Red Heat (16 page)

Wait. It was nearly eleven p.m. How could it still be light out? Then she remembered. Tomorrow was Midsummer’s Eve. At this time of year, and so close to the Arctic Circle, the sun would be up all night.

She puffed out a breath. This was
so
not the way she’d imagined seeing the midnight sun for the first time.

As she reached the top of the ladder and poked her head up through the hatch, she tried desperately to concentrate on handing her safety line to the man above, and
not
on peering out at the surrounding ocean that was still churning up whitecaps from the earlier storm. Spume crashed over the bow, sweeping across the flat deck of the sub in a wash of glittering foam. Her stomach did a somersault . . . and not only from the exaggerated up-and-down motion of the boat. A buzz of fear knifed through her veins.

She battled it back. She didn’t have time to be nervous or panicked. She swallowed down the agonizing tightness in her throat and forced herself to climb up into the cockpit.

Another man she didn’t know greeted her with a smile and a few words in Russian. She smiled back and waved her phone again, already punching up her boss’s number while it was searching for a signal. She clamped the set to her ear, ready to launch into a hurried report as soon as it connected, a report she knew would be taped, so she needn’t worry about going too fast.

She frowned.

She couldn’t hear a damn thing from the receiver. No dialing. No search tones. No static. And no blue light to indicate the set was switched on.

Worriedly she held it up and pressed the “on” button again. Still nothing. In mounting desperation, she shook it. Again nothing. Madly punching random keys, she prayed for a connection, or at least some kind of noise to indicate it was working.

“God
damn
it!” she exclaimed in dismay.

Nikolai’s angry voice rose behind her. “What’s the matter, your boss not answering?”

Her time had run out.

She ground her jaw. And rounded on him. “
You
did this. Didn’t you!”

His face didn’t alter. Even in the dim, golden midnight sun his expression looked dark and forbidding. “What are you talking about?”

“My sat phone. It’s not working.”

At that, his brows beetled. “Let me see.”

It wasn’t as if he could do anything else to it. Other than maybe throw it overboard. So she let him take it. He went through the same ritual she had . . . with similar results. Then he flipped it over, fished a pocket knife from his trousers pocket, and popped the battery cover off.

For a second he just stared. Then his lips thinned.

“Well, here’s your problem,” he said and held it up for her to see. A half dozen colored wires protruded from inside the phone every which way into the battery compartment. Every one of the wires had been cut.

Her jaw dropped. “What the—Someone sabotaged my phone!”

He slowly nodded. “I’d say that’s a certainty. And I assure you, it wasn’t me.”

Her pulse took off as she met his stony gaze. There was no way he was lying. He looked too grim. “What does this mean?” she asked hoarsely, though she knew exactly what it meant.

“It means,” he said with jaw set, “that it’s time we stop playing games, Liesha. You’re going to tell me what you’re doing here. And you’re going to tell me right now.”

Nikolai could tell Julie did not want to reveal a damned thing to him. He supposed he didn’t blame her. If what she’d told him was true and she was only an analyst, her spycraft would not be terribly sophisticated, but she’d know better than to confess her mission to the enemy. But then, he’d like to think they’d ceased being enemies when they’d joined their bodies together.

Before she could balk at his demand, he handed her back the ruined phone and said, “But to answer your question, it means this is proof there’s a saboteur on board. And that he is targeting you specifically. Which means he must know exactly who you are and what you’re doing here.” Unable to help himself, he ground out, “Which is a hell of a lot more than I can say.”

“Nikolai—”

He held up a hand. “I am not finished. It comes down to this,
dorogaya
. We can take our chances and continue working at cross-purposes, each trying to find this saboteur on our own. Or we can choose to trust one another and work together. You know which way I vote.”

Her lips parted. The night wind was blowing several ends of her hair out of her usually neat bun and whipping them madly about her face. His fingers itched to yank out the pins again as he’d done earlier and let the auburn locks go free to whip and tangle in the crazy breeze. She was so lovely when she wasn’t trying so hard to be . . . well, hard.

He reached up and skimmed a knuckle over her cheek. It was smooth and cool, like porcelain. “What’s it going to be, Liesha?”

Her eyes cut down to the useless sat phone. “Rufus could probably fix this.”

“Probably,” he allowed. There were a half dozen others on his crew who could, as well. Submariners tended to be a talented and resourceful bunch. Not the point.

He waited.

She met his gaze. “What do you know about China?” she asked.

His brows went up. “Other than the fact that one of their 093 attack subs is tailing us?”

She nodded, scrutinizing his face.

A gnawing started in the pit of his stomach. It had been a serious question. За ебис.
Fucking great
. He didn’t bother hiding his trepidation. “You better tell me what the hell the Chinese want with you,” he growled. “By God, if you’ve put my vessel and crew in danger—”

“It’s not me they’re after! Damn it, Nikolai, I told you—”

“Wait.” He glanced over at the forward lookout and snapped a quick order at him to continue his watch from the flying bridge below. As soon as the man had disappeared down the ladder, Nikolai said, “Go on.”

She bit her lip. “The Shang-class sub being here in the Pacific might mean nothing. And it could just be practicing on us, like Rufus said. Nothing sinister.”

“Then why are you so damned worried about it?”

She looked downright distraught when she said, “You realize if I tell you what I know it will mean my job.”

He took a breath. He was so close to breaking this wide open. But suddenly, learning her secrets seemed a whole lot less important than protecting his boat and his men from the potential danger that may be closing in on them. And after this afternoon, the thought of betraying her trust turned his stomach.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he told her, making a snap decision. “Read me in on your mission so I know what the hell is going on, and when we catch this saboteur, I’ll turn him in as the spy instead of you. I’ll make sure he doesn’t talk until you are safely back in the States.” That last part killed him. But he understood that was reality. The idea that they could be together, especially now, was just a pretty fantasy.

“You would do that?” she asked, shocked.

“This is too important.”

She stared at him. “But surely it would be trading your career for mine. I thought—”

“My career is already over,” he said, and for the first time he let himself see the painful truth of that, too. He was done. Maybe if Julie had been a major player in CIA, a field operative, an expert in espionage rather than just a junior analyst, and if he’d managed to turn her into a valued double agent, perhaps then the prestige involved might have been enough to salvage his career. But as it was . . . even Cherenkov couldn’t resurrect what was already as dead as the Soviet Union. It would take a damn miracle. And this much he had in common with his atheist father: he didn’t believe in miracles.

Not anymore.

“Last year I was in command of one of the most sophisticated nuclear submarines on the planet,” he said evenly. “No offense to the scientific expedition, but demoting me to driving this sorry rust bucket is the Main Naval Command’s not-so-subtle way of telling me I should retire,” he said in disgust.

“But why?” she asked, her eyes filled with guileless incomprehension. God, she was sweet. “What happened?”

He shook his head, realizing he’d already said too much. He was a big boy. He didn’t want her pity. “Some other time.”

She tilted her head. “Nikolai, you asked me to tell you everything, but you constantly put me off until later. That’s not mutual trust.”

He gazed out over the darkened sea, a field of slate blue spangled with the silver glitter of a thousand pieces of floating ice sparkling in the midnight sun. He felt like one of those ice chunks, alone and suspended in a harsh, thankless environment not quite cold enough to freeze you into a block of emotionless apathy, but instead slowly ate away at your body and your soul, your very humanity, until there was nothing left of you.

“Okay,” he said. “You’re right.”

It wasn’t as if she couldn’t just Google it anyway.

“My last command was a Project 971 Shchuka, a top-of-the-line nuclear submarine. While out on patrol we collided with a Norwegian submarine during a surfacing. The Norwegian’s propeller was clipped clean off.”

She winced. “Ouch,” she said.

“Ouch, indeed. Our sonar had shorted out because of a faulty gasket that had been slated to be replaced but wasn’t, and we were coming to the surface to avoid driving blind.”

“Jesus.”

“It happened in Varangerfjørd. In the very north of Norway. Right next to the Russian border, close to the Northern Fleet headquarters.” Surely she’d heard of it. Every news service in the world had made a huge deal about the incident.

“It was obviously an accident,” she said. “If your sonar wasn’t working, they can’t blame you for that. Was anyone hurt?”

Not unless you counted his career. “The Norwegian boat sank, but luckily the crew was able to escape onto inflatables before it went down,” he said.

Suddenly her eyes popped. “Oh, my God!
That
accident? In that storm last fall? The Russian sub that stopped to pluck up the Norwegians from their life rafts?”

“A bad storm was brewing. If we hadn’t, they would have died for sure,” he said. He looked uncomfortable, but nodded.

“But the press hailed you as heroes!” she exclaimed. “Why would your navy want you to retire because of that?”

His gaze slid away. “The navy brass didn’t see us as heroes. Ironically, it wasn’t the collision but the rescue that got me in trouble.”

“You’re kidding me,” she said, incredulous.

“Unfortunately, it happened just inside Norway’s territorial waters. When I reported the collision to my superiors, I was given direct orders to leave the area immediately.”

“And just leave the Norwegians stranded out there in the freezing water during a storm?” She looked horrified.

He nodded. “To avoid exactly the kind of international incident that resulted. The Norwegian government protested loudly. And Russia could hardly deny culpability, under the circumstances. The president was forced to give away some very expensive concessions in a contract my government was negotiating with Norway for the disposal of dozens of our derelict nuclear submarines that are endangering the Barents Sea coast with leaking nuclear materials.”

“And as captain, you took the blame.”

Nikolai spread his hands, indicating the
Ostrov
. “When the dust settled, this is where I landed.”

They stood in silence for a moment, gazing out over the achingly lonely twilight seascape. In the distance, a whale broke the surface of the water, looking gray and ghostly.

“Oh, look!” Julie exclaimed as the whale spouted and flicked its tail up out of the water, then was joined by first one, then two, then three others, breaching and shooting up through the liquid gold of the pale reflected light. A calf appeared, hugging its mother’s side as the pod danced in the water, a fitting homage to the midnight sun.

Nikolai put his arms around Julie and together they quietly watched until, all too soon, the whales disappeared.

“Beautiful,” she whispered, and he kissed the top of her head.

“Yes.” He’d miss sights like this when he was no longer in the navy. Maybe he could get a job on a fishing boat.

“You should come work for us,” she said, shocking him out of his bleak thoughts.

“What?” he asked, not quite believing his ears. He turned her in his arms.

“Our navy would love to have a man like you.”

It was his turn to stare incredulously. Then he let out a bark of laughter. Touché. Despite himself, he grinned. Perhaps she was not so innocent and guileless after all. She’d timed that to perfection, at exactly his most vulnerable moment.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “But now it’s your turn to talk. And Julie, I want to know everything.”

She nodded, stepped out of his arms, and started her explanation. “The thing I’ve been searching for on
Ostrov
is a micro storage card containing a new Chinese guidance system for their stealth UUVs.”

He grew more and more alarmed as the story spilled out of her. About the dead Chinese and Russian double agents, about the circuitous route from China to Rybachiy by which the stolen SD card had ended up on his submarine, and about how she’d been hastily plucked from her job as a China desk analyst at CIA to replace the injured field operative. Nikolai suspected Julie’s knowledge of China at least in part explained why they’d chosen her, a complete neophyte when it came to the spy business, for this mission. She was an expert on all things Chinese.

That, and her gender and her looks.

Did CIA have files on Russian officers in which their preferences in women were duly recorded for just such opportunities? If so, he had to believe no one had informed Julie of her backup role as honey in the plan B trap.

At this point he didn’t give a damn that he seemed to be going right along with that plan.

When she was done with her tale and fell silent, he blew out a long breath. Despite the buzz of unease over the potential implications and possible danger of the situation, a profound sense of relief sifted through him. Her mission could have been much worse. At least CIA wasn’t targeting him or any of his men. And Comrade Cherenkov could stop worrying about Russian state secrets being compromised. This was all about China. Good to know.

“You should have come to me right away with this,” he told her. “I could have helped you search for this card instead of threatening you every five minutes.”

She sent him a withering look. “Right. Because you definitely would have believed I was on a Russian submarine looking for Chinese weapons technology.”

“I would have.” He smiled crookedly. “Eventually.”

She rolled her eyes, but didn’t protest when, with a sigh, he took her in his arms again, this time front to front, her soft breasts pillowing against his chest.

He was getting used to her being close like this. It felt right, like she belonged there, cradled protectively against his body. Especially now that he knew she didn’t make her living from intrigue and deception. It made a difference. The knowledge lifted a weight from his heart that he hadn’t realized had been burdening it. And he was gratified she trusted him enough to confide in him.

He vowed she wouldn’t suffer because of telling him the truth. Not if he could help it.

Over her shoulder he noticed the rear lookout glancing forward toward them. He was too far away to see the man’s expression, but he could just imagine. He knew his behavior with Julie was way out of line—even for a captain whose formerly distinguished career was now toast. The crew would speculate rampantly at his motives for his flagrant disregard for navy decorum, wondering if he was angling for a ticket to America or just thumbing his nose at his superiors. Consorting with their traditional enemy, regardless of the end of the Cold War, would hardly endear him to the Admiralty.

Except his FSB orders were to do exactly that. The Naval Command must be aware of his assignment. The envelope he’d received from Cherenkov had contained orders placing him under FSB command. Surely, the navy hadn’t ordered him blind. . . . Did they know there was a CIA operative among the contingent of foreign scientists aboard
Ostrov
? And what about the saboteur? Could that saboteur have been sent by his own navy superiors to neutralize Julie because they hadn’t been informed of Nikolai’s specific mission?

Would his promise to her backfire and take them both down as traitors by both countries?

Possible scenarios did crazy Ivans through his mind.

Finally he shoved them aside with a growl of impatience. He would
not
second-guess himself. He knew he was doing the right thing joining forces with Julie, and that was all that mattered.

“Okay,” he said to her, “we need to find that SD card. Give me a list of where you’ve already searched. Day after tomorrow while the scientists are on Attu Island, I’ll check some of the more inaccessible places you haven’t gotten to yet.”

“Good. I’ll stay on board and help,” she said, looking up at him.

He shook his head. “
Nyet
. It will be too dangerous. I’m planning to take the boat through a deepwater test while we wait.” He gave her a sinister smile. “Perhaps if the Chinese 093 is still around, I can teach that tenacious commander a lesson in good manners.”

She grasped his arms. “Nikolai, no! Are you nuts? The Shang class is a nuclear submarine carrying every piece of stealth technology available! That’s hardly a fair fight.”

“Which is why he won’t be expecting a challenge from us.”