Stephen Coonts - Arctic Gold

As Dean moved, the man fired, the shot a thunderclap in the steel confines of the base passageway. The bullet struck the overhead, ricocheted with a screech, then ricocheted again off a bulkhead somewhere at Dean’s back.

“Jesus!” Dean ducked reflexively, even though the round had already screamed past. Taking aim, he triggered a round as well, and heard the bullet bouncing off one of the walls before rebounding from the bulkhead behind the other man. Something clattered on the deck ahead of Dean… the spent round, spinning as it burned off the last of its energy.

This was, he realized, a deadly shooting gallery. Handguns simply weren’t accurate beyond a range of a few yards unless the shooter was well trained. Here, though, the massively thick steel bulkheads served to channel shots all the way down the passageway… with the effect of making this a little like a shoot-out inside a sewer pipe.

Sooner or later, even the worst shot would hit something. Dean needed to end this now .

He fired three more shots in rapid succession, not trying for accuracy so much as for a storm of bouncing, ricocheting rounds that would force the Russian gunman back behind the shelter of the far bend in the passageway.

The ugly little Makarov was uncomfortable in Dean’s hand, the grip considerably thicker than what he was used to. A disengaged part of him recalled that the design enabled the shooter to handle the weapon easily while wearing heavy gloves-a necessity in the cold, long winters of Russia.

The other man dropped to the deck, writhing. A pipe running along the overhead suddenly spurted a stream of water. A second man appeared and snapped off another shot that came shrieking down the metal corridor, then pulled back out of sight. Behind him, Dean heard a sudden gasp, a cry of, “ Ah! ”

“Who’s hit?” Dean called.

“It’s Golytsin!” Kathy said.

“I’m okay!” Golytsin said. “Into the submarine! Into the submarine!”

Two men appeared around the bend in the passageway, grabbed their comrade, and dragged him back out of sight as water continued to spray into the far end of the corridor. At least, Dean thought, it wasn’t coming in with a force of half a ton per square inch; it must be a broken internal water supply.

“You can’t get away, American!” a voice yelled.

Braslov.

For answer, Dean fired twice more, deliberately aiming at the bulkhead far down the corridor in an effort to bank the shots around the corner. He heard a shriek with the second shot.

Behind him, the others had scrambled down an open hatch in the deck. Dean fired one more shot blind, then jumped into the opening, pulling down one circular hatch and dogging it, then the second.

Golytsin was already at the controls, flipping power switches and bringing the little submersible to life. “We need to leave now, ” he told the Russian. “Before they figure out how to stop us.”

“Coming online now,” Golytsin replied. Dean could hear the rising hum from astern. “Cutting the connectors now…”

There was a jolt and a sudden dropping sensation as the deck tilted sharply forward. The whine aft shrilled louder, and then the deck started to level off as Golytsin wrestled the submarine level.

Dean dropped the Makarov onto one of the narrow seats provided for passengers on the craft and squeezed forward between Kathy and Benford, peering over Golytsin’s shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Dean asked the Russian.

“For now.”

“Where’d you get hit?”

“His side,” Kathy told Dean.

“It just grazed me.” Golytsin shook his head. “I didn’t think the idiots would open fire inside the facility!”

“The walls seem pretty thick,” Dean said.

“Yes, but the water pipes, hydraulic lines, and wiring conduits are all quite vulnerable,” Golytsin replied. “We could have crippled the base!”

“I wish we had,” Dean said. He was looking at a TV monitor mounted high up on the forward bulkhead, above and between the two thick quartz portholes. The screen showed the view aft, the brightly lit stern of the upended Russian ship now receding slowly astern. “Can they come after us?”

“They might,” Golytsin acknowledged. “We’ll just have to see…”

The portholes forward showed only impenetrable blackness. The deck was tilting again, however, this time with the bow nosing higher. They were beginning their ascent: eight hundred meters, half a mile…

Dean glanced around the compartment and saw three sets of bright blue survival dry suits on the deck aft where the others had dropped them.

“Let me take the helm, Golytsin,” he said. “You three should get into your dry suits… and, Kathy? Check his wound. I don’t want him bleeding to death. Is there a first aid kit in here?”

“Port-side bulkhead,” Golytsin said.

Dean was still wearing the neoprene dry suit he’d donned for the assault on the Lebedev. Once they reached the surface, it would be best if they could stay snug and dry inside the Mir, but he didn’t know how long the little vessel’s life support would last, or how well it might ride on the surface. If they did have to abandon ship, the others stood a much better chance of surviving if they were properly garbed.

A neoprene dry suit was designed to prevent hypothermia; Dean’s suit had proven that much already. He’d been miserably hot over the past hour, especially with the athletic exertions of the past few minutes, and was sweating heavily inside the thing.

“Keep hold of this,” Golytsin told him, moving aside so he could take the joystick. He pointed at a digital readout. “That is our angle of ascent. Keep it between twenty and forty degrees.”

“Right, Admiral.”

Golytsin looked pale and drained and was clutching his right side. Dean could see blood slowly spreading beneath Golytsin’s hand.

Dean hoped they could find the Ohio up there. Even with a survival suit, Golytsin wouldn’t last long on the ice-or in this cold chamber-not when he was already going into shock.

The Mir continued its climb through darkness.

SSGN Ohio Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1208 hours, GMT-12

Captain Grenville had been wondering what had become of the Pittsburgh.

The Los Angeles-class attack submarine had accompanied the Ohio all the way up to the Arctic. They’d passed messages back and forth, of course-by radio when they both were at periscope depth and could raise a mast, and by hydrophone while at depth-but once they’d entered the AO, the Area of Operations, all hydrophone communications had ceased. Anything one of the American subs could hear underwater could be heard by Russian subs, and at an extraordinary distance.

Standard operation orders, therefore, required a communications blackout. According to the ops plan, the Pittsburgh was to have begun orbiting the AO ten miles out each time the Ohio surfaced, providing perimeter security against the Russian attack subs that were known to be in the vicinity.

Grenville stared at the patterns on Mayhew’s waterfall, realizing that what they represented was a slight decrease in noise-even the background noise of grinding ice and distant ships-just astern of the Russian Victor.

In short, Grenville was seeing what amounted to a sound-absorbing hole in the water, and the only thing that might do that was the anechoic, sound-absorbing paint on the outer hull of…

“The Pittsburgh, ” Mayhew said softly. “It’s gotta be.”

“Agreed,” Grenville said. He put out a hand to steady himself against an overhead beam as the Ohio ’s deck tilted with her turn. The Ohio had been passing the Victor, from bow to stern and off her starboard side, but not on a perfectly parallel course. Grenville had been intent on executing a maneuver known as the Williamson turn, cutting behind the Russian Victor and coming around on an exact reciprocal of his initial course-which would put him squarely in the Russian’s wake.