"Thanks, Chief."

"The wreckage was off in that direction, sir."

The chief petty officer pointed in an easterly direction, and Pete brought his binoculars to his eyes. Pete swept the horizon. Black smoke billowed into the sky. At least one small lifeboat was in the water. And it was in serious trouble.

Lifeboat

The Black Sea

The lifeboat was spinning rapidly now, almost like one of those rides at the amusement park in Kiev. Masha had abandoned her paddling and was now wrapping her arms around as many orphans as she could reach.

The water was getting choppy and was splashing into the boat. Waves breaking over the side drenched their clothes. The orphans screamed and cried.

"Do not panic! Do not panic!" Aleksey was yelling, as he fought the current and the whirlpools with his paddle.

Masha closed her eyes. The words that the Allisons had written in her Bible came to mind.

If you are ever in doubt, ask him to show you the way!

"Jesus! Jesus! Save us! Please! Save us!"

The wooden lifeboat was half full of water now. The children huddled in the middle of the boat, shivering and crying. Masha spread her arms across their shoulders, like a mother hen protecting her flock. Aleksey sat in the back of the boat, his legs spread, his mouth agape.

She closed her eyes and prayed again. Something felt different. The motion. Or lack of it. She opened her eyes. The boat had stopped spinning! Debris floated on the top of the water, but nothing was being sucked down. In fact, pieces of wood, plastic, and Styrofoam that had been sucked under were now floating back to the surface.

She bowed her head, cried some more, and thanked God that they had not been swallowed by the sea. At least not yet.

The boat tilted to the left. A shrill scream pierced the air.

"Monster!"

Crimean Airlines Flight 18 Over the Black Sea

Captain Pavel Zalevskiy looked down over his right shoulder at the long, black, cigar-shaped object floating in the water.

Odd, Zalevskiy thought. He had flown an old Tu-124 antisubmarine warfare aircraft for the Ukrainian Navy. He had experience spotting submarines in the Black Sea. But this did not look like anything put out by the Russians or any of the other littoral nations surrounding the sea.

He lowered his altitude to one thousand and banked around for another look. This boat almost had the shape of one of those Los Angeles – class boats used by the Americans. But that would be impossible. There was no way that even the Americans could get an LA – class boat through the Bosphorus submerged. Everyone in the world would know if they had sailed through on the surface.

Zalevskiy trained on the sub with his binoculars. Orange-jacketed men were on the bridge, looking out over open sea. With the movement of the plane, however, he could not keep his eyes trained on the sub for more than a couple of seconds.

He pushed the button opening up a line to Sevastopol.

"Sevastopol Tower. Crimean Eighteen. I have an unidentified submarine on the surface. Resembles United States Los Angeles – class design. Coordinates forty-five degrees north latitude; thirty degrees, thirty minutes east longitude."

"Crimean Eighteen. Sevastopol Tower. Did you say Los Angeles class?"

Pavel took another look over his shoulders. "Definitely not Kilo and not Tango either." He was referring to the two classes of Russian subs now in the naval base at Sevastopol, which the Russians now leased from Ukraine.

"Thank you for your work, Crimean Eighteen. We will notify the Ukrainian Navy. Crimean Eighteen, go to ten thousand and resume course for Constanta."

"Crimean Eighteen, roger that. Resuming ten thousand. Good luck to the Navy."

Lifeboat

The Black Sea

The scream and the tilting boat brought Masha's eyes off to the left. A black creature with goggles and a hose in his mouth was pulling up on the side of the boat.

"Lieutenant John L. Smith, United States Navy, " the creature said. Having studied some English at university, Masha realized that the man had just spoken to her in English.

The children stopped screaming, but most still cried. They huddled on the other side of the boat, staring at the strange man in the black rubber suit.

"Is everyone okay?" the man said.

"I Masha. This Aleksey, " Masha tried her broken English. She gestured at the children. "We okay."

"Great, great." The diver put the hose back into his mouth and disappeared under the water again.

In a second, others were swimming in the water around the lifeboat. An inflatable rubber raft appeared on the surface. Some of the divers climbed into the rubber boat. Some swam with a rope from the back of the raft to the lifeboat. Others attached some sort of small outboard motor to the rubber raft.

They pulled a cord, and the motor started. The others disappeared underwater. In a moment, the rope tightened, and the lifeboat was moving through the water. The men in black driving the rubber boat made a wide turn in the water, and Masha saw the long, sleek outline of a submarine off in the distance.

CHAPTER 21

Ilyushin I1-96 jetliner

150 miles northeast of Odessa, Ukraine

President Vitaly Evtimov looked out the window of the presidential cabin and saw the MiG-29 Fulcrums that accompanied all flights made by the president of the Republic.

If this summit were successful, perhaps he could pull President Butrin out of the American orbit.

The plan was to have the orphans step off the freighter, then climb Odessa's most famous landmark, the Potemkin Stairs, the long staircase of over two hundred steps that started at the waterside and went straight up the hill to Primorskaya Street, where they would be ceremoniously greeted by the two presidents.

He looked over the speech that had been written for him for the joint ceremony by the pier in Odessa.

To my dear friend President Butrin, and to the warm, peace-loving people of Ukraine, I bring heartfelt greetings and open arms from the people of Russia.

We are bonded by a history forged by war, tempered by peace, and destined for prosperity.

Today, we enter into a new era of cooperation that will bring good will to all peoples of our region.

But justice for all will never be realized until there is justice even for the weakest of the earth.

For the orphans of the Ukraine, for the orphans of the East, we share your compassion… and we share your passion.

Evtimov could read no more. He folded the speech and put it back in his briefcase. The events in Georgia still had him fuming. How had his Fulcrums been gunned down by American F-15s? Although the most serious international crisis still loomed around the missing plutonium, Evtimov found it difficult to contain his temper about America's meddling with what was essentially a Russian problem.

He had swallowed Russian pride by using diplomatic rather than military force in reponse, and supposed that the proposed UN condemnation proposal was the best solution. But if the Americans fired on any other Russian targets, he may not be so apt to respond diplomatically.

Next time, he would respond with the hammer and the sickle. That thought brought some degree of satisfaction.

"Pardon me, Comrade President."

Evtimov looked up and saw his chief of staff, Sergey Semyonovich Sobyanin, standing in the entrance to the presidential cabin. He wore a grave look on his face.

"What is it, Sergey Semyonovich?"

"It is the orphans, sir. We believe that the freighter they were on has sunk."

"Sunk?"

"A distress call came on a VLF frequency from Alexander Popovich, the freighter carrying the orphans. The distress call claimed that the freighter had been hit by a torpedo and was sinking."