Sychkin tossed something from a pocket. A small transmitter with a blinking red light. It was meaningless to all of them—but not to Turov.
The captain backed away as if the archpriest had thrown a cobra at his feet.
“What’s wrong?” Gray asked.
Turov stared at Gray, at all of them, his expression grim, his words worse.
“It’s doomsday.”
7:32P.M.
Turov closed his eyes, balanced between fury and remorse. “This is not the outcome I had wished for.”
That statement had layers of meaning beyond regret. He had feared this very scenario. It was why he had fought so hard—not so much to secure this little plot of land, as to keep this nuclear option from being deployed. Still, he knew that wasn’t entirely true. It was his own ambition that led him here as much as it had Sychkin.
“I thought I possessed the only failsafe device, a way of reaching theSiniykit,” he said. “Or so I was told.”
He stared at the blinking transmitter, a match to the one couriered to him, arriving locked in a secure case from the Northern Fleet Joint Strategic Command. Clearly someone had doubted that Turov would resort to this option, even in defeat. Turov could guess who that was, the only one with authority enough to dare do this, someone whose desires were in lockstep with Sychkin.
Vice Admiral Glazkov.
Still, Turov knew there were many others up and down the chain of command, the vocal minority who had wanted to perform a live-fire test of the Poseidon torpedo, who also played a role in this subterfuge.
And now we must pay the price.
Not just those gathered on the ice, but the hundred crew aboard theLyakhov.
“We’re all trapped,” he said.
The American with the phone—Gray—approached him, challenged him. “What do you mean it’sdoomsday?”
Turov saw no reason to prevaricate. “There is a Belgorod-class submarine, theSiniykit, the third prong of this mission. It was ordered to surface fifty miles away, to offer support if needed, but also as afailsafe, to make sure no one but Russia had territorial control of this location.”
“And what does that mean for us?”
“Are you familiar with our Poseidon torpedoes?”
Gray nodded. “Unmanned stealth weapons. Eighty feet long. Nuclear capable.”
“Not justcapable. On theSiniykit, the boat has one loaded with a hundred-kiloton warhead.”
“That’s your failsafe?”
“It’s already been dispatched. Underway.” Turov waved to the transmitter on the ground. “With satellite comms open, theSiniykitwould’ve received the command to launch.”
“Can you countermand it?” Gray asked.
Turov shook his head. “After firing the Poseidon, the boat was under orders to dive beneath the ice cap and go into hiding.” He stared across the group. “There is no way of reaching them.”
Tucker looked at his dogs, no longer bothering to point his pistol at Turov. “How much time do we have?”
“At a range of fifty miles, accounting for the Poseidon’s rate of travel...” Turov shrugged. “Thirty minutes, maybe less.”
Gray searched to the south, speaking rapidly. “A hundred kilotons. Meaning a fireball of four hundred yards. Blast radius of two miles. To escape the worst of it—radiation, thermal damage—we’d need to be nine or ten miles away.” He turned to another man in the colors of the icebreaker. “Captain Kelly?”
Turov looked at the two men.
“With both engines going, theKingcan push twenty-two knots. But that’s over open water. Even if we reverse along the path we took, we’ll manage no more than fifteen to eighteen. And that’s pushing it.”
