Maximov released the brake, then gripped the crank and strained to turn it. ‘It won’t move!’
‘Shake it loose!’
With a growl, Maximov pushed and pulled at the recalcitrant crank. It screeched horribly, then began to turn. ‘It’s moving!’
‘Great, keep it up!’ As Chase ascended, the jib slowly rotated, flecks of rust falling on him like sharp-edged snowflakes. He looked across at the Typhoon. The bow had already passed him, the massive submarine picking up speed.
A crunch of metal echoed inside the pen. Some of the electrical cables had torn loose from the sub, but others were holding firm, the pylon buckling as they were pulled taut. Sparks flew as the cables twisted against each other, then the pylon’s legs gave way and the whole thing crashed to the dock, dragged along as the submarine moved into open water.
‘Come on, come on!’ Chase yelled. The jib had turned through about thirty degrees, but he needed it to go much further. He reached the jib, clambering along its top as Maximov kept working the crank. The Typhoon’s missile tubes rolled past below. ‘Faster!’
Maximov roared as he pushed harder. The jib picked up speed, but Chase realised he was out of time. The submarine’s sail had almost reached him, and by the time he got to the end of the jib and climbed down the cable the stern would have passed.
Instead he ran along the jib.
One slip and he would fall to his death. But he kept running, feet clanking along the weather-worn metal until he reached the end - and leapt from it, arms and legs still pumping as he flew through the air . . .
Chase slammed against the rear end of the sail, slithering down the steep black wall to crash on to the rounded hump at its base. He rolled painfully down it, ending up skidding on his back down the wet stern. Barely missing the edge of the hole cut in the hull, he picked up speed on the sloping casing, one of the churning propellers rising out of the water just ahead—
His hand bashed against a recess in the hull. He reflexively grabbed it, swinging around with his feet just short of the enormous bronze blades. Freezing spray sluiced over his body. Gasping, he pulled himself forward.
An ominous crack. He looked towards the sail . . .
Another overstretched power cable ripped loose from the reactor. Chase ducked as it whipped over his head and tore a chunk as big as a man out of the rudder before splashing into the sea. The pylon was still being dragged along the dock, sweeping up smaller objects as it went.
It reached the crane. Maximov, who had been watching Chase’s battle for survival in frozen fascination, suddenly realised the danger he was in and fled along the jetty as the wrecked pylon crashed into the crane behind him. The Typhoon was now moving at near running pace, the impact shaking the crane to its foundations. Another cable tore free in a shower of sparks - but the remainder were firmly secured, thirty thousand tons of submarine jolting as if it had run into a wall.
With an earsplitting screech, the crane was wrenched from the jetty and toppled over. It fell into the water, pulling the pylon with it. Both broken structures sank, sweeping the cables across the submarine’s stern.
Chase pulled himself up and vaulted them as they sliced over the recess. ‘Jesus!’ he gasped, seeing them pile up against the ring shrouding the propeller. The safety feature had done its job - not that it helped him. The Typhoon was now clear of the dock and heading out to sea at an increasing pace.
He staggered up the stern and reached the gap in the casing. The Typhoon consisted of two long titanium pressure hulls mounted side by side like a catamaran, enclosed in an outer steel shell. Looking down, he saw where the inner hulls had been cut open to facilitate the decommissioned vessel’s new life as a mobile nuclear power station, cables running through them. Some of the gaps were large enough for him to fit through. He dropped into the opening.
Behind him, unnoticed, water crept up the stern as the weight of the wreckage being dragged behind the submarine pulled its back end lower and lower, waves sloshing towards the hole in the hull . . .
Chase slipped through a gap to land on the deck beneath - and found himself facing a huge radiation warning symbol on a bulkhead. He instinctively clapped both hands protectively over his groin and looked for the quickest possible way out of the reactor room.
An open hatch led forward. He moved through it, the low thrum of the driveshafts turning the screws fading behind him. There were no other sounds of activity. Presumably the sub only had a skeleton crew, just enough to operate the reactors rather than actually take it out to sea. Either they had got off, or Mitchell had killed them.
He guessed the sub’s control room would be under the sail, where its commander could use the periscopes. He headed forward until he found a ladder to the next deck, and crept up it.
The faint sound of someone talking reached him. Mitchell. Chase couldn’t make out what he was saying, but from his clipped tone it sounded as though he was issuing orders. Was he sending a radio message?
He quietly advanced through what turned out to be the sonar room, seeing the first physical sign of Mitchell’s presence, a splatter of blood on one of the pale cream walls. A few more steps and a body came into view, a man slumped over a hatch entrance. A large wrench lay beside him. Chase picked it up - any weapon was better than none - and peered through the hatch.
It was the control room. Two long tubes ran down from the ceiling through large circular holes in the deck to the level below: the sub’s periscopes, both lowered. At the front of the room was a pair of seats before banks of instruments and almost aircraft-like controls. Another corpse was slumped in one, blood trickling down the seat back. Mitchell must have forced the luckless sailor to get the sub under way before killing him.
Chase couldn’t yet see Mitchell - but he could see Nina. Still unconscious, she lay in a corner beneath a bank of computer screens. He watched for a few seconds until he was sure that she was breathing. Then he heard movement from the other side of the room, and slowly leaned further round the hatch.
Mitchell stood before what he assumed was the communications console, his back to him. The XM-201 was propped beside him. As Chase watched, the American unzipped the pack containing Excalibur and took out the sword to examine it.
Chase assessed the situation. If he could get close enough, he could smack Mitchell over the head with the wrench and knock him out - or kill him, either was fine. But the rifle was within easy reach of the DARPA agent, and apart from a faint hiss of static from a radio the control room was all but silent. It would only take one footstep, one slap of wet clothing, for him to be heard.
There wasn’t much choice. He couldn’t wait for ever - Mitchell definitely wasn’t planning to sail the Typhoon all the way back to the States. Someone was meeting him, either a ship or another submarine.
Hefting the wrench, he stepped through the hatch and moved behind the nearer of the two periscopes. Glancing through the hole in the deck he could see the handgrips and eyepieces in a compartment below, ready to rise at the push of a button. Mitchell was about ten feet away. Close enough to rush him?
A small noise caught Mitchell’s attention. Chase ducked back, but it wasn’t him the American had heard. The sound had been a faint scrape of metal. Mitchell stared intently at a piece of equipment resembling a weighing scale, low-tech in the computerised control centre. Chase realised it was a mechanical inclinometer: a weighted pendulum, a simple but near-foolproof way to determine the sub’s angle of climb or descent. As he watched, the pointer slowly moved. The Typhoon’s bow was gradually rising - or the stern was sinking.
A chill ran through Chase as the implications of that hit home, but then Mitchell took a step closer to the inclinometer, Excalibur still in his hands. His eyes were fixed on the pointer.
Chase saw his chance and crept round the periscope behind him. Mitchell turned, about to put Excalibur down on the console - and his eyes locked on to Chase’s, reflected in the sword’s polished blade.
Chase jumped back behind the periscope as Mitchell snatched up the rifle. He expected gunfire, but nothing came. He quickly realised why. Even if Mitchell switched to armour-piercers, shooting the thick titanium casing of the periscope would result in a potentially lethal spray of ricochets.
But he only needed take a few steps round the periscope to have a direct line of fire.
‘God
Chase slapped his hand on the periscope controls.
With a hiss of hydraulics, the metal tube rapidly rose into position. Chase dropped, hurling the wrench under the bottom of the periscope. It cracked into Mitchell’s knee and clanged to the floor.
Mitchell staggered back in pain. Chase rushed at him. The rifle came back down, but too late, as Chase
