Chapter 49
Kasey had seen automobile accidents before. They happened in a heartbeat, and came with a metallic smack that sounded like a clap of thunder. In comparison, the disaster playing out before her seemed to unfold in slow motion.
The sounds of crunching steel and fracturing ice shattered the quiet.
The size and momentum of the vessels sustained the collision for an interminable length of time.
The forces translated through the ice, feeling like an earthquake beneath Kasey’s feet.
It took half a minute for the ships to grind to a stop.
The Aurora was in worse shape. She had been sliced clean through, the forward thirty feet of her bow simply gone. The rest of the submarine lay smoldering, canted down at the bow with flames licking up at the edges. Her matte-black hull glimmered in the reflection of the fires.
Kasey thought the sub might sink immediately, but it didn’t seem to be dropping lower.
Not yet. She knew submarines were fitted with ballast tanks and watertight doors, so maybe there was a chance the boat wouldn’t sink.
The next thought that came to mind, a bit too late, was that the Aurora, like all newer Russian submarines, was almost certainly nuclear-powered.
Had she and Chen just instigated the next Chernobyl?
Chen was standing next to her. He looked ashen. “That isn’t what I intended,” he said in a hollow voice. It was probably the understatement of his life.
Kasey gave him a perplexed look. When he had told her Sky Fire might be able to seize control of the Snow Dragon 2, she’d guessed it might shut down the engines or steer the ship toward the North Pole. Wholesale destruction had never entered her mind.
She wondered if the disaster Chen had just instigated—no, she corrected, the disaster I ordered him to instigate—might constitute an act of war.
That thought subsided as quickly as it had arisen.
This was precisely what Sky Fire was capable of, proof of its lethality.
Kasey had merely turned the system against the country that created it, a Frankenstein moment for the digital age.
There would be attempts to cast blame in the days ahead, but those were arguments better left to diplomats and politicians.
Two immediate impacts, however, were inescapable. The ante had been upped incredibly. And she and Chen needed to leave right now.
“I think our work here is done,” she said. “Shut Sky Fire down. Time to move.”
While Chen complied, Kasey edged toward the back of the fuselage.
Upon reaching it, she peered around the corner and searched for the two Russian guards.
They were nowhere in sight. Then, suddenly, faraway flashes of movement caught her eye.
Their two minders had just crossed the makeshift bridge and were sprinting toward the wrecked ships.
The sailor that had been assigned to watch the passerelle was also gone.
He, too, must have rushed to aid his shipmates.
On the decks of both vessels crewmen were scrambling and shouting.
A sailor was inflating a life raft on the Aurora’s crumpled foredeck and Russian crewmen were tumbling down onto the ice.
She saw the sheen of an oil slick on the trail of open water behind the icebreaker, and fire flickered ominously from a hatch on the Aurora. The scene was apocalyptic.
And Kasey wasn’t going to waste it.
She hurried back to Chen and, as soon as he had Sky Fire in its case, she snatched it up, ready to move.
Studying the barren ice-scape ahead, she searched for references in the distance, a landmark of any kind.
There was nothing but ice and mottled sky for as far as she could see.
Bands of low gray clouds whipped past above, and the ice seemed to sway on unseen swells.
It had been there all along, but now, as she was about to face it head-on, the surrounding world of white took on a far darker aura.
Together they began walking away from the wreckage that had become their refuge.
Kasey watched Chen carefully and set the quickest pace he could manage.
For the first few minutes, she kept turning around to check their six, hoping no one had noticed their departure.
At one point she saw Nick emerge from the shelter, but he disappeared to the far side.
Two others came out and followed suit. It made perfect sense.
Everyone inside would have heard the catastrophe, and it was only natural that their interest would be piqued.
Kasey was thankful to have their attention locked in the wrong direction.
After roughly a quarter mile, she took one last look over her shoulder.
The fuselage had all but faded into swirls of snow.
Moments before it disappeared completely, however, a man suddenly appeared.
Her heart skipped a beat when he looked straight at them, but with great relief she realized it was Sharpe.
He held out his arm and gave a wave.
Kasey waved back, but not quickly enough. Sharpe had vanished in a sweeping curtain of mist.