Flames and falling debris filled his rearview mirror and rattled on the car’s roof as a third missile plunged through the same hole as the first two and exploded. Durov jammed his foot down harder on the accelerator. He had to get away, get to someplace where he could give the command to his submarines in the White Sea to begin firing.

He raced around an icy turn. The heavy car slid sideways, clipping the corner of a building. Somehow he got it straightened. The big automobile rocketed down the street toward the waterfront.

He gritted his teeth as he drove fast toward the one spot where he felt most at home. There, at the submarine pens, the symbol of the awesome naval power he had built, in spite of the meddling of his country’s weak-kneed government. It was even more perfect that his ultimate command to commence firing the nuclear missiles toward their targets would come from the waterfront, overlooking the harbor and the fjord.

His instincts had been right again. Somehow they had found him and tried to kill him. Well, they missed. He would show them. All he needed to do was get to his barge down at the pier. Once there, he could escape this hail of rockets and call in the attack that would devastate Moscow. That would give him the victory he knew was rightfully his.

An unbelievably intense pain knifed through his head. His vision blurred and tunneled. He seemed to be looking through a long pipe.

Alexander Durov could not move his arms. His legs were locked, rigid, and his foot was stuck hard on the accelerator pedal. At first, he thought some debris from the explosion had hit him on the head, but the pain was so intense, the paralysis so complete, it had to be something else.

A blood vessel deep inside his brain had torn loose, causing a massive stroke.

Admiral Durov was paralyzed but still crisply conscious, aware of all that was happening around him. His body refused to respond to any command that his mind tried to send it. His limbs had mutinied.

The Zil shot down the narrow street, just missing the fire engines racing back the other way, toward the blazing crater where the Command Center had once been.

The limousine, out of control, reached the end of the street and flew across the pier. With so much momentum built up, it crashed easily through the wooden barrier at the pier’s edge, over one of the slips where his beloved new Akula submarines had been berthed only days before. The car plunged through the air and dropped hard through the skim ice. It sank into the black, oily water.

Inside the car, the water closed greedily around the old sailor. Admiral Alexander Durov could not protest, could not fight back. He could only wait, immobile, until this little corner of the sea he knew so well claimed him as its own.