At the end of the hold, there was a closed doorway that appeared to lead toward the stern.
Sam turned the door handle. It was a little stuck but gave way with a little bit of forceful encouragement.
The door opened, and it led to a single passageway that ran the length of the ship. Sam slowly made his way aft, shining his flashlight into every room he passed. This section of the ship appeared to have been more affected by the icy event, with every wall and room covered in thick ice, at some parts more than a foot deep.
He heard the crackle of Tom’s voice in his portable radio. “Sam. You’ve been there for nearly an hour. Is everything all right?”
Sam depressed the microphone and replied, “All good over here, Tom. It looks like a frozen ship. No survivors. No answers.”
“Are you ready to come back?”
“Soon. I’ll do one more reconnaissance sweep, and then I’ll come and get warm.”
“Give me a call when you’re ready.”
“Will do.”
Sam turned to make his way back to the original hold and up the ladder.
He gripped the first rung of the ladder and stopped.
Behind him, he heard the sound of someone chiseling away at the ice. Sam stepped back down the ladder and shone his flashlight around the room. The sound continued to echo in the hold, but he couldn’t quite make out its precise location.
He closed his eyes and listened.
The sound was distinctly coming from the portside of the dark hold. Sam shined his flashlight in that direction and stopped to listen.
The chiseling sound stopped for a few moments.
Sam felt his heart race.
Had his mind been playing tricks on him?
Then it started again.
Sam snapped the flashlight around, fixing it straight at the origins of the noise. The sound had stopped, but Sam audibly gasped, because in its place a hand now penetrated the frozen floor, extending upward with a metal chisel.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Svetlana heard the stranger’s voice and froze.
“Hello, I’m here to help,” came a confident man’s voice. “Are you all right?”
“I’m down here,” she said in fluent English, without a trace of her Russian accent. She waved her hand through a hole she had broken in the ice above her head.
“Okay, just step back. I’m going to break through. Is anyone else alive down there?”
She felt her chest constrict at the question. Did he just imply that no one else survived the disaster? “No. It’s just me. What about everyone else?”
“I’m sorry, I haven’t found any other survivors.”
That confirmed it. She was the only survivor. Svetlana stepped back into her surveillance room and listened as the stranger struck the icy roof of her confines with something heavy. Broken pieces of ice fell through the gap and into her room.
As the second piece ricocheted off the wall and fell onto her shoulder, the revelation of her circumstance struck her as vividly as if she’d been dumped in icy water. The stranger had an American accent. She was the sole survivor from a Russian spy vessel, and she was in trouble.
Svetlana glanced at her surveillance monitors. She pocketed a small USB drive with all the valuable information she’d gathered, including the internal recordings of her captain and the submarine commander who’d offered to sell the Omega Deep. She still felt that the information was valuable, certainly important enough to risk her life to keep.
What frightened her was who to provide it to. Someone within the Russian Foreign Intelligence had betrayed her government, trading in their secrets for money. The question was, how high up was the insurrection? If she returned to Russia for a full debrief, was she walking straight into the hands of the very people who were involved in the conspiracy?
Perhaps it was better that her government continued to believe she went down with the Vostok until she could study more of the information on the USB stick. There had been hundreds of hours of continuous sound recordings inside the Vostok. Somewhere in there were the answers she needed before she knew who to report to.
She then removed her laptop’s hard drive, slid it into a slot on her desk, and flipped a switch. A brief humming sound of the degaussing machine wiped and destroyed the drive. She suspected if the U.S. Navy had boarded her vessel, they would most likely guess without any trouble what the ship’s true purpose was, but at least there wouldn’t be irrefutable evidence.
A few minutes later, the stranger broke through the opening.
She looked up and saw his arm reach down into the narrow opening of ice.
“Give me your hand,” he said. “I’ll pull you up.”
Svetlana took one last look at what had been the highlight of her short-lived career in espionage and gripped his hand.
The stranger pulled her up through the narrow ice hole without any effort, and in a matter of seconds, she was standing in the bogus fishing hold.
“My name’s Sam Reilly,” the stranger said, offering her his hand.
She took it. “Svetlana. Thanks for getting me out of there.”
He had a nice face with a carefree and kindly smile, full of even white teeth, and piercing blue eyes, that reminded her of the depths of the ocean.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “How long have you been trapped?”
She thought about it for a minute. “About two days, I think.”
“You must be starved. You’re lucky you’re not frozen. Come on, my friend and I have a yacht. You’d better come aboard and have something to eat and get warm. We can notify the authorities and get you back home.”
“Sounds great,” she said.
She couldn’t believe her luck. The Vostok must have been spotted by local sailors or tourists. Of course, that luck would only last so long. The U.S. Navy would investigate as soon as her rescuer notified the authorities.
It didn’t matter. She would have to work out a way to deal with that. Svetlana hardened her resolve. If she needed to, she might have to kill the man who’d come to her assistance — only if she had to.
She followed him up the ladder onto the deck.
Into a portable radio, Sam said, “Tom, do you want to come alongside now with the Matilda. I have one survivor.”
Svetlana glanced to the west, where a wealthy pleasure cruiser was making its way toward them. She smiled. What were the chances that she should be picked up by a wealthy tourist on vacation and not a U.S. Navy patrol?
The pleasure cruiser pulled up alongside the hull.
Sam said, “Here, give me your hand, and I’ll help you across.”
She reached the side railing of the Vostok and stopped. “I’m sorry. Can you please wait a few minutes? I just realized I forgot something that I really need from down below.”
“All right,” Sam replied. “No problem. Can I give you a hand?”
She made her best smile, tilting her head to the side in that coquettish way that came unnaturally to her, and said, “I’m fine. I’ll just be a minute.”
Her eyes met his.
She bit her lower lip, hoping that he would buy it. If not, she wondered whether she would need to dispose of him? She had no doubt she could kill him by surprise, inside the dark confines of the Vostok’s hold, but what about the other men on board the pleasure cruiser? How many were there? Would she be able to take them out, too?
No. It would be best if Sam just left her alone.
The stranger said, “All right. I’ll just wait here. Let me know if you need anything.”
She smiled. “Actually, can I borrow your flashlight.”
“Sure,” he said, handing it over to her.
She took it. “Thanks. I’ll just be a minute.”