Silent Waters

by Jan Coffey

He peeled back the rag to examine the wound. He couldn’t find it, so he went into the kit and took out surgical scissors. It took only a moment to slit the pant leg to the thigh. He carefully inspected the wound. There was no exit hole from the bullet, so he knew it was still lodged somewhere above the knee. The blood was flowing freely, so McCann quickly tore open the packet of antibiotic pads and held it firmly against the bullet hole.

  “Sorry, sir,” the young man said.

  “Shut up, sailor.”

  McCann waited as long as he could, but he knew the bleeding wasn’t going to stop while that bullet was in there. Using his teeth, he tore open a second packet. He had to replace the first pad because it was already soaked.

  “No, I mean it, Skipper. I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” McCann reached into the kit and took out a roll of wide surgical tape.

  “For questioning you. I shouldn’t have. I wasn’t really thinking straight, sir, but I should have remembered that Rivera and Dunbar were the only ones who could have knocked me out. They were in the galley when I left. They must have come out right behind me.”

  “Forget about it,” McCann said, winding the tape tightly around Brody’s leg. “That’s the best we’ll be able to do right now. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, sir. If you could just help me get to my feet.”

  “That’s the last thing you should be doing.”

  Even so, he helped Brody up. The sonar man balanced on his good leg and leaned back against the torpedo rack.

  McCann glanced toward the stairs. He didn’t know who shot at the third gunman. The shot definitely came from the middle level. When the hijacker had responded, firing up the stairs, McCann had then been able to take the man down. He wondered if someone else, like Brody, had just been able to get free. If that was the case, why hadn’t he come down when the shooting stopped.

  It couldn’t have been Amy, he told himself. She’d promised to stay where he’d left her.

  “They’ve taken the sub deeper, sir,” Brody said, trying to put a little weight on his leg. The blood was soaking through the man’s pant leg.

  “Yes, I felt it,” McCann said, suddenly worried for Amy. “Okay, this is the plan. I’m ordering you to stay here and shoot anyone who tries to come down those stairs. I don’t want them loading the tubes.”

  “That ain’t gonna happen, sir.

  “There’s a woman on board. An EB ship super. She was in charge of fixing our system, but she got caught in the boat during the hijacking. Don’t shoot her.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “She’s supposed to be waiting in the engineering office, back aft. But she’s not too good at following orders.”

  “Got it, Skipper” Brody assured him.

  “We’ve got enough weapons now, so I’m going to make my way back to the engine room. I’ve got to take out the man in Maneuvering if I’m going to shut down the reactor. Then I’m coming back here, and we’re going to take our ship back.”

  “I can be more help than just guarding the tubes, sir. Seriously.”

  “I know you can. But for now, I want you here.” He reached over and tore the headset off the dead hijacker. He handed it to Brody. “Don’t say anything into this until you hear my voice.”

  “Hold on, Skipper. You’re gonna blast your way like Rambo all the way to the engine room and back and take on all of them yourself, is that it?”

  “We can’t let them do this, Brody. You drag yourself up to the control room as quick as you can when I tell you.”

  McCann collected all the pistols that had been dropped, and left an extra gun with Brody. He took a quick look at the face of the man at the bottom of the stairs. The dead hijacker wasn’t anyone he knew, and it occurred to McCann that he definitely looked more Scandinavian than Middle Eastern. He stepped over him and started cautiously up the stairs.

  Two bodies were lying in the passageway, but there was no one else in sight. He moved quietly to the first of the two. There was little left of the face of the first one, but he was sure it was Kevin Barclay. The second corpse lay outside the officers’ cabin, part of his upper body lying across the threshold. McCann took a step in that direction, and then whirled when he saw a movement in the cabin. He raised his pistol.

  Amy gasped and backed up against the paneled wall.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked sharply, immediately rushing toward her. He took hold of her hand—the one with the gun pointing at him—and lowered it to her side.

  “I saw the gun pointed at your head, so I came up to save you. But there were these people in the passageway and I tried to hide in here…and…and…I saw him,” she said brokenly, pointing at the bunk.

  McCann saw Gibbs’s body. He looked back at Amy. Her breathing was unsteady. She dropped the gun on the desk next to her and leaned against it. He pulled her into his arms and she held him, pressing her face against his chest. There was no restraint with her. She was all emotion, up or down.

  He wished they had met at a different time, a different place, under better circumstances. The fact that she could have been shot, that she could have been one of the bodies that was lying at their feet, mortified him. He took her hair with one hand and pulled her face away from his chest so he could look into her eyes.

  “Why can’t you follow orders?”

  She ignored his question and her gaze moved to his shoulder.

  “You’re bleeding. Oh my God…you’re shot!” she said urgently, trying to open the front of his shirt.

  He trapped her hands against his chest. “Only a scratch. There’s nothing to it, really.”

  “Then let me see.”

  She tried to push his hands away, but he stopped her again. “We don’t have time, right now.”

  He looked around the room, forcing himself to see past the dead young men who were members of his crew only twenty-four hours ago. He had to figure out what the hell went wrong and what made them act the way they did.

  McCann turned back to Amy. “How am I going to get it in your head that I need you to stay in one place?”

  “No. No way. I refuse to stay in a room with all these dead bodies.”

  He knew she wouldn’t stay in any other room, either. Showing up here had proved that much.

  “Okay, you follow me,” he told her. “But I expect you to obey orders. Got it?”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” she muttered, picking up her gun again.

  He pushed the muzzle to the side, so it wasn’t pointing at his chest. “I’m the good guy. Try to remember that.”

  As he leaned out the doorway, looking up and down the passageway, he could hear her mumbling under her breath, repeating what he’d said, but twisting the words. He thought that was a very good sign.

  There was no one in sight.

  “Where are we going?” she whispered.

  “Back through the reactor tunnel to the engine room. First, I want to make sure Brody, my sonar man, is still conscious. I left him down in the torpedo room.”

  “He’s not with them?”

  “Definitely not,” McCann said. “He was knocked cold. He was a little confused at first, but he’s on our side, so don’t shoot him. Understood?”

  Her head butted him lightly on the back. He took that as a yes.

  McCann looked both ways again before stepping over the sailor’s body. She was right behind him. As they went, he touched his chest, feeling for the key he’d need to get into Maneuvering. It was still there.

  In a moment, they were looking down the stairs into the torpedo room. He peered down through the entry. There was no sign of Brody.

  “There’s something important that you should know,” she whispered. “There was a man they called Kilo who shot your two men by the officer’s stateroom.”

  He stared at her. “You were there when they were shot?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the point,” she told him. “I heard this Kilo guy say something to one of the men going down into the torpedo room. He sai
d he was doing a cleanup. There was a mention of fourteen hundred, too, but I don’t know what the context was.”

  McCann didn’t know any Kilo, but most submariners went by one nickname or another. He looked down at his watch. It was already 1:25.

  Little more than half an hour until 1400 hours.

  He wasn’t about to wait around wondering what the hijackers intended to do in another thirty five minutes. The torpedo tubes were shut down, but the Vertical Launch System might be operational if they were to go back up to periscope depth again. Why had they gone deeper?

  It didn’t really matter, he supposed. The nuclear reactor could be a disaster at any depth.

  “I’m going to do what I planned to do from the beginning. I have to shut the reactor down before they can use that as a weapon, too.”

  Just as McCann stopped talking, he heard footsteps behind them, and then the shooting began again.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 40

  Pentagon

  1:40 p.m.

  There were no new aerial shots of the pursuit of Hartford. The media had been banned from the area, along with all private boats. All nonmilitary aircraft in a five-hundred-mile radius had been grounded. The camera crews of the local affiliates, however, were staying busy, filming from the shore with the most powerful lenses they had. Across the water, the smoke and flames rising from the oil rig made for dramatic footage.

  Sarah stood in front of the television in the conference room. The room buzzed with faxes and phone calls coming and going and agents walking in and out. She was in her own world, enclosed in a bubble that blocked out the noise, the people, and everything else.

  Her thoughts were on Darius McCann. She was determined to think of him still alive, fighting the hijackers. He had a warrior streak in him, something he’d entered the navy with. She liked to think that it was in his blood, a fighting spirit that came to him through his ancestors. It was in the name his mother had given him. Darius the Great, of the royal family of Achemenides. King of Persia from 521 to 486 BC.

  Over the years, Sarah had studied Persian history, its culture, its customs. The curiosity had begun with her interest in Darius, in an effort to understand him. But soon the civilization itself had won her over, the centuries of history and the evolution of the region had fascinated her. It was through this knowledge that she believed she was now better able to understand the conflicts in the Middle East.

  Persia encompassed many countries, cultures, and various religions. It had always been a bomb with a slow burning fuse. The centuries-old conflicts had roots running back to the days of the Persian Empire, long before a prophet named Mohammed rode in from the desert. More recently, it has been an area rich in oil, where poverty-stricken people seethe at excesses of the rich puppets who are kept in power by the West in general, and by American oil companies in particular. To many in the Middle East, America and the oil companies mean the same thing—brutality and decadence. What America called democracy and capitalism were simply terms for a Judeo-Christian coalition bent on taking all they could from those living in the region. They saw no evidence to make them think otherwise. They saw no reason to temper their resentment.

  Sarah believed that the lack of understanding of all parties involved perpetrated the flaring violence. There seemed to be no end in sight. Fear and distrust were the breeding ground of war.

  And terror was the weapon of those without weapons.

  She tried to shake off thoughts of politics, now. She had a job to do, and she focused on the running script at the bottom of the television screen. Most of the images were a continuous loop showing the damage to the lighthouse and the Coast Guard cutter in New London harbor and to the oil rig on Long Island Sound. There were two known fatalities on the rig, but they expected the numbers to grow. The fire was nowhere under control.

  “Anything new?” Bruce asked, moving next to her.

  He handed her a cup of coffee. She didn’t have to look. She knew it’d be perfect and just the way she liked it. She took a sip. “The networks are already announcing that President Hawkins is planning another press conference at three o’clock,” she told him. “What do you think is left for him to say?”

  “That they’ve attacked Hartford.”

  Her heart twisted. She looked at Dunn. “Have they?”

  “My sources say engagement is imminent,” he said quietly.

  Sarah’s breath caught in her chest. She forced herself to swallow the painful lump forming in her throat. Fighting to control her emotions, she took a long sip from the cup.

  “It’s okay to be upset,” he said softly. “No one is going to think less of you because of it. For God’s sake, I didn’t even know most of those people, and I’m upset.”

  Sarah appreciated what he was trying to do. She looked past the brim of the cup at the television screen again, hoping the unshed tears would hurry up and dissolve.

  There were now showing footage of the White House again. The President and some of his cabinet members were leaving the Oval Office.

  “They must think that if they show President Hawkins enough times at the White House, then people might believe that he’s really there holding the fort,” Bruce commented.

  “He is there, isn’t he?” she asked.

  Bruce nodded, taking a step closer to the screen. “But have you noticed that there are a couple of people who should be there, but aren’t?”

  Sarah focused on the faces, recognizing everyone she saw. The cameramen were catching every attendee.

  “This is a submarine hijacking,” Dunn said. “Who do you see from the military?”

  Sarah understood that he wasn’t necessarily asking her, but just questioning aloud.

  “The members of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense. There’s the Secretary of the Navy,” she said as the men appeared.

  “And from the Submarine Service?”

  “That’s Admiral Pottinger, Commander of Submarine Force of Atlantic Fleet.”

  “He hasn’t commanded a sub in fifteen years,” he told her, staring at the television screen. “Where are the sub drivers? Not at the White House, and not here helping us.” Bruce turned to her. “This is exactly what you were talking about before.”

  “You were the one who said we should attack.”

  “That’s true, but they should have done it hours ago, before these people got their legs under them, before they got too far into this.”

  “Back to the experts.” Sarah took the pad of paper she had tucked under her arm and flipped the pages until she found what she was looking for. “I’ve done a little research since we came back.”

  “About experts?”

  “Right. For the past ten years or so, under the last three administrations, the exact same sub commanders have been called upon by the president and the media for advice and commentary whenever emergencies came up having to do with submarines. They’re the same experts that General Dynamics Electric Boat Division and Newport News use as consultants to sit in on engineering-design reviews. They’re supposedly sought after by people like Admiral Pottinger and Admiral Gerry for practical advice. I haven’t heard even one of their names mentioned today.”

  “Let me guess.” Bruce gave her a sideways glance. “You’re talking about Whiting, Erensen, and Barnhardt.”

  “Very good.”

  “Between them,” Bruce continued, “they’ve commanded or supervised the sea trials of every sub that has been built for the navy since the late seventies. Since Admiral Rickover died, those three are considered more knowledgeable about subs than anyone on the planet.”

  Sarah looked down at her list. “I’m impressed, Commander Dunn.”

  “Don’t be,” he told her. “Our minds are in sync. I dug up the names ten minutes ago.”

  “If you and I could come up with the same list, then why isn’t the Atlantic Fleet using these people? Why doesn’t the media have them on television?”

  “Maybe they are using them. Maybe they ha
ve them on the sub that’s chasing Hartford. Maybe they’re working behind the scenes in tactical positions.”

  “In that case, it would be nice to have them available to us, too,” Sarah commented. “Some of the questions that are taking us hours to research, these people might have answered in seconds.”

  “You’re talking about the overhaul Hartford went through this past year. Four months ago,” he said specifically.

  She wasn’t surprised that he’d picked up on that. One of the items on their agenda this morning was to find everything that might be new and different about Hartford.

  “There were some system changeovers that were unique to that SRA,” Sarah added. “And the crew of Hartford had to go through some training for it. I’d like to know how practical it’d be for someone lacking this training to operate that submarine. And depending of what the answer might be, I have more questions that could narrow down our search of who could be qualified and trained to head this hijacking.”

  Before Bruce could say anything, Sarah continued. “Of course, my questions are based on the assumption that Commander McCann has no hand in the hijacking.”

  “Whether he’s involved or not, we could use the help of one of these guys.” Bruce nodded thoughtfully. “I think just because Meisner and company haven’t assigned any of them to our team, it doesn’t mean we can’t go out and get them. Meisner said we have access to every resource and investigative unit of the U.S. Government. And from what I found, Whiting, Erensen, and Barnhardt are kept on retainer all the time. ”

  “And if they’re too busy with the tactical side of things?”

  “I’ll take care of that part,” Bruce assured her. “There’s three of them. We should be able to get at least one to lend his expertise for an hour or two.”

  ~~~~

  Chapter 41

  USS Hartford

  1:50 p.m.

  Shoved back around a bend in the passageway, Amy held her pistol where she could hand it to McCann if he ran out of bullets.