The sound of jet engines sent her gaze skyward, where the stars were beginning to fade, where she should be right now.
After slinging the survival kit over her shoulder, the two.45 magazines in her left hip pocket, the pistol in her gloved hand, she took one last look around to make sure she’d hadn’t left anything. Then, remembering she had been gliding northwest when she’d dumped the seat, she jogged off and headed southeast through the forest.
She got no more than a thousand yards from her landing site when she heard the sounds of multiple, somewhat high-pitched engines. The sounds left her puzzled. She crouched down, then dug through her kit, produced her binoculars.
In a clearing off to her left, a half dozen black snowmobiles had come to a halt. Climbing off them were heavily armed Spetsnaz troops.
Lowering the binoculars and placing them back into the kit, ever so gently, as though the tiniest sound might be heard by the enemy, Halverson glanced up, saw how the forest dipped down ahead, and figured there might be better cover there.
She rose, started off, wouldn’t look back, wouldn’t do a damned thing except focus on the next position.
One of the Spetsnaz cried out in Russian, loud enough for her to hear, and she understood the words: “I found the chute!”
And now they knew she was alive.
TWENTY-ONE
A weatherworn man in his early sixties whom the computer identified as Ivan Golova, commander of the helicopter assault ship Ulyanovsk, was standing on the main deck, midships, inspecting his vessel for debris damage.
Andreas’s men had just intercepted and decrypted communications between him and the skipper of the amphibious assault ship Ivan Rogov. Both men agreed that the destruction of the Varyag and Kalovsk was the worst refueling accident in the history of the Russian Navy.
And both men were unaware of the wolf at their door.
Andreas tensed as Golova looked up, a half second before the Harpoon struck his ship broadside.
The incredible amount of energy directed upward into the main deck instantly blasted the commander apart—
Just as the flooded engineering spaces exploded in a magnificent conflagration that, seconds later, split Ulyanovsk in half.
The helicopter assault ship’s stern section sank within a minute, but the bow section remained afloat, and crewmembers scrambled to get into lifeboats. The dozens in the water would die within minutes from hypothermia induced by the unforgiving arctic sea.
Those lucky men in the lifeboats, about twenty-five by Andreas’s count, paddled furiously for the Ivan Rogov as they watched the bow section finally join the Varyag and Kalovsk at the bottom of Gray’s Bay.
This time there was no cheering in Andreas’s control room. The odd thing was — and every man serving on his boat would attest to this — if there wasn’t a war going on, they and the Russians sailors would probably buy each other drinks. They were all proud Navy men and women. There was a kinship there that extended beyond politics and culture.
But, as always, when push came to shove, they would kill each other without hesitation, and often without remorse. So, yes, there was no cheering this time while the tortured faces appeared on the Florida’s screens.
For a few minutes more, everyone in the control room watched as the Ulyanovsk’s survivors struggled to reach a ship that was already doomed.
Andreas, unwilling to subject himself and his crew to any more, gave the order to fire.
The Florida’s third Harpoon struck the Ivan Rogov’s forward fuel tank. The enormous blast instantaneously consumed the first hundred feet of the ship, including the Ulyanovsk’s overloaded lifeboats.
As long columns of fire and smoke billowed from the vessel, wave action and shifting tides swung her 180 degrees on her stern anchor, causing her to dislodge the flukes. Dragging a useless anchor and powerless to stop, Ivan Rogov’s broken hulk foundered against the rocky shore.
The handful of survivors who began making their way to the rails would face the hostile Northwest Territories. Andreas doubted that they’d last more than a week.
Throughout the Harpoon attack, he had stood with his right hip pressed against the plotting table and suddenly realized his right leg had gone to sleep. The realization carried him back to his boyhood and Melville’s Captain Ahab. He shuddered free the memory and got back to work.
The task force’s icebreakers had left, leaving the ammunition ship, which had already lifted an anchor and was on the run.
Andreas spoke softly. “Let her pass. I want to see her plimsoll line and draught markings. I’d also like to get her name before we kill her — for the log.”
The ammo ship’s angle on the bow was currently port thirty, making it impossible to see her stern and name. However, she had been zigzagging and was just about due for another course change.
Andreas got his wish when she turned right seventy degrees. He let her pass then slowly fell in behind to read her transom:
MOЛHИЯ
“Anybody. Translate that for me,” he said.
“It means lightning, sir,” replied the SpecOps communications technician.
“How apropos.” He glanced sidelong at the XO. “Her draught markings indicate she’s drawing forty-two feet. Set up the Mark 48 accordingly and let her open out to ten thousand yards — we don’t want her coming down on us when she blows. Load up tube one. You have the honors.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
The Mk-48 ADCAP (advanced capability) was a wire-guided, active/passive homing torpedo, nineteen feet long and twenty-one inches in diameter. Thrust from its pumpjet propulsor was developed by an air turbine pump discharge (ATPD) system, and liquid fuel powered the swash-plate piston engine.
Once the XO confirmed that the torpedo was loaded, Andreas paused a moment more, thinking about all the men and women about to lose their lives. War was a terrible thing.
After a barely discernable nod from Andreas, the XO gave the order.
As the torpedo shot through the launch tube, a thin wire spun out, electronically linking it with the submarine. This enabled the operator of the submarine’s sensitive sonar systems to guide the torpedo toward the target.
The ammo ship Lightning had deployed several decoys and jamming devices, but the operator would avoid those as the torpedo reached seventy-five knots.
A few seconds later, the wire cut free, and the torpedo’s high-powered active/passive sonar steered it during the final attack.
The Mk-48’s warhead contained the explosive power of about 1,200 pounds of TNT, and both Andreas and the XO knew that that power could be maximized when the warhead detonated below the keel of a target ship.
“Three seconds,” said the XO, monitoring his console’s timer. “Two, one.”
The warhead exploded exactly as planned. The resulting pressure wave of the blast lifted the Lightning, and while Andreas couldn’t see it, he felt certain that her keel had been broken in the process.
As she settled, the second detonation occurred, tearing her apart and igniting her huge cache of ammunition. Long plumes of water and fragments shot nearly two hundred meters skyward. Dozens more explosions joined the first in a rainbow of colors that lit waves pockmarked by splashing debris.
When the smoke cleared a bit, Andreas confirmed that they had broken the ship into several pieces. The larger bow and stern sections were taking on water fast, while still more ammunition began to cook off.