As soon as the rounded underhull of the Sea King touched the churned-up water, Mercer bit down on his mouthpiece, sucked in a breath of cool air, and launched himself out of the chopper.
The water was warmer than he expected. At first Mercer sank below the surface, then he adjusted his buoyancy by detaching one of the lead weights. He took a bearing from the compass on his wrist and, still underwater, started swimming toward the John Dory.
Mercer had made two potentially fatal assumptions when he launched himself from the Sea King. One was that the ship they had picked up on radar was, in fact, the John Dory. There was a definite possibility that the craft ahead of him was an entirely different ship, one innocently steaming through the area. The second assumption concerned the hull of the Soviet submarine/ freighter. If there was no gap between the submarine’s hull and the fake sides of the freighter, he would have no way of gaining access to the vessel. If he was wrong about either guess, he would be dead long before the Russian missile detonated.
After a few minutes of swimming, Mercer felt a vibration through the water — the pounding engines of a large ship.
Adding a little air to the compensator, he surfaced on the crest of a swell. Through the rain-lashed night, he made out the running lights of a large freighter about two hundred yards ahead of him. His breath hissed through the regulator, rain and spume splattered against his mask.
He ducked back under the surface and continued to doggedly swim toward the John Dory. The backs of his legs were beginning to ache and his breathing was labored.
The sound of the ship’s props filled the silence of the sea, but the vessel itself was still hidden in the gloom. Mercer was hesitant to turn on his dive light for fear of being detected by a lookout on deck, but at last he took the chance.
The knife-edge bow of the John Dory was no more than ten feet away and bearing down on him at eight knots. Mercer dove hard, but his reaction came an instant too late. The steel plates of the ship’s bow scraped along his body, shredding the thick rubber of his wet suit. The thick crust of barnacles grated against Mercer’s skin like a thousand tiny paring knives.
Mercer screamed into his mouthpiece as pain shot through his system, racing through his body to explode against the top of his skull. He felt the gray blanket of unconsciousness falling over his mind, but managed to push it aside by sheer force of will. He wouldn’t allow pain to stop him now. He had only a few seconds in which to find a handhold of some sort before the vessel passed him. And if that happened, he had no chance of ever catching her.
Training the dive light upward, Mercer recognized the smooth curve of a submarine’s hull. At least he had the right ship. He flashed the light to starboard and saw a space between the freighter silhouette and the sub’s hull. He swam into the gap.
When his head broached the surface, he spat out his mouthpiece and gulped down the warm humid air trapped between the steel plating and the sub. The water in the four-foot-wide gap was churned in a vortex that carried Mercer along with the ship.
Since he did not have the luxury of time, he didn’t bother glancing at his watch. He was certain that the sub was getting into position to fire the missile. He immediately set to work. The magnetic limpet mines he’d pilfered from the SEALs’ stores stuck to the hull with a quiet snap; the timers had all been set, and as each one made contact with the sub’s hull, it went active.
As soon as the explosive charges were planted, Mercer began climbing the spiderweb of steel girders that locked the bogus freighter hull to the submarine. Because of his injured ribs and the scuba gear hanging from his back the climb was exhausting. He wished he could dump the dive equipment, but if he hoped to escape with Valery Borodin, he needed it. At the top of the girders, he paused to look at his watch. Four minutes until launch.
Shit.
The sharp steel struts had ripped into his hands; blood poured from the wounds and dripped onto the deck where Mercer stood, just forward of the submarine’s conning tower. The empty superstructure of the freighter soared thirty feet above his head. The cavernous space echoed with the hiss of water sliding across her hull and the beat of her props. The nearly total darkness smelled of diesel oil and saltwater. As quietly as possible, Mercer stashed his scuba gear and dive fins in a corner.
Two minutes.
He crept up the ladder of the rounded conning tower. As he neared the top, he made out muted voices. The language was unmistakably Russian.
He popped his head over the top of the conning tower and gave a friendly smile to the two shocked officers standing at the open hatch.
“Take me to your leader,” Mercer grinned. Exhaustion and the adrenaline he was using as a substitute for real courage had made him giddy.
The two officers produced pistols in record time, leveling them at Mercer’s head. One of them shouted down into the sub. Though Mercer did not speak Russian, he assumed that the captain had just been informed that they had a prisoner. Prompted by curt gestures from a pistol barrel, Mercer went down the hatchway and into the Soviet submarine.
At the base of the ladder, Mercer casually glanced around the vessel’s control room. By the slack-jawed looks and the lack of movement, he rightly guessed that the launch had been suspended for the moment.
“Hi, my name’s Barney Cull.” Mercer stuck out his hand but no one made a move to shake it. “I’m offering a sale on hull scraping and wondered if you needed my services.”
Captain Zwenkov stepped forward, his face set in a deep scowl. “Who are you?” His English was thick but understandable.
“Actually I’m Sam O. Var, your local Coffee Wagon Company representative. How are you guys fixed for blinis?”
Zwenkov said something that in any language would have sounded like, “Get him out of here and lock him up.”
Mercer was hustled from the control room by two armed sailors. He called over his shoulder, “Don’t think strong-arm tactics will get me to lower my prices.”
He would have continued with the jokes but the pistol stabbing into his kidney jammed the air in his throat. He was led through the sub toward the stern, thankfully away from where he had planted the charges.
He was stripped of his wet suit and after a rather extensive body search, one of his guards undogged a hatch and thrust Mercer into a small cabin. The hatch was closed behind him but not locked.
In the spartan room, a man a few years younger than Mercer sat on one of the bunks. He was handsome in that Connecticut shore, hair blowing in the wind, sweater knotted around the throat kind of way. Mercer assumed, correctly, that this was Valery Borodin. Borodin said something to Mercer in Russian.
“Sorry, I don’t speak it.”
Mercer’s use of English drained the color from Valery’s face. “I said, you’re not a member of the boat’s crew. Who are you?”
“I’m Philip Mercer, the guy you sent the telegram to.”
“Who?” Valery’s eyes narrowed in confusion.
“Philip Mercer. You sent a telegram to me in Washington, warning me about the danger to Tish Talbot.”
“Tish sent you?” Valery stood, his voice brightening.
“No, you sent me.” Mercer was getting confused himself.
“I don’t know who you are, but you know Tish?”
“You didn’t send a telegram to me in Tish’s father’s name?”
“No.”
“Just after you had her rescued from the Ocean Seeker?”