Operation Caribe

33

Big Hole Cay

THE HURRICANE HIT at sunset.

Everyone inside the Wyoming heard it coming, this unexpected storm. The thunder sounded like artillery. The lightning caused all the electricals onboard to blink. The wind was so fierce, it seemed to be making the seventeen-thousand-ton submarine sway.

Most disturbing, though, rain could be heard pelting the sub’s hull. Like a continuous barrage of machine gun fire, it was hitting all sides at once.

And that meant something was very wrong.

The Wyoming was built to be silent, especially when submerged. It was soundproofed, inside and out, top to bottom, stern to bow. So why did everything outside sound so loud?

Having no luck getting any more sailors back to work, Beaux was in the CAAC going over the Trident launch procedures when the commotion started. Leaving Smash, Monkey and Ghost to watch those few crewmen still left on deck, he retrieved a trouble light, grabbed Elvis and together they climbed the conning tower ladder to the bridge above.

The noise outside grew the higher they went. The sound of the rain alone was deafening. Then, just as Beaux was about to open the top hatch, the sub moved dramatically to the left. It shifted so violently, at first, both SEALs thought it was an earthquake.

“Damn!” Elvis yelled. “We’re ninety-five percent underwater. Even a two-hundred-knot wind shouldn’t be moving us like that.”

Beaux pushed open the top hatch—but the weather outside was so fierce, it nearly slammed the heavy cover back down on their unprotected heads, a blow that would have killed them both. It took all their combined strength to force the hatch back open and lock it in place.

Then they had to crawl up onto the tilted sail platform. Finally steadying themselves against the ferocious gale, they stood up and looked around.

Beaux couldn’t believe what he saw.

He screamed: “What happened to all the water?”

It was true. Even in the darkness, they could see the lake’s water level had dropped to almost nothing. No longer five feet up the sail, more than two thirds of the submarine’s hull was now exposed. It was like someone had pulled a plug at the bottom of the lake and the water was draining out.

This was why the rain sounded so loud from the inside: so much of the hull was now above water. This was also why the Wyoming was at a tilt. Resting on the slippery, muddy lake bottom, with hardly any water to support it, the hurricane winds were blowing it over.

Fighting the severe gusts and rain, Beaux aimed the trouble light back at the channel opening 100 feet beyond the sub’s stern. This was the place the 616 had widened on the backs of the twenty day laborers in the run-up to the Wyoming’s seizure. Expanding the mouth of the channel had been necessary to get the sub into the lake.

But now he saw the channel opening was clogged with trees, beach debris, sand and mud, effectively damming it and drastically reducing the flow of water into the lake.

Beaux spun Elvis around and pointed out the situation to him.

“What the f*ck?” Elvis yelled over the storm. “That’s impossible!”

Had the hurricane blown the trees down, felling them perfectly over the opening? Or had a great swirl of flotsam washed ashore and completely jammed the gap? Both were highly unlikely—yet there were no other explanations.

Then, in the midst of all this, they saw something else. Not at the clogged channel opening, but at the far end of the sub’s deck itself. Caught in the trouble light’s beam, close to the suddenly exposed tailfins.

There was a man down there. He was soaking wet, wearing a tie-dye shirt, ragged pants, a knit hat jammed on top of dreadlocks, and jammed on top of that, of all things, a welder’s mask. In fact, he was welding something on the sub’s tilted hull.

“What the f*ck?” Elvis yelled again.

“Who the hell is that?” Beaux screamed. “What’s he doing?”

Then two more men appeared on the sub’s tail, both also soaked to the skin. Barely visible through the sheets of rain, they were wearing brightly colored African dashikis.

Neither SEAL had brought his assault rifle, so Beaux grabbed Elvis’s .45 automatic and aimed it at the men. But before he could squeeze the trigger, the bridge was suddenly awash in orange sparks. Someone was shooting at them! In an instant, dozens of tracer rounds were ricocheting off the top of the sail, one of them blowing the trouble light right out of Beaux’s hands, another destroying the sub’s periscope.

Both SEALs tried to duck—but it was too late. They heard one especially loud crack! and a bright flash of orange went by them. The next thing Elvis knew, he was looking down at his left hand.

It was covered with blood—and holding his severed right ear.

* * *

IT WAS ALL Beaux and Elvis could do to retreat back down the conning tower ladder. Dripping wet and shaking, they staggered into the control room, which like the rest of the boat, was now at a pronounced slant. Elvis was bleeding profusely and still clutching his ear.

The other SEALs were shocked.

“What the hell happened up there?” Monkey yelled at them.

“We don’t know,” Beaux shot back. “The water is running out of the lake. We’re almost totally exposed. And there’s some crazy guy down on the deck with a welding rig. And someone started shooting at us!”

The three other SEALs exchanged troubled looks. The sick sailors still on duty just listened in, confused. The water is running out? People on the deck? People shooting at them? What was Beaux babbling about? They were supposed to be in the middle of nowhere.

“Wait a minute,” Smash urged them. “Are you sure about all this?”

Beaux was sure—and he knew it was a disaster in the making. When Team 616 attacked the Russian training sub a week before—a target of opportunity if ever there was one—they’d first disabled it by planting a charge near its exterior propeller shaft while stalking it in their mini-sub. When the Russian captain beached his injured, unarmed vessel, the 616 first sealed all its escape vents, and then broke inside. They practiced rounding up the crew and securing the boat, and—when their impromptu training exercise was over, well, the witnesses just had to go. But that sub had also been off-kilter, because of how it wound up on the beach, and moving around inside it had been extremely difficult. Now the SEALs were facing the same thing here, but on a much grander scale. Even worse, the low water level meant they didn’t have the depth needed to blow their ballast tanks and leave here if they wanted to.

But most troubling of all, someone was out there.…

Smash was still disbelieving. “How can this be possible?” he exclaimed. “We checked out this place a million times. There’s not supposed to be anyone around for miles.”

Monkey examined Elvis’s wound and said: “Maybe someone was hunting? Some rifle shots can go a long way.”

Elvis was instantly furious. “Hunting? At night? In a f*cking hurricane?”

The sub’s corpsman was on hand, checking the ill sailors being made to stay at their posts. He gave Elvis a cursory glance then retrieved a towel from his medical bag.

Out of sheer desperation, Elvis turned to the corpsman as he was applying the towel to his wound and asked: “What do you think happened?”

The corpsman just shrugged and replied, “I think someone tried to shoot your ear off—and succeeded brilliantly.”

* * *

ELVIS WAS TAKEN to the sick bay, where the corpsman stitched him up as best he could. There was no hope of reattaching the ear, but Elvis insisted the medic keep it in the infirmary’s icebox.

The corpsman was loath to give Elvis a bunk that would be better used by a sick sailor, so he took the wounded SEAL down to the torpedo room, one level below. It was a relatively roomy compartment, one of the few places aboard the sub that actually had both head- and legroom. It was used occasionally as the sick bay’s annex.

The corpsman set up a cot right next to the starboard-side torpedo tube and helped Elvis lie down. Elvis complied without a word, keeping his assault rifle close by.

Then the corpsman left, intent on flushing Elvis’s severed ear down the toilet.

Elvis tried to lie still, praying sleep would come. “Maybe I’ll wake up and it will all be a bad dream,” he thought.

And he did drift off after a few seconds, only to be startled awake by a loud noise.

It took him a few moments of painful listening before he realized someone was banging on the torpedo tube.

From the inside.

* * *

UP IN THE CAAC, three of the four remaining SEALs had climbed into their battle gear. Flak jackets, body armor, Fritz helmets, extended ammo belts. They were ready to deal with the bizarre situation outside.

Who was the strange man on the sub’s deck and what was he welding? How did the channel mouth get all jammed up? And who was shooting at them? Beaux, Ghost and Smash were going up top to find out and to defend their position, leaving Monkey behind to guard the sailors on deck.

But just as they were ready to climb the conning tower ladder, all the lights on the submarine suddenly went out.

They’d heard a dull thud an instant before they were plunged into darkness. It took a few seconds before the sub’s emergency lights finally blinked on. But they sent little more than a dull, greenish glow throughout the control room, casting eerie shadows everywhere.

“Now what’s happened?” Beaux bellowed.

No one seemed to know. Beaux turned to a young ensign, the highest-ranking crew member still on the deck, and demanded an answer. The ensign guessed that with the reactor turned off and the submarine relying purely on battery power, a short circuit had occurred somewhere in the power bus.

So, how could they fix the problem? Beaux pressed him. The submarine equivalent of a tripped circuit breaker had to be pushed back in place, was the ensign’s reply. Exactly where that breaker was located, though, was the question. There was so much redundant wiring on the Wyoming, it could be in one of a dozen places.

Beaux’s head began pounding. His stomach was starting to ache. He didn’t need this, not now, not ever. He barked at Smash to go with the CAAC’s electrician to locate the tripped breaker. Then he reaffirmed that Monkey should remain on deck and watch the sailors.

Then he and Ghost headed for the bridge to deal with the problems outside.

* * *

THE WYOMING WAS built in sections. The nose contained the sonar equipment. The next section carried the torpedoes. Then came the CAAC, the crew’s quarters, the reactor, and the forest of Trident missiles. Toward the back of the boat was the maneuvering room, the atmospheric control room and the engine room. All of them contained some sort of circuit breaker.

Smash and the electrician made their way through each compartment, aided only by a single flashlight. It took twenty long minutes, walking the whole way on a tilt. But after examining all the breakers and finding none had tripped, the electrician said they had to check out the main electrical room, way at the end of the boat.

It was here they finally found the cause of the blackout—and it had nothing to do with circuit breakers.

The sub’s primary power cable, looking like an anaconda and nearly a foot around, was lying on the electrical room floor, smoking and in pieces.

It had been blown in two.

* * *

SMASH AND THE electrician quickly headed back to the CAAC, barely able to navigate the darkened passageways. Along the way, the sailor told Smash that to repair the severed cable would take days, and that was under the best conditions. But until then, they could not access any of the power stored in their batteries, nor could they restart the reactor.

This meant the only electricity available to them would have to come from a handful of small diesel generators that were normally used only for short periods of time when the sub was in port. And even with these generators running, everything aboard the sub, from the air circulators to the ballast tank blow mechanisms to the missile launchers, could only draw about one-tenth their normal power.

Smash and the electrician reached the CAAC where the sailor went about starting the auxiliary generators. Then Smash climbed the conning tower ladder to report the bad news to Beaux.

He opened the hatch to find himself in the midst of a gun battle—with a ferocious storm going on around it. Bullet rounds were ricocheting all over the open bridge. Beaux and Ghost were cowering in one corner, their battle suits drenched, trying to return fire, but failing miserably. Their trouble lights had been shot away. The wind was absolutely howling. The rain was coming down in buckets.

Fort Apache … in a hurricane.

That’s what it looked like to Smash.

Clearly 616 was in a fix. The bridge itself was narrow with a lot of thick, bulky cover around it. Like a parapet on a castle wall, it would be almost impossible to get shot up here if one was properly behind cover. But, it was just as impossible to return effective fire, as doing so made the shooter woefully exposed in all directions. Yet whoever was shooting at them, 616 had to defend their position somehow—that’s what their SEAL training told them to do. And the bridge was the only place they could do it from.

Trying his best to be heard above the appalling conditions, Smash yelled his report across to Beaux. The 616 commander was not happy to hear it.

The boat’s main power cable? Blown in half?

Sabotage …

Beaux immediately suspected the submarine’s crewmen were responsible.

He pulled Smash out onto the bridge and gave him his M4.

“Provide counter fire when needed,” Beaux yelled to him before starting to crawl down the hatchway.

Smash stopped him, though. “But, sir,” he yelled over the gale. “Who are we shooting at?”

Beaux just shook his head and said, “I got no idea.”

* * *

BEAUX QUICKLY RETURNED to the CAAC, feeling like his whole body was on fire.

Despite the auxiliary generators being turned on, the control room was much darker than before; even the emergency lighting was beginning to fade. Beaux dropped his battle gear and checked himself for any hidden wounds. Finding none, he tried to get his thoughts straight, but was struck with a sudden wave of claustrophobia. The darkened, tilted boat was throwing off his equilibrium, making him dizzy. It took a couple minutes before the unpleasant feeling finally passed.

His body behaving again, he managed to grill the electrician’s mate about the damaged power line. The sailor confirmed what Smash had told him. The cable had been blown in two, cause unknown.

“Was it done on purpose?” Beaux asked him sharply.

But the sailor didn’t reply. He simply put his flu mask back on and returned to his station.

This convinced Beaux the cable had indeed been cut. But all the ailing sailors on the control deck were under guard before the lights went out. None of them could have sabotaged the power line.

This meant someone laid up in the sick bay had to be responsible.

Beaux marched back down the dark passageway to the infirmary and confronted the corpsman a second time. The medic denied anyone had left the sick bay, saying no one was strong enough to. But Beaux brushed his explanations aside and made a pronouncement instead: Until the person who cut the cable came forward, the corpsman was to withhold all medication from every sailor under his care. If that meant some of them died, then so be it.

The corpsman just shrugged on hearing the edict.

“That’s not a problem, sir,” he said. “Because we ran out of medicine a long time ago.”

* * *

BEAUX HAD TO see the damaged cable for himself.

With Monkey still guarding the control room, the SEAL commander made his way through the murky passageways, heading aft toward the power locker. It soon became tough going. It was extremely cramped and trying to walk on a tilt made a bad situation worse. The sub’s emergency lighting was of little help, too, being so dull and lifeless. And while Beaux had a flashlight with him, it started to fade about halfway to his goal, forcing him to shut it off.

At one point, it became so dark, he had to get on his hands and knees and feel his way along the slanted passage. His claustrophobia returned, the fear running through him like a knife. In the midst of the anxiety attack, he heard weird noises all around him. People mumbling, whispering, crying softly—and someone walking close by as if with a peg leg. All this on top of the sound of bullets and raindrops hitting the exposed hull. But anytime he stopped and listened closely, the strange noises went away.

It took a long time to reach the electrical room. When he finally arrived, he turned the flashlight back on and discovered the power line really was blown in two—and the destruction was worse than he’d thought.

He knew no sick sailor had done this. Only a trained saboteur could have destroyed the cable, probably using an explosive charge.

That only meant one thing: Someone else was aboard the sub.

* * *

BEAUX TRIED TO rush back to the CAAC, but with his flashlight barely working, he was forced to rely on the feeble emergency lights for illumination. They were more hindrance than help.

He became lost almost immediately, crawling through some areas he knew were not part of the sub’s regular passageways. After what seemed like forever, he felt a door in front of him. Hoping it was the portal to the next section, he opened it to discover it was an equipment locker close to the torpedo room. As the door opened wider, he was touched by something warm and wet.

He tried the flashlight one more time and in its weak glow, he found a body hanging inside the equipment locker, held in place with electrical wire, not three feet away.

Beaux collapsed against the far wall and immediately vomited. He remained there, flashlight off, for a long time. Only when he regained his composure did he turn the failing flashlight back on and direct it back at the bloody body. That’s when he realized it was Elvis.

His throat had been slashed and he had multiple stab wounds in his chest. Most disturbing, his other ear had been cut from his head and stuffed deep into his mouth.

* * *

BEAUX SCRAMBLED ALL the way back to the CAAC, tripping and injuring himself many times. When he finally reached the control room, the only SEAL there was Monkey. Ghost and Smash were still up top.

Monkey was startled to see him. Beaux was in a full-blown panic, not the usual state of affairs for the 616 commander.

“What the hell is it now?” Monkey asked him.

But Beaux could barely talk. Monkey made him sit down and only then was he able to croak: “They’re inside the boat. Someone is inside the boat.…”

Monkey immediately checked the clip in his assault rifle. “I gotta go get Elvis then,” he said, starting to run off.

“No!” Beaux yelled, stopping him in his tracks. “Go up top with the others. I’ll take care of things down here.”

Monkey thought the order was puzzling, but he complied. Once he had gone, Beaux’s fear slowly turned to anger. His perfect plan was coming apart at the seams and he needed someone to blame. He scanned the control room, his eyes falling on the young ensign, the last officer remaining on deck.

Beaux took out his .45 automatic, staggered over to the junior officer and put the muzzle against his head.

“Open the security safe and get me the missile launch keys and codebook, now,” he told him.

The ensign hesitated just for a moment … so Beaux pulled the trigger, shooting him through the temple. The young officer crumpled to the deck.

Then waving his gun in front of him, Beaux looked at the rest of the shocked sailors and said, “Who’s next?”