He glanced at her. She continued to curse under her breath as she watched the screen.
McCann figured he was the most Middle Eastern of anyone he’d seen on the ship so far. Money had to be the motivator, especially for someone like Cav, or Rivera, or whoever else on his crew was involved. None of them were Muslims. None had any ties to the Middle East, at all. He was familiar with the backgrounds of his entire crew. He knew their personnel files inside and out. They wouldn’t follow the orders of an Islamic terrorist even if they had guns held to their heads. He looked at the petty officer in Maneuvering. No one was holding a gun to his head. What they were saying on the news made no sense at all. It had to be something else.
“They think the nuclear power plants are more likely targets than the cities,” Amy relayed. “But they’re not ruling anything out.”
McCann looked down at his chart. They were already past the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in Waterford, Connecticut. But the structure was still an easy target for the Tomahawks.
He’d waited long enough. He had what he needed. His plan was clear. Shutting down the reactor wasn’t enough. He had to go on a search and destroy mission before attempting to shut down the reactor. That wouldn’t force the sub to surface. With enough of the hijackers still armed, they could use the auxiliary power, remain at periscope depth, and fire some of the weapons. But once on the surface, they wouldn’t be able to use the Vertical Launch System.
Amy was white-knuckled and pale when McCann turned her chair around to face him. He pulled away her headset and crouched down until they were eye to eye.
He pulled out one of the two guns and held it in front of her.
“This is very easy to use,” he told her, showing her the gun and the little there was to know about it. “Keep the safety on until you want to use it. I don’t want you shooting yourself or me by accident. If the situation warrants it, though, I want you to shoot. Don’t hesitate because, I’m telling you, the bad guy won’t hesitate. Someone tries to come through that door, you aim at the middle of his chest and shoot them dead.”
“Where are you going?”
Her eyes were huge, and he could see the mist of tears forming. “I’m going forward to the torpedo room.”
“What about shutting down the reactor?”
“I’ll come back for that.”
“Can I come with you?”
He shook his head. “This is the safest place on the sub for you right now.”
“What are you going to do there?”
“They’re getting ready to do some damage. I have to try to stop them.” McCann gave her the weapon. Her fingers were like ice cubes, but they wrapped around the handle. She looked down at the weapon in her hand.
“Will you please reconsider and take me along?”
He pushed back the hair that had fallen across her brow. He lifted her chin until she was looking into his eyes again.
“I need to know you’re here,” McCann said softly. He pushed to his feet. “Lock the door from the inside. I’ll come back for you.”
She nodded reluctantly. “You promise?”
A chuckle rose in his chest. He imagined one of her twins asking that question in just the same way. “I will. I promise to come back for you.”
McCann was on the loose, so Mako was not about to use the P.A. system for communication. What he wanted done needed to be conveyed from the conn to the torpedo room only, and the headsets were the way to go. Kilo distributed the equipment to the rest of their own men. It was time that they left Commander McCann guessing.
Standing on the conn, he strapped on his headset, adjusted the boom mike and single earpiece, switched on the wireless transmitter. He left one ear open for the room.
“Man battle stations.” Mako stepped up onto the periscope platform and made a preliminary sweep of the surface as everyone moved into position.
“Battle stations manned, sir.”
“Attention, fire control team. Attention, sonar,” Mako ordered.
He glanced at his watch. They were right on schedule. He looked around at his men. All eyes were on him. The room was quiet.
“This is the plan gentlemen. Four torpedoes. We’ll hit them where it hurts most — in their pocket. We’ll target that brand new exploratory oil rig that has been going up this year off Orient Point. I want a firing solution. Prepare to engage.”
As the men in the control room turned to their tasks, Mako watched Cavallaro mark the coordinates on the charts.
“Prepare for the firing sequence.”
Chapter 30
The floor shook as another torpedo fired.
With his weapon drawn, McCann rushed forward along the passageway. No one appeared to be around. It all came down to a matter of priorities. He had to do what he could to lessen the damage they could inflict upon innocent people on the outside. Keeping Hartford intact was no longer the primary objective of his plan. As bad as a reactor leak would be if the submarine were to sink in Long Island Sound, the resulting problems would be secondary to the damage the hijackers could wreak on the population of the East Coast if they started firing the missiles.
Two of those Tomahawks in the VLS were tipped with nuclear warheads, and McCann was beginning to wonder if they didn’t need him to arm the weapons.
He now had to operate under that assumption, and his first priority was to stop them from firing anything.
At the top of the stairs to the torpedo room, McCann got down on his hands and knees, peering as far as he could into the lower level. He could see no one, but the sound of operating torpedo racks reached his ears.
Before moving, he assessed his position. At the bottom of the stairs, three sets of torpedo racks stretched forward, filling the room. On either side of the center rack, a narrow passageway led to the torpedo tubes.
As McCann slid down the stairs, he saw Rivera operating the small crane while the hijacker helping him muscled the nose of the torpedo into tube number 3. He quickly dropped behind the starboard rack and then cautiously peered up over it. Both men were wearing headsets.
McCann, keeping his head below the level of the center torpedo rack, moved silently down the aisle toward Rivera’s back. The time to let anyone surrender was past. The numbers had to be diminished. What he knew about each member of his crew was sealed and put away in the recesses of his mind. They were now the enemy.
He reached Rivera just as the hijacker shut the breech door. McCann was close enough that he heard the order from the conn through Rivera’s headset.
“Match bearings and shoot.”
The firing of the torpedo coincided with McCann shooting point blank into the back of Rivera’s head. The muscular seaman went down like a rock in the passageway. McCann stepped past him and fired again as the other man turned, his hand still on the tube’s flood drain mechanism. The second shot echoed loudly throughout the torpedo room, but the shot was true. The bullet struck the man in the chest and he went down, dead before he hit the deck.
McCann took another look at Rivera, who was lying in a spreading pool of blood. He had been a trusted crewman. A shipmate.
“Stay focused,” McCann muttered to himself.
He glanced at the VLS control panels, located in the center of the ship, between the torpedo tubes. It would take him only a moment to remove the back of the panel and rip out the internals of the firing connections.
Before moving to that task, McCann turned and fired two shots at the camera above the racks.
Chapter 31