And lately, Zubrin, Davis, and Schiffer had all come down with savage bouts of diarrhea. Sometimes the guards came to escort them to the lavatory in time… and sometimes they didn't. Once, when he was a kid, DuPont had found a burlap bag in his father's barn and tried pulling it over his head. The bag was empty, but once had held manure. The indescribably foul smell in that bag, as DuPont remembered the experience, was no worse than right here in this tiny compartment.
Sometimes, when the submarine was running on the surface, a vent in the passageway outside washed the corridor with a stream of cool, fresh air that tasted like pure heaven compared to the stench of their prison. Of course, after walking that passageway at such a time, the air back in their room seemed that much worse by comparison.
All the prisoners had slumped into deep depression. There was no conversation any more, no talk at all save at long, rare intervals when someone asked to be taken to the bathroom. They sat or lay huddled on the steel deck; by agreement, the women had been given an upper bunk for their sole use, but every other square foot of space was taken up by cramped and unwashed, unshaven, unmoving bodies. The fear was palpable, a constant presence. They'd all heard the sounds hours ago when the submarine had attacked another vessel. They'd heard clearly the sharp twin hisses of torpedoes sliding into the ocean and, minutes, later, the heavy thuds and crashing noises marking the death of a ship. Since then, the sub had been running submerged, judging by the lack of wave action on the hull.
Who were they attacking? The Vietnamese? Was the Vietnamese navy looking for them, trying to hunt them down?
At times, DuPont found himself praying that the submarine would be found and sunk. It would, at least, end this nightmare of fear, claustrophobia, and stink.
Across the compartment, Schiffer groaned, placed a white hand across his belly, then rose unsteadily and picked his way past sprawled legs to the door. "Hey!" he shouted, thumping on the door. "Hey, out there! I gotta go!"
There was no answer, and Schiffer pounded on the door, harder.
"Jesus, Schiffer," Kingsfield said, making a face. "Just put a cork in your ass, for cryin' out loud."
"Leave him alone, man," Carle said. "When you gotta go…"
"Yeah, but he's makin' a fuckin' religion out of it."
"Watch your language, people," DuPont said. "We've got women in here."
"Fuck you," Kingsfield said. "They've heard fuckin' worse."
DuPont started to make a sharp response, then sagged back against the bulkhead, too exhausted, too wrung out to continue. It was astonishing how quickly the veneer of civilization — the polite language, manners, mutual respect, and simple caring for other people — could all vanish after just a few days of privation.
No one answered Schiffer's increasingly frantic pounding. At last, he turned away, yanked down his swim trunks and squatted over one of the buckets. Impossibly, or so it seemed to DuPont, the fetid stink of raw sewage grew worse. DuPont gagged against the odor, leaning back, squeezing shut his watering eyes, fighting down the nausea, the depression, the sheer terror. God, how much longer could they stand this torture?
Some time later, the door banged open and, as a sailor with an AK rifle stood guard from the passageway, a young sailor came in and removed the buckets, replacing them with clean ones. Instead of locking them in again, however, the armed guard stepped back and left the door open. A moment later, one of their captors strode in.
This was the one DuPont worried about the most. Kingsfield thought the guy might be Afghani. DuPont didn't know and didn't really care; what bothered him were the man's eyes, dark and probing and… arrogant was the word that came to mind. He wore no uniform but carried himself in front of the prisoners like a general, someone who would tolerate no disrespect, no rebellion. He stood inside the open doorway, fists on hips as he surveyed the captives. Then he pointed at the upper bunk where Ginger and Katie were seated and barked something in Arabic. Grinning through his scraggly beard, the guard stepped in, reaching up for Ginger's leg, his hand closing around her bare ankle. She screamed, pulling back from the edge of the bunk, kicking blindly…
"Just a goddamned fucking minute!" DuPont shouted, rising suddenly with a strength he'd had no idea he possessed. "Get your paws off of her!"
The guard, momentarily distracted, was holding his rifle casually with one hand, muzzle-down, and DuPont caught him by surprise. His wildly hurled fist connected with the side of the man's head and slammed him back into the bulkhead. DuPont whirled on the other man, stepping between him and the bunk. "I want to talk to whoever is in charge!" he shouted, his face inches from the Afghani's face. "You understand me? You speak English? I want to talk to the captain!"
The man spat something in Arabic. The guard was back, furious, his AK raised. DuPont didn't care. "I want someone who can talk to me in goddamn English!"
The guard swung his rifle, the butt connecting with DuPont's chest. Pain exploded through his body and he collapsed in a heap, gasping to draw breath.
The other men had roused however, and were moving forward, putting themselves between the women and DuPont. Kingsfield snarled something in Arabic, and both the guard and the Afghani blanched. As DuPont struggled to get back on his feet, the Afghani and Kingsfield snapped Arabic at each other, Kings-field defiant, the other shaking with rage.
Suddenly, the Afghani turned, pulled the AK assault rifle from the surprised guard's hands, and brought the muzzle up to Kingsfield's head. Kingsfield grappled with the man, trying to grab the weapon, but the rifle fired, the shot detonating like a bomb blast in the tiny room, and the side of the American's skull literally exploded in a spray of blood and brain and chunks of bone that splattered like hurled paint across half of the bulkhead at Kingsfield's back. The former Green Beret dropped, rag-doll limp.
In the stunned and ringing silence that followed, the guard, his eyes so wide they looked like they were starting from his face, took his weapon back and aimed it at them, sweeping it back and forth in tight, nervous arcs. The Afghani, his arm and sleeve covered with
Kingsfield's blood, screamed something unintelligible at them all before backing out of the room. The guard backed out after him, and the door slammed shut.
Carle knelt beside Kingsfield, but it was all too clear that the man was already dead.
My God, what have I done? DuPont thought. Now they're going to kill us all….
Virginia was under way once more, racing southwest at thirty knots on her way to her rendezvous with the Navy SEALs. Garrett slouched in his command seat, watching the view screen on the forward bulkhead with glum distraction. While ashore conferring with Captain Summers, he'd made a slight detour by the Navy exchange and tried calling Kazuko. He'd gotten her roommate, a woman who spoke only a few words of broken English, but who managed to convey the message that Kazuko was not home. "Kazuko go work," the woman had said over and over. "Kazuko go work." That meant she was working a flight. With a lot of patience and a lot of repetition, Garrett had finally learned that Kazuko had left that morning for a flight to Singapore. Ichi-ichi-ni-go bin—Flight 1125 if his rocky Japanese was working right.
Well, those were usually short layovers, a quick there-and-back. She'd be back in Tokyo in a few days. Maybe he could see her on the return leg of Virginia's deployment.