Panic Switch полностью

And now the decision he’d feared was here. There were only two options — surfacing the boat and abandoning ship, or scuttling the vessel in the deep water of the fjord to avoid capture by the Russians. In the first case, they’d be taken captive, held as criminals, interrogated, and tortured, and certainly used as a propaganda win for the Russians, with the top-secret project submarine Vermont in their hands. In the second, every crewman aboard would die and the USS Vermont would sink below crush depth in the deep fjord and scatter wreckage on the sea bottom, all to be harvested by the Russian deep-diving machinery. If the boat still had propulsion, and it were clear that all was truly lost, Pacino could order full speed and a steep angle to crush depth and get all this over with fast, and maybe that way the hull breakup would be violent enough that it would spoil any Russian salvage attempts.

“Maneuvering, Conn, report your status,” Pacino ordered over the tactical circuit.

But there was no reply. The circuit was silent.

“Navigator, Control, report.” No reply. “Navigator, Officer of the Deck, report!” But there was nothing.

By then, the room was so filled with smoke that there seemed no way to breathe. Without remembering how he got there, he found himself lying prone on the deck, coughing so hard it felt like he’d toss up a lung, and it was then that the strangeness began.

He saw a beam of light attempting to shine through dark smoke, rotating around to shine on the other crewmembers.

A second light beam came into view and then a third, a fourth, and more. One of the lamps shone in his face, blinding him, and when it moved from his face, he could see the dim outline of a masked figure oddly wearing a fireman’s helmet.

Everything went black then, but while he couldn’t see or hear anything, he felt a sense of time.

Then he could see and hear again, but only for a brief moment, and while he could see, he couldn’t move. He saw a circle of bright light, half obscured by smoke, and if he didn’t know better, he could swear it was an open hatch, and he felt himself incline from lying flat to being vertical, but he wasn’t standing, he was just… floating.

The world went black again, and again he had that strange sense of time passing.

And like a cosmic strobe light, the world returned once more, this time the light around him so bright he became convinced he’d passed on to the other side like he had in his near death experience aboard the Piranha, but then he saw a flash of something. His head was turned to the side and he could see the outside of the hull of the Vermont, but she wasn’t in a Russian fjord, she was lying in a drydock, drenched with the afternoon Virginia sunshine. A short trailer or container box was placed on the top of her deck aft of the plug trunk hatch, block letters on the trailer reading TRACON, with the emblem of Submarine Development Group 12 next to the letters.

Pacino couldn’t move his head, or anything else, with the exception of his eyes. He looked up and saw a hovering helicopter overhead, its blades rotating in slow motion. He scanned the chopper to see if it had markings of the Russian Navy, but it was painted red with a large white cross painted on it. He could make out the word MEDEVAC on its side just before the blackness came again.

This time the blackness seemed to last longer, and when it ended, the white room around him came into focus. He could see machinery around him, medical machines, and someone in a white outfit starting to rush into the room, but then the universe went black again.

Still that odd sense of time passing. He waited for the world to light up again, but other than waiting, he was unable to think or process what he’d experienced and seen.

When the curtain lifted again, Pacino looked up to see his father, former Admiral Michael Pacino, who was now the National Security Advisor to the president. The elder Pacino leaned over him. Pacino noticed his father’s dark tailored suit and red patterned tie. He blinked and saw his father try to say words, but no sound emerged. Then the blackness came back for him, but this time, there was no sense of time.

It was just a black nothingness.