If the two SEALs in front of me were worried about getting shot in the back, they didn’t show it. I wondered if I looked as unruffled. I wasn’t uncomfortable with my role, with the automatic rifle I was cradling or with Larsen’s .45 tucked into my waistband. And the other possible task Larsen had given me was lurking in the dark places of my brain. I kept it sequestered there.
Larsen had put his hand on my shoulder after Grimm went aft to get Moretti and Reyes.
“You know there’s a chance of failure. None of us believe we’re going to fail, but sometimes it’s not…” The right words had seemed just out of his reach. Or maybe he just didn’t want to say them. Instead of finishing his sentence, he had raised his eyebrows, looking for acknowledgment.
It’s not in the cards, is what you want to say, I had thought as I nodded.
“If none of us come out of that room, and if the Serpent’s not dead, you need to make sure it doesn’t get away. Do you understand?”
I did. He had made this point before, and there was no reason to respond.
“Campbell might be killed, too. There’s no guarantee both of you will be alive to take care of this. So I’m going to give you the same thing I gave him.”
Both of our weapons had been pointed at the floor, producing a reflected twilight. The pipes, wires and machinery in the background were black-on-black, unseeable.
Out of the artificial night had come Larsen’s hand, reaching toward me. In its palm had been a hand-sized gray slab with a black piece of plastic embedded in it.
“It’s C-4. Three door-busting charges molded together. Enough to put a hole in the pressure hull, I think. But if you want to make sure the sub goes down, put it on the oil or fuel tanks in the engine room. Obviously, the torpedoes would make a pretty big bang, too.”
The explosives had been lighter than I expected and had a greasy texture.
“The timer’s simple. It’s got a readout like a digital watch, you see there? All you have to do is use these arrows to set the minutes and seconds. Then push the red button. You can’t disarm it after it’s set, and if you pull the trigger out of the brick, it will fire.”
“So once it starts, there’s no going back.”
“No going back, no backing out. I don’t think you’ll need to use this. But you know how important it is. I know you do.”
“Yes. I can do it.”
And he had nodded, letting go of my shoulder as Moretti and Reyes had arrived for their briefing, hustling down the stepladder.
Now, as I squatted there in the control room, waiting for the shooting to start, I could feel the explosives in the pouch he had given me, hanging from a loop on my jeans. I tried to banish the sensation and focus on the immediate future.
Tried to pretend that I still was just a forensic scientist, not a conscript in a fast-dwindling army. Tried to ignore the blood-sodden body on the floor beside me. Tried to follow my own advice and allow pleasant memories to keep my thoughts from descending into inescapable darkness. There was going to be a tomorrow, I kept telling myself.
But I had to survive today first.
We had all been listening. No sound of the hatch opening. No signal. The Serpent was still there. Was it aware of what we were planning? Did it even want to avoid our final assault? It had shown little desire to back away from conflict, but I agreed with Larsen and Grimm: If the SEALs did this the way it was supposed to be done, there was no way the Serpent would be able to fight off the two-pronged attack. It was too small a space, and there would be too many bullets in the air.
There was no sign-to us, anyway-that two SEALs were creeping through the corpses on the lower deck, either. If they were quiet, evading even the Serpent’s enhanced hearing, surprise might be total.
The agony of waiting was exquisite. I thought of Campbell in the captain’s room; he must feel even more helpless. The bleeding from his leg had stopped, for the most part, but his cognitive functions seemed impaired. No way of knowing for sure at this point, but I guessed that his concussion was worse than I had diagnosed it as being. Forget secrecy, I thought; if this attack goes as planned, our priority afterward should be getting Campbell to a hospital before he slipped beyond help. But I knew Larsen wouldn’t see it that way.
After checking him one final time, I had left Campbell sitting on the edge of the bed-he’d refused to lie down-keeping the cone of light from his assault rifle pinned on the doorway. Other than that focused illumination, he sat in darkness and anticipation. I turned to look at him as Larsen led me out of the room, and he had smiled. A gentle, kind expression that I was becoming used to. More than Larsen’s plan or the massed firepower of the rest of the SEALs, it reassured me.
“Hey,” he had said. “Keep your finger on the trigger and the barrel pointed downrange. I’ve got your back covered. But you owe me a beer on dry land.”
“Deal,” I’d replied, and I’d meant it. That was the last time I can remember smiling.
Clang.
Reyes and Grimm hadn’t moved, but somehow their shadowy shapes seemed more alert. Ready to pounce and kill.
But where were the second two knocks? I was bowled over by billowing panic and sudden realization. It might not be the second team signaling us. It might be Grimm’s makeshift alarm sounding. I swallowed a scream. How could we tell whether the Serpent was escaping or the attack was on? How could…
Clang. Clang.
The world slowed down again.
I don’t remember breathing. Grimm grabbed the dogging wheel and gave it a vicious spin, allowing the wheel’s momentum to do most of the work of unlocking it. Behind him, Reyes’s right hand came off his rifle and danced in front of his chest. He was making the sign of the cross.
The wheel stopped, and Grimm shoved the door ajar with his shoulder as he bulled through. Reyes followed, his head entering the opening as soon as Grimm’s combat boots were clear. They were no more than moving outlines now, made sharp by the jerking lights at the other end of the electrical compartment.
So the SEALs were coming through the aft hatch, too. If the lights overhead had been functioning, the scene would have been more real. I might have seen their fluid, sure entrance, four rifles pivoting to strip away all the compartment’s defenses.
But their actions were lost in the maelstrom of shadows. Boots slapped against the deck, metal struck metal as the doors swung against the adjacent bulkheads. No shouting or talking. The shifting patches of light and dark made shapes emerge where there were none and blurred perception of what was alive and what was not. The room’s walls seemed to undulate.
I’m not sure when the shooting started. There was a short, stuttering burst that made the silence afterward sound absolute. Then, a voice.
“Reyes! Chacho, please, no!”
I couldn’t tell who said it. The voice was strong and full of earnest emotion.
Then the room exploded with gunfire. Someone fell on the other side of the hatch, passing through the light from my rifle too fast for me to make out who it was. Sprays of red on the lip of the door were left behind.
The shooting continued, and I found myself standing, trying to sprint across the control room. My feet didn’t react as fast as the rest of my body, however, and I fell face-first not out of panic, but clumsiness. I caught myself, the MP-5 smacking into the deck and skittering away as I let it go. The light on the barrel winked out.
I lay there, looking up. I was more shocked by the sudden darkness than by the violence blossoming in the next compartment.
Sparks now had joined the visual cacophony as bullets plowed into the instrumentation and controls. I heard a scream. It wailed and wailed, an alto counterpoint to the firing, then just disappeared, as if it had been severed from its source.