The World Is Not Enough

16 - Countdown to Oblivion

Bond chased Elektra up the triple spiral staircase leading to the minaret's balconies.

‘James. You can't kill me. Not in cold blood,' her voice echoed in the stone chamber.

Bond wasn’t wavering. He clutched Zukovsky’s bloody- wet gun and ascended in the semi-darkness. As he swung around a comer of a landing, he heard an unexpected but familiar voice.

‘Bond!'

He stopped and kicked at the door. The room was empty except for the barred cell at one end. M, looking tired, breathed a sigh of relief.

Bond shot at the lock on the cell door, blowing it to bits.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked her.

‘Yes,’ she said, leaving her prison. ‘I just —

But Bond had already turned to go, heading upwards, after Elektra.

‘Go after the submarine!' M called after him. ‘Forget the girl! Bond!'

Elektra reached the uppermost balcony, which afforded a spectacular view of the Bosphorus and the city beyond. She stood there, looking out at the sea as the submarine pulled out of the quay. Bond stepped behind her; she had no escape.

'Call him off,’ he said, holding the walkie-talkie to her.

Elektra turned around to face him.

‘I won’t ask again. Call him off!’

She looked at him questioningly. Did he really mean it? Hesitantly, she took the radio and held it to her mouth.

This is your last chance, Bond thought. Save the city. Save yourself.

‘Renard . . .’ she said into the radio.

Bond waited.

‘You wouldn’t kill me,’ she whispered to Bond. ‘You’d miss me.’

Then her face broke into a perverted grin and she shouted into the radio, ‘Dive! Dive! Bond is —’

The force of the bullet knocked her back against the balcony rail. She dropped the radio and stared at Bond in disbelief that he could actually shoot her.

‘I never miss,’ Bond said.

Elektra King slumped to the floor, shocked by her mortality. Gasping for breath, she looked up at Bond. She was attempting to say something. Bond crouched beside her and listened, but he couldn’t understand the words. She was speaking — no, she was singing! — singing in a whisper. It sounded like a lullaby.

After half a minute, she choked once and shuddered. There might have been a hint of regret in her watering eyes, but this quickly vanished as a cold, dark shadow passed over her face. Whatever demons had been tormenting her were now gone. She attempted to complete the verse of the lullaby, but could only manage a final exhalation of breath.

Bond looked at the lovely face, now relaxed and in peace; he reached out and caressed her cheek, just once.

Behind him, in the doorway, M had seen it all. She hardened her heart to the swirling cacophony of emotions that yearned to cry out for the poor, tortured girl. Bond had done his duty, but M couldn’t help saying a silent prayer for the soul of Elektra King.

Bond stood, looked over the rail to see the nose of the submarine heading into the Bosphorus, half-submerged. The hatch was still open. He stepped onto the ledge and prepared himself. Without a second thought, he performed a flawless swan dive, one hundred feet to the water. He hit it like a knife and found it very cold. He surfaced near the sub, grabbed a ladder and pulled himself up. Splashing through the water that was flooding over the rail he appeared in front of the amazed sailor who was just shutting the hatch. Bond slammed the lid on the mans head, then got inside. He closed it and turned the wheel seconds before the hatch slid underwater.

Bond crept down into the dark vessel. Renard’s small crew was spread throughout the sub, so he knew the best tactic was silence. He peered into the control room and saw Renard and several men at various stations. Beyond them, on the other side, were the outer chambers of the machine room and reactor room.

He moved toward the bow and down a ladder to what appeared to be living quarters. He found one man working on a radio and smoking a cigarette. Bond’s gun barrel dug into the man’s temple.

‘Easy,’ he said. ‘How do you want to die? That?’ He indicated the cigarette. ‘Or this?’ He pressed the barrel harder into the man’s head. ‘One word and your brains will be on the floor. Now — take me to the girl they brought on board.’

The man's cigarette dropped from his mouth as he nodded in compliance. He led Bond forward and down another ladder to a crew room. He pointed to a solid metal door.

‘She’s in there?’ Bond asked.

The man nodded.

‘You have the key?’

The man offered it.

‘Thanks. Now we’ll knock, all right?’

The man nodded again.

Bond took hold of the man's head and banged it hard on the door, rendering him unconscious. He then unlocked the door and found Christmas Jones sitting on a cot.

‘James!’ she said, stunned to see him.

He untied her bonds, put his finger to his lips, and then led her through the shadows of the sub toward the control room. They soon came upon the tank room and found a man operating them.

Renard’s voice came over the intercom. ‘Flood tanks four and five . . .’

‘Hooding tanks four and five,’ the man said into a radio on the table, then he did as he was told. As soon as he was finished, Bond knocked him out with the butt of his gun.

‘We have to get to the reactor room,’ he said. ‘It’s on the other side of the control room, but Renard and his men are in there.’

‘Is there another way?’ she asked.

‘We go down to the torpedo bay.’

Before they could move, though, a man came through a hatch. Bond lashed out at him, but the man’s reflexes were sharp. He deflected Bond’s blow and rebounded with a vicious kick to Bond’s chest. Bond dropped his gun and it slid across the floor. Christmas watched helplessly as the two men fought silently and ferociously. The man drew his gun but Bond kicked it out of his hand. This was followed by a solid punch to the man’s face, sending him sprawling over the table where the radio sat. He reached for the fire alarm, but Bond grabbed his legs and pulled him off the table. The man used the momentum to twist and elbow Bond in the stomach.

‘Open the tanks,’ Renard’s voice said over the intercom.

Hunched over, Bond propelled himself forward and knocked the man back onto the table. He grabbed the radio receiver and wrapped the coiled cable around the man’s neck, throttling him.

‘Open the tanks. Do you copy?’ Renard’s voice came again.

Bond pulled the cable tighter. The man's eyes bulged. Disguising his voice, Bond pushed the transmit button on the microphone and said, Tanks open.’

The man finally slumped to the floor. Christmas was obviously shaken. Bond retrieved his gun, took her hand and led her forward.

Unaware of the situation in another part of the boat, Renard left the control room momentarily and joined Truhkin in the machine room. Truhkin was hard at work with the extruder, a machine that resembled a gigantic V8 engine. He carefully lifted the half-grapefruit-sized plutonium core from the metal box, then placed it inside the extruder, which would mould the substance into the shape of a reactor control rod. Satisfied that the procedure was going smoothly, Renard left Truhkin to his business and went back to the control room.

Bond and Christmas found a hatch with a small window looking into the control room. Bond peered in and saw five crewmen at different consoles. Renard was pacing amongst them.

‘Level out at one hundred feet,’ he commanded. ‘Hold her steady. ’

The crewman closest to Bond operated the buoyancy controls. The helmsman, across the room, reduced the engine thrust. Rcnard felt die submarine’s position change, nodded, and went back through the hatch toward the reactor room.

Bond whispered to Christmas, ‘If we could force them to the surface, it would show up on the spy satellites. That would bring out the Navy. Wait here.’

‘Where are you going?’ she asked, wide-eyed.

‘In there.’

Renard rejoined Truhkin in the machine room in time to see the plutonium rod emerge from the end of the extruder.

Bond opened the hatch, stepped into the control room and slammed the butt of his Walther into the buoyancy control crewman’s head. The rest of the crew reacted, going for their guns, but Bond was faster.

‘Don’t even think of it,’ he said, covering them.

He scanned the controls at his side and saw four emergency handles that would blow the buoyancy tanks. Bond grabbed the two for the forward tanks and pulled them down.

Alarms sounded throughout the ship and a loud hiss of air could be heard everywhere. The main forward ballast tanks immediately began filling with water. Bond purposefully avoided opening the aft ballast tanks so that the submarine would dive nose-first, which it did - abruptly.

Renard cursed and ran back to the control room with his gun drawn to find his crew standing frozen at their positions.

Upon seeing Bond, Renard screamed, ‘Shoot him!’

Everyone dived for cover as he and Bond exchanged fire, but the sub’s tilting threw them off-balance. The bullets ricocheted off the control panels, blowing them to pieces. Renard wedged himself in the doorway leading to the reactor room, but the other crewmen lost their footing and fell to the deck. Two crewmen fired their guns at Bond, who successfully leapt out of the way in the nick of time. The bullets shattered the buoyancy control panel, forcing Bond back into the corridor with Christmas.

‘Do you know what you did in there?’ she asked.

‘Like riding a bike,’ he replied.

‘What kind of bikes did you ride?' she asked.

‘Just wanted to put him on edge . . .’

They started to run back from where they came, but two new crewmen appeared at the far end of the passageway and opened fire. Bond threw Christmas to the floor and shot at them, but the Walther was out of ammunition. Thinking quickly, he jumped on top of Christmas, held on to her, and rolled with her through an open hatch to their left. Once they were inside, Bond leaped to his feet and slammed the door shut. As they took stock of their surroundings, Bond realised that they were in the bow torpedo room.

The submarine’s nose continued to dive. Bond and Christmas shifted to the side of the room as everything that wasn’t screwed down began to slide. They grabbed the nearest fixed objects and hung on as the room turned ninety degrees.

‘Get us level!’ Renard shouted to a crcwman in the control room. The man pulled on the buoyancy controls, but there was no response. The machinery had been completely demolished by the gunfire.

‘It’s no good!’ he yelled back.

The submarine tilted further until the entire vessel was hanging vertically in the water.

Renard cursed again, then climbed up, back into the machine room, and shut the door, now at his feet. As the crewmen attempted to regain their footing, the helmsman accidentally hit the engine control, sending it to FULL AHEAD. He crashed with the rest of the men into the wall as the submarine lunged violently toward the bottom of the sea.

Bond and Christmas fell back against the racks of torpedoes. The sound of the engines was deafening. Christmas screamed. Bond held her as he looked around the room. Emergency equipment was stowed in netting against a bulkhead near them. He pulled at the straps, emptied the netting, and thrust Christmas inside.

‘Quick!’ he shouted, following her into the netting.

They secured themselves just as the submarine crashed into the sandy bottom of the Bosphorus.

The boat jolted with the force of an earthquake. Renard slammed hard against the wall of the machine room. The crewmen in the control room were not so lucky. Chairs and desks broke free and crushed them against the damaged equipment.

In a few moments, it was over. There was an eerie silence, save for the occasional groan of hull stress and the wail of alarms.

Renard, dazed, looked up and saw that the extruder had slid into Truhkin and killed him . . . but he was holding the finished plutonium control rod in his clenched fists. Rcnard got up and wrenched it free. He then made sure that the hatch to the control room was sealed.

Bond and Christmas climbed out of the netting just as a horrible creak resounded through the chamber. A rupture at the end of the racks of torpedoes spread across the wall; water gushed toward them at a frightening rate.

‘Climb!’ he shouted. He pulled Christmas up and they ascended toward the control room. ‘Keep moving!’

As they emerged into the demolished chamber, the water was already pouring through the hatch, splashing at their feet. They struggled together to shut the hatch, but by the time they were successful, the water was up to their knees.

Renard climbed to the reactor room and, without flinching, he opened the cover of the glaring reactor. He was bathed in a ghostly blue light.

Renard was no nuclear physicist, but he understood enough about reactors to get the job done. A reactor’s only real purpose, he knew, was to generate heat to boil water into saturated steam. The only difference between it and any other type of steam-powered turbine plant was the amount of energy concentrated in the nuclear fuel in the reactor core, as well as the complete lack of any need for air.

The process of nuclear fission was really quite simple. An atom was split and released two neutrons, generating energy as heat. When the two neutrons hit two more atoms, four more neutrons were thrown, and so on, until the result was an uncontrolled, supercritical fission reaction. An atomic explosion.

However, Renard knew that, here in the submarine, the amount of energy released by the splitting atoms was controlled by control rods that were made of a neutron-absorbing material such as cadmium or hafnium. These rods were set to absorb the right amount of neutrons to bring the reaction into controlled, critical fission. This reaction still generated a great deal of heat, boiling water into saturated steam to power the sub’s turbines, but the process could continue safely for years.

Renard stared at the glowing reactor core, transfixed momentarily by the power it held. He studied it carefully, picking out what he presumed to be the uranium fuel elements that had been formed into plates to allow maximum heat transfer to the primary coolant loop. They were mounted parallel to each other in an assembly mounted on top of a support structure in the base of the reactor vessel. In between the fuel elements were the control rods, designed to drop into place in the event of a reactor problem. The coolant of the primary loop circulated around the core, feeding the heated coolant into a steam generator. This, in turn, directed the steam into a secondary cooling loop that fed a pair of high- pressure turbines in the machinery spaces. There, the steam was condensed into water and sent back into the steam generator. The turbines were responsible for turning the main propeller shaft, as well as providing electrical power to the boat and its equipment.

Renard held the plutonium control rod and prepared himself for what he had to do. The job would have to be performed slightly ahead of schedule . . .

The submarine lurched again and threw him down. He struggled to get back up to the reactor but found it to be exhausting. For some inexplicable reason, he felt real pain on the side of his head where he had been shot It was odd to actually feel something there after so long. Was the bullet moving? Was the time the doctor had given him now up? No! He would finish Elcktra’s plan!

He stared into the violet blue heat, mesmerised by its beauty. It was almost as beautiful as she . . .

He pressed a button and one of the neutron-absorbing control rods slowly rose from the reactor. He reached out and released it from its berth, then threw it across the room. Renard carefully picked up the plutonium rod and prepared to insert it into the orifice left by the rod he had removed.

He smiled, but the pain in his head overpowered him.

Back in the control room, Christmas noticed a panel light.

‘Oh my God, he’s opened up the reactor.’ Bond studied the panel as she interpreted more lights. ‘And he’s sealed himself in.’

‘And us out,’ Bond said.

‘He’s already withdrawn one of the control rods. He’s going to insert the plutonium. What do we do?’

Thinking fast, Bond moved to the controls near the tanks. He took four seconds to study them, then began to hit switches. He examined a control panel that was marked, in Russian, ‘Forward and Aft Escape Chambers’. He looked around the room and saw that the Forward Escape hatch was located there, as well as a cabinet on the wall.

‘Look in there for re-breathers,’ he said, pointing. She opened the cabinet and found that they had been ripped to shreds.

‘Sabotaged,’ she said. ‘No one was meant to get off the sub alive.’

i never liked those things anyway,’ he said. He pushed a button on the panel.

The Aft Escape hatch opened, high up on the sub. Water flooded the escape chamber there, but an inner door stopped it from getting into the submarine.

She suddenly understood what he was planning to do and looked at him questioningly.

‘You have a better idea?’ he snapped. He opened the inner door to the Forward Escape Chamber and said, ‘Count to twenty. When you get to twenty, push this button. It will open the inner door of the Aft Escape hatch. It can only be opened for a few seconds or we’ll sink.'

‘But what if. . .?’

‘Count to twenty. I’ll be there. Wait five more seconds, then press the purge button. That will empty the water out of the chamber.’

He got inside the hatch and she sealed the door behind him, wrenching a lever that immediately flooded his chamber with water. Bond held his breath as the water poured in. It was extremely claustrophobic, but he had been in tight spots before.

A green light flashed on the control panel. Christmas punched a button and the outer Forward Escape hatch opened. Bond burst out into the dark water and began the long, torturous ascent up the outside of the submarine.

‘One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand,’ Christmas began to chant.

It was very disorienting. There was very little illumination and Bond had difficulty getting his bearings against the vast, black vertical whale next to him. He might have got lost if he hadn’t recognised the conning tower jutting out sideways.

‘Fourteen, one-thousand, fifteen, one-thousand . . .’

His lungs felt as if they would explode. He had to be almost there! Where was the bloody thing?

‘Seventeen, one-thousand . . .’

There it was - the open hatch of the Aft Escape Chamber! He swam inside then yanked the lever to close the hatch.

Christmas was shivering in the rising water.

‘ . . Twenty, one-thousand.’ She pressed the button.

The inner hatch opened, and Bond collapsed into the sub . . . but the chamber was full of water. Now all Christmas had to do was press the ‘purge’ button.

However, before she could do so, the hatch leading to the deck above split open with a tremendous shriek. She was hit with a torrent of water, knocking her off her feet.

In the chamber above, Bond was running out of breath. Where the hell was she? Press the purge button!

Christmas struggled to get back to the controls, but she tripped over the body of a dead seaman. She recoiled in terror, then realised the man couldn’t hurt her. The water was rising quickly, now over her head. She ducked into it, reached for the controls and hit the button.

Bond rolled out into the corridor, just as Christmas closed the door. He took a few seconds to catch his breath, then began the descent to the reactor chamber. It took him four minutes to get there, only to find the door sealed.

Now what? he thought. Cursing to himself, he looked around the room and noticed a sign that read ‘Emergency Use Only’. There were some lengthy instructions on when and how to open the door in case of a problem, and they were clearly marked with Danger warnings. Bond pulled the lever and the hatch to the reactor room exploded off its hinges.

Bond crawled into the chamber and saw that Renard was lying in a crumpled heap, unconscious. The plutonium rod was lying beside him and there was a flare gun attached to his belt. Bond took the gun and stuck it his waistband, then moved to the controls. He saw that the temperature gauge was at 4000 degrees and climbing. A thumping noise below him got his attention. Christinas was at the window of the door. The water had risen to the top of the control room and she would drown at any moment. Bond jumped for the door and opened it.

‘Christmas!’ he called. He lowered an arm and pulled her up, then closed the door. Together they moved to the reactor and gazed inside.

Breathlessly, she said, ‘We’re safe from the radiation as long as the reactor coolant doesn’t burst. If he had got the plutonium in the reactor you could have written off the whole city.’

Suddenly, an arm locked around Bond’s neck, throttling him. Behind them, Renard had regained consciousness and mustered every bit of strength to surprise-attack his enemy. Christmas grabbed at Renard, but he flung her back. She nearly fell through the hatch but managed to grab a pipe and hang on for dear life.

Bond elbowed Rcnard hard in the stomach. It was like hitting a stone wall. He then snapped forward, causing Renard to flip over his back. The terrorist crashed into a panel. Bond jumped on him and punched him in the face, over and over. He didn’t give the man a chance to defend himself. He allowed his anger to overcome Renard’s strength and really damage him - anger at what he had done to MI6, anger at what he had done to Elektra . . .

After a minute of battering him, Bond snapped out of the trance. Renard was stunned. Bond pushed him away and went back to the reactor, but Renard revived quickly. The killer grabbed Bond and tossed him across the room as if he were a toy. Renard turned to ward off an ineffective blow from Christmas and back-handed her over the railing. She fell against the wall, which was now the floor, and lost consciousness.

‘Bond!’ Renard shouted. ‘You have decided to join me on this historic voyage. Welcome to my nuclear family!’

Dazed, Bond shook his head and eyed the plutonium rod on the floor, just out of his reach.

‘You’re really going to commit suicide for her?’ he asked.

‘In case you’ve forgotten,' Renard answered, ‘I’m dead already.’

‘Haven’t you heard the news?’ Bond spat. ‘So is she.’

Renard’s face screwed up into a grotesque mask of pain that he would never be able to feel in his skin. His scream of bloody murder echoed throughout the ship as if a wounded animal were howling in the bowels of the boat.

Renard gasped, momentarily shaken. ‘You’re lying.’

Bond grabbed the plutonium rod, got to his feet and swung it hard into the side of Renard’s head. It barely fazed him. He took hold of Bond’s shoulders and smashed him repeatedly into the steel mesh of the flooring, forcing Bond to drop the rod. Rcnard then threw Bond against an opening in the mesh. He fell through, dazed. Renard pulled the mesh closed and bolted it. Bond watched in frustration as the terrorist retrieved the plutonium rod.

Bond scanned the scene, searching for any idea that might save them. He saw one of the hoses that fed into the primary coolant loop had become uncoupled. It was thrashing violently nearby, as the steam passing through was under extremely high pressure. It was heated to literally hundreds of degrees and contained a great deal of motive energy.

Renard slowly inserted the plutonium rod into the reactor. Immediately the light around him became an even deeper blue, a horrible luminescence. The water coolant around the reactor core began to boil furiously.

The temperature gauge rose to 4500 degrees.

Bond could see the end of the rod being pushed through from the other side of the reactor. There was only one thing to do. He tore a piece of fabric from his shirt and wrapped it around his hand. He then grabbed the thrashing hose and attached it to the fitting on his side of the reactor. The pressure began to build.

Renard continued to force the plutonium into the reactor as the temperature gauge neared the red-lined 5000 mark.

Finally, the high-pressured steam dislodged the plutonium rod with such force that it shot out of the reactor and impaled Renard in the heart.

Renard stared at Bond in horror. The rod was sticking through his chest like a spear. Bond calmly said, ‘She’s waiting for you.’

Renard collapsed and fell in a heap next to Christmas, who was just beginning to regain consciousness. She recoiled at the sight of him, then gathered her wits. She got up and unbolted the steel mesh, freeing Bond, then found the original control rod lodged near the reactor. She gently picked it up and reinserted it into the fitting.

The temperature gauge immediately began to fall, but the H2 metre on the wall was in the yellow and rising towards red. Christmas spotted the needle and grabbed Bond’s arm.

‘The hydrogen gas level is too high. One spark and this reactor room will blow. It’ll cause a disaster!’

Bond took two seconds to think, then said, ‘We have to flood the reactor with water. Go up to the mine room. I'l be there in a minute.’

She climbed up to the next chamber as Bond opened the hatch leading to the control room. The water began to gush into the reactor chamber. Bond then fought his way to the machine room hatch, opened it, and climbed in. He sealed the hatch behind him, preventing the water from engulfing him. He made his way forward and found Christmas in the mine room. She pointed at another H2 metre, the needle of which was in the red.

‘This room is one gigantic bomb ready to explode any second. It’ll set the mines off!’ she cried.

‘I know,’ Bond said. ‘I’ve sealed the reactor so it will be safe from the blast. There'll be no radiation leakage.’

He motioned Christmas toward a mine launching tube.

‘Get in!’

She hesitated.

‘You have a better idea?’ he asked.

Wide-eyed, Christmas got into the tube. Bond examined the controls, set a timer to fire, and then followed her inside. The hatch automatically closed behind them.

The clock ticked down . . .

The launching doors opened as Bond and Christmas shot out into the water, streaking away from the sub, and then upward.

Inside the now empty mine room, a tom electric cable touched the bulkhead

The submarine blew apart with a horrendous explosion. What was left of the vessel began its slow descent to the bottom of the Bosphorus.

Bond and Christmas reached the surface, gasping for air. They looked around to see no boats coming to the rescue. ‘I don’t think I can tread water much longer,’ she cried. ‘Hold on to my shoulders,’ he said.

A tourist boat was a hundred yards away. Bond felt in his pocket and found the flare gun that he had taken off Renard. He shot it into the air. People on the boat waved at them and turned the vessel in their direction.