"Hey, that's pretty cool, dude," the blond-haired American said as he peered in a torpedo tube. "Hey, are those real torpedoes over there? Hey, what are you dudes doing? Hey, put me down! Hey, open this up!"
The last words were shouted from the wrong side of the locked torpedo tube door.
The second man was loaded into another tube. Both men banged and screamed as the Novgorod sank below the waves. The tubes were flooded and the banging stopped.
When their bodies popped to the surface a few minutes later, there was very little time for their companions on the boat that had brought them there to panic. A single torpedo strike from the Novgorod sank the boat and all hands.
And on that very special day-a day of liberation for the old Soviet captain-Gennady Zhilnikov had finally found a post-Cold War mission for the crew of his small stolen submarine. The utter humiliation and destruction of the man who had put the Novgorod and Mother Russia out to sea.
Zhilnikov already knew through the Green Earth newsletter (printed on 100% recycled paper) that Nikolai Garbegtrov intended to act as the organization's ambassador to the Globe Summit. With the eyes of the entire world squarely on Mayana, there would be no better place to seek public revenge.
On occasion the Novgorod had returned in secret to Latvia or one of the other breakaway republics for supplies. It was, after all, a nuclear attack submarine and there were some items that just could not be procured from even the wealthiest American fools. On the black market they were able to purchase scavenged parts from ships rusting all along the west coast of the former Soviet Union.
Captain Zhilnikov had made certain that he had a full complement of torpedoes on board at all times. No matter what Green Earth claimed about peaceful motives, Gennady Zhilnikov had no intention of putting out to sea unarmed.
His torpedoes had come in handy removing the Green Earth boat that had delivered Nikolai Garbegtrov's doomed envoys to the Novgorod. And now, two weeks later, they were proving instrumental in Captain Gennady Zhilnikov's scheme to ruin Russia's untrustworthy former premier once and for all.
UNSEEN BY EYES on sea or shore, the dark shape of the Soviet-era submarine Novgorod slid silently through the midnight-black waters of the Caribbean Sea.
After sinking the first two garbage scows three days earlier, the old submarine had slipped out to deeper waters between Haiti and Mayana. There it had waited patiently among coral and schools of swimming fish.
Captain Gennady Zhilnikov expected some news. The world was watching Mayana. The two scows had obviously been sunk by torpedoes. A simple investigation would reveal that fact. Even Mayana with its limited resources would be able to figure it out with just a cursory examination of the scows.
The news would create fear and panic, especially with the leaders of the world converging on the small South American country. The world would focus like a laser beam on the treacherous Caribbean and the unknown danger that lurked beneath its surface. And then, then Gennady Zhilnikov could surface, pop the hatch and point a finger squarely at the great betrayer, Nikolai Garbegtrov-the man behind it all. His men listened in on radio signals for hours. There were no news reports of the torpedo strikes. That the two garbage scows had sunk was mentioned a few times. But it was attributed to a human error. One scow had struck another, resulting in an explosion that consumed both ships. As the hours dragged into days, no corrections were issued. The captain of one of the scows was to blame for both ships sinking. There was no mention of a submarine. No one knew of the stolen Novgorod. No one knew that Nikolai Garbegtrov, the lying, former dog-of-a-Soviet-premier, was to blame.
It was all too much.
"Human error," Captain Zhilnikov growled. "I will give them human error. Take us back," he ordered.
Even when they returned to the coast of Mayana, the Russian captain thought they might be sailing into a clever trap. But there were no submarines or warships lying in wait for them. Just a cluster of fat blips on the sonar screen.
There were many more scows than had been there just three days previous. The green dots of the scows stretched from one side of the sonar display to the next.
Sitting ducks.
Zhilnikav watched the screen through narrowed eyes. The monitor bathed his pale face in a wash of watery green. He looked like a seasick Martian.
"That one," Zhilnikov commanded, pointing randomly at a blip on the screen.
The order was relayed, the torpedo tubes loaded. "Periscope," Captain Zhilnikov commanded, spinning from the sonar station.
Far above, the periscope rose like the neck of a steel sea monster.
He found the scow. Silhouetted against a backdrop of lights from the hundred ships beyond it.
Captain Zhilnikov paused for a moment.
They had gotten away with their first attacks. He and his men could slip off and the world would not be the wiser.
He thought of Garbegtrov-the bloated betrayer-sprawled on a bed of American dollars. Laughing at Zhilnikov, laughing at the Soviet Union. Laughing at Russia.
The old Russian officer's face steeled. "Fire!" Captain Zhilnikov bellowed.
And the word launched frothy spittle from between the bitter old captain's furiously sputtering lips.
Chapter 20
Remo and Chiun stood on the damp deck of the speeding Russian trawler. Beside them, Petrovina Bulganin and Vlad Korkusku studied the Caribbean night. The rest of the SVR agents were up on the bridge.
The two Russians on deck were damp from the spray of the waves that broke across the boat's prow. Both Sinanju Masters remained bone-dry.
The first scows were moored a half mile off the coast.
There had been more torpedo strikes since they left the hotel. In a dozen spots fires now toyed with the twinkling stars in the warm sky. The scows were so tightly packed that flames from the explosions had spread to other boats.
Mayana wasn't equipped for such an emergency. Here and there in Garbage City could be seen flashes of red-and-blue lights-official boats sent from shore. Two undermanned fireboats squirted high plumes of water onto two separate blazes.
When the attack began, some scows had tried to flee. The slow-moving craft were easy targets. The remaining scows were hemmed in by miles of floating trash heaps.
The unnatural firelight cast visions of Hell across the calm sea surface. Petrovina Bulganin's beautiful face was bathed in a ghoulish wash of flickering orange.
She had regained her full senses during the ride from the hotel and the trip out on the boat. Her anger toward the men around her worsened as she grew more alert.
"So you try to kill me for Garbegtrov and his idiotic environmental movement?" she said, sneering at Vlad Korkusku. "That is why you try to blow me up and suffocate me?"
"No," Korkusku grunted in reply. He was watching the sea. "At first it was because I just do not like you."
Remo raised his hand. "Me, neither."
"Make that three," chimed in Chiun, who knew only too well his pupil's soft spot for beautiful Russian spies.
"And you," Petrovina said to Remo. "You are a menace, with your kicking in of doors like macho American Rambo. You could have gotten me killed. "
"Could've, should've, would've," Remo said. "Sue me for saving your life. And for those of you keeping score, that's the third thank-you I didn't get from you."
"Russian women never show proper gratitude," Chiun confided. "You would think being tractor wenches with cement-mixer hips and shovels for faces they would be grateful for any little attention they receive. But their ugliness has made them resentful. Do not talk to Russian women, Remo, unless you wish to be disappointed or need to know 1001 ways to abuse a cabbage."
Vlad Korkusku-whose mother, sisters, aunts and grandmother were all Russian women-decided to say a word not for Petrovina Bulganin, but for Russian females in general. He spent the next minute dangling by his ankle from the back of the boat with his head underwater and his face an inch away from the propeller. When he was allowed back up for air, Korkusku vehemently agreed that all Russian women were ugly, nasty harpies.
"You see?" Chiun said. "Even through his alcoholic delirium this Russian male understands."
"I don't think he's drunk, Little Father. Just wet."
Chiun patted Remo's hand. "You are still young in so many ways," he said paternally.
Searchlights were cutting across the water. The others concentrated on the spots of white. Remo and Chiun searched the darkness between the light. They all scanned the surface of the water for any signs of the Russian submarine.