“All ahead flank,” the captain ordered. “Full down on the bow planes.”
The submarine broached anyway, broke the surface. Then the water pouring back into the tanks took effect, and the boat got enough way on for the bow and stern planes to get a grip on the water. They helped pull her back under. “Watch it, Chief,” the captain said sharply, well aware that if they lost control now and drove the sub’s bow into the mud, they would probably have to abandon ship. The chief knew his boat. He got her stabilized and let her sink to periscope depth. “Up scope,” Pavel Saratov ordered, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. After a quick 360-degree sweep, the captain said, almost as an afterthought, “Perhaps we should stop engines, Mr. Krasin, wait for the Spetsnaz divers. They will not be pleased if we leave without them.”
The XO winked the OOD. “Stop engines.”
Saratov walked the scope around again, taking his time, looking carefully. Well, he could see the lights of the refinery, the tankers at the tanker pier, the ING carrier. Yokohama glowed in the misty darkness. Several dozen anchored ships were in view. The lights of Tokyo farther north were invisible in the misting rain and fog. He saw no ships or boats anchored close by. Saratov backed off from the scope and gestured with his palm for it to be lowered. “Gentlemen, I suggest we surface and collect our swimmers.”
The OOD gave the necessary orders, and the submarine rose slowly from the sea.
Martos was very tired. Filimonov had not moved since he knocked him out, and the current was running toward the entrance of the bay, which meant Martos had to swim north constantly in order to remain more or less in one place.
He had not managed to remain in that one place. When the submarine surfaced, he was at least a half mile south of it, swimming toward it while towing Filimonov. He spit out the mouthpiece. “It wouldn’t hurt”—he took a breath—“for you to help … swim a little…, you large piece … of horse’s dung.”
Filimonov remained motionless. Martos knew he had just dinged his friend four or five times with the butt end of his knife, hardly enough to stun a mouse. This hardheaded ox had been hit harder than that in barracks brawls and never even blinked. He heard the submarine break water. Heard the splash of a large object and heard the sucking sound as it went back under. He didn’t hear it surface the second time, but he heard the metallic clanging of the conning tower hatch being thrown open. He was already swimming in that direction, dragging Filimonov. “You foolish…, simple…, son of a bitch! Help me.”
Finally he stopped. Ensuring that Filimonov’s head didn’t go under, he shouted, “Hey! Over here.”
They would never hear him. He had a flashlight on his belt, so he reached for it. Gone, probably in the fight. Filimonov’s light…, still there. Something unnatural about the big man. Martos turned the flashlight on and waved it in the general direction of the sub. “Viktor, speak to me. Say something, my friend.”
He shined the flashlight in Viktor’s face. The glare of the light on the white skin took getting used to. It was several seconds before Martos’s eyes could focus. Filimonov’s eyes were open, unfocused. They did not track the light. The pupils did not respond. Viktor Filimonov was dead. What? How … “Viktor, you…, you …”
The sub glided up. The wash pushed him away from it. Two men on deck threw a line. Keeping a firm grip on Filimonov’s wet suit, Martos wrapped the line once around his wrist and called, “Pull us aboard.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Grab him. Pull him aboard.”
After they pulled Filimonov from the water, they dragged Martos onto the slimy steel deck. He was so tired he could barely summon strength to stand. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s dead. Get him below.”
The sailors lowered Filimonov’s body through the torpedo reloading hatch. Martos was still on deck when one of the large storage tanks at the refinery exploded. At this distance the noise was just a pop, but the rising fireball looked spectacular, even against the background lights of Yokosuka. “The captain wants to see you, on the bridge,” someone told him. Filimonov’s body lay on the deck walkway, between the racks holding the spare torpedoes. The corpsman was examining it. Martos made his way aft. From the control room he climbed into the conning tower, then on up the ladder onto the tiny bridge, or cockpit, atop the sail. Pavel Saratov was watching the receding refinery through his binoculars. “Sir.”
“How did it go?”
“We set the charges. Filimonov killed a guard — a woman. Cut her throat. He became morose. We fought. I thought I knocked him out. Apparently, I killed him.”
Saratov shifted his attention from the fires of the refinery, which was receding behind, to the lights of a ship far ahead, off the port bow. “Come right ten degrees,” he said to the sailor beside him, who was wearing a sound- powered telephone headset. The sailor repeated the order into the headset, then confirmed, “Right ten, sir.”
Martos wanted to get it off his chest. “When he was a boy, maybe seven or eight, Viktor Filimonov’s mother was killed. In Odessa. Some sailor slashed her. She,vas a whore. The sailor sliced her eighty-nine times. She bled to death.”
“So …” the captain said. “The authorities took Viktor to identify his mother’s body. I don’t think he ever forgot how she looked, sliced to ribbons, her entrails coming out, blood everywhere … Sometimes he talked about it.”
“I want to hear about this, later,” the captain said. “You did a good job on the refinery. It is burning nicely. I wanted you to know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you mean to kill your partner?”
“No, sir. Absolutely not.”
“We’ll talk later. You may go below.”
Martos went.
The captain studied the ship off the port bow. It looked small, about fifteen thousand tons. Not worth a torpedo. They could do much better. “Not this one,” he said to the talker standing beside him. “All ahead two- thirds.” The talker repeated the order, and in seconds Pavel Saratov felt the diesels respond. Too bad about the swimmer. Several miles behind another fireball rose out of the refinery complex. The wind in his hair felt good. Saratov inhaled deeply, savoring the musky aroma of tidal flats and salty sea air and the tang of the land.
Martos was in the tiny galley eating bread when the corpsman found him. The diesel engines made the surfaced boat throb. There was just enough swell inside the bay to make it pitch and roll a bit. “Look at this,” the corpsman said. He opened his hand. “He had this between his teeth.”
It was a red plastic capsule, waterproof, but ruptured. “Poison,” Martos whispered. “Poison?”
“A suicide pill. He must have had it in his mouth.”
“Why would …”
“He must have been thinking about it,” Martos said slowly. “Maybe he accidentally bit it when I whacked him on the head. You bite it, death is nearly instantaneous.”
The corpsman looked at Martos strangely, then turned away. “An accident,” Martos murmured to himself. “He must have put it in his mouth as we sat there waiting … “Oh damn!”
The reporter’s name was Christine something. She looked like a caricature. Her hair was immaculately coiffed and lacquered so heavily that it reflected the television lights. She wore some kind of horrible safari jacket, something discount stores sell for two-thirds off the day after Christmas. Her makeup was heavily layered to cover the deep lines that radiated around her eyes. Caked, gaudy lipstick made her mouth look like an open wound. She glanced once at the camera, then stood staring at Bob Cassidy, waiting. She was the pool reporter, chosen by her colleagues to ask the questions because Cassidy had been willing to subject his pilots to only one interview. The television lights were hot. A trickle of sweat ran down Cassidy’s face. He wiped it away. Someone must have said something to the reporter through her earphone, because she started talking. “Colonel, I understand you are leading the Americans hired to fly the F-22’s?”
He nodded, once. “If I may ask, why you?”
They were looking for a bastard without a family, and they found me. He didn’t say that, of course. “I volunteered.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“How many Americans are with you?”
“About one hundred and fifty.”
“When do you plan to go to Russia?”
“Soon.”
