questioning the crew.
Kvartirmyeister
, you may resume your regular duties.”
“Aye, sir.”
Stefan Mikhailovich gave Walker a death look before grudgingly stalking out of the central post, muttering.
Bruises were already starting to show on Clint’s bronze skin, but he didn’t rub his arms as Julie would have done. He just crossed them over his chest, mirroring Nikolai’s belligerent stance. “Thank you, Captain Romanov,” he said nonetheless. “Now if someone will please tell me what the hell this is all about?”
All at once, Gavrikov’s urgent voice sounded over the circuit from the sonar shack. Whatever he said made everyone in the central post turn to look at the sonar repeater. Julie did, too.
The spidery blip that was the Chinese 093 had gotten a lot closer to the center of the screen—and to
Ostrov
.
With a curse, Nikolai pulled off his cap, slashed a hand through his hair, and tugged it back on again. Then he pointed at the empty console chair in front of the sonar repeater and turned to Clint. “Sit,” he ordered. “If you move out of that damn chair I’ll have you put in irons until we get back to Attu and I can throw you off this boat for good, which is really what I’d like to do right now. Is that clear, Mr. Walker?”
Clint gave a curt, angry nod, strode over to the chair, and sat.
Misha gave him a menacing glare.
Julie opened her mouth, but Nikolai beat her to it. “You trust him? Fine. You watch him. He moves an inch off that chair, I want to know about it.”
She nodded. She didn’t really blame Nikolai for his anger and suspicion. She was angry, too. Just not at Clint. At least not yet. Not until someone proved to her he’d done it. “Can I tell him what happened to me?”
Nikolai considered for a second. “Just the basics. No details. But before you do”—he reached for a pad of paper on the console and glanced at Clint—“I want a written account of how you spent the morning and exactly why you are still on board.” He tossed him the pad. “Get writing.”
“Whatever,” Clint said, looking distinctly annoyed. “I don’t suppose your medic can take a blood sample for me? From myself,” he added.
Nikolai frowned. “Why?”
“I was drugged. I’d like to be able to prove it.”
“What?” Julie exclaimed.
“Like I said, I
never
oversleep.”
Nikolai’s frown deepened. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then he turned his back to the man and strode over to the navigation table.
Julie’s head was spinning.
Drugged
. Good Lord. If Clint was telling the truth, that meant . . . what?
Both
of them were targets of the saboteur?
But for the same reason? Was it a simple frame job—maneuvering an innocent man to be accused of assaulting her—or was Clint aboard
Ostrov
for the same reason she was, and that was why he was also targeted? Or was the mysterious UUV driver’s role in all this more nefarious than that?
Clint picked up a pen from the console. “If I were you,” he said without looking at her, “I’d double-check my IDA. Just to make sure no one’s been messing with it while I slept.”
Jerking out of her thoughts, she instinctively touched the bright orange pouch hanging from her belt, which Nikolai still insisted everyone on board keep with them at all times. She hadn’t thought much about it since the night of the drill. What was Clint trying to say? That the entire sub was in danger?
A sick feeling blossomed in the pit of her stomach at the implication of his advice. And at the direction of her welling suspicions.
Oh, God.
Things were bad enough already. But somehow, she had a sinking feeling that Clint knew more than he was saying, and things were about to get a whole lot worse.
The Chinese 093 was closing in on
Ostrov
.
Nikolai wasn’t exactly alarmed, but he sure didn’t like it. What the devil was the enemy sub playing at? He had made his displeasure very clear the day before . . . and still the 093 pursued them. Was this an egotistical commander’s inappropriate challenge? A tactical learning opportunity being exploited to an annoying degree? Or the prelude to an outright attack, either to retrieve or to sink and destroy the SD card with their stolen technology, and
Ostrov
along with it?