The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(55)

Federov would never stomach anyone who betrayed her country, but he had begrudging respect for someone who would give her life to a cause, no matter how misguided.

He slowed when he came to the damaged police vehicles. The roadblock was no longer needed, nor had it been of any use. Matveyev had no clue about what he was doing.

Federov powered down his window, waving at the two cars to separate further so he could pass. He accelerated between them and continued down the dirt-and-gravel road leading to the Black Sea. When he reached the far end, just before the turn, he parked, pushed out of the vehicle, and hobbled on his aching knee down the access path, careful not to roll his ankle on a rock or step into a hole.

Alekseyov stood at the water’s edge, looking through binoculars. He turned at the sound of Federov’s approach. Federov took the glasses without a word and focused on the horizon, scanning left to right, searching for a boat or a light, not seeing one. The marine fog layer remained thick enough to hide a boat, especially if the boat was running without lights.

“Have you seen anything?” he asked Alekseyov.

“No, Colonel, I have not.”

“You’ve contacted the coast guard?” he asked, eyes still pressed to the binoculars, fingers adjusting the knob between the lenses.

“They have dispatched a Rubin-class patrol boat to search this area.”

“One?” Federov lowered the binoculars. “They have one vessel?”

Alekseyov shrugged. “I stressed to them the urgency of this matter, Colonel—”

Federov swore, raised the binoculars to his eyes, and continued searching. “Ya naydu tebya, Mr. Dzhenkins, I kogda ya eto sdelayu, ty rasskazhesh’, mne vse. V etom vy mozhete byt’ uvereny.” I will find you, Mr. Jenkins, and when I do, you will tell me everything. Of this you can be assured.



Jenkins checked his SPG. It was now becoming a habit, like a person in a car running low on gas repeatedly glancing at the descending gas gauge. The needle on his SPG had dropped another 10 psi, down to 60. Another 10 and he’d officially be in the red. It didn’t mean he was out of air, just getting dangerously close. He knew it would be prudent not to allow the gauge to dip farther, but Jenkins didn’t have much choice, or options, other than to surface, something Paulina had said not to do.

He checked his compass. The lubber line pointed straight and true to 210 degrees. The question now was whether he had swum far enough, or whether the current, what little existed, had been just enough to slow his pace, in which case the boat remained farther out. He was beginning to think the plan had been doomed from the start—the ship trying to find a drop of water in an ocean. Then he remembered the search-and-rescue transponder, and Paulina’s instruction. He disconnected the conical device from his belt, opened the plastic casing, and turned the switch to the black dot just as Paulina had instructed. A light began to flash. He wrapped the string around his wrist, and let the rest of the string unfurl. The transponder floated to the surface and gently tugged on his arm.

Nothing left to do now but to hope and wait.

He swam in circles to keep warm, one eye focused on the compass, the other searching for a light. Not seeing one.

Could the compass be off? He tapped the face. Could Paulina have somehow set it wrong, sending Jenkins swimming in the wrong direction, making the transponder out of range of the boat, and making Jenkins hopelessly lost? He fought to remain calm and to control his breathing. If he panicked, he’d suck what remained of the compressed air from the tank, and then he’d be both lost and without air. He looked again to the SPG—50 psi. He was in the red. The gauge seemed to be dropping faster. He was breathing too quickly, or too deeply. He again contemplated surfacing, but Paulina had warned against doing so prematurely. He could inflate his vest and float on the surface. At least then he wouldn’t be sucking what remained of his air.

He was about to surface when he heard a dull, distant thrumming sound. He stopped moving and held his breath, listening more intently. The noise increased in volume. A boat engine. He couldn’t pinpoint the sound, magnified under the water. The noise sounded as if it was all around him. He turned in circles, searching the surface.

There!

A wake cut through the surface, the hull of a boat approaching at a slow speed. Trailing behind the boat’s stern, perhaps three feet below the hull’s lowest point, was a blue LED light.

It glowed like a small lighthouse. Charles Jenkins’s salvation.

Jenkins kicked his fins, moving toward the light, closing the distance from forty feet to twenty feet and finally to ten feet. About to inflate his BC, he heard another thrumming, this one even louder than the first, a much larger engine to a much larger boat, and one that sounded as if it was traveling at a much higher rate of speed. The water above him churned. The hull of the boat was deeper than the first boat, deep enough to crush Jenkins. And it was quickly closing on him.

The LED light extinguished.

Jenkins stopped swimming, frantically using his hands to help him sink. The hull of the boat passed over him, but close enough to spin him in the rush of the moving water. When he’d stopped spinning he checked his SPG. The exertion of the swim toward the boat had caused him to suck in more compressed air. The gauge now read just 30 psi. It was firmly in the red, and quickly fading to the black.





32



Demir Kaplan had been a fishing boat captain for almost twenty-five years, and, at sixty-three, he knew the waters of the Black Sea, Bosphorus strait, and Marmara Sea as well as any man. Prior to owning his boat, he’d spent fifteen years in Turkey’s navy, the last ten in an amphibious marine brigade, after five years in special forces detachments. He’d retired, largely out of boredom, and set to work on his father’s fifty-foot fishing boat. When his father died from too many cigarettes and too much booze, Kaplan became the fishing boat’s captain. For years, fishing had provided his family a good living. The fish he caught—anchovies and shad—filled the fish sandwiches sold by the vendors beneath Istanbul’s Galata Bridge. Turkish fishing, however, had been in sharp decline for years, a victim of commercial overfishing, illegal netting, and lax regulations. Where once Kaplan could fill his nets with thirty different species of fish, he was now lucky to catch just five or six, and none in great quantities. In a bid to replenish the stock, the government had banned fishing in the summer months to allow the fish to reproduce, but these regulations impacted only Turkish fishermen. The Russians did not abide by any such laws, did not honor territorial waters, and they stripped the Black Sea through gill netting, then grossly underreported their catch counts. After spending eighty years learning how to cheat the government, cheating had become ingrained in the Russian way of life.