Chapter 54
It took twenty minutes to assemble the special shore detail Khurtin had requested. During that time, he kept a close eye on his boat. And an even closer eye on the Chinese.
In particular, he watched the group that had rushed ashore.
A junior officer was shouting commands, while the man with captain’s stripes anxiously looked on.
Khurtin couldn’t understand what was being said, but the group had split into two distinct details, each composed of five men.
One of the details headed toward the Aurora, where the Chinese sailors began helping his own men.
The language barrier was evident, but they immediately tended to the wounded and assisted in the search for survivors.
It was a symbolic effort at best, but at least they were showing some compassion. An adherence to maritime rescue law.
To Khurtin’s surprise, the second detail, led by the nervous captain, didn’t approach the Aurora. Instead they struck out toward the wrecked airplane, which only fueled Khurtin’s simmering wrath.
There had been a handful of messages between the two vessels, exchanged via short-range VHF radio in the immediate aftermath of the collision.
The Chinese had cited a catastrophic malfunction of their engine controls as the cause of the disaster, and assured Khurtin that they would provide any and all assistance to the Aurora that could be spared.
What they hadn’t offered was any sort of apology.
The fact that the Chinese captain was now prioritizing a far less critical situation enraged Khurtin.
The consequences of the man’s incompetence were all around them: dead bodies, wounded, a foundering submarine.
Seeing the Chinese captain simply shun the stricken Aurora, and shun any sense of accountability, was beyond baffling.
When the second Chinese detail reached the lead, they hit the same roadblock Khurtin and his crew had when they’d first tried to reach the crashed airliner.
Curiously, his own solution, the passerelle, had vanished.
He didn’t see it anywhere, and wondered if the ice might have shifted from the force of the collision, causing it to fall into the sea.
The man he had stationed to mind it was gone, having rightly returned to aid his shipmates.
The ramp, at some point in the confusion, appeared to have been lost.
For ten minutes, he watched the Chinese contingent stand in disarray.
They gestured and argued, and their captain seemed unwilling to make a decision.
One of them shouted in the direction of the wrecked fuselage but received no reply from the crash survivors.
This Khurtin thought curious, but he wrote it off to the wind.
In the end, the stymied Chinese turned around and began walking back to their ship.
Khurtin assessed his own vessel. Aurora remained afloat, but her electrical buses had failed completely.
This rendered the pumps inoperative and would hasten her demise.
Procedurally, one of his primary concerns was the boat’s nuclear reactor.
The reactor was centrally located and had not been exposed to the brunt of the collision.
Its critical cooling system was operating normally on backup power, and there were so far no warnings from the radiation monitors.
All that would change, but probably not before Aurora ended up on the bottom of the sea.
Khurtin actually felt a measure of solace in this, which was a testament to how far he had fallen.
Only minutes ago, he had commanded the most cutting-edge vessel in the Russian Navy.
Now he was grateful that the nuclear disaster unfolding on his watch had at least occurred in one of the most inaccessible places on earth.
He strove to keep his composure. This was not the time for stray thoughts.
His crew had salvaged everything possible from the Aurora: food, medical supplies, survival gear.
In his mind, all that could be done had been done.
It was time for the next step, which had been brewing in his mind since he’d realized his ship was doomed.
He descended a ladder to the ice, ignoring the groans that emanated from deep inside Aurora’s hull.
His special shore detail was waiting, along with the items he’d requested.
Khurtin gave his men a meticulous briefing on his plan.
He led his contingent toward the Chinese who were returning from the lead.
His own crew complied perfectly with his detailed instructions.
To a man, they appeared more consumed by shock than anger; more in need of help than posing any sort of threat.
Khurtin was in front, and at the rear were two men carrying a stretcher.
One of his sailors was on the stretcher.
His eyes were closed, suggesting that he was either dead or seriously injured, and his lower body covered by a thick blanket.
Khurtin brought his men to a stop, letting the Chinese traverse the last 20 meters to reach them. The second Chinese shore party paused their aid work and rejoined their captain. The air was redolent with the scents of the disaster—burning oil, charred wiring, singed flesh.
The Russians arranged themselves precisely as Khurtin had instructed—a wide arc, with Andreyev directly behind Khurtin and the stretcher at the very back.
The two groups ended up ten paces apart.
The Chinese eyed them warily. Unlike his own men, they were clumped in a tight group.
Their captain stood at the front, and the three men carrying weapons mingled with the rest, their rifles hanging loosely on their shoulders.
Khurtin locked eyes with his Chinese counterpart but said nothing. Previously anxious, the man now feigned confidence—even borderline bravado. It was an inappropriate posture in such a volatile situation, which called for contrition. A long and awkward silence ensued.
Finally, the Chinese captain exchanged a few words with the man directly behind him in their native tongue.
Khurtin heard a distinct cough—Andreyev by his own shoulder.
This was the prearranged signal. Confirmation, based on what Andreyev had heard, that there were no Russian speakers among the icebreaker’s crew.
More critically, they apparently assumed that there were no Mandarin speakers on the Russian side.
Conceding to the usual default language, the Chinese skipper said in heavily accented English, “I am Captain Yong of the People’s Republic of China. We are officially taking command of this rescue.”
Khurtin remained silent.
“It is regrettable that you and your crew have suffered injuries.” He looked directly at the stretcher, then at Khurtin’s limp arm. “As we previously informed you, our ship suffered a technical malfunction affecting our engines and steering.”
“We have suffered more than just injuries,” Khurtin growled, struggling to keep his temper in check. “Three of my crew are dead, and sixteen are missing.”
The Chinese skipper turned his head and said something to the nearest man with a rifle.
Andreyev whispered a translation in Khurtin’s ear. If you have to shoot, take the captain first.
Khurtin had had enough. “Now!” he shouted.
It happened in a flash. The man on the stretcher threw off the blanket, revealing six fully automatic AK-12 battle rifles.
Rounds had been chambered, and the fire selector levers were set to semiautomatic.
It took mere seconds for the six men Khurtin had designated to retrieve weapons and train them on the Chinese crewmen that mattered—the three who were armed.
The Russians had deconflicted their fire in advance: left, center, and right.
Two barrels were leveled at each of the three armed Chinese.
Only one made the fatal mistake. The rightmost guard lowered the rifle from his shoulder.
Before he could get anywhere near the trigger, he was cut down in a hailstorm of 5.
45x39mm rounds. Eight of them connected at minimum range, and he was dead before he hit the ground.
The man standing next to him staggered, a stray bullet having caught him in the arm.
The Chinese captain looked horrified, but he said nothing. Did nothing.
Khurtin gave a hand signal, and eight more of his men appeared in the distance. They were also carrying weapons, the last from the Aurora’s armory. They sprinted toward the Snow Dragon 2’s gangway.
Khurtin stepped forward until he was looking Yong straight in the eye. With his good right hand, he pulled a Makarov from his pocket and directed the barrel straight at Yong’s forehead.
Andreyev bellowed in Mandarin, “Everyone on your knees! Hands behind your heads!”
Captain Yong was the first to kneel. His men followed his example.
Khurtin saw a walkie-talkie on the junior Chinese officer’s belt.
He ordered one of his men to confiscate it.
He then said to Andreyev, “Tell him I want his entire crew assembled on the ice in fifteen minutes. If even one man remains on board, the captain will be shot. Anyone carrying a weapon will be shot.”
Andreyev translated, and Yong ordered the seaman nearest the ship to carry out Khurtin’s instructions. The poor man set out with his hands in the air, Andreyev accompanying him.
The act of piracy was concluded quickly.
With three minutes to spare, sixty-one officers, crew, and scientists from Show Dragon 2 were sitting on the ice floe under guard.
That was where they would stay, cold be damned, until transportation could be arranged for everyone, including the air crash survivors, on a Russian Navy vessel.
Khurtin was soon on the bridge of Snow Dragon 2.
One of his technicians reconfigured the communications suite, first to cut all connections with Beijing, and then to initiate contact with the Russian Navy.
Khurtin knew that the icebreaker was not seaworthy.
Her hull had been damaged, which meant that battering her way to open water was out of the question.
Through no fault of his own, the Aurora was lost. But he had at least taken control of the situation.
From the bridge of the Snow Dragon 2, he glared at his Chinese counterpart, who sat shivering on the ice.
Yong looked back with abject fear. Khurtin suspected his terror wasn’t driven by his present predicament, but rather the one he would face when he returned to China.
Both men were so engaged in their stare-down, one reveling in a dark victory, the other dazed in ignoble defeat, that neither noticed the periscope that had emerged half a mile away.