Radiant Angel

I reached the vestibule on the salon deck and dropped to one knee as I swept my MP5 around the dark space. The ship was very quiet and I could hear my breathing.

Tess backed up the staircase and into the vestibule, her Glock still pointed down the stairs.

The next deck was the bridge where the ship’s office and captain’s quarters were located, and I stood and moved toward the spiral stairs.

Tess, however, moved toward the glass doors of the salon and motioned me to follow.

Well, you’re supposed to check out everything to make sure you’re not leaving hostiles behind you, but in my head I heard a timer ticking.

Petrov’s handheld radio beeped and Gorsky said, “I am not sure they are still here.”

Petrov replied, “In any case you must stay there and guard the device and kill anyone else who comes aboard from the swimming platform.”

Gorsky did not reply immediately, then said, “The Americans will start boarding over the sides, and in force—”

“I see no craft from the bridge,” though he did see them on the radar.

“But they know who we are, Colonel, and why we are here.”

“It is too late for them, Viktor.”

Again, there was a silence, then Gorsky said, “It is also too late for us.”

Petrov did not reply.

“Are we going to die?”

“Yes, we are going to die.”

Gorsky said nothing, so Petrov advised, “Be brave. Stay at your post—as Captain Gleb is doing.” He reminded Gorsky, “We ca

Again, Gorsky said nothing, and Petrov had nothing more to say to him, so he signed off and turned his attention to the radar and the windshield, confident that Viktor Gorsky would do his duty. And if not, it didn’t matter because there was literally nothing that could stop The Hana at this point, except perhaps a naval ca

Petrov stared at the approaching skyline, then glanced at the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. “Yob vas.”

I followed Tess into the long salon. She stopped and took a deep breath. “Oh my God…”

So as it turned out, Tasha and her friends were just throwaway props, easily expendable in the pursuit of some psychotic goal of world domination. Well, Buck and I agreed on another thing—the Russians needed closer watching.

There was nothing more to see there, so we returned to the vestibule and approached the spiral staircase carefully, knowing that at least one person was on the bridge deck—and also knowing that these people carried submachine guns and knew how to use them.

We listened for a sound at the top of the stairs, but all I heard was that ticking in my head.

I made a tactical decision and said to Tess, “The only chance we have of stopping this fucking nuke from leveling Manhattan is if we split up. I go back to the tender garage, kill Gorsky, pump the garage dry, and try to disarm that thing. You go up to the bridge and see if you can get rid of whoever is up there and turn this ship toward the middle of the harbor.” I looked at her in the dim light and I could see she understood that this was our only play. She nodded.

“And if you get a chance, jump ship.”

She looked at me and our eyes met. “Well… nice working with you, Detective.”

“Yeah. You too.” I promised, “I’ll buy you that drink later.”

She started up the spiral staircase toward the bridge, and I moved quickly down the stairs to the lower deck.

Well, there are good plans and there are desperate plans. Petrov, too, had a desperate plan that obviously included dying for his country. He could have stopped the ship and raised the white flag, or he could have jumped overboard. But he wasn’t doing that, so neither were we.

Tess Faraday stopped near the top of the spiral staircase, noting that the bridge door was closed and that the other two doors in the vestibule were also shut.

She climbed the last few steps and swept the vestibule with her Glock, noticing blood trails on the floor that led to the captain’s quarters and the ship’s office, and she understood that dead bodies had been dragged into the rooms. Nothing in there to check out.

She turned toward the bridge door. Behind that door, as Corey said, was the asshole who controlled the nuke and the asshole who controlled the ship.

She took a deep breath, hit the entry pad, and dropped into a low crouch with her Glock aimed at the door, ready to empty her nine-round magazine. This could all be over in a minute.

But the door did not slide open.

She stepped back, aimed at the door, and began firing.

Tess felt a sharp pain in her arm and realized she’d been hit by a ricochet, and that the door was armored. “Damn it!”

An intercom speaker near the entry pad crackled, then a voice with a Russian accent said, “I am watching you on the camera. Where is your friend?”

“Open the fucking door and put your hands in the air!”

“I can’t hear you. Push the intercom button.”

Tess hit the intercom button, took a deep breath, and said, “Listen… we know what you’re doing, and we know this is not an attack by the Saudis. We know all this, and if you want to start fucking World War Three—”

“Shut up.”

“Look… Colonel Petrov… think about—”

“Shut up.”

“Asshole!” Tess took her finger off the intercom button and began kicking at the door. “You bastard! Stop this!”

There was no reply, but then Petrov’s voice came through the speaker. “You will be dead in thirteen minutes.”

I ran through the dark passageway on the lower deck between the staterooms, and at the end of the passageway were the double doors that led to the garage—and to Viktor Gorsky and the nuke.

I gripped my MP5 in my right hand and threw open a door, then dove into a prone position and sca

I could hear the blood pounding in my ears, but that was all I could hear, and I could see nothing except some moonlight coming through the doors that led to the swimming platform across the flooded garage.

Okay, I’d outflanked Gorsky, but where was he?

If I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me. But he had to have heard me diving through the door and hitting the deck, so he knew approximately where I was, and I expected to see the flash of his MP5 and hear the bullets smacking into the deck around me—or into me. I tried to control my breathing, but it sounded too loud. Someone had to make a move. But time was still on Gorsky’s side, and he didn’t have to do anything. Unless he’d decided he didn’t want to be standing at ground zero when the nuke blew. So maybe he’d put on a life vest and gone off the swimming platform, leaving me alone with the nuke. File that under wishful thinking.

I rose slowly to one knee and suddenly the underwater lights came on, and I turned quickly toward the catwalk. And there was Viktor Gorsky, not twenty feet away, aiming his submachine gun at me.

I knew I was dead, but Gorsky seemed to hesitate for half a second, or maybe the light momentarily blinded him. I used that half second to dive over the side of the dock into the water, just as I saw the flash of his muzzle and heard the bullets impacting on the dock where I’d been.

I sank to the bottom of the illuminated water and saw bullets coming at me, but they lost their velocity before they traveled a foot into the water.

I found traction on the submerged deck and I half walked and half swam toward the catwalk. I was ru

Gorsky kept firing into the water, desperately trying to overcome the laws of physics. He was losing his cool.