‘James!’ she said, stunned to see him.
He untied her bonds, put his finger to his lips, and then led her through the shadows of the sub toward the control room. They soon came upon the tank room and found a man operating them.
Renard’s voice came over the intercom. ‘Flood tanks four and five . . .’
‘Hooding tanks four and five,’ the man said into a radio on the table, then he did as he was told. As soon as he was finished, Bond knocked him out with the butt of his gun.
‘We have to get to the reactor room,’ he said. ‘It’s on the other side of the control room, but Renard and his men are in there.’
‘Is there another way?’ she asked.
‘We go down to the torpedo bay.’
Before they could move, though, a man came through a hatch. Bond lashed out at him, but the man’s reflexes were sharp. He deflected Bond’s blow and rebounded with a vicious kick to Bond’s chest. Bond dropped his gun and it slid across the floor. Christmas watched helplessly as the two men fought silently and ferociously. The man drew his gun but Bond kicked it out of his hand. This was followed by a solid punch to the man’s face, sending him sprawling over the table where the radio sat. He reached for the fire alarm, but Bond grabbed his legs and pulled him off the table. The man used the momentum to twist and elbow Bond in the stomach.
‘Open the tanks,’ Renard’s voice said over the intercom.
Hunched over, Bond propelled himself forward and knocked the man back onto the table. He grabbed the radio receiver and wrapped the coiled cable around the man’s neck, throttling him.
‘Open the tanks. Do you copy?’ Renard’s voice came again.
Bond pulled the cable tighter. The man's eyes bulged. Disguising his voice, Bond pushed the transmit button on the microphone and said, Tanks open.’
The man finally slumped to the floor. Christmas was obviously shaken. Bond retrieved his gun, took her hand and led her forward.
Unaware of the situation in another part of the boat, Renard left the control room momentarily and joined Truhkin in the machine room. Truhkin was hard at work with the extruder, a machine that resembled a gigantic V8 engine. He carefully lifted the half-grapefruit-sized plutonium core from the metal box, then placed it inside the extruder, which would mould the substance into the shape of a reactor control rod. Satisfied that the procedure was going smoothly, Renard left Truhkin to his business and went back to the control room.
Bond and Christmas found a hatch with a small window looking into the control room. Bond peered in and saw five crewmen at different consoles. Renard was pacing amongst them.
‘Level out at one hundred feet,’ he commanded. ‘Hold her steady. ’
The crewman closest to Bond operated the buoyancy controls. The helmsman, across the room, reduced the engine thrust. Rcnard felt die submarine’s position change, nodded, and went back through the hatch toward the reactor room.
Bond whispered to Christmas, ‘If we could force them to the surface, it would show up on the spy satellites. That would bring out the Navy. Wait here.’
‘Where are you going?’ she asked, wide-eyed.
‘In there.’
Renard rejoined Truhkin in the machine room in time to see the plutonium rod emerge from the end of the extruder.
Bond opened the hatch, stepped into the control room and slammed the butt of his Walther into the buoyancy control crewman’s head. The rest of the crew reacted, going for their guns, but Bond was faster.
‘Don’t even think of it,’ he said, covering them.
He scanned the controls at his side and saw four emergency handles that would blow the buoyancy tanks. Bond grabbed the two for the forward tanks and pulled them down.
Alarms sounded throughout the ship and a loud hiss of air could be heard everywhere. The main forward ballast tanks immediately began filling with water. Bond purposefully avoided opening the aft ballast tanks so that the submarine would dive nose-first, which it did - abruptly.
Renard cursed and ran back to the control room with his gun drawn to find his crew standing frozen at their positions.
Upon seeing Bond, Renard screamed, ‘Shoot him!’
Everyone dived for cover as he and Bond exchanged fire, but the sub’s tilting threw them off-balance. The bullets ricocheted off the control panels, blowing them to pieces. Renard wedged himself in the doorway leading to the reactor room, but the other crewmen lost their footing and fell to the deck. Two crewmen fired their guns at Bond, who successfully leapt out of the way in the nick of time. The bullets shattered the buoyancy control panel, forcing Bond back into the corridor with Christmas.
‘Do you know what you did in there?’ she asked.
‘Like riding a bike,’ he replied.
‘What kind of bikes did you ride?' she asked.
‘Just wanted to put him on edge . . .’
They started to run back from where they came, but two new crewmen appeared at the far end of the passageway and opened fire. Bond threw Christmas to the floor and shot at them, but the Walther was out of ammunition. Thinking quickly, he jumped on top of Christmas, held on to her, and rolled with her through an open hatch to their left. Once they were inside, Bond leaped to his feet and slammed the door shut. As they took stock of their surroundings, Bond realised that they were in the bow torpedo room.
The submarine’s nose continued to dive. Bond and Christmas shifted to the side of the room as everything that wasn’t screwed down began to slide. They grabbed the nearest fixed objects and hung on as the room turned ninety degrees.
‘Get us level!’ Renard shouted to a crcwman in the control room. The man pulled on the buoyancy controls, but there was no response. The machinery had been completely demolished by the gunfire.
‘It’s no good!’ he yelled back.
The submarine tilted further until the entire vessel was hanging vertically in the water.
Renard cursed again, then climbed up, back into the machine room, and shut the door, now at his feet. As the crewmen attempted to regain their footing, the helmsman accidentally hit the engine control, sending it to FULL AHEAD. He crashed with the rest of the men into the wall as the submarine lunged violently toward the bottom of the sea.
Bond and Christmas fell back against the racks of torpedoes. The sound of the engines was deafening. Christmas screamed. Bond held her as he looked around the room. Emergency equipment was stowed in netting against a bulkhead near them. He pulled at the straps, emptied the netting, and thrust Christmas inside.
‘Quick!’ he shouted, following her into the netting.
They secured themselves just as the submarine crashed into the sandy bottom of the Bosphorus.
The boat jolted with the force of an earthquake. Renard slammed hard against the wall of the machine room. The crewmen in the control room were not so lucky. Chairs and desks broke free and crushed them against the damaged equipment.
In a few moments, it was over. There was an eerie silence, save for the occasional groan of hull stress and the wail of alarms.
Renard, dazed, looked up and saw that the extruder had slid into Truhkin and killed him . . . but he was holding the finished plutonium control rod in his clenched fists. Rcnard got up and wrenched it free. He then made sure that the hatch to the control room was sealed.
Bond and Christmas climbed out of the netting just as a horrible creak resounded through the chamber. A rupture at the end of the racks of torpedoes spread across the wall; water gushed toward them at a frightening rate.
‘Climb!’ he shouted. He pulled Christmas up and they ascended toward the control room. ‘Keep moving!’
As they emerged into the demolished chamber, the water was already pouring through the hatch, splashing at their feet. They struggled together to shut the hatch, but by the time they were successful, the water was up to their knees.