It was a strangely hollow sound, the Major thought. The force of the explosions was contained by the stout concrete walls. He led his men in a second later. Electrical circuits were sparking, and fires would soon begin in earnest, but everyone he could see inside was down. His men moved swiftly from one to another, seizing weapons and killing those merely unconscious. The Major saw a Russian officer with general’s stars. The man was bleeding from his nose and ears, trying to bring up his pistol when the Major cut him down. In another minute they were all dead. The building was rapidly filling with thick, acrid smoke. He ordered his men out. “We’re finished here,” he said into his radio. There was no answer. “Are you there?”
The Archer was against a wall next to a half-open door. His radio was switched off. Just outside his room was a soldier, facing down the corridor. It was time. The freedom fighter threw the door aside with the barrel of his rifle and shot the Russian before the man had had a chance to turn. He screamed a command, and five other men emerged from their rooms, but two were killed before they got a chance to shoot. He looked up and down the corridor and saw nothing but gun flashes and half-hidden silhouettes.
Fifty meters away, Bondarenko reacted to the new threat. He shouted an order for his men to stay under cover, and then with murderous precision, the Colonel identified and engaged the targets moving in the open, identified by the emergency lighting in the corridor. The corridor was exactly like a shooting gallery, and he got two men with as many bursts. Another ran toward him, screaming something unintelligible and firing his weapon in a single extended burst, Bondarenko’s shots missed, to his amazement, but someone else got him. There was more shooting, and the sound of it reverberating off the concrete walls completely deafened everyone. Then, he saw, there was only one man left. The Colonel watched two more of his men fall, and the last Afghan chipped concrete only centimeters from his face. Bondarenko’s eyes stung from it, and the right side of his face recoiled at the sudden pain. The Colonel pulled back from the line of fire, flipped his weapon to full automatic, took a deep breath, and jumped into the corridor. The man was less than ten meters away.
The moment stretched into eternity as both men brought their weapons to bear. He saw the man’s eyes. It was a young face there, immediately below the emergency light, but the eyes . . . the rage there, the hatred, nearly stopped the Colonel’s heart. But Bondarenko was a soldier before all things. The Afghan’s first shot missed. His did not.
The Archer felt shock, but not pain in his chest as he fell. His brain sent a message to his hands to bring the weapon to the left, but they ignored the command and dropped it. He fell in stages, first to his knees, then on his back, and at last he was staring up at a ceiling. It was finally over. Then the man stood by his side. It was not a cruel face, the Archer thought. It was the enemy, and it was an infidel, but he was a man, too, wasn’t he? There was curiosity there. He wants to know who I am, the Archer told him with his last breath.
“Allahu akhbar!” God is great.
Yes, I suppose He is, Bondarenko told the corpse. He knew the phrase well enough. Is that why you came? He saw that the man had a radio. It started to make noise, and the Colonel bent down to grab it.
“Are you there?” the radio asked a moment later. The question was in Pashtu, but the answer was delivered in Russian.
“It is all finished here,” Bondarenko said. The Major looked at his radio for a moment, then blew his whistle to assemble what was left of his men. The Archer’s company knew the way to the assembly point, but all that mattered now was getting home. He counted his men. He’d lost eleven and had six wounded. With luck he’d get to the border before the snow stopped. Five minutes later his men were heading off the mountain.
“Secure the area!” Bondarenko told his remaining six men. “Collect weapons and get them handed out.” It was probably over, he thought, but “over” would not truly come until that motor-rifle regiment got here.
“Morozov!” he called next. The engineer appeared a moment later.
“Yes, Colonel?”
“Is there a physician upstairs?”
“Yes, several—I’ll get one.”
The Colonel found that he was sweating. The building still held some warmth. He dropped the field radio off his back and was stunned to see that two bullets had hit it—and even more surprised to see blood on one of the straps. He’d been hit and hadn’t known it. The sergeant came over and looked at it.
“Just a scratch, Comrade, like those on my legs.”
“Help me off with this coat, will you?” Bondarenko shrugged out of the knee-length greatcoat, exposing his uniform blouse. With his right hand he reached inside, while his left removed the ribbon that designated the Red Banner. This he pinned to the young man’s collar. “You deserve better, Sergeant, but this is all I can do for the present.”
“Up ‘scope!” Mancuso used the search periscope now, with its light-amplifying equipment. “Still nothing . . .”He turned to look west. “Uh-oh, I got a masthead light at two-seven-zero—”
“That’s our sonar contact,” Lieutenant Goodman noted unnecessarily.
“Sonar, conn, do you have an ident on the contact?” Mancuso asked.
“Negative,” Jones replied. “We’re getting reverbs from the ice, sir. Acoustic conditions are pretty bad. It’s twin screw and diesel, but no ident.”
Mancuso turned on the ‘scope television camera. Ramius needed only one look at the picture. “Grisha.”
Mancuso looked at the tracking party. “Solution?”
“Yes, but it’s a little shaky,” the weapons officer replied. “The ice isn’t going to help,” he added. What he meant was that the Mark 48 torpedo in surface-attack mode could be confused by floating ice. He paused for a moment. “Sir, if that’s a Grisha, how come no radar?”
“New contact! Conn, sonar, new contact bearing zero-eight-six—sounds like our friend, sir,” Jones called. “Something else near that bearing, high-speed screw . . . definitely something new there, sir, call it zero-eight-three.”
“Up two feet,” Mancuso told the quartermaster. The periscope came up. “I see him, just on the horizon . . . call it three miles. There’s a light behind them!” He slapped the handles up and the ‘scope went down at once. “Let’s get there fast. All ahead two-thirds.”
“All ahead two-thirds, aye.” The helmsman dialed up the engine order.
The navigator plotted the position of the inbound boat and ticked off the yards.
Clark was looking back toward the shore. There was a light sweeping left and right across the water. Who was it? He didn’t know if the local cops had boats, but there had to be a detachment of KGB Border Guards: they had their own little navy, and their own little air force. But how alert were they on a Friday night? Probably better than they were when that German kid decided to fly into Moscow . . . right through this sector, Clark remembered. This area’s probably pretty alert . . . where are you, Dallas? He lifted his radio.
“Uncle Joe, this is Willy. The sun is rising, and we’re far from home.”
“He says he’s close, sir,” communications reported.
” ‘Gator?” Mancuso asked.
The navigator looked up from his table. “I gave him fifteen knots. We should be within five hundred yards now.”
“All ahead one-third,” the Captain ordered. “Up ‘scope!” The oiled steel tube hissed up again—all the way up.
“Captain, I got a radar emitter astern, bearing two-six-eight. It’s a Don-2,” the ESM technician said.
“Conn, sonar, both the hostile contacts have increased speed. Blade count looks like twenty knots and coming up on the Grisha, sir,” Jones said. “Confirm target ident is Grisha-class. Easterly contact still unknown, one screw, probably a gas engine, doing turns for twenty or so.”
“Range about six thousand yards,” the fire-control party said next.
“This is the fun part,” Mancuso observed. “I have them. Bearing—mark!”
“Zero-nine-one.”
“Range.” Mancuso squeezed the trigger for the ‘scope’s laser-rangefinder. “Mark!”
“Six hundred yards.”
“Nice call, ‘Gator. Solution on the Grisha?” he asked fire control.
“Set for tubes two and four. Outer doors are still closed, sir.”
“Keep ’em that way.” Mancuso went to the bridge trunk’s lower hatch. “XO, you have the conn. I’m going to do the recovery myself. Let’s get it done.”
“All stop,” the executive officer said. Mancuso opened the hatch and went up the ladder to the bridge. The lower hatch was closed behind him. He heard the water rushing around him in the sail, then the splashes of surface waves. The intercom told him he could open the bridge hatch. Mancuso spun the locking wheel and heaved against the heavy steel cover. He was rewarded with a faceful of cold, oily saltwater, but ignored it and got to the bridge.