On her worst moments, she hated Hassan for letting her take his pistol and walk into the engine room alone. Selfish—by saving a life, he’d forced her to take one.
Not a day went by when she didn’t remind herself that she wore a dead man’s boots. Sometimes she’d suddenly realize she was kneeling over the same spot of grimy deck where her attacker coughed out his bloody last breath. She would always force herself to stop what she was doing, repeat a mantra—It’s just a room, a room like any other— before she could continue working. Alexis didn’t know how killers were supposed to feel, but couldn’t imagine they were ever as scared as she was in that moment.
Hassan adjusted his grip on the rifle, awkwardly aiming the barrel towards the beach. Drawing himself up on his elbows, he tried to position himself in front of her, instinctively blocking as much of her body as possible without interfering with her line of fire. She supposed she appreciated the gesture. Not, however, that it would mean a goddamn thing if it came down to a fight. Their unknown adversary had taken out an entire Japanese naval fleet. What chance could four amateurs with stolen rifles possibly have? Maybe their only saving grace would come from how utterly insignificant they were — a mosquito too small to swat.
“Promise me you’ll retreat below deck if we receive fire — no matter what happens to me,” said the doctor, looking to her with imploring eyes. The Scorpion sliced through rolling waves, sending a fresh spray of warm tropical water across the already slick deck.
“Texans don’t get shot in the back,” she snapped. She slicked back her wet hair and yanked the rifle’s charging handle, pulling a round into the receiver. She tapped the forward assist for good measure, snapping the bolt closed. Dalmar kept excellent care of the armory. The weapon slid and clicked with military precision. Her thumb hovered over the safety, ready to flick it into firing position. She stared down the red reticle of her low-magnification sight, searching for a target along the distant jungle tree line, ignoring Hassan’s concerned missives.
I’m already a killer, she reminded herself again. But it still didn’t make her feel brave — only sad and scared.
“I think I should like to visit Texas someday,” said Hassan. “I hear the Alamo is quite striking.” The doctor mimicked her actions, charging a round into the receiver and flipping down the bulky safety lever of his modernized AK-47.
“You’d like it,” she whispered. “We’ll go camping with my dad. It’ll be fun.”
The beach approached at incredible speed, Vitaly pushing the Scorpion to maximum power until the last possible moment. Thick, black diesel smoke belched out of the stack. She tried not to think about the strain on her engines—not now, goddamn it—as she scanned the black beach. Massive breakers crashed against the shoals at either side of the open harbor, the dark sand now lit golden by a rising sun.
“We must sing ‘Ride of the Valkyries’!” shouted Dalmar from the conning tower. He started to belt out a rising baritone duh-duh duh-DUH-duh, duh-duh duh-DUH-duh over the sound of churning engines and roaring waves. Vitaly blew the ballast, raising the Scorpion’s bow as she began to skim over the last of the waters.
Alexis glanced up at Dalmar. He’d braced himself against the conning tower, massive sniper rifle swaying against the tilting yaw of the charging sub. It felt comforting somehow, as though she were under the wings of some great and deadly bird.
Jonah stood on the bow, his unslung assault rifle cradled in his arms, eyes to the beach. “What is he doing?” hissed Hassan.
Alexis swallowed hard. Jonah was presenting himself as an obvious target. Too obvious. He was trying to lure any hidden gunmen into taking an early potshot, one that would give the rest of the crew time to retreat before it was too late. Goddamn you, Jonah. She was just over his swaggering, shoot-from-the-hip bullshit and disinterested shrugging when he had to go and once more reveal his true self. Sometimes she felt as though she was Jonah’s personal archaeologist, digging away at his endless layers of alpha-male bluster and half-assed approach to leadership. She always expected to find nothing beneath it, but kept hitting the same noble bedrock every time, and it totally pissed her off. It was almost as if he wanted his crew to think little of him, insisting his every sacrifice be made in silence, unrecognized.
But she saw right through him. Goddamn you, Jonah. Why did he always have to become a decent man at the worst possible time?
The Scorpion began to shudder like the propellers had just thrown half their blades — Vitaly had reversed the engines. They were too close to stop now, just meters from the beach. To her right was a mammoth concrete dock, eroded and collapsing. A long set of railroad tracks paralleled the dock, dipping beneath the waves. Black sand drifted over the tracks, their steel all but lost to rust.
Jonah knelt, bracing himself. Alexis heard a soft, rushing crunch of metal against sand as the Scorpion’s armored bow slid up through the surf and onto the beach. She pressed her shoulder against the base of the conning tower to steady herself against the protracted, grinding impact. Jonah was over the side before she could even stand, throwing himself into the crashing surf with a splash, both hands clutching his rifle above his head. Hassan went over next, landing in waist-deep waters.
It was a longer drop than she expected, just long enough to lose her balance mid-air and hit the water butt-first, the shallow surf washing over the top of her head as she struggled to keep the rifle dry. And then she was up again, dripping wet, rifle in hand, Hassan dragging her up and out of the surf as they ran along the length of the Scorpion’s hull towards the beach.
The submarine’s engines throbbed behind her, its propellers whipping a white froth as the bow slowly withdrew, leaving behind a deep, flooded gouge in the black sand.
Alexis and Hassan flopped down beside Jonah, joining him behind the cover of a thick driftwood trunk at the top of the debris-ridden, high-tide mark. The sand beneath them was still cold from the long tropical night. She peeked over the top of the felled tree, seeing clearly for the first time the imposing volcano at the center of the island. It had once loosed a thick basaltic flow from the caldron above, following the valley through the abandoned colonial town, burying the long line of crumbling buildings to their roofs. Only a single, lonely bell tower and steeple poked out from the buried township, the bells within, long since rusted to nothing, and the cross atop the church tilted and broken. A single trickling stream ran down the center of the buried street, while the remaining city slowly lost a long war of attrition with the encroaching jungle.
Dalmar descended the exterior conning tower ladder, running the length of the Scorpion’s bow before sliding off the deck and dropping into the shallows, the submarine now released from the grip of the sandy shore. Jonah stood up and swung a leg over the driftwood trunk, followed by Alexis and Hassan. Dalmar strode behind them, his massive rifle carried almost casually over one shoulder. The foursome slowly walked toward the abandoned township.
“I see tire tracks, but they are days old at least.” Dalmar knelt down to examine the loose sands beneath his feet. Several massive, tractor-tire-sized lines ran parallel along the length of the beach and across the volcanic flow, disappearing at the upper edge of the buried town. He’d almost missed them. They were drifted over, made indistinct by winds and rain, almost completely blended with the natural topography of the island.