by Captain Sammitch
"Are we there yet?" came the timeless question.
Kozlov chuckled. "Yes, we are here, Miss Kline."
Leslie Kline sat up in the Zodiac, yawned, and stretched her arms above her head. She looked around to see... absolutely nothing. "Are you sure they gave you the right co-ordinates, or...?"
There was a loud splash as what looked to be a solid wall of matte-black metal broke the surface of the water maybe twenty feet in front of her. Leslie panicked and nearly jumped out of the boat, but Kozlov held her in place, smirking at her.
The Zodiac slid backward, pushed by the water being displaced by the rising submarine. Finally, the immense hulk of metal came to a halt, exposing a curvature of black metal stretching almost nine hundred feet long: a Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine.
This particular Typhoon looked to be heavily modified. Leslie's trained eye was able to pick out a few major changes. The entire section of the sub that normally carried the sixteen nuclear missiles the Typhoon was intended to deliver -- nearly a third of the boat -- had been replaced with some sort of large compartment, but Leslie wasn't sure what it was. The huge red Soviet star had been removed from the side of the conning tower, but it hadn't been replaced with the three-color Russian flag or the flag or standard of any other nation in the CIS. There was only an empty space with the faint outline of where the red star had once been.
Leslie found out what the strange compartment was when two enormous doors on the back of the submarine opened upward. Kozlov piloted the Zodiac up to the edge of the above-surface portion of the submarine's hull and waited. Within a few moments, four powerfully built Russians in black uniforms clambered from the smaller of the two hatches on the flank of the conning tower and hurried over to the Zodiac.
Kozlov threw them a rope and rotated the outboard motor down so that the blades of its single screw pointed upward. The Russians hauled the Zodiac over to the edge of the doors, where one of the men helped Leslie out gently and another took her luggage. The remaining two deflated the Zodiac and carried it to a lift at the edge of the expanse between the two open doors. Leslie walked over and looked down.
The entire missile bay had been hollowed out and replaced with a huge floating garage or hangar of some sort. Two large mobile cranes and one slightly smaller one dominated the vast space below, but Leslie saw the unmistakable shapes of two assault hovercraft, a small search-and-rescue helicopter, and a larger transport chopper. The entire space -- a three-hundred-foot-long cylinder about eighty feet in diameter -- looked like it held a lot more, but shadows obscured Leslie's view.
The two sailors with the Zodiac were lowered down into the "garage" and disappeared into the darkness. Leslie, Kozlov, and the other two Russian sailors walked across the oddly non-slippery surface of the sub and into the hatch the sailors had come out of. The huge doors of the garage closed, and the sailor who had helped Leslie out of the Zodiac pulled the hatch closed and dogged it carefully, securing six massive bolts with a pneumatic wrench until the hiss of escaping air was heard for a brief moment, then subsided.
Leslie followed Kozlov down a ladder into the dimly lit corridors of the submarine. Kozlov didn't go far before he stopped at the door to his right and knocked twice. The door opened from the inside, and Leslie and the sailors stepped into a well-lit and very comfortable-looking room, apparently the captain's ready room.
A tall man with graying hair and a well-trimmed beard turned to greet his visitors. "Leslie Kline," he greeted her with an accent a bit heavier than Kozlov's. "We are honored to have you here." Leslie smiled. The man went on to introduce himself. "I am Sergey Gennadyevich Tsulygin, captain of the Korystnyj. I trust you are acquainted with Commander Kozlov, my first officer. I apologize for the somewhat rough accommodations, but you will not be aboard too long. My men will take your things to the guest quarters." The two sailors with Kozlov nodded, turned, and left the room, leaving Kozlov standing at the door, Leslie sitting in a recliner, and the captain standing over by an antique walnut bookshelf.
Captain Tsulygin began pacing around his ready room. "I am sure you are wondering what it is we do on board this vessel, Miss Kline. I do not see a problem with explaining. Eleven years ago, during the coup in Moscow, the Communist Party sent some instructions to us through our political officer. We were told to attack certain targets of American military importance, in order to provoke them into attacking the revolutionaries under Yeltsin. I decided then that I could never fire our nuclear rockets at the United States, especially not as an act of deceit. I refused to proceed with the attack plan. The political officer confronted me, and was found guilty of mutiny and... dealt with in the appropriate manner.
"We realized then that we could not go back to our homes, and would not be able to for some time. It was decided that the best thing we could do for our families before the party fell and the government changed was to stage an accident and feint the loss of the submarine -- and all of us. Those who did not wish to join us were given lifeboats and emergency beacons and instructed to perpetuate the cover story of a massive disaster.
"The deception worked. Our wives and children received sizable compensation from the party -- one of its last acts while in power -- and we decided to become mercenaries, soldiers of fortune. We immediately destroyed all our nuclear weapons to ensure that they could never be used in anger, and with the help of a very skilled engineer and fellow mercenary named Grissom Montag, we completely refitted this submarine to support all our mercenary operations. Now, we sail under no flag, and we have allegiance only to one another. We are merely soldiers of fortune, somewhat like yourself, Miss Kline."
Kozlov nodded.
Leslie didn't know what to say. "I... I suppose so, Captain."
Tsulygin chuckled. "Listen to me... an old fool telling stories. I do not wish to delay your work, Miss Kline. We will be departing shortly. Commander Kozlov will be accompanying you around the ship for... ah... protective reasons."
That got Leslie's attention. "Are you sure that's necessary?"
Tsulygin furrowed his brow. "Not all of us have resisted corruption as well as Commander Kozlov, Miss Kline. You may find him a valuable escort, for your own safety."
Leslie nodded. "Understood. So what's the plan?"
Kozlov unrolled a map from a case of charts by the bookcase. "The hurricane is traveling remarkably slowly," he explained. "The hurricane is almost to the island. We will proceed with all possible speed through this channel..." He pointed to a trough on the map. "...and surface, hopefully, within the eye of the storm -- which will not remain there for long -- and at this time you will be taken ashore and hopefully will come back with your objective before the remainder of the hurricane hits."
Leslie was skeptical. "And that's your plan? That's gonna get me there in one piece?"
Kozlov gave a noncommittal gesture. "It is the only plan we have. Would you like to explain to those who are paying you that you prefer to wait a while longer?"