Kowalski jabbed a thumb toward the door. “With a little help from my friends.”
Another man entered the room, a bandage around his head and a rifle in his hands. He covered the door.
“Tom!” Jenny called out. She clearly knew the pair.
But the fellow was not alone. At the man’s knee, a shaggy form loped into the room, tongue lolling, eyes bright.
“My God!” Matt said, dropping to the floor. “Bane.” His voice caught in his throat. The dog leaped on the cell door, pushing his nose through the bars, trying to squeeze through, whining, squirming.
“We found him in the ice peaks.” Kowalski spoke rapidly as he keyed open the cell doors “Or rather, he found us. The Russians left Tom as dead meat in the snow, but he was only knocked out. I dragged him off.”
“You survived,” Jenny said, still sounding incredulous.
Kowalski straightened with a handful of keys. “No thanks to you guys…running off and leaving us for dead. Next time check a goddamn pulse, for God’s sake.”
As Matt’s cell was unlocked, he pushed open the door and worked fast. Time was against them. He removed the dagger from the corpse and sliced the admiral’s hands free, then searched the guards for further weapons, taking everything he could find. He passed weapons around as the other cells were opened. “We’d better haul ass.”
“This way,” Tom said, rushing the line of prisoners out and around to the curving exterior hallway. The group hurried to the same service duct through which Matt and the others had fled hours ago.
As they were ducking away, a commotion sounded from across the level. Yelling. Matt straightened, listening as he waved the biology group into the tunnels. It was Craig. He must have realized the abort code was a ruse. Matt didn’t want to be here when Craig found out they had escaped.
Matt dove through the vent, following Bane and Jenny.
Kowalski led them into the service shafts. “We’ve been rats in the walls ever since the attack started. Tom knows this station like the back of his hand. We were waiting for a chance to break you free.”
“Where’s this ventilation shaft?” Washburn asked as the group piled into one of the service huts. She still held Maki in her arms. The boy was silent, eyes wide.
“About half a mile,” Tom said. “But we’re safer down here.”
Matt turned to the admiral. “What’s the blast range of the Polaris bomb?”
Kowalski swung toward them, eyes wide. “Bomb? What bomb?”
Petkov ignored the man. “The danger is not so much the blast as the shock wave. It’ll shatter the entire island and the ice for miles around. There’s no escape.”
“What f**king bomb?” Kowalski yelled.
Jenny told him.
He shook his head as if trying to deny the truth. “Fucking fantastic, that’s the last time I rescue you guys.”
“How much time do we have left?” Tom asked.
Matt checked his watch. “Fifteen minutes. Not nearly enough time to get clear.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
Matt removed one of the confiscated weapons. One of the black pineapples. “I may have an idea.”
“Buddy, that grenade’s not strong enough to blast a hole to the surface,” Kowalski said.
“We’re not going up.”
“Then where?”
Matt answered, then led them off in a mad dash as time was running out.
Kowalski pounded after him. “No f**king way.”
9:10 P.M.
Craig stared at the empty row of cells, the pair of dead guards. Everything was unraveling. He spun on the pair of soldiers at his side. “Find them!”
Another soldier rushed through the door. “Sir, it looks like they fled into the service shafts.”
Craig clenched a fist. “Of course they did,” he mumbled. But what were they trying to do? Where could they go? His mind spun. “Send two men in there. The Russian admiral must not—”
A muffled blast cut him off. The floor under his feet rattled.
The guards stiffened.
Craig stared down between his toes. “Shit!”
9:11 P.M.
A floor below, Matt tested the docking bay’s hatch. The others were lined up along the wall on Level Five. A moment ago, he had opened the hatch and tossed in a pair of the incendiary grenades, one collected from each of the two dead guards.
Matt touched the metal door with his bare fingers. It had gone from ice cold to burning hot. The blast of the V-class incendiaries continued to impress him. But were they strong enough to do the job here?
There was only one way to find out.
As the blast echoed away, Matt swung open the door. It led to the docking lake for the Russian transport sub, an old I series. A moment ago, the room had been half filled with ice, completely encasing the docked conning tower. Matt remembered Vladimir’s final confession. Petkov’s father had scuttled the sub, blowing all ballast, driving the sub up and jamming it in place. Over the years, the room had flooded and frozen.
Matt stared into the room. The pair of grenades had transformed the frozen tomb into a fiery hell. Water bubbled on the surface. Pools of flame dotted the new lake formed around the sub. The smell of phosphor and steam rolled out.
As Matt studied the chamber, his eyes and face burned. It was still too hot to enter.
“Next time,” Kowalski groused, shielding his face, “let’s try just one grenade.
Despite the residual heat, at least the mound of ice covering the conning tower had melted away. The sub’s hatch was uncovered.
Now if only they could get to it.
Matt checked his watch. Thirteen minutes. With his face sweating, he turned to the others. They didn’t have time to spare. “Everyone inside!”
Washburn splashed into the room first, followed by the biology group. The water was knee-deep. Tom went with them. “Get that hatch open!” Matt called to the Navy pair.
Kowalski and Matt covered the door, keeping their weapons fixed toward the stairs. Despite the thick insulation of the docking bay, everyone had to have heard the grenade explosion.
Matt motioned Jenny. “Get everybody into the sub!”
Jenny nodded, starting across with Bane at her side and Maki in her arms. Beside her, Petkov still spoke into the walkie-talkie, passing the coordinates to the Polar Sentinel.
Jenny called back to him: “Matt!” He heard the distress in her voice and turned. “The water’s getting deeper! It’s filling up!”
She was right. The level had risen to her thighs. Suddenly a geyser of water shot up from the half-frozen lake, exploding up with a soft whoosh.