Allah's Scorpion

by David Hagberg

  “The indicators on the panel show the tubes flooded and the doors open. They must have opened them before Dale and Bob could reach the bow.”

  “They were welding something,” Jackson said. “The timer was sabotaged, could they have done the same with the indicators for those two tubes?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know why, unless there was a mutiny.”

  “We did hear gunfire,” Terri said.

  “I need two blocks of Semtex, one with a short fuse for the torpedo room hatch, and the other with a longer fuse to destroy the compartment,” McGarvey said. “We can’t let those missiles fire. If they explode even inside the tubes they’d spread radiation through the river and all of the lower bay.”

  “That compartment will be hot,” Jackson said.

  “I’ll blow the door, shoot anything that moves, and toss the second block inside.”

  Terri had taken a brick of plastic explosive from her pack and was hurriedly molding a small block of it for the torpedo room hatch. “What do we have to wreck inside to make sure the missiles won’t fire?”

  “Take out the inner doors,” Dillon said. “Should break the firing circuitry between there and here.”

  “You can’t go inside,” Jackson cautioned.

  “Neither of us are, honey,” Terri said. “I’ll toss a big enough block to take out the door and the entire compartment. Stand by at the escape trunk, we’re probably going to be in a big hurry.” She gave McGarvey a grin. “For a first date, you’re not half-bad.”

  “Terri,” Jackson said softly.

  She turned to her husband and a look of complete understanding passed between them. “Be back in a flash,” she said.

  McGarvey. The single thought crystallized in Graham’s head as he noiselessly climbed up into the escape trunk. His sneakers were slippery with oil from the bilge, and he nearly fell.

  The son of a bitch was aboard. But no matter how the man had gotten this far, he was going to die down here in just a few minutes. Graham only wished that he could somehow see the look on McGarvey’s face when the escape trunk was blown apart and the wall of black water came rushing through the boat.

  There would only be a brief moment between the time McGarvey knew he was going to die and the instant when his consciousness was blotted out. But Graham wished he could see it.

  He closed the inner hatch, dogged it, and opened the seawater valve to flood the compartment. As the water rose, he donned his Steinke hood.

  Within ninety seconds the chamber was filled with water. He undogged the outer hatch and swung it open. He waited for a few seconds, to make sure that no one was waiting outside, then cautiously eased out of the escape trunk.

  Somewhere forward, possibly at the bows, two very dim violet lights flickered in the pitch-black water.

  It came to him all at once that he knew what the buzzing sounds he’d heard earlier were. Someone was up there welding the torpedo doors shut.

  The missiles would fire inside the tubes and when they did, the entire bow section of the submarine would be destroyed.

  It was another failed operation, and he was bitter about it. But this time McGarvey would die for certain.

  Graham jammed the ten-kilo brick of plastic explosive against the inner hull just inside the escape trunk, set the timer for four minutes, and, holding his waterproof satchel against his chest, kicked off for the surface.

  “Fifteen-second fuse,” McGarvey said.

  Terri had molded the small block of Semtex around the dogging wheel at the center of the forward torpedo room door. She nodded, inserted the acid fuse into the plastique, and she and McGarvey ducked back around a bulkhead.

  “Get the big charge ready to toss,” he told her. He switched his Walther’s safety catch to the off position.

  Someone fired a pistol from behind them, the first shot ricocheting off the deck, a piece of the shrapnel catching McGarvey in the left foot. He turned in time to see a tall, slender man waving a large pistol stagger up the passageway from where he had apparently been hiding. He was ravaged by radiation sickness, open, running sores distorting his face so badly that he looked like something out of a horror movie.

  McGarvey started to bring his pistol to bear when the dying man fired a second shot, this one caching Terri in her forehead just above her left eye, and she fell back.

  “No!” McGarvey shouted, and fired three shots in rapid succession, all of them striking the Arab in the middle of his chest, sending him backwards, dead before he hit the deck.

  The Semtex Terri had set blew with a sharp bang, and the torpedo room hatch locks came loose, the door swinging open a few inches.

  McGarvey ducked across the passageway to Terri, who was crumpled against the bulkhead. Her blood-filled left eye was open in surprise but she was dead, and there was no power on earth that could bring her back.

  He looked up toward the torpedo room, his heart like granite, willing with everything in his soul for someone to come charging out of there. But no one came.

  Terri Jackson, whose handle was Lips, was a pretty young woman, who McGarvey thought looked a little like the movie actress Kim Basinger. He shook his head. So goddamned senseless. All of it. All the killing. All the suicide bombers. All the attacks.

  And for what? Religion? He sincerely hoped not, because that would mean the entire world would be at war with itself forever.

  McGarvey picked up the heavy charge, darted down the passageway, and shoved the torpedo room hatch open with a foot. The body of one man dangled half out of his bunk. He too had advanced radiation poisoning.

  There was no one else inside the narrow, very cramped compartment. Six torpedo doors, three to the right of the boat’s centerline and three to the left, were arrayed in the forward bulkhead about thirty feet from the hatch. There were at least six torpedoes still in their racks.

  McGarvey only took a split second to look before he set the acid fuse to three minutes, and tossed the heavy package into the compartment with all of his might.

  He did not bother to see where the package landed before he pulled the hatch shut, went back to Terri’s body, picked it up, and headed in a run back to the control room.

  Dillon had gone aft to get the escape trunk ready. Jackson was the only one there, waiting for his wife and McGarvey. He didn’t say a word, nor did he look at McGarvey as he took his wife’s body in his arms. He studied her face for several long moments, his expression completely unreadable.

  “I’m sorry,” McGarvey said. “We missed one.”

  Jackson looked up. “Did you kill him?” he asked, his voice soft as if he were whispering a secret.

  “Yes,” McGarvey said. “But we need to hustle. I set the fuse for three minutes.” He glanced over at the weapons control board, which showed the missiles were set to launch in three minutes and ten seconds.

  “Time to go,” Jackson said. He turned and headed aft in a run, McGarvey right behind him.

  When they reached the escape trunk, Dillon was there, wrestling with the controls. “Somebody locked out and left the outer hatch open,” he said, as he turned around. When he spotted Terri’s body in her husband’s arms, his face fell. “My God,” he said.

  McGarvey was looking up at the escape hatch. “It was Graham,” he said. The noise he’d heard in the workshop aft. The bastard had been hiding back there after all.

  “Dale and Bob are out there, they might have spotted him,” Dillon said, not able to take his eyes off of Terri’s body.

  “Not unless they came aft,” Jackson replied mechanically. There was no animation in his face.

  “As it stands there’s no way we’re going to get out from here,” Dillon cautioned.

  “We’ve got to get away from this compartment,” McGarvey said, suddenly realizing that Graham wouldn’t have simply jumped ship without first making sure that no one else could follow him. “The forward torpedo room is going to blow in less than two minutes, and I think this hatch is going to blow too.”

  “So
n of a bitch, you’re right,” Jackson said.

  McGarvey hustled them aft into the generator room, and tried to close the waterproof door, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “What’s wrong?” Dillon demanded.

  “It’s been welded open,” McGarvey said. “All the doors to the aft torpedo room have been welded open.”

  “It’s going to get real hairy here in about one minute,” Jackson said.

  “It’s worse than that,” Dillon told them. “I took off my rebreather and left it in the control room—”

  A very large explosion in the forward torpedo room shook the entire boat as if she were a child’s toy.

  McGarvey and the others ducked back behind the bulkhead on either side of the open hatch, the sounds of water rushing forward as loud as a 747 coming in for a landing, bringing with it every piece of loose debris or equipment or bodies like deadly shrapnel from a powerful bomb.

  All the lights aboard the submarine went out, plunging them into absolute darkness.

  A second explosion, this one practically on top of them, opened up the hull at the escape trunk. Water immediately came pouring into the boat as if from a hundred fire hoses, acting as a temporary cushion against the water and debris racing forward from the wrecked torpedo room.

  Water had already risen to their waists and would flood the entire boat within seconds.

  Jackson saw their chance at the same time McGarvey did. “We’re going out the hole where the escape trunk was!” he shouted.

  “Go!” Dillon shouted over the tremendous din. “I’ll be right behind you!”

  “You’re coming with me and Terri!” Jackson shouted. “You need to use her rebreather.”

  McGarvey switched on his dive light, pulled his mask over his face, and took a deep breath from the rebreather as the water rose up over their heads.

  Jackson had his own mask on, and moments later Dillon had donned Terri’s mask. He and Jackson had to hold her body between them because there had been no time to take the dive equipment from her body.

  Within a couple more seconds the entire boat was flooded and the in-rushing water stopped.

  McGarvey swam out of the generator room first to survey the damage and see if they could get out of the boat. The entire escape trunk had been obliterated, as had a fifteen-foot-wide section of the hull. Except for some dangling wires and piping the boat was open to the river here.

  McGarvey helped Jackson and Dillon maneuver Terri’s body out of the generator room, and up through the debris and out into the open water.

  MacKeever and Ercoli appeared out of the gloom from forward and above, but they moved slowly, their bodies battered by the massive concussion of the explosion in the forward torpedo room.

  Together the five of them rose slowly to the surface, Terri’s body cradled in her husband’s and Dillon’s arms until they reached the surface.

  “Son of a bitch,” MacKeever said. “Someone stole our boat.”

  PART FOUR

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  Dick Adkins was ten minutes late for his 9:00 A.M. briefing to the president, and an impatient Dennis Berndt met him at the west entrance for the walk down the connecting corridor to the Oval Office. “Well?”

  “He did it,” the DCI said.

  Berndt heaved the first sigh of relief in ten days. “Thank God.”

  Don Hamel and his National Intelligence apparatus had been purposely kept out of the loop on the McGarvey–bin Laden operation, to give the intelligence community plausible deniability. It meant that if something went wrong, the blame would not fall on the White House. But Adkins was bringing good news, and Berndt figured they had dodged the bullet for the second time in as many weeks. First the Panama Canal, and now the submarine.

  “It was right where he said it would be,” Adkins said, with a little awe in his voice. He shook his head. “I worked with the man for years, Dennis. I was his assistant DCI for the couple of years he ran the show. I know the mechanics of what he does. But I still haven’t a clue how he pulls it off.”

  “He’s never been afraid of stepping up to the plate.”

  President Haynes, his jacket off, tie loose, was sitting at his desk, talking on the telephone, while his staff came and went, depositing files and other paperwork in front of him. He was working Congress to get enough votes for passage of his controversial energy bill, and neither he nor anyone else seemed very happy.

  “He needs this lift,” Berndt said.

  The president looked up and waved them in.

  “There were some problems,” Adkins cautioned as he and Berndt entered the Oval Office.

  “Good morning, Mr. Director,” the president’s secretary said, going out.

  “Morning,” he mumbled.

  “Casualties?” Berndt asked.

  “One of our people was killed, but there are a lot of dead bodies at the bottom of the York River we’re trying to get to. Plus a big mess. Could be an ecological disaster.”

  The president finished his call, and ordered everyone except Berndt and Adkins out. When the door was closed he came around his desk. “What ecological disaster?”

  “The sub was where McGarvey figured it would be, and he and a SEAL team managed to stop the attack, but the boat was badly damaged,” Adkins said. “The Coast Guard is on site to evaluate the situation, but at the very least there’s a significant diesel oil spill into the river. The media is already down there wanting to know what’s going on. Problem is that nobody other than us and McGarvey’s team has the answers.”

  “What about nuclear weapons?” the president asked.

  “At least one, possibly more,” Adkins reported. “Mac thinks there’s a good chance we’ll also be facing a nuclear materials spill, which we had to warn the Coast Guard about.”

  The president turned and looked out the thick Lexan windows toward the Rose Garden. “Were any of our people injured?” he asked.

  “One of the SEAL team members was shot to death,” Adkins said.

  “How about the terrorists?”

  “We’ve recovered three bodies so far, but everyone aboard the sub is dead,” Adkins said. He glanced at Berndt who had a strong feeling what was coming next.

  “What about Graham?”

  “Somebody escaped from the sub, got past Mac and the others, and stole the Special Operations boat the SEAL team borrowed from the navy.”

  The president turned back. “Was it Graham?”

  Adkins shrugged. “Unknown, Mr. President,” he said.

  “How’d Mac and the SEAL team get back to the Farm?” Berndt asked. “It’s a long swim.”

  “His daughter and son-in-law run the facility. Mac and the others swam ashore just above Yorktown and used a cell phone to call for help. They were picked up in a van and brought back to Camp Peary. It was the middle of the night and apparently no one saw a thing. That’s national parkland along the river there.”

  “What about the boat?” Berndt asked.

  “A Matthews County Sheriff’s deputy found it abandoned at a commercial dock between Newport News and Hampton.”

  The president was surprised. “That’s just across from the navy base.”

  “I think McGarvey was right about the Brit all along,” Berndt said, not surprised at all. “He did the same thing in Panama, abandoning his crew when the mission fell apart. By the time anybody realized he was gone he’d made his escape.”

  “Well, unless he has help, he won’t get out of the country,” the president said.

  “Don’t count on it, sir,” Adkins said. “The man has been ahead of us every step of the way.”

  “But only one step,” the president said. “McGarvey’s stopped him twice.”

  “There’ll be a third time, unless we get to bin Laden first,” Berndt said. He could feel it in his bones. No matter what else they would have to face in the near term, bin Laden was the key.

  “I agree,” President Haynes said. “Will McGarvey go back to Pakistan a
nd finish the job?”

  “Mr. President, I don’t think any power on earth could stop him,” Adkins replied.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  THE FARM

  McGarvey got off the phone with Adkins a few minutes before ten, and walked across the compound from the BOQ to the five-bed field hospital housed in a World War II–style Quonset hut. It was operations as normal at the training camp, and so far no one had taken undue notice of him or the SEAL team that Todd had rescued early this morning.

  A doctor had come down from Bethesda to tend to MacKeever’s and Ercoli’s concussion injuries. They’d started to swim aft toward the escape trunk hatch when the bow section of the boat had exploded. It was the only reason they’d survived. Both men had sustained damage to their ears and eyes, and Ercoli’s left hip and knee had been severely dislocated.

  But that small bit of luck was nothing against Terri Jackson’s death and the growing probability that it was Graham who had escaped from the sub, sabotaged the escape trunk, and had made off with the SOC. The Coast Guard had found a small inflatable with Libyan navy markings drifting downriver. Whoever had locked out of the submarine had probably intended to use it to make their escape, but had seized the opportunity of taking the SEALs’ boat. The entire operation had Graham’s signature written all over it.

  “The boat was found near Newport News,” Adkins had told him.

  “Get an FBI team down there right away to look for trace evidence,” McGarvey suggested.

  “The county cops found it tied up at a sightseeing dock, and from what I understand they found no evidence of a crime so they turned it over to the navy. Figured someone on base had gotten drunk and took it for a joy ride.”

  “Get Puckett to run interference for Jackson and his people. I have a feeling they’re going to be in a tight spot as soon as they report in.”

  “How’s Jackson taking it?” Adkins asked.

  “I don’t know, Dick,” McGarvey said. He could put himself in Jackson’s shoes, he’d almost lost Katy on more than one occasion, but the man had become a blank slate from the moment McGarvey had brought Terri’s body back to the control room. There’d been no rage, no tears, no blame. Jackson had carried on as a fire-team leader, making sure that MacKeever and Ercoli were well taken care of, and then retreated with Dillon to write the end-of-mission report.