Fire Ice

29

AUSTIN STOPPED AT an intersection and glanced up and down the corridors like a bewildered tourist. "Damn," he said. "I think we're lost."

"We should have left a trail of bread crumbs," Trout said wistfully.

"This isn't exactly a gingerbread house and we're not Hansel and – whoops." Austin jerked his thumb at a door off to the left. His ear had picked up the click of a knob turning.

Trout stepped back, but Austin grabbed his arm. "Too late," he whispered. "Look as if we belong here." He bent his head over a clipboard he'd liberated from the divers' room and kept one hand close to the gun concealed under his uniform. Trout got down on one knee, untied his shoelace and began to tie it.

The door opened, and two men carne out. Austin glanced up from his clipboard, gave them a friendly smile and checked them out for weapons. The men differed from each other in physique, but both wore glasses and their faces had a studious look. They were deep in conversation and only glanced at the NUMA men before they disappeared down a corridor.

Austin watched them go and said, "You can stand now. Those two looked like techies. We've got a major problem. It could take days to search this ship properly. The longer we're here, the greater the chance someone will see through our highly imaginative disguises."

Trout stood and rubbed his knee. "To say nothing of the toll to be exerted on my aging joints. What do we do now?”

Austin stared off past Trout's shoulder, and a smile replaced the frown on his lips. "For starters, I'd suggest that you look behind you."

Trout grinned when he saw the diagram on the wall. It was a map showing the ship's layout as seen from above and in profile. "We're apparently not the only ones who need help finding their way around this little houseboat."

Austin examined the map closely and tapped a red dot that indicated their intersection. "We're coming up on a restricted area. Let's see what they're trying to hide. If it's restricted, there may be less chance of bumping into Razov's thug brigade."

Austin's words had barely faded when they heard rough male voices approaching. Without hesitation, Austin stepped over to the door from which the scientists had emerged, and tried the knob. The door was unlocked. He gestured for Trout to follow him. The room was dark, but he could smell chemicals and guessed it was a lab. He quietly closed the door, leaving it open a crack. Within seconds, a pair of stocky guards, each carrying an automatic weapon, passed by and disappeared down the passageway. He flicked on a wall light long enough to see that they were, indeed, in a laboratory of some sort. Then he checked once more, saw the way was clear, and they cautiously slipped back into the corridor.

He pointed to the passageway on the right. Ever alert, they set off along the corridor until a door blocked their way. Austin used his rusty language skills from his CIA days to translate the Cyrillic letters printed on the outside. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He tried the door. Locked. He reached into his pack and came out with a set of burglary lock picks, another holdover from his time with the Company. With Trout keeping watch, Austin tried several picks before coming up with the right one. He turned the knob, and they stepped inside.

With its horseshoe-shaped console, the room resembled the control area of Yaeger's computer center, although it was a fraction of the size. Instead of facing out onto a voice-activated hologram stage like Max, beyond the console was a large screen controlled by a keyboard, archaic relics that Yaeger would have disdained.

Trout walked over and examined the setup. It was fairly sophisticated. Although he was considered a computer whiz in his own right, specializing in the modeling of deep ocean bottom phenomena, Trout was not in the same league as Yaeger.

"Well?" Austin said.

Trout shrugged and said, "I'll give it a try." He settled his long form into a swivel chair. Like a concert pianist looking for a lost chord, he let his fingers play over the keyboard without touching the keys. After first asking Austin to trans- late the Cyrillic, he took a deep breath and pushed the key that said Enter. The fish school screens aver that had been swimming across the screen disappeared, and in its place was an icon of a sunburst. "So far, so good," he said."

I didn't set off any alarms that I know of."

Austin, who was leaning over Trout's shoulder looking at the monitor, gave him a back pat of encouragement.

Trout bent to his task. He clicked on the icon, which was replaced by a number of options. For several minutes, he pecked away at the keys, muttering under his breath. Then he sat back and folded his arms. "I need a password to get in.”

"That could be anything," Austin said with frustration.

Trout nodded sadly. "We have to think Russian. Anything you've come across that might work?"

Taking a stab at it, Austin told him to try Cossack. When that didn't work, he tried Ataman. Nothing. One more false try, and the computer would freeze up on them. He was about to give up when he recalled his first conversation with Petrov back in Istanbul. "Try Troika."

Trout let out a triumphant, "Yes!" Then his shoulders sagged as the screen filled with lines of words. "This is the Russian equivalent of gobbledygook." He worked on it a few more minutes. Beads of perspiration appeared on his forehead. He sat back in the chair and threw his hands up in the air.

"Sorry, Kurt, this is beyond my skills." He shook his head. "What I need is a teenage hacker."

Austin only had to think about Trout's request for an instant. "Hold on. I can get you the next best thing."

He produced his Globalstar phone and punched out a number. When Yaeger's voice came on, Austin said, "Good morning, I can't get into details because we're short on time, but Paul needs help."

He handed the phone to Trout. Before long, the two men were into a deep discussion of firewalls, packet filters, applications, Trojan horses, gateway circuits, tunnels and decoys. He gave the phone back to Austin.

"Let's see if I can explain the problem," Yaeger said. "Think of the computer as a room. You go into the room, but it's dark, so you can't see what's written on the blackboard. So you flick the switch, which is what Paul has done, but the blackboard is still unreadable because it's in a language you can't understand."

"Where does that leave us?"

"Nowhere, I'm afraid. I wish Max and I were there to take a crack at the puzzle."

Austin replied with a grunt, then looked at the phone. "The solution may be at hand. You tell me if it's possible."

He explained what he was thinking and Yaeger said it was doable, given the right equipment. Austin returned the phone to Trout, who got up and began to go through drawers in the console and other cabinets in the room. He found some cables that he spliced together, and then plugged one end into the computer's entry port. "It's not the greatest modem in the world, but I'll try to attach it to the phone now." He removed the back of the phone and ran the other end of the cable inside. Then he dialed a number.

The computer screen went squirrelly for a second. Letters and numbers streamed by in a blur. The screen went blank. Then a message appeared: "We're wired. Starting to download. Hiram and Max."

Austin glanced at his watch as he paced back and forth, wondering how long it would take Yaeger to do his job. The minutes ticked by. He feared that they would have to leave before the job was done. But after ten minutes, a big yellow smiley face wearing granny glasses that looked suspiciously like Yaeger's appeared. "Hack job done. Hiram and Max."

They quickly disconnected the makeshift modem and replaced the parts. Austin stuck his head out the door to see if the way was clear. The corridor was deserted. Moving with haste they made their way back to the ship diagram and selected a shorter route to the moon pool. So far their luck had held out and they'd seen no one. Austin was puzzled at the lack of personnel, but wasn't about to argue with good fortune. They were hurrying along a passageway, when they passed a door and heard voices speaking in English. The accents were unmistakably American. Austin tried the door and found it locked. Again, he resorted to his lock picks.

The door opened onto a cabin with two bunks. Lounging on the bunks, with bored expressions on their faces, were Captain Logan and the pilot from the NR-1. Their conversation stopped in midsentence, and they stared at the newcomers with unbridled hostility, assuming they were guards who had come to make their life miserable.

Logan turned to the pilot and said, "Where are they getting these guys?"

"The tall one looks like he should be scaring crows in a field," the pilot said.

"That suit on the shorter guy sure didn't come from Armani," Logan said, with a chuckle.

"Armani was closed, Captain Logan. We had to borrow our wardrobe from the ship's crew."

Suspicion clouded Logan's eyes. "Who the hell are you?"

"That gentleman imitating a scarecrow is my colleague, Paul Trout. My name is Kurt Austin, but you can call me 'Shorty.' "

The captain sprang from his bunk. "Dammit, you're Americans!"

"Told you our disguises wouldn't hold up," Austin said to Trout. He turned back to Logan. "Guilty as charged, Captain. Paul and I are with the NUMA Special Assignments Team."

The captain looked toward the door. "We didn't hear any fighting. Have your guys taken over the ship?"

Austin and Trout exchanged amused glances. "Sorry to disappoint you. Delta Force was busy, so we came alone," Austin said.

"I don't understand. How – "

Austin cut him off. "We'll explain after we get you off this ship."

He motioned to Trout, who opened the door slightly to see if it was safe to exit. Again the hallway was clear. With a Trout leading the way and Austin taking up the rear, they moved along a corridor toward the stairway as if they were escorting the submariners.

The strategy came in handy a moment later when they encountered a lone guard walking in their direction, his weapon shouldered. Austin guessed from the man's casual demeanor that he was on his way back to his quarters. The guard's eyes flicked toward Trout and his brow wrinkled as he tried to figure out why he didn't recognize a shipmate of a Trout's imposing height. The captain stopped when he saw the guard, unsure of what to do.

Austin could have taken the guard out, but he preferred that the visit to the ship go unnoticed, if possible. He hooked his foot around Logan's ankle and gave him a shove. The captain went down on his hands and knees. The guard's puzzlement changed to amusement, and he roared with laughter and said something in Russian. He laughed again when Austin kicked the captain lightly in the rear end.

Austin shrugged and replied with an innocent look. Still laughing, the guard continued along the hall until he was out of sight. Austin reached down and helped Logan up.

"Sorry, Captain," he said, with obvious embarrassment. was getting a fix on Paul, and I had to divert his attention."

Logan dusted off the seat of his pants. "I've had my command hijacked, my crew kidnapped, and been forced by these seagoing thugs to use a U.S. Navy vessel for their purposes," he said with a grin. "I'll suffer whatever it takes to get off this ship."

Trout stopped and examined another wall diagram. "It looks as if the moon pool hold is divided into a smaller and larger section. I'd advise going in the smaller end to avoid crew quarters here."

Austin told him to lead the way. With long, loping strides, Trout led them along a series of passageways until they came to an unlocked door. On the other side was a catwalk that ran along the wall of a high-ceiling chamber about a third the size of the moon pool.

"What the hell is that thing?" the captain said. He was looking at a huge cylindrical object suspended from the ceiling. It was at least four feet across and fifty feet long. The bottom end was cone shaped and several projections were clustered around the top, where a complex set of cables and hoses snaked into the ceiling.

"Looks like an ICBM," the pilot said, "only it's pointing wrong way."

"That's not all that's wrong with it," Trout said. "Those thrusters around the top, not fins."

Austin was as fascinated as the others, but time was short. "Take a good look at it now, gentlemen, and we'll compare notes later."

They continued along the walkway through another door and found themselves outside the changing room, where they found dry suits that fit the navy men. Austin and Trout carefully folded their borrowed coveralls and replaced them on the shelves. Then they all moved on to the decompression chamber. The dive gear was undisturbed. They descended a short stairway that led to a room with the smaller moon pool. Set into the deck was a depressed twelve-by-twelve-foot-square section outlining the pool that was used for launching ROVs. Trout studied the controls on the wall, then hit a button and the floor of the shallow wall slid back.

Water lapped over the top of the well and a damp, briny chill filled the room.

The pilot looked into the dark square of ocean and gulped. "You're kidding."

"Sorry it isn't a hot tub," Austin said. "But unless you can figure a way to open the main floodgates so we can use the NR-1, this is the only way off the ship."

"Hell, this should be no different from the escape training tank at Groton," the captain said with bravado, although his face was pale.

"We don't have any spare air tanks, so we'll buddy-breathe. It's about a hundred-yard swim to our pickup. The open hatch probably sets off an alarm up in the wheelhouse, so we don't have much time."

Despite his bluster, the captain didn't look enthusiastic about the prospect ahead, but he gritted his teeth, pulled the hood down and the face mask over his eyes. "Let's go before I change my mind," he growled.

Austin handed the pilot the auxiliary air hose, called the octopus. Trout did the same with the captain. When all were ready, Austin linked arms with the pilot, stepped to the edge of the pool and jumped in.

They sank in a cloud of bubbles until their buoyancy overcame their downward momentum. The bubbles quickly cleared, and Austin saw Trout's light waving in the gloom from several feet away. Austin started swimming. The submariners' kicking technique was uneven and the Siamese-twin arrangement was awkward, but they managed to claw their way out from under the ship's massive bulk.

Austin felt himself rising and falling. Sea conditions must be deteriorating. Austin's compass was useless so close to the huge metal mass of the Ataman ship. He relied on dead reckoning to move them in the general direction of the rendezvous.

When Austin gauged they were a hundred yards from the ship, he stopped and signaled for the others to do the same. While they hovered thirty feet below the surface, he undid a small self-inflating buoy from his belt and looped a nylon line tied to the buoy over his wrist. He released the buoy and let it rise to the surface, where the miniature transponder it carried would start broadcasting their location.

The next few minutes were excruciating. Despite their suits, the cold numbed the exposed areas around their hands and masks. The NR-1 men were courageous, but being held prisoner had sapped their strength and they were simply out of shape from spending long idle hours in their cabin. Austin wondered what they would do if the Kestrel failed to show up. He was savoring the bleak possibilities when Jenkins's voice came through his earphones.

"Got a lock on your position marker. You boys okay?"

"We're fine. We picked up a couple of hitchhikers, and they're turning six shades of blue from the cold."

"On my way."

Austin signaled to the others to get ready. The NR-1 men responded with okay hand signals, but the slowness of their movements indicated that they were becoming fatigued. For the plan to work, they would need energy. All four men looked up as they heard the muffled grumble of an engine. The noise grew louder until it was right overhead.

Austin jerked his thumb up. Then he and Trout rose, pulling their exhausted companions with them. Austin kept his free arm extended straight above his head until his fingers closed on the moving net being towed behind the slow-moving Kestrel. The others all managed to grab onto the cod end, the tapering pocket where the fish are actually caught.

When Austin saw that everyone had a grip on the net, he shouted to Jenkins. "All aboard!"

The boat's speed picked up and they felt as if their arms were being pulled out of their sockets. But after the initial shock, the ride smoothed out and they were flying through the water. The water pressure tried to brush them off, but they held on gamely until they were well away from the ship. Jenkins hove to.

"Hauling back," he said in warning.

Austin and Trout got a firm grip on their charges as the net pulled them to the surface. Their troubles weren't over, however. They were tossed around in the heaving seas and hampered by their scuba gear, until, finally, they jettisoned their air tanks and belts. Without the awkward weight, they could work with the waves rather than fight them.

Jenkins was leaning over the stern controlling the hauler, the big metal drum that the net was wound upon when not in the water. The net had drawn Austin and the pilot within a few feet of safety, but the boat pitched and yawed violently and the seas lifted them one second, dropped them the next. Choking fumes from the exhaust rose from the water. To make matters worse, Austin's right arm had become entangled in the net.

Jenkins saw their predicament, and the narrow blade of a razor-sharp filleting knife flashed dangerously close to Austin's biceps. With his arm free, he reached up to Jenkins, who grabbed his wrist in an iron grip. Working the hauler with the other hand, he pulled Austin, then the pilot, closer.

"Damn funny-looking fish we're catching these days," he yelled over the rumble of the engine.

Howes was manning the helm and doing his best to keep the boat steady. "Those fellas are a bit small," he shouted back. "Maybe we should throw them back."

"Not on your life," Austin said, as he got one leg over the transom and practically fell into the boat.

Jenkins helped the pilot on board. With three of them working, they got Trout and Logan onto the boat in short order. The submariners staggered drunkenly across the pitching deck into the wheelhouse. The net had caught several hundred pounds of fish; and the weight threatened to drag the ship down. Jenkins hated to lose the fish and let the net loose in the sea where it might catch on a propeller, but he had no choice. He cut the lines and watched the net drift off into the foamy sea. Then he took over the helm and gunned the boat through the white-capped seas that splashed over the bow.

Howes helped the others out of their dry suits, then passed around blankets and a bottle of Irish whiskey. Austin peered through the spume, but the black ship had disappeared. There was also no sign of the fishing boats that had accompanied them on the way out. He asked where the other boats were.

"Things got dicey out here, so I sent them home," Jenkins yelled over the grinding roar of the engine. "We should get back to port before the storm hits. Sit back and enjoy the ride."

"I wonder what our former hosts will say when they discover us gone," Logan said with a wolfish smile.

"I'm hoping that they'll think you tried to escape and were drowned."

"Thanks for coming to our rescue. My only regret is that we couldn't leave the way we came, on the NR-1."

"The important part was getting you out in one piece."

Trout passed the whiskey bottle to Austin. "Here's to a job well done."

Austin raised the bottle to his lips and took a sip. The fiery liquid overwhelmed the salty taste in his mouth and warmed his stomach. He stared out past their heaving wake, thinking about the huge projectile they had seen on the ship.

"Unfortunately," he said, "the real work may have just begun."

HIRAM YAEGER TOILED late into the night. He had moved away from his usual place at the grand console and sat in a corner of the vast computer center, his face lit up by a single screen. He was typing commands into a keyboard, and Max didn't like it.

HIRAM, WHY AREN'T WE USING THE HOLOGRAM?

THIS IS A SIMPLE ACCESS PROBLEM, MAX. WE DON'T NEED THE BELLS AND WHISTLES. IT's BACK TO BASICS.

I FEEL PRACTICALLY NAKED SITTING OUT HERE IN A PLAIN PLASTIC CABINET.

YOU'RE STILL BEAUTIFUL IN MY EYES.

FLATTERY WILL GET YOU EVERYWHERE. THE PROBLEM, PLEASE.

Yaeger had been working for hours to carve away the useless and misleading data in the files Austin and Trout had transmitted from the Ataman ship. He'd run into countless dead ends and had had to cut through more layers than an onion. Finally, he had distilled his findings into a series of commands that would cut through the dross. He typed them out one at a time and waited. Before long, words written in Cyrillic appeared. He entered a command to use translation software.

Yaeger scratched his head, mystified at the image on the screen. It was a menu.

As he was watching, the menu disappeared and in its place was a message from Max.

MAY I TAKE YOUR ORDER, SIR? WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?

I COULD TELL YOU BETTER IF WE USED THE HOLOGRAM.

Yaeger blinked. Max was trying to bribe him. He rotated his shoulder blades to relieve the stress of working, breathed a weary sigh and brought his fingers back to the keyboard.