"Go," said Jacobsson. "I'm here."

Dewey heard shouts from the hallway in Russian, then the loud drumbeat of footsteps. He looked at Katya just as her mouth opened and she started screaming. Dewey charged at her, catching her near the bed, and covered her mouth with his hand, silencing her. He felt her sharp teeth bite down.

Dewey pulled his hand, now bleeding, away from her mouth. He wrapped his forearm around her neck and tightened it. She struggled, kicking his legs, trying to punch him, but it was futile. In seconds, she grew weak, then went limp in his arms.

He carried her limp body to the window. He quickly surveyed the courtyard, as, behind him, a steel battering ram slammed into the door with a somber thump.

Dewey took a few steps back and aimed his gun at the window.

The battering ram slammed a second time. The door made a loud cracking noise as wood splintered.

Dewey lifted Katya's body and wrapped it around the back of his neck, clutching her legs and neck in a tight grip with his left hand as he held his gun in his right.

He charged toward the window, as, behind him, the door crashed in. He fired a slug, shattering the window, just as he leapt into the air. Yelling in Russian was interwoven with automatic gunfire. Dewey's right foot hit the windowsill as slugs erupted behind him. He hit the sill, then leapt out as far as he could, launching into the air as bullets flew just above his head. The momentum of the jump was quickly gone; Dewey and Katya dropped in a sharp line toward the ground two stories below. Dewey kicked his legs furiously through the air, trying to maintain his balance, holding Katya tightly around his neck. Their trajectory took them toward a red-and-white canvas umbrella. Dewey slammed into it, feetfirst. He ripped through the thick canvas and smashed painfully into the wooden pole holding the umbrella, snapping it in half, then crashed to the ground, his right palm, elbow, hip, and knee all absorbing the trauma yet protecting the unconscious Katya.

Dewey jumped to his feet, despite piercing pain in his leg.

The staccato of unmuted gunfire clotted the Saint Petersburg night.

He shifted Katya's body to his left shoulder, fireman style, and charged across the Four Seasons courtyard. He hurdled a wall of neatly manicured boxwoods as bullets pocked the slate on the ground around him.

They were trying to slow him, or scare him into stopping, but the gunmen did not target him directly. They would not want to kill Katya, and that fact alone offered him a slim margin of protection.

Dewey could see the iron balustrade above the canal entrance, just a block and a half away. He sprinted as fast as he could, sweat drenching him. The scene was chaos. Gunfire mixed with shouting, screams, cars honking, and, in the distance, the low thunder of a chopper moving in.

From both sides, policemen swarmed. For the first time, Dewey registered the khaki-and-red uniforms of Russian soldiers. He sprinted past a block of mansions, lungs burning, then lurched out into traffic, dodging cars as he crossed the last remaining roadway before the canal. Suddenly, to his left, he eyed a pair of soldiers running toward him.

Horns blared. Bullets struck a taxicab, shattering its windshield. Sirens mixed with hysterical screaming.

Dewey leapt to the sidewalk on the other side of the road. He had a few yards on a pair of officers who were closest, but they were gaining. He had less than a block now, a block lined with a half dozen limestone mansions. After that, he would be free and clear.

Suddenly, just past the last mansion on the block, precisely where Dewey wanted to run, a police cruiser cut across the road and bounced up onto the sidewalk, blocking him.

Dewey kept running as police officers jumped from the front and back of the sedan, weapons aimed at him. As one of the men stepped toward him, Dewey slammed his left shoulder into the officer, pummeling him backward, then kept charging toward the canal ahead.

Dewey recalled Polk's words: The nuke is through the strait ... get her out, then stay in-theater ...

Dewey was now running as fast as he could, despite the pain in his hip, just feet in front of a pack of Russian policemen. His eye shot right as a plainclothes agent lurched at him, diving toward his legs. Dewey kept running, bracing himself as the agent's arms wrapped around his thighs. He broke through the tackle, his knee striking the man's head, a loud grunt coming from him as he tumbled to the ground.

From behind, police officers swarmed, coming from what seemed like every direction, shouting at Dewey to drop Katya.

At the iron gate above the canal, Dewey threw Katya, like a rag doll, toward the water, then followed, leaping in the air, hurdling the fence. He heard a splash as Katya's body hit the water beneath him, then, suddenly, he slammed feet first into the water next to her. Dewey dived down into the dark canal as bullets hit the surface of the water just above his head.

45.

GRIBOYEDOV CANAL.

SAINT PETERSBURG.

In the dark waters of Griboyedov Canal, a small black object floated in a stationary position next to the four-hundred-year-old stone embankment, directly across the canal from an iron railing, past which was Nevsky Prospect, the nearest entry point to the canal from the Four Seasons.

The object appeared to be nothing more than a piece of floating debris, dull matte rubber in a dark shade of gray, a sliver of glass on one side, and that was all. It could've been anything: a buoy, an old boot, an empty vodka bottle. But it wasn't just anything. The rubber was in fact the skullcap of a tactical wet suit. The glass was a specially designed full-face diving mask, equipped with night optics and a dynamic graphical user interface which, on the left side of the interior of the helmet, displayed a live video feed, taken from the sky, of the scene.

Wearing both was Navy SEAL John Jacobsson. He moved his legs slowly beneath him, inhaling and exhaling through a closed-circuit underwater breathing apparatus called a rebreather, which enabled him to recycle most of the unused oxygen from his exhale, thus eliminating telltale bubbles from the water, cloaking his presence as he waited. He listened to the din from the street above, the cacophony of violence, which he registered with anticipation and dread, the tumult of a chaotic extraction whose odds of success were diminishing with each passing moment.

Jacobsson's earbud connected him to the SDV that idled directly beneath him, eighteen feet below the surface.

The rat-a-tat-tat of sporadic gunfire started less than a minute after Jacobsson surfaced. It echoed down across the flat water, bouncing between the stone walls of the canal, each round causing Jacobsson's heart to race a little quicker.

"It sounds like fucking Beirut up there," Jacobsson whispered into his commo as he tread water.

Jacobsson's teammate, Davey Wray, was seated in the tight cockpit of the SDV, waiting for him to return.

"Roger that," came Wray. "I can hear it."

In Jacobsson's right hand was an odd-looking weapon: HK P11, a pistol designed for underwater use, capable of firing steel darts.

The flashing lights of a police cruiser abruptly appeared, directly across from him, slamming to a screeching halt on the sidewalk just behind the balustrade.

The shouts grew closer, then were overhead.

Suddenly, an object came flying from above. It was a body, limp, like a corpse. He watched as the object came crashing from above; it was a woman, her long hair unmistakable. She splashed violently into the canal.

Jacobsson lunged beneath the water, kicking furiously, sticking the P11 back in his belt with his right hand as, with his left, he pulled a small red canister from the same belt. The canister-a ditch pipe-was the size of a pack of Life Savers. Jacobsson swam underwater to the place where he guessed she entered the water. He searched frantically for the woman, then found her, at least five feet beneath the surface, unconscious. Jacobsson pulled her even farther beneath the water, aiming for the SDV. He stuck the ditch pipe into her mouth, then pressed a black button on the end. Oxygen poured into her mouth as Jacobsson swam deeper, kicking hard, moving down into the depths of the canal.

Dewey hit the water hard, slamming legs-first only inches from where Katya's limp body had plunged into the canal. He dived below the surface just as bullets struck the water near his head. He dived as deeply and as quickly as possible, fighting to get to a safe depth, reaching down frantically into the water with his hands, kicking as hard as he could, despite the pain and what he now understood was a potentially serious injury to his right knee.

As he kicked lower, Dewey wrestled his way out of the leather Belstaff jacket, pulling his arms from the sleeves, then let the jacket fall away.

Dewey opened his eyes beneath the water, seeing nothing but infinite black. Instinctively, he searched for signs of Jacobsson, of Katya's white pants.

Then Calibrisi's last words came back to him: We need you in Russia.

He'd arrived in Russia totally unprepared for deep field work, but he understood that the situation was far graver than anyone back in America had predicted.

Whoever this person or this group was, it was clear they were an enemy far more sophisticated than anyone imagined.

In the cold water of the canal, the trauma from the leap through the hotel room window came into sharp relief. Each movement of his right arm and right leg brought acute pain.

Fight through it. You're not done yet. Not even close.

Dewey had always known how to take pain and compartmentalize it, then put that compartment out of the way, so that even though he was feeling it, it did not affect his work. He would need that strength now. His leg, in particular, felt as if it was dangling, still attached to the knee, but by a thread.

He scanned the water again for Jacobsson and Katya. He would stay in Russia, yet the SDV offered the chance to pick up a medical kit so he could bandage up his leg later.

In the murky water, his eyes suddenly caught a flash of white beneath him. He dived down toward it. It was the white of Katya's jeans. Jacobsson was pulling her down to the SDV.

He swam after them. As he went lower, the darkness became like the blackest of tunnels. Katya's white pants remained the only thing that wasn't black, but they were fading.

Then she disappeared.

Dewey found himself deep in the water, unable to discern which direction was up. He was out of breath.

Let it go.

Dewey stopped swimming. For several seconds, he didn't move. Slowly, he felt his buoyancy pulling him up. Blackness turned into a light-speckled greenish blur.

He knew the Russians would be waiting, their weapons trained at the surface of the water. But there was nothing he could do now. He breached the surface, gasping for air, then ducked back below the surface, diving down. He waited for the dull staccato of gunfire but heard none. He remained below water for nearly a minute, then surfaced again.

When he looked around, what he saw shocked him. The canal had opened up. The channel's current had taken him several hundred feet away from the scene. He was thirty feet from shore, along a marina whose wharves were lined with boats.

Dewey struggled to catch his breath. He side-paddled to the far end of a dock that jutted out into the water. On both sides of the wooden jetty, small sailboats were moored, empty and quiet.

Dewey placed his hand on the top of the dock, holding on to it, remaining there for several minutes as he caught his breath and stared at the brightly lit scene up the canal, where a helicopter now hovered, its spotlights scouring the surface of the water. Both sides of the canal were alight with spotlights and the flashing strobes of police cruisers. From the other side of the canal, Dewey saw police speedboats, sirens roaring as they approached the disordered scene. He turned at a sudden noise. Behind him sped another police boat, its spotlights scanning the surface of the water, moving rapidly across the marina. Soon it would be at him. As the light hit the sailboat to Dewey's right, lighting it up, he dived again, using the bottom of the jetty to hold himself just below the surface. After a half minute, he resurfaced. The police boat was creeping along the canal, toward the Four Seasons, its spotlight panning the canal wall, hunting.

Dewey's eyes shot to the Four Seasons. Along the terraces, at least a dozen gunmen swept the water with guns, searching. He watched the chaotic scene as several scuba divers entered the water, looking for Katya. Looking for him.

Jacobsson swam into a small compartment at the aft of the SDV, pulling Katya in with him. He pressed a button inside the compartment. The door shut tight, then locked.

"Go!" barked Jacobsson, still on commo, speaking into his mask to Wray, who was in a separate compartment just a few feet from him, dry.

The SDV moved out, its nearly silent propulsion system sending it forward into the darkness, away from the Griboyedov Canal and toward the open water.

The compartment still filled with water. Jacobsson pressed another button, and a small but powerful pump came to life, pumping out water. Soon the water level in the SDV started dropping. In less than ten seconds, it was empty.

Jacobsson laid Katya on her back. He felt her carotid artery at the side of her neck for a pulse. There was nothing.

He pulled off his mask, arched Katya's neck gently, and plugged her nose. He started breathing hard into her mouth, in timed puffs, trying to push air back into her water-choked lungs. After more than a minute, she made a soft moaning noise, then started vomiting water.

Slowly, Katya opened her eyes. She looked frightened and confused. She looked slowly around the tiny compartment. Then she started bawling uncontrollably.

The SDV moved quietly through the water, aiming deeper, speeding at fifteen knots toward the USS Hartford.

Jacobsson knocked on the glass, getting Wray's attention.

"Heat," he said, asking Wray to crank up the heat inside the compartment.

Jacobsson placed his hand on Katya's forearm, attempting to calm her down. After several minutes of sobbing, she put her first words together.

"Where am I?" she asked.

Jacobsson said nothing.

Twenty minutes later, the SDV locked in place against the submarine. Jacobsson opened the hatch, picked up the barrel of his gun, and rapped the steel grip against the sub. A moment later, a round hatch lowered, opening.

Halogen lights, beamed up from the sub, made the light blue and eerie. Jacobsson crawled down first, followed by a pair of bare feet beneath soaked white denim jeans. Katya climbed down the ladder, sopping wet and dripping. She was placed on a stretcher and carried to the quarterdeck, her eyes scanning the inside of the submarine, then the half dozen men standing in front of her.

"Bring her to the officers' quarters," said Montgomery Thomas, the Hartford's captain. "Get her some dry clothes. Something to drink if she wants it. Do not let her out of your sight."

After Katya was led out of the compartment, Thomas looked at Jacobsson.

"What happened to Andreas?"

"I don't know," said Jacobsson.

46.

MISSION THEATER TARGA.

LANGLEY.

Calibrisi looked at one of the NCS case officers.

"Get me Montgomery Thomas on the USS Hartford. Use a clean uplink."

"Yes, sir."

A few seconds later, Calibrisi's cell buzzed.

"Monty?"

"Hector," said Thomas, "I was wondering how long it would take you to call."

"How's she doing?"

"Fine. She's a bit terrified, but we've got her in some warm clothing. You need to know something. Andreas didn't make it out."

"I know," said Calibrisi. "We need him in-country. We have a problem."

"You want to talk to the lady?"