Jonah held the door shut for one more minute, then let it go. No sounds came from the compartment; his hands were bright red from the searing heat. The smoldering bodies of the mercenaries in the bow would have to be considered a loose end, at least for now. If the jet of white fire shooting out of the pipe was any indication, death would have been fast, a bright white light searing heat, a few screams and — once the brain cooked or blood boiled — nothing.
Jonah scrambled to the control panel followed by Alexis, both now intimately close to Dr. Nassiri in the tight quarters of the command compartment. Dr. Nassiri kept his back turned — a few more staples and the bleeding might actually be under control—
“Blowing ballast tanks,” said Jonah. He inputted a series of commands into the controls console and was rewarded by a loud hissing sound as the external ballast tanks filled with air, displacing the heavy seawater and lightening the entire vessel. The depth gauge slowed as all three watched with held breath. The gauge just edged barely past fifteen hundred feet, almost stopped, then continued deeper and deeper, once again picking up speed. The groaning of the structural members continued with renewed intensity.
“This is not good,” Jonah said. “There’s too much weight from the yacht pulling us down. Alexis, give me engine power. Let’s push this ship off our backs.”
“Me?” Alexis looked at him as if he’d sprouted horns.
“You’re my engineer.”
“But I’ve never—”
“What happened to their engineer?” Dr. Nassiri asked.
“I think I shot him.” Alexis said.
“Dead man’s boots.” Jonah pointed at the controls. “You’re my new engineer.”
“Shit. Shit. Shit!” Alexis kicked the empty chair in front of the control panel, sending is spinning.
“I need you.” Jonah said.
“Fuck you.” Alexis said as she stilled the chair and sat down. Fingers flying, she pulled up a series of menus and engine diagnostics. “I can give you sixty seconds of full battery power,” she said. “Maybe ninety, then we’re running off emergency reserves.”
“Sixty?” demanded Jonah. “That’s it?”
“I may have also shot up the battery compartment,” she admitted.
“Can’t do anything about that now. Put the pedal to the metal.”
Alexis winced as she inputted the command. The long driveshaft of the submarine spun to life, chewing at the dark water, trying to gain traction. The entire vessel shifted, the bow rising as the stern fell, putting Dr. Nassiri in the uncomfortable position of hugging his patient to prevent him from sliding off the chart table.
The semi-conscious Russian hugged him back, and Dr. Nassiri could have wept with joy — with the bleeding contained and with the IV bag the Russian still had enough strength to move. The doctor took the opportunity to listen to both lungs. It wasn’t good news, but total lung collapse had been prevented. If they lived through the next sixty seconds, the Russian might just make it.
“Come on, you bitch!” Jonah shouted as the submarine shuddered and bucked under the intense power of the massive rear propeller. “Come on!”
One loud, long scraping sound, peeled along the skin of the submarine, and then another — the yacht wreckage above them was moving, but not enough. Not more than thirty seconds into the exercise, the engines died amid the howl of emergency warning klaxons.
“What happened? That wasn’t sixty seconds!” yelled Jonah over the cacophony.
“It’s the drag, we sucked down too much power,” shouted Alexis. “We’re down to emergency reserves. The computer is locking me out of throttle controls.”
“Down to bare knuckles and swingin’ dicks,” mused Jonah as the now unimpeded depth gauge rolled past 1700 feet. “Fill the ballast tanks, make us heavy.”
“What?” said Alexis.
“Fill them. I want to hit the sea floor with enough impact to knock this wreckage free. Doc, I need your help here. Fuck that guy — he’s already good as dead.”
“But we have no idea how deep the bottom is!” protested Alexis.
“You got a better plan?”
Dr. Nassiri ignored both Americans. There it was, the last bandage put in place.
“Am I going to have to put a fucking bullet in your patient’s head?” demanded Jonah. “If I kill him, will you please fucking help me?”
Dr. Nassiri cleared his throat, loud enough for Alexis and Jonah to look up from their stations. “Please allow me to assist,” said Dr. Nassiri. And with that, he took a massive syringe loaded with a bear shot of amphetamines and adrenaline and jammed it into the Russian’s heart, pushing the plunger fully down.
The Russian’s eyes jumped open, wide enough to see the whites around all sides. Nearly crazed, he yanked the syringe out of his chest and tried to jump to his feet while screaming in Russian.
“English!” shouted Dr. Nassiri.
“Who fuck you are?” he yelled, his thick accent tumbling out of his mouth for the first time.
Dr. Nassiri glanced down at his name patch — Vitaly Kuznetsov.
“Vitaly, we’re the ones your crew tried to kill,” said Dr. Nassiri. “All your comrades are dead and we’re sinking.”
“Is submarine. Is designed to sink,” said the Russian, as if this would be obvious to anyone.
“We’re passing eighteen hundred feet,” said Jonah. “What’s our crush depth?”
“Difficult to say until actually crushed, no?” Vitaly gurgled. He dragged himself up against the wall, his head lolling.
“Fucking guess for me,” said Jonah, frustration building again.
“Maybe two thousand five hundred? What big deal, just blow ballast, make us very light for emergency surface.”
Nobody had to tell Dr. Nassiri that they were already past two thousand and still rapidly descending. Five hundred feet to go, maybe less given the violence of the collision. How long would it take, a minute, maybe two? At least the end of the ride would be quick enough, a sudden bang, a rush of water.
“We blew the ballast,” said Jonah. “We’ve got three hundred and seventy tons of yacht wreckage fused to the upper deck pushing us down.”
“No good, no good,” Vitaly said, realizing the predicament for the first time over the powerful combination of endorphins, pain, amphetamines, and adrenaline. “Battery power?”
“Down to reserves,” said Jonah, scowling at the man he’d shot. “We were going to try to drive the submarine into the sea floor, knock off the wreckage that way.”
“No good, no good,” said the Russian. “Your idea terrible. We must roll submarine. You certain everybody dead?”
“Your comrades are dead,” said Jonah. “How do we roll? Is that even possible?”
“I believe rolling only option. But rolling submarine only tried one time. Black Sea, nineteen-seventy-three by Russian Navy.”
“Did it work?” asked Alexis.
“Everybody die,” Vitaly said. “My father lose two cousins.”
The Russian threw an arm over Dr. Nassiri’s shoulder. The doctor guided him to the helmsman’s chair, inches from where he’d been shot through the chest.
“Brace yourselves,” Vitaly ordered as he secured himself in the mounted helmsman’s seat with a seatbelt across his lap and shoulder. Without further warning, he dumped the starboard ballast tank. The submarine suddenly lurched to the right like it’d just had a leg kicked out from underneath it. Alexis, Jonah, and Dr. Nassiri all fell to their knees, crawling over the jagged surfaces of the bulkhead mounted consoles that had once been on the right wall as the submarine turned over on her side.
Vitaly swore, pounding away at the command console, adjusting the depth planes and trim with furious speed, his fingers dancing over the controls as if conducting an eighty-piece symphony orchestra.