“We’re cavitating, Captain!” Mayhew said.

“Captain, Con!” a voice called over the intercom at the same instant. “We’re cavitating!”

The damage was done. “Helm! Maintain turn! Come to new heading two-six-zero! Ahead half!”

“Helm maintain turn to new heading two-six-zero, aye! Ahead half. Aye!”

Even at a creeping pace of four knots, the sudden turn had been enough to make noise in the water. The trouble was that the Ohio, over 560 feet long and with a submerged displacement of 18,750 tons, did not stop on a dime or turn inside her own length, and Grenville had to goose the old girl to give her rudder some bite to the water.

The cat was well and truly out of the bag now, dripping wet and making a hell of a racket… but that was better than scoring an own goal by ramming the Pittsburgh.

The question now was what the Russian was going to do about it.

SSN Dekabrist Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1209 hours, GMT-12

“Got him, Captain!”

Captain First Rank Valery Kirichenko looked up as the sonar officer called over the intercom.

“Talk to me, Lieutenant.”

“Sir! We have sounds of propeller cavitation to starboard, bearing two-five-zero, range approximately five hundred meters. Target aspect changing, and appears to be turning away from us, to port. I’m getting increased power plant noise as well. I believe he is accelerating.”

“Excellent! Stay with him!”

Kirichenko’s orders required that he find and neutralize any enemy submarines operating within a twenty-kilometer perimeter around the GK-1 if hostilities commenced. The Lebedev had passed him the word hours before that American commandos were boarding the ship and that an American Ohio-class submarine had surfaced alongside.

The Americans had made it so easy… but then the game had turned dark as the Dekabrist slipped closer to the enemy. The American vessel had suddenly submerged, making the challenge of finding her that much more difficult. He knew approximately where the enemy vessel was, but not precisely. He’d hoped the sounds of scraping ice and opening bow doors would have enticed the Americans into doing something rash-and noisy-but there’d been nothing.

Until now.

“Helm!” Kirichenko ordered. “Come right eight-five degrees, to new heading two-five-zero! Increase speed to twelve knots!”

“Yes, Captain!”

Five hundred meters. They’d been so close! But the American sub was turning away, which made her an easy target.

“Stand by to fire torpedoes one and two,” Kirichenko said. “On my mark!…”

Mir Beneath the Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1209 hours, GMT-12

“Everyone stay calm,” Benford continued. “But you will do as I say. Or you’ll all die sooner, rather than later.”

“Harry!” Kathy cried, pulling back a little from Golytsin. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m not going to jail for murdering Richardson!” he said. “The damned Russians double-crossed me… tried to put the blame on me. Well, they’re not going to get away with it!”

“We’re not trying to blame you,” Dean said. He was kicking himself. That was his pistol, the one he’d carelessly dropped on a seat after coming on board the Mir. He was trying to remember… how many cartridges should be left?

He didn’t know the Makarov well, but he knew the Walther PP series and he’d read once that the Russian Makarov was based on the tried-and-true PP design. Walthers had eight-round magazines, so the chances were good that the Makarov had an eight-round mag as well.

But how many rounds had he fired in the short, savage firefight on board the GK-1 just now? There’d been his first shot… then three quick ones…

He couldn’t be sure-things had happened so fast-but he was pretty sure the pistol only had one shot left. Maybe two…

“Yes, you are!” Benford cried. There were tears on his face now, and his hands were shaking. Not good…

“Harry, it’ll all be okay!” Kathy told him. She started to rise, but he swung sharply, pointing the pistol at her.

“Don’t move, you little bitch! Damn it, no one believes me! It… it wasn’t supposed to be this way! I did everything they wanted me to do, and then they always wanted more! And now they want to double-cross me! Well, I’m giving the orders now!”

“Listen here, Benford,” Dean said.

“No, you listen!” The pistol swung back to point at him. “You… you just get me to the surface, understand? And get me out of this fucking box!”

The stress, Dean thought, must have been building on the man for days. From the sound of it, he was having a bout with claustrophobia as well, first locked up in that stores closet on the Russian platform, and now crammed into the Mir. That and his fear at being caught for the murder…

The trouble was that if he fired that pistol in here, it could very easily kill them all. The hull of the Mir was as thick and rigid as the hull of the GK-1, designed to withstand the incredible pressures of the abyss… which meant that a bullet fired in here would bounce wildly around the crowded compartment until it hit someone-or cracked one of the quartz viewing ports forward, or smashed some piece of equipment vital to their continued survival.

“The pressure on the hull outside, Benford,” Dean said, keeping his voice low and level, “is roughly one half ton pressing down over every square inch. Do you know what will happen if you put a hole in one of our viewing ports with that thing?”

“Don’t make me find out!”

“Give it up, Benford! Put the gun down!”

“No!”

“If you think it’s cramped in here now, wait until twenty tons or so of seawater blast in through a porthole and smash you into a grease spot!”

“Shut up!”

Dean met Kathy’s eyes. He flicked his own gaze forward, to the place where she’d laid her pistol when she’d changed clothes. It was lying on a shelf on the starboard side, a few feet forward of Golytsin’s chair and well out of her reach… out of Golytsin’s reach, too, assuming he could move fast enough to grab it.

Dean glanced aft again to meet Kathy’s eyes, then ahead to the pistol again. She gave a barely perceptible nod.

If Dean could throw the Mir into a violent maneuver, knocking Benford off his feet, Kathy might be able to grab the other pistol and regain control.

Of course, Benford’s weapon might go off when he fell. The odds were not real good at the moment…

And then something collided with the Mir, knocking it sideways with the violence of a sledgehammer blow and sending Benford slamming against a bulkhead.

“What the hell?”

Kathy looked up at the TV monitor over Dean’s head and pointed. “Look!”

Dean glanced up, then looked again. Another submarine, bigger than the Mir, an ugly bug of a submersible painted dark red and with a pair of insect’s arms spread wide, had just slammed into the Mir’s aft port quarter.

And Dean saw Braslov’s leering face in the cockpit canopy.

SSN Dekabrist Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1210 hours, GMT-12

“Fire number one!” Kirichenko said.

The weapons officer brought his palm down on the firing button at his console. Kirichenko felt the slight bump through the steel deck, heard the hiss of compressed air forward.

“Number one fired electrically, sir!”

“Fire two!”

Again, a bump and a hiss.

“Number two fired electrically, sir! Both torpedoes running true and normal.”

“We have operational control of both torpedoes,” a michman seated at the weapons console announced.

“Estimate impact,” the weapons officer said, looking up at the clock high on the bulkhead, “in thirty seconds!”

SSGN Ohio Arctic Ice Cap 82° 34' N, 177° 26' E 1210 hours, GMT-12