by Mack Maloney
“Right on!” the sailor exclaimed.
“Or we might hang them,” Harry said suddenly.
Nolan shrugged. “Well, right,” he said. “We might hang them instead.…”
“Or we might drown them.” Harry kept talking. “Or slice their throats.…”
Nolan was getting slightly annoyed—in Whiskey’s overall plan, the means of the SEALs’ execution had yet to be decided. “Yes, maybe we’ll do all of those things, and electrocute them, too,” he said. “But whatever the way, they’re going to pay for what they did to our friend. And in the bargain, you guys get your payback, too. Just like everyone else they’ve fucked with in the past few days, all the people they killed. The score will be settled—but it will be settled our way. That’s our goal.”
“But how long will you wait for them to come out?” the sailor asked.
Nolan adjusted the ammo belt in his M4. “Until Doomsday if necessary,” he replied defiantly. “We know they’re diehards, so it might be a while before they realize they have no other choice. That’s why our guy in the copter just let them know who we are, finally, just to freak them out a little more. We’re hoping them knowing it’s us firing at them will make them panic and do stupid things—like trying to negotiate with us. Or at least that’s the plan; we’ll see if it works. But no matter how long it takes, we’ll be here.”
That’s when the sailor looked out at the sub and noticed something. “Well, I hate to say this, but you might have your dirty work done for you way before that.”
“What do you mean?” Nolan asked him.
The sailor pointed to a spot just in front of the sail. There was a closable vent there and puffs of nasty black exhaust could be seen shooting out of it.
“There’s an auxiliary generator right below that vent,” he said. “Those fools have been running it and a few others full blast ever since the power cable was cut. The problem is, they’re not built for that. They’re more for use when the ship is in dock, during repairs, things like that. And they’re always supposed to be properly ventilated, which at the moment, none of them are. I guarantee that one in particular is going to burn out at any minute, and when it does the fumes will be like poison. They’ll go right through the boat, because the air filtration system isn’t really working and the vents can’t handle it all. It will produce a cloud of carbon monoxide inside and whoever is breathing it in will see some smoke, but they might not realize what’s happening until it’s too late. They’ll just drop to the deck and it will be like going to sleep.”
This was not something Nolan wanted to hear. He wanted the 616 to suffer more than that. But he also had another, bigger concern.
He asked the sailor: “When that generator goes, how long will it take for the fumes to poison the entire boat?”
The sailor shrugged. “Ten minutes maybe—twenty tops.”
Nolan immediately looked to the front of the sub.
“Damn,” he said. “I hope all the friendlies are out by then.”
38
BATMAN WAS FACING an unusual problem for a combat pilot. He was low on fuel, but still had plenty of ammunition left. That didn’t happen very often.
Like the rest of Whiskey, his mission since taking off about ten minutes ago was to keep the SEALs on the open bridge pinned for as long as possible, this to prevent them from firing at Ramon and his security party, as well as the sailors coming out of the torpedo tube. It was also his job to finally let the SEALs know who they were dealing with, a bit of psy-ops that Whiskey was hoping might hurry the inevitable simply by screwing with 616’s collective heads.
But doing these things in the OH-6 in hurricane-force winds had been a real chore. One of the Senegals was with him, and the normally cool customer was holding on for dear life. Batman was, too. He was just grateful the plan didn’t call for him to fire directly at the SEALs. That would have required a sustained hover, tricky to do under these conditions, especially if the SEALs were firing back at him.
So, while they might have looked threatening to the 616 guys trapped atop the conning tower, it was all Batman could do to keep the helicopter in the air.
He’d made about a dozen passes on them, wounding them, scaring them, and per the plan, generally fucking with their heads. But now he had only enough gas for a few more sweeps. He hoped all the sailors would be safely out of the sub before then—and that Ramon would be done by then, too. He really didn’t want to have to land this copter once its tanks were dry, then get into Bad Dawg Two, and use it to provide air cover until it, too, ran out of gas. But that was a definite possibility.
He turned sharply and went to fly over the sub’s bridge again. He was about 100 feet away and coming down fast when he saw one of the 616 guys suddenly jump up out of cover and into plain view.
It was hard to tell who in Whiskey fired first. Nolan and Harry opened up from their dugout. The Senegals protecting Ramon fired from down on the deck and Gunner even fired the 30mm cannon from down near the sub’s bow.
But Batman was closer—and more accurate.
At first he thought the SEAL was going to take a shot at Ramon down on the deck, so he didn’t even think about it. He squeezed off a burst from his twin 50s and watched the rounds tear into the renegade SEAL’s body.
It was only then that he realized the man had attached a white cloth to his rifle and had actually been waving it at the helicopter.
It was too late though. The SEAL was blown off the bridge and into the water below where he was quickly swept downstream.
Batman pulled the copter up and over the bridge a moment later, missing it by inches.
“God, was that a flag of surrender?” he asked his white-knuckled Senegal passenger. “Did I just screw up the plan?”
“Ne vous en faites pas,” the Senegal replied, once they had regained level flight. “Un de moins meurtrier pour noyer tard.”
Don’t worry about it, he said. Just one less murderer to drown later.…
* * *
BEAUX WAS SHOCKED that Ghost was so suddenly gone.
Like Elvis, he’d known the guy for years—they all had.
But that was the final straw. It was totally useless to be up on the bridge, trying to do battle with Whiskey, while God knows what was happening in the sub below. The 616 team had already lost two men, with absolutely nothing in return. SEAL training or not, this strategy would not come to any good end for them.
Sick, dizzy and deflated, Beaux had had enough. On his order, the last of his command collected their weapons and scampered back down the conning tower ladder, slamming the hatch behind them. Their defense of the boat from up top had ended in abject failure.
They wearily climbed down to the control deck and dropped their weapons, helmets and ammunition.
Then they dragged themselves into the CAAC, only to find that all the sailors they’d left at their posts, unattended, were now gone.
* * *
IT WAS TOTAL confusion in the torpedo room.
Twitch had led the last group of sailors out of the CAAC, this while the SEALs were still battling Whiskey up on the open bridge.
Luckily, he didn’t have to carry any of these guys. Most could walk, and those who couldn’t were helped by those who could. The remaining sailors arrived in the torpedo room just as the last of the sick bay sailors was going out.
It took another ten minutes but once all of the CAAC sailors had gone, only the corpsman and Twitch remained. The Wyoming would soon be empty of friendly forces—and anything could happen after that.
“You go first,” the corpsman told Twitch. “I’ll push you along if you need any help.”
But Twitch shook his head. He had one more thing he had to do.
“No, you go,” Twitch told the medic.
The corpsman was taken aback. “Aren’t you coming?” he asked Twitch.
Twitch said, “Not yet. I have to go get my leg. I need it.…”
Before the corpsman could say another word, Twitch disappeared b
ack into the dark sub.
39
ADMIRAL BROWN HAD just finished his eighth cup of coffee when his phone rang.
It surprised everyone in the Rubber Room. The FBI experts had predicted that after their last conversation, Beaux would not call back for hours, if at all.
But it was now 5 A.M., and the phone was ringing.
Brown waited for the tape recorders to be turned on and then answered by pushing the button for speakerphone.
“We are ready to adjust our demands downward,” was how Beaux started off the conversation, his voice sounding totally burned out.
“I’m listening,” Brown replied dryly.
Beaux was obviously reading his response. “I think we’ve all learned some lessons here,” he said between coughs. “We could draw up a set of security guidelines to prevent something like this from happening again. We could also give you intelligence on how an enemy could hide a ballistic sub close to the U.S. shoreline without being detected.”
“These things might be useful,” Brown said, stringing him along. “But our concern is the welfare of the men assigned to that boat.”
“The crew is no longer on the boat,” Beaux replied quickly.
A gasp went around the Rubber Room.
“They are safe, you mean?” Brown asked eagerly.
“They are no longer here with us,” Beaux said. “So, I guess in a sense, they are.”
A wave of relief washed over those gathered around Brown.
“So you’re altering all your demands?” the admiral asked him.
“We can come to some agreement on that, yes,” Beaux said. “This has never been about money. And we’ll even be willing to stand trial. People like prison interviews, don’t they?”
An FBI man passed Brown a note. It read: “Ask him what he wants in return exactly.”
Brown relayed the question and Beaux replied immediately. “Forget everything else. You’ve got to do one thing and one thing only: Get these freaking Whiskey guys off our backs. We know now they’re the ones who have us surrounded—in fact, they’re out there flying around, rubbing our noses in it. They want us to know it’s them, even though they’ve brutally killed two of my men already and they’re not doing your boat any favors, either. Now I’m sorry, Admiral—we realize now you didn’t send them. We realize now that it was probably out of your control. So we’re not blaming you. But seriously, we’re ready to throw in the towel here. So please get word to these guys somehow and tell them to back off. They’ll get paid no matter what—damn it, we’ll pay them, if that’s what it takes. Anything just to stop them from messing with us.”
Brown and his experts were silently celebrating—even though the Whiskey problem was totally out of their hands. But they weren’t about to tell Beaux that.
“OK, how about this?” Brown proposed. “You tell us where you are and we’ll come get you.”
“Now, that’s a deal,” Beaux said, obviously relieved. “But you’ll have to hurry…”
“We will,” Brown assured him.
They could hear Beaux let out a long sigh.
Then he said: “OK, Admiral, we are at—”
But at that moment, everyone in the Rubber Room heard the sound of a huge explosion coming from Beaux’s side of the phone.
Then the line went dead.
* * *
NOLAN AND HARRY finally stopped firing their weapons.
Their dugout was awash in empty shell casings and depleted ammo clips. Five minutes had gone by since they’d seen any movement from the sub’s bridge. It was obvious the SEALs had retreated inside.
“I guess they finally figured it all out,” Harry said.
Nolan took off his helmet and wiped his tired face.
“Thanks to Batman,” he said. “But at this rate, there’ll be no one left for us to whack.”
Their job was done here. They prepared to split up. Nolan would move to the front of the sub to help the last of the escaping sailors. Harry would climb up the sub’s tailfin and join the two Senegals protecting Ramon on deck.
But before they crawled out of their dugout, Harry fired off one last burst, hitting the sub’s communications antennas. A pair of long, thin tubes sticking out of the top of the conning tower, they’d somehow survived the onslaught. Both exploded now into sparkling bits of metal and glass.
“Just so they won’t be calling out for any more pizza,” Harry explained.
* * *
NOLAN MADE HIS way down the muddy embankment, joining Gunner and the two Senegals near the front of the sub.
The last of the sailors were just coming out of the torpedo tube; Nolan helped several get to shore. As sick as they were, they were all grateful—some were even crying—happy that they were finally out of the terrifying U-boat.
The sub’s medic was the last man out. Nolan and the Senegals caught him before he hit the water and helped him to the channel bank. The man could barely hold himself up. He collapsed to the mud, overwhelmed with relief.
Except for one thing.
Twitch was not behind him.
“Where’s our guy?” Gunner yelled to the corpsman over the howling wind.
The medic reported: “I wanted him to go out in front of me, but he told me to go first. Then he ran back into the sub.”
Nolan and Gunner were stumped. What the hell would have made Twitch stay on the sub?
“His leg,” the corpsman went on. “He left it in the sick bay, so he went back for it. The problem is, the sick bay is just one level up. He should have been right behind me.”
At that moment, Nolan saw Agent Harry up on the deck near the conning tower gesturing wildly at him.
He was pointing to the generator vent just in front of the tilted submarine’s sail, the one the environmental systems guy had told them about. A column of solid black smoke was now rising out of the opening.
“Is everybody out?” Harry was yelling down at them. “Because this is looking serious.…”
Nolan froze. If the environmental systems guy was right, the fumes from the burned-out generator would fill the sub with deadly toxic fumes in twenty minutes.
And Twitch was still inside.
Nolan would have throttled his wayward colleague if he were in front of him. Getting another prosthetic leg was not a problem. Yet, knowing Twitch as Nolan did, that fake leg was probably his most prized possession. It had been with him even before he’d been sprung from the hellhole of Walter Reed Hospital’s Building 18.
But if Twitch wasn’t out of the sub by now, something must be wrong.
And that meant only one thing.
Nolan had to go in and get him.
“So close,” he griped to Gunner, shedding everything he had on him except his knife, his .45 automatic and his special night-vision scope. “We were so fucking close.…”
* * *
NOLAN WADED INTO the depleted lake and made his way through the wind and rain to a point right under the torpedo muzzle door. Gunner and the two Senegals followed him in; one Senegal handed him a dashi, a large kerchief that Nolan tied around his nose and mouth. This would be his only protection from the creeping toxic fumes.
Gunner and the Senegals then boosted him up to the torpedo tube. It took some doing, but Nolan finally managed to squeeze inside.
He began shimmying down the greasy pipe, hoping he wouldn’t run into someone unfriendly coming the other way. The tube was awful inside. Slimy, because so many sweating and coughing sick guys had come out, and bloody, because some of them had also been bleeding.
It was also pitch black, so Nolan had no idea when he’d run out of tube. One moment he was crawling along, the next he was falling in space.
He hit the torpedo room’s deck hard, landing on his shoulder. Painfully getting to his feet, he adjusted his specially adapted night-vision scope and took a look around. The torpedo room was a mess. Overturned cots. Bloody litter and bandages everywhere. Piles of ripped and oily clothes, stripped off by the sailors before they we
nt out the tube. The place smelled horrible.
He quickly found his way out and started moving aft. Navigating was difficult, as his night-vision scope was working at only one-third power due to the almost nonexistent lighting. The biggest problem, though, was how cramped the tilted passageway was. Trying to get through it on an angle was almost impossible in some places. Plus he was beginning to smell smoke.
He finally turned the first corner and was suddenly looking at a body. It was hanging in an equipment locker right in front of him and at first he thought it was one of the sub’s crewmen. But on closer inspection, he realized it was the SEAL named Elvis. He’d been brutally stabbed, his throat was slit, and one of his ears was stuffed in his mouth.
Nolan knew immediately whose work this was.
Twitch …
The dead man’s eyes were wide open, though. He seemed to be looking at Nolan and saying: Why would you ever come to this horrible place?
* * *
NOLAN MOVED ON. He’d only been inside the sub for about three minutes and the smoke was already getting more noticeable. Up one level and past the crews’ quarters, he finally found his way to the sick bay. It, too, was dark, smelly and in disarray. He searched the place twice, but couldn’t see anything resembling Twitch’s artificial leg.
His .45 automatic out, scanning the darkness in front of him, he resumed moving aft. The sub was a mess just about everywhere he looked. Because of the tilt, anything not secured had spilled on the deck: water, coffee, oil and lots of unidentifiable fluids. It was as if the Wyoming had been seized weeks ago, not just a day earlier. And with each step he took, the smell of smoke got stronger.
He reached the CAAC to find it was in the worst shape of all. Smashed equipment, discarded flu masks, expended ammo clips, with blood splattered everywhere. The smoke was getting thick in here.
He scanned the control panel, looking for anything that might shut down the balky generators. But most of the controls had been either smashed or damaged by liquids, including blood.
