“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m happy to keep working the problem… but…”
There was more silence before the stranger spoke again. “I’ve heard that some of your crew are still trained in some expert forms of interrogation, not necessarily recognized since the KGB’s changeover to FSB during the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
Her captain didn’t remark on the stranger’s slur on what she knew he believed to be the Soviet Union’s glory days. Instead, her captain merely said, “So what is the location of this missing submarine — for assistance purposes only, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Where?”
“At the gateway to the 8th Continent.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Tom listened to the near-silent drone of the Gulfstream G650’s powerful Rolls Royce engines. They were softening, and he guessed, they were about to commence their descent into Oahu.
He picked up the satellite phone and dialed a number by heart.
A man picked up immediately. “Admiral Bower’s office, Lieutenant Gibbs speaking.”
“Good morning, sir,” Tom said. “This is Tom Bower. Is the admiral available?”
The man appeared to recognize his voice. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bower, I’m afraid the admiral is unavailable currently.”
“Can you tell me when he will be?” Tom persisted.
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
“Right. When he gets into his office, can you please ask him to call me on my cell phone. It’s a matter of urgency.”
“Can I pass on a message, sir?”
“Afraid not. What I need to discuss with the admiral is private and needs to be done so in person. I’ll wait until he’s free today.”
“He might not be available for quite some time.”
“That’s fine. We’re staying at Holiday Inn at Waikiki. You can let him know we’ll come to him once he’s available.”
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Bower…” there was the slightest of pauses on the line, as though the operator was covering the phone to speak to someone else. Then, without further preamble, he said, “Admiral Bower is out at sea on deployment, for an unknown duration.”
Tom let out an audible laugh. “Lieutenant Gibbs, my father retires in two weeks. His last posting was to Pearl Harbor, at his request, so that he could oversee the transfer of the Pacific Submarine Fleet… so don’t try and tell me he’s gone out to sea.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, sir.”
Tom swallowed down the frustration. “Just tell him that Tom has an urgent message for him, that can’t go through the Emerald Queen of Spades.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just make certain he gets the message.”
“Understood, sir.”
He ended the satellite call.
Sam glanced at him with a wry smile on his lips. “The Emerald Queen of Spades?”
Tom shrugged. “What? It was the best I could come up with at short notice.”
“But will your father get it?”
“Of course, he will. That’s what he used to call the secretary of defense when she cheated at cards.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Svetlana committed the precise coordinates of the 8th Continent to memory.
She would have liked to have written them down, but any reference to them would have provided insurmountable proof that she had indeed spied on her own captain. Instead, she waited, trying to mentally picture the location in her mind.
How could a continent have remained hidden there for so long?
It was another hour before someone unlocked her door, and an hour after that before divers removed the purpose-built covers to her hydrophones.
She immediately increased the range to their maximum.
There was little point.
Despite the signals of three other vessels she heard within her range, she knew none of them came from the submarine that had docked beneath them.
The Vostok continued to head south for the next twenty-four hours.
She opened the thick, soundproofed hatch and was on her way to the deck to enjoy her first view of the sky — albeit at night time — since she boarded the Vostok nearly a month ago when she heard the sound.
Quiet at first. Little more than a sibilant hiss as wind whipped through the array of radar and satellite dishes on the top of the Vostok’s bridge.
A moment later, she spotted the fine mist of water, as it pummeled the deck. The warm seawater quickly turned to ice. Above her, she heard the sharp crack of the thick Perspex windshields that lined the bridge, being shattered by the icy pellets.
Her head snapped round to the right, where the end of the passageway was starting to freeze solid. An intricate web of ice started to form. Small stars of ice formed on the doorway. Part of the wall broke apart as though the entire thing had been struck by liquid nitrogen.
Svetlana turned to run.
Her breath misted and crystallized in front of her.
She opened the door to her surveillance room and slammed it shut behind her. Inside, the room was silent. The temperature remained unchanged, protected by the thick layer of soundproofing.
There she waited.
What the hell was that?
After twenty minutes, she couldn’t take it anymore. She opened the latched door, which opened inwards.
On the outside of the door, was a solid wall of ice.
She closed the door and screamed, her voice lost, trapped, and alone.
Chapter Thirty
Sam was breathing hard from exertion as he made it over the crest of the final wave between him and the relative safety of the deep blue water beyond the break. He sucked in the warm ocean breeze as it clipped the tops of the waves falling away behind him. Snapping himself up to sit on his surfboard, he glanced over his shoulder toward the sand at Rockpile Beach on Oahu’s North Shore. He raked the surf with his eyes, trying to see where Tom had gotten to among the white-water rollers.
He relished the ache in his triceps and back muscles after his hard work getting back out. He and Tom had been doing some hard surfing this morning, blowing off some steam on the first day of a long-needed vacation. Rockpile was usually the domain of veterans and kamikaze surfers only, renowned as one of the meanest breaks in Hawaii — and so far, it had delivered just what Sam and Tom were after — big, heavy waves.
Half a minute later Tom crested a breaking wave near Sam, paddling hard, whooping and laughing as he slapped down on the calm side of the break. He eased up alongside his friend, smiling from ear-to-ear.
“Pull up a seat!” Sam said, returning his friend’s good cheer.
“Oh man,” Tom said, with a satisfied groan as he sat up on his board, “It’s been far too long between waves.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” Sam said, with one eye on the horizon, searching for the next wave, idly paddling himself with his hands by his side.
There were a half-dozen other intrepid souls out the back of the break, spaced intermittently across the take-off zone. There was a friendly vibe, the dangerous waves immediately placing everyone present in an exclusive club of high caliber surfers. Sam looked at Tom to his right, and then followed his friend’s smiling gaze across to a pair of girls, shoulder-to-shoulder astride their boards, fifty feet to their left.
Without a word, Tom turned and paddled hard, racing toward a massive wave. Beside him the two girls paddled swiftly trying to catch it too. Sam knew he was too far back to catch the wave so he kicked hard and duck dived beneath it.