37 Hours

She looked up.

The burner switched off. With his gloves, the driver began to tug at the bow plate. She kicked hard with her fins towards the sled driver, pushing away from the other diver, the regulator slipping from her mouth, leaving her tank and harness in his hands, her eyes fixed on the bow plate. He was about to let it go, let it drop to the floor. But there was no floor, just the abyss. She angled herself down and kicked hard, and caught it just as it fell from his hands, its edges still hot from the burner, cooling quickly due to the water.

It dragged her down headfirst. She was out of her harness, which meant she had no buoyancy. She was sinking fast, but dared not let it go. And she couldn’t breathe. The flimsy regulator from the small cylinder was out of reach, and if she let go of the cap with even one hand, it would slide from her grip.

The sled’s engine whined, and she hoped to God they were chasing her. She could see her dive computer. Fifty metres. Fifty-two. Fifty-four. A hand grabbed her ankle, hauling her back upwards. Fifty-six. Her lungs screamed at her to breathe. He shoved a regulator – not hers, his spare – into her mouth, and pulled her upright. But the sled got free of him, the engine still revving. It careened sideways, then slalomed into the depths, taking her return tank with it. Screwed didn’t cover it. She and the diver stared awhile, watching the sled vanish into the chasm.

When they arrived back at the torpedo tube, she half expected the lead diver to shoot her with his spear gun, or at least give her the hardest glare he could muster. Instead, he pointed to his temple with a finger and drew a circle. Technically it meant he had narcosis – but he couldn’t have, he was on Nitrox – so it meant instead that he’d not realised the mistake he’d been about to make. The other diver who’d rescued her must have figured it out as well, because if they let the torpedo room flood when she entered, it could have sent the sub over the ledge.

She held the steel bow cap to her chest with one arm, and pointed at herself, then the opening, then the cap, then the blowtorch. The driver nodded, for the first time a hint of respect in his eyes. She would have to enter, and he would seal her in. If she failed… No point going there. He took the cap from her, and she turned to face the other diver. She took several deep breaths while he switched on her head torch. She let his spare regulator fall from her mouth, and brought up the small breathing tube from her cylinder, took a short breath to check it was working, then finned to the opening.

Her torch lit up the mirror-shiny passage all the way to the inner hatch eight metres away. She put her arms in front and kicked to manoeuvre her head, then her torso, then her thighs, then her feet and fins inside. One of the divers unbuckled her fins. Of course, they’d just get in the way, especially if – when – she got the inner hatch open. She began crawling through the tube, having to hunch her shoulders to fit, the way Sergei had rounded them back at the airport. She moved forward, taking fast baby steps, with the occasional lurch. A bubbling sound began behind her, followed by clanks and flashes of blue lightning flickering down the steel tube. They were sealing her in. She’d taken four breaths so far.

Six left.

She reached the end, rewarded herself with a fifth breath, and prayed they’d selected the correct tube. It had been a carefully guarded secret, a ‘back door’ in case a submarine was ever hijacked or disabled and the normal points of entry were unusable. The missile bays couldn’t be used as the missiles were in place, but torpedo tubes had to be loaded. This one had a special device inside, just near the inner hatch. The operation had only been tested in training, until four years ago when a Russian sub had almost been lost in a fjord in Norway. Three Special Services divers entered the same way. Must have been pretty slim. Probably women like her.

She reached the inner door and prised open a square flap. The bubbling behind her ceased. They probably hadn’t sealed it completely, just enough to keep it in place – suction and outside pressure would do the rest. There were two buttons: one red, one green. She took another breath, and pressed the green one firmly with her index finger. Nothing. Wait – let it work. Pressing it again might cancel the first press.

She heard a rattling noise, like a chain rolling over steel cogs. She waited some more. Another breath, number seven. Nothing. A popping sound. And another. A creaking noise from the other side. She pushed with all her might against the inner hatch, grinding the neoprene on her knee pads and boots against the tube’s slippery floor to gain traction. No way. Eighth breath. A big one. Don’t panic. Think. Sergei had said push the green one. Not the red. He’d not said what the red one did. She could hear clanks on the other side of the hatch, but it wouldn’t open. Then she understood why.

Someone was on the other side, holding it shut.

The shock of realisation forced her to take another breath. Nine. There was a thick glass eyehole, but it was covered on the other side. She wondered if her Glock could shoot through it. She didn’t even know if it could fire underwater, only that it was meant to work once she was on the other side. Her two dive buddies could see her predicament via the camera. She heard banging behind her, then the fizzing of the blowtorch. Nice thought, but she’d never make it out in time. She squirmed to retrieve the Glock, then stuck the end of the muzzle against the eyehole. Closing her eyes in case it blew up in her face, she squeezed the trigger.

A muffled click.

She should have had one more breath. But when she tried, she was sucking on empty. Story of her life. Sergei had been right with his little extra-time trick, when he’d stopped her breathing earlier, because she didn’t panic. Instead, she stared at the red button. No more options. It might blow up in her face, might try and fire her from the tube for all she knew. But there was no going back.

Her father came into her mind. Maybe she’d get to see him, finally, more than ten years after his death.

She pressed the red button.

Chapter Four (#udf8a0755-e809-586a-bcc2-80cc42d1292a)

Nadia gained some idea of how a bullet felt. She was glad she’d closed her eyes and put her hands over her head immediately after pressing the button. The small explosion blew off the inner hatch, shattered her dive mask, and squirted her into the compact room full of unforgiving metal pipes and valves.

Miraculously she didn’t gouge herself on anything. But she was deaf – temporarily, she hoped – a loud ringing in her ears like a perpetual cymbal. She touched her finger to one ear to see if there was blood, but there was only water. She touched her face: grazed, nothing serious. Water trickled in from the tube, but not much. The sub was stable. Her left ear popped, and she could hear again, though the ringing continued.

The guy who’d been jamming the hatch closed was in bad shape. She sloshed towards him through ankle-deep seawater, the Glock in her right hand. He was armed, but his right elbow was mangled, his gun hanging from broken fingers, and his jaw was badly lopsided. The hatch must have hit him in the face.

‘How many men?’ she asked.

He gurgled something. Blood dribbled from his mouth, and then he tried to move, grimaced, and stayed put. She took a look. He was impaled on a length of shiny copper tubing that had transected his spine midway up his back. Soon to be dead. Beyond him, piled in a corner, were three dead sailors. A Borei sub had a full complement of a hundred and seven men, but this had been a skeleton crew according to Sergei. Twenty men, making a test run.

‘Pizda!’ he snarled, referring to the uniquely female part of her anatomy.

‘You’ve not got long,’ she replied. His pain must have been off the scale.

He told her to go and do something with herself.

She shrugged. ‘Have it your way.’ Nothing she could do anyway except speed him on his way. She figured he and whatever he believed in needed some alone time. She paused a moment, wondering what she would say to her maker when the time came, then decided she’d just give Him the silent treatment until He explained Himself.

The workstation was thankfully waterproof, a light transparent gel casing over everything including each key on the keypad. She inserted the USB key. A message in Russian came up, asking for a password. Sergei had said nothing about a password. Not the kind of thing he would have forgotten. So, the terrorists had inserted one of their own. She wondered why. She moved back to the man bleeding out.

‘Password?’

He spat blood on the floor.

Sergei and the others didn’t have unlimited time; at forty metres they were going to go through their nitrox pretty quickly. They could abort their mission, but Sergei didn’t seem the type. He’d go in anyway, and be killed as he did so.

Not going to happen.

Back in Kadinsky’s camp, she’d been trained in torture techniques. Not just the theory. She’d not slept for days afterwards, and swore she’d never do it for real.

Yet here she was.

But this scenario was tricky. The man was dying. He had little to lose. Which meant she’d have to inflict extreme pain, as well as psychological terror. And she’d have to give him the Promise. She wasn’t sure she could do it. An image of Danton – sick torturer that he’d been, back in the Scillies – arose in her mind, taunting her, calling her a pussy, telling her she could never do what was required, never be what was required.

She visualised Moscow, Katya in Gorky Park with a hundred other people, kids playing, taunting the geese on the lake, people laughing, a father holding his son up to the sky, then a blinding flash, and half a million people reduced to ash in the first seconds of the explosion.

No.

She steeled herself. ‘Last chance,’ she said, for which she received a string of stuttered expletives.

She took out her stubby knife, and thrust it into his left shoulder, severing the tendons that controlled his arm. He half-grunted, half-cried out through gritted teeth, gave her his remaining repertoire of swear words, then began combinations. She took off his belt and strapped it around his forehead, securing him so he couldn’t move a millimetre.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, his breath thready, his voice less sure.

She didn’t answer. The divers outside, and Sergei no doubt, would be watching via the camera. She retrieved the knife, stole a breath, then made an incision in the middle of his forehead, and dragged the knife sideways, both hands on the hilt so as to exert constant pressure. She felt sick as the blood oozed out, but she continued. She needed the password. Now.

So many nerves in the face. He held out for five seconds then began shouting, another five struggling, another five kicking. She continued. His shouts turned to screams.

She paused.

‘Password,’ she said, keeping her voice level.

Tears flowed down his bloody cheeks. Her guts churned, but she gave him a cold, hard stare. Then raised the knife again.

‘Vengeance!’ he half-screamed, half-shouted.

She went over to the terminal, entered the word. The computer came to life, and she downloaded the contents of the USB key. The computer screen began to flash streams of incoherent data, half-formed disjointed images, then it blanked. The lighting in the room flickered, then went out, replaced by red emergency lights.

‘Kill me,’ he said, squinting from blood that dripped from his brow into his eyes.

She took off the camera and placed it on a ledge, facing the other way. Kneeling down next to him, her face close to his so he could spit in it if he wanted to, she spoke. ‘My father was Vladimir Lakshev. Does that name mean anything to you?’

His eyes flared, maybe with recognition, perhaps blinding pain, almost certainly hatred for her. ‘You’ve had all you’re going to get from me, suka. Just do it.’