In was over in an instant. The hallway smelled of cordite, blood, and feces. A haze of eye-stinging smoke parted as Jefferson inched forward to make sure the girl, in a heap against the wall, was down for good. He saw that she was and only then lowered his weapon. He looked up at Scott standing with the unfired Sig held loosely in his right hand. He was covered with plaster dust and spattered with the girl’s blood and brain tissue. Red flecks clung to his cheeks and matted hair.
Jefferson eyed him up and down. Scott knew what he was thinking: Scott, hesitating, missing an opportunity to kill the Croatian, Karst, and now this. Scott looked at the girl — what was left of her — and felt sick, but he refused to give in to it.
He heard voices, turned, and saw Caserta and Leclerc dragging Ramos’s ruined body up the stairs. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Scott thought. Ramos dead; the girl who had killed him dead too, along with the others. The fear and rage he’d felt in his gut began to dissipate, but its effects made him question why any sane man would do what he had done. Scott wiped his bloody face on a sleeve. As if reading his mind, Jefferson threw him a look and said, “It’s too late in the game for regrets.”
“It’s never too late,” Scott said and jammed the unfired Sig into a thigh holster.
Jefferson held Scott’s gaze for a beat, then went to Caserta and Leclerc, who had laid Ramos out in the hallway on a remains pouch. They stood looking down at him.
Jefferson said, “What’s the body count outside?”
“Thirty-three,” Leclerc said. He pointed to the dead girl. “Who’s that?”
“The cunt who wasted Ramos.”
“Christ.”
Caserta started taking weapons and equipment off Ramos’s body, preparing it for underwater transport to the ASDS.
“They’re still missing,” Scott said.
Jefferson rounded. “Who?”
“The other two girls — and Fat.”
“I don’t know about the girls, but for sure that fat shit can’t have gotten very far.”
Scott put up a hand, then a finger to his ear, and while the others listened in on the squad line, he said, “Go ahead, Chief.”
“Comms from Reno,” said Brodie. “That Kilo’s back. Cap’n Deacon thinks the Chinaman may be on to us and might be huntin’ for our ride home.”
“Copy. Wait one.”
Scott checked his watch. They’d been ashore not more than forty-five minutes, but it seemed like hours. Deitrich and Allen were anchored offshore in the ASDS, waiting for word that the op had been wrapped up. Now they had to sweat out a possible contact with a Chinese sub.
“Decision time,” Jefferson said to Scott as he watched Caserta and Leclerc working on Ramos’s body. “Sounds like we aren’t going to have time to sweep this place clean and get out of town before that Kilo finds the parked mini-sub.”
Scott touched his throat mike. “Chief, we’ve got one of Fat’s girls up here, dead. Seen any sign of the other two?”
“Negative.”
“Any sign of Fat?”
“Nope.”
“All right, you and Van Kirk start wrapping up. I’ll get back to you.”
“So?…” Jefferson said.
“So we split up. You, Caserta, and Leclerc take Ramos back to the mini-sub, mate up with the Reno before that damned Kilo sniffs out both subs. Brodie, Van Kirk, and I’ll stay and search for Fat and scoop up any intel we can find. You pick us up after it’s clear.”
“Too risky. So is the three of you hunting for Fat and those two girls. Hell, you saw what this one was capable of.”
“Look, if we split up now you all stand a good chance of getting back to the sub in one piece and with Ramos’s body before that Chinese skipper finds the mini-sub.”
“Don’t worry, Scott, I’m not planning to die here.”
“Good. Now shove off.”
“No way. Don’t try to be a hero and do it all yourself.”
Scott jerked his head at Ramos. “There’s only one hero here.”
“You got that right.” Jefferson broke out a fresh magazine for his M4. “Can Deacon handle that Kilo?”
“He’ll do whatever he has to do to make sure we get a ride home.”
Jefferson nodded that he understood what that meant and the risks it entailed.
Caserta and Leclerc had finished their work. Now they stood, weapons ready, anticipating Scott’s next order.
“All right, let’s find Fat,” he said.
“Conn, Sonar, that Kilo’s just about dead in the water.”
“Conn, aye,” Deacon said. Okay, the Kilo was hunting for the mini-sub. How? He glanced at Kramer. “Rus, those Kilos, if I remember correctly, have an advanced digital sonar system, right?”
“Yes, sir. An MGK 400 EM.”
“I’m thinking out loud here, Rus. He’s seen the fires burning on Matsu Shan, knows something’s happened, probably reported it to Northern Fleet Headquarters. Maybe they suspect Uncle Sam’s involved and that we’ve got a spec-ops team ashore. Why would we do that? He hasn’t a clue but sure as hell wants to find out what we’re up to. So… might the Kilo’s MGK system have a MAD — magnetic anomaly detector?”
Kramer thought it over. “I’m not sure, Captain. I’ll call it up in our system, see what the specs are. If it does—”
“If it does, the Chinaman might not have any trouble locating the ASDS.”
“Sir, parts of it are titanium, which as you know, is nonmagnetic and—”
“Parts of it, but not all of it are made from titanium. The rest of it is made from HY-80 and HY-100 steel. And if that MAD gear is up to snuff, the Chinaman shouldn’t have any trouble locating a big hunk of steel sitting on the bottom of the ocean. Hell, she’s a sitting duck.”
Kramer called the Kilo’s combat system up in the Reno’s archives and directed Deacon’s attention to the computer display. “You’re on the money, sir: MGK systems in Kilo 636s have a MAD detector good for ranges of up to two nautical miles—”
“Excuse me, Captain,” said the comms chief. “Incoming from Commander Scott, visual crawler only, can’t get their voice transmit.”
Deacon and Kramer broke off as the incoming message inched across the RDT’s display monitor.
“Christ, they want us to run interference on that Kilo for them while they hunt for Fat,” said Deacon. “Well, they better hurry, ’cause that goddamn Kilo’s breathing down our necks.” Deacon needed only a moment to decide what to do next. “Make ready tubes one and two.”
Kramer, Fire-control officer, ordered, “Torpedo room, Fire-control. Make ready tubes one and two. Stand by to open outer doors.”
Moments later the torpedo room confirmed the order and Kramer relayed it to Deacon. “Captain, tubes one and two ready in all respects.”
“Very well, Fire-control. Firing point procedures on Master One.”
The BSY-2 team and fire-control coordinator already had a TMA solution on the Kilo.
Kramer reported, “Target bearing zero-four-zero, course one-seven-zero. Speed two knots. Range sixty-five hundred yards.”
Deacon pictured the situation topside: A virtual traffic jam, and with no way to duke it out with the Kilo in private. A 21-inch Mk-48 ADCAP torpedo carried a 295-kilogram warhead of PBXN-103. If they sank that Chinese Kilo, the explosion would be felt in Beijing and for sure would rock Washington, D.C.
“Very well,” Deacon said. “Stand by—”
“Conn, Sonar.”
Deacon opened the mike. “What’s up now, Chief?”
“We’ve picked up a pair of diesel engines. Pretty sure it’s that junk what belongs to the drug-lord, Fat.”