by Mack Maloney
That was the condition of the missile launch console. It had been ripped apart, as if someone had clumsily tried to cross the wires inside to make it work. But two of the keys needed to launch the missiles were in their respective locks and they’d been engaged. That could only mean the SEALs had attempted to launch at least one of the Trident missiles, maybe more.
“These guys are nuts,” Nolan whispered.
He moved to the center of the CAAC, stopped and just listened. He prayed that he’d hear Twitch shuffling down the passageway nearby, like some old haunted soul, looking for his lost leg. Then they could get the hell out of here.
But no such luck.
* * *
NOLAN FOUND HIS way to the sub’s missile bay. He’d been inside the Wyoming for about ten minutes at this point, halfway to when the seeping smoke would become overwhelmingly toxic.
He moved very cautiously in here, scanning everything around him before taking a step. There was no mystery why they called this place the Forest. It was a vast hall with twenty-four vertical tubes, each resembling a thick metal tree covered with control boxes, wires, cables, and assorted switches and buttons. They were all painted gray and festooned with radioactivity warning signs. Viewed through his night-vision scope, the place looked like the set of a science-fiction movie. The smoke was even thicker down here, though, rising up from the deck like a lethal fog.
Ten steps in, he stopped and just listened again. Amid the sounds of machinery struggling to stay alive and a cacophony of electronic beeps and burps, he heard three odd things: a voice alternately whispering and cursing somewhere among the missile tubes, someone snoring loudly and the sound of metal tapping on metal. It made for an eerie combination.
He crept to the center of the Forest, cranking his night-vision scope to its highest possible power. He followed the trio of strange noises for about ten more steps—and that’s how he found Twitch.
His missing colleague was sitting on the deck, tucked between two missile tubes. His weapons were nowhere in sight. He was swearing softly as he tried to reattach a broken strap to his prosthetic leg. But his face was covered in blood; both his eyes were closed and swollen. His hands were so cut up, he was having trouble just holding the leg brace, never mind trying to fix it. Clearly, he’d been severely beaten.
Nolan’s first instinct was to grab him and carry him out of this place—but he stopped himself, a wise choice.
First, he noticed a thin wire wrapped around Twitch’s neck. Then he saw a shadowy figure was sitting beside him, propped up against the missile tube wall. It was one of the three remaining SEALs, the one nicknamed Monkey. He was sound asleep and snoring.
The wire around Twitch’s neck was attached to the trigger of Monkey’s M4 assault rifle, which the SEAL was cradling in his arms. If Twitch moved too far in any direction while Monkey dozed, the M4 would blow his head off.
In the background, near another pair of missile tubes, maybe twenty feet away, Nolan saw the last two SEALs, Beaux and Smash. Both had M4s slung over their shoulders. They were also holding a cigarette lighter over a manual of sorts and were jabbing buttons attached to one of the launch cylinders.
Still in the shadows, Nolan studied them closely. What were they doing exactly? The rescued sailor had told him in the dugout that there were several different places on board from which to fire a nuclear-tipped missile. Did that mean they could be launched from down here, just by pushing the right button?
The smoke was getting thicker now, as was its sickening smell. Nolan couldn’t tell whether the SEALs even knew the burnt-out generator was filling the sub with deadly fumes. As it was, all three of them already looked like zombies. Yet they’d managed to catch Twitch somehow—and with all the sub’s crew now gone, he was their last remaining hostage.
Nolan steeled himself. There was no way he could sneak back out and return with reinforcements, not with only a few minutes of breathable air left in the sub.
He had to free Twitch now.
He finally stepped out of the murk, holding his .45 automatic out in front of him. Monkey woke up and saw him right away. The SEAL looked very nasty up close. Gaunt, sunken eyes, pasty white skin; the sores around his mouth and nose were obvious even through the night-vision goggles. He was either suffering from the acute flu, or being slowly poisoned by the fumes. Or maybe both.
He was also slow in reacting. He just stared up at Nolan, puzzling over him in the dark. Nolan must have looked like a monster to him, the dashi wrapped around the bottom half of his face, his patch and the night-vision scope covering his eyes, his clothes stained with grease and blood, surrounded by the smoky gloom.
But then Monkey’s eyes fell on Nolan’s .45 automatic.
“Don’t go shooting that thing off in here,” he told Nolan in a weirdly passive voice. “We got twenty-two live missiles, and just one bullet could—”
But Nolan didn’t let him finish. He squeezed his trigger and shot the SEAL right between the eyes. His head came apart and splattered on the deck.
“So much for The Plan,” Nolan thought grimly.
Nolan saw Beaux and Smash, alerted by the gunshot, spin around and look toward him; both appeared dazed and confused. Again, they were armed with M4s, but they didn’t have night-vision goggles, meaning they couldn’t see Nolan as well as he could see them. But they could certainly detect his shadow in the faint glow of the green emergency lights.
Nolan had to move fast. He grabbed Twitch, tore the wire from his neck and retrieved Monkey’s M4. Then he started dragging his badly beaten friend away.
But which way to go? Between the smoke, the dark, and the tightly packed missile tubes, Nolan wasn’t sure where he was. Every direction looked the same. He wasn’t even sure which way he came in. When Nolan was a kid his favorite attraction at the amusement park had been the House of Horrors. Now he was in one for real.
By pure luck, he stumbled onto an aisle that was slightly wider than the rest; it also had a red line running down the middle. Nolan began dragging Twitch along this aisle, even as he could see the ghostly shadows of Beaux and Smash moving through the Forest parallel to him. And through it all, Twitch was still trying to reattach his artificial leg.
The two SEALs began taunting Nolan.
“Throw us your weapon and we can talk about this,” came Beaux’s distinctive twang. “Nothing is so bad that we can’t hash it out.…”
Nolan responded by firing his .45 twice in the direction of the SEALs. The bullets ricocheted wildly around the missile compartment, causing an earsplitting racket.
“You’re fucking crazy, man!” Smash yelled, ducking behind a tube. “One bullet in the wrong place and this boat will go up and take half the East Coast with it.”
Nolan fired two more shots at the disembodied voices. Again, the bullets crashed loudly around the missile tubes, throwing sparks everywhere.
“You’re going to kill us all!” Beaux yelled. “Be reasonable! We can all get out of here in one piece.”
But Nolan wasn’t really listening. He was desperately looking for some way out of the missile hall. He still couldn’t tell forward from aft. Not that it made much difference. Considering how intense the smoke was getting, returning to the front of the sub, to the conning tower or the torpedo room, would be suicidal.
So what could he do?
There was only one option left. Nolan knew the Forest contained two lockout chambers, one of which the SEALs had used to come aboard in the first place. If Nolan could find them, maybe he could use one to escape.
Perhaps attuned to his thinking, the SEALs opened up on him with their assault rifles. Nolan hit the deck, shoving Twitch behind him as the barrage went overhead. He raised his pistol and squeezed off a shot, only to hear his clip pop out.
Damn … His pistol was out of ammo.
Nolan threw the .45 away and raised the M4 he’d taken from Monkey. He squeezed the trigger; the weapon bucked once, firing a single round—and then its ammo clip popped out.
The rifle was also out of ammo. It’d had just one bullet in it all along.
It was at that odd moment, with them pinned down and defenseless, that Twitch came out of his fog. Suddenly he seemed aware of what was happening around him. Or so Nolan thought.
Because at that point, Twitch looked up at him and asked, “Are we still in Shanghai?”
Dozens of bullets were zinging off everything around them, lighting up the near darkness. Nolan could only imagine this was how the SEALs felt when Whiskey had them pinned down atop the conning tower earlier. He just hoped the missile compartments could take a bullet or at least deflect one. If not, they could all be turned into radioactive dust at any moment.
Nolan knew the lockout chambers were located among the forward tubes—he just didn’t know which ones. Using the light created by the SEALs firing at him, he finally regained his bearings and spotted the forward part of the Forest. He started dragging Twitch in that direction, trying to keep both SEALs in sight as they continued firing in his direction, with no idea that he was now without a weapon.
“We’ll cut you in on the deal—our team and your team,” Smash was yelling, as the gunfire died down. “We’ll give you points on the movie.”
“And that’s on the gross, not the net!” Beaux echoed.
Nolan finally reached the forward part of the missile compartment. But he soon discovered none of the tubes here was marked any differently than the rest. There was nothing indicating which tubes were the lockout chambers.
So he randomly selected one tube and yanked open its hatch, only to find a huge Trident missile inside. Suddenly Beaux and Smash renewed their barrage. Their bullets went over his head and started ricocheting off the missile poised inside the tube.
Nolan quickly pushed the hatchway closed, then held his breath.
He waited about five seconds—and nothing happened. No explosion, no sound of the missile taking off. No start to Armageddon.
Then from the darkness, he heard more taunting.
“If we have to shoot you we might all go up together!” Beaux yelled.
“Then no one wins!” Smash added.
Nolan pulled Twitch along again and made it to the next tube. He yanked this hatch open—only to have a body fall right into his arms.
The corpse almost embraced him. It was so close, Nolan could read the nameplate over the left breast pocket: COMMANDER SHEPHERD.
The Wyoming’s captain …
He’d been shot in the head and the wound had swelled to grotesque proportions. The smell was unbearable. Nolan dropped the body immediately. It hit the deck with a sickening crunch.
He almost lost it right there. But he shook off the horror when he realized there was only one tube to go before he ran out of choices.
He yanked its door open—and a small gush of water came out, soaking both him and Twitch. But this was a good sign. There was no missile inside; instead Nolan could see a metal ladder that led straight up to the deck.
He stuck his head inside the launch tube, but his heart sank when he heard people and equipment moving around the silo just above him. He knew who it was: Ramon, his welding gear and his armed guardians.
He thought he could actually see the glow of the arc welding light seeping through the seams of the hatch.
“God damn,” Nolan cursed, looking up into the empty tube
The only way they had to get out of the sub—and Ramon was right above him, about to weld it shut.
* * *
RAMON’S ACETYLENE TANK was running low.
His back was hurting. He was soaking wet. Until just minutes before, a gunfight had been raging around him. And he was in the middle of a hurricane, welding.
But he hadn’t had this much fun in his life.
“One more to go, mon,” he said to Agent Harry and the two Senegals still watching over him. “One more shim and dis boat is sealed.”
Ramon jammed the small metal piece into the missile hatch and fired up his torch. He wiped the rain from his eyes, flipped down his mask … but suddenly the missile hatch began to move.
“Jesus, mon!” Ramon cried out. “What is this?”
He and the others watched in astonishment as a bloody hand emerged from underneath the hatch. It was like a horror movie happening right before their eyes. A monster inside the sub was trying to escape. But was it real? Ramon freaked out. He went to step on the hatch and sever the fingers, when Agent Harry yelled for him to stop.
Something else was being jammed between the hatch seal and the lid.
It was a piece of white plastic—with a boot on it.
Twitch’s fake leg.
Harry pulled up the hatchway to see Twitch’s bloody, distorted face looking up at him. Below him was Nolan, trying his best to push his lame colleague up and out of the lockout chamber.
The strange thing was, they really did look like creatures from a horror movie.
“What the hell happened to you guys?” Harry yelled at them. “Everyone thought you’d be coming back out the torpedo tube!”
“Just pull us out, will you!” Nolan yelled back. “We’ve had two freaks on our ass and I’ve been boosting Junior here for the last forty-eight feet!”
The Senegals reached down and lifted Twitch out of the tube, allowing Nolan to get to the top rung of the ladder.
But just as he was easing himself out, something grabbed onto his leg.
He looked into the hole and saw Beaux was right behind him, arms wrapped around his right leg, trying to pull him back down.
This shouldn’t be, Nolan thought. With bullets flying and the two SEALs just inches away from catching them, he and Twitch had dashed into the empty missile tube, locking it with just seconds to spare. They’d heard Beaux and Smash banging on the hatch door as they began their mad climb up, but were sure they’d finally left them behind. Now, in this moment of terror, Nolan saw Beaux no longer had his M4 with him. Had he and Smash expended their ammo shooting open the silo’s lock?
It made little difference now, though, as the 616 commander was laughing crazily and tightening his grip on Nolan’s leg. Nolan tried kicking him away with his other leg, but Beaux still hung on tight. Nolan tried to hit him with his fist, but the rogue SEAL was just out of reach. Meanwhile, Nolan’s friends on top, with the wind and the rain still swirling around them, were trying their best to pull him one way, with Beaux pulling him in the other. And the SEAL was winning, because he had such a tight grip on him. Making it worse, Smash was on the ladder right below Beaux and now he had hold of Nolan’s other leg.
The desperate tug of war seemed to go on forever—with Nolan caught in the middle and losing. It was like he was being pulled back down to the underworld by the devil himself.
Is this how it ends? he thought. After such a perfect escape?
Finally, Ramon took action. He re-fired his torch, leaned almost all the way into the hole and with one of the Senegals holding his feet, put the flame right next to Beaux’s throat.
“Let go of my friend,” he growled. “Both of you—or this guy gets his gullet fried.”
Beaux had no doubt this crazy-looking man would burn him. So both he and Smash immediately let go of Nolan. But because the people up top were still pulling on him, Nolan came shooting out of the missile tube at high speed, knocking over Harry and the other Senegal, with all of them landing in a heap on top of Twitch.
Nolan rolled off the pile and collapsed on the sub’s tilted deck for a few seconds, fighting hard to catch his breath. The rain was pelting his face, the wind was still blowing fiercely—but at that moment, he couldn’t recall anything feeling so beautiful.
“One more moment,” Harry said to him, finally helping him up, “and it would have been curtains for you.”
Then Ramon started calling out from below. He was still headfirst in the missile silo, still holding his lit welding torch.
“Do you even want these dizzles now?” he asked. “Or should
I drop them back where they belong and then seal this coffin?”
Nolan recovered enough to stagger back to the missile tube and look down. He saw Ramon with his welding torch clenched between his teeth, one hand holding Beaux and the other holding Smash.
“Fucking hey we still want them!” Harry yelled, also peering down the tube. “There’s only two, but that’s okay. It still means The Plan is back on schedule. And that means it’s payback time—for all of us.…”
The Senegals looked to Nolan. He hesitated just a moment, but then said: “Yes, OK—pull them out.”
With that, the two Senegals reached down and roughly pulled the SEALs to the deck. Both hijackers were visibly disoriented and terrified. Ever since Whiskey let it be known that they were the ones who’d found them and the Wyoming here, it was clear that if anyone from 616 was ever captured outside the sub, only a horrible death awaited them.
In fact, Harry already had his pistol out. He shoved it so far into Smash’s temple, it broke the skin and the SEAL started to bleed.
Ironically, in the midst of all this, the rain had suddenly stopped. Morning had come, and the hurricane was moving off as quickly as it had arrived. There were even signs the sun was about to break through on the rapidly clearing horizon.
“Perfect weather for a firing squad!” Harry roared.
Word had spread of what was happening on the deck and a group of freed sailors had gathered on the lake’s muddy bank nearby to watch the drama play out. Harry’s call to action elicited screams of support from them.
“Drown them!” someone yelled from the bank.
“No! Burn them at the stake!” came another voice.
“No—hang one! And make the other walk the plank!”
Harry buried his pistol even deeper into Smash’s head wound.
“I say we do them right here—right now,” he growled. “No ceremony. No bullshit. No last words. Quick justice, just like we planned.…”
An even louder cheer erupted from the muddy bank. Smash began to weep openly. Harry’s finger started to squeeze his trigger.
But then Nolan calmly reached over and moved Harry’s pistol away from the SEAL. “As much as I want to do this,” he said, “we just can’t…”
