by Jan Coffey
“Can I come with you?”
He shook his head. “This is the safest place on the sub for you right now.”
“What are you going to do there?”
“They’re getting ready to do some damage. I have to try to stop them.” McCann gave her the weapon. Her fingers were like ice cubes, but they wrapped around the handle. She looked down at the weapon in her hand.
“Will you please reconsider and take me along?”
He pushed back the hair that had fallen across her brow. He lifted her chin until she was looking into his eyes again.
“I need to know you’re here,” McCann said softly. He pushed to his feet. “Lock the door from the inside. I’ll come back for you.”
She nodded reluctantly. “You promise?”
A chuckle rose in his chest. He imagined one of her twins asking that question in just the same way. “I will. I promise to come back for you.”
****
McCann was on the loose, so Mako was not about to use the P.A. system for communication. What he wanted done needed to be conveyed from the conn to the torpedo room only, and the headsets were the way to go. Kilo distributed the equipment to the rest of their own men. It was time that they left Commander McCann guessing.
Standing on the conn, he strapped on his headset, adjusted the boom mike and single earpiece, switched on the wireless transmitter. He left one ear open for the room.
“Man battle stations.” Mako stepped up onto the periscope platform and made a preliminary sweep of the surface as everyone moved into position.
“Battle stations manned, sir.”
“Attention, fire control team. Attention, sonar,” Mako ordered.
He glanced at his watch. They were right on schedule. He looked around at his men. All eyes were on him. The room was quiet.
“This is the plan gentlemen. Four torpedoes. We’ll hit them where it hurts most—in their pocket. We’ll target that brand new exploratory oil rig that has been going up this year off Orient Point. I want a firing solution. Prepare to engage.”
As the men in the control room turned to their tasks, Mako watched Cavallaro mark the coordinates on the charts.
“Prepare for the firing sequence.”
~~~~
Chapter 30
USS Hartford
11:55 a.m.
The floor shook as another torpedo fired.
With his weapon drawn, McCann rushed forward along the passageway. No one appeared to be around. It all came down to a matter of priorities. He had to do what he could to lessen the damage they could inflict upon innocent people on the outside. Keeping Hartford intact was no longer the primary objective of his plan. As bad as a reactor leak would be if the submarine were to sink in Long Island Sound, the resulting problems would be secondary to the damage the hijackers could wreak on the population of the East Coast if they started firing the missiles.
Two of those Tomahawks in the VLS were tipped with nuclear warheads, and McCann was beginning to wonder if they didn’t need him to arm the weapons.
He now had to operate under that assumption, and his first priority was to stop them from firing anything.
At the top of the stairs to the torpedo room, McCann got down on his hands and knees, peering as far as he could into the lower level. He could see no one, but the sound of operating torpedo racks reached his ears.
Before moving, he assessed his position. At the bottom of the stairs, three sets of torpedo racks stretched forward, filling the room. On either side of the center rack, a narrow passageway led to the torpedo tubes.
As McCann slid down the stairs, he saw Rivera operating the small crane while the hijacker helping him muscled the nose of the torpedo into tube number 3. He quickly dropped behind the starboard rack and then cautiously peered up over it. Both men were wearing headsets.
McCann, keeping his head below the level of the center torpedo rack, moved silently down the aisle toward Rivera’s back. The time to let anyone surrender was past. The numbers had to be diminished. What he knew about each member of his crew was sealed and put away in the recesses of his mind. They were now the enemy.
He reached Rivera just as the hijacker shut the breech door. McCann was close enough that he heard the order from the conn through Rivera’s headset.
“Match bearings and shoot.”
The firing of the torpedo coincided with McCann shooting point blank into the back of Rivera’s head. The muscular seaman went down like a rock in the passageway. McCann stepped past him and fired again as the other man turned, his hand still on the tube’s flood drain mechanism. The second shot echoed loudly throughout the torpedo room, but the shot was true. The bullet struck the man in the chest and he went down, dead before he hit the deck.
McCann took another look at Rivera, who was lying in a spreading pool of blood. He had been a trusted crewman. A shipmate.
“Stay focused,” McCann muttered to himself.
He glanced at the VLS control panels, located in the center of the ship, between the torpedo tubes. It would take him only a moment to remove the back of the panel and rip out the internals of the firing connections.
Before moving to that task, McCann turned and fired two shots at the camera above the racks.
~~~~
Chapter 31
Pentagon
12:00 noon
Bruce Dunn considered the avalanche of information on the computer, in the phone calls, in the hundreds of pages of files that were stacked up on the conference table. These contained what he needed to know about everyone possibly connected with the hijacking.
But Bruce was more confused now than when he’d started.
He felt as if he knew less about some of these people after reading their files. Nothing made sense. Ends didn’t meet and from the phone conversations he was having with Admiral Meisner, it seemed that no one realized that something was wrong.
He shut the file on Paul Cavallaro and leaned back in the chair, his hands threaded together behind his head. He stared into space, but a muted TV screen at one end of the conference room caught his attention.
The TV cameras were inside the White House. President Hawkins and a group of high-ranking military advisors were going into a conference room. The President waved at the camera and shook hands with reporters before going in. He acted like it was a normal day. La-di-dah. Nothing much happening. If the sun stayed out, he’d probably get in a round of golf later. Just another day like any other in his presidency.
There wasn’t even a sense that it was the day before the elections.
As the door of the conference room closed on the President and his advisors, the shot changed to views outside the White House. Pennsylvania Avenue was deserted, and cameras zoomed in on the military snipers on the roof while F1 fighters flew by overhead.
Bruce swiveled his chair away from the screen and realized that across the table, Sarah had done the same thing. She’d been watching the same segment. He wondered if he looked as perplexed as she did.
“Do you want to step out for some fresh air?” he asked.
“Yes, that sounds great.” She pushed to her feet and grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair, pulling it on.
Dunn didn’t bother to tighten his tie or put on his coat. He just said a couple of words to one of their group and hurried to catch up with Sarah as she left the room. It had been his suggestion to step out, but she appeared more eager to get out of here than he was.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked, once they were out of the conference room.
“Outside,” she said, never slowing down as they headed toward the elevators.
“I have my car keys.”
“Good. I don’t care where we go, but I need to get away from this place. Even just for a few minutes.”
His mind immediately moved into the gutter, for the first thing that ran through his mind was taking her back to his apartment. Actually, he’d thought that every time he’d seen her at one function or another. Not
that she’d even noticed him. He pushed away the ridiculous thought. He certainly had never had the opportunity of getting her attention.
They shared the elevator with four other people, so neither said a word until they were out of the building and walking to the parking lot.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” she blurted when they were out of earshot of every one else. “Nothing makes sense.”
“Thank you,” he said, taking her by the elbow to hold her back as a car sped past in the parking lot.
“Thank you for what?”
“For speaking my sentiments. You must be reading my mind.”
They reached his car, and he opened the door for her. But she stood there, staring at him. “Are you pulling my leg, Commander Dunn?”
“Hold on. Let’s not start with formality now. It’s Bruce. And no, I’m dead serious. There’s definitely something out of whack with this case.”
She got in. Bruce hurried around the car and got behind the wheel. He turned on the engine and stared ahead, trying to decide where to go.
“I don’t know where to start—”
“Wait,” he interrupted.
He couldn’t explain it, but after a career of military service, he was suddenly feeling a little paranoid. The sense that someone might be listening in on their conversation. It would be easy for someone to plant a bug in his car. He’d learned long ago to trust his instincts.
“Wait until we can compare notes.”
He pulled out of the parking spot and headed for the exit. Sarah didn’t require any explanations. Bruce sensed that she understood. Outside of the parking lot, he took couple of quick turns.
“Where are we going?”
“Arlington Cemetery.” He saw her smile. “What?”
“I would have picked the same place.”
Bruce checked the rearview mirror before giving Sarah another side glance. He saw her look in the side mirror, too. They had more in common than both of them had realized. And he figured this was what happened when you planted the seed of suspicion. Nothing was safe. No one was to be trusted.
“I know why I was picked to work on this case,” she said to him. “Why were you?”
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“There had to be something,” she insisted.
“Although it was a long time ago, I did one tour of duty on a 688-class sub. Actually, it as about a zillion years ago. Right after that, I transferred into Intelligence. And I have headed a few NCIS cases.” Dunn would have liked to think that his stellar career put him head and shoulders above everyone else who might have been given this assignment, but he wasn’t that naïve. “I can think of at least half a dozen people out there who are better qualified for this specific case.”
“More submarine experience?”
Bruce looked up at the sky as an Air Force fighter jet made a maneuver overhead. “Yes, every one of them.”
“Do you know or have you ever met Darius McCann?” she asked.
“Know him, like a friend? No. Know of him? Yes. Have I ever met him? Yes. In fact, the one time that I met him was at a function where you were in his company.”
“I was?” She sounded surprised.
He flashed his ID at two armed soldiers standing at the entrance to the Arlington National Cemetery and drove up through the rolling lawns and gray and white stone monuments. The grounds were covered with yellow leaves, although there were still quite a bit of brightly colored foliage in the trees. He pulled over at a spot overlooking the Potomac River.
“You were attending a reception at Annapolis,” he told her. “We weren’t introduced, though. While McCann and I spoke, you were talking to some admiral.”
“I ignored you?”
“No, the old geezer pulled rank.”
She turned around fully to face him. “How many years ago was that?”
“Two, maybe two and a half.” He wasn’t going to say any more, or she’d be scared shitless. Exactly two years and two months ago. It was the first time he’d seen her. The event had been a cocktail party that was held after a speech at the Naval Academy. Bruce could provide more details about the longer length of her hair and how she wore flat shoes and that her hand had barely dropped from McCann’s arm that night. But he decided not to share any of that.
He also decided not to tell her what he’d thought that night—and still thought—Darius McCann was one lucky son of a bitch.
Suddenly, his sports car seemed a little small. He needed some air to get that tempting scent of her out of his head.
“Let’s walk.”
She nodded, not waiting for him to come around to open the door. They met in front of the car. The air was brisk and the earthy smell of autumn was strong.
“Will you be warm enough like that?” she asked him.
“Hey. I’m a tough guy.”
She smiled and he had to force himself to keep his hands at his sides. She wasn’t wearing a hat, and the wind had her hair dancing in every direction. He guessed the strands were silky soft.
They walked for a few paces in silence before she spoke. “Would you like to go first, or would you like me to?”
“You start,” he said.
She looked around them. There were no school children, no tourists, no families. The guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier stood at their post some two hundred yards away. The sky and the trees and the graves of countless American heroes were their only witnesses.
“Do you know Kevin Barclay was engaged this past summer?” she asked.
Bruce nodded. He’d seen it in the young man’s file this morning.
“He and his fiancée were picking out china patterns two weekends ago,” she continued. “He was helping her make the guest list for the wedding they have scheduled for next summer. I don’t mean to sound sentimental, but the hijacking of Hartford this morning had to be in the works for awhile. So why bother? Why go through the paces of wedding planning?”
“You’re absolutely right,” Bruce told her. “He doesn’t fit the profile for a member of a conspiracy that, at best, will require that he disappear out of the country. And he’s not the only one.”
She put her back to the wind; the breeze blew her hair into her face. “Who else?”
“I don’t know how a young man like Paul Cavallaro could be part of the conspiracy. The guy comes from three generations of navy officers,” Bruce told her. “He has two uncles and five cousins who are all in service today. His grandfather was a Purple Heart and Bronze Star recipient and his father received the Navy Cross from President Nixon. Their entire family has ‘Property of Navy’ tattooed to the soles of their feet.”
“And yet, you sound like you’re certain he’s in league with the perpetrators,” Sarah said.
“He’s got to be, but I don’t know how he could.” Bruce stopped near a grave of a twenty-two year old who’d died in Vietnam. He looked up at Sarah. “Three days ago, Paul Cavallaro told his wife that some special duty was coming down. He told her it didn’t matter what they told her—everything was fine, and she shouldn’t worry.”
“When did you find this out?”
“About half an hour ago. One of our agents was able to talk to her. The young woman is seven months pregnant, and she’s a total mess, worrying over her husband.”
“They were being deployed. What kind of special duty?”
“She thought he was talking about some kind of promotion.”
Sarah rubbed her arms and rocked back on her heels. “It doesn’t make sense. These are clean, straight, all-American kids. Why, all of a sudden, would they be tempted to flip?”
“Exactly my point,” Bruce said. “With the exception of two crew members, I can give you a similar story about the devotion of every one of the men who were left on Hartford. These aren’t the kind of sailors who threaten to bomb their own people and tear their country apart.”
The breeze was picking up. Bruce saw Sarah rub her arms again. She started walking. He fe
ll into step.
“Which two?” she asked.
“Juan Rivera, a torpedo man, and Michael Dunbar, who works in the galley.”
“And Darius McCann?”
He shook his head. “It’s impossible. Other than the ridiculous ancestry issue that Smith brought up, and that the media is feeding on, there’s nothing in McCann’s records that indicates he would go over.”
Bruce didn’t think Sarah realized it, but her sigh was audible. He gave her a quick side glance. She was watching her step as they walked along the path between fields of white grave markers.
“He’s a lucky man.”
Her blue eyes rounded as she turned to him. “What do you mean?”
“McCann,” he said simply. “You really care about him.”
“I care about his honor,” she said tensely. “I know what he’s stood for all his years in the navy, serving our country. It hurts to think that there’d be the slightest doubt about his allegiance.”
He didn’t say anything.
“If you were in his position and they asked your ex-wife to investigate your involvement in a situation like this, don’t you think she’d defend you if she believed in your innocence?” she asked.
He didn’t know what Claire would do, other than go to her father. Dunn looked down at the tips of his polished shoes. He was being unfair. He and Claire had their differences, but she was as much navy as any military brat. The navy’s code of honor was engrained in her as much as it was in her father or her brother who’d chosen that way of life.
“Yes, she would defend me,” he admitted.
He could see that some of the tension had drained from her face.
“Thank you.”
He grinned.
The wind had picked up. The temperature was dropping. Sarah pushed her hair out of her face and glanced back toward the car.
“By the way,” she said, “I agree with your suspicions about Dunbar. There’s nothing out there on him that’s meaningful. Nothing personal that gives a glimpse of the kind of person he might be. As many pages as I looked through, he’s just as innocuous as a brick in a wall. There’s nothing in his file that distinguishes him. Nothing that draws your eye positively or negatively.”
