Survivalist - 15.5 - Mid-Wake (51 page)

“An Island Classer, sir?”

“Just relay the messages—and hurry, lieutenant.” “Aye, sir.”

“Sonar—any change in the pattern?” “No, sir—except the first submarine is moving a little erratically.”

“That is unfortunately to be expected, Lieutenant Kelly. The Captain is the only one of the raiding party who knows anything about maneuvering a vessel. Estimated time until rendezvous with the lead vessel, Naviga

tor?”

“Seventeen minutes at present course and speed, Mr. Sebastian.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Bowman.” He stood up from the command chair and walked down the three steps and reached to the overhead. “For your information. This is the Bridge. The Captain is apparently commanding a Soviet Island Class submarine which has just left the domes and is being pursued by several Island Class vessels under Soviet command. The situation is under control and I will keep you advised. Move to Battle Stations. I repeat. Battle Stations. This is not a drill.” He switched off and hung up the microphone.

Communications called to him. “Mr. Sebastian. The Wayne has already responded. John Rourke is aboard her. Commander Pilgrim sends his compliments and awaits your instructions, sir.”

“Convey to the commander my compliments as well. Suggest that if he has not already done so, he should move to Battle Stations—stand by. Sonar—how many pursuit vessels—do you have that now?”

“Aye, sir—four of them.”

“Thank you, lieutenant. Communications—convey also to the Captain of the Wayne that the commandeered Island Class submarine is now confirmed as being pursued by four—I repeat, four—additional Island Class vessels. And please also convey my compliments to Doctor Rourke on his restored good health.”

He studied the video composite—and he wished, with the Reagan going into battle, that Jason Darkwood were aboard her… .

John Rourke stood beside the command chair on the bridge of the Wayne, watching her Captain, Commander Walter Pilgrim, with considerable admiration. The man was very good at running a submarine. The Communications Officer, a pretty red-haired girl named Maureen O’Donnell, was relaying a message. “… additional Is

land Class vessels. And please also convey my compliments to Doctor Rourke on his restored good health.”

Pilgrim told her, “Signal message received and understood. Wayne out.” Pilgrim’s chair rotated and he called to his First Officer, Lieutenant Commander Bruno Smith. “First Officer—order Battle Stations,” the short, stocky man said.

“Aye, sir. Ordering Battle Stations now.”

Pilgrim rotated his chair to face John Rourke. He ran both hands through his balding hair and his blue eyes smiled. “Appears that quick briefing we gave you on our scuba gear, as you call it, won’t prove necessary. Which is probably just as well. Just out of the hospital, I wouldn’t want to try it for the first time either, even if I were experienced in other diving techniques.”

“What happens now?” John Rourke asked.

“We go to Battle Stations and so does the Reagan. We intercept the Island Classers—”

“Those are the big ones, right?”

“Big is an understatement. But both the Reagan and the Wayne are well suited to outmaneuvering them and we’re faster, by a considerable margin. Jason Darkwood’s as good a skipper as they come. U anybody in our Navy could handle one of those suckers, he can. And, I’d venture to say, he’s got your Major Tiemerovna aboard with him. We’ll get in there and run interference for Darkwood—”

“I take it that football isn’t a lost art at Mid-Wake?”

“No—yeah, we play football—and some of us just used to.” Pilgrim laughed. “So—we run interference for Darkwood while he gets himself clear and gets the Island Classer to full speed. As long as we buy him about ten minutes and he’s got a straight course, the other Island Classers can never catch up to him.”

“You make it sound easier than it is.”

“Ohh, it won’t be easy, Doctor Rourke. Especially if that Island Classer’s got missiles, and knowing Jason, he wouldn’t have bothered snatching it if it hadn’t. The Soviets won’t want us looking at their little missiles.

They’ll try to blow their own vessel out of the water before that.”

John Rourke didn’t say anything more. He turned his eyes to the composite videoscreen, as it was called, and watched ahead of them. Natalia, he thought …

Alexeii Serovski held his pistol tight in his fist. It was clear to him now that all aboard this submarine was not as it should be. The main hatch had been closed and, at times, he had the definite sensation of motion. Yet there seemed to be almost no one aboard the vessel.

He had heard voices and he had been uncertain of their speech. And as he had approached nearer to the sound, the voices had vanished. Logic dictated that the command center of the submarine would be near the central portion of the ship and probably on one of the upper levels.

He made his way in that direction now, his pistol as ready as he was… .

Jason Darkwood set the course on auto and left the navigation station hurriedly, the Island Classer at flank speed now. “Gimme the chair, Sam—hang loose,” and he slid into the command chair as quickly as Aldridge vacated it. He needed touch with the rest of the ship and rapidly. If the Reagan had received his distress signal and code phrase, they still wouldn’t rendezvous with the Island Classer’s present course for several minutes, and the last thing Bacon had gotten off the hailing frequency was that the pursuing four Island Classers were preparing to fire unless he killed all engine power.

“Aft Torpedo Room—anybody down there?”

“I am, sir—this is Hornsbey.”

“Private Hornsbey—listen carefully and I’m going to give you a procedure to follow in order to verify that all our torpedo tubes are dry and to ascertain their exact status. Now—do exactly as I tell you and remember, if

you open a torpedo tube and the other end is open, we’re in deep shit—right?” “Yes, sir.”

“Good—here’s what I want—” “Stop!”

Darkwood turned the chair around 180 degrees. There was a Russian officer with a handgun standing between computer and sonar stations near the periscope array. “Who the hell are you?” Darkwood snapped in English, not thinking that fast.

“I am Captain Alexeii Servoski of the Elite Corps of the Committee for State Security of the Soviet Union, under command of Hero Marshal Vladmir Karamatsov. You are under arrest!”

“Your English is very good. And you are also out of your mind. Shoot me, mister, and this submarine goes to the bottom because I’m the only man on board who can command her. Miss me and put a bullet hole into one of the instrument packages and we might be as good as dead as well. And what the hell kind of uniform is that? And who’s this cockamamie Karamatsov character?”

The Soviet officer’s face became livid with rage and Darkwood threw himself out of the chair and toward the man. “Sam!” The pistol discharged and Darkwood felt a burning sensation across his rib cage, and heard something electronic pop behind him as his left hand closed over the gunhand wrist and his right fist hammered forward. With pain across his ribcage the roundhouse punch wound up a short right jab. But Aldridge was there the next instant, and the Soviet officer’s body was ripped away from him and slammed into the overhead like a rag doll at the mercy of an angry child.

“All right! Don’t kill him. We might get something out of him.” Darkwood’s right hand came away from his left side covered with blood. “Ohh, wonderful! Great.” He half walked, half lurched into the command chair. “Hornsbey—you still there?”

“Yes, sir, Captain—what happened?”

“We had a visitor—stand by—get right back to you.”

He pushed the button for engineering. “Major Tiemerovna—Natalia. Do you know a Captain Servoski? “

“Servoski?”

“Something like the KGB Elite Corps or some such nonsense? And something about a Hero Marshal something—began with a K I think?”

“Serovski!”

“If the reactors are all under control and Mr. Rourke and Corporal Harkness can handle engineering, why don’t you duck up here for a sec and check out this guy. Okay?”

“Yes—okay.”

“Great—look forward to it. Bridge out.” He cut back to the aft torpedo room. “Okay, Hornsbey—you ready?” “You betchya, sir.”

“Go ahead—inspire me with confidence.” As he started telling Hornsbey the procedure to follow, he realized that if he didn’t get a torpedo or two ready to go pretty quick, he and everyone else aboard was in genuine trouble.

Otto Hammerschmidt and the others had gone. Maria Leuden was beside her. The mortar bombardment of the first camp had stopped more than an hour ago and Captain Svetlana Grubaszikova’s “women” were massing for attack. And what had happened to her husband and brother?

She worked the bolt of the M-16 and charged the chamber, leaving the selector on safe for the moment. Maria had an M-16 as well. She liked this girl and Michael loved her, whether he knew it or not yet. And she trusted to Maria’s good judgment that if Michael didn’t know it, he soon would. If any of them survived this thing alive.

“I think they are going to attack us.” Maria commented.

Annie smiled at her. “I think you’re right.” “I wonder if Michael is all right—and your husband too, of course.”

Annie didn’t know what to say.

Grubaszikova’s people were definitely getting ready to move—and not to a different neighborhood. She moved the M-16’s selector to auto.

“Where is Otto?”

“Getting into position down there—I hope—be ready, Maria.”

“What will they do to us if they win?” “Since you wouldn’t want to know, the logical thing is to keep them from winning. Hang in there, Maria.”

“I will—yes.”

Annie debated if one really decent shot—if she’d had her father’s Steyr-Mannlicher SSG sniper rifle it would have been a different story—but if one decent shot could take out Grubaszikova. If only her father could have been behind that rifle. She felt tears welling up into her eyes. He was dead, they all felt. They never really said that he was, but they all felt it. Michael and Paul didn’t want to believe it, and maybe it was a sign of their strength that even though inside them somewhere they did believe it they still kept looking for him. But she would have known, somehow, somehow.

Annie moved her selector back to safe.

Battle would come soon enough.

Her father had to be alive.

Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna had asked Commander Darkwood for his knife as soon as she had reached the bridge. He had been sitting at what looked like a navigation station, Sam Aldridge in what would have been the command chair, his feet resting on Serovski’s chest.

She had noticed too that Darkwood was wounded and, against his protests, had knelt beside him at the navigation station, utilized the first-aid kit from the bulkhead nearby, and seen to his wound, quickly but adequately.

“We should be rendezvousing with the Reagan in a couple of minutes. Don’t worry, major—we’ll get out of this.”

“You remind me of John Rourke,” she told him. For her, it was the ultimate compliment she could give any man besides John Rourke.

“Your eyes remind me of my mother’s eyes. They were blue like that. Doctor Rourke’s a very lucky man.”

“Everyone misunderstands—he is married.”

“We all have problems.”

“His wife is a wonderful person and he loves her a great deal. He was never unfaithful to her with me.” Why was she telling this almost total stranger this?

“Then he must be a man of iron will, your Doctor Rourke.”

She felt her cheeks warming again. “Your wound isn’t deep—but you could use having a doctor take a look at it.

“Know anybody who’s any good?”

“Yes. I do.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. That man under Sam’s feet— you know him?”

“He was sent by my husband as his delivery boy.” She looked at Serovski, set down the medical kit, and picked up Darkwood’s fighting knife.

“Your husband.”

“The most evil man on earth, I think.”

“He’s a marshal? That’s an old Russian term for a general, isn’t it?”

“He has an army. If an alliance between the Russians you fight and my husband becomes reality, then …” She couldn’t finish it.

Darkwood seemed to be thinking. “Major—Natalia. Listen. Do you think you could persuade our friend to tell us where he’s supposed to meet your husband? I mean, after all—your husband’s apparently expecting an Island Class submarine. This very one. Such an important man. I guess I was thinking, if we make it out of this alive, it might be a real nice gesture on our parts if we didn’t just leave your husband standing there waiting—for his ship to come in, so to speak.” And Jason Darkwood grinned at her.

Natalia stood up, the knife in her fist. “Sam—hold him down for me.”

“My pleasure, major,” Aldridge responded.

There was fear in Serovski’s hard eyes. It was justified, she felt, as she knelt beside his face and touched the knife to his throat.

It was perfectly justified.

“Where are you supposed to bring me, captain?”

“Comrade major—have you no loyalty?”

“I have loyalty—but unlike your loyalty, it is not misplaced. This is a very fine knife, and I imagine it is very sharp. And if you know me by reputation, you know that I am very good with a knife. Either tell me where you are to meet Marshal Karamatsov and when, or we will both find out together just how sharp this very knife happens to be.”

“You wouldn’t.”

She shifted the knife to her left hand and her right hand reached down to his crotch and found the zipper at the front of his uniform.

“No!”

She started to reach inside his pants and he screamed like a woman. “Wait! Please! I will tell you!”

“Where and when?” She drew her hand back but brought the knife to his throat.

“The Island of Chinmen Tao in the Formosa Strait— the rendezvous was to be …”

“Look at your watch,” she ordered.

He raised his left wrist. “About four hours—Chinmen lao.

Natalia moved the knife. “Quemoy,” she said softly. H they could trap Vladmir, then kill him. If …

It would have been slow going with the trucks filled with the internees from the death camp, but by now, certainly, Han had reached the J-7V and used its radio to call in help. And by now, help would be coming. Perhaps a large German force, or perhaps only some German aircraft lifting in Chinese troops.