“Those engineers at Electric Boat think of everything.”
The water finally stopped pouring in. “The pressure is equalized,” said the captain. “We can open the escape hatch now.” He pointed down, into the water.
“I’ll go first!” said Haggerty, not giving them a chance to discuss it. He then dived below the waterline and disappeared. They heard a clank outside as the doctor egressed.
“You’re next,” said the captain.
“Are you sure?” said Pete.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the top.”
Pete took a deep breath, then stuck his head underwater. In the murk, and with the ship’s steep angle, it was difficult to find the escape hatch, even in the close confines of the trunk. He hit his head hard on the way under, and fought off the natural instinct to avoid diving into a dark, water-filled pipe.
But once he was inside, the natural buoyancy of the hood and his own body took over. He made his way through the open hatch and felt himself being pulled to the surface, and before he could even remember to say HO HO HO, he broke through, his head once again exposed to bright sunshine and clear air.
McCallister came up soon after. The orange raft popped up immediately after that, and began to unfold and inflate immediately with a hiss. They ripped off their hoods and paddled toward the raft. The captain pulled himself in first, then leaned over and pulled Pete in with a strong arm.
“Over there!” said the captain. The motor canister was bobbing a few feet away. They both leaned over and paddled toward it until the captain could pull it onboard.
He ripped off the protective casing and soon had the parts spread out on the floor of the boat. He popped out the blades of the propeller, pulled off a plastic tag that activated the battery. He then hung it off the back of the boat, on a mount that was designed for it. The final step was to thread together two small poles, the larger of which had a ribbed rubber grip: the till. It was done in minutes. He pushed a button, and Pete could hear the engine switch on.
“It’s got a high-capacity battery, and only one speed,” said the captain. “It’ll last about thirty minutes.”
Pete looked forward. Hana Moody was still standing on the front of the ship, waving his white shirt; she hadn’t noticed him escaping with Finn yet. And Haggerty, he saw, was eagerly swimming away. Toward the Typhon boat.
“Haggerty!” shouted the captain. “We’re over here!”
Haggerty looked back briefly but continued swimming toward the other submarine. It didn’t surprise Pete at alclass="underline" a final confirmation.
“Head for the shore?” said the captain.
“No,” said Pete. “The other direction.”
“To rescue Haggerty?”
“No — screw him. I just want to get close to them.”
“Why?” said Finn. “Don’t they want to kill us?”
“Probably,” said Pete. “I’ll explain later. But do me a favor — lie down. And try to look sick.”
The captain did as Pete asked, and he turned the boat toward the Typhon sub, about one hundred yards from the Polaris. They were gaining on Haggerty, who was frantically swimming away from them. Pete looked down at the captain, who looked, for all the world, like a dying man.
Pete saw a woman on the main deck, looking shocked as they approached. She gave an order, and men with rifles trained their guns and shot — bullets whistled over their heads. His gambit was having the desired effect. Pete began waving his arms frantically and pointing at the lifeless body of McCallister, as if begging Carlson to let them aboard. The small engine of the boat whined loudly, making it seem like they were approaching much faster than they were. In fact, they were moving against the tide and the waves, and were barely making progress. The distance and the motion of the waves, he hoped, would keep them out of the range of the riflemen.
A shot cracked against the casing of the motor, splitting it, but it kept running.
“Are you sure about this?” said the captain.
“Not at all!” Pete said. He kept the little boat pointed at Carlson.
They were close enough that he could see the concern in her eyes. Playing the part perfectly, McCallister began coughing violently, and leaned his head over the side to spit out a giant glob of phlegm. Carlson suddenly relented, shouted another order, and the ocean behind her began to churn as her submarine’s massive engines turned and pulled the submarine away from them.
She was backing away from them, panicked that a deadly epidemic was heading her way in an orange life raft. Just as Pete had intended.
The huge engines worked quickly, and the drones continued to fly in their seemingly random patterns overhead. Carlson wasn’t worried at all about the drones, Pete could see; she was fixated on the raft that seemed to be speeding toward her with a cargo of disease. She backed up twenty feet, then thirty. Even as they moved away, though, some of the sharpshooters’ shots came closer to the raft, as the men adjusted their aim. Pete could hear bullets whistling by them in the boat, and some shots hit the water so closely that spray hit them, and drummed against the side of the raft. Come on, thought Pete, cross that line.
The Typhon submarine continued to pull backward while the sharpshooters shot at them. The drones dived over both submarines and the raft without dropping their bombs.
Then finally, as Carlson and her ship crossed that invisible five-mile line in the ocean, the drones attacked.
The first bomb exploded on the main deck of the Typhon ship with a loud pop, seemingly causing no damage on the thick metal. It had landed on the aftmost part of the deck, far from where the men were boarding their inflatables — the part of the submarine, Pete realized, that crossed the five-mile radius first. Carlson’s crew looked at her in shock. She looked at Pete with a grim smile.
“Kill the engine!” said Pete, and McCallister quickly sat up, turned off their small outboard, and turned the till so that they stopped moving forward.
While the first bomb had done little damage, the other drones were attacking in a frenzy now, dropping their bombs in a fury as the marines on the main deck took cover and scrambled to get in their small boats. The big submarine continued to move backward, exposing more and more of herself to the drones’ attack. The drones ignored the inflatables, told by their programming to focus on the big target.
It was fascinating to watch.
The whole Typhon boat was now under attack. Some of the bombs began to have an effect, opening holes on spots on the deck that had previously been hit and weakened. Carlson realized what had happened and cut the engines, the water no longer churning behind the boat. But she weighed thousands of tons, and her momentum was slow to reverse, carrying her farther into the free-fire zone.
In the shower of bombs that the drones dropped upon her, one fell straight into the conning tower. A shower of sparks shot into the sky, followed by a column of black smoke. The other drones took note, and poured more bombs into the wound.
As they did, each flew away in an orderly straight line, back to Eris Island to reload.
The two inflatable boats from the Typhon were now full. A few men, some wounded terribly, were swimming in the sea. Their shipmates stopped firing at Pete and McCallister as they tried to pull their comrades aboard. The submarine was mortally wounded, smoke and fire pouring from multiple holes, the ship listing badly to port.
“She’s dead,” said McCallister.
“You’re sure?” said Pete.
“Listen,” he said. “You can hear the air banks exploding.…”