Jack nudged Cate, and motioned to one of the tiny windows in the helicopter. Below them the boat was moving at full speed. And the chopper circled it, coming up from behind. The Slava wasn’t a huge ship, at only one hundred and seventy-one feet, and with a displacement of eight hundred tons. But it had a three thousand horse-power diesel engine and could crank itself up to eighteen knots, which it seemed to be doing now.

The powerful chopper hovered over the deck, and each of them was harnessed in, and then lowered, usually in twos – Jack and Cate, Vincent and Regina and then Valery and Sonya. Drago and some of his men were there to receive them, and also take another cable the chopper had dropped. This they then attached to the bow of the ship. The Mi8T helicopter slowly lifted away, adding its forward lift power, and an extra kick of speed. Together, boat and chopper, now cut the cold sea at around twenty-five knots – unbelievable for a ship of its size.

In the control room, Vincent immediately set about familiarizing himself with bridge room, with Drago assisting with the key controls he would need and their Russian-English translations. Jack and Cate did their best to stay out of the way.

“Got it.” Vincent turned to Sonya. “It’ll be two days until we’re in warmer water. That is, as long as we don’t run into any weather.”

“Good.” She seemed in no mood for conversation, and left to speak to Mironov and Drago.

Jack and Cate joined Vincent at the wheel. Vincent raised his eyebrows. “Two days to get there, and we have two or maybe three max after that until your shark will shit out the tracker. We’re cutting it fine.”

“And then what happens if we get there, and find its about three thousand feet down, and we can’t get it to come to the surface?” Cate leant her hands on the sill and looked from the window. “This is where we pray for luck.”

She lifted a hand from the sill edge, looking at her greasy fingers and grimacing. “Ugh, Jack, this place is an abomination.”

Regina slid the heavy door open, and entered, rubbing one of Vincent’s shoulders.

Jack grinned. “I hear you. I guess a few decades of fletching and butchering whales hasn’t exactly left this place a bed of roses.”

“You can say that again,” Regina said. “Below, it stinks to high heaven. Oh yeah, and the mattresses look like a cat peed on them.”

Vincent grinned at her. “Jezuz, and we took a week’s leave for this?”

“Paradise,” she responded, smiling.

Mironov rejoined the group, and introduced them to Alexi, their gunner. The stocky, young man shook hands all-round, and Cate noticed the incongruity of youthful eyes in a weathered face, and palms that were as tough and calloused as old leather.