Chasing Ivan (13 page)

The general answer was trademark Ivan. Ghosts vanish. That was a start, but I had to get more specific.

How would I vanish on a superyacht? I supposed I might just hide and hope to emerge in Bermuda. Perhaps in some prepared hideaway, already stocked with food, water, and weapons. But that didn’t feel right. Stowing away was both passive and somehow unoriginal. It wasn’t a personality fit. Ivan wouldn’t risk the possibility of his legend ending with the headline, “Discovered by dogs.”
 

Disguise was an option, but also risky. He’d have planned for the worst-case scenario, which had to include the yacht being surrounded and searched by competent pros. Hard men who would look twice and then again, regardless of whether the subject was wearing a ball gown, or surgical scrubs, or a police uniform.
 

That was the stumbling block.
 

A meticulous planner like Ivan would assume that everyone exiting the
Anzhelika
would be processed through a tight filter.

It was also the solution.
 

I knew where Ivan had gone.
 

I went down.
 

There was only one deck lower. The aft end of the bottom deck was occupied by fresh water storage and the engine room. Closer to the bow were the cold storage and wine cellar, where I’d begun the hunt. Descending the stairs I found myself further forward still. The trapezoidal room wasn’t very deep, and it hummed with an odd gurgling mechanical noise. If my eyes had been closed I’d have been hard-pressed to place the sound, but they weren’t, and the answer was right at my feet.

The C-Explorer submarine was a big glass sphere centered between the two arms of a C-shaped orange body. Looking like a pea wedged between a fork’s two tines, the sphere was reminiscent of a helicopter cockpit, offering its occupants largely unobstructed views both horizontally and vertically. By the time I leapt down the last six stairs, only the top of the sphere still breached the water’s surface.

“He’s getting away by submarine,” I yelled for the benefit of the mike.
 

If I’d had a gun, I could have shot the sphere, although I suspected most bullets would either pancake harmlessly or ricochet off what was no doubt the equivalent of bulletproof glass. But I didn’t have a gun. I scanned the room for weapons, but came up blank. Nothing but basic scuba gear.
 

Oscar said, “…ay …ain …les,” which my brain translated to, “Say again, Achilles.”
 

“He’s about to launch a submarine off the bow!”

Oscar’s reply translated to, “Say again. We’re not reading you.”

“Submarine!” Transmission was even worse than reception. They couldn’t hear me. My signal wasn’t penetrating all that steel. I had no time to fiddle with it. The sub was descending. What could they do anyway? As passionate as Director Rider was about killing The Ghost, he wasn’t about to order a missile strike on Monaco.

I didn’t have time to assemble the scuba equipment neatly stacked and stored in wall racks, so I checked the oxygen levels on the two used systems abandoned on the floor by pampered guests. The best read only one-third, good for about ten minutes. I grabbed its tank through the wet BCD’s armholes, throwing it up and over and onto my back in the same single fluid motion I’d learned to use with backpacks. Then I slapped the Velcro belt closed, grabbed a mask off the floor, and dove after the escaping sub.

Chapter 25

IGNORING THE SEARING white flashes of pain and the concerned queries from the little girl’s gawking mother, Jo pulled herself to her feet and continued her ascent. No, she wasn’t all right. Yes, she needed a doctor. But her needs would have to wait.
 

Each step set off an explosion in her foot, but each stair brought her closer. She didn’t look down. She didn’t want to see. It was enough to know that no matter what was there, she couldn’t stop. Not until she had Michael. By the time she reached the top, her endorphins had kicked in and her Glock had come out.

Parting the blue curtain through which they’d watched Emily disappear an hour before, Jo spotted her prey. Michael was slipping into the Mercedes’ driver’s seat, while the attentive valet held his door. She almost cried with relief.
 

This was perfect!
 

She could hold Michael at gunpoint in his own car while calling Langley for instructions. They could even patch her through to Achilles. She hoped that he’d saved Emily and ended Ivan, but if not, capturing The Ghost’s right-hand man would be some consolation. A reportable event. Food for Rider’s PR machine.

Jo pushed all the pain from her body and pulled all her skills into play. She willed herself to be silent and invisible as she sprinted the short gap to the rear passenger door. While the valet wished Michael a good evening, Jo slipped through her door. She was already positioned behind him, by the time Michael turned around. Door closed, Glock aimed, game on.

Michael’s door closed a second after hers with an incredibly loud bang, and a blinding white flash.

Chapter 26

AS I SPLASHED into the cool Mediterranean water, my hands made immediate contact with the back of the C-Explorer. Then everything started to go wrong. I couldn’t find anything to grip, and my loose mask was filling with water, impeding the search. As the sub literally slipped through my fingers toward darkness and freedom, my lungs began screaming for air.
 

This couldn’t be happening.
 

I wouldn’t let it.
 

Ignoring the burning in my eyes and the panic in my lungs, I kicked and I stroked and I scanned and I prayed. Any second now, Ivan would engage the forward thrusters and vanish into the deep dark Mediterranean. I had to gain a handhold before he did.
 

After a few seconds of panicked searching and furious kicking, the
Anzhelika’s
underwater lights revealed a prize. Like a shady palm tree on a desert oasis, a black handle protruded from the sphere’s entry hatch. If only I could reach it.
 

I was no kind of competitive swimmer, but cross-country skiing had given me an ox’s heart, a dolphin’s lungs, and a muscular system primed for sprinting. I set my eye on that finish line and gave it everything I had. I kicked harder and stroked faster, I stretched and strained, while the tank wobbled and the mask fluttered. My lungs begged for air. Then a thousand tiny bubbles spewed from the sub’s rear grid, and I knew the forward thruster had just been engaged.
 

It was now or never.
 

With a giant coordinated thrust that called on every major muscle in my body, I porpoised forward and made contact with the middle finger of my left hand. It wasn’t much, just a single distal phalange. But for a climber it was plenty. I locked it down and levered my shoulders forward, catching a full grip with my right hand just as the C-Explorer began to bolt.

Air.

I needed air.

I swapped my right hand for my left on the grip, reaching back for my regulator. It wasn’t there. The usual sweeping retrieval move doesn’t work when someone’s being dragged though. My screaming lungs were starting to spasm. I fought back by clamping my mouth shut. Turning my head, I saw my regulator flapping around with the three other hoses like towed ropes. I tilted my shoulders until it was fluttering in the right place, then snatched it and pressed it to my mouth. Oxygen never tasted so sweet.

I cycled through a few deep inhales, then snugged and cleared my mask before recceing my situation. We were humming through the water at what felt like a sprint, but was likely just the speed of jogging. The water was cool and getting colder. And dark. So very dark. Yachts that were moored above on harbor buoys were spotlighting the sea here and there with azure cones of light. Seen from below, it looked like the set of a science fiction movie. An alien invasion.

Now that I could breathe and see, I pulled myself forward and looked into the sphere, which glowed with the radiation of dozens of LED lights. Knobs and buttons and screens and panels gave it a living luminescence.
 

The Ghost turned his head and looked back.
 

I don’t know what I expected to see on his face — fear, or anger, or nervous tension — but those weren’t what I got. There in the bluish-white glow, The Ghost wore a grin of pure satisfaction. It didn’t compute. He should be angry, furious even. His plan had been foiled for the first time ever, and now he had a live tail.
 

Comprehension struck me like a blow to the gut. Ivan had actually mapped this out. He’d gamed this very scenario in his head. Probably weeks earlier. He’d done the proverbial math during extensive contingency planning. Now he was sitting smugly like a chess master who saw ten moves ahead, while I was just getting a feel for the board.

With a dismissive shoo-bug brush of his hand, Ivan turned back to the main control panel and began diving even deeper. As the lights disappeared ever further above and behind, I recalled from my scuba certification class that anything below 60 feet was considered deep, and 130 was the conventional limit. I had no idea how deep the Mediterranean got off the Monaco coast, but I was pretty sure it was a lot deeper than that. The race was on, and I only had about a minute.

I had two options: drown Ivan, or get him to surface. To do either, I’d have to disable the sub, quickly and without tools.
 

I started looking around for things I could yank or kick or twist or release. Cords or plugs or cables or housings. The C-Explorer looked more streamlined than a Formula One racer. I supposed that when someone was manufacturing toys for billionaires, the smart marketers were big on sleek design. My hungry eyes found nothing of tactical value anywhere, including alternative grips. I thought about trying to jam the propeller housings at an angle that would force the sub to the surface, but there were two of those and just one of me. Regardless, I couldn’t see either from my topside position, and I had no means to descend.

That left the passenger hatch. It screwed shut using a wheel housed in a recession that was covered on the forward half, making it hydrodynamic. Translation — I wouldn’t get a lot of leverage. But with no destructive tools, no choice of handhold, and no time, I had no alternative. I grabbed the wheel and started twisting.
 

It didn’t resist.
 

I got it through half a revolution before Ivan reached up and back behind his head to grab the inside lever with his right hand.

Sub hatches have spoked levers rather than wheels on the inside, specifically to provide superior leverage. Submarines were born as military vessels, and engineers had designed them to prevent exactly the maneuver I was attempting.
 

I put both hands on the wheel and then doubled over to brace my feet against the housing. I began to heave with my arms extended, using the muscles of my back and legs. The wheel gave an inch. Hand over hand I worked it like a tug-of-war, fighting for every inch as I worked it through most of a rotation.
 

Then two things happened at once.

Ivan stood up, and stopped the wheel by bracing it with his second hand.

And my air ran out.

I don’t scare easily, but losing the ability to breathe really rattled my cage. One second I was breathing normally, no more conscious of the process than on land, and the next my lungs wouldn’t inflate. There was nothing to pull. It was like someone slapped duct tape over my mouth and nose.

Instinctively I looked up before looking back down. There was only blackness above. I could have been fifty feet down, I could have been a hundred. Ivan’s eyes said it all when I returned to the wheel, determined to overpower him. The leverage required to turn it from the outside just wasn’t there, and the bastard knew it.

The sub had stopped moving when Ivan abandoned the controls to stand. With no need to hold on, I now had free use of both my hands. I yanked the empty tank off my back and raised it over my head like a battering ram, intending to attack the sphere. I envisioned Emily’s choking face, and thought about the anguish she surely felt. I pictured Oscar and Rider back at Langley, barking out orders from the comfort of plush leather chairs. I thought about Jo, and the possibility that she might now be dead. I bundled those emotions and fed them to the fire that now fueled the rage powering my arms, back, and shoulders. Then I brought the tank down between my legs with the full force of my furious anger. It smashed into the sphere with a metallic clank that rang like victory in my ears, and sent a flash of fear across Ivan’s eyes.