“Boys with toys,” Emily muttered. “Let’s just stay clear and keep an eye on them ‘til the Navy gets here, yeah?”
“Sounds like a plan.” Boone stuck the gun and mags in his shorts and looked out across the water towards the submarine. They were quite some distance away now. Stooping, he picked up the binoculars he had dropped on the deck when scrambling for the wheel. Sid lifted the marine Nikons he’d found below and joined him in scanning their quarry.
“I see four men,” Sid said. “Two with the guns. Another pair at the stern.”
Boone watched these new figures as they pulled and tugged at the bent rudder. “They’re trying to unjam the rudder.” After a second, one of the figures took out a cylinder from a toolbox at their feet and shook it. He leaned over the side and appeared to be spraying something black on the hull.
“Is that…?” Boone began. “You ever see that TV commercial where this guy sprays rubber on a boat he’s cut in half and then drives it around?”
“Patching a hole, maybe,” Sid said.
Boone looked back to the man at the rudder. He was black, with broad shoulders and a do-rag tight to his scalp—he seemed to be working a crowbar against the base of the rudder. After a moment he stepped back and worked it back and forth. “Crap,” Boone muttered.
“I see it.” Sid grabbed the handset of his marine radio and flipped to marine channel 16. “To all naval and Coast Guard units, this is pleasure craft Wavy Davey requesting immediate assistance. The submarine you are looking for, we have it in sight, on the surface approximately halfway between Saba and Sint Maarten, please respond, over.” He repeated this message twice before a Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard radio operator came on the channel and asked for his precise location. Sid looked at the GPS and provided the coordinates. “Please advise if you have any assets able to reach our location within five minutes, over?”
“One moment, over.” Twenty interminable seconds passed, then: “Be advised, all assets are diverting from the approaches to U.S. Virgin Islands. One helicopter operating off the HNLMS Zeeland is refueling now. It could be on site in approximately forty minutes.”
“Forty minutes!” Emily exclaimed.
“Does it have… I don’t know… depth charges or torpedoes or something?” Sid asked.
“Wait one.” Another pause. “Negative, the helicopter is primarily for search and rescue and anti-piracy. The United States Navy has anti-submarine assets on the way but they will arrive later.”
“Understood. Wavy Davey out.” He set the handset back.
“The two men who were working on the stern are heading back toward the conning tower,” Boone said. “We have to ram it before it can submerge again.”
Emily sighed. “I was afraid you were gonna say that. But you’re right.”
Sid had gone a couple shades paler. “Are you sure?”
“We lost the anchor. If they submerge again there’s not much else we can do to them. Besides, now they know we’re onto them and if that sub can go much deeper, they’ll be able to lose us with just this fishfinder looking for them. And no one equipped to find a submarine is anywhere near. If they get up to speed, they’ll hit the cruise ships long before anyone equipped to sink them shows up.”
“Whatever we’re gonna do, let’s do it now,” Emily said, putting on one of the life vests. The others quickly followed suit.
Boone took another look through the binos. “The two gunmen are still there. Probably gonna stay up till the last second. Sid, can you set up in the anchor locker hatch? You can keep your feet on the ladder and brace yourself against the edge of the opening. Once the boat goes up on plane the bow will pitch up. You’ll have some cover and you can lay down some fire on them on the approach whenever it dips. You probably won’t hit anything but maybe you can keep them on their toes—make them miss.”
Sid let out a shuddering breath. “All right… yeah… I can do that.” He grabbed a couple extra magazines from the hidey hole and headed down the ladder.
“Emily, put that kill-switch lanyard on your wrist, in case we hit hard.”
“Where will you be?”
“Right beside you.” He looked down as Sid made his way across the bow. “Get ready to punch it. Aim for their stern. Less risk to us, and we’ve damaged it already.”
“It’s also the part of the boat that isn’t packed with explosives,” Emily said. “So there’s that, too.”
“Oh, yeah. Good point.” Ana Muñoz had told them the cocaine compartment was in the bow.
As they watched, the submarine slowly began to move forward, a small wake developing. Below them, Sid positioned himself in the hatch in the bow. Sighting down the barrel of his borrowed weapon, he threw a thumbs-up over his shoulder.
“Hang on, Boone!” Emily cried, shoving the throttle to the stops.
“I’ve almost sealed the inside of the breach,” Samarkandi said, coming forward from the engine room, the smell of rubber clinging to his nostrils. “Where’s the other can?”
Zougam found it in a crate and tossed it to him. “Will the seal hold?”
“I think so, but we shouldn’t dive below fifty feet. Also, the starboard engine is destroyed, so we can’t use reverse thrust on alternate propellers to assist with turns. We need the rudder—tell me it’s working!”
“I’ve got her behaving well enough,” Lenox said. “We won’t be doing any zig zags but I can keep us on a bearing. But we’ll need to dive to use it, of course.”
Samarkandi shook his head. I should have listened. Popov had actually recommended rudder redundancy, with a second rudder below, but he had talked the Russian out of it since it would have made it difficult to make the maiden voyage along the shallow jungle river to the sea.
“How fast can we go?” asked Zougam.
“If we take her down to fifty, we should be able to reach seven knots. We are less than fifteen miles from the cruise ships—we can hit them in under two hours.”
A voice called out from above. “The boat is coming back!”
“I need two minutes!” Samarkandi cried, dashing aft.
Zougam spun the periscope around. Though distant, the boat was rushing straight at them, its bow lifted partway out of the water. To him, it looked like a fishing boat. Who are these fools? “Kill them!” he shouted up to the Oukabir brothers.
“Shit!” Boone cried as muzzle flashes appeared from the men on the submarine. One was seated on the deck in an odd crouch, his elbows propped on his knees. The other was in the hatch opening, weapon braced against the side of the conning tower. He looked over at Emily. Her face was a mask of concentration as she craned her head to see the submarine. “Em, please, get your head down!”
“I need to see!” she shouted. “This boat pitches up at this speed.”
Shit, she’s right. He looked down at Sid. The Saban’s upper torso was braced in the hatch, probably not even visible to the men, his assault rifle’s barrel wobbling as the boat bounced along the chop. More flashes, and this time, a round ricocheted off one of the supports for the canopy. Emily yelped, but stayed focused. They’re going to shoot at her, unless I give them something else to focus on. Moving forward to the cupola in front of the console, he knelt and gripped Sid’s pistol in both hands, bracing it as best he could. At this distance he had little chance of hitting either man, but if he could strike the conning tower, at least he could distract the gunman braced against it. Aiming carefully, he squeezed the trigger twice. Nothing. The gunman continued to fire, unfazed by Boone’s ineffective shots.
Boone was about to try again when a rapid trio of loud pops sounded from the bow. Sid had fired a burst. On the submarine, the seated man replied with his own longer burst and Boone could hear bullets striking the bow. The terrorist by the conning tower fired again as well and Boone heard another round strike the bridge console. He leveled the P99 again, bracing it on the edge of t
he cockpit. Breathing out, he let himself relax, clearing his mind and letting himself feel the rise and fall of the Wavy Davey’s bow as it tore through the waves. Concentrating, he aimed for the conning tower, and just as the bow reached its peak and began to pitch down, he fired once. This time the gunman by the tower flinched, ducking back into the hatch for a moment.
By now, the boat was less than two hundred yards from the sub, less than ten seconds from impact at the speed Emily was sustaining. Sid fired another three-round burst, paused, then fired again as they came within a hundred yards. His target was in the midst of changing a magazine when one of the rounds from this second burst struck home. The man jerked, but rammed home his magazine and lurched to his feet, screaming something as he began to empty the clip. Another burst from Sid and the man was thrown backward from the deck, disappearing into the waters behind the sub. Time seemed to slow as the other terrorist swung his gun toward the policeman and the Viking ate up the remaining distance.
Traveling at thirty-eight knots, the Wavy Davey smashed into the stern of the sub, crumpling the port dive-plane, staving in the hull and bending the just-repaired-rudder almost horizontal. The boat pushed the submarine’s stern across the water, turning her slightly. The remaining terrorist tumbled backward into the hatch and Sid was jerked violently, tumbling down into the anchor locker, his assault rifle skidding across the bow before falling overboard. Boone had braced himself and managed to keep his balance while Emily lost her grip on the wheel and pitched sideways out of her chair, striking the side of the cockpit— conveniently, her life-vest absorbed the impact and she quickly scrambled back to the wheel
The sound of the engine was strangely absent and Boone could hear a rushing, bubbling sound as water gushed into a fresh breach in the hull of the submarine. The boat was hung up on the twisted stern of the sub—Emily reached over and grabbed the throttle, pulling it down into reverse. Nothing happened. Boone scrambled to the side of the console.
“The kill-switch! When you fell—”
Boone stopped talking, his instinct telling him to turn around, turn now! The open hatch in the conning tower was there, just to his left; the terrorist who had fallen back was gripping the edge of the hatch with one hand and raising an assault rifle with the other. Without thinking, Boone raised the handgun and fired three rounds into the man, sending him tumbling back into the hatch.
Sayyid crashed limply to the bottom of the ladder, blood pouring from his neck. Rachid had probably achieved martyrdom as well, for there was no more shooting up top. Zougam staggered to his feet, stepping over the body and dashing up the ladder to pull the hatch shut. “The hatch is closed!” he shouted frantically. “How bad is the damage? Can we dive?”
Samarkandi barked a bitter laugh, coming forward from the rapidly filling engine compartment. “Oh, we will dive. We are finished.”
Zougam’s eyes welled with tears. “Then we will take these infidels with us.” He started toward the bow compartment. “Lenox! Arm the explosives!”
“Hang on!” Emily had replaced the key in the ignition and fired up the engine, sending the boat into reverse. It pulled free with a sudden lurch and then they were skidding backward, the convertible’s engines stuttering. One of them abruptly coughed and quit.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Emily said quietly, idling the working engine and checking the gauges.
Boone kept his eyes on the hatch in the rear of the conning tower. A moment ago it had slammed shut. The sub’s decks were awash and she was slowly sinking. Below, Sid climbed out of the anchor locker hatch and looked at the submarine for a moment before turning aft. He was wincing as he made his way unsteadily across the bow. “Think I cracked a rib,” he called up. “But we did it! They’re not going anywhere. We can sit on them til the authorities—”
“No,” Boone said, a terrible realization rising inside. “Their sub is sinking, they’ll never reach Sint Maarten… but they’ve still got ten tons of explosives. And they’re not the surrendering type.”
“Oh my God,” Emily said softly. “Sid! Grab hold of something!” She turned the wheel, shifting out of reverse and slowly pushing the throttle forward. The remaining engine protested and their speed slowly rose. “If this other engine quits…” she said.
“It won’t. It knows you’re at the wheel,” Boone said.
Emily glanced aside at him, a little smile tugging at the side of her mouth. “All right, then,” she said, a nervous quaver in her voice. She slammed the throttle to the stops. The boat accelerated but was moving noticeably slower than before.
Boone looked back at the submarine as they slowly added distance—it was still too close. Boone came behind Emily and wrapped his arms around her. He told himself it was to shield her from any flying shrapnel but he knew there was more to it than that. “We’ll make it,” he said against her ear. Boone continued to hold her tight as the Wavy Davey struggled to reach safety.
Samarkandi watched as Lenox connected the primary leads, linking the port and starboard rows of explosives. Zougam held the master detonator, his body tense with anticipation. They had felt their adversary tear free but Samarkandi knew that an explosion of this much Semtex would likely rip the boat to pieces before it could reach a safe distance. You also know that if you descended a little before detonating, the underwater pressure waves would be even more devastating. So why didn’t you flood the ballast tanks, Hamid? The answer came immediately, accompanied by a rush of memories—among them, a flock of flamingos taking off into a moonlit sky, the ocean waves lapping against the Venezuelan coast. Because… because I don’t want to die.
All at once, a part of him awakened. He’d heard its voice before—questioning his decisions, expressing doubts—but he had always crushed that voice under a mental heel, reminding himself the infidels has robbed him of his brother. Another memory: Igor Popov’s lifeless eyes staring up at him. Realization struck with full force. I don’t want to be a martyr.
Lenox’s voice came from the bow: “Dat’s da last connection!”
“No,” Samarkandi said softly, then hurled himself at Zougam, grabbing at the master detonator. His frantic fingers snagged one of the leads and pulled it from the small handheld trigger.
“Hamid! What are you doing?” Zougam shouted, pushing at the Uzbek with his free hand. “Lenox! Stop him!”
Lenox’s footfalls were already pounding on the deck as he rushed from the bow compartment and threw himself on Samarkandi, his powerful arms locking a chokehold on the neck of the smaller man and pulling him back against his broad chest.
“You fool! Now paradise will be denied to you,” Zougam rasped as he reattached the lead.
Hamid Samarkandi’s vision dimmed as he watched Zougam raise the detonator, watched as the terrorist leader placed his thumb above the button. “Allahu akb—”
A massive explosion ripped the ocean behind the Wavy Davey. Water geysered into the air in a wide arc and Boone felt the detonation in his body, particularly the eardrums, as the pressure wave punched through the air. The underwater portion of the shockwave slammed into the convertible, cracking the hull as it lifted the boat completely out of the water. Boone and Emily were lifted from the deck and Boone tightened his grip on the petite Brit. As the Wavy Davey slammed back into the ocean with a splash, Boone held Emily tightly to his chest, twisting his body to take the impact as they crashed back to the deck. The life vest absorbed some of it but his head banged against the floor of the cockpit and he saw stars. They both lay there for a minute, Boone’s ears ringing.
“You okay, Em?” Boone asked Emily’s ear, which was an inch from his face. She twisted her head to the side to look at him.
“Yeah, I think so…” She suddenly grinned. “Boone, you’re like my own personal seat belt.” The grin abruptly faded. “Are you all right? You hit your head, didn’t you?” She struggled out of his bearhug and took off her sunglasses, cupping his chin in
her hand. “Look at me, Boone,” she said, her voice tinged with concern as she looked into his eyes.
He fought off a wave of dizziness and smiled to reassure her—he was fairly sure they had bigger concerns. “I’ll be all right in a minute,” he said, gritting his teeth as he sat up. “We better check on Sid. I didn’t like the sounds I heard when the shockwave hit us—we might have to abandon ship.”
She looked at him a moment longer but then rose and peeked over the edge of the flybridge. “Oh bugger… not good. We’re down at the stern.” She headed for the ladder. “Sid? You okay?” she called out.
Boone struggled to his feet and looked below. We’re sinking fast. “Find Sid. I think he was heading for the cabin. I’ll get on the VHF and see if anyone can assist.”
Leaning heavily against the console, he grabbed hold of the handset for the radio and flipped the radio on. Please work please work… It crackled to life. Confirming it was still on channel 16, he keyed the mic. “Mayday, Mayday! To any vessel northeast of Saba, this is the Wavy Davey. We are in distress. We have sustained major damage and are sinking fast.” He looked at the GPS to provide coordinates but its screen was dark. “GPS is down but we are midway between Saba and Sint Maarten. Mayday, Mayday…”
“Vessel in distress, this is the Floridablanca,” a gravelly voice cut in over the radio. “I am just north of Saba bound for Saint Kitts. I believe I have you on radar but I don’t have visual. I wanna make sure this blip is you—do you have a flare gun on board?”
“Wait one,” Boone said, looking around. If I were a flare gun, I’d be… He popped open a compartment to the right side of the console. Bingo. He pulled the small orange case out, extracted the pistol and loaded it with a single flare. Extending his arm, he fired off the flare, sending the miniature sun sputtering in an arc to the north.
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