Patriot

CHAPTER 32

Five thousand yards and closing,” Alex heard Putin say in his headphones, “Let’s light it up…”

He reached forward and flipped down four toggle switches on the main panel. The world outside exploded into pure white light as the sub’s surrounding halo of high-intensity lanterns illuminated. Hawke instinctively leaned forward scanning his eyes back and forth, looking for the silhouette of the sunken Arkhangel waiting for him somewhere out there on the undulating plain of the seabed.

When Hawke finally saw it, it loomed up so suddenly that he feared Sputnik II’s impact was imminent. For some curious reason, they had come upon it at such a high rate of speed Putin had to haul back on the yoke and execute a steep vertical climb up the side of the corroded hull before leveling off and diving hell-bent between the two smokestacks, flipping the boat over onto one side to squeeze through.

“Fun, no?” Putin said, glancing over at him.

“Stunt like that would stiffen the back of a jellyfish.”

“Ha.”

By the look on Putin’s face, Hawke believed the near miss had been intentional. Volodya was just having a little fun with the veteran flyboy captive in his jump seat. Even without visual contact with the freighter, Putin had been watching their rapid approach on his radar screen. He’d known exactly what he was doing.

“That was fun, actually,” Hawke said mildly. “You enjoy all this, don’t you, screaming around down here in the darkness all by yourself?”

“I do. It’s as close as I’ll ever get to flying.”

“I suppose so. I must say doing it while getting shot at adds immeasurably to the fun.”

Putin laughed. “I’m terribly jealous of all you combat flyboys. My eyes weren’t good enough. I was good at judo, that’s all. You had quite an aerial career, Alex. Some said you had a perfect genius for air combat.”

“Owe it to my grandfather, I suppose. He flew Sopwith Camels with the Flying Corps over the Ardennes in the first war. There were plenty of trick flyers around in those early days, and plenty who knew more about the science of the new game than he did, but there was no one else with quite his magic for an actual scrap. The old fellow was as full of dodges a couple of miles up in the sky as he’d been among the rocks in the Berg. He knew how to hide in the empty air as cleverly as in the long grass of the Serengeti.”

“What was his secret?”

“Secret? He was a right brave young bastard, not sure that he had a secret. But he had this theory he explained to me when I first set out to earn my wings. ‘Every man has a blind spot,’ he said, and he knew just how to find that blind spot up there in the world of air. The best cover, he maintained, was not in a cloud or a wisp of fog, but in the elusive unseeing patch in the eye of your enemy.”

“I like that.”

“Me, too. Somehow, I recognized all that talk of his for the real thing. It was on a par with his theory of the ‘perfect atmosphere’ and ‘the double bluff’ and all the other air combat principles that his queer old mind had cogitated out of his rickety military life… but it worked for him. And I guess a bit of it rubbed off on me.”

Hawke’s mind drifted off, watching Putin deftly maneuver the craft through, around, and inside the narrow crevices between the upper reaches of the giant ship’s superstructure. When he tired of that game, he angled upward until they were floating a few hundred feet above the moldering monolith stretched out below.

Putin throttled back even more, and they hovered there above the sunken giant. She was remarkably intact, although submersion at this depth had done its best to eradicate her. Her hull was a deep iron red, and the superstructure appeared to be slowly melting toward the broad decks. Her railings were mostly intact and one could imagine what a prize she must have been as viewed through the periscope of an attacking U-boat.

“I’ll give you a quick stem to stern tour, Alex. It’s quite something to see, is it not?” Putin put the sub over to port and circled just beneath the bowsprit before cruising down the length of the vessel, remaining about twenty feet just off her port-side hull…

It was a sight. But Hawke could not imagine Putin would go to all this trouble just to show him a forgotten and rusty relic of the Second World War. Five minutes later, the tour was over. Putin slowly allowed Sputnik II to drift upward until they arrived amidships, hovering directly above the two towering smokestacks.

When he was centered about thirty feet over the forward-most of the two stacks, he brought the sub to a stop, setting the propulsion system to maintain their position against the strong and shifting currents. He got very busy all of a sudden, adjusting the angle of the halo lights, turning on all the sub’s many sound recorders and video cameras and adjusting their positions—

“What’s going on?” Hawke asked, although he had a fair suspicion.

“We’ve finally come to the demonstration portion of today’s adventure.”

“Let me guess. The Feuerwasser?”

“What else? Now watch closely. I’m going to engage the articulating arm nestled above our heads. You can see everything through the twin overhead portholes…”

Putin used the thrusters to maneuver into the desired position, slightly above and roughly thirty feet from the forward stack. Only then did he take control of the forty-foot arm.

Hawke craned his head back and took a look. As he watched, the articulated arm slowly unfolded and extended itself upward and to the right. Putin used the most delicate of corrections until the small pincerlike mechanism at the very tip of the armature was where he wanted it. It was now positioned over the yawning black opening of the forward smokestack.

“Notice the object grasped by the pincers,” Putin said.

In the fierce cold white light, Hawke could see the tiny vial of explosive gripped in the steel claws.

“Why here?” Hawke said, though he already had a pretty good idea. Bomber pilots had long tried to drop their loads down the stacks of enemy vessels at sea, because they fell all the way to the engine room and keel before detonating.

“It’s a straight shot down to the bowels of the ship where the explosion will be most effective.”

“So I can expect to see more than a puff of smoke rising from the stack?” Hawke said, not being able to help himself.

“Considerably more. We’re a hundred miles offshore. Were we at fifty, the mushroom of water on the surface would terrify the pedestrians marching along the Croisette. As it is, we’ll cause a blip on the undersea seismographers’ screens comparable to a minor earthquake.”

It was still difficult to believe that this substance, in such a minute quantity of clear liquid, could have any such dramatic effect as Putin was describing. On the other hand, Hawke knew Volodya was not the type to drag him all the way out here to the bottom of the sea just to embarrass himself. Maybe, Hawke thought, the Russian scientists actually had created the perfect explosive.

“Oh, yes. I think you’ll see a great deal more. Here goes—”

Putin carefully made minute adjustments that adjusted the articulated arm and twisted the slender pincers in a counterclockwise motion.

“That should do it,” he said, a strong note of anticipation in his voice. Not until the explosive device was upright and dead center did he toggle the switch that released it. Not until just before the glass vial dropped out of sight, down into the bowels of the ship, did Hawke notice that some sort of tiny electrical mechanism had been screwed into the mouth of the tube. The fuse, no doubt. What had Putin called it? The lead azide blasting plug, whatever the hell that was.

The sub shot forward and away from the wreck.

“All right,” Putin said, throttling up and giving a series of short bursts of the stern thrusters. “Let’s get the hell out of here. The tiniest bit of electric leakage could trigger that little fucker and we don’t want to be anywhere near Arkhangel when she goes up, believe me.”

“You’ve done this before, I take it?”

“Blown up sunken ships? No, no. I didn’t have to. I know exactly what my little love potion is capable of, Alex. In a few moments, so shall you. By the way, the French naval authorities are well aware that we’re out here today. Not only do we have their permission, we are receiving some kind of official commendation from the Cousteau Society for creating a massive artificial reef to encourage more sea life out here. I asked that your name be inscribed on the citation of merit beside my own.”

Hawke shook his head in wonder.

“You are really something, Volodya. I have to say that.”