“Get out of my way,” Hawke said and kept moving.
“Ha! You think you’re leaving? Deserting the ship like those Chinese rats? I told Luca we could never count on the Chinese! Come here! You’re not going any—”
Hawke’s left fist flashed out, connected with the man’s nose, and there was a soft crack of bone, a dry twig snapping in two. Von Draxis dropped the knife. His hands flew to his face, blood trickling from beneath them, and his legs gave way. He went down hard. He was trying to get up but he couldn’t get anything to work. He looked up at Hawke, blood streaming from his nose.
“You think this is the end?” he said, red bubbles forming on his lips.
“Don’t you?”
“Bonaparte and I, we are invincible. Unsinkable, just like this beautiful ship I built. We—”
“Bonaparte is going down, just like you and your boat. Auf wiedersehen, Baron. Schlafen Sie gut.”
Hawke paused at the top of the steep stair leading down to the life-boats. There was no way of descending with Tynan over his shoulder. He had five minutes now. No time to lower the boat anyway. No. He would have to—his mobile was ringing in his pocket and he fished it out.
“Hawke,” he said, his mind racing ahead, searching for a way out of this.
“Alex, it’s Jack McAtee. You’re in the lifeboat? You’re away?”
“No, sir. Not in the lifeboat at all, I fear, Mr. President. Are we—are we over the—over the ‘Wall’?”
“Alex, the torpedoes are launched! Yes, you’re well over the ‘Wall.’ Get off that boat now!”
“Right. Good idea. It’s just that unless you sink this bloody ship…I don’t know—she’s got to go down! To the bottom, or—”
“That’s my problem! Listen to me, damn it! You get your ass off that—”
“Mr. President. I’ve a badly wounded man here. He’s not going to make it unless he—medical attention. Or—”
“Alex, do you see the chopper? There’s a Coast Guard—hold on—somebody get that pilot to drop a goddamn rescue sling…Hawke is still aboard the damn boat—Alex, listen to me. Get somewhere where you can—”
Hawke staggered beneath the weight, his strength all but gone. Searching the skies, he moved forward toward the rail and open deck. He simultaneously heard and saw the chopper to starboard, coming in low over the water. Orange-suited crew stood in the open bay and paid out line.
“Alex, are you still there? You’ve only got one shot at this!”
“Yes, sir, I—” a sharp blow from behind. Like a blow from a hammer. A searing pain in the small of his back. The bloody German. The bloody knife. He went down hard on his left shoulder and rolled, trying to hold on to Tynan, trying to break the gravely injured man’s fall.
3:52 A.M., EST
“Coast Guard helo Yankee Victor, this is the president speaking. Copy?”
“Roger, Mr. President, sir, this is U.S. Coast Guard Yankee Victor. I now have your man in sight, sir. He’s on the upper deck forward atop the forepeak. Some kind of a struggle going on—he’s, uh, he’s down, sir.”
“Listen to me, son. You’ve got three minutes before that ship blows sky-high and takes you with it.”
“Less than that, I’m happy to say, sir. I’ve got two torpedoes a couple of miles out and closing fast. I’m going in now. One pass. Okay, this is it. He’s, uh, he appears to be on his feet again. He’s…I, uh—can anybody tell what’s going on down there?”
“There is no time, Yankee Victor. Get him off that deck. And get your medic ready for that wounded man. Do it now.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Two-man rescue net is deployed. We’re going in now.”
3:54 A.M., EST
Hawke climbed to his feet. He was reaching behind his back to see if the knife was still there as he faced the grinning German. The man’s nose had swollen to twice its size and coagulated blood clotted his lips, teeth, and chin.
“I get off,” said Von Draxis. “I must get off this—”
“Certainly,” Hawke said, lunging forward, lifting the man in one fluid motion from the deck, and heaving him over the rail and into the foaming sea far below, “I insist.”
He turned to his right at the whumping sound of the approaching helicopter, swooping in and out of a sharp bank and heading straight toward him. He bent and picked up the unconscious American, surprised at how easily he was able to get Tynan’s body up onto his right shoulder again. Directly overhead now, the chopper was slowing and flaring. The bright red rescue net hung from the hoist in the open bay and was swinging in elliptical loops. Trying desperately to keep Tynan balanced on his shoulder, he braced one foot against the rail and stretched out his right hand. The net was tantalizingly close. He was tempted to lunge for it—no, wait! Christ, he’d missed it! Missed his chance!
Still, the chopper hesitated above, whipping left and swinging the basket back once more—
What the hell? Two white torpedo trails just beneath the surface of the black water, racing toward the ship. One veered sharply toward the stem, the other continued straight toward the bow. A hundred and fifty yards…ye gods! They were seconds from impact and—there was the rescue net, swinging right toward him!
He reached up and snagged it. Wrestled with it a second, got the net’s hard square base down on the deck, managed to heave Tynan inside the opening as gently as possible under the circumstances…and climbed in after him.
“Tynan!” Hawke shouted at the man cradled in his arms over the deafening roar of the chopper’s engine. “We made it! You’re going to be all right! Just hold on!”
Then, at the precise moment the first two heavyweight torpedoes impacted the ship and exploded, Hawke felt the net jerk suddenly upward. The chopper lurched violently skyward, as if lifted by the horrific explosion below.
3:57 A.M., EST
After the first two torpedoes struck, the Mark 48s kept coming. One narrowly missed the bow, swung hard left, circled, and slammed into the port side, successful on its second attempt. The torpedo salvo unleashed by Seawolf had already caused horrific but not imminently lethal damage. It wasn’t over. One more trail, another explosion. Then two, three, four huge explosions as more blackened holes appeared amidships. The center of the ship buckled. Her entire stern, blown off by the very first torpedo Fraser fired, to take out her propulsion pods hanging below, was still afloat, drifting way from the main body of the ship. What remained of the great liner, roughly two-thirds of her, lay dead in the water.
Hawke watched Leviathan founder from his lofty perch. He was still dangling twenty feet below the navy helicopter as the hoist reeled his rescue net upward. She had a slight list to starboard, but she was still pretty much balanced on her keel. Watertight compartments made the water rush from the starboard quarter to the port and then back again. This was probably what kept her remains on an even keel.
God almighty, it was just as he’d feared. Torpedoes, no matter how powerful or how many, were not enough to sink the damn thing! She had watertight bulkheads from stern to stern! It would take a bloody—wait! His peripheral vision had picked up something.
Hold the phone, the president had not let him down after all.
There, screaming across the water about thirty feet above the wavetops, was a squadron of Navy Tomcat F/A18 Super Hornets. He saw two spurts of flame beneath the wings of the lead jet. Two white trails streaked toward the liner. Two Onyx missiles had been fired. Then the fighters flanking the lead fired. Deadly and unstoppable, six Mach 2.9 ramjet antiship cruise missiles skimmed the waves and slammed into the great ship. The sheer force of the missiles, each with the impact energy of fifty-five hundred pounds striking at terminal velocity of 2,460 feet per second, literally vaporized the entire center section of the hull.