37 Hours. J.F. Kirwan

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СКАЧАТЬ It would wreak havoc with the sub’s systems – lighting, aircon, engines. Most importantly, the weapons launch and guidance software would be erased. It would be the distraction Sergei needed; otherwise he’d be killed as soon as he tried to enter the sub.

      Once she uploaded the virus, Sergei and two others would enter via the conning tower, though he didn’t explain how. Sergei had an identical black USB key – the antivirus. He went over the plan a second time. Both times he was vague about what would happen to the terrorists. But something had been bugging Nadia since the outset.

      ‘Why me?’ she asked.

      He pointed at the torpedo tube at the front of the sub.

      Her size. Although a man could get into the tube, and even be launched by it, only someone very small could move around and manipulate controls inside, and lift their head to see what they were doing – hence the elaborate measurement foreplay earlier. But still… ‘Not enough of a reason,’ she said, because for Russian military, it wasn’t.

      Sergei nodded to the colonel, whose name she still didn’t know, and likely never would.

      ‘Three additional reasons,’ he said. His voice was higher-pitched than Sergei’s, but sharp, used to command, the type of guy who knew the rules backwards and could dice you with them if you didn’t do as ordered. ‘First, you are all Black Ops. We cannot risk this leaking out. Imagine the headlines. Any one of you leaks anything, we’ll bury you for ever. And if you are captured or killed, we will disavow you.’

      It figured. Best of both worlds.

      But he had a point. Nadia imagined the headlines: Terrorists seize nuclear sub, a dozen warheads at their disposal. The political wound would cut deep, even if resolved overnight. Putin would lose face. Heads like this particular colonel’s would roll.

      ‘Second, your performance in the Rose affair had already come to our notice. You are resourceful, not afraid to kill, not afraid to sacrifice.’

      So, her antics back in the Scillies were now a matter of record. She’d like to see those files.

      ‘The third reason…is your father.’

      Her heart skipped a beat. ‘What?’

      The young colonel cast her a searching look. ‘He was Spetsnaz, but he also wrote pamphlets under a pseudonym. The Black Cossack. He wrote a manifesto on why the Crimea should remain Ukrainian, not Russian. He foresaw the future. His writing is still quoted today, but now with his real name: Lakshev. Your name. So if you are captured…’

      She stared at him. Though he’d tried to suppress it, when he’d used the male form of the family name, the acid in his tone had come through loud and clear. Had he known her father? Unlikely – too young.

      The colonel gave her a searching look. ‘You didn’t know?’ he said.

      She shook her head. Her father had never mentioned it. They’d lived in Uspekh, not that far from Ukraine geographically. She remembered he used to write, but he’d kept it all in a locked drawer. My secret diary, he’d once told her. And after his death, her mother had burned it all. So, if they really were Ukrainian freedom fighters – or even Ukrainian Secret Service – maybe her name would cut some ice. But it seemed like a long shot. It was her turn to search the colonel’s face. There was something else, something he wasn’t telling her. But clearly he’d finished.

      Of course there was the real reason. She was expendable. Just released from a secret prison. No one would mourn her except Katya. But she had no intention of dying on her first day of freedom. She sat up, gripped the edges of the sub layout schematic and spoke to Sergei.

      ‘I’m going to go through the plan again. You will correct me on the tiniest detail I get wrong.’

      He nodded, a faint smile lifting the corners of his mouth. Her eyes hovered for a moment on those coarse seafarer’s lips, then she cleared her throat, and began.

      ***

      The toilet was cramped even for her. But outside there were too many people. Too much contact after solitary. She’d wanted to see Katya, then try to find Jake, either to make love with him, or to slap him really hard, probably both; she hadn’t decided the order yet.

      It was three days before her birthday. She studied her reflection in the mirror, the short dark hair, her grey eyes. Not much to work with. Prison had changed her. The softness Jake had known was gone. Maybe she’d lost her looks, or whatever Jake had found interesting in her. He might not want to see her. Two years. Two fucking years. He’d have found someone else. One of his exes – Lorne or Elise – might have reclaimed him. A hundred other girls.

      It’s not fair, Katya had said earlier on the plane. Damned right. But they were Russian. History had stripped the belief in fairness from the gene pool a long time ago. What had her father said a thousand times? Make the choice right. Especially when you don’t have one.

      She came back out and signalled to Katya that she wanted a private word, which in this case meant shouting to each other in the noisy corridor between the fore-section and the main hold. She told her about Jake, whom Katya had met briefly on the cargo ship that had turned into a bloodbath.

      ‘I’m so happy you found someone during that awful time.’

      ‘If I don’t –’

      ‘You will.’

      ‘If I don’t… I want you to meet with Jake. He deserves to know…’ To know what? She’d leave it up to Katya, who was better with words.

      ‘All right, Nad. But you will come back. You’re strong, like Papasha.’ And then Katya clearly realised what she’d just said – because one day their father hadn’t come back.

      They went back to the cabin. Sergei got up and knocked on the cockpit door. It opened. He talked to the pilot, and Nadia glimpsed the stormy weather outside, another factor stacking up against them.

      Sergei came back in. ‘Twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘Suit up.’

      She grabbed the thin cylinder of compressed air that might just sustain her long enough to reach the interlocks on the torpedo tube’s inner hatch. She had a feeling someone would be waiting for her on the other side. Armed, naturally.

      ‘I’ll need a knife,’ she said to Sergei as they entered the bay where the other divers were assembling everything, including voluminous grey parachutes for the sleds. She’d never jumped out of a plane before.

      ‘Absolutely,’ he said. He handed her a small, short, stubby one, flat-bladed at the top, with a sharpened edge. It looked useful in many ways, except as a serious weapon.

      As she strapped it in its sheath to her inner thigh – so it would be out of the way inside the torpedo tube – she recalled Jake’s obsession with diving knives. She wished he was there, but was also glad he wasn’t, as she didn’t need any distractions right now.

      Some of the fear dropped out of her, displaced by adrenaline. She imagined Jake watching. He’d laugh, tell her to look on the bright side: she was going to dive a nuclear sub, an opportunity many wreck divers would relish. She smiled, and as she stripped down to her underwear, still thinking of Jake, Sergei’s eyes hooked hers. She swallowed, turned away from him and squeezed into her wetsuit. Evidently she hadn’t lost СКАЧАТЬ