Red Heat (32 page)

Nikolai looked at Varnas incredulously. “You think I won’t tell anyone who’ll listen exactly what happened here? Who you are? Who did this?”

The
starpom
smiled. “Honestly, Nikolai. Do you really think the Russian Naval Command will actually listen? Who will they believe, an already disgraced captain who’s lost yet another submarine, or the Chinese government? Besides, it won’t matter who they believe. They’ll need someone to take the blame, and I’ll give you one guess who that will be.”

Nikolai’s anger roiled. The fact that it was true only made him more furious.

“Besides,” Varnas added, “we’ll have Miss Severin to ensure your cooperation.”

His temper jumped into the danger zone. “What are you planning to do to her?” he demanded.

“Up to you,
Kapitan
. Tell the world this was a random terrorist attack, and she’ll be sent home safe and sound. If,” he qualified, “she doesn’t have the SD card in her possession when rescued.”

Nikolai clenched his jaw. “And if she does?”

Varnas shrugged. “Anyone found holding stolen Chinese military intelligence will be arrested and tried for espionage. It’s out of my hands.”

But it wasn’t out of Nikolai’s. He’d heard enough.

He whirled, throwing his body full against Varnas, knocking him off balance. The gun flew up, but not before Varnas had pressed the trigger.

A loud
pop
echoed through the passageway and a searing fireball burned through Nikolai’s side.

He grunted in excruciating pain, steadied himself, and grabbed for the gun, trying to wrench it from Varnas’s hand. It went off again. This time Varnas cried out; he crumpled to the floor, blood pouring from his belly.

Nikolai staggered from his own wound, falling against the bulkhead, and watched in horror as the
starpom
pulled a small remote control from his coverall pocket and held it in a shaky hand.

Stefan Mikhailovich’s breath was shallow, his face bathed in pain and sweat. “I shall be worthy, Nikolai,” he said, his voice strangled but his eyes triumphant as he put his thumb to the button of the remote.

“Nyet!”
Nikolai cried, as he lunged for it amid a shower of crimson. He stumbled to his hands and knees, weakened from loss of blood. His head spun, and his grab missed.

Varnas pressed the button. Then his eyes fluttered closed.

Below, Nikolai heard the dull rumble of an explosion. It would be a miracle if bilgewater did not get into the batteries after that.

Пиздец!

His heart raced.
Julie!
He had to warn her and the crew!

He glanced up to get his bearings. He was right around the corner from his own stateroom door. There was a comm in there. He tried to rise to his feet, but couldn’t manage it. So he crawled. Using one hand to stanch his wound from bleeding, he forced himself to stay conscious while he dragged himself to the door. Somehow he reached the handle, turned it, and fell into the stateroom in a bloody heap.

The edges of his vision dimmed. Black spots flickered and grew bigger. With a monumental effort, he put his back to the bulkhead, slid himself up it, and groped for the comm receiver hanging next to the door.

“Conn, this is the captain,” he wheezed when he finally had it clutched in his hand. “Don IDAs and abandon ship! Chlorine gas leak in forward battery compartment. Say again, chlorine gas, abandon ship!”

With his last spurt of tremulous consciousness, he reached down for his IDA and pulled out the mask. But before he could tug it on completely, the dancing black spots in his vision blurred together into a single dizzying whirlpool.

And, falling back against the door, he slid to the floor, unconscious.

“No! I’m not going anywhere without Captain Romanov!”

“But Miss—”

“No.”

Julie backed away from Misha, who was urging her toward the torpedo room, where the crew was rushing to pile up onto the deck after surfacing just moments ago. It had been almost five minutes since Nikolai’s urgent call came over the circuit warning of the deadly chlorine gas. So far none had been detected in the air, thank God. But Nikolai had not returned to the central post, either.

She knew he wouldn’t leave her here terrified like this. And he sure as hell wouldn’t abandon ship without her. Therefore, something must have happened to him. Something very bad.

“Is dangerous!” Misha protested. “You must come!”

“I need to find Nikolai!” she said, shaking him off when he would have grabbed her arm.

“
Kapitan
is fine. He call us,
da
? He busy with helping, then come to deck, I am sure.”

“Sorry, I need to see that for myself.” She jerked away and ran for the watertight door.

He could be lying hurt somewhere, or the traitor could be holding him hostage. She just prayed he had on his IDA. She felt for hers, and brought it out of the pouch, and started to pull it over her head. The filter would last between ten and thirty minutes before she needed to get to fresh air.
Please, let that be enough time
.

She collided with Clint Walker.

“Julie? Hey, where are you going?” he asked when she attempted a quarterback sneak around him. “This gas is fatal in, like, five minutes! You need to get up on deck ASAP.”

“Not without Nikolai,” she ground out like a broken record, still fumbling with the straps of her mask as she hurried.

“He’s not here?” Clint called after her with a frown, his own mask dangling in his hand.

“No! I haven’t seen him. He has to be in trouble, Clint. I’m going to find him.” She spotted Misha coming after her and took off at a trot before he could catch up.

Clint’s lips thinned and he muttered a curse. But he waved Misha off. “Julie! Wait up. I’m coming with you.”

“Thank you,” she said as they got to the ladder. “I appreciate the help.”

“Stop,” Clint said. “Tighten your mask properly. Chlorine gas is heavy, so the danger is much greater on the lower deck.”

As they both adjusted their masks, an announcement blared out from the overhead speakers. Clint paused to listen.

“What is it?”

“Interesting,” he said through his respirator, sounding like Darth Vader. The Chinese sub is on its way to pick us up, passengers and crew, and transport us all to safety. They claim it’s a rescue.”

They stared at each other apprehensively through their IDAs’ buglike eyeholes. “Crap,” she said.

That
was a twist she hadn’t seen coming.

“No fucking kidding.” He blew out a breath and the respirator wheezed. “We need to find the skipper pronto. Where should we start?”

She turned back to the ladder. “The gas alert is for the forward battery compartment. He must have been there to give the alarm.”

“Yep.”

She grabbed the rails of the ladder and slid down to the lower deck. “I’m just not exactly sure where it is.”

“This way,” Clint said, taking the lead. They dove through the watertight door to the officers’ staterooms and ran along the passageway. “The opening’s down to the—”

His words cut off abruptly and they skidded to a halt when they rounded the corner. They nearly tripped over the prone, bloody body of
Starpom
Varnas.

Julie gasped, biting off a scream. “My God! Is he—”

Clint nodded, kneeling to feel the pulse at the side of the
starpom
’s neck. “Dead.”

A gaping hole split the body’s midsection and a pool of blood surrounded him on the deck, but the expression on his face was surprisingly peaceful. In one hand he held a small box.

“Shot, by the looks of it,” Clint said.

“But . . . I didn’t think there were any weapons on board,” Julie said, looking around for Nikolai. The sight of Varnas sprawled out dead was making her sick. Her heart pounded in her throat. What had
happened
here? “Nikolai!” she called, more worried than ever.

“I’ll check the battery compartment,” Clint said, and he started to climb down through a trapdoor in the floor.

“Clint, be careful!” she cried. “That’s where the gas is supposed to—”

But he had already disappeared.

While he was gone, there was another announcement over the loudspeaker. Another warning to come up on deck, she assumed.
They needed to hurry
.

Clint came back up less than thirty seconds later and quickly hoisted himself out. “He’s not down there. But there’s been some kind of explosion. The gas is right up to the top of the space.” He slammed the trapdoor shut with a racking cough. “We need to find Romanov. Any second now, the gas’ll be seeping up through the deck. If he doesn’t have his mask on . . .”

He didn’t need to finish. As they watched, the first shimmers of yellow-green curled up through the seams of the trapdoor, spreading out across the deck.

“Nikolai!” she called again, the desperation in her mind rising. “Where
are
you?”

From the other compartments she could hear the sounds of IDA-muffled shouting and things being tossed around as crewmen hastily grabbed some of their belongings to take with them.

But there was no answering call from Nikolai.

“Look,” Clint said, pointing to a pair of bloody hand smears on the bulkhead. “Only one of Varnas’s hands has blood on it. These must have been made by someone else.”

Julie’s heart stalled. “No!” she said past the lump of fear growing in her throat. She glanced around, searching for more signs, a blood trail to follow. Anything.

“Here!” she called, following a thin line of reddish brown drops on the deck. They led around the corner and stopped at a stateroom door.
Nikolai’s stateroom
. More bloody smears were around the door handle. “He must be inside!”

She tried to open the door. Something was blocking it.

“Nikolai! Answer me!” she cried, pushing hard against the door. It wouldn’t budge.

“Here, let me,” Clint said, and used his shoulder and full weight to force his way into the dark stateroom, moving an inert body out of the way.

The light snapped on.

“Nikolai!” she gasped and rushed in, throwing herself to her knees by him. His limp hand was clutching at a wound in his side. He was soaked in blood, though not as badly as Varnas. “He’s been shot!”

“Get his mask on,” Clint ordered as he checked his neck for a pulse. “He’s still alive.”

“Thank God, oh, thank God,” she murmured as she grabbed the mask and started to pull it down over Nikolai’s face.

He moaned, and his other hand moved, reaching up to keep the mask off.
“Nyet,”
he groaned. “Julie.”

Her heart leapt. He was waking up! That had to be a good sign. “I’m here,
dorogoy
. You’re going to be okay.”

He muttered something unintelligible, but his lips curved up slightly.

“Shhh. You have to put your mask on. The gas—”

He rolled his head away.
“Nyet.”
He murmured something that was more recognizably Russian.

“He’s saying something about the SD card,” Clint said, wrapping a sheet around Nikolai’s middle to bind the wound. “We have to get him up on deck. I’m no doctor, but the bullet seems to have missed the vital organs. He may have cracked a rib though. Either way, he should get to a hospital. He’s lost a lot of blood.” Clint tied off the sheet and Nikolai moaned again.

She tugged the IDA mask all the way down over his face. “Sweetheart, we’ve got to go. Can you hear me?”

Under the bug eyes of the mask, his lashes fluttered up and he looked at her. They softened. “Julie? Is that you?”

“I’m right here,” she said and smiled, though she knew he couldn’t see it under her respirator. “Clint, too. We’ve come to get you out of here.”

He swallowed and winced with pain. “Varnas?”

“He’s dead,” she told him gently. “I’m so sorry.”

His eyes closed briefly. “I’m not.”

“It was him?” Clint asked when she was too surprised to respond right away.
Varnas?

“Da,”
Nikolai said. “Everything.”

Clint nodded. “Understood. All right. Let’s get you on your feet, Skipper.”

Once he was up, he limped to the desk, gathered up a few things, and put them in a leather satchel. She took it from him to carry.

“My papers,” he said, and she nodded.

As slowly and gently as possible, with one on each side supporting him, they walked him to the ladder. At the bottom they stopped to let him rest.

He leaned his back against it and groaned. “Damn, this hurts.” His breath came in gasps, his hands were clammy, and there was a fresh ring of scarlet blooming in the white of the makeshift bandage.

She couldn’t look at his pain-drawn face without wanting to let him lie down until he felt better, so she checked her watch. Time was running out. It had been ten minutes already. Hopefully their IDA filters would last until they got on deck.

She sensed something was different around them. She cocked her head and listened. And realized what it was. The submarine was eerily quiet. No engines. No voices. No mechanical noises. Even the sound of the air filtration had ceased. Everyone must be up on deck already, awaiting rescue, all systems shut down for the abandonment.

For one frightening moment, she imagined they’d all left without the three of them.
Her nightmare come true.
But then the overhead speakers squawked out another announcement, and she breathed a little easier.

“Hell. We need to hurry,” Clint said. He pointed down. Yellow-green tendrils were licking at their shoes.

Nikolai straightened away from the ladder, putting his hand on her arm to steady himself. “Liesha, do you have the SD card?”

“Yes. Don’t worry, I won’t lose it.”

He grasped the handrail. “No. You don’t understand. You must get rid of it.”

“What? Nikolai, no way. It’s what I came to—”

“Varnas said”—he winced against a wave of pain as he lifted himself onto the first rung—“they know it’s you. They’ll arrest you if you have it in your possession.”

She watched his difficult climb, her mind in a whirl. She knew very well what that meant. “Okay,” she said, following him up. “We can decide what to do with it when we get up on deck.”

He grunted again, but didn’t argue.

It must have been excruciating for Nikolai to climb the ladder, but somehow he managed it.

“You go up,” he told her when they got as far as the central post. They were headed for the closest access to the outside deck, the forward torpedo room hatch. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Hell, no,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

She knew as captain he must have a certain protocol to follow when abandoning ship. He had to get the boat’s official logbook, for instance, and add it to the notebooks in the satchel she was carrying for him. Who knew what else.

“You are one damn stubborn woman,” he muttered, and she couldn’t help smiling as she helped him over to the cupboard where the ship’s logs were kept.

“Yeah, and that’s why you love me,” she said jokingly.

But there was no joke in Nikolai’s gaze when he turned back to her, logbook in hand. He gazed down at her through the ridiculous orange insect mask, his own eyes dark like the midnight sea. Behind the many shadows she saw in them—the pain of his wound, and the anger at Varnas’s betrayal, the frustration of losing his boat, and the powerlessness over his career—she saw something else, as well.

Something meltingly warm and wonderfully good and absolutely right.

“Yes, Julie Yelizaveta Severina,” he said in his deep, incredibly romantic voice, “that is why I love you. One of the many reasons.”

“Oh, Nikolai,” she whispered, her heart turning over in a drowning ache. “I love you, too. So much.”

She desperately wanted to throw her arms around him and hold him close, but she didn’t dare for fear of hurting his wound. She couldn’t hug him. She couldn’t even kiss him, because of the stupid respirators covering their faces.

This was not how she’d imagined declaring her true love for the man of her dreams.

But somehow she knew he was smiling.

“We should go up,” he said, but suddenly she didn’t want to. In minutes they’d be torn apart, and God knew if they’d ever see each other again.

“Yes,” she said. And fervently wished they hadn’t wasted so much of their time being suspicious of each other . . . when they could have been making love.