Ice Hunt (41 page)

They were flooding. Smoke billowed into the conn. The
Drakon,
already heavy with water in the ballast tanks, yawed as the seawater pounded into the stern, lifting the nose. His planesman fought his controls to hold them level. Gregor leaned over him, yelling.

Mikovsky’s ears rang. He could not hear his words.

The sub continued to tilt. A clanging hammered through the captain’s temporary deafness. Additional hatches were being closed, manually and electronically, as the flooding sections of the boat were further isolated.

Mikovsky leaned against the thirty-degree tilt in the floor.

From the video monitor, he watched the nose of the
Drakon
break the water’s surface, tilting high in the air like a breaching whale, while the stern, heavy with the flood, dragged downward.

They were exposed again on the surface.

Mikovsky searched quickly for the lone warrior who had fired the rocket—then spotted him. The parka-clad man ran along the ice ridge, diving down the far side, running full tilt.

Why was he fleeing?

The answer appeared out of the blowing snow a moment later. Two helicopters, both painted as white as the blizzard, a Sikorsky Seahawk and a Sikorsky H-92 helibus. From the bus, ropes tumbled out open doors as the craft slowed. Men immediately slid down the whipping lines, weapons on backs. The helibus then swung out in a wide arc, dropping soldiers behind it, aiming for the drift station.

Mikovsky could guess the identity of the new arrivals. He had been briefed by the White Ghost.

United States Delta Force.

The other helicopter, the Seahawk, flew over the listing submarine, buzzing it like a fly over a dying bull’s nose. Mikovsky stared, sensing his doom. Under him, the
Drakon
sank into the sea, stern first. The best its captain could hope for was leniency for his crew, mercy from his captors.

As he prepared the order to abandon ship, the Seahawk flew right over the exterior camera. Mikovsky squinted at the monitor. Something was strange about the undercarriage of the aircraft. It took a full breath for Mikovsky to recognize what he was seeing.

Drums
…a score of gray drums were attached to the Seahawk’s belly, like a clutch of steel eggs.

He recognized them on sight. All sub commanders did.

Depth charges
.

He watched the first drum drop free from the Seahawk’s undercarriage, tumbling end over end toward the foundering sub.

Mikovsky had his answer to the fate of his crew.

There would be no mercy.

3:02 P.M.
USS
POLAR SENTINEL

Perry stood in the Cyclops chamber, surrounded by the open Arctic Ocean. The
Sentinel
had retreated a safe distance away from the fighting, remaining silent in the waters. Even their motors were stilled as they floated.

Upon the first missile strike on the surface, Perry had ordered the
Sentinel
to dive deep. The
Drakon
was clearly under attack from the surface. This was confirmed a moment later when his sonar chief had reported a successful rocket attack. Listening from a half mile away, they had heard the explosion and the resulting
bubbling
of a ruptured submarine.

“It looks like the cavalry finally arrived,” Lieutenant Liang had said, grimly relieved, voicing everyone’s opinion.

The XO was probably right. The attackers had to be the Delta Force team noted in Admiral Reynolds’s last message.

Still, Perry had wanted confirmation before letting anyone know of their presence in these waters. The timing of this attack was too perfect. How had the Delta Force team crossed the blizzard to arrive so opportunely? And why hadn’t the two helicopters been heard before now? Had they been flying too high and were only picked up by the hydrophones as they made their bombing dive toward the surface?

Perry didn’t like questions he couldn’t answer—and in a submarine, paranoia was a survival trait. It kept you alive in dangerous waters.

As such, Perry stood in the forward chamber, watching the battle through the
Sentinel’
s window. He had wanted to see with his own eyes what was happening. He had tried to use the exterior cameras from the control bridge, but they didn’t have the zoom capability to cross the distance.

So Perry had improvised. Standing now in the Cyclops chamber, he used a set of ordinary binoculars to watch the battle.

Half a mile away, the
Drakon
was nose up in the waters, silhouetted in the storm light beaming through the open lake above. She listed at close to sixty degrees, almost vertical in the water.

Perry watched, knowing that his counterpart on the other sub must be sounding the evacuation alarm. The battle was already over. The Russian crew had only one chance here: to abandon ship.

Then through the binoculars, a bright flash ignited the waters, freezing the image upon Perry’s retina before temporarily blinding him. He blinked away the dazzle as the dull explosion roared to him. It sounded exactly like a rumble of thunder, followed by the rattling of deck plates from the distant concussion.

Perry’s vision cleared. The
Drakon
was fully upright, surrounded in a whirlpool of bubbles. Chunks of ice, blown down from above, rattled back up out of the depths.

The room intercom buzzed. “Captain, Conn. We’re reading a depth charge!”

Perry hurried away, tapping the intercom as he passed. “Pull us out of here!” he called out, then ducked through the hatch and ran back toward the bridge.

Another explosion shuddered through the boat, rocking the
Sentinel
.

These icy waters were about to get too damn hot.

3:03 P.M.
OMEGA DRIFT STATION

John Aratuk accepted death. He had seen entire villages, including his own, meet brutal and harsh ends. He had held his wife’s hand as she lay dying, trapped in the wreckage of his drunken accident. Death was a constant in his life. So as others around him shouted or cried, he sat quietly, his hands bound with plastic ties behind his back.

Another explosion shook the barracks building, setting the hanging lamps to swinging. The ice under the buildings bowed and rattled from the forces of the nearby explosions, threatening to shatter the entire area.

Around John, the military men were struggling to get free of their bonds, using whatever sharp edge they could find to saw through the tough plastic.

The Russians had bound them after Jenny and the seaman had escaped, keeping them under constant armed guard. Then a few moments ago, the Russians had fled. It was clear from their hurried departure and frantic grab for supplies that they were abandoning the base.

But why?
Had they discovered what they came to find? And what was to be their own fate? These questions had been bandied about, mostly among the civilian scientists. But John had seen the answer in Lieutenant Commander Sewell’s eyes. He had overheard the conversation about the V-class incendiary bombs planted throughout the drift station. There was no doubt what was going to happen, what the Russians intended.

Then the blasts had started, rocking the ice, deafening even the storm.

“Everyone stay calm!” Sewell yelled in a firm authoritative voice. His attempt at assuredness was weakened as he almost lost his footing with another rattle of ice. He caught himself on one of the bed frames. “Panic will not help us escape!”

John continued to sit, unconcerned. Jenny had escaped. He had heard the Twin Otter buzz by overhead. John positioned his feet closer to the space heater.

At least he’d die warm.

3:04 P.M.
OUTSIDE OMEGA DRIFT STATION

Master Sergeant Kanter lay on the far side of a steep pressure ridge. The rocket launcher he had used to pierce the sub was propped beside him, but it was no longer needed. His ears ached from the concussion blows of the depth charges. Even though he was half shielded by the ridgeline, the explosions felt like punches to his solar plexus. Each one pounded at him.

He watched drum after drum drop into the sea, sink the preset ten feet, and blow. Water ballooned up, then exploded skyward, casting a funnel of water and ice high into the air. The float ice under Kanter bucked with each blow.

The wide lake of the polynya had turned into a roiling and hellish pool. Fires burned onshore. The edges of the lake were shattered. Steam flowed into the snowy blizzard, masking and shrouding the bulk of the sinking submarine. It foundered in the lake, vertical in the water, only its nose visible—and even this was sinking rapidly.

Kanter spotted a pair of Russian sailors bob up in the lake, struggling to keep their heads above water. They wore orange float suits. Evacuees, attempting to escape. It did them no good. A depth charge landed a yard from them. It blew, casting their shattered and broken forms through the air to smash against both ice and their own boat.

There would be no escape.

Farther out, the Sikorsky helibus circled the hovering Seahawk. It had dropped the remaining team members and awaited further orders. Somewhere Delta One was organizing ground forces to retake the U.S. research base.

But Kanter’s attention remained on the polynya.

The majesty of the attack was breathtaking, a symphony of ice, fire, water, and smoke. He felt each explosion down to his bones, becoming a physical part of the attack himself.

Kanter had never been prouder than at this moment.

Then he spotted movement on the flank of the dying sub.

3:06 P.M.
ABOARD THE
DRAKON

Mikovsky was strapped in a seat, as were most of the key bridge crew, trying to keep some semblance of order. Their boat was dead: compartments crushed, flooding everywhere, engines almost gone. Smoke choked through the bridge, making it difficult to think, to see. The explosions deafened them. The bridge crew wore emergency air-breathing masks, but such meager safety devices would not save them—only allow them one last act of revenge.

“Message relayed through digital shortwave!” the radioman yelled from the neighboring communication shack, half his face burned by an electrical fire he had managed to put out. His words sounded as if they came from down a long tunnel, hollow and whispery.

Mikovsky glanced to his weapons officer. He got the nod he wanted. They could not carry on proper protocol, but communication was still intact. His weapons officer confirmed the fire control solution and target fix—one unlike any calculated before.

Their vessel might be doomed, but they weren’t dead.

The
Drakon
carried a full complement of two-hundred-knot Shkval torpedoes, SS-N-16 antisubmarine missiles, and one pair of UGST rocket torpedoes. This last pair were the latest in Russian design, powered by a liquid monopropellant with its own oxidizer. They were mounted in special flank tubes that deployed by pushing out from the sides of the boat. It had been an accident in such a deployment that had led to the
Kursk
tragedy back in 2000, a mishandling that led to the loss of all aboard.

There was no mishandling today.

He got the nod that the starboard UGST rocket tube was flooded and ready, target locked. All that remained was one word from him.

The last word he would ever speak.

“Fire!”

3:07 P.M.
USS
POLAR SENTINEL

“I’m reading a weapons launch!” the sonar chief yelled, jerking to his feet. “Torpedo in the water!”

Perry started toward the man. “Target?”

The
Polar Sentinel
was in full retreat from the hot zone. The bombardment of depth charges threatened his own boat. The cap of ice overhead trapped the concussive waves from the explosions, radiating them outward under the ice. Like dropping a cherry bomb down a toilet.

But as the
Sentinel
fled, Perry kept tabs on the Russian sub. He was taking no chances.

“Target does not appear to be us,” the sonar chief said.

“Then who?”

3:07 P.M.
OUTSIDE OMEGA DRIFT STATION

Frantic, Master Sergeant Kanter tried to raise Delta One. He needed to get the warning out.

“Delta One, here.”

Kanter still wore his subvocal microphone—where the barest whisper could be heard—but now he yelled. “Sir, you have to tell the Seahawk—”

He was too late. From his vantage on top of the ice ridge, Kanter saw a blast of fire ignite below the churning waterline of the foundering submarine. From the flank side of its drowned bulk, a lance of gray metal burst out of the water, leaping into the air.

The missile rocketed skyward, aimed dead center on the Seahawk helicopter hovering overhead. It was impossible for the craft to get out of the way in time.

“Christ!” Delta One screamed in his ear, spotting the danger.

The torpedo struck the helicopter. It seemed for a moment to spear completely through the Seahawk, an arrow piercing its target.

Kanter held his breath.

Then the rotors slammed into the thrusted tip of the torpedo rocket. The blast—accentuated by the two remaining depth-charge drums still attached to the helicopter’s undercarriage—shattered outward in a ball of metal and flame.

Kanter dove behind his ridgeline, seeking shelter from the rain of oil and steel, covering his head. Through the noise of the explosion, he heard the telltale
whup-whup
of another chopper.

He glanced back over a shoulder.

The remaining helicopter, the Sikorsky helibus, raced overhead. Kanter saw it pelted with flaming debris, cutting right through the craft. A section of the Seahawk’s broken rotor flipped end over end and crashed into the forward crew cabin. The helibus lurched over on its side, its blades chopping vertically at the air.

Kanter struggled to his feet, but the slick ice and blowing winds betrayed him. He fell. He fought again, fingers digging at the sharp ice. The toes of his boots fought for purchase.