“Before I can accompany you,” he informed the warship’s commander, “I will require authorization codes from Moscow.”
He locked eyes with Ivanov. The XO nodded back at him. In this instance, at least, they seemed to be on the same wavelength. Even Alexei saw the wisdom in so reasonable a precaution. Losenko was relieved to have his starpom watching his back for once.
“Those codes were lost in the initial attack,” Frantz insisted, after another awkward delay. “Have faith in your countrymen, Captain. The Russian people need you sailing beside us.”
Along with our remaining ballistic missiles, Losenko thought. K-115 was both a tempting prize and a potential threat to whoever Frantz truly answered to. Losenko remembered the collaborators who had attacked Grushka’s armored truck. He was not about to let the Gorshkov’s last two thermonuclear weapons fall into the hands of turncoats such as those.
“Faith is in short supply these days,” Losenko answered. “As you said, the world is a dangerous place. Perhaps if you can put us in touch with your superior officers, we can arrange to rendezvous at a neutral location.”
An ominous silence ensued. The mood of the control room soured as the excited men realized, along with their captain, that something was amiss. Ilya Korbut, who had succeeded the late Lieutenant Zamyatin as tactical officer, approached the captain.
“Excuse me, sir,” he whispered. “I have been reviewing the fleet records and there is no record of a Captain Frantz. The Smetlivy was under Captain Dobrovolsky’s command at the outset of the attack.”
Losenko remembered Dobrovolsky. He was a good officer, ambitious but devoted to duty and his country. He would have scuttled the destroyer before he let it become the spoils of war.
Was Konstantin Frantz cut from the same cloth? Losenko had his doubts.
“Captain!” Michenko blurted out. The sonarman’s face went pale. “Smetlivy is flooding its torpedo tubes!”
“What!” Ivanov could not contain his shock. “But they’re our own people!”
Losenko knew how he felt. He just wished he was more surprised.
“Battle stations! Down bubble, full speed.”
The men scrambled to their posts, even as Frantz spoke again over the phone. “Surrender your vessel, Captain.” All pretence at civility went by the wayside. “Or we will sink you.”
“They’re opening torpedo doors!” Michenko reported.
“Traitor!” Losenko let loose his own anger, even as— outside the sub—plumes of mist vented from the ballast tanks, signaling their intentions. “Who is pulling your strings? Skynet? The Americans? Some petty warlord?” That a Russian warship would dare threaten K-115 was the final proof that the world had truly gone mad. What had become of patriotism and loyalty? “You call yourself a captain of the Northern Fleet? How can you live with yourself!”
His accusation hit a nerve.
“You don’t understand!” Frantz ranted “I don’t have any choice. None of us do. Skynet’s forces are everywhere, humans commanded by machines. They’re holding our families hostage. American missiles are aimed at what’s left of our country, ready to finish what they started on Judgment Day if we don’t comply with their demands. The machines are watching us every minute. There’s one right behind me at this very moment. It will terminate me if I don’t obey!”
“So you are a coward and a collaborator, just as I feared.” Contempt dripped from Losenko’s voice. He was tempted to hang up, but the longer he kept Frantz talking, the more time they had to submerge. “If you had any honor, you would defend this sub with your last breath, not turn your weapons against it!”
“And condemn the Motherland to further reprisals?” Frantz sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as much as Losenko, who heard a guilty conscience behind the other man’s self-serving rationalizations. “You’re living in the past, Captain! This is Skynet’s world now. Our only hope for peace is to accept its new world order.”
That’s not what John Connor says, Losenko thought. Frantz was deluding himself if he thought that the machines would be content ruling over humanity like benign overlords. Most likely Skynet had already murdered the majority of the world’s population. Why assume it would let its human pawns survive once it was through with them? Gratitude was a human concept.
“You are being used, Mr. Frantz.” Losenko declined to honor him with the title of captain. “But you will not have my boat. Or my missiles.”
Keeping the hundred-kiloton warheads out of enemy hands was his supreme priority now. No threat or argument could convince him otherwise. He would take the missiles with him to the bottom of the sea if necessary.
“Don’t make me fire, Captain.” Frantz was practically pleading now. “Halt your descent!”
Like hell, Losenko thought. He hung up on Frantz.
An alarm blared from the speaker system.
“Captain!” Lieutenant Pavlinko reported. He monitored the electronic surveillance sensors installed atop the periscope. “Aircraft approaching from the northeast. Two American helicopters!”
Losenko found himself outnumbered. Were the fighters allied with the Smetlivy? If the American planes were equipped with anti-submarine torpedoes, Gorshkov’s odds of escaping had just turned considerably worse.
“Americans!” Ivanov snarled. “I should have known! This was a trap, using the Smetlivy as bait!”
Pavlinko’s next announcement stunned them all.
“The enemy aircraft have fired on the Smetlivy!” The weapons officer looked baffled by his own information. “The Americans are requesting our assistance. They say they’re the Resistance!”
The what?
Losenko didn’t know what to think. Despite John Connor’s broadcasts, the captain had seen no evidence that the so-called Resistance was anything more than an idea. Now American warplanes were defending them against a Russian destroyer?
Explosions upon the surface rocked the submarine. The sound of anti-aircraft fire, coming from the Smetlivy, penetrated the icy depths and the steel hull of K-115. The deck rolled beneath Losenko’s feet as though the sub was being tossed about atop a stormy sea, and not submerged beneath the waves. Dangling cords and cables swung wildly back and forth.
The captain didn’t fully comprehend what was happening, but he recognized an opportunity.
“Dive! Down bubble, twenty degrees!”
The submarine descended at a sharp angle, hoping to escape the conflict above.
“Scope’s under,” Ivanov announced. He lowered the periscope and locked it into place. The overhead lights flared up again.
“Forty meters.” The diving officer called out the depth. “Fifty meters.”
But Frantz wasn’t going to let them get away so easily.
“Two torpedoes launched and running!” the sonarman warned, then he began a continuing report on the projectiles’ speed, bearing, and range. Sweat glistened upon Michenko’s face. His gaze was glued to the slaved sonar screens.
“Torpedoes have acquired! Repeat: torps have acquired!”
“Helm! Hard to port!” Losenko spat out orders at a rapid pace. “Deploy countermeasures!”
The Gorshkov jettisoned a pair of decoys via the rear ejector tubes. Losenko heard them wailing loudly outside the sub. The acoustic noisemakers made a racket by releasing compressed air while vibrating like tuning forks. With luck, the decoys would lure the torpedoes away from K-115.