Page 95 of Gryphon

“Launch a line of four depth charges.”

The cans rolled out of the rear chute to tumble in the boat’s wake. There they sank until the pressure gauge decided they’d reached their target depth. A hundred kilos of high explosive punched holes in the water and kicked fountains of foamed seawater skyward in clouds as tall as the Karlstad herself.

They repeated the exercise twice more.

One of the third group blasted a great double-thump of water aloft: the charge and one of the torpedoes.

All Kerstin could see was how close it lay off the stern. They survived that one by seconds.

“One down. Per the sonobuoy data, the other fish is circling to reacquire.”

“Now! Helm,” Kerstin called out. “Flank speed. Everything you’ve got.”

She actually felt the big ship accelerate, pushing her back into her seat.

Now it was a pure race.

Each passing second brought more hope.

“Estimate zero fuel now,” tactical called out.

Kerstin kept the Karlstad at flank for another five minutes before she dared ask.

“Anything from the sonobuoys?”

“Only us and the ice bumping about.”

“Set speed for ten knots.” She managed to keep her voice steady for the crew’s sake and for her own.

Helm eased down the speed in a single knot at a time, looking ready to hammer back to flank speed at the least provocation.

Kerstin was in no mood to hurry him along.

The torpedo was designed to safely sink once it was out of fuel. But she certainly wasn’t about to backtrack to make sure that it had.

She picked up the radio handset that had jammed in her seat cushion and punched back to the first radio frequency.

“Hello?”

“We’re still here, Kommendör.”

Kerstin considered. “So are we.” Then she replaced the phone in its cradle.

81

“Not sure quite how to say this,” Tad shifted from one foot to the other like a little boy who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Mike had just finished checking over the work that the Gulfstream’s team had done on Miranda’s jet. Two new side windows, a new section of hull, and a new seat without a bullet hole in it. All clean.

The Georgian Prime Minister had insisted on his government paying for it, cheap for the price of never telling anyone what happened here.

In the last twenty-four hours, many other revelations had come to light.

Once they were face-to-face, or face-to-corpse, Max had recognized the fake General Kurbanov as a Turkish arms dealer who had stood to benefit more from a war than any country. His assets had been confiscated and converted into a large, anonymous reparation. Pavle had routed it through LuftSvenska to the families of those downed in the 737 crash.

Rolm Lindgren would be able to retire from the airline’s presidency in relative peace.

Harry had finally penetrated the Italian flight school database sufficiently to unravel that Marco Marino had been Marko Marinin. The pilot who had crashed the 737 was indeed a Russian sleeper agent—but not working for Russia. He’d traded his attack to Kancheli for smuggling his family out of Russia through South Ossetia. To the media he became a sole actor manic-depressive who had falsified his psychological profile with the help of the now ruined Italian flight school scam.

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