Medusa

CHAPTER 1

MURMANSK, RUSSIA, PRESENT DAY

AS THE COMMANDER OF ONE OF THE MOST FEARSOME KILLING machines ever devised, Andrei Vasilevich once held in his hands the power to wipe out entire cities and millions of people. If war had ever broken out between the Soviet Union and the United States, the Typhoon-class submarine Vasilevich had commanded would have launched twenty long-range ballistic missiles at the U.S. and sent two hundred nuclear warheads raining down on American soil.

In the years since he had retired from the navy, Vasilevich had often breathed a sigh of relief that he had never been told to unleash a salvo of nuclear death and destruction. As a captain second rank, he would have carried out the orders of his government without question. An order was an order, no matter how evil it was. A nuclear sub commander was an instrument of the state and could have no room for emotions. But as the tough old undersea Cold Warrior said good-bye to his former command, the submarine unofficially known as Bear, he could not hold back the sentimental tears that rolled down his plump cheeks.

He stood on the dock overlooking the port of Murmansk, his eyes following the sub as it glided toward the harbor entrance. He raised a silver flask of vodka high in the air in toast before taking a slug, and his thoughts drifted back to those years prowling the North Atlantic in the monster vessel.

With a length of five hundred seventy feet and a seventy-five-foot beam, the Typhoon was the biggest submarine ever built. The long forward deck stretched out from the massive, forty-two-foot-tall conning tower, or sail, to make room for twenty large missile tubes arranged in two rows. The design gave the Typhoon a distinctive profile.

The unique hull design extended past its metal exterior. Instead of one pressure hull, as in most submarines, the Typhoon had two parallel ones. This arrangement gave the Typhoon a cargo capacity of fifteen thousand tons and room in the starboard hull for a small gym and a sauna. Escape chambers were located above each hull. The submarine’s control room and attack center were both in compartments located under the sail.

The Bear was one of six 941 Typhoons commissioned in the 1980s and introduced into the Northern fleet as part of the first flotilla of nuclear submarines based at Nerpichya. Leonid Brezhnev called the new model “the Typhoon” in a speech, and the name stuck. They were deployed as the Russian Akula class, meaning “shark,” which was the name the U.S. Navy used for them.

Despite its huge size, the Typhoon clipped along at more than twenty-five knots underwater and around half that speed on the surface. It could turn on a ruble, dive to the ocean depths, and stay down a hundred eighty days, accomplishing these maneuvers with one of the quietest power systems ever designed. The sub carried a crew of more than one hundred sixty. Each hull had a reactor plant that powered a steam turbine which produced fifty thousand horsepower to drive the two huge propellers. Two propulsion pods allowed the sub to hover and maneuver.

The Typhoon subs eventually outlived their military and political usefulness and were taken out of service in the late 1990s. Someone had suggested that they might be converted to carry cargo under the arctic ice by replacing the missile tubes with cargo space. The word went out that the Typhoons were for sale to the highest bidder.

The captain would have preferred to see the subs scrapped rather than have them turned into undersea cargo scows. What an ignoble end for a fine war machine! In its day, the terrible Typhoon was the subject of books and movies. He had forgotten how many times he had seen The Hunt for Red October.

Vasilevich had been hired by the Central Design Bureau for Marine Engineering to oversee the conversion. The nuclear missiles had long been removed as part of a joint treaty with the U.S., which had agreed to scrap its own city busters.

Vasilevich had supervised the removal of the missile silos to create a vast cargo hold. The silos were plugged and modifications were made that would allow easier loading and off-loading of cargo. A crew half the size of the original would deliver the sub to its new owners.

The captain took another shot of vodka and tucked his flask into a pocket. Before leaving the dock, he couldn’t resist turning back for one last look. The submarine had cleared the harbor and was on the open sea headed to its unknown fate. The captain pulled his coat closer around him to ward off the damp breeze coming off the water and headed back to his car.

Vasilevich had been around too long to accept things at face value. The submarine supposedly had been sold to an international freight company based in Hong Kong, but the details were vague, and the deal was structured like a set of matryoshka nesting dolls.

The captain had his own theories about the sub’s future. An undersea vessel with the long range and huge cargo capacity of the Typhoon would be perfect for smuggling goods of every kind. But Vasilevich kept his thoughts to himself. Modern-day Russia could be dangerous for those who knew too much. What the new owners did after taking possession of the Cold War relic was none of his business. This deal had warning signs posted all over it, but the captain knew it was wise not to ask about such things, and even wiser not to know.