Deep Silence

PROLOGUE

“We’re coming up on it,” said the pilot. It was the third time he’d spoken, and this time he pitched it almost to a shout.

Valen Oruraka looked up this time, nodded, and put his satellite phone back into a pouch on his belt. The crew were used to having to say things to Valen several times. The man was deaf as a haddock, and either his hearing aid did not work well or he kept the volume turned down because of the annoying engine noise. Or, maybe it was that the strange man did not want to be bothered by chatter from the crew. He was quiet and the furthest thing from chatty. The captain did not think he was actually cold, like some of the Russians he’d worked with on jobs like this, but certainly not social. There were complex lights in Valen’s eyes, and sometimes he looked hurt, and sometimes he looked scared. Once, in a moment when he was not aware the captain was looking at him, the Russian’s eyes seemed filled with a bottomless despair. The captain knew absolutely nothing of substance about the man, though.

“I don’t see anything,” said Valen, and the captain gave the order for floodlights. All at once the empty and featureless black beyond the window revealed its secrets. A lumpy converted tug lay wallowing in the swell, but the pitch and yawl were distorted, out of time with the water. It was only when the pilot angled around to come up on the stern that it became clear the boat was lashed to another craft by lines fore and aft.

“Want me to lay her alongside?” asked the pilot, but Valen did not answer.

The captain pitched his voice a bit louder. “Sir, do you—?”

Valen smiled. “I heard you, Captain.”

He was a tall, youthful, good-looking and well-built man in his midthirties. Although he seldom spoke and never raised his voice, people tended to defer to him. Oruraka was like many of the new breed of Russians — smart, educated, focused, and political. In the post-Soviet days someone like him would likely have been either a disillusioned officer now sucking on the tit of organized crime, or he would be a civilian son born to a Mafiya family. One of those bred to step into the cracks in the Berlin Wall that everyone who grew up during the Cold War knew were forming.

Not Oruraka. He was a different breed. Openly he was a businessman who did geological survey work for the Russian government. Privately — very privately indeed — he was part of the Novyy Sovetskiy, the New Soviet. Still an ideal, but one that was flourishing quite well in darkness, and tended lovingly by old and new power players who wanted to see a new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that truly lived up to the vision of Karl Marx. Oruraka was a Party man in every way, even if that party existed in theory, in darkness. The captain and every man aboard this ship shared the same ideal, dreamed the same dreams.

The pilot slowed the boat but gave it just enough throttle for steerageway.

“Get some men on deck,” ordered Valen from his vantage point on the rail. “Rifles. Do it now.”

The captain growled an order and six crewmen with Kalashnikovs hurried to the rail, barrels raised, eyes staring at the two tethered craft.

“Mr. Oruraka, look there,” said the captain, pointing to an intense green glow coming from the small submarine. “Maybe it’s some kind of safety light…?”

“No,” said Valen. “I think the hatch is open. Damn.”

“Interior running lights in subs are usually red. Why would they use a green light?”

Valen did not answer. Instead he frowned as he studied the two boats. The stark white lights revealed red splotches on the submarine’s conning tower, on the sides of the gray hull, and also on the starboard rail of the converted tug. The red was not paint. Anyone could tell that. And it looked fresh, too. Still wet.

Suddenly a shadowy something rose up from behind the transom of the salvage boat.

“Christ, what’s that?” gasped the captain. One of the deckhands swung a spotlight and there, frozen in the stark white beam, was a big, muscular young man with a Hawaiian face and torn clothes. His hair was wild and there were bright splashes of red blood on his face and chest and hands. He stared into the light with eyes that were filled with terror and madness, and a desperate species of hope.

“Hey,” he cried, waving his arms, “help. God, help me. Please…”

The captain took up a megaphone out of metal clips on the outside of the pilothouse. “How many people are aboard?” he called.

“Me… just me… oh, God it got them,” wailed the young man. “It came out of the sub and… and… and…” He collapsed into broken sobs, covering his face with his hands. Then he jerked erect and looked back at the sub as if he’d suddenly heard some new sound. “Please, for the love of God, get me off of here.”

The captain licked his lips. “Do you… ah… want me to send some hands aboard?”

“No,” cried Valen sharply. “No one sets foot on either of those boats.”

“But… what about the survivor?” asked the captain. “What do you want to do, sir?”

Without turning to look at him, without taking his eyes off the submarine, Valen quietly said, “Kill him.”

The captain stiffened for a moment, but he did not question the order. Instead he turned and nodded to the closest armed hand. Immediately six guns opened up. The bullets struck the Hawaiian and tore him to rags. Dozens of tiny geysers of blood leaped up like spurts of hot volcanic magma. The young man collapsed back and down out of sight.

The captain cut a sideways look at Valen and saw the man wince. But then Valen caught him looking and his face instantly turned to an emotionless mask. The guns fell silent and soon the only sound was the slap of water against the hulls of the three vessels. The freshening breeze out of the southeast whipped the smoke away.

Valen walked to the rail and the armed deckhands gave ground. “Captain, rig a towline without anyone setting foot on either boat.”

The captain hesitated for a moment, poised to ask a question, thought better of it, and hurried away to give the orders. Valen Oruraka leaned on the rail and let out a breath that had burned hot and toxic in his chest.

One more, he thought. One more ghost to haunt me.

There were already too many, and it did not matter one bit that it was not his finger on the trigger. Would it ever get to the point where there were so many that they morphed into so large a crowd that no individual accusing voice could be heard above the others? Would their faces blur together over time? Did it ever happen that way?

Across the narrow gap, rising like a ghostly wail from within the submarine, a chorus of voices cried out together.

“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!” rose the cry. “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”

All along the rails hardened soldiers blanched at the sound, which was strained and raw as if it rose from throats torn to ruin by screaming. Wet and ugly. Each voice cried out in perfect harmony to create an imperfect alien shriek. Not a prayer. Not as such, but there was a red and terrible reverence in it nonetheless.

“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”

The green glow emanating from within the sub was not a steady light. It flickered as if something inside were capering and writhing, its movements casting goblin shapes.

Valen took the compact satellite phone from his pocket. His fingers trembled so violently that he nearly dropped the device, and even when he got a firm grip he misdialed three times before finally getting the correct number. It rang only once.

“Gadyuka,” he said in a tremulous voice, “I found it.”