by Jan Coffey
“Dr. Atwood—”
“Let me finish, Mr. McCarthy. We’ve held elections in this country during natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes. We’ve held elections while we were at war, and even during the Civil War. We will hold to that precedent, gentlemen. Tomorrow is a statutory election. It will go ahead, on schedule, and no one will change it.”
“Thank you, Jane. Ned,” Penn said, his attention drawn to the images on the muted TV that had been set up in the corner of the room.
There’d been another missile launch by Hartford.
They were done fighting this point. It was up to the American people to decide if Will Hawkins or John Penn was the best man to handle the country’s future. Even if they were under attack at this very moment.
He was willing to wait and see where the chips fell.
~~~~
Chapter 35
USS Hartford
12:12 p.m.
“Brody, put the gun down,” McCann ordered a second time, speaking in a low voice. But the young man’s aim didn’t change.
McCann looked intently at the man standing three steps away. The petty officer’s pistol was pointed directly at his face. A quick glance told him that the firearm had been Rivera’s.
Brody didn’t seem too steady on his feet. One look at his face and McCann could see that the young man hadn’t completely come around.
“You killed Rivera, sir.” His speech was slurred, but the note of accusation in his tone was unmistakable.
Brody must have been unconscious for some time. He clearly had no clue what was happening on the boat. At least, McCann thought, he wasn’t one of them.
“You killed…him,” he said, not taking his eyes off McCann.
McCann could take him out right now. He held his own pistol at his side. But he couldn’t do it. Brody was the only member of the crew left on the submarine that he could trust right now. And he needed the sonar man.
Still, time was running short. McCann was certain that whoever was running this operation must know by now that the loading of torpedoes had stopped. From the orders being barked into the headset, he also figured that there would be someone down here in a hurry. He didn’t want to hazard a guess how many would be coming.
“Listen to me, Brody,” McCann told the younger man with some urgency. “You’ve been out cold for hours. I’m the one who cut the tape binding you.”
“You—”
“Listen. Hartford has been hijacked. I don’t know by whom. But with the exception of you and me, I suspect everyone else who was left on board last night is either dead or cooperating with the hijackers.”
“You killed Rivera,” Brody repeated.
“Yes, Brody, I had to. He was helping to load and fire torpedoes at American targets. They shot their way out of New London harbor!”
The young man blinked a couple of times. McCann hoped this meant that the words were registering.
“Look at this man, Brody.” Slowly, he reached down and lifted the head of the hijacker who’d been operating the small crane. “Do you know him? Is he a member of our crew?”
Brody stared at the gun still in McCann’s hand before looking at the dead man. His confusion was obvious. He shook his head.
“He’s not one of ours,” McCann said.
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t know who’s behind the hijacking. One thing I do know is that a few of them will be coming down those steps any minute.”
Brody didn’t move. The gears in his head were not operating at full capacity.
“We can’t let them kill us, Brody.”
The hand wavered a bit. He still didn’t appear to comprehend what he was hearing.
“Petty Officer Brody,” McCann snapped in an official tone.
There was an immediate straightening to attention by the young man. His face cleared somewhat. The hand holding the weapon actually dropped to his side.
“Shit,” McCann cursed as he heard footsteps on the top of the stairs on the deck above them. “They’re here.”
He pushed Brody to the side just as the first shot was fired down at them, ricocheting off the torpedo rack near to where they were standing. They came down the stairs, guns blasting.
“They’re shooting at us,” Brody said in disbelief.
“Yes, they are. And they’re planning to kill us,” McCann asserted, moving along the end of the racks as he checked the weapon and what little ammunition he had.
“What are we gonna do?”
“We’re going to finish what I started. Kill them before they kill us.”
“How many are there?”
Brody’s brain was starting to work. McCann peered around one of the torpedoes. Two hijackers fired at him, the bullets striking the VLS panels behind him and causing the electronics to short out in an explosion of sparks.
“I only see three. There might be more,” he told Brody. “They don’t have a full crew. I think there’s only a handful of them trying to pull this thing off.”
“Tell me what you want me to do, sir,” Brody demanded.
“Distract them so I can get around the outside of the rack.”
Trust had once again been restored between them. There was no questioning, no doubt. The young man followed the orders as McCann slid around the rack.
The gunfire continued as he worked his way back from frame to frame until he reached the aft end of the torpedo rack. He could see the three hijackers spread along the racks.
This is it, he thought, taking a deep breath.
Aiming at the one closest, he fired at the man’s temple and then fired repeatedly at the two gunmen further along.
The first two went down, but he had no time to take any satisfaction in it. The third hijacker’s shot nicked McCann’s left shoulder, and he immediately felt the burn of the bullet and the numbing of his arm.
Brody fired a series of shots from his position as the hijacker ducked behind the corner of the rack. The firing stopped for a moment, and then the man broke for the stairs, shooting at Brody and McCann as he went.
McCann fired back, and at the base of the stairs, the hijacker ducked behind two large bottles of compressed air.
McCann could hear Brody uttering a string of curses. “Brody, are you hit?”
“It’s only my leg, Skipper,” Brody called back through gritted teeth.
The hijacker fired off a round in McCann’s direction.
~~~~
Chapter 36
USS Hartford
12:20 p.m.
To Amy, it sounded as if the shooting was still happening right in the passageway. No, she decided, it had to be down one level.
As scary and nerve-racking as that was, at least it meant McCann had to be alive. The hijackers must have been shooting at someone in the torpedo room.
She stood against the wall beside the open door, holding the heavy pistol in her hand. She would use it. But she had no illusions about her ability to shoot. Before today, she’d never held a gun. She didn’t know if she’d be a help or a hindrance if she were to enter the fray.
The shooting continued. Finally, Amy just couldn’t wait any longer. She crept toward the door. Crouching down, she felt for a pulse on the man who lay slumped in the doorway. There was nothing. She noticed that he was wearing the same coveralls as Gibbs. He was probably one of McCann’s crew, as well.
She angled her head into the passageway. A second body, again in Hartford coveralls, lay in a twisted pose a few feet away. Amy couldn’t help but cringe at the sight of the blood that covered the man’s face.
Something was happening. It was obvious that they’d started killing the crew members of Hartford. Whoever had killed these two men—they’d called him Kilo—had done so in cold blood. There had been no provocation. Amy wondered what had suddenly changed. She remembered what Kilo had said. Clean up.
Clean up seemed to mean death. The end. Fourteen hundred. Military time for 2:00 p.m. Engagement in less than two hours.
&nb
sp; Amy took a couple of deep breaths and made sure she was holding the gun correctly, the way McCann had instructed her to. She jumped as more shots echoed in the passageway. The shots were definitely coming from below.
She moved to the top of the stairs and looked down just as McCann called out below. At the bottom of the stairs, crouching behind a pair of pressurized bottles, a man began to shoot in the direction of the commander’s voice.
Raising her pistol with both hands, Amy squeezed the trigger.
The pistol almost bucked out of her grasp, but the man at the bottom of the stairs looked up in surprise, raised his gun and fired a shot at her. She pulled back, feeling the buzzing heat of the bullet an inch from her ear before it buried itself in the wiring above, showering her with sparks.
Stumbling over the bodies behind her, she backed away from the stairs.
Shots continued to ring out below, and then everything fell completely silent. She didn’t know if she’d even hit her mark.
~~~~
Chapter 37
White House
12:40 p.m.
With the exception of the Vice President, who had to be relocated under the present crisis, the rest of President Hawkins’s war cabinet were assembled at the White House when the executive order was issued.
“They are clearly targeting our energy resources,” Hawkins told his group. “This time they hit that exploration facility in Long Island Sound. The next missiles will be headed for nuclear power plants. We won’t let that happen. We’ve waited long enough.”
“All the pieces are in place, sir,” the deputy Secretary of Defense announced.
“That’s correct, Mr. President,” the head of the Joint Chiefs concurred. “USS Pittsburgh is in Long Island Sound and in hot pursuit. The navy has two frigates following and a destroyer standing by in New York harbor. Air support is ongoing. We’re waiting for your order, sir.”
“Good. We’ve discussed your tactical options, General. I want you to blow them out of the water.”
The head of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense both looked at Admiral Norman Pottinger and nodded.
He’d been waiting for this all morning. It was finally time to go to work.
~~~~
Chapter 38
USS Hartford
12:42 p.m.
In the control room, Mako watched his crew as he tugged a Yankees cap out of his back pocket and pulled it on. He was ready for action.
Three of the men glanced over their shoulders at him, waiting for his orders. Paul Cavallaro, unaware of Mako’s intentions, continued to plot their course on the charts.
Mako marked the time on his watch before beginning to bark out orders faster than they could be acknowledged.
“Officer of the Deck, all ahead one third. Helm, turn for fifteen knots, right ten degrees rudder, steady course. Prepare to dive, depth six hundred feet. Officer of the Deck, give me tube status. Dive, helm.”
The deck inclined downward as the helmsman pushed the control yoke for the stern planes forward. As the depth was called out, he eased back on the yoke. The deck leveled off, and several in the control room moved quickly to monitor the additional stations that they were manning.
Mako stalked to the firing panel, where one of his men was trying to program the torpedoes.
“Nothing down there, sir. We’re shut down,” he said under his breath.
“The VLS?”
The man checked the monitor at the next station. “Also down, sir.”
“We don’t need it,” Mako said, stepping back onto the conn platform. He looked down at his watch again and saw Cavallaro as he moved into the Sonar Room.
“Conn? Sonar,” the officer called out the door. “Captain, we have company. There’s an approaching object. A small object.”
“Can you identify it? Is it a torpedo?”
“Negative on the torpedo, sir. But I can run it through the computer.”
“Negative, Lieutenant. That won’t be necessary.”
Mako smiled. They were right on schedule for their appointment.
~~~~
Chapter 39
USS Hartford
12:55 p.m.
Brody was pressing a rag against the wound to stanch the bleeding, but McCann was not ready to leave him like that. A medical kit was bolted to the bulkhead by the stairs, and he went running for it. He was back in seconds.
“How are you holding up, Brody?”
“Real good, Skip.”
McCann knew he was lying through his teeth.
“Let me look at that.”
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.
