And for what? Religion? He sincerely hoped not, because that would mean the entire world would be at war with itself forever.
McGarvey picked up the heavy charge, darted down the passageway, and shoved the torpedo room hatch open with a foot. The body of one man dangled half out of his bunk. He too had advanced radiation poisoning.
There was no one else inside the narrow, very cramped compartment. Six torpedo doors, three to the right of the boat’s centerline and three to the left, were arrayed in the forward bulkhead about thirty feet from the hatch. There were at least six torpedoes still in their racks.
McGarvey only took a split second to look before he set the acid fuse to three minutes, and tossed the heavy package into the compartment with all of his might.
He did not bother to see where the package landed before he pulled the hatch shut, went back to Terri’s body, picked it up, and headed in a run back to the control room.
Dillon had gone aft to get the escape trunk ready. Jackson was the only one there, waiting for his wife and McGarvey. He didn’t say a word, nor did he look at McGarvey as he took his wife’s body in his arms. He studied her face for several long moments, his expression completely unreadable.
“I’m sorry,” McGarvey said. “We missed one.”
Jackson looked up. “Did you kill him?” he asked, his voice soft as if he were whispering a secret.
“Yes,” McGarvey said. “But we need to hustle. I set the fuse for three minutes.” He glanced over at the weapons control board, which showed the missiles were set to launch in three minutes and ten seconds.
“Time to go,” Jackson said. He turned and headed aft in a run, McGarvey right behind him.
When they reached the escape trunk, Dillon was there, wrestling with the controls. “Somebody locked out and left the outer hatch open,” he said, as he turned around. When he spotted Terri’s body in her husband’s arms, his face fell. “My God,” he said.
McGarvey was looking up at the escape hatch. “It was Graham,” he said. The noise he’d heard in the workshop aft. The bastard had been hiding back there after all.
“Dale and Bob are out there, they might have spotted him,” Dillon said, not able to take his eyes off of Terri’s body.
“Not unless they came aft,” Jackson replied mechanically. There was no animation in his face.
“As it stands there’s no way we’re going to get out from here,” Dillon cautioned.
“We’ve got to get away from this compartment,” McGarvey said, suddenly realizing that Graham wouldn’t have simply jumped ship without first making sure that no one else could follow him. “The forward torpedo room is going to blow in less than two minutes, and I think this hatch is going to blow too.”
“Son of a bitch, you’re right,” Jackson said.
McGarvey hustled them aft into the generator room, and tried to close the waterproof door, but it wouldn’t budge.
“What’s wrong?” Dillon demanded.
“It’s been welded open,” McGarvey said. “All the doors to the aft torpedo room have been welded open.”
“It’s going to get real hairy here in about one minute,” Jackson said.
“It’s worse than that,” Dillon told them. “I took off my rebreather and left it in the control room—”
A very large explosion in the forward torpedo room shook the entire boat as if she were a child’s toy.
McGarvey and the others ducked back behind the bulkhead on either side of the open hatch, the sounds of water rushing forward as loud as a 747 coming in for a landing, bringing with it every piece of loose debris or equipment or bodies like deadly shrapnel from a powerful bomb.
All the lights aboard the submarine went out, plunging them into absolute darkness.
A second explosion, this one practically on top of them, opened up the hull at the escape trunk. Water immediately came pouring into the boat as if from a hundred fire hoses, acting as a temporary cushion against the water and debris racing forward from the wrecked torpedo room.
Water had already risen to their waists and would flood the entire boat within seconds.
Jackson saw their chance at the same time McGarvey did. “We’re going out the hole where the escape trunk was!” he shouted.
“Go!” Dillon shouted over the tremendous din. “I’ll be right behind you!”
“You’re coming with me and Terri!” Jackson shouted. “You need to use her rebreather.”
McGarvey switched on his dive light, pulled his mask over his face, and took a deep breath from the rebreather as the water rose up over their heads.
Jackson had his own mask on, and moments later Dillon had donned Terri’s mask. He and Jackson had to hold her body between them because there had been no time to take the dive equipment from her body.
Within a couple more seconds the entire boat was flooded and the in-rushing water stopped.
McGarvey swam out of the generator room first to survey the damage and see if they could get out of the boat. The entire escape trunk had been obliterated, as had a fifteen-foot-wide section of the hull. Except for some dangling wires and piping the boat was open to the river here.
McGarvey helped Jackson and Dillon maneuver Terri’s body out of the generator room, and up through the debris and out into the open water.
MacKeever and Ercoli appeared out of the gloom from forward and above, but they moved slowly, their bodies battered by the massive concussion of the explosion in the forward torpedo room.
Together the five of them rose slowly to the surface, Terri’s body cradled in her husband’s and Dillon’s arms until they reached the surface.
“Son of a bitch,” MacKeever said. “Someone stole our boat.”
PART FOUR
SIXTY-SEVEN
Dick Adkins was ten minutes late for his 9:00 A.M. briefing to the president, and an impatient Dennis Berndt met him at the west entrance for the walk down the connecting corridor to the Oval Office. “Well?”
“He did it,” the DCI said.
Berndt heaved the first sigh of relief in ten days. “Thank God.”
Don Hamel and his National Intelligence apparatus had been purposely kept out of the loop on the McGarvey — bin Laden operation, to give the intelligence community plausible deniability. It meant that if something went wrong, the blame would not fall on the White House. But Adkins was bringing good news, and Berndt figured they had dodged the bullet for the second time in as many weeks. First the Panama Canal, and now the submarine.
“It was right where he said it would be,” Adkins said, with a little awe in his voice. He shook his head. “I worked with the man for years, Dennis. I was his assistant DCI for the couple of years he ran the show. I know the mechanics of what he does. But I still haven’t a clue how he pulls it off.”
“He’s never been afraid of stepping up to the plate.”
President Haynes, his jacket off, tie loose, was sitting at his desk, talking on the telephone, while his staff came and went, depositing files and other paperwork in front of him. He was working Congress to get enough votes for passage of his controversial energy bill, and neither he nor anyone else seemed very happy.
“He needs this lift,” Berndt said.
The president looked up and waved them in.
“There were some problems,” Adkins cautioned as he and Berndt entered the Oval Office.
“Good morning, Mr. Director,” the president’s secretary said, going out.
“Morning,” he mumbled.
“Casualties?” Berndt asked.
“One of our people was killed, but there are a lot of dead bodies at the bottom of the York River we’re trying to get to. Plus a big mess. Could be an ecological disaster.”