George Wallace - Hunter Killer [Movie Tie-In]

He had to leave the Command Center at once. Admiral Durov knew from long experience that he must not ignore his finely honed sixth sense.

He grabbed his fur hat and struggled into his heavy bridge coat. Zhurkov looked up. The admiral was preparing to leave? Now, when the operation was at such a critical juncture?

“Should I call your driver, Admiral?” he asked. “I’ll grab my coat and go with you.”

“No, Vasiliy. I’m just going out to get a breath of fresh air,” Durov shot back over his shoulder. “You stay here and keep me informed.” The aide would think he was a foolish old man if Durov voiced his concerns. Better to make an excuse.

The old sailor stepped through the heavy steel door and started up the stairs to the ground floor, two stories above the Command Center.

His Zil limo was sitting at the curb. Maybe a short drive would be better than a walk, he decided.

He was crossing the sidewalk, reaching for the car’s door handle, when he saw a flash of silver out of the corner of his eye. The first Tomahawk plunged sharply downward, almost too quick to be seen. It drove deep into the bowels of the command building and detonated with an awful flood of fire. The shock wave from the explosion threw Durov sprawling on the frozen ground. He rose to his knees just as the second bird detonated behind him.

He stumbled again as he tried to climb into the Zil, then managed to dive in behind the wheel. The ignition key was there. The car started on the first try. He shot down the street before another rocket could fall on his head.

Flames and falling debris filled his rearview mirror and rattled on the car’s roof as a third missile plunged through the same hole as the first two and exploded. Durov jammed his foot down harder on the accelerator. He had to get away, get to someplace where he could give the command to his submarines in the White Sea to begin firing.

He raced around an icy turn. The heavy car slid sideways, clipping the corner of a building. Somehow he got it straightened. The big automobile rocketed down the street toward the waterfront.

He gritted his teeth as he drove fast toward the one spot where he felt most at home. There, at the submarine pens, the symbol of the awesome naval power he had built, in spite of the meddling of his country’s weak-kneed government. It was even more perfect that his ultimate command to commence firing the nuclear missiles toward their targets would come from the waterfront, overlooking the harbor and the fjord.

His instincts had been right again. Somehow they had found him and tried to kill him. Well, they missed. He would show them. All he needed to do was get to his barge down at the pier. Once there, he could escape this hail of rockets and call in the attack that would devastate Moscow. That would give him the victory he knew was rightfully his.

An unbelievably intense pain knifed through his head. His vision blurred and tunneled. He seemed to be looking through a long pipe.

Alexander Durov could not move his arms. His legs were locked, rigid, and his foot was stuck hard on the accelerator pedal. At first, he thought some debris from the explosion had hit him on the head, but the pain was so intense, the paralysis so complete, it had to be something else.

A blood vessel deep inside his brain had torn loose, causing a massive stroke.

Admiral Durov was paralyzed but still crisply conscious, aware of all that was happening around him. His body refused to respond to any command that his mind tried to send it. His limbs had mutinied.

The Zil shot down the narrow street, just missing the fire engines racing back the other way, toward the blazing crater where the Command Center had once been.

The limousine, out of control, reached the end of the street and flew across the pier. With so much momentum built up, it crashed easily through the wooden barrier at the pier’s edge, over one of the slips where his beloved new Akula submarines had been berthed only days before. The car plunged through the air and dropped hard through the skim ice. It sank into the black, oily water.

Inside the car, the water closed greedily around the old sailor. Admiral Alexander Durov could not protest, could not fight back. He could only wait, immobile, until this little corner of the sea he knew so well claimed him as its own.

Mark Stern leaned back in the car’s rear seat and tried to relax. The big Lincoln Town Car wove as best it could through the thickening afternoon traffic. The Long Island Expressway resembled a slowly moving parking lot. The driver was using every trick he knew to get down the road more quickly. It wasn’t enough for the frazzled venture capitalist.

Stern leaned forward and growled, “Can’t you make this thing go any faster?”

The driver had been listening to these complaints ever since Stern flagged him down and hopped into his car in front of the Plaza Hotel. It didn’t matter to the driver if the stiff wore a thousand-dollar suit and promised a fifty-buck tip if he got him to JFK in thirty minutes. No reason for the son of a bitch to behave like that.

“Listen, bud, we goin’ as fast as we’s can,” the driver said in his thick Bronx accent. “I ain’t losin’ my license for youse or anybody else. Youse don’t like how I’m drivin’, get your ass out an’ walk to da friggin’ airport.”

A lane opened for a few feet. The Lincoln shot toward it, only to grind to a halt again when that space closed up.

Stern sat back again and tried to relax. He didn’t know why he was in such a hurry. There was still plenty of time. The flight didn’t leave for a couple of hours. It looked as if he had made a clean getaway.

Stan Miller’s call had caught him off guard. He reported that Andretti was in custody and singing like a bird. Telling all the world about the great caper he had set up for Mark Stern.

Stern had not expected Andretti to fold so easily. In retrospect, he wondered why he had ever been so naive. The man was nothing but a sniveling drunk. There was no reason to think the fat slob would have even an ounce of backbone. But the CTO had held the keys to the kingdom. There had been no choice.

Miller was already on the run. He called from a pay phone somewhere on the New York Thruway. He was headed for Canada. The SEC deputy director told Stern that the feds would be on his tail as well, and very soon. Andretti had made certain of that. He had better run while he had a chance. Otherwise, he was looking at some very nasty jail time.

Stern managed to find a first-class seat on a Varig flight, nonstop to Rio. That would do for the first leg. Once he was safely hidden in Rio, he could plan what to do next. It was a big globe with lots of places to hide if one had the money to do so.

Traffic thinned a bit after they passed Atlantic Avenue. The ride through Jamaica was quick. The driver pulled up in front of the concrete-and-glass front of Terminal Four. Stern grabbed his carry-on bag, threw a couple of twenties over the seat, and hopped out. The driver didn’t bother to thank him for the two-dollar tip.

An hour later, Stern was sitting in Varig’s First Class Lounge, enjoying a reasonably good Scotch before boarding the flight. He relaxed. Brazil would be nice this time of year. It was late summer and the girls on the beach would be wearing very little. With the money he had stashed away in offshore accounts around the world, life on the beach could be very comfortable. The take had been nothing like what he could have made if the OptiMarx scheme had not blown up in his face, but he would still be comfortable. There was also the matter of the considerable debt he had amassed with some very bad people. He was skipping out on that. Too bad. If he covered his tracks properly, that little entanglement would eventually be forgotten as well.