The flight in the jet with her, once again, as the only passenger, seemed to take longer than the flight to Moscow. As she stared out the window, holding a rocks glass of vodka, she reflected that her career had started strangely and was progressing even more strangely. She’d been a young psychology student at the prestigious M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, concentrating on human sexuality and sexual dysfunction. It was a field of study that had few students, which was good for her, since it meant less competition for coveted post-graduate assignments. After completing one course concentrating on sex workers, her professor asked her to his office after the final exam. She’d been worried that there might be something wrong, but he was all smiles and poured them drinks as he waved her to a seat opposite his desk. He told her she’d gotten a perfect score on the final exam and that her term paper was the best he’d ever read, and that he wanted to collaborate with her over the summer to write a paper for publication.
As she’d worked with him, he eventually disclosed that as a sideline, he worked for the FSB, the internal security branch of Russia’s intelligence agencies. He recruited her to the Brigade of the
And so it was that Svetlana Anna, after graduate school graduation, had joined the Navy’s test wives. At first, she thought the work would be disgusting. After all, one thing was clear, that in the Navy, in a combat vessel, forward deployed, water was rationed, and people routinely went days without showering. Would this lack of personal hygiene make the work awful? But Anna had always had a strong sex drive, and growing up, it had threatened to get her in trouble numerous times. Could that be harnessed in the service of the country?
The answer was that it indeed could. The first few years were actually pleasant, but as Anna got older, she was less sought out as a companion. But the Navy had seen leadership skills in her, and had promoted her to the rank of captain third rank and put her in command of a group of test wives and requested she keep working.
It had gone well until the meeting with Admiral Zhabin and Chairwoman Lilya.
And now it was time to execute the next plan, since the sabotaging of the torpedo control cabinets had failed, which she’d found out when the ship launched the supercavitating torpedo.
In Anna’s coveralls pocket was a 5.45 mm PSM pistol, a weapon barely bigger than her palm, though it was heavy. In the other pocket was a package of Semtex plastic explosive, over a kilogram of it, the bulk of it making her pocket bulge. This wasn’t the watered-down Semtex of the 2020s, it was the good stuff from the Cold War, 1980s vintage plastic explosive. A kilogram would be sufficient to blow up the entire atmospheric control machinery room, but she wasn’t relying on that alone. The atmospheric controls would assist in this particular task.
Anna made her way down two sets of steep stairs — ladders, the Navy called them — to the zero three deck, until she emerged into the same space where she’d walked forward to the weapon electronics room. Instead, she walked aft down a narrow passageway, passing doors to other electronics rooms — sonar, battlecontrol, the second captain AI system — until at the end of the passageway she reached the machinery room marked with a sign reading,
She’d expected the room to be empty. She’d made her way below easily, unobserved, since the ship was at action stations, and every person on board had a place to stand his or her watch to shoot torpedoes — or evade them. But a watchstander stood next to the oxygen generator, or the
