J.F. Kirwan - 37 Hours

Sergei groped for the keys in his pocket, but Nadia raised her pistol and fired at the chain between the man’s cuffs. The prisoner slumped to the floor, Sergei breaking his fall.

Sergei spoke to the prisoner again. ‘What did you mean we’re going to join you?’

The man simply stared into space.

She glanced at Sergei. ‘Cyanide?’

He shook his head. ‘TTX.’

She knew it, the deadly toxin from the blue-ringed octopus. ‘It’ll block his ability to breathe.’

‘I know what it does, Nadia.’ Sergei faced her. He spoke quickly. ‘There’s one warhead missing. And he must have set some kind of device to sabotage the sub, blow it up or take it over the ledge.’

‘He’s not going to tell us where it is.’ She knelt next to the prisoner. ‘You said you knew my father. When he was working with the military?’

His body had grown still. Paralysis was setting in. His diaphragm would stop working, and he’d suffocate. But his eyes turned to hers, his speech slurred. ‘After,’ he said. ‘Eight…years ago.’

That couldn’t be right. Her father died eleven years ago. His face took on a blue tinge.

‘Where?’ She thought about mouth-to-mouth to keep him alive, but the toxin…

He stared at her intently. ‘Eyes…like his.’ He tried to breathe in, but couldn’t. ‘T…ch.’ His body trembled once, then his eyes glazed, and the air came out of him in a long sigh, like a deflating balloon.

‘He was the one who killed two of my men, despite the gas,’ Sergei said. ‘We need to find the case. It’s ten to midnight. My guess is there’s a device set to blow the sub at midnight.’

‘Wait, slow down. Case? What case?’

Sergei wasn’t really listening. His eyes darted everywhere, as if searching the compartment. ‘If the warhead is still outside –’

‘It can’t be. What would be the point? It’s gone, somehow. Which is where we need to be.’

He gazed around him again. She understood. This was his sub, his command. And his tomb? Go down with the ship and all that bullshit? Sergei didn’t seem the type.

‘We have to find it, Nadia.’

She grabbed his arm. ‘Sergei, what case? What are you talking about?’

His gaze turned back to her, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Of course, why would you know?’ He took a breath, and spoke quickly. ‘Each warhead has a series of arming codes, exactly for eventualities like this. Even if you steal a warhead, you can’t arm it. Best you’ll have is a dirty bomb. The arming codes are kept in a reinforced steel case, like a briefcase. Only the Commander and the Executive Officer can access it. And it’s gone.’

‘Do we know if the warhead – or any of the others – have been armed?’

He shook his head.

Shit.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘The warhead is probably long gone. But there are still eleven warheads on board. If there’s a bomb, it’ll be an unholy mess.’

‘He said bottom of the ocean. The sub was obviously grounded on a cliff edge for a reason.’

He nodded, frowning. ‘So, something to tip it over the edge.’

She imagined the sub toppling over the cliff, the two of them trapped inside while it plunged downwards like a stone, until pressure or impact cracked its hull. She recalled watching the sled dive downwards on full thrust. And then it came to her. An image of the sub rose in her mind, the first thing she’d seen. In truth, the second.

The sub’s massive propeller.

‘What if it’s not a bomb? The engines… If they started the propeller…’

His brow creased further, then flattened. ‘The virus you uploaded stopped the main engine room computers. But there’s an auxiliary control room back near the propeller. Quick, this way.’

She ran behind Sergei as fast as she could through chamber after chamber. A hundred metres, trying not to trip or smash her head. He was much taller but knew his ship backwards. She had a hard time keeping up. On a good day she could run a hundred metres in fourteen seconds, but this was taking for ever, having to open a hatch every ten metres.

At last they reached the final hatch, the one to the auxiliary engine room that controlled the sub’s propeller. She glanced at her dive watch. Two minutes to midnight. Sergei gripped the hand wheel and tugged. It wouldn’t budge. A stoic, heavily bearded face appeared at the porthole, taking on a grim, twisted smirk when he saw Sergei. He pointed to his watch and mouthed something she couldn’t decipher, but didn’t really need to. Clearly he wasn’t going anywhere, except down, and he intended to take them along for the ride. He turned his back and began flipping switches.

‘Is there any way we can override him?’

‘No,’ Sergei said. ‘We have to go back to the conning tower.’ He punched the porthole with his fist. ‘ Fuck!’ he shouted. ‘Dammit, we have to abandon ship.’ He spun on his heel and bolted back the way they’d come.

Still chasing Sergei, she heard the deep stutter of the diesel engines starting up, a bass growl that accelerated into a hammering, the steel floor vibrating, setting her teeth on edge. Soon, the blades of the propeller would start to turn. Initially the submarine’s twenty-five thousand tons of mass would fix it on the ground, but as the engines rose to maximum power, the propeller would nudge it over.

Five compartments later, Sergei stopped, and flung open two cupboard doors. Inside were one-size-fits-all bail-out suits, with full-face masks, and small air bottles that looked like they were for children. He tossed a set to Nadia.

‘Ditch the suit, just put on the mask; check that it fits.’

It did, barely. ‘How do we get out?’

‘Viktor is coming,’ he said.

The engine’s pitch rose, and there was another sound now, like a helicopter underwater. The sub’s propeller blades were turning.

Sergei grabbed her hand. ‘This way. Leave all the doors open.’

She didn’t get it. For a submariner it was practically second nature to seal hatches behind you, just in case, to stop the whole sub being flooded should it spring a leak. She added it to her list of questions for later, hoping there would be a ‘later’.

The sub began to judder, the engine noise rising to a high-pitched whine. The propeller whirred like a dentist’s drill. And then it happened. The ship moved. A small, juddering lurch forward. Sergei stopped and tapped something into the dive computer on his wrist. She hoped Viktor was receiving the message, whatever it was. Sergei looked her way as he made the final tap.

The explosion almost knocked her off her feet, as a booming blast of air cannoned around the close quarters. Suddenly knee-deep in seawater, she waded to the hatch entrance to the conning tower section. Water jetted in with the ferocity of a rocket engine. She fought the instinct to run.

This was their way out.

‘Put your mask on,’ Sergei yelled.

She did, checking none of her hair was trapped under the rubber seals, securing the straps behind her head, pulling them as tight as they’d go.

The sub lurched forward again. Stopped. And then. No, no, no! The water, chest height, began running away from her, towards the front end. The sub began to tilt forward. Sergei dived into the broiling water and was gone. Water continued to thunder into the room, the level rising quickly, to her shoulders, her neck. It splashed over her mask, and then her ears and head were underwater, the sounds suddenly muffled, the gushing of water shifting to a deep grumbling. The air cylinder wouldn’t last long. She needed to get out. Right now.

And then she saw Sergei, on the opposite side of the room. He was closing the hatch. It made sense: water flooding the forward compartments would tip the sub further, whereas if it flooded the rear, it could delay the sub going over the edge. But another lurch confirmed the worst. The sub was on its way to a deep grave. The faucet eased off, then stopped. The chamber was full. She swam towards the hole in the ceiling. The sub began to move forward and tilt further at the same time. Seizing the ragged edges of the hole, she pulled herself through, and gripped a rung of the conning tower ladder. She glanced at her dive computer to check the depth of the dark water around her. Forty metres.