The shark surfaced again.
This time, fifteen feet to their right.
Making a wide loop, the fin orbited their position in the water, its wet skin reflecting the leaping flames from the ship in the background.
“There’s another one!” Grimes shouted.
Eichenbrenner looked over his left shoulder. A second shark had joined the first.
Basnight swore and pointed. “Another.”
Over his right shoulder, a third fin cut through the water in the circle.
Like bloodthirsty savages circling a defenseless wagon train, the sharks circled their prey slowly, in an inexplicable ritual of cruel, psychological torture.
“I wish they’d get it over with,” Basnight groaned.
“You boys believe in prayer?” Eichenbrenner asked.
“Never believed in it. Not gonna start now,” Basnight said. Cold fear filled his voice.
“If there was a God, why would he put us on a burning ship and then throw us out to the sharks?” Grimes muttered.
“There may or may not be a God,” Eichenbrenner said, “but I’m going to try it.”
“Try what?”
“Prayer. I suggest you do the same.”
USS Boise
The Andaman Sea
3:25 p.m.
Range to target one thousand yards,” the chief of the watch said. “All ahead one-third,” Captain Hardison said.
“All ahead one-third,” came the reply.
“Very well. Up scope!”
“Up scope. Aye, sir!”
The commanding officer moved over to the periscope station as mechanical motors inside the stainless-steel cylinder whined and clanked, raising the top of the scope to a position just a few feet above the level of the surface.
“Scope’s up, Captain,” the chief of the watch announced.
“Very well.” Captain Hardison stepped up to the eyepiece, grabbed the handle bars, and peered through the scope. Nothing but open water and late-afternoon horizon.
Rotating clockwise, he turned slightly to his right.
Still nothing.
He turned a bit more. Orange smoke and black flames billowed into the sky. Below the smoke, the silhouette of a ship lay low in the water. He hit the magnification button, bringing the ship in full view in the viewfinder.
Hardison squinted, meticulously searching for any signs of life still aboard the ship. His eyes quickly swept twice from the smoking bow to the stern area.
Nothing.
He’d seen enough.
“Down scope. Prepare to surface.”
The Andaman Sea
4:05 p.m.
They had drifted another fifty yards away from the burning ship, perhaps just far enough to avoid getting sucked down when the Altair Voyager went under.
But getting sucked down was the least of their worries at the moment.
Like a hangman tightening a noose, the gray fins continued to swirl angrily in a concentric ring about ten yards from the tiny flotation device. They were so close now that the men could see the shadows of the sharks’ bodies swimming by.
Against the chopping roar of helicopter motors, which remained invisible above the black smoke, Eichenbrenner silently prayed.
Basnight and Grimes cursed that they had no effective means of committing suicide.
“Look!” Basnight suddenly pointed outward. “One of them is leaving.”
One of the sharks had left the circle and seemed to be swimming away, toward the direction of the burning ship.
“It’s turning around!” Eichenbrenner warned.
“It’s headed back!” Basnight unleashed a string of profanities.
“It’s coming fast!” Grimes yelled.
“Lord, help us,” Eichenbrenner blurted. The shark slid through the circling perimeter of fins, then disappeared.
A moment passed.
“Aaahhhhh!” Basnight screamed. “My leg! Aaaaahhh!” Basnight’s face contorted. Blood bubbled and gushed up around his neck. He cocked his head to the heavens and released the raft, drifting in his own blood.
The shark surfaced a few feet to Grimes’ left, then submerged again.
A second later, with a violent jerk, Basnight was snatched under the water. More blood pooled on the surface.
Grimes swore. “We’re dead, Captain.”
“Pray.”
Basnight’s blood excited the circle of sharks. They swam faster now, splashing at the surface violently, as if in a war dance.
A second shark broke away and swam toward the burning ship. Like the one that got Basnight, he turned and started swimming toward Eichenbrenner and Grimes.
The fin disappeared. “God have mercy!” Eichenbrenner said.
A second passed.
Then another.
Nothing.
Five seconds.
Still nothing.
Maybe God had heard his prayer.
“No!”
The shark’s powerful jaws clamped around Grimes’ arm. Grimes screamed, flailed, splashed in the water, and tried punching the creature on the nose with his fist. The shark dragged him across the surface of the water, away from the life ring. “Help me! Help!” Grimes’ screams even drowned out the sound of the helicopters.
With a jerk and a splash, Grimes vanished with the shark under the surface. Blood bubbled up from the spot where he had disappeared.
Eichenbrenner grasped the life ring hard. Coiling into a human ball, he tucked his knees tightly against his chest, as if that would somehow give the monsters less of a target to sniff.
Two fins circled his position now, in equidistant spots, each about ten yards from the life ring.
“If anyone is in the water, please swim aft of the ship! We need you to clear that smoke cover! This is the US Navy!”
Eichenbrenner cocked his head back, gazing at the spreading smoke cloud.
If God would part that cloud…
Still scrunched in a ball, he felt cramping set into his calves. He instinctively kicked his feet down into the water to relieve the pain. The sharks were circling faster now.
One of the sharks broke away, and just as before, began swimming away, toward the ship. Then the second also broke away. Both swam away from him.
They were now at least twenty yards away.
Then, as if choreographed by a trainer at Sea World, both sharks pivoted, one a time. Their vicious snouts took aim at him.
Swirling and splashing their tail fins, they started swimming back toward the life ring.
Fifteen yards. Ten yards.
His life flashed in front of him. His marriage. His divorce. His girls.
This was it.
Fred closed his eyes and remembered words his grandmother once taught him: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come…Thy will be done…”
Chut-ah-chut-ah-chut-ah-chut-ah-chut-ah-chut-ah-chut-ah-chut-ah!
The wall of water sprayed from left to right in a line right in front of the sharks.
The sharks went limp on the surface. They floated on their stomachs for a second, then rolled over, belly-up, limp and bleeding.
Eichenbrenner looked over his shoulder.
The rubber boat was bobbing in the water, perhaps twenty feet behind him.
Crouched in the front of the boat in a black wet suit, holding a black submachine gun with white smoke billowing from the barrel, the man with the rugged chin sported a triumphant grin.
Rambo had risen from the sea!
“I can nail the suckers if they’re close to the surface,” the man said. “But no guarantees if they’re under the water. Now we’ve got to get you out of there.”
“Dear Jesus!”
“Nope. I’m not him. But you can thank him if you want. Lieutenant McKinley Kennedy, US Navy SEALs, at your service, sir,” the man said. “This is Senior Chief Comstock.” Eichenbrenner had not noticed the other man in the back of the boat. “Give me your hand, sir.”
Eichenbrenner reached up. The SEAL’s grip was an iron vise. The SEAL heaved, and instantly, Eichenbrenner was lying on his back in the bottom of the rubber boat.
“Any other survivors?” Kennedy asked.
“I don’t know. The sharks got several of my crew. Some tried swimming out from under the smoke. I was the last off the ship.”