Patriot

CHAPTER 33

It took thirty minutes to get safely out of the Arkhangel blast zone. According to Putin, if they remained any closer, the explosion’s pressure wave, and the resulting shock wave, would implode Sputnik II instantly. Underwater explosions, called UNDEX by scientists, were far more lethal than the equivalent aboveground. Underwater, the surrounding water doesn’t absorb the pressure like air does, but moves with it. As a result, undersea explosions transmit pressure with far greater intensity over far longer distances.

There were two large monitors on the control panel and Putin was surveying the scene using the high-powered telescopic lenses. The picture wasn’t crystal clear, but Hawke could easily make out the massive red freighter standing stolidly atop the vast undersea plain.

Putin was busy making sure all his photographic needs had been attended to: lighting, focus, all film and video cameras locked in on the impending scene of destruction.

Putin looked over at him, his face expressionless.

“Ready?” he said.

“Ready,” Hawke replied.

“Well,” Putin said quietly, “hold on to your hat, Lord Hawke.”

With that, he reached forward with his index finger pointed at the “Fire Control” panel and pushed a single flashing yellow button in the middle.

There was a millisecond of hesitation before the whole undersea world was transformed into an ever-expanding field of white-hot light emanating from the disintegrating Arkhangel. The big red hulk had already disappeared from view on the monitors, but a dangerous glare remained inside Sputnik II’s tiny cabin and Hawke reflexively covered his eyes for fear of being blinded.

“Shock wave coming,” Putin said. “Brace yourself.”

It hit them hard.

The sub’s bow was lifted straight up and flipped over on its back; thrown violently backward, the craft tumbled end over end inside the pressure wave, helplessly twisting and turning in the maelstrom of enormous shock created by the epic blast.

There was simply nothing for Hawke to do, except hold on to the handhold atop the control panel with both hands, trying to avoid a head injury if possible. Helmets? Why the hell hadn’t they donned helmets? Putin fought the controls, trying desperately to use the thrusters to regain stability. But it was hopeless… and getting worse. Soon, tiny jet streams of water began to spout, streaming from the edges of the thick glass portholes… and the fierce screeching noises of the hull being compressed to the breaking point were sufficient to cause Hawke to fear the worst.

And the most alarming part? They were in uncharted waters. A thousand feet down in a damaged machine that was out of control. He could remember a few times feeling this helpless, at the mercy of events, but not often. He cursed himself for allowing Putin to talk him into this insane experiment in underwater demolition. The sub was nothing but a hobby. And Putin had clearly not employed experts to predict the power of the heretofore untested new explosive.

Alex had had a niggling notion, an almost psychic premonition that Putin might try something stupid during this visit. He’d try to disable him or even take him out… but… a murder-suicide? No. This was just an utter lack of understanding of the surreal power of the explosive he was playing with at this ridiculous depth. And Hawke, well, he was simply unlucky enough or stupid enough to have gone along for the ride.

Putin’s struggles continued for an eternity that probably lasted all of five minutes. But eventually he regained control of the systems. And, miraculously, he finally managed to actually right the ship. Once that was accomplished, he aligned all the thrusters on the same vector — out of the blast current — and he gave it one final blast… they shot forward…

And ended up in calm water.

“Jesus Christ,” Hawke said, as soon as he could speak.

“I had no idea,” Putin said. “Are you hurt?”

“No. But for God’s sake, Volodya!”

“Do you want to return to the mother ship? Or go back and have a look at the debris field?”

“I want a bloody rum is what I want. But to hell with it. Let’s go see what’s left of the monster. Maybe the next guy will have a better idea what the hell he’s dealing with regarding this stuff you’ve invented. Because you didn’t, Volodya. You clearly had no idea.”

“Yeah,” Putin said, bristling. He was not a man used to criticism from any quarter, let alone a tall and good-looking enemy British intelligence officer.

Hawke said, “Look. I’ve got a son. I’m all he’s got. As you well know, his poor mother’s practically a prisoner in one of your KGB training camps. So, for better or worse, I’m it. He cannot afford to lose his father.”

“You want me to apologize?”

“I want to see if you’re man enough.”

“I’m sorry, Alex. I made a stupid mistake.”

Hawke made no reply.

There was a crater where the freighter had been.

Maybe a quarter of a mile across and a hundred feet deep. The ship itself was gone. Utterly obliterated. Tiny glittering bits of scrap metal were scattered for miles across the seabed for as far as they could see in any direction. There were a few objects of any size at all out there, only a smattering of crumpled hunks of metal about the size of a Volkswagen. But they were few and far between.

Most of Arkhangel?

Vaporized.

By less than a fluid ounce of something called Feuerwasser.

The two men spent the return voyage to Tsar in silence, each man alone with his thoughts about what he had just witnessed, and what it meant.

About ten minutes out from Tsar’s anchorage off the Hôtel du Cap, Putin broke the deadly silence inside Sputnik II.

“Quite an amazing achievement when you think about it, isn’t it?”

“What achievement?” Hawke replied, stirred from a reverie about something else. Like his sudden unease around a man whom he’d come to believe he could trust, despite what all his colleagues had been saying for years now. C had told him, in no uncertain terms, to “watch his front, for when the stab came, it would not be in the back.”

Putin continued his lecture.

“Aside from nuclear fission, isotopes, enriched uranium, which are the most easily detectible weapons ever invented, in Feuerwasser, you have one that is colorless, odorless, tasteless… virtually undetectable! Yes, in fact, it resembles nothing so much as the one substance that composes nearly eighty percent of the earth’s surface… water!”

“Amazing.”

It came to Hawke rather suddenly, then, an abrupt revelation, an understanding of what this weekend invitation of Putin’s was really all about. It wasn’t about the murder of some decadent and wasted KGB general who may or may not have been a close friend of the president’s. Nor about someone roaming around the planet killing highly placed intelligence officers of various and sundry secret services. No. Not about that at all.

What this was really all about, Hawke now realized, was history repeating itself. What he had just witnessed was something much akin to Harry S. Truman’s “Little Boy” A-bomb moment. It was the bombing of Hiroshima all over again, just without the victims. Truman’s idea was to drop the big one on a major population center to let the Japanese know unequivocally that any further resistance to the Allied advance was useless. Send them an unmistakable signal. But when Little Boy fell on Japan, sixty-six thousand men, women, and children had to die to prove Truman’s point.

Now, Putin had figured out a way to deliver the very same message of terror to his enemies around the world. And all he needed to do so was have one single solitary witness, one who would live to tell the tale.

All he had needed was Lord Alexander Hawke.

Hawke looked over at Volodya’s profile, hazy in the dim reddish light of the instrument panel. He saw the military buzz cut, the stern set of his jaw, the keen focus of those pale blue eyes, the eyes everyone said were so “cold.” He also saw the thin line of a smile spreading across the face of the old fox.

This, palpably, was a formidable enemy. This was a man who was running rings around the American president and half his allies. This was a man invading sovereign nations without batting an eye. This was a man intent on doing whatever he damn well pleased on this planet and God help you if you got in his way.

Because Volodya now had an Armageddon Little Boy weapon of his very own. But a weapon that was virtually undetectable. It could be introduced anywhere, at any time, into any environment with no one the wiser until a distant button was pushed and it exploded.

The big question, then, was why? What the hell did he intend to do with it? At some point before he left France, Hawke had to find out. He now realized fully why Rosow and Brick Kelly had been so adamant about him making this trip. Rumors of a new Russian superweapon had been floating around the American intel community for quite a while. They were making a long-shot bet that Hawke could ferret it out.

And Putin and the Kremlin didn’t need the Enola Gay and a whole goddamn air force to deliver their new doomsday weapon. Hell, he could ship it to you, FedEx! Deliver it at the doorstep of your country in a million goddamn Stoli bottles and you’d never even know it. That is, until he triggered all the little metal screw caps that ignited the fluid. From the mind-blowing destruction Hawke had just seen with his own eyes, it was not a giant leap to the conclusion that a half-gallon of “tainted” Stoli firewater could take out most of lower Manhattan.

Message delivered.

Putin was now utterly secure in the knowledge that Hawke would take his message home, deliver it to the powers that be in the White House, in Whitehall, at Langley and MI6. That message was simple: BEWARE! Don’t stick your fingers inside the Russian bear’s cage. He bites but first he chews your fingernails.

And what then? Well, then would begin the long and arduous process of figuring out how the hell to stop a megalomaniac with a weapon like this. Because there was not a doubt in Hawke’s mind that Putin’s boys were shipping this stuff all over the world… and they were doing it right now. Stockpiles being created in Asia, in Latin American, America, Europe. Warehouses stacked to the rafters with this stuff, waiting for his signal to explode.

The man upon whose doorstep this clearly insurmountable problem would ultimately be dumped?

Well — unless he was badly mistaken — that would be none other than Alex Hawke.

Back into the bloody fray with you, Lord Hawke. And it all started right now. Here we go again.

Alex Hawke, saving the world, one madman at a time.