Radiant Angel (29 page)

The autopilot display showed that
The Hana
at this speed would be close to the tip of Manhattan in less than fifteen minutes. He looked at the clock on the dashboard: 06:11. He reset the detonation time on the arming device to 06:27, then did the same with the backup device. He dropped the two arming devices on the deck and put a bullet into each one, sealing not only his own fate but the fate of the City of New York. He would have also put a bullet into his own head, so he didn’t have to wait for death, but he wanted to watch the skyline getting closer as the minutes ticked off. Perhaps, he thought, there would be a moment of incandescent beauty at the instant of nuclear fission. This was the way to die.

Well, I thought, if you gotta die, it’s good to die in a bar.

I didn’t know who these people were, but I knew they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

With Tess close behind, I led the way into the dining room, and I saw two more bodies on the floor. I also noticed that the table was set for ten, but the guests were still lingering over cocktails.

I pulled the deck plans from my pocket and Tess shone her penlight on them. I could see an area marked VESTIBULE where there was an elevator and a spiral staircase that connected the decks toward the front of the yacht, and we headed quickly in that direction, guns drawn.

We got to the vestibule and I unslung my MP5. You never take an elevator in a tactical situation, and I whispered to Tess, “I go up the stairs face first, you follow ass first.”

I climbed the stairs, two at a time, my MP5 to my front, and Tess followed, climbing the stairs backwards, covering our rear with her Glock pointed at the base of the staircase.

I had no idea how many hostiles were aboard this ship, but there was a minimum of two. Petrov and Gorsky. And there was probably a Russian skipper aboard. There could also be a few other SVR killers who came aboard along with the Russian captain and the nuke, but maybe not if Moscow wanted to limit the number of people who knew about this. Which was why we found Urmanov waiting to die. So hopefully the only other Russians aboard were the party girls, and based on what I saw in the barroom, the party was over.

And then there was the crew. Maybe twenty of them. Where were they? Could Petrov and Gorsky have whacked them all? If so, Petrov was the worst ship passenger since Count Dracula.

I reached the vestibule on the salon deck and dropped to one knee as I swept my MP5 around the dark space. The ship was very quiet and I could hear my breathing.

Tess backed up the staircase and into the vestibule, her Glock still pointed down the stairs.

The next deck was the bridge where the ship’s office and captain’s quarters were located, and I stood and moved toward the spiral stairs.

Tess, however, moved toward the glass doors of the salon and motioned me to follow.

Well, you’re supposed to check out everything to make sure you’re not leaving hostiles behind you, but in my head I heard a timer ticking.

Petrov’s handheld radio beeped and Gorsky said, “I am not sure they are still here.”

Petrov replied, “In any case you must stay there and guard the device and kill anyone else who comes aboard from the swimming platform.”

Gorsky did not reply immediately, then said, “The Americans will start boarding over the sides, and in force—”

“I see no craft from the bridge,” though he did see them on the radar.

“But they know who we are, Colonel, and why we are here.”

“It is too late for them, Viktor.”

Again, there was a silence, then Gorsky said, “It is also too late for us.”

Petrov did not reply.

“Are we going to die?”

“Yes, we are going to die.”

Gorsky said nothing, so Petrov advised, “Be brave. Stay at your post—as Captain Gleb is doing.” He reminded Gorsky, “We cannot be taken prisoner. We cannot betray our country.” He assured Gorsky, “Your family will be taken care of. If you do your duty.”

Again, Gorsky said nothing, and Petrov had nothing more to say to him, so he signed off and turned his attention to the radar and the windshield, confident that Viktor Gorsky would do his duty. And if not, it didn’t matter because there was literally nothing that could stop
The Hana
at this point, except perhaps a naval cannon. But even if the Americans had a warship in the area, would they take the risk of firing on the ship that they suspected had a nuclear device onboard?

Petrov stared at the approaching skyline, then glanced at the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. “Yob vas.”

I followed Tess into the long salon. She stopped and took a deep breath. “Oh my God…”

So as it turned out, Tasha and her friends were just throwaway props, easily expendable in the pursuit of some psychotic goal of world domination. Well, Buck and I agreed on another thing—the Russians needed closer watching.

There was nothing more to see there, so we returned to the vestibule and approached the spiral staircase carefully, knowing that at least one person was on the bridge deck—and also knowing that these people carried submachine guns and knew how to use them.

We listened for a sound at the top of the stairs, but all I heard was that ticking in my head.

I made a tactical decision and said to Tess, “The only chance we have of stopping this fucking nuke from leveling Manhattan is if we split up. I go back to the tender garage, kill Gorsky, pump the garage dry, and try to disarm that thing. You go up to the bridge and see if you can get rid of whoever is up there and turn this ship toward the middle of the harbor.” I looked at her in the dim light and I could see she understood that this was our only play. She nodded.

“And if you get a chance, jump ship.”

She looked at me and our eyes met. “Well… nice working with you, Detective.”

“Yeah. You too.” I promised, “I’ll buy you that drink later.”

She started up the spiral staircase toward the bridge, and I moved quickly down the stairs to the lower deck.

Well, there are good plans and there are desperate plans. Petrov, too, had a desperate plan that obviously included dying for his country. He could have stopped the ship and raised the white flag, or he could have jumped overboard. But he wasn’t doing that, so neither were we.

Tess Faraday stopped near the top of the spiral staircase, noting that the bridge door was closed and that the other two doors in the vestibule were also shut.

She climbed the last few steps and swept the vestibule with her Glock, noticing blood trails on the floor that led to the captain’s quarters and the ship’s office, and she understood that dead bodies had been dragged into the rooms. Nothing in there to check out.

She turned toward the bridge door. Behind that door, as Corey said, was the asshole who controlled the nuke and the asshole who controlled the ship.

She took a deep breath, hit the entry pad, and dropped into a low crouch with her Glock aimed at the door, ready to empty her nine-round magazine. This could all be over in a minute.

But the door did not slide open.

She stepped back, aimed at the door, and began firing.

Tess felt a sharp pain in her arm and realized she’d been hit by a ricochet, and that the door was armored. “Damn it!”

An intercom speaker near the entry pad crackled, then a voice with a Russian accent said, “I am watching you on the camera. Where is your friend?”

“Open the fucking door and put your hands in the air!”

“I can’t hear you. Push the intercom button.”

Tess hit the intercom button, took a deep breath, and said, “Listen… we know what you’re doing, and we know this is not an attack by the Saudis. We know all this, and if you want to start fucking World War Three—”

“Shut up.”

“Look… Colonel Petrov… think about—”

“Shut up.”

“Asshole!” Tess took her finger off the intercom button and began kicking at the door. “You bastard! Stop this!”

There was no reply, but then Petrov’s voice came through the speaker. “You will be dead in thirteen minutes.”

I ran through the dark passageway on the lower deck between the staterooms, and at the end of the passageway were the double doors that led to the garage—and to Viktor Gorsky and the nuke.

I gripped my MP5 in my right hand and threw open a door, then dove into a prone position and scanned the darkness.

I could hear the blood pounding in my ears, but that was all I could hear, and I could see nothing except some moonlight coming through the doors that led to the swimming platform across the flooded garage.

Okay, I’d outflanked Gorsky, but where was he?

If I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me. But he had to have heard
me diving through the door and hitting the deck, so he knew approximately where I was, and I expected to see the flash of his MP5 and hear the bullets smacking into the deck around me—or into me. I tried to control my breathing, but it sounded too loud. Someone had to make a move. But time was still on Gorsky’s side, and he didn’t have to do anything. Unless he’d decided he didn’t want to be standing at ground zero when the nuke blew. So maybe he’d put on a life vest and gone off the swimming platform, leaving me alone with the nuke. File that under wishful thinking.

I rose slowly to one knee and suddenly the underwater lights came on, and I turned quickly toward the catwalk. And there was Viktor Gorsky, not twenty feet away, aiming his submachine gun at me.

I knew I was dead, but Gorsky seemed to hesitate for half a second, or maybe the light momentarily blinded him. I used that half second to dive over the side of the dock into the water, just as I saw the flash of his muzzle and heard the bullets impacting on the dock where I’d been.

I sank to the bottom of the illuminated water and saw bullets coming at me, but they lost their velocity before they traveled a foot into the water.

I found traction on the submerged deck and I half walked and half swam toward the catwalk. I was running out of breath, but if I surfaced for air I’d be inhaling hot lead.

Gorsky kept firing into the water, desperately trying to overcome the laws of physics. He was losing his cool.

I got under the catwalk and hoped that Gorsky would not think of the only thing he could do to save his ass, which was to jump off the catwalk and join me in the water. But he didn’t think of that fast enough and I extended my arm until the submachine gun was out of the water and aimed straight up at the catwalk’s floor grate and squeezed the trigger, hoping the MP5 really could fire when wet.

I felt the submachine gun bucking in my hand, and I looked up through the water to see Gorsky lying facedown on the catwalk, hopefully with a few rounds in his balls and up his ass. Surprise!

The water around me was turning red, and I surfaced, took a deep breath, then reached up and grabbed the edge of the catwalk.
Gorsky’s face was right above mine, and his eyes were open, staring down at me through the grate, and his lips were moving. I put the muzzle of my MP5 to his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Now for the nuke.

Vasily Petrov stared at the video monitor. Was it possible that Gorsky was dead? He kept staring at the dim image on the screen, then watched as the American climbed out of the water and onto the catwalk, then found the switch to the pumps, then the switch to the overhead lights. The garage brightened and Petrov continued to stare at the screen as the man Depp searched Gorsky’s body, then ran to the dock toward the submerged lifeboat—and the nuclear device.

It was not possible that this man could disarm the device even if he was trained. There simply wasn’t enough time for the water to recede and for him to get the locked trunk open.

Petrov looked at the clock on the dashboard. Then back at the image on the screen.

The time until detonation was so short that Petrov knew he needed to do nothing… but the American had found Urmanov’s tool kit… so perhaps he needed to go below and kill this man. But first he needed to kill the woman outside his door.

Tess stood in the vestibule, her gun drawn, staring at the bridge door, thinking about how to get to Vasily Petrov and whoever else was on the bridge.

Petrov’s voice said, “I can see my man Gorsky on the monitor. He has killed your friend in the garage.”

Tess felt her stomach tighten.

“It is finished. Save yourself. Go!”

Tess aimed her Glock at the intercom, fired, and silenced it. “Bastard!”

She looked up at the eyeball video camera in the ceiling and fired three rounds into it. “Fuck you.”

She also noticed a skylight on the ceiling, and she moved under it,
seeing that it was hinged. It was about ten feet above her head, impossible to reach, but there must be a ladder.

She looked around, then saw a lever next to the elevator buttons, marked
ROOF HATCH
. She pulled the lever and a collapsible steel ladder fell from an overhead compartment.

Tess slapped a fresh magazine into her Glock and began climbing the ladder, which would take her to the roof above the bridge, and also to the sloping windshield where she could lie flat over the edge of the roof, look into the bridge, and empty her Glock into Vasily Petrov.

I stood on the catwalk and hit the switch marked
PUMPS
, and heard them engage. I found the light switches, turned them on, and the garage brightened.

I also noticed a switch marked
SHELL DOOR
, which I assumed opened the door in the hull. I glanced at the amphibious craft tied to the dock. That was a way out of here if the pumps didn’t work fast enough to get the water below the nuke. The question was, How fast was that amphibious craft and how big was that nuke? I hoped I didn’t have to find out.

I also hoped that Tess was having better luck on the bridge, but I could feel that the ship was still moving forward, meaning that the bad guys were still in command.

I quickly searched Gorsky’s body to see if he had something, like a remote control device, or a code to stop the clock, but all he had on him was a small pistol and a knife. As for extra MP5 magazines, apparently he’d used them up murdering everyone. I pocketed his pistol.