by Jan Coffey
Amy forced herself to move away from the paneled wall. Walking on rubbery knees, she moved behind him, looking past his shoulder. He was trying to get into different networks. Every one of them seemed to be down.
“Do you mean…like a hijacking?” she asked, shivering.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
Amy didn’t want to distract him. She knew there was no one more familiar with the systems and operations of this sub than the man sitting before her.
“The network is shut down. From what I can tell UHF, HF, VLF, and ELF systems are locked down, too.”
She knew he was talking about frequency channels in the communications system.
He continued to mutter. “That’s against SUBSAFE rules and a dozen other regs.”
He stood up. Amy backed away quickly as he started opening the cabinets and drawers. He was looking for something.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked, feeling useless just watching.
“Do you have anything on you? Tools? A knife? Anything that we could use as a weapon?”
The joke around the shop had always been that if Amy ever fell in the water, she’d never surface. She tended to carry too many tools on her. If fact, the union had written formal complaints against her for carrying them. It didn’t stop her.
She patted her jacket pockets and started emptying them on the desk. A crimping tool, a pair of pliers, a wire cutter, a screwdriver that doubled as a voltage detector. She stripped off her blue coat and threw it aside, taking out a tape measure from the pocket of the vest she was wearing under it. There were also some cable straps and banding crimps. McCann wasn’t waiting for her to give him an inventory. He continued to search the drawers, pulling out anything that could be used as a sharp object or a tool and adding it to her pile.
“Do you think some of your crew is involved with this?” She realized this was the wrong question to ask the moment it left her lips.
His expression became even fiercer. The drawers opened with more vengeance. “I have no information on that right now.”
No ship’s captain would take the idea of mutiny lightly.
As she patted the back pockets of her jeans, her gaze fixed on the laptop that she’d hurriedly tucked under the desk.
She pointed to it, excitedly. “Remote access to the network. I might be able to connect to the shipyard’s system and send a message out. We could warn them what’s happening here.” The news she’d received not too long ago came back to her. “That fire…”
“What about it?”
“It was probably a decoy. They’re trying to distract everyone.”
He reached under the desk for the laptop and handed it to her. “Don’t build your hopes up about getting connected. You’re talking about a signal that has to penetrate two inches of HY-80 steel.”
“We have to try.” Amy unzipped the bag and booted the computer up. The wait felt forever. Finally, the Windows start-up icons appeared. She searched for network access.
“It shows a remote signal,” she said, turning the laptop to face him.
“It could be from our in-house router in the control room,” he said thoughtfully, “but we’ll take whatever they give us.”
He started typing, his fingers flying over the keyboard. Most of it was gibberish to her, codes, time, date. He pressed Send, and the computer started grinding. The cursor locked, nothing happening.
“Come on, damn it,” he said under his breath.
The clocked cursor stared back at them.
“We lost it. It’s not there.”
He was talking about the signal. The bars had disappeared. Amy forced down her disappointment.
He turned the laptop toward her. “Don’t give up. Keep searching for the signal.”
She squeezed by and watched him go back to search the drawers and cabinets. A box cutter’s sharp edge introduced a whole new realm of possibilities. Her attention returned to the screen. No signal.
“You were going to remove the paneling in this ceiling to get to the wiring of the navigation system in the sonar equipment room,” he said. “Is there any chance of climbing through?”
She shook her head. “No, from the stage where they do the wiring installation in the modular sections at Quonset, there’s no space. We’ve stuffed ten pounds of shit into a one-pound container…at your request. There’s no way to get through up there.”
He’d reached the last set of cabinets and methodically began to search them.
She now knew what he was planning to do. They had to work their way out of this room, since the door was locked from the outside. This was one of many restricted areas on the sub.
He pulled two pairs of scissors from a drawer before crouching down to inspect the bottom shelves.
Amy felt a faint shudder in the deck, and she knew something had gone wrong. McCann’s gaze went to the door, then to the ceiling and bulkheads.
“What’s going on?” she asked in a whisper.
He stared at her for a long moment before answering.
“We’re moving.”
~~~~
Chapter 7
Norfolk, Virginia
5:18 a.m.
Admiral Norman Pottinger, commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet Submarine Force, was still asleep when the phone rang. He stared at the dark ceiling of the bedroom for a couple of seconds before rolling onto his side and patting the bedside table in search of his glasses. He glanced at the clock. His alarm would go off in twelve minutes. On a normal morning, he would have been awake in eleven. He turned off the alarm.
Patricia switched on the light on her side of the bed and checked the caller ID.
“Groton,” she told him, reaching for the handset.
He knew his wife wouldn’t bother to speak into the phone. No son of a bitch in Groton was stupid enough to call at this hour unless it was an emergency. She passed the phone to him.
Pottinger sat up and cleared his throat before speaking. Don Brown, the commander of submarine base in Groton was on the line.
“We have a disaster on our hands, sir.”
“Hold on.”
Pottinger immediately put his bare feet on the carpeted floor and stood up. Padding across the floor to a desk by the window, he turned on a lamp and picked up the pen lying beside a yellow legal pad. Behind him, his wife turned off her light.
“All right. Give me the specifics.”
“Seven minutes ago,” Brown started, speaking formally, “USS Hartford left the pier of the Electric Boat shipyard without authorization and with unknown passengers aboard.”
“What do you mean left?” Pottinger pulled out the chair and sat down. “They were deployed twenty-four hours ago.”
“Well…yes, sir. They were directed to return to port because of a malfunction with their navigation equipment. Your office was notified, Admiral.”
His office may have been, but he wasn’t. Pottinger had taken a rare weekend off, spending time with his family on the Outer Banks and closing down their summerhouse for the season.
“Who’s in command of the ship?”
“We don’t know for sure who has the conn on Hartford at this moment, Admiral, but it’s Commander McCann’s sub.”
“That’s right.” He jotted down the name. McCann was a good officer. “What the hell were they doing at Electric Boat?”
“The shipyard had a replacement system. A joint decision was made by NAVSEA, the Undersecretary of the navy’s procurement liaison, the defense contractor, and Commander McCann, who was then directed to dock the sub in the shipyard. The system replacement was to be completed before 1200 hours today.”
“But the replacement was not completed and McCann took his ship anyway?”
“Not exactly, Admiral. The replacement was not completed, but we can’t be certain of the circumstances of the undocking. In fact, we’re operating under the assumption that Hartford has been hijacked.”
“What are you talking about, Captain Brown
?” Pottinger picked up the pad of paper and walked out of the bedroom. He could hear the volume of his voice rising sharply. “No one can hijack a fully manned submarine.”
“All but nine members of the crew were given leave, sir.”
“Why the hell would McCann do that?” he barked. “That submarine was fully armed. That crew had already been deployed.”
There was a pause on the other end. “Commander McCann ran that decision by me, sir. This crew’s time ashore had been cut substantially short. McCann believed the sailors could use the extra day with their families before going out on patrol, and I agreed. There was no reason to believe the sub’s security stood to be compromised in that short duration of time in a secure defense contractor’s facility.”
Pottinger considered the ramifications of this security breach. If that submarine so much as ran up on a sandbar, the potential for disaster was incomprehensible. If that sub had really been hijacked…
“Where the hell is McCann now?”
“He’s aboard Hartford, Admiral.”
“Say that again.”
“One officer and eight enlistees were left on board. Per shipyard security, at 0400 today, Commander McCann arrived at the gate. He made a stop at the NAVSEA office and a few minutes later boarded the submarine in the company of a shipyard superintendent who was to be responsible for the navigation equipment replacement.”
Pottinger ran his stubby fingers through short, thinning hair. He walked into the kitchen. “So we have a civilian aboard, as well.”
“Yes, sir. A woman.”
“Jesus H. Christ.” He sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. This was getting worse by the second. “What else do you have?”
“Around 0430, a fire broke out in one of the support shops in the shipyard. They’re still battling the blaze right now. They suspect arson.”
“No shit,” Pottinger said, in no way trying to keep the sarcasm out of his tone.
Brown continued. “A few minutes ago, the bodies of two shipyard security guards were found in the North Yard Ways, the building adjacent to the fire. Both had been stabbed to death.”
“Who killed them?”
“We believe it was the hijackers, Admiral. Oxygen tanks and other diving equipment were found abandoned in the vicinity of the killings,” Brown said solemnly. “Shipyard security concurs. The director of security believes the hijackers swam in, murdered the guards, then boarded Hartford.”
Pottinger tried to absorb all of this. “And they sailed off with one of your subs.”
Brown’s voice was grim. “Yes, sir.”
“What the hell happened to the floating booms?” Pottinger barked. “We spent $600 million to position those security measures everywhere that our submarines or our ships are docked in North America.”
“The security boom was in place, sir. Shipyard security put the boom in place behind Hartford immediately after docking. The ship was penned in, but the divers must have known that they couldn’t approach the boat directly from the water.”
“And that boom did nothing to stop the sub from leaving?”
“No, sir. That was never the intention behind their design,” Brown said. He was beginning to sound rattled. He had plenty to be rattled about. “They were just designed to keep intruders in small boats away. The security boom in place was an anti-motorboat, type B device. Historically, smaller light hull crafts belonging to protestors or curiosity seekers have been the only type of problem we’ve had in this area. The distinctive feature of this boom is the baulk—a heavy iron-strapped wood and metal tank fitted with eyebolts and links for connecting it to the boom-jack-stays. It stretches from pier to pier behind the vessel and…”
Pottinger let Brown talk for a moment. He knew the next steps in the notification chain, but he had to find out what measures were being taken.
“…two watertight iron tanks occupy the interior of each baulk and provide flotation. Each baulk is fitted with four steel spike cutters and connected by upper and lower jackstays. Along the upper jackstays, at intervals of four feet, four-pronged steel star cutters are—”
“But they didn’t do jack shit to stop Hartford, did they?”
“No, sir. They wouldn’t.”
Pottinger stood up again, thinking. The consequences of what this all meant would be dire, no matter what the outcome. Rogue terrorists using a fully armed U.S. fast-attack submarine could hold the world hostage. If they had the know-how—and there was no reason to assume they didn’t—they could use the sub’s nuclear weapons to strike any number of targets in the northeast. The damage that one nuclear submarine could do to the East Coast, to this country, was almost beyond comprehension. MK48 torpedoes, Tomahawk cruise missiles with nuclear and conventional warheads…never mind a goddamn nuclear reactor. That one submarine carried more fire power than United States ever released in any war.
Christ, he thought, they could hit Washington from where they were right now. Free in the Atlantic, they could start World War III.
Pottinger felt himself break into a sweat. Careers would be ruined for this, his included. Too late for that. What was important now was containing the potential damage.
“How many divers came in through the shipyard?”
“They found eight scuba tanks.”
The navy put hundred thirty people on those subs, but Pottinger knew a crew of eight trained people was enough to sail it out of there.
“Shipyard security has to have more details,” the admiral demanded. “Surveillance cameras, eye witnesses.”
“It’s too soon, sir, to have anything solid. Hartford is still backing into the channel.”
“Anybody is taking responsibility for the hijacking? Any sign of foreign or homegrown terrorist group activity.”
“Not yet, Admiral.”
Pottinger glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. As much as Brown had to be berated, it was much too soon to get any information from anyone.
“What action are we taking?” he asked, starting to pace the floor.
“Two tugs and three smaller craft are en route from the sub base. They’re approaching the I-95 bridge, and should catch up to it in a few minutes. Coast Guard has deployed a cutter from New London to assist, as well.” Brown went on to name another submarine, a sub tender, and an aircraft carrier that were within four hundred miles of Groton. All had been put on alert and were moving in to head off Hartford if the sub tried to disappear into the Atlantic. The first real support to reach them, however, would be from the air—sub hunters flying in from South Weymouth, Massachusetts.
“Any communication with Hartford?”
“None, sir. All channels are down.”
Pottinger ran his hand through his hair again. “What’s happening now?”
“Hold on, Admiral.” Brown was speaking with a subordinate. “The sub has completed its backing maneuver. Hartford is sitting in the channel, her bow pointing south toward the mouth of the harbor.”
“How long before the sub makes open water beyond the lighthouse?”
“Depending on their speed, they could clear New London Ledge Light in ten to fifteen minutes.”
Pottinger knew they couldn’t do anything to them while the nuclear submarine was in such close proximity to the Groton-New London shoreline. Whatever group was responsible for this had to know that, too. They had to be preparing to make their demands.
“But they are moving, Captain?”
“Not yet, sir. Their bearing is south, but they are not…Correction, Hartford is beginning to move.”
In an avalanche of shit, this would at least be a hint of air freshener. They could deal with this much better once the nuclear submarine was in the open waters of Atlantic Ocean. With a full crew, Hartford might be able to evade detection and disappear, but not with a skeleton group. Once they were clear of the coast, the Atlantic Fleet would be able to do whatever needed to be done.
“Brown, I want you to get any information you have on the crew that you know is aboa
rd, and the civilian, to my office in the next ten minutes.”
“We’re sending what we have right now, Admiral.”
“Do you know anything about the civilian?”
“No, sir,” Captain Brown answered. “We’re bringing up the security clearance files now.”
Pottinger sat down. The pacing wasn’t going to prevent the inevitable.
“How much of this has leaked out?”
“Shipyard personnel were the first ones who realized Hartford was leaving. And with pursuit activity on the river, I believe it’s only a matter of time before the press is all over this.”
“Well, pick a spokesperson. But I don’t want a word of any of this confirmed until you have clearance from Washington.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pottinger needed to call his boss, Bob Gerry, commander of the Atlantic Fleet. But that wouldn’t be the end of the calls. The Defense Secretary was the next on the list. The Pentagon staff would take it from there. Considering the magnitude of the situation, the President would be briefed, as well.
Christ, all this the day before the election. That couldn’t be any coincidence, he thought grimly.
“Brown. Listen hard. There will be no move to board or cut them off until I order it. That is a direct order.”
“Aye, sir.”
Pottinger hung up and stared at his notes for few seconds. Punching the number of his next call, he thought that he should have retired the last time he’d had the chance.
~~~~
Chapter 8
USS Hartford
5:33 a.m.
They were a two-person wrecking crew.
Everything that was screwed, bolted, or glued to the outboard bulkhead was being removed. McCann was determined to get the two of them out of this office. Their only possible escape lay on the other side of the wood-veneered, sheet metal bulkhead that formed the outboard wall.
“Once we remove this bulkhead, you know we won’t be able to go forward or aft,” Amy told him as she moved the things he was ripping out to the far side of the office, near the door. “The frames running up and down cut off most of the space, and the piping and cable banks take up the rest. Going up or down is the only possibility, and I’m not sure we’ll be able to do that.”
