Operation Caribe

37

THE ONLY THING harder than Twitch getting into the Wyoming would be getting the sick sailors out.

The water level on the submarine was now about four-fifths down the hull and still dropping. Gunner and two of the Senegals were huddled near the bow, staying low in the muck, anxious as to how it was all going to play out. They could hardly see each other in the dark and wind and rain; the hurricane was now blowing across the island at indescribable force. They’d been waiting out here so long, with no way to communicate with Twitch on the inside, they were wondering if any sailors were going to be rescued at all.

Then, without any warning, a dark figure slid out of the nearby torpedo tube and tumbled awkwardly into the water.

The Senegals immediately retrieved this person and brought him to the muddy bank. He was a young sailor, covered in grease and still wearing his flu mask.

“A lot of people are behind me,” he gasped. “But a lot of them are sick, too.”

And that’s how it began. In the midst of the thunder and lightning, sailors began falling out of the tube one after another. Gunner and one of the Senegals were waiting in the water as they came splashing down, a drop of six feet. Some were strong enough to wade to the muddy bank themselves, a stone’s throw away. Others had to be pulled to safety.

As soon as they reached solid ground, the other Senegal helped them down the culvert and into the blue hole cave. Here they were out of the elements, and there was a fresh water spring from which they could drink.

One of the first sailors to escape grabbed the Senegal on shore and told him: “I don’t know who you people are—but you just delivered us from Hell.”

To which another sailor said: “And your friend inside deserves a medal—if they give medals to crazy people, that is.”

* * *

THE FIFTH SAILOR to come out of the tube was the boat’s environmental systems engineer.

He seemed relatively healthy, so Gunner had one of the Senegals hustle him along the channel’s bank to the team’s main weapons dugout. Gunner knew Nolan would want to talk to him.

Nolan and Harry had been sitting in the vine-entangled dugout for more than two hours now, firing at the SEALs anytime one of them stuck his head up from the bridge. Their barrages had been so intense, they’d not allowed any of the 616 guys to squeeze off more than one or two shots at a time before taking cover again. Nolan and Harry had been firing lots of random bursts, too, just to keep the SEALs off balance.

The sailor practically fell into the nearly invisible weapons pit, getting snarled in the strangler vines as he arrived. Nolan and Harry quickly introduced themselves, not that it made much difference. They were both wearing battle suits, head to toe, with blackened faces and night vision scopes attached to their oversized helmets.

Nolan asked the sailor the situation aboard the sub. The man tried to distill it as best he could.

“Everyone was really sick on the way home,” he began. “Bad flu. Then the SEALs came aboard, killed the captain and stuffed his body somewhere. We all thought it was a drill, at least at first. Then they made us tell them how to fire the torpedoes—they killed the defensive weapons officer right in front of us, so the junior XO told us to do whatever these guys wanted. So, we did. And eventually we wound up here.”

He looked out on the dark, storm-swept island and added: “Wherever the hell ‘here’ is.”

“What about the nukes?” Nolan asked him. “Are they still operational?”

The sailor nodded grimly. “And those guys have the launch code book, too, because we heard they just shot our ensign a little while ago to get it. So they probably know how to do a launch—even though there’s actually a few different places you can do it from. My guess is they probably studied up on submarines before they pulled this stunt. We could tell some things were screwing them up, but they also knew a little bit about how to run a submarine.”

Nolan used his special night vision scope to scan the back of the Wyoming. Ramon was still up there, doing his welding. He had at least a half dozen hinges still to do.

“Have they been in touch with anyone on the outside?” Nolan asked the sailor.

“They’ve been talking to Norfolk on the IP phone,” he replied. “I’m sure the Big Brass got no real idea what’s going on here, but Beaux told them he’ll use the missiles if he doesn’t get what he wants—which is a huge money payment, a TV show and immunity from prosecution. They also want you guys to stop attacking them.”

Harry laughed maniacally. “Like that’s going to happen,” he roared, opening up again. Every time he pulled his trigger, he yelled at the SEALs: “Show yourselves, you a*sholes! You chicken motherf*ckers!”

“So is your plan to try to force these guys to give up?” the sailor asked Nolan. “Read them their rights, that sort of thing?”

Nolan shook his head slowly. “We’re going to wait them out,” he said. “But when they do give up, we’re going to make them pay for what they did.”

“They killed a good friend of ours when he didn’t have a chance,” Harry interjected, talking more like a member of Whiskey than one of their ONI adversaries. “So, we’re going to kill them the same way, while they’re helpless and don’t have a chance in hell of escaping. Do you have a problem with that?”

The sailor laughed darkly. “Are you kidding?” he said. “Just get me a front row seat. Any idea how you’re going to do it?”

“We’re going to line them up and shoot them,” Nolan declared simply. “Like a firing squad. One at a time, each guy who makes it out of there alive. And we’re going to videotape it so the whole world will see.”

“Right on!” the sailor exclaimed.

“Or we might hang them,” Harry said suddenly.

Nolan shrugged. “Well, right,” he said. “We might hang them instead.…”

“Or we might drown them.” Harry kept talking. “Or slice their throats.…”

Nolan was getting slightly annoyed—in Whiskey’s overall plan, the means of the SEALs’ execution had yet to be decided. “Yes, maybe we’ll do all of those things, and electrocute them, too,” he said. “But whatever the way, they’re going to pay for what they did to our friend. And in the bargain, you guys get your payback, too. Just like everyone else they’ve f*cked with in the past few days, all the people they killed. The score will be settled—but it will be settled our way. That’s our goal.”

“But how long will you wait for them to come out?” the sailor asked.

Nolan adjusted the ammo belt in his M4. “Until Doomsday if necessary,” he replied defiantly. “We know they’re diehards, so it might be a while before they realize they have no other choice. That’s why our guy in the copter just let them know who we are, finally, just to freak them out a little more. We’re hoping them knowing it’s us firing at them will make them panic and do stupid things—like trying to negotiate with us. Or at least that’s the plan; we’ll see if it works. But no matter how long it takes, we’ll be here.”

That’s when the sailor looked out at the sub and noticed something. “Well, I hate to say this, but you might have your dirty work done for you way before that.”

“What do you mean?” Nolan asked him.

The sailor pointed to a spot just in front of the sail. There was a closable vent there and puffs of nasty black exhaust could be seen shooting out of it.

“There’s an auxiliary generator right below that vent,” he said. “Those fools have been running it and a few others full blast ever since the power cable was cut. The problem is, they’re not built for that. They’re more for use when the ship is in dock, during repairs, things like that. And they’re always supposed to be properly ventilated, which at the moment, none of them are. I guarantee that one in particular is going to burn out at any minute, and when it does the fumes will be like poison. They’ll go right through the boat, because the air filtration system isn’t really working and the vents can’t handle it all. It will produce a cloud of carbon monoxide inside and whoever is breathing it in will see some smoke, but they might not realize what’s happening until it’s too late. They’ll just drop to the deck and it will be like going to sleep.”

This was not something Nolan wanted to hear. He wanted the 616 to suffer more than that. But he also had another, bigger concern.

He asked the sailor: “When that generator goes, how long will it take for the fumes to poison the entire boat?”

The sailor shrugged. “Ten minutes maybe—twenty tops.”

Nolan immediately looked to the front of the sub.

“Damn,” he said. “I hope all the friendlies are out by then.”