Sleeping Giants (Themis Files #1)(40)

—The Saint Petersburg?

—Lada class. She’s the lead ship. Really quiet. She was designed for this sort of thing. Blowing up subs, defending a base, things like that. They must have sent her when the Akula stopped responding. Whatever she was guarding, the “reactor,” she seemed adamant about not letting us anywhere near it.

—You do not think it was a power reactor?

—It’s not my place to say. It was a large object, about thirty-five feet in diameter, sitting in between her and the disabled Akula. Sonar said it was metallic. When we tried to get closer, the Saint Pete maneuvered herself between us and the target.

We stopped. The USS Maine tried to go around the Russian sub. We were hoping that having two ships to deal with might make her run. She didn’t. She kept her nose straight at us and flooded her torpedo tubes.

—What did you do then?

—Nothing. Our other boat stopped. We waited. Submarines are slow, clumsy things. A lot of what we do is just sit and wait. We’re good at that.

—You had orders to fire if necessary.

—I didn’t think it was necessary. And I wasn’t ready to get blown to bits quite yet. We could have taken her down, but not before she fired everything she had at us.

—How long did you wait?

—About a day. Like I said, we’re good at waiting. The next morning we received an ELF warning that a Russian corvette was under way. It would get there in less than ninety minutes. We had to act quickly. A corvette is well equipped for antisubmarine warfare and she would no doubt bring the target aboard or tow it away.

I gave the order to flood and open our torpedo tubes, and we used the Gertrude to tell the USS Maine to do the same. The Russians responded in kind. That’s when things started to get crazy. Our Army guest “suggested” we surface and warn the Russians that we’d destroy the object before we let anyone have it.

—Did you?

—No. I had no intention of doing that. There was a corvette coming. She then asked me—ordered me, would be a better choice of words—to actually do it. “Just fire on it!” she said. “Everything you’ve got!”

My orders were to recover that object, fire at the Russians if need be, not to destroy the very thing we came for. Naturally, I said no. She assured me it wouldn’t be destroyed, but the blast would force the Russian boat to back off, and we’d gain enough time for the cavalry to arrive. I couldn’t even be sure we had boats under way. She called me a fool for arguing with her.

—How did you respond?

—“You’re out of order,” I believe was my reply. I told her I would have her removed if she did not desist immediately. Then, and I remember this perfectly because it was the last thing I expected, she raised her voice to make sure everyone in command heard her and said: “I’m assuming command of this ship under the authority given to me by the president of the United States.”

—Gutsy.

—You could call it that. I called for security on the double and I asked the Chief of the Boat to place her under arrest. The XO grabbed her by the arm, and then things are a little fuzzy. It was happening so fast. She got the XO in an armlock and slammed his head on a console. Two armed security officers arrived on deck. She round kicked one of them and broke the other one’s nose with her palm before kneeing him and throwing him down. She must have grabbed a sidearm from one of the men because the next thing I knew, she had her arm around my throat and a gun to my temple. She backed us up against the wall to get a full view of the room.

Four more armed men came through the door. There was a lot of back-and-forth yelling. I could sense my men were losing their calm so I asked everyone to lower their weapons. I had to repeat it a few times, but they eventually complied. I asked her what the next move was. She gave me two choices: I could either fire on the object as she wanted or surface to confirm her orders. I certainly questioned her motives, but there was no doubt in my mind about her resolve. She would blow my head off, I was sure of it. Yet she remained fairly calm under the circumstances and I chose to believe she hadn’t completely lost her mind.

I told her there was no way I would surface with a corvette only minutes away, but I would fire our torpedoes at the object if the USS Maine kept hers aimed at the Saint Petersburg. Only, I would not do it with a gun to my head. She had to let me go.

—She believed you?

—I gave her my word as a Navy officer. I took the gun away from her. The XO punched her unconscious, broke her nose in the process, I think. The men dragged her to the brig.

—Did you fire?

—I gave her my word. We shot two torpedoes at the object. Both were direct hits.

—What happened?

—Nothing happened. Well, not nothing, but not what you’d expect. When the torpedoes exploded, we braced ourselves for the shock wave that would shortly follow. We were fairly close to the target. The engine went silent, all the lights went out. All we could hear was the metal of the hull shrieking under the pressure. We started to slowly tilt upward and sideways, we all had to grab ahold of something. We hovered like that for about six hours, then we heard something attaching to the hull. They took us out in a rescue sub, a dozen men at a time.

Turns out they had sent a whole lot of boats after us: several frigates, two destroyers, and a cruiser. They must have been minutes away when it all happened. We could see the Saint Petersburg through the window in the rescue sub—her shadow, actually. There was a lot of bluish light behind her. She was missing part of her tail. A really clean cut, not like an explosion. You’d need a laser or a blowtorch to make a cut that clean. The rescue sub went out to help the Russians. They were lucky. The rear chamber was sealed when their tail was cut off; only two people had died.