A loud explosion rocked the back of the stern section. Masha looked back. Flames lapped into the sky from behind. The heat intensified. The air was warming, almost like an oven.

The front of the stern section was angling down, slightly at this point, into the water. Waves lapped onto the deck in front of her. Behind her, the flaming rear section was rising into the sky, as if the floating hulk was turning into a flaming seesaw.

Masha had seen clips on the internet of the World Trade Center Towers falling. The sinking bow died in the same surrealistic manner. Now the stern section would soon do the same.

"Masha! Masha!" Sasha's voice screamed across the tilting deck. Crouching to avoid falling from the tilt, she walked across and embraced him. Katya was crying beside him. "We are going to die! We are going to die!"

"No! No! We are not going to die!" Masha looked around for her children. They lay all over the deck. Screaming. Wailing. Crying. "We're sinking! We're sinking!"

"We are going to be okay!" She frantically tried to comfort them all. Some were bruised and bleeding. Many had black smut on their faces.

"Dima! Dima!" She looked around everywhere for him. Please God, let him be alive.

"Masha! Get over here!" Aleksey was behind her, leaning over the side of the ship.

Masha pried the children's arms from around her and ran to the side of the ship. Aleksey was slowly uncoiling the rope from a winch. She looked over the side. A wooden lifeboat was slowly descending down to the water.

"Masha! Look in the box just to your right. There is a rope ladder. Get it out. We need to get the children off the ship!"

"Where are the rest of my children?"

"Some are in the water already! I threw them flotation devices! Hurry!"

Masha ran for the rope ladder, and together they unrolled it over the side.

"You must go now!" Aleksey Anatolyvich screamed at Masha.

She looked over the side of the ship, down into the water at the empty lifeboat. "I am not going without my children!"

"Masha, I will send your children down one by one! I need you at the bottom to help them into the boat! Do what I say, or all of them will die!" She looked down at the boat, then back up at Aleksey. "Okay."

She reached for his hand, then stepped her foot over the side of the sinking ship.

"Now put your foot on the rope."

The rope was wobbly. Shaking, she stepped down one step. Then another. Then another. Finally her foot reached for the side of the life boat. It bobbed in the water. She felt for it, and then dropped into the bottom of the lifeboat.

She looked up. The kids were climbing down the ladder. The first one to reach the bottom was Katya. After Katya came Anatoly. Marina and Ekaterina climbed down. And then, Masha looked up. Sasha was hanging onto the rope ladder about halfway down the side of the ship.

"I am afraid. I no want to go, " he was saying.

"Sasha, come down, we must hurry!"

"Go, Sasha, " Aleksey yelled from above.

"I am afraid." His little legs were trembing. "I want to go back up."

"No, Sasha!" Masha yelled.

"Sasha, go down!" Aleksey yelled even louder.

The boy took his foot, stepped out of the rung, and then reached for the next rung. The rope ladder began wobbling. A look of stricken panic crossed his face. The ladder swayed from the left to the right.

The world shifted to slow motion.

The boy lost control of his grip. He fell through the air.

"Sasha!"

He splashed into the water about twenty feet from the boat.

He did not come up.

The USS Honolulu The Black Sea

Conn. Radio." "Go ahead, Radio."

"Captain we're receiving a VLF radio transmission in Russian. Most likely a distress signal from Alexander Popovich. "

Pete looked at Lieutenant Jamison. "Ready to go to work, Mr. Jamison?"

"Aye, Captain."

"Radio. Conn. Patch that message over the loudspeaker."

"Yes, sir, Captain."

A few seconds later, the sound of someone speaking Russian was broadcast into the sub's control room. Lieutenant Jamison made notes on a legal pad. A curious look crossed his face. The message ended.

"Well, Lieutenant."

Jamison looked at his captain. "Sir, it was a mayday. They say they were hit by a torpedo, they are sinking, and that they have children on board."

"Talk about lowlife Russian propaganda, " the chief of the boat said. "I've heard that the Russians are the world's worst for this sort of thing."

"Lying slimeballs, " came another voice.

A cramping beset Pete's stomach. "Mr. Jamison, read the message verbatim."

"Aye, sir." Jamison held up the legal pad.

"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is the Russian freighter Alexander Popovich. We have been struck by torpedo! Location: Black Sea. Ninety miles west of Sevastopol. We have children on board. We are sinking! Mayday! Mayday! This is the Alexander Popovich. We have children on board. We are sinking!"

"That's odd, " Frank Pippen said. "Why would they include a reference to children?"

"To try to get rescuers out here faster, that's why, " the OOD said.

"Or maybe they really did have children on board, " Pete mumbled.

"Sir?" This was the chief of the boat.

"When I viewed the wreckage on the attack scope, I saw people running around on the deck. At first I thought I saw a bunch of kids. I looked again and they were gone. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me."

Dead silence pervaded the control room. Pete felt tormented. To have a chance to survive, which was a slim chance, he needed to get the Honolulu out of the area as fast as possible. Besides, even if children were on board, what could he do?

Should he further jeopardize the lives of his brave men for a hap-penchance rescue of some children who might already be dead?

But these were children.

Deep in his gut, he now knew it was true. Somehow, some way, children wound up on that freighter. What a colossal intelligence failure. But that wasn't the point.

He thought of Hannah and Coley. Suppose his own children had been on board that ship. Who would reach out a hand to save them? But even if he disobeyed orders and surfaced, the chances of a rescue at this point had to be slim-to-none.

He wiped cold sweat from his forehead. Never had the weight of command felt so burdensome. He had not been paralyzed by the decision to volunteer for this mission. He had never had qualms about sacrificing his own life.

He prayed silently. God give me wisdom. Give it to me fast. He remembered a verse from the Bible. Jesus said, "Bring all the little ones to me." Then another verse flashed into his mind. "And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

"Make course three-four-zero degrees. Alert SEAL team. Be on standby for rescue effort. Prepare to surface."