“Much better, ma’am.”
She knew Brody was trying to be tough, but she wasn’t taken in. The bullet wound looked like raw meat above his knee. There was no distinguishing between the cartilage, bone, or flesh. The loss of blood had to be a serious concern. Amy did the best she could, but he might as well have been bandaged up by a blind woman. Nursing was definitely not one of her gifts, and this was a little different than slapping a Band-Aid on a playground scrape.
She actually felt a sense of pride for the young man and his courage and she’d told him that many times while she’d been working on the leg. She’d needed to say those words for her own sake as much as his. She couldn’t even imagine the pain he was enduring — or how much she was making it worse with her poking and prodding.
Amy sat back against the heavy steel supports and looked across at Brody. The racks of torpedoes loomed above them, protection on many levels. She tried not to look at the dead bodies on either end of the aisle. She was certain she’d never be able to work on the construction of another submarine and not remember what they’d gone through here. She closed her eyes for a second and tried to clear her head. She was assuming that she’d survive. That they’d get out of here.
She wondered where McCann was. Everything was too quiet. “What do you think is going on?”
“We’ve stopped and the reactor is shut down,” he said. “The skipper could have done it.”
He fiddled with the earpiece of his headset.
She knew McCann’s survival meant living or dying for both of them. But how could he handle so many of the hijackers alone? The name Kilo flashed into her mind. Amy remembered how brutally he’d shot the two men in the passageway upstairs. And they were supposedly on the same side of the fence as he was. There had been no argument. No word of warning. Just sudden death.
“Silent waters run deep,” she murmured.
“Pardon, ma’am?”
“Nothing.” She picked the gun off the floor, stood and peered around one of the torpedoes toward the stairwell. All was quiet. “Maybe we should go up.”
“The skipper’s orders were to stay down here until he calls for us.”
Amy would never understand the military’s culture of following orders. But they all lived by it. It was engrained in them from their first days of training. They were brainwashed to accept it, to live by it.
She crouched and looked at Brody again. “How come you aren’t one of them?”
He looked at her questioningly.
Amy remembered that he’d been knocked out for most of the morning. “The crew who stayed aboard Hartford are… or were… cooperating with the hijackers. Why not you?”
He bristled, and she watched him look at the body of Rivera before answering. Finally, he shrugged.
“I’m not a traitor,” he said. “I don’t understand them, but I’ll tell you something else. I wouldn’t have betrayed the skipper for any amount of money. They all knew that. Probably figured I’d give them away.”
Brody’s kind of loyalty tended to propagate itself. At least, this was the way things worked in the shipyard. Crews either hated their bosses or liked them. They weren’t too many mixed bags. Amy didn’t know any of the other men on Hartford. The little she’d seen of how McCann treated his crew before the hijacking and how he’d refused to believe that they’d have anything to do with it, made her think of him as the type who would be liked.
Something crackled in Brody’s headset. The young man adjusted the earpiece again. “I’m here, Skipper.”
Amy couldn’t hear what was said by McCann, but she saw Brody immediately sit forward, trying to push himself up. She tried to help him.
“I’m on my way. Yes, sir. I can handle it.”
There was no way he could put any weight on the leg; Amy was sure of it. She didn’t know how he’d be able to handle the stairs. Still, she was amazed by Brody’s determination as he did stand up.
“What’s going on?” she asked when Brody finished listening to the commander’s instructions.
“They’re all gone. The C.O. thinks it might have been a DSRV that took them away. We seem to have the boat to ourselves.”
Amy couldn’t believe it. Did this mean that it was over?
“He wants to talk to you.”
She took the headset from him, and saw him quickly bend down and tape his bad leg to his good one.
“Amy, how familiar are you with Clyde?” McCann asked.
“I know Clyde very well,” she answered as she walked up the aisle between the racks. She stopped at the doorway leading into the large space aft of the torpedo room. It was the same room where McCann said he found Brody tied and gagged. “It’s the auxiliary diesel engine. The back-up power source for the reactor.”
She saw Brody start hopping toward the stairs and hurried back to help him.
“Do you know where it is?”
“Of course. It’s twenty feet from where I’m standing.” Amy was torn about staying where she was or helping Brody up the stairs. He’d tucked his pistols into his pockets and was hoisting himself up the stairs with his arms.
“Good. I need you to go there now. I’ll walk you through the procedure to start Clyde up. We need our auxiliary power.”
She had her answer. She was staying down here. “What’s going on?”
“The reactor is shut down. We’re running on batteries now, but that won’t help us for what we need to do.”
She rushed back to where the hulking diesel engine sat half buried beneath the deck.
“Tell me, McCann,” she ordered quietly. “I’m ready.”
“I’m sending out four SLOT buoys as we speak. That might help, but I can’t guarantee they get any messages on time.”
Amy knew SLOT buoys were one-way transmitters launched from the submarine. They could send a digitally encoded message, but — because of their depth — they were still unable to receive any responses.
“I swear to God, Commander, if you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’ll wrap my fingers around your throat and choke you the next time I see you.”
“I like that. But before you incapacitate me, you should know something.” His voice turned serious. “I have one of our own subs on the sonar, and it’s close to getting within strike range. It may be a matter of seconds before they start firing torpedoes at us.”
Chapter 45
Bruce Dunn respected Sarah’s privacy.
He walked away from the conference table where she’d just received a phone call from Commander McCann’s father. He’d never admit it to her, but Bruce had actually arranged for the phone call as soon as he’d learned through one of their field agents that Mina McCann’s condition had stabilized. The older woman had suffered a minor stroke that morning upon hearing the news about McCann. Bruce thought it would be so much more meaningful to hear the good news from the family than from a stranger like him.
Seth McDermott entered the conference room at that moment. Perfect timing.
“Did you get any answers for me?” Bruce asked.
“Admiral Meisner says he’ll see you in two minutes.”
Not exactly what he wanted to hear, but Dunn knew the Director of Naval Intelligence would be able to cut through the red tape and get answers, if anyone could.
“Where?”
“Outside the large conference room,” McDermott said, grinning. “Things are about to get critical in the Command Center, but he had to go to the head. He said he’d give you some answers on his way back.”
“I guess we should be grateful that admirals are human enough to take bathroom breaks.” Dunn looked at his watch. It had to be two minutes by now. He stepped out and spotted Meisner walking back.