“You sure?” McGarvey asked.
“Three screws, big diesels. Not one of ours.”
MacKeever and Ercoli were looking toward the east through light-intensifying binoculars.
“Anything?” McGarvey asked.
“Still too far,” Ercoli said. “But maybe they sent a chase boat ahead to make sure the channel is clear.”
“Is there any deep water farther up into the bay?” McGarvey asked.
“Nothing,” Dillon called back. “This is the only place.” He turned back to the sonar.
“Do you want us to light up the radar?” Jackson asked.
“Negative,” Dillon said. “His ESM’s gear would recognize it as military.” He made an adjustment to the controls. “Hang on.”
The night was utterly still for several long moments.
“His aspect ratio is changing,” Dillon said. “Stand by.”
It seemed for the moment as if the entire world were asleep, yet McGarvey could almost feel an evil presence somewhere in the darkness to the east. Bad people were coming with a dark intent, like monsters stalking in the night, getting set to pounce.
Dillon looked up. “It’s turned directly toward us,” he said. “It’s the Foxtrot heading to where it can submerge.”
Jackson came to the open door. “Okay, McGarvey, we’ve bagged him. Now what? Do you want to call for backup?”
“Will his radar be on?” McGarvey asked.
“I don’t think he’ll risk it,” Dillon answered.
“We’ll let him pass and then come in behind him out of visual range,” McGarvey said. “As soon as he submerges we’ll dive down and knock on the escape trunk hatch.”
Jackson’s wife laughed. “That’ll get their attention,” she said. “Won’t they fire whatever weapons they have?”
“I’m hoping they’ll try,” McGarvey said. “If they have missiles what tubes would they load them in?” he asked Dillon.
“They’d probably start with tube one, and go from there depending on how many weapons they have. Wouldn’t make any sense to fire them from the stern tubes.”
McGarvey’s plan suddenly dawned on Ercoli. “Holy shit, the salvage equipment you wanted,” he said. “I thought you were going to use it to cut through the hull into the escape trunk. But that’s not it.” He turned to look up at Jackson on the bridge. “FX, this crazy bastard wants us to weld the torpedo tube outer doors shut.”
“Can it be done?” Jackson asked Dillon.
“I don’t see why not.”
Terri raised an eyebrow. “I thought you and your English captain were either very brave or very crazy,” she said. “But I was wrong.”
“Which is it?” McGarvey asked.
She laughed. “Both,” she said, and she immediately raised a hand. “But I love it. One guy is bringing a Russian submarine up a shallow bay past a major enemy navy base, and the other guy wants to do hand-to-hand combat with the boat.” She turned to her husband. “Honey, this sounds like fun. Why didn’t we think of it first?”
The bottom dropped away once they passed under the Highway 17 Bridge into the York River.
Graham keyed the bridge telephone. “Con, bridge. What’s our depth?” “Bridge, we have fifteen meters under our keel, but it doesn’t look like it’ll get much deeper,” al-Hari responded. He was obviously very sick.
The boat was already partially submerged. Only the top couple of meters plus the masts were above water. Another fifteen meters would do nicely. “Very well, prepare to dive the boat.”
“Aye, Cap’n, prepare to dive the boat.”
Graham replaced the phone in its bracket under the coaming, and looked at Ziyax, who was studying something to the stern through light-intensifying binoculars. “What do you see?”
“I thought I heard something,” Ziyax replied softly. “Engines, but very quiet.”
Ziyax might be a Libyan, but he’d been trained by Russians. Graham had developed a grudging respect for the man’s abilities, if not his judgment, on the long trip across the Atlantic. He called the control room again.
“Secure the diesel engines and switch to electric power, All Ahead Slow.”
Al-Hari hesitated for a second. “Aye, sir. Switching to electric motors.”
Within a few seconds the soft rumbling of the three diesels died away, and the night became totally silent except for the delicate sounds of the leading edge of the sail cutting slowly through the water.
Ziyax continued to study the thickening fog behind them.
Graham cocked an ear and held his breath. Their sonar was blind aft, but if a U.S. Navy vessel had spotted them coming into the bay, or turning up into the York River, they would have charged in, radar sets hot, searchlights blazing, the guard frequencies alive with demands to stop and identify, and warning shots fired across their bows. They wouldn’t be sneaking around without lights. It made no sense to him.
There was the man on the bridge of the Apurto Devlán with the gray-green eyes. Bin Laden was certain it had been Kirk McGarvey. He is the one man above all others who you must respect and fear.
But there was absolutely no reason to expect that McGarvey were here in this time and place. No reason whatsoever.
Graham held his breath and strained to pick up a sound, any sound, no matter how faint or unlikely, that might indicate someone was behind them.
But he heard nothing.
Ziyax lowered his binoculars. “I must have been mistaken,” he said. He shrugged. “Nerves.”
They were about four miles upriver from Yorktown here, and there was a certain delicious irony to their position in Graham’s mind, because they were only five miles downriver from the CIA’s training base.
For a moment he thought about the man on the bridge of the Apurto Devlán, but then he called the control room. “Put the boat on the bottom,” he ordered.
“Aye, Cap’n,” al-Hari responded.
Ziyax was first down the ladder.
Graham cocked an ear to listen one last time, then dropped down into the sail, secured the hatch, and descended the rest of the way into the control room. He took the 1MC mike down from its bracket near the periscope pedestal. “Battle stations, missile,” he ordered calmly, his voice transmitted to every compartment aboard the submarine.
Al-Hari was at the ballast control panel, releasing air from the tanks in a carefully controlled sequence, and they started down, cautiously because they had no real idea what was on the bottom.
Ziyax went to the weapons control station and began the process of spinning up the cruise missile guidance systems, making the engines ready to fire once the missiles were ejected from the torpedo tubes and rose to the surface, and arming the nuclear weapons, which would fire at five thousand feet over the capital city.
“All Ahead Stop,” al-Hari ordered, as the boat settled.
The angle on the bow was very shallow, and they drifted another two hundred meters, their speed slowly bleeding off until their keel scraped the bottom. The boat lurched forward then came to a complete stop, easing a few degrees over on her port side.
“Secure the motors,” Graham said softly. Shehab had reached her final resting place. He casually glanced at the men gathered at their stations around him in the control room. This was to be their mausoleum, he thought indifferently. They wanted martyrdom, they would have it.
“Missile one and two are ready in all respects to fire, Captain,” Ziyax reported. “Shall I flood the tubes and open the outer doors?”