by Jan Coffey
The map grids that sectioned off the coast were being studied and analyzed. The federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies had been called and assigned to search specific locations. Satellite photos of the area were continuously being piped to the command center at the Pentagon. The movement of all non-military vessels, be they ships or boats or trucks along the coast roads, continued to be restricted and monitored. Every government and research facility on the East Coast that had possession of a submersible vessel was contacted for its status.
She wanted to be there at the site. More than anything they could find on shore, Sarah believed the forensic evidence gathered from Hartford would provide the keys to the identities of the hijackers.
First thing, the submarine had to be kept afloat and eventually towed ashore. She didn’t know when that would be happening.
Bruce got off the phone, and Sarah went to him. Admiral Meisner entered the conference room and joined them.
“Did you get word of the action?” the admiral asked Bruce.
“Just now,” he replied, turning to Sarah. “Four torpedoes were fired at Hartford by USS Pittsburgh. Immediately after launching the weapons, they received a communication from McCann via a SLOT buoy that he and two others were still aboard and that the hijackers had escaped. We received the same information. The C.O. of Pittsburgh immediately began electronic detonation efforts on the torpedoes. Three of them were successfully destroyed before they made contact. McCann initiated emergency blow procedures in an effort to escape the torpedoes. The last one hit Hartford beneath the torpedo racks in the forward compartment, breaching the hull just as the submarine reached the surface.”
“We don’t know yet what caused the last explosion,” Meisner said to her.
“I was just talking to Captain Whiting, aboard Pittsburgh,” Dunn cut in.
“What did he say?” Sarah asked.
“He says the SEALs just boarding Hartford have communicated to them that the explosive may have been triggered by a timed device left by the hijackers. The rescue crews are about to go in, but the forward end is flooded, so the going is slow. And there’s the additional concern that there may be more explosives planted on board.”
“Any sign of survivors?” she asked.
Bruce shook his head. “Not yet, but they’re not giving up hope.”
“How is the sub staying afloat?” she asked.
Meisner answered. “Pittsburgh reported that they believe the forward and aft ballast tanks, as well as the engine room and the reactor compartment are still intact. The air inside them is keeping the vessel afloat, though it’s riding very low in the water.”
Bruce concurred. “Whiting says that from what he can tell, the breech in the hull is by the forward escape truck, where the DSRV—or whatever it was they used—must have hooked up. His guess is that the explosive was planted to make sure nothing would remain of the control room.”
“Or anyone aboard,” Sarah added.
“If McCann hadn’t gotten that sub to the surface,” the admiral said grimly, “Hartford would have taken the blast at six hundred feet below the surface.”
“With the added pressure down there, the sub would have broke in two and sunk to the bottom.”
“So much for collecting any evidence,” Sarah said.
“Well, we might still be able to gather evidence now. They may have left something down there that they didn’t think we’d get our hands on,” Meisner said. “I don’t believe they ever counted on McCann being able to pull off what he did.”
Sarah was greatly relieved that Admiral Meisner was referring to Darius as a hero and not as the one who engineered the hijacking. She hoped this sentiment was held throughout the Pentagon. If he could now just pull himself through this last hurdle…and survive.
Bruce turned to Meisner. “To bring you up to date on what we spoke about before, I’ve already sent a plane to bring Captain Barnhardt back from his trip. Two operatives have gone to Johns Hopkins to speak to Captain Erensen.”
“Good. We need to follow up on every avenue.” The admiral nodded. “When you talked to Captain Whiting, did you discuss possible perpetrators?”
“I did, sir.”
“And?”
“His initial remarks were, and I quote, ‘no fucking foreign terrorist could have pulled a job like this.’”
“Why?”
“It’s his position that no living terrorist sub driver has ever had a sub in Long Island Sound. There is no way anyone but one of our own could have maneuvered that sub through those waters the way he did.”
“We’ve been building a case that argues some of the crew members might have cooperated with the hijackers,” Sarah reminded them.
Bruce lowered his voice. “But no one aboard besides McCann had that kind of know-how.”
“If it wasn’t McCann, then it had to be a foreigner working with the crew still on board.”
“The ranking officer was Lieutenant Paul Cavallaro, and Whiting is certain he could not have handled the sub like that.” Dunn shook his head. “Whiting also believes that the probability that the crew was working with the hijackers adds to the argument that those behind it are home grown. It’s almost an impossibility that any sailor in the submarine service would sell his soul to any foreign terrorist. According to Whiting, it’s completely absurd to think that nine members of the same crew would.”
“That puts a new twist on things.” Meisner sat on the corner of the conference table, crossing his arms as he contemplated everything he’d been told. “From now on, you’ll keep all your findings between us. Access to anything you learn is hereby restricted to me and the half dozen people going up the ladder from me to the President. This includes whatever you discover on Hartford. Is that clear?”
“What if there are survivors?” Bruce asked.
The admiral considered that. “Including information about them. No one is to know. Not even their families. An extra night won’t kill anyone. There’s no telling what they might have seen. And if someone expected them to be dead, they might just come after them to finish the job.”
Sarah thought of Darius’s parents and Amy Russell’s children and how much difference a night would make. But she kept it to herself. There was no point in arguing when they didn’t even know if any of them had survived the two explosions.
“What’s next on your agenda?” Meisner asked them.
Bruce looked at Sarah. “We need to fly to Connecticut. If there are any survivors, we need to be there for the debriefing. Otherwise, we should be there for the recovery of Hartford.”
“Are you okay with that, Lieutenant?” Meisner asked Sarah.
Once again, Bruce Dunn had known exactly what she’d been looking for.
“Absolutely,” she said.
~~~~
Chapter 53
Newport, RI
5:05 p.m.
John Penn pushed his son’s wheelchair along the paved path toward the lawns that overlooked the Cliff Walk and Atlantic Ocean. Three secret service agents trailed them.
“Nice to have the rain finally stop, don’t you think?” he asked Owen.
The young man gave him a thumbs up response.
“Tell me if you get cold.”
The nineteen-year-old tapped the arm of his wheelchair. John knew that meant, ‘Okay.’
Owen’s speech was still indistinct. He wasn’t able to pronounce certain vowels, and words tended to run into one another. He hadn’t regained the complete use of his vocal cords after the accident and the tracheotomy, but he could talk. Yet he only chose to exercise that ability with his family.
They were at the end of the campaign, and John now realized how much he missed his privacy. He regretted the discomfort he caused his son, his wife, and his daughter by putting them in the public eye, twenty-four seven.
Owen, though, was the one he felt sorry for most. Anna and Aileen were outspoken and could hand out two jabs for every one that came their way, but Owen had fewer resour
ces to defend himself. He’d been limited to the bed and this wheelchair since he was sixteen. Two weeks after his birthday, he’d been a passenger in a car driven by one of his friends. Speeding, poor road conditions, lack of experience. They could have blamed it on a dozen things. The end result was that the driver had been killed instantly, and Aileen and John had to wait months before knowing if their child was going to make it through.
And Owen had made it. But the extent of his progress continued to be a big unknown. He had the use of both hands, although he lacked many motor skills. He could eat and drink and breathe without any apparatus. John was certain that Owen’s mind was sharper than the rest of the Penn family combined.
As a family, they had come to peace with Owen’s condition. He was alive and that was the most important thing to all of them.
John had been too caught up in the whirlwind of the campaign and how far ahead he was in the polls to take the time to reassess the pros and cons of what he was doing to his family. Today had been an eye-opener. He wasn’t sure anymore which would be the worse fate, losing this election or winning it.
Owen made a motion with his hand, and John looked to their right.
Anthony McCarthy was coming their way, and from the look on the man’s face and the length of his strides, John decided his campaign manager must be pissed off. The senator shook his head. He could only imagine what this was about.
McCarthy joined them where the two paths merged some twenty yards ahead. McCarthy and Owen exchanged a handshake.
“I’ve arranged a news conference for six o’clock. You should be inside, Senator, preparing.”
“I don’t have to prepare anything, because there isn’t going to be a news conference.”
“I knew it,” McCarthy said with a heavy sigh. “John, don’t do this to me.”
The senator was getting to know this routine. Temper followed by the laying on of guilt. The second tactic always worked better on him than the first.
He didn’t even look at his manager. “We agreed about this yesterday, Anthony. No. In fact, I think it was last week. No more campaigning. I’m spending the evening with my family. That’s all there is to it.”
“A week ago, even yesterday, you were light years ahead of Hawkins in the polls. Right now, with what’s happened, it’s suddenly a dead heat. He’s had ample opportunities to be in front of television screens today, tooting his own horn.”
“He’s been doing his job as the president,” Penn corrected.
“He’s been taking credit for it, too. Now it’s time for you to go out there and remind the American people that the end results wouldn’t have been any different if you were the one in office. The armed forces were the ones who got the job done. No personal glory belongs to Hawkins.”
Penn moved Owen’s chair next to a bench so that his son was facing them. “I would never stand at a podium and tell the American people a blatant lie. And that would be a lie. The end result would have been different if I were the one calling the shots.”
McCarthy brought a hand to his forehead. “You would never admit that you were planning to meet the hijackers’ demands.”
“I wouldn’t say that because it isn’t true,” Penn said, bristling. “What I wouldn’t have done was to go in front of everyone and say that the crisis was over when those hijackers are still running free somewhere. This thing is far from over, but Hawkins is using the retaking of the submarine to swing votes. The problem is that he has jumped the gun. How can he know that the hijacking wasn’t the first step in a multi-pronged attack strategy? That a runaway oil tanker in the Midwest won’t barrel into a government building. Or that some kind of missile isn’t being aimed this minute at the Golden Gate Bridge. Or any of a dozen other possible disasters. He can’t know, and he’s irresponsible for telling Americans that they are safe.”
“These are the concerns he’ll bring up on Wednesday, the day after the election,” McCarthy reminded him. “Right now, there’s only one thing on Hawkins’s mind and that is winning votes.”
“Well, that’s wrong,” Penn said passionately. “We’re no safer than we were three hours ago. That submarine is still sitting in the Sound, and he can’t know that it won’t be blown to pieces at any moment, poisoning the most densely populated area in the country with radiation that will render this area uninhabitable for the next ten thousand years. He doesn’t have a clue what’s become of the people responsible for that hijacking. This job isn’t even half done.”
“Why don’t you go to that press conference at six and tell the reporters what you just said?” McCarthy persisted.
Penn shrugged and sat on the bench next to Owen. “I can’t. I hate backseat drivers. That’s never been my style.”
“I can’t fucking believe it,” McCarthy cursed. “You’re getting cold feet. You’re turning your back on everything you’ve done so far.”
“It’s not that,” Penn said, planting his elbows on his knees, looking down at the grass growing between blocks of stone.
“Then what is it?”
There were plenty of reasons, but the most important one was the young man sitting in the wheelchair next to him. John looked up, shaking his head, unable to respond.
Owen’s hand reached for his father’s. John took it and looked over at his son.
“You owe it to people, Dad,” Owen said in his slow, labored way. “Hawkins is an asshole. We need you to tell truth. Go out…tell them. Please, Dad. Do it for me. For Mom. For all of us.”
~~~~
Chapter 54
Yale-New Haven Hospital
8:30 p.m.
Under orders from Naval Intelligence, the survivors were not to be taken to any military hospital or installation. Instead, one floor of a wing of Yale-New Haven Hospital was evacuated of patients and made ready to accept the injured.
Following the rescue on USS Hartford, Amy Russell and Lee Brody were immediately flown to Yale-New Haven, but McCann had stayed with Captain Whiting and the two of them had boarded one of the support crafts that arrived to aid in the operation.
Whiting was supervising the preliminary efforts to secure what was left of the submarine. Several hours later, and after four navy tugs from Groton were successfully harnessed to the submarine, McCann had begun to feel comfortable enough in the knowledge that his ship would be saved. Only then was Whiting able to force him to follow the others to Yale-New Haven and have his shoulder tended to.
All three were at the hospital when Bruce Dunn and Sarah Connelly arrived from Washington. After asking Sarah to talk to Amy Russell, Dunn went in to see McCann.
The submarine commander was undergoing a number of tests on his shoulder. As soon as the wound was bandaged and he’d been moved into a private room, McCann had promptly kicked the doctors and nurses out so he could talk to the investigator.
If there was the slightest doubt left in Bruce Dunn’s mind about Commander McCann’s direct or indirect involvement with the hijacking, the information that he was hearing completely erased it.
McCann was precise in giving Dunn every detail of what happened, from the moment he’d been phoned in the middle of the night to go in for his X.O., to the moment the hijacker’s bomb had exploded.
He recited specifics about which of his crew members he’d seen directly involved, assisting the hijackers, and told Bruce about the others that he’d found dead or injured like Brody.
“The rescue team has recovered some of the bodies. They’re working hard to ID everyone,” Bruce told him.
“With the exception of Brody, who’s here at the hospital, and Juan Rivera, who I shot while he was loading weapons in the torpedo room, everyone else on my crew was killed by the hijackers before they escaped. Amy overheard one of them making a reference to ‘cleaning out’.”
“Do you have any idea why they would do that, considering these same people had joined their ranks and were cooperating?”
“Fear of recognition,” McCann said. “One of the first things the per
son running the show did was disable the cameras in the control room that fed the MFD video displays. He knew he could be recognized. At the end, he had to make sure there were no witnesses.”
Bruce studied McCann for a minute. The commander had refused to stay in bed, where the nurses had left him. He’d also had changed out of the hospital gown and into the borrowed uniform they’d given him on USS Pittsburgh.
“Is there a possibility that he thinks you or Ms. Russell or Petty Officer Brody might have seen him, or any of those who got away?”
“Definitely.” McCann said. “I assume that’s why you’ve brought us here, isn’t it? You’re trying to lay a trap for them.”
“No,” Bruce said, surprised at the response. There wasn’t a hint of anger in the commander’s tone. In fact, he looked like he was hoping to get another whack at these guys. “We won’t endanger your lives, not after what you’ve been through. We brought you here for your own protection.”
“Who knows about it?”
“Only a handful of people. Admiral Meisner created a very restricted list.”
McCann sat down in the faux-leather chair across from him. “What does your press release say about what’s going on?”
“Only that the rescue operation is still under way, and it’s too early to tell if there are any survivors.”
Bruce watched McCann stare into space. He figured he was thinking of his family’s reaction to this news. No one had mentioned a word to McCann about his mother’s stroke yet. Actually, Bruce had been the only one in a position to say something, but he’d decided it might be better for Sarah to tell him. She’d spoken to them last.
One thing that had fascinated Bruce was McCann’s complete lack of response to hearing Sarah Connelly was part of the investigating team. With the exception of a nod of recognition, he’d said nothing more about her. He didn’t ask to see her, and he hadn’t requested to have her debrief him.
