Panic Switch полностью

“Well, hell,” Sobol said. “Let’s find anyone still alive from the spaces and get them forward then. Maybe we can evacuate the ship.”

“Evacuate? How are you going to abandon ship under thick ice? The escape chamber will just clunk into the bottom of the ice cover.”

“Maybe the Gigantskiy explosion opened up a polynya overhead.”

“You can’t count on that, Weapons Officer.”

“Maybe we can call for the Losharik to pull us out. That’s why they undocked before we shot the Gigantskiy.”

“They did? I didn’t know,” Pavlovsky said. “But you’ll have to communicate with it.”

“If we can get the central command post power, we can light off the Bolshoi-Feniks sonar communications system.”

“Didn’t the first detonation kill our active sonar?”

“Wow, you are paying attention to goings-on in the central command post. It did, but Bolshoi-Feniks can be switched over to an emergency sonar array with its own hydrophones. If we can connect it to the forward battery, we’ll be in business. Come on.”

Sobol led a limping Pavlovsky through the upper level of the compartment, trying to collect the other engineering watchstanders, pausing to try to wake them up. Three crewmen were able to regain their feet, but four couldn’t get off the deck and another two were dead.

There was no doubt, Sobol thought. This was going to be a very long day.

As she opened the hatch to the fourth compartment, a loud ripping noise slammed her ears, followed by a roaring like a mighty waterfall. Sobol turned around and saw the stream of seawater flooding the space, presumably from the main seawater piping rupturing. She pulled the hatch shut behind her and dogged it, peering through the high-pressure glass window into the space as its lights went out and it filled with seawater.

Goddammit, she thought. This day just kept getting worse.

Georgy Alexeyev sat at a table on the sun swept sidewalk in front of the UDC Café on Moscow’s Kamergersky Lane, a pedestrian-only area decorated year-round with hanging lights, the sounds of a street musician’s guitar playing soulfully a block away. Alexeyev smiled, happily sipping a double espresso, waiting for his wife Natalia to join him after a leisurely Saturday afternoon of shopping. He glanced down at the pad computer’s article he’d been reading, about President Vostov and his five-year program for the Navy. Fortunately, the president was a true believer in the power of the Navy of the Russian Republic. Alexeyev was halfway through the article when his cell phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his sports jacket’s inner pocket. The caller was unidentified, but he decided to answer it.

“Go for Alexeyev,” he said, which was a better and more concise way to answer than Captain First Rank Alexeyev. It worked for strangers, subordinates, and superiors alike.

It’s me, Captain, the unmistakable voice of Chief Engineer Alesya Matveev said. The dead chief engineer.

“Chief,” he said, pulling the phone from his ear and staring at it as if it had turned into a toad. Slowly, he put the phone back to his ear. “How are you calling me?”

Look to the south, she said.

Alexeyev looked to his right, and a few tables over, Chief Engineer Matveev sat, a cup of coffee in front of her. As if in a dream, Alexeyev hung up the phone, placed it in his pocket, stood and walked slowly to her table. She was dressed exactly as she had been on the Kazan — in her powder blue coveralls with high-visibility yellow stripes running across the torso beneath her throat and on her sleeves. Her hair was shining and clean, pulled back into a ponytail. Her face shone with good health, but still bereft of any sort of makeup. In life, she’d seemed plain to Alexeyev, but in death, she had an inner beauty that was reflected in her face. Hesitantly, he sat down opposite her.

“I miss you,” he said, not intending to say it.

I miss you too, Captain, she said without speaking, her voice in his mind. She smiled slightly with that enigmatic unreadable expression. But you didn’t listen to me. She found her pack of rancid cigarettes, pulled one out and lit it with a lighter with the emblem of the sunken K-561 Kazan. The smoke was distinctive, but not entirely unpleasant, Alexeyev thought, because now it reminded him of his dead friend. You didn’t take my advice, her voice said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I told you the one word to bear in mind. Distance. You got too close. Now your ship is dying. If it’s not already dead.

Alexeyev looked down forlornly at the table surface. He picked up her lighter and looked at the Kazan emblem, sad for days gone by. How good had he had it in the time before the South Atlantic run, he thought, when his crew were all alive? And his submarine was in one piece? He looked back up at Matveev, but she wasn’t finished talking.