rowing, Doctor, I would like to be closer”
Webb was in the dispensary with Woodman and Medic Second Class Justin Owens when Layman and Anders carried D’Angelo’s body inside and laid it on the operating table. “Christ” he said, bile rising at the back of his throat. D’Angelo was in rictus, his tongue protruding. His eyes were open and his face held an expression of horror or extreme pain. II Are the others like this, sir” Owens asked, bending over D’Angelo and studying his eyes. The kid was huge, he had played football in high school, but he had a gentle touch. “All of them” Layman replied, looking at Webb. “Where are they, Earl” Webb asked softly. “Officers’ wardroom”
Owens was looking up. “What is it, Justin” Webb asked.
“Skipper, I’ve only read about this. Saw a film. But unless my guess is way off, I’d say it was gas”
“Gas? What kind of gas”
“Nerve gas Labun, or something like that” Owens turned back to D’Angelo’s body. “He’s got the symptoms. No apparent wounds or other trauma” He felt the base of D’Angelo’s skull, his neck, and chest.
“Dispensary, conn, is the skipper back there” the comms speaker squawked. Webb turned and hit the switch. “Webb, here”
“Sir, COMSUBMED is pressing. They want to know our situation. “Tell them to stand by. What’s the status of the auxiliary to our south”
“Looks like she’s dead in the water now, sir”
“Have you got that intercept course plotted”
“Aye, aye, sir”
“Jesus Christ” Owens swore, and Webb turned around. The medic had opened D’Angelo’s shirt. A huge gash had been cut in the quartermaster’s gut and had been roughly sewn up. Webb could hardly believe his eyes.
Layman’s mouth had dropped open, and one of the crewmen who had helped carry the bodies aboard stood in the doorway shaking his head.
“Skipper” the speaker blared. “Stand by” Webb snapped, keying the comm.
“What the hell happened, Justin”
“Christ, I don’t know, sir. Someone cut him open and sewed him back up”
“Is that what killed him” Layman asked. “I don’t think so” Owens said.
“Check the others, Earl” Webb said. Layman brushed past the crewman and hurried the few steps to the wardroom. “Open him up” Webb ordered.
Owens was breathing through his mouth, and his face was red. “Yes, sir”
he said. He pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and got a scalpel from the autoclave. Carefully he began cutting the running stitches in D’Angelo’s gut, one by one. His hands were shaking. Layman came back slamming the flat of his palm against the bulkhead. “Every one of them, Skipper. They cut them open and stitched them back together, like fucking stuffed turkeys. I I “Someone was aboard that cruiser” Webb said. Layman looked up, sudden understanding dawning in his eyes. “You’re goddamned right they were. When they were done, they dumped Tony and the others overboard, set the cruiser on fire, and got the hell off the ship.
Probably a rubber raft, so we wouldn’t paint them on radar. And they would have kept the cruiser between us and them until they got far enough out so that we couldn’t see them”
“That auxiliary to our south will come back for them” Webb said” But why … ” Layman started to ask, but Owens shouted something as he jumped back away from the operating table and dropped the scalpel to the deck.
Webb spun around. The wound in D’Angelo’s gut was fully open.
Something had been stuffed inside his body. Webb got the impression that it might be a cylinder of some sort. Eight or ten inches long, perhaps a couple of inches in diameter. All of a sudden he knew!
“Gas.” he shouted. The cylinder in D’Angelo’s body made a popping noise and began to hiss furiously.
Kurshin’s wristwatch beeped softly at the forty-minute mark. They had gotten within one hundred yards of the submarine. II Stop rowing” he told the doctor, and he raised the AK74 to his shoulder, scoping the boat from stern to bow The after hatch had been closed, as he expected it would be. There was no sign of any activity on deck, nor was the boat showing any lights. Slowly raising his aim up the broad sail, he could see the officer and lookout as before One had his back toward them, the other was looking this way. The small rubber raft bounced and moved on the small seas, the targets weaving in and out of the scope’s field of Vision. But he had made successful shots in conditions far worse than these. His watch beeped again after twenty seconds at the same moment the lookout’s head was centered in the reticle of the assault rifle’s scope. He squeezed off a shot, the noise shockingly loud on the quiet sea. The seaman’s body was shoved forward against the rail, his head exploding in a mass of blood, bone, and gray matter. Immediately Kurshin shifted his aim slightly left as the officer started to turn and rear back. He squeezed off a second shot, driving the officer forward and out of view beneath the level of the armor steel coaming. If something had gone wrong in the dispensary aboard, the alarm would be sounded now, but as Kurshin kept his aim on the bridge there was no movement aboard the boat, no sounds, no lights, nothing. After a full thirty seconds he lowered the rifle. “The boat is dead” he said softly. Even he was impressed and moved by what they had done and by the ease with which they had accomplished it. “The boat itself is of no real interest to us, Arkasha” Baranov had told him. “Although there are certain technical and design specifications our people would like you to learn for them, we cannot risk starting a war over it”
“These boys you are giving me are going to want to keep him. Will they be able to contain themselves so that they can operate the boat”
“That will be up to you. But believe me, they are capable. “Five men and a drunken doctor.”
“And you, Arkasha. Do not fail me … this time” Kurshin glanced over at Velikanov. The man’s lips were half parted and he seemed to be mumbling something. Aboard the cruiser he had been frightened and then disgusted.
Now he was neither, he was in awe. “It’s time” Kurshin said softly. The doctor blinked and looked at him. “We have no idea what messages they passed to their fleet command headquarters. We must be out of here within the hour” Without being told to do so, Velikanov took up the oars and began rowing them toward the submarine, lying dark and menacing in the water. Already the flames aboard the cruiser had begun to die down.
The ship was listing a few degrees to starboard. Within the next few hours she would probably be at the bottom of the sea, though it didn’t really matter; there was nothing aboard now to connect her with the KGB.
The nerve gas and cylinders were American made. They had been stolen more than a year ago from the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Nor was there anything to connect them in Naples, if the KGB’s Rome rezident had done his job correctly. Kurshin had been aboard Soviet submarines before, but he was still impressed by the sheer size of the American boat floating in the water, her black sail rising up out of the broad, gently sloping hull. The submarine was slightly low at the stern.
Kurshin directed Velikanov to approach the boat well aft of the sail so that they would be able to climb aboard. Forward she was too high out of the water, her hull too sharply sloping for them to get up on the deck.
Minutes later they bumped gently against the Indianapolis’s hull, the waves shoving them half up on the deck. Kurshin scrambled aboard with the raft’s painter and his AK74. Dr. Velikanov passed up the equipment bag, and then clambered on deck himself. For a long beat Kurshin just stood there in the darkness. He cocked an ear to listen, but there were no sounds. Taking out his knife, he pulled the rubber raft up a little higher on deck, and then sliced the fabric with a loud pop. The little boat, almost completely deflated, floated away. They were committed now.
Slinging the rifle over his shoulder and hefting the equipment bag, Kurshin hurried forward, Velikanov right behind him, passing beneath the broad hydroplanes jutting out from the side of the sail.
There was no access into the submarine without help from inside, except from the bridge deck. Kurshin laid down his rifle and pulled a grappling hook and line from his equipment bag. Standing back, he tossed the hook up over the top of the sail, the grapples clanging loudly against the steel plating, scraping against the coaming, and then coming free.
Kurshin gathered up the line for a second try and tossed the hook up again. This time it caught. He tied the tail of the line to the equipment bag. Unzippering his black jumpsuit, he checked to make certain his pistol was ready to fire and free in its holster strapped against his chest. “Can you make it up this line” he asked the doctor.
