Clouds of black enveloped him. The fire spread into the bilges and created a wall of flames that blocked Jake’s forward escape route. He shut and dropped the nozzle.
“It’s over! Forget it. Let’s go. Engine room. Ready, inhale!”
When they reached the back of the missile compartment, Jake could again see his companion’s opaque shape. He shouted to Panther to inhale, unhooked from the manifold, and started up the ladder to the third level. Reaching the ladder’s midpoint, he felt a tug at his belt.
Jake twisted and watched Panther’s eyes bulge as he swallowed the vacuum of his facemask. Falling backward, the commando reached for Jake and grabbed his air cord. Jake’s mask chafed his cheeks and slid across his face. Smoke burned his eyes.
Jake heard a thump and saw Panther cough, gag, and rip off his facemask. He jumped to the deck and reached, but the commando kicked his arm. He reached again, but his fingers slipped off a flailing arm. His lungs burned, and he craved air.
I need the self-contained air of an OBA to save this guy, he thought.
He popped free from the buddy fitting and left the commando’s useless EAB next to its dying owner.
Jake retreated to an air manifold. He plugged in and breathed, but toxins made him want to tear out his lungs. He pried open the seal of his mask and coughed. As he inhaled again, the air tasted less noxious. He expelled air through his mask one more time, unplugged from the manifold, and sought the ladder.
After breathing tainted air in his mask at successive manifolds, Jake saw light through the round window of the engine room’s watertight door. He slapped his hand against the handle, depressed it, and pulled. The door opened and he staggered through.
Ripping off his mask, he knelt and rested his chest on the doorframe’s machined ring, inhaling deep, rapid breaths. Then he stood, held his breath in the path of the flowing smoke, and shut the door behind him. In the narrow tunnel through the reactor compartment, he fell to all fours and shut his eyes while he cried to clean the smoke from them.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Tiger, a mountain of muscle, towering over him. The broad-shouldered commando screamed.
“Where is Chanlin?”
Chanlin, Jake thought. Mister Panther has a real name.
“I said where is Chanlin!”
Jake looked up at Tiger’s smoke-covered cheeks. Black pupils seemed to pop from the husky commando’s head.
“You left him to die.”
“He panicked. I had to leave him, but I can save him. There’s a mobile OBA breathing system at the engine room damage control locker. I can put it on in thirty seconds and have him back in here in ninety seconds. We can revive him.”
The commando stepped aside.
CHAPTER 29
“Captain, their engine room is still up, but there’s no flow noise, no screw noise, no blade noise. The Colorado’s not going anywhere,” Schmidt said.
“We’ve closed twenty miles, and they’re still sixty miles off,” Brody said.
“They’re farther than I thought.”
“They hit hard, didn’t they?”
“Real hard, sir.”
Brody entered the Miami’s control room and tapped Pete Parks on the shoulder. Parks’ brown eyes appeared glassy as he analyzed the data on the Colorado.
“Executive officer, join me over the navigation plot,” Brody said.
Brody leaned over a bird’s eye view of the icecap.
A convex arc outlined the ice wall separating the Arctic Ocean from the Chukchi Sea. An ‘X’ had been stenciled where lines of noise from the Miami’s zigzag path converged on the resting place of the Colorado. He walked a pair of dividers across the paper.
“Sixty-one miles to the Colorado. I still can’t believe how far sound carries under the ice,” he said.
“Makes our job easier, sir,” Parks said.
“Easier, yes. Easy, no. Remember the last time we shot at this guy?”
“Yes, sir. And now he’s bottomed, which will make the shot just as hard for our torpedo as last time.”
“But he won’t have a chance to shut down his plant again if he doesn’t hear the weapon.”
“The high-speed screws will be audible if his sonar system still works.”
“I’ll shoot a slow speed shot so he won’t hear it,” Brody said.
“The active seeker will tip him off.”
“Not if I shoot a passive shot. The torpedo can swim up to him and he’ll never hear it.”
“I concur sir, but we’ll need to get close and perfect our targeting data. We’ve got to be gnat’s ass dead on.”
“Pete, he used to be my friend, but he’s toyed with me across two oceans. When I tell the Commodore how I finally put an end to this, I’m going to tell him I did it right. I don’t care how close I have to get, I’m shoving an ADCAP torpedo up the Colorado’s tailpipe.”
From one maneuvering doorway to the other, Tiger barked at Leopard. Tiger and his comrade had Gant and Bass pinned in the engine room’s control center.
“He left Chanlin to die,” Tiger said in Mandarin. “He’s trying to revive him, but what of it? We don’t need the Americans. I say we kill them now!”
“We’re two against three in the engine room, and my arm is broken. Kao also warned us that Slate is trained in martial arts,” Leopard said.
“I will kill them all myself,” Tiger said, savoring the worry in Bass and Gant’s faces. He reached into the tiny control room for a microphone and yelled in a language that was unbreakable code to the westerners.
“Kao, Slate left Chanlin to die in the missile compartment. Let me kill them!”
“Mister Tiger sounds upset.” Renard said.
“The fire grew out of control, and Mister Panther was an unfortunate casualty,” Kao said.
“I’m sorry for the loss,” Renard said.
Jaguar caught Renard’s eye as he climbed the stairs to the control room and darted to Kao to relieve the injured Cheetah from holding a washcloth over his leader’s left eye. McKenzie, pulling his facemask over his head, followed Jaguar. Black flex hoses suspended the mask behind his back.
“The fire’s out of control,” McKenzie said. “No way we can fight it. We’re going to have to let it burn itself out.”
A dead commando… a fire between Slate and me, Renard thought. A potential war… neutrality may be impossible.
Renard watched as Jaguar discarded blood-soaked towels into a waste bin and helped Kao stand. Kao reached into the overhead but staggered. Jaguar stabilized his commander and handed him the microphone.
“Mister Tiger, we mourn the loss of our comrade,” Kao said. “We will pay honor to him upon our return home.”
He switched to Mandarin. Renard decoded no words but intuited the meaning. Kao had ordered Tiger to kill the Americans.
“Do you have a knife?” Tiger asked in Mandarin.
“A small blade,” Leopard said.
Tiger twisted his neck to see Jake running behind him toward the missile compartment.
“We will deal with Slate later,” he said. “But I will begin by killing Bass.”
Tiger launched a side kick that hyper-extended Bass’ knee, and he buckled against the electric panel. Then the commando stabbed his index finger knuckle through Bass’ windpipe. Bass clutched his throat, and his face turned red. Tiger heard the American’s face slap linoleum and stepped on Bass’ back as he convulsed, suffocated, and died.
Leopard jabbed the knife into Gant’s lung, followed him as he fell to the deck and dropped a knee into his back. He pushed Gant’s head and slid the blade through his carotid artery.