“Missile one and two are ready in all respects to fire, Captain,” Ziyax reported. “Shall I flood the tubes and open the outer doors?”
“Flood the tubes and open the outer doors, but do not fire the missiles,” Graham ordered.
“Aye, Captain,” Ziyax responded mechanically. He reached up to a control panel and flipped two switches. A few seconds later, two lights blinked green. “The tubes are flooded and the outer doors are open.”
Something was wrong. Flooding a torpedo tube and opening its door to the sea was a fairly noisy operation. “I didn’t hear a thing,” Graham said.
“Captain, my indicators show open doors.”
Graham snatched the growler phone. “Forward torpedo room, this is the captain. I want a visual on tubes one and two.”
A few seconds later one of Ziyax’s people came back. “Captain, tubes one and two are flooded and the outer doors appear to be open.”
“Very well,” Graham said, and he hung up the phone.
“When will we fire the missiles?” Ziyax asked.
“Soon,” Graham said. “First I need to see if our ride is topside and in a safe position. Wouldn’t do to hit them with our missiles.”
“Isomil, are there any contacts on the surface?” Ziyax called to his sonar man.
“There might have been one briefly off our port stern quarter, but it’s gone now, sir,” the Libyan junior officer responded.
“Get your crew ready to abandon the boat as soon as I return,” Graham said. “We’ll set the missiles to launch on a countdown clock. Thirty minutes should give us plenty of time.”
“It’s already been done, Captain,” Ziyax said. He stepped aside from the weapons panel so that they could all see the launch controls for tubes one and two. They were in countdown mode at twenty-nine minutes and eighteen seconds.
Graham shrugged. “Very inventive of you, Captain.”
Ziyax pulled out a pistol. “This won’t be another Distal Volente in which my entire crew is killed,” he said. “This time it will be you and your men who die.”
Al-Hari fired two shots from Graham’s left, both catching Ziyax in the chest and shoving him backwards, his pistol firing once into the chart table.
Graham pulled his Steyr and shot the young Libyan at the diving planes and steering yoke, at the same time al-Hari stepped forward and put bullets into the heads of both sonar operators.
“Best you leave now, Captain,” he told Graham. “I fixed the firing circuits so that the timer cannot be shut off.”
“I don’t think the outer doors are open. You’ll have to find a way to get to them.”
“I’ll do it,” al-Hari promised. He was weak, but still able to function.
Graham looked into his eyes. “I don’t understand.”
“No, and you never will,” al-Hari said. “Not until you have come to know God, which I think is too great a leap for you to make.”
Someone from forward fired a pistol shot that ricocheted off the deck between them. He and Graham fell back out of the line of fire.
“Get out of here while you still can,” al-Hari said. “And may Allah go with you.”
Graham shrugged indifferently, and ducked through the aft hatch, to get his things from his cabin and make his way to the escape trunk. “I need three men to lock out with me!” he shouted. It was the only way he figured he’d get off this boat now. He couldn’t shoot his way out, so he needed the cooperation of three crewmen who were not so willing to die for the cause after all. He would take care of them once they reached the surface.
SOC-4
“Holy shit, it’s gunfire,” Dillon said, looking up from the side-scan sonar.
“Sounds like the bad guys are getting cranky,” Terri said.
She and the others were donning their black wet suits, equipment packs, and rebreather units. They’d lowered an anchor just aft of the submarine, which was sitting on the bottom in about seventy feet of water, its sail just a few feet beneath the surface.
The two welding sets were on the afterdeck, ready to go into the water. The job of making sure that as many of the forward torpedo tubes as possible would not open had fallen to them.
McGarvey was going to stay topside with the boat in case the others needed help, but the sounds of gunfire changed everything. “You’re going to need all the help you can get,” he said, pulling on a black wet suit and the rebreather that Terri had to help him with.
“You ever do this before?” she asked.
“Shoot bad guys, or go for a swim in the middle of the night?”
“Both at the same time.”
“Once, a long time ago,” McGarvey said, thinking about the flooded tunnel beneath a castle in Portugal where he had very nearly lost his life. He shuddered inwardly. It wasn’t his most pleasant memory.
His pistol and spare magazine of ammunition went into a waterproof pocket in his suit. Terri handed him an underwater pistol that used CO2 to fire five-inch steel bolts that were tipped with spring-loaded razor-sharp arrowheads. On impact four blades opened and could do a considerable amount of damage to a human body. Spring-loaded racks held five bolts. He was given two racks, plus the one loaded into the triangular frame of the eighteen-inch-long weapon.
“We dive the buddy system, Kirk,” she said. “For this dive my husband pairs with Frank, and you’re mine.” She grinned. “Just don’t think it means we’re going steady or anything.”
“Treat him nice, honey,” FX said from the stern rail. “He’s a VIP.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, dear,” she said. “Ready?” she asked McGarvey, who’d pulled on his dive mask.
“Let’s do it,” he told her.
“Right,” she said. MacKeever and Ercoli went down first with the welding equipment, followed by FX and Dillon, and finally Terri and McGarvey.
The water was pitch-black, though within a few feet the massive sail loomed below and ahead of them like a gigantic black beast. Two small pinpricks of light moved forward toward the bow of the submarine that was completely lost in the darkness, while Jackson and Dillon headed aft toward the escape trunk hatch. McGarvey and Terri followed the lights moving aft.
McGarvey liked diving on the reefs in the Florida Keys, in crystal-clear water, but this was different. The darkness was disorienting, and already a chill was seeping into his bones, though he was sweating with the exertion of fighting the river current.
All of a sudden the bulk of the submarine loomed out of the darkness directly below them. Dillon and Jackson had just reached the aft deck, when a huge stream of air bubbles suddenly escaped from the escape trunk hatch.
Someone was locking out.
McGarvey and the others switched off their dive lights, plunging them into nearly absolute darkness. He pulled out his CO2 pistol, making sure by feel that the safety catch was in the off position, and swam down a few more feet to a position he thought should be just above and just aft of the hatch, with Dillon and Jackson out of his line of fire.
Terri was behind him. She touched his ankle, and then swam down to him so that their face masks were inches apart. She held up her weapon so that he could see it, and he did the same. She nodded and gave him the thumbs-up, then turned in the direction of the escape hatch.
A very large bubble of air rose past McGarvey and Terri, the current carrying it right over them. All of a sudden he saw a circle of dull red light where he thought the hatch should be. Moments later three ghostly figures, wearing what appeared to be emergency escape hoods, rose one by one from inside the submarine.
Dillon and Jackson switched on their dive lights, illuminating the three figures in harsh white light, and fired their CO2 guns, taking out the first two men, who flopped backwards, dark, black blood streaming from the massive wounds in their chests where the razor-sharp arrowheads had punctured lungs and severed major arteries.
Terri fired at the third figure who was desperately trying to swim forward, catching him in his left thigh. Jackson was right there, f
iring a second shot, hitting the man in the middle of the back, severing his spine and causing his body to go completely limp.
McGarvey had been watching the open hatch for a fourth man who’d briefly appeared, but then had ducked back inside the escape trunk when the firing had begun.
He pushed off as fast as he could swim down to the aft deck as the hatch swung shut, getting a brief impression of a pair of eyes behind the clear faceplate of the Steinke hood.
Terri reached him moments later, but the hatch had already been dogged, and they could hear high-pressure air clearing water from the trunk.
McGarvey turned and held up three fingers in front of Terri’s faceplate, and pointed toward one of the bodies drifting slowly upwards and downstream.
She got his meaning and together they swam to the first body. McGarvey pulled the Steinke hood off, and shined his light on the face. The man’s dark eyes were open in death, his face screwed up in a grimace of pain and terror. He was not Rupert Graham.
Dillon and Jackson understood what McGarvey was doing, and they retrieved the other two bodies, pulling off the Steinke hoods as McGarvey and Terri swam over to take a look. Neither of the dead men was Graham either.
Jackson pulled out a plastic tablet and grease pen. “Graham?” he wrote.
McGarvey shook his head.
Dillon got their attention, and pointed the beam of his dive light back down toward the escape trunk hatch, where bubbles were streaming out.
They switched off their dive lights, and moments later the hatch opened to reveal a dim circle of red light.
No one swam up from inside the submarine.
McGarvey took the tablet and pen from Jackson. “Looks like an invitation to me.”
Jackson looked toward the bow of the boat. Just visible, nearly three hundred feet away, were the otherworldly twin glows of the two welding torches. He turned back to McGarvey and nodded, then took the tablet and pen.
“This is our show,” he wrote.
McGarvey took the tablet. “I’m coming too. Your wife needs a dive buddy.”
SS SHEHAB
Graham was beside himself with rage, crouching in the doorway of the passageway just aft of the escape trunk. Two more of his crew were crouched forward of the hatch that they’d recycled once he’d gotten back aboard.
It was quiet, except for the gentle hush of the scrubbers and fans circulating air that had been recycled and cleaned of its excess CO2. Earlier he thought he’d heard strange buzzing sounds from somewhere well forward in the boat, but most of his attention had been directed toward escaping before the missiles fired. Now he couldn’t hear the sounds.
When the escape trunk hatch had opened and the three crewmen had emerged into the river, Graham had counted three, perhaps four small lights hanging in the water just outside.
Seeing them, and instantly understanding that he had led his boat into a trap, had been the biggest shock of his life. Every detail had been planned. His crew had done exactly what he wanted it to do. They had evaded detection through the Strait of Gilbraltar, had crossed the Atlantic, allowing satellites to spot them heading south, and had sailed into the Chesapeake with not so much as a close call.
But it had been for nothing if he couldn’t escape.
The missiles would launch and contaminate Washington if al-Hari had gotten the outer doors open, or fire and destroy the submarine if the doors remained shut. At this point it did not matter to him.
He wanted his life, not merely for the pleasure of it, but to continue striking back at the bastards. Over and over because they … because … what? He didn’t know if he knew the answer now.
But it wasn’t going to end here. Not like this.
“There are at least three of them,” he called out to his men hiding in the darkness. “Wait until all of them come aboard, and then fire and keep firing.”
“We could surrender,” someone suggested.
“They’ll kill us first so that they can get to the missiles. We have to stop them before we can get out of here.”
With the three men presumably dead or captured outside the submarine, plus the four he and al-Hari had killed in the control room and sonar space, the twelve they had shot in their bunks, and the two Libyans who were deathly sick with radiation poisoning, there weren’t many men left aboard. What few remained were holed up in various compartments throughout the boat, trying to stay out of the firefight.
But that wouldn’t last. Sooner or later some of them would try to reach the escape trunk with whatever weapons they’d managed to find. It was going to get unhealthy back here in a matter of minutes.
He looked up toward the escape trunk hatch, willing himself to get a grip, to remain calm. “Come on,” he muttered under his breath. One shot was all he needed and the bastards would be caught in a cross fire. Once his two crewmen had finished the job he would kill them and make his escape.
It all would depend on timing, and on their attackers being lured down into the passageway.
Someone closed the outer hatch, and immediately high-pressure air began to hiss into the escape trunk. They had accepted the bait.
Graham tightened the grip on his 9mm Steyr and eased a little farther back into the shadows, using the bulkhead and edge of the doorway as a shield. “Wait until they all come down the ladder,” he called softly.
But he was forgetting something. He could feel it.
The air stopped, and the inner hatch was undogged and pulled up into the escape trunk.
For several seconds nothing happened, but then something small dropped through the hatch and clattered heavily on the deck.
Graham had time enough to realize that it was a flash-bang grenade, the very possibility he had forgotten to consider, and fall the rest of the way back into the generator room, before a tremendous flash of light followed instantly by an ear-shattering boom hammered off the bulkheads.
He caught a glimpse of two black-clad figures dropping through the hatch and immediately spraying the compartment and passageway with automatic weapons fire, before he raced aft, ducked through the hatch into the tiny machine shop and electrical parts storage bins. He had his pistol at the ready, half-expecting to see some of his crew waiting to gun him down.
But he was alone back here for the moment.
The firing stopped, but then started again, farther forward.
He figured that they were U.S. Navy SEALs and that they would make a lightning-fast sweep through the boat, killing anything that moved.
Graham stuffed the pistol in his belt, pulled up a section of floor grating beneath a metal lathe, eased the waterproof bag with his civilian clothing and papers into the bilge, and climbed down into the cold, stinking filthy water.
Someone was coming aft.
He had just enough time to ease the grating back into place, when a black-suited figure appeared at the open hatch.
McGarvey hesitated for a moment just inside a cramped compartment that was equipped with a workbench, a vice, a metal lathe, and other tools, plus bins and bulkhead-mounted cabinets filled with parts.
Terri was right behind him, her Beretta 9mm pistol in hand, her dive mask pushed up on top of her head. “What?” she asked.
He thought that he’d heard a noise. Faint. Metal-on-metal just before he’d come through the hatch, but then Dillon and Jackson, who had headed forward, had opened fire again. “Someone’s back here,” he said softly.
“Watch yourself,” she cautioned.
McGarvey continued aft through the next hatch into the engine room and pulled up short again. The hairs at the nape of his neck were standing up. A slightly built man was sprawled on his face on the deck, a pistol in his hands. He was obviously dead, but there was something wrong with the skin on his hands and neck. He was covered in suppurating wounds or sores.
“That’s radiation sickness,” he said. “There are nukes aboard and they’re leaking badly. You better tell Frank and your husband.”
Terri found a growler phone on the
bulkhead. She dialed up the 1MC. “FX pick up.”
A second later Jackson came on. “Go.”
“Trouble. We got a bad guy down in engineering. Already dead when we got here. Mac thinks it’s radiation sickness.”
“Stay away from the body.”
“Have they found Graham?” McGarvey asked Terri, and she relayed the question.
“Negative,” Jackson came back. “We’ve bagged a dozen bad guys, but there are more than that dead in their bunks. Tapped in the heads at close range. Two down in the con, two in sonar.”
“Have you reached the forward torpedo room yet?” Terri asked.
“I’m at the hatch, but it’s dogged from the inside. How about you?”
“There may be someone else back here. We’re going to finish—”
Dillon broke in over the 1MC. “We’ve got big problems, people,” he said. “We need to get off this boat right now.”
“Where are you, Frank?” Jackson demanded.
“In the con,” Dillon came back. “But you better hurry, we’ve got less than six minutes.”
McGarvey stared at the dead man for a moment longer, then looked up. All the hatches back to the aft torpedo room were open. Nothing moved back here. There were no sounds except for the air circulation fans.
“Mac?” Terri asked.
He had definitely heard something. Someone was hiding back here, but it could take hours to dig him, or them, out. “Right,” he said, and he turned and followed Terri forward to the control room.
Jackson got there at the same time they did. Dillon was hunched over the weapons control panel, on which two lights were flashing. A clock was on countdown mode, with five minutes and twenty-eight seconds showing.
“Whatever’s in tubes one and two is going to fire in about five minutes unless we do something,” Dillon said. “The timing circuits have been sabotaged, so we can’t do it from here.”
“Did they open the outer doors?” Jackson demanded.
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