Atlantis

Jack felt a surge of adrenaline as he saw the response was unanimous and without reservation. They had come too far to let their target slip from their grasp. By now Seaquest’s movements would have excited interest among their adversaries, men who would eliminate them without a moment’s hesitation if they stood in their way. They knew this was their only chance.

Jack picked up the mike again.

“We are staying. I repeat, we are staying. We’ll turn the weather to our advantage. I assume no hostile vessels will be able to get near either. We’ll need the time you’re away to get through the sub. Over.”

“I understand.” The voice was barely discernible through the static. “Retract your radio buoy and only use it in an emergency as it’ll be picked up by every receiver for miles around. Wait for us to contact you. The best of luck to you all. Seaquest out.”

For a moment the only sound was the low hum of the CO₂ scrubbers and the whirr of the electric motor used to pull in the radio buoy.

“Ten minutes are up,” Ben said from the console. “You’re good to go.”

“Right. Let’s get this show on the road.”

Andy slid over and unlocked the docking clamp. The hatch opened outwards with no resistance, the pressure inside the DSRV and the submarine now equalized.

Costas swung his legs over and found the rungs of the ladder on the inside wall. He started to raise his mask and then paused.

“One final thing.”

Jack and Katya looked at him.

“This is no Mary Celeste. The Kazbek had a full complement of seventy-three men when she went down. There may be some pretty grim sights in there.”

“We’ll head forward through the passageway. The bulkhead behind us seals off the reactor compartment.”

Costas stepped off the final rung of the ladder in the escape trunk and swung round, his headlamp throwing a wavering beam into the heart of the submarine. Jack followed close behind, his tall frame bent nearly double as he reached back to offer Katya a hand. She cast a final glance up at the crewmen peering down from the DSRV before ducking through the hatch behind the two men.

“What’s the white stuff?” she asked.

Everywhere they looked a pale encrustation covered the surface like icing. Katya rubbed her glove along a railing, causing the substance to sprinkle off like snow and revealing the shiny metal beneath.

“It’s a precipitate,” Costas replied. “Probably the result of an ionization reaction between the metal and the increased levels of carbon dioxide after the scrubbers shut down.”

The ghostly lustre only added to the sense that this was a place utterly cut off, so far removed from the images outside that the ancient city seemed to belong to another kind of dream world.

They advanced slowly along a raised gangway into an open space obscured by darkness. A few steps inside, Costas stopped below an electrical box set between the piping above their heads. He delved into his tool belt for a miniature pneumatic cleaner attached to a CO₂ cartridge and used it to blow away precipitate from a socket. After plugging in a cord he had trailed from the DSRV, an orange indicator light flashed above the panel.

“Hey, presto. It still works after all these years. And we all thought Soviet technology was so inferior.” He looked at Katya. “No offence intended.”

“None taken.”

A few moments later the fluorescent lighting came on, its first pulses surging like distant lightning. As they switched off their headlamps a bizarre world came into view, a jumble of consoles and equipment shrouded in mottled white. It was as if they were in an ice cave, an impression enhanced by the blue lighting and the clouds of exhalation that issued from their masks into the frigid air.

“This is the control room attack centre,” said Costas. “There should be some clue here to what happened.”

They made their way cautiously to the end of the gangway and down a short flight of steps. On the deck lay a pile of Kalashnikov rifles, the familiar banana-shaped magazines jutting out in front of the stairway. Jack picked one up as Katya looked on.

“Special Forces issue, with folding stock,” she commented. “AK-74M, the 5.45 millimetre derivative of the AK-47. With the worsening political situation the Soviet General Staff’s Intelligence Directorate put naval spetsialnoe naznachenie—special purpose — troops on some nuclear submarines. Better known by their acronym spetsnaz. The GRU were terrified of defection or insurrection and the spetsnaz were directly answerable to them rather than the captain.”

“But their weapons would normally be locked away in the armoury,” Jack pointed out. “And there’s something else strange here.” He snapped off the magazine and pulled back the bolt. “The magazine’s half empty and there’s a round in the chamber. This gun’s been fired.”

A quick check revealed that the other weapons were in a similar state. Below the assault rifles they could see a jumble of handguns, empty magazines and spent cartridge cases.

“It looks like someone cleaned up after a battle.”

“That’s exactly what happened.” Costas spoke from the centre of the room. “Take a look around you.”

In the middle was a command chair flanked by two columns housing the periscope arrays. Set into the walls around the dais were consoles for weapons and navigation control, which made up the operational heart of the vessel.

Everywhere they looked was destruction. Computer monitors had been reduced to jagged holes of broken glass, their innards spewed out in a jumble of wires and circuit boards. Both periscopes had been smashed beyond recognition, the mangled eyepieces hanging off at crazy angles. The chart table had been violently ripped apart, the jagged gouges running across its surface the unmistakable result of automatic rifle fire.

“The ship control station is shot to hell.” Costas was surveying the wreckage at the far corner of the room. “Now I see why they couldn’t move.”

“Where are they?” Katya demanded. “The crew?”

“There were survivors.” Costas paused. “Someone stashed those weapons, and I’d guess there were bodies which have been disposed of somewhere.”

“Wherever they camped out, it wasn’t here,” said Jack. “I suggest we move on to the accommodation quarters.”

Katya led them along the walkway towards the forward compartments of the submarine. Once again they plunged into darkness, the auxiliary electrical system only providing emergency lighting in the main compartments. As they inched forward, Jack and Costas could just make out Katya’s silhouette as she felt for the handrail and fumbled for the switch on her headlamp.

There was a sudden clatter and an ear-piercing shriek. Jack and Costas leapt forward. Katya was slumped in the passageway.

Jack knelt over her and checked her regulator. His face was drawn with concern as he looked into her eyes.

She was mumbling incoherently in Russian. After a moment she raised herself on one elbow and the two men helped her to her feet. She spoke falteringly.

“I’ve had a…shock, that’s all. I’ve just seen…”

Her voice faded away as she raised her arm and pointed in the direction of the sonar room at the end of the corridor.

Jack switched on his headlamp. What it revealed was an image of horror, a spectre drawn from the worst nightmare. Looming out of the darkness was the white-shrouded form of a hanging man, the arms dangling like some ghoulish puppet, the face lolling and grotesque as it leered through long-dead eyes.

It was the very apparition of death, the guardian of a tomb where no living being belonged. Jack suddenly felt chilled to the bone.

Katya recovered herself and straightened. Cautiously the three of them edged into the room. The body was wearing the dark serge of a Soviet naval officer and was suspended by the neck from a wire noose. The floor was strewn with discarded food cartons and other debris.