“Instead of sitting there sucking up oxygen, why don’t you two start looking for these charges?”
Juan and Dave looked clueless. They were techno geeks, not bomb disposal experts.
“Now,” Jack bellowed at them. “Go!”
“Captain, what was Sam trying to tell us about the rats?”
“No idea, Coulson. Not a goddamn clue.”
“Durand?” Jack turned to the XO, their last shot at solving the puzzle.
“When I was doing nuke training at Goose Creek, I heard some of the old timers working there talking about how they used to kill rats aboard a submarine, but that’s all I can think of.”
“How?” asked Jack.
“How what?”
“How did they kill the rats?”
“Fire extinguishers. They’d freeze the little fuckers to death with a blast of a CO2. If one of them needed a fire extinguisher, he’d say ‘hand me that rat killer over there’ or something like that”
“That’s it!” Jack’s face lit up. “Okay, Durand, you’re with me. We’re going to round up as many extinguishers as we can get our hands on.”
“I’ll go help the nerd brigade find the explosives,” Jameson called over his shoulder as he ran after the two scientists.
Durand started unclipping the control room fire extinguishers from the bulkheads, piling them up below the periscope.
“Mind telling me what we’re doing exactly?” Durand asked.
But Jack had already run through the aft hatch on his way to find more extinguishers.
If this didn’t work, the world could be swallowed up by the darkness of another Reich.
But they wouldn’t live to see it.
Failure is not an option, Jack kept telling himself as he ran the length of the boat.
“We’ve found them,” Jameson reported entering the control room. “What now?”
“How many are there and can we move them?” asked Jack.
Jameson shook his head. “Half a dozen, small but well placed to sink us fast. I wouldn’t be trying to move them, though. They’re all wired to some pretty high tech looking touch screen timers. If they have inertial sensors, we’re screwed.”
Jack considered that for a moment. “Here’s the plan — Juan and Dave, grab as many of those extinguishers as you can and follow me. The rest of us,” he looked to Durand and Jameson, “will carry what these guys can’t and head to the first charge.”
“What happens then?” Durand looked perplexed.
“You’ll see. If it works, that is.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Durand already knew the answer. They all did.
Chapter 59
Nellie was home.
Her battery packs had run down to their minimum safe operating levels, initiating a ‘limp home’ subroutine in her programming. Nellie had followed the homing signal continuously broadcast from the Barracuda and was preparing to be retrieved and recharged before resuming her survey mission.
<Initiating search and recovery lighting protocols>
Chapter 60
The timer on the cell phone sized touch screen counted down to detonation. If they were all set to blow at the same time, and Jack was working on the assumption that they were, there wouldn’t be enough time to deal with all six charges. The timer showed 3 minutes until detonation.
Unless…
“I’m going to do this one with Durand, so watch closely. Then, Durand, Juan and I will keep working toward the bow and do the other two charges.” Jack spoke urgently and paused to catch a breath. “Captain, you and Dave will work aft and do the remaining three charges. Right?”
They all nodded but clearly had no idea what they were supposed to do.
“Durand, get ready to pass another extinguisher when I say.” Jack then began blasting the C4 charge with a jet of CO2 from the extinguisher. As soon as it began to spurt empty, he threw it aside.
“Now!”
Durand pulled the safety pin from an extinguisher and handed it to Jack who continued to blast the scuttle charge until it was white and crystalline.
The timer kept counting down.
“It didn’t work,” squeaked Juan. Sweat dripped from his face.
“OK, you three go.” Jameson and Dave scurried aft cradling arms full of fire extinguishers.
“Durand, Juan, with me, let’s go.” Together the three made their way toward the bow.
“Where is it?” Jack asked Juan.
The man was trembling like a schoolboy after his first kiss and stared blankly at Jack as if he didn’t understand the question.
Jack placed both hands on Juan’s shoulders. “Son, I know this has been a real shitty day for you but it’s not been all that much fun for me, either, but trust me, if you don’t show me where those fucking explosives are, it’s gonna get a whole lot worse. I need you to stay with me and stay focused. Are you with me?”
Juan’s eyes began to focus on Jack. He wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his sleeve and pointed to a rack full of torpedoes in the next compartment.
“Good man, come on, let’s go,” Jack spoke as reassuringly as he could.
The next explosive responded to the CO2 treatment the same as the first. The C4 charge turned white and frosty but the timer continued to count down.
Juan didn’t need to be coaxed, he was already lugging the remaining extinguishers to the third charge by the time they’d finished emptying a second one on the second explosive.
Jack and Durand caught up with him near the torpedo tubes where he stood pointing at a charge stuck to the bulkhead.
The counter counted down.
00:09.
Jack snatched a fire extinguisher from Juan and directed a blast at the final explosive.
00:06
It ran dry.
00:05
Juan shouldered Jack out of the way and began to empty the contents of their last extinguisher at the C4 charge. His knuckles turned white he squeezed the handle so hard.
00:02
The last extinguisher sputtered.
Empty.
00:01
The three men stared wide eyed at the explosive package, waiting for it to detonate.
A second later, it did.
Chapter 61
Countdown to impact: 0.20 minutes.
Chapter 62
00:00
The detonator exploded.