Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [191]
The ship probably had a name and a designator, but those particulars had also been excluded from Adnan’s briefing report. What he did have was a map with the ship’s anchorage coordinates and a roughly sketched blueprint of the cargo hold and deck entrances; clearly, the blueprint had come from neither Atomflot nor the manufacturer, but rather a firsthand source, likely one of the crew. Adnan also knew the vessel’s history and how it had come to rest here.
Commissioned in 1970 as an Atomflot nuclear tender, it had been designed to offload spent fuel and damaged components from nuclear-powered civilian vessels at sea and transport them back to shore for disposal. In July of 1986, overburdened with high-level reactor rods from a damaged icebreaker, the ship lost steerageway in heavy seas and foundered, spilling seawater into the cargo hold and breaking loose the reactor rods. So severe and immediate was the contamination that the ship’s crew, forty-two in all, died before rescue vessels could reach the scene. Anxious to avoid revealing to the world another Chernobyl-level disaster, which had happened just three months earlier, Moscow ordered the ship towed to a secluded cove on the eastern coast of Novaya Zemlya and abandoned in place.
The error that had allowed other vessels to be deposited here was monumental, but such was the nature of bureaucracy, Adnan reasoned. Surely at some point the government had realized its error, but by then little could be done. The bay was designated a restricted area, and the secret was kept. On occasion, teams were likely sent into the bay to check the ship’s hull for leaks or signs of intrusion, but as time passed and priorities changed, the incident would have faded into the secret pages of Soviet Cold War history.
Out of sight, out of mind was the phrase, Adnan believed.
The ship was anchored on the north side of the cove, fifty meters offshore and sheltered from view by a pair of bulk carriers. It took them another forty minutes to circumnavigate the cove.
They began unpacking their equipment. First came the rubber-impregnated L1 chemical protection suits, followed by the rubber boots and gloves. Like most of their equipment, the suits were Army-issue: olive drab and stiff, and stinking of new dye. After making sure zippers and snaps were sealed, each man donned a Soviet-era GP-6 rebreather mask.
“How much good will these do?” asked one of the men, his voice muffled.
“They are rated for short-term exposure,” Adnan replied. Part of him regretted the lie, but there was nothing to be done about it. Even if the suits hadn’t been twenty-plus years old, they would be of little use against anything other than chemical and biological agents.
If told the true extent of the danger before them, the men would likely go anyway, but it was a chance he couldn’t afford to take. “As long as we’re out within an hour, there will be no long-term damage.” This, too, was a lie.
They pushed the rafts into the water, then piled in and set off across the water, heading for the ship’s midships accommodation ladder, which was extended, coming to within a foot or two of the water. Why this was Adnan didn’t know; none of the crew had made it off. Perhaps the government had performed some sort of inspection in the past.
They tied the rafts to the ladder, then started upward. The ladder shook and clanked beneath their