Chapter 45 - The Dead Calm of the Barents Sea
The maintenance crawlway beneath the deck plates was a suffocating nightmare of high-pressure hydraulic pipes, exposed conduits, and the freezing condensation dripping from the submarine’s outer pressure hull.
I crawled on my hands and knees, dragging the sovereign registry cylinder behind me by its heavy nylon lanyard. Ahead of me, Clara moved with ruthless speed, using a pocket flashlight to navigate the labyrinth of iron ribs that formed the skeleton of the *Njord-IV*.
Above us, the muffled detonations of breaching charges vibrated through the steel frame. Julian’s men were blowing the magnetic locks on the briefing room.
"How much time on the registry countdown?" Clara called back over her shoulder, her breath misting in the freezing crawlway air.
I checked the LCD screen built into the top casing of the cylinder. "Seven minutes until the failsafe triggers the global liquidation cascade. If this submarine sends the automated signal to the low-orbit Duncan satellite relay, the debt markets are finished."
"Then we cut the sub’s eyes and ears," Clara said.
We reached the end of the crawlway. Clara kicked through an aluminum inspection grill, dropping four feet down onto the wet steel grating of the forward torpedo room.
The space was cavernous and frigid. Four massive, five-hundred-millimeter torpedo tubes jutted from the forward pressure bulkhead like the barrels of siege cannons. Racks of wire-guided maritime munitions rested on hydraulic cradles along the port and starboard bulkheads. In the center of the compartment sat the auxiliary communication trunk—a tall, water-cooled rack of server arrays responsible for routing emergency ultra-low-frequency transmissions through the vessel’s deployable towed-array antenna.
"There," I said, pointing toward the primary optical fiber cables linking the console to the external transmitter housing. "If we sever that trunk, the sub can't broadcast anything to the surface until it docks."
"They'll have backup lines routed through the conning tower," Clara said, inspecting the heavy hydraulic cables. "Cutting the wires buys us ten minutes. We need to force this ship to the surface. We need the international task force to see this hull."
"How do you force an attack submarine to surface when the bridge is locked?"
Clara smiled—a cold, terrifyingly reckless smile that reminded me of the woman who had walked into my wedding chapel with nothing but a thumb drive and the truth.
"We blow the high-pressure emergency ballast tanks from the local auxiliary valves," she said, running toward a bank of massive, red-painted manual handwheels mounted beside the forward buoyancy controls. "It’s an old naval design mandate. In the event of a bridge command failure, the torpedo bay crew can manually blow the forward tanks to prevent sinking. If I open these valves completely, fifty thousand liters of pressurized air will empty into the tanks in six seconds."
"And what happens to the submarine?"
"We breach like a breaching whale," Clara shouted over the sudden whine of the torpedo bay’s pneumatic pressure line. "Hold onto something solid, Evelyn!"
Heavy footsteps pounded down the metal ladder at the far end of the compartment. The hatch burst open, and three of Julian’s tactical guards spilled into the room, their weapons raised.
"Step away from the manifold!" the lead operative roared.
I didn't step away. I grabbed a heavy iron torque wrench from the maintenance bench and jammed it directly into the emergency manual override lever, pulling it downward with the entire weight of my body.
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Clara spun the massive red wheel with both hands, shouting through the roar of escaping air.
A sound like the sky splitting open tore through the lower hull.
