Kilo Class Read Online Free PDF

something else in common, Kerguelen and the Antarctic.”
    “They do? What’s that?”
    “No human being has ever been born in either place.”
    “Jesus.”
    At 0600 they swung into the first wide fjord, Baie Blanche, and immediately became aware that the wind had stopped and that the water was calm and tideless. There were four hundred feet below the keel. Tug Mottram cut the speed back because in these very cold, deep Antarctic bays, you could blunder into the most dangerous kind of small iceberg — the ones formed of transparent meltwater ice, which float heavily below the surface, absorbing the somber, morose shades of the surrounding seas. To the eye they look bluish black, and unlike white glacier ice, they are almost impossible to see.
    After four miles, Bob Lander took the wheel while the skipper went outside into the freezing but clear air and gazed up at the rugged sides of the waterway. Ahead he could see the lowish headland of Point Bras where the fjord split. Beyond that, rising to a height of a thousand feet, was the snow-covered peak of Mount Richards. Through his binoculars Tug could see gales of snow being whipped from the heights by the still blasting wind.
    This lee would be fine for a while, but should a gale swing suddenly out of the north, it would blast straight down Baie Blanche. That was why Kit Berens had advised running right down into the deeply sheltered Baie du Repos before they brought out the welding kit.
    They turned into the long continuing fjord of Repos at 0655 and made their way over almost seventy fathoms of water around the long left-handed bend, which led to the protected dead-end waters below Mount Richards.
    Bob Lander slowed to below four knots while they searched for an anchorage. Tug Mottram caught sight of two old, rusting, gray buoys spaced about four hundred feet apart, some fifty yards off the rocky western lee shore. “That’ll do just fine,” he muttered, at once wondering if it had been Captain Cook who had left them there in the first place. But then, still looking through his glasses, he spotted something beyond both his imagination and comprehension.
    Speeding toward them, at about fourteen knots, was the unmistakable shape of a US-made Naval assault craft, one of the old 130 LCVP’s, complete with two regulation 7.62mm machine guns mounted on the bow. What was really disconcerting to Tug was the line of big red and white dragon’s teeth painted about two feet high across the shallow bow. Worse yet, there were ten men standing on the deck, each wearing white military-style helmets. Tug could see the sun glinting off the ones worn by the for’ard gunners.
    “Where the hell did they come from?” asked Captain Mottram standing stock-still on the deserted deck. He could only guess they were French, but he called out for Kit and Bob to take a look. Lander was thoughtful. “That’s an old Type 272,” he said. “Haven’t seen one of them for a few years.”
    But young Berens, sharper by nature and a frontier Texan by heritage, took one look, grabbed for a set of keys, and announced he was headed for the arms cupboard, “RIGHT NOW!”
    The Captain pulled his loaded sidearm from his drawer, and Bob Lander slowed the ship to a halt. Moments later the assault craft pulled alongside, and the leader requested permission to board. To Tug’s eye he looked Japanese beneath his big helmet.
    Eight of the armed military men on board the LCVP climbed over the rails. Captain Mottram offered his hand in greeting, but this gesture was ignored. Instead the visitors trained their guns on Captain Mottram and his crew. The Captain and Bob were ordered flat against the bulkhead, arms outstretched. Mottram did not reckon his pistol would be much of a match for the Kalashnikovs the raiders carried.
    Bob Lander turned to ask by whose authority this action was being undertaken and was felled by a blow to the head from a machine-gun barrel. At just this moment Kit Berens swung around