Fire Ice Read online

  They quickly disconnected the makeshift modem and replaced the parts. Austin stuck his head out the door to see if the way was clear. The corridor was deserted. Moving with haste they made their way back to the ship diagram and selected a shorter route to the moon pool. So far their luck had held out and they'd seen no one. Austin was puzzled at the lack of personnel, but wasn't about to argue with good fortune. They were hurrying along a passageway, when they passed a door and heard voices speaking in English. The accents were unmistakably American. Austin tried the door and found it locked. Again, he resorted to his lock picks.

  The door opened onto a cabin with two bunks. Lounging on the bunks, with bored expressions on their faces, were Captain Logan and the pilot from the NR-1. Their conversation stopped in midsentence, and they stared at the newcomers with unbridled hostility, assuming they were guards who had come to make their life miserable.

  Logan turned to the pilot and said, “Where are they getting these guys?”

  “The tall one looks like he should be scaring crows in a field,” the pilot said.

  “That suit on the shorter guy sure didn't come from Armani,” Logan said, with a chuckle.

  “Armani was closed, Captain Logan. We had to borrow our wardrobe from the ship's crew.”

  Unknown

  Suspicion clouded Logan's eyes. “Who the hell are you?”

  “That gentleman imitating a scarecrow is my colleague, Paul Trout. My name is Kurt Austin, but you can call me 'Shorty.' ”

  The captain sprang from his bunk. “Dammit, you're Americans!”

  “Told you our disguises wouldn't hold up,” Austin said to Trout. He turned back to Logan. “Guilty as charged, Captain. Paul and I are with the NUMA Special Assignments Team.”

  The captain looked toward the door. “We didn't hear any fighting. Have your guys taken over the ship?”

  Austin and Trout exchanged amused glances. “Sorry to disappoint you. Delta Force was busy, so we came alone,” Austin said.

  “I don't understand. How - ”

  Austin cut him off. “We'll explain after we get you off this ship.”

  He motioned to Trout, who opened the door slightly to see if it was safe to exit. Again the hallway was clear. With a Trout leading the way and Austin taking up the rear, they moved along a corridor toward the stairway as if they were escorting the submariners.

  The strategy came in handy a moment later when they encountered a lone guard walking in their direction, his weapon shouldered. Austin guessed from the man's casual demeanor that he was on his way back to his quarters. The guard's eyes flicked toward Trout and his brow wrinkled as he tried to figure out why he didn't recognize a shipmate of a Trout's imposing height. The captain stopped when he saw the guard, unsure of what to do.

  Austin could have taken the guard out, but he preferred that the visit to the ship go unnoticed, if possible. He hooked his foot around Logan's ankle and gave him a shove. The captain went down on his hands and knees. The guard's puzzlement changed to amusement, and he roared with laughter and said something in Russian. He laughed again when Austin kicked the captain lightly in the rear end.

  Austin shrugged and replied with an innocent look. Still laughing, the guard continued along the hall until he was out of sight. Austin reached down and helped Logan up.

  “Sorry, Captain,” he said, with obvious embarrassment. was getting a fix on Paul, and I had to divert his attention."

  Logan dusted off the seat of his pants. “I've had my command hijacked, my crew kidnapped, and been forced by these seagoing thugs to use a U.S. Navy vessel for their purposes,” he said with a grin. “I'll suffer whatever it takes to get off this ship.”

  Trout stopped and examined another wall diagram. “It looks as if the moon pool hold is divided into a smaller and larger section. I'd advise going in the smaller end to avoid crew quarters here.”

  Austin told him to lead the way. With long, loping strides, Trout led them along a series of passageways until they came to an unlocked door. On the other side was a catwalk that ran along the wall of a high-ceiling chamber about a third the size of the moon pool.

  “What the hell is that thing?” the captain said. He was looking at a huge cylindrical object suspended from the ceiling. It was at least four feet across and fifty feet long. The bottom end was cone shaped and several projections were clustered around the top, where a complex set of cables and hoses snaked into the ceiling.

  “Looks like an ICBM,” the pilot said, “only it's pointing wrong way.”

  “That's not all that's wrong with it,” Trout said. “Those thrusters around the top, not fins.”

  Austin was as fascinated as the others, but time was short. “Take a good look at it now, gentlemen, and we'll compare notes later.”

  They continued along the walkway through another door and found themselves outside the changing room, where they found dry suits that fit the navy men. Austin and Trout carefully folded their borrowed coveralls and replaced them on the shelves. Then they all moved on to the decompression chamber. The dive gear was undisturbed. They descended a short stairway that led to a room with the smaller moon pool. Set into the deck was a depressed twelve-by-twelve-foot-square section outlining the pool that was used for launching ROVs. Trout studied the controls on the wall, then hit a button and the floor of the shallow wall slid back.

  Water lapped over the top of the well and a damp, briny chill filled the room.

  The pilot looked into the dark square of ocean and gulped. “You're kidding.”

  “Sorry it isn't a hot tub,” Austin said. “But unless you can figure a way to open the main floodgates so we can use the NR-1, this is the only way off the ship.”

  “Hell, this should be no different from the escape training tank at Groton,” the captain said with bravado, although his face was pale.

  “We don't have any spare air tanks, so we'll buddy-breathe. It's about a hundred-yard swim to our pickup. The open hatch probably sets off an alarm up in the wheelhouse, so we don't have much time.”

  Despite his bluster, the captain didn't look enthusiastic about the prospect ahead, but he gritted his teeth, pulled the hood down and the face mask over his eyes. “Let's go before I change my mind,” he growled.

  Austin handed the pilot the auxiliary air hose, called the octopus. Trout did the same with the captain. When all were ready, Austin linked arms with the pilot, stepped to the edge of the pool and jumped in.

  They sank in a cloud of bubbles until their buoyancy overcame their downward momentum. The bubbles quickly cleared, and Austin saw Trout's light waving in the gloom from several feet away. Austin started swimming. The submariners' kicking technique was uneven and the Siamese-twin arrangement was awkward, but they managed to claw their way out from under the ship's massive bulk.

  Austin felt himself rising and falling. Sea conditions must be deteriorating. Austin's compass was useless so close to the huge metal mass of the Ataman ship. He relied on dead reckoning to move them in the general direction of the rendezvous.

  When Austin gauged they were a hundred yards from the ship, he stopped and signaled for the others to do the same. While they hovered thirty feet below the surface, he undid a small self-inflating buoy from his belt and looped a nylon line tied to the buoy over his wrist. He released the buoy and let it rise to the surface, where the miniature transponder it carried would start broadcasting their location.

  The next few minutes were excruciating. Despite their suits, the cold numbed the exposed areas around their hands and masks. The NR-1 men were courageous, but being held prisoner had sapped their strength and they were simply out of shape from spending long idle hours in their cabin. Austin wondered what they would do if the Kestrel failed to show up. He was savoring the bleak possibilities when Jenkins's voice came through his earphones.

  “Got a lock on your position marker. You boys okay?”

  “We're fine. We picked up a couple of hitchhikers, and they're turning six shades of blue from the co
ld.”

  “On my way.”

  Austin signaled to the others to get ready. The NR-1 men responded with okay hand signals, but the slowness of their movements indicated that they were becoming fatigued. For the plan to work, they would need energy. All four men looked up as they heard the muffled grumble of an engine. The noise grew louder until it was right overhead.

  Austin jerked his thumb up. Then he and Trout rose, pulling their exhausted companions with them. Austin kept his free arm extended straight above his head until his fingers closed on the moving net being towed behind the slow-moving Kestrel. The others all managed to grab onto the cod end, the tapering pocket where the fish are actually caught.

  When Austin saw that everyone had a grip on the net, he shouted to Jenkins. “All aboard!”

  The boat's speed picked up and they felt as if their arms were being pulled out of their sockets. But after the initial shock, the ride smoothed out and they were flying through the water. The water pressure tried to brush them off, but they held on gamely until they were well away from the ship. Jenkins hove to.

  “Hauling back,” he said in warning.

  Austin and Trout got a firm grip on their charges as the net pulled them to the surface. Their troubles weren't over, however. They were tossed around in the heaving seas and hampered by their scuba gear, until, finally, they jettisoned their air tanks and belts. Without the awkward weight, they could work with the waves rather than fight them.

  Jenkins was leaning over the stern controlling the hauler, the big metal drum that the net was wound upon when not in the water. The net had drawn Austin and the pilot within a few feet of safety, but the boat pitched and yawed violently and the seas lifted them one second, dropped them the next. Choking fumes from the exhaust rose from the water. To make matters worse, Austin's right arm had become entangled in the net.

  Jenkins saw their predicament, and the narrow blade of a razor-sharp filleting knife flashed dangerously close to Austin's biceps. With his arm free, he reached up to Jenkins, who grabbed his wrist in an iron grip. Working the hauler with the other hand, he pulled Austin, then the pilot, closer.

  “Damn funny-looking fish we're catching these days,” he yelled over the rumble of the engine.

  Howes was manning the helm and doing his best to keep the boat steady. “Those fellas are a bit small,” he shouted back. “Maybe we should throw them back.”

  “Not on your life,” Austin said, as he got one leg over the transom and practically fell into the boat.

  Jenkins helped the pilot on board. With three of them working, they got Trout and Logan onto the boat in short order. The submariners staggered drunkenly across the pitching deck into the wheelhouse. The net had caught several hundred pounds of fish; and the weight threatened to drag the ship down. Jenkins hated to lose the fish and let the net loose in the sea where it might catch on a propeller, but he had no choice. He cut the lines and watched the net drift off into the foamy sea. Then he took over the helm and gunned the boat through the white-capped seas that splashed over the bow.

  Howes helped the others out of their dry suits, then passed around blankets and a bottle of Irish whiskey. Austin peered through the spume, but the black ship had disappeared. There was also no sign of the fishing boats that had accompanied them on the way out. He asked where the other boats were.

  “Things got dicey out here, so I sent them home,” Jenkins yelled over the grinding roar of the engine. “We should get back to port before the storm hits. Sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  “I wonder what our former hosts will say when they discover us gone,” Logan said with a wolfish smile.

  “I'm hoping that they'll think you tried to escape and were drowned.”

  “Thanks for coming to our rescue. My only regret is that we couldn't leave the way we came, on the NR-1.”

  “The important part was getting you out in one piece.”

  Trout passed the whiskey bottle to Austin. “Here's to a job well done.”

  Austin raised the bottle to his lips and took a sip. The fiery liquid overwhelmed the salty taste in his mouth and warmed his stomach. He stared out past their heaving wake, thinking about the huge projectile they had seen on the ship.

  “Unfortunately,” he said, “the real work may have just begun.”

  HIRAM YAEGER TOILED late into the night. He had moved away from his usual place at the grand console and sat in a corner of the vast computer center, his face lit up by a single screen. He was typing commands into a keyboard, and Max didn't like it.

  HIRAM, WHY AREN'T WE USING THE HOLOGRAM?

  THIS IS A SIMPLE ACCESS PROBLEM, MAX. WE DON'T NEED THE BELLS AND WHISTLES. IT's BACK TO BASICS.

  I FEEL PRACTICALLY NAKED SITTING OUT HERE IN A PLAIN PLASTIC CABINET.

  YOU'RE STILL BEAUTIFUL IN MY EYES.

  FLATTERY WILL GET YOU EVERYWHERE. THE PROBLEM, PLEASE.

  Yaeger had been working for hours to carve away the useless and misleading data in the files Austin and Trout had transmitted from the Ataman ship. He'd run into countless dead ends and had had to cut through more layers than an onion. Finally, he had distilled his findings into a series of commands that would cut through the dross. He typed them out one at a time and waited. Before long, words written in Cyrillic appeared. He entered a command to use translation software.

  Yaeger scratched his head, mystified at the image on the screen. It was a menu.

  As he was watching, the menu disappeared and in its place was a message from Max.

  MAY I TAKE YOUR ORDER, SIR? WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?

  I COULD TELL YOU BETTER IF WE USED THE HOLOGRAM.

  Yaeger blinked. Max was trying to bribe him. He rotated his shoulder blades to relieve the stress of working, breathed a weary sigh and brought his fingers back to the keyboard.

  NUMA 3 - Fire Ice

  -30- WASHINGTON, D.C.

  THE NUMA EXECUTIVE jet was one of dozens of planes coming into Washington National Airport. Unlike the regularly scheduled arrivals that followed the bug-like ground vehicles to their respective terminals, the turquoise plane taxied to a restricted section on the south end of the airport not far from an old airplane hangar with a rounded roof. The engines whined to a stop and a trio of dark blue Suburban SUVs emerged from the shadows with darkened headlights, and lined up alongside the plane.

  Two Marine guards and a man dressed in civilian clothes got out of the lead vehicle. While the guards took their place at the foot of the gangway, standing stiffly at attention, the third man, who carried a black satchel, strode quickly up the gangway and rapped on the door. It opened a second later, and Austin stuck his head out.

  “I'm Captain Morris, a doctor from the naval hospital,” the man said. “I've come to check out our people.” He looked past Austin and saw the unconscious forms of the captain and the pilot slumped in their seats. “Dear God! Are they dead?”

  “Yeah, dead drunk,” Austin said. “We celebrated their homecoming on the trip from Portland and they had a little too much of the bubbly. Those strapping young Marines down there might want to assist your men off the plane.”

  Captain Morris called the Marines, and they managed to help the NR-1 men down the gangway to the tarmac. The cool night air revived Captain Logan and the pilot. They gave Austin and Trout an emotional and slurred thank-you, staggered to the middle vehicle and were whisked off into the night in a squeal of tires, leaving Austin and Trout breathing in their engine exhausts.

  The taillights were barely out of sight when a figure stepped from the shadows and a familiar and unmistakable voice said, “That's gratitude for you. The least the navy could have done was call a cab to run you home.”

  Austin glanced at the departing SUVs. “The navy doesn't like fly-by-night operations like us showing up their expensive intelligence services and aircraft carriers.”

  “They'll get over it,” Admiral Sandecker said, with amusement. “Can I offer you a lift?”

  “Best offer I've had all night.” Austin
and Trout got into the Jeep Cherokee parked nearby. Sandecker deplored limousines, or any of the trap- pings of power for that matter, and preferred to drive a four- wheel drive from NUMA's agency pool. The pilot and copilot finished buttoning down the plane and Sandecker gave them rides home.

  Austin had called Sandecker from Maine to tell him about the mission. As he drove onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway, Sandecker said, “I said it before, but you boys deserve a medal for getting aboard that ship.”

  “It was getting off the ship that I preferred, although I may give up fishing forever now that I've seen a trawl from a cod's point of view,” Trout said with his understated New England humor.

  Sandecker chuckled. “You're reasonably certain no one on board the Ataman ship will suspect the navy men were spirited away?”

  “A few crewmen might remember seeing us and put two and two together with the missing dry suits and the open moon pool. I doubt they'd think anyone was crazy enough to do what we did, and get away with it.”

  “I agree. They will report the missing navy men to Razov, but they'll assume they drowned or died from hypothermia. Even if they suspect an intrusion, I doubt whether they'd tell Razov, for fear of their lives.”

  “He might learn the truth when the navy announces that all the NR-1 crew have been rescued.”

  “I've asked the Navy Department to keep a lid on the announcement, which they were glad to do. The crew members will be reunited with their families and whisked off to a seaside retreat for some R & R.”

  “That will buy us some time.”

  “We'll need every minute. Get a good night's sleep, both of you, and we'll have a meeting first thing in the morning.”

  Sandecker drove Trout to his Georgetown town house and gave Austin a lift to Fairfax. Austin dropped his overnight bag inside the door and went into the den-study, a spacious room with dark wood colonial furniture and walls lined with shelves for his books and progressive jazz collection. The red light was blinking on his telephone answering machine. He clicked through the messages and was happy to hear that Joe Zavala was back from England. Austin grabbed a tall can of Speckled Hen ale from his refrigerator and settled into a black leather chair with his phone. Joe answered on the first ring. They talked at length. Zavala filled him in on his interview with Lord Dodson, and Austin gave a summary of Jenkins's visit to NUMA and the successful mission to the Ataman ship.