Retribution Road
Page 18
“Captain, the Garmin nav unit in the sub was smashed. Could that have been because there was a trace like this that could be retrieved if the unit was recovered intact?”
“It’s possible,” Edwards answered. “But I don’t know how submersion would affect the electronics. Smitty, do you know?” the captain asked of the sonarman.
“With the right care, the unit might be salvageable, sir.”
“Then there’s your answer, a definite maybe. Why? What are you thinking?”
“It would help us to know their point of origin. If there’s a base there, it could be one step closer to their command center, if they even have one.”
“Sir, if I may?” the first officer asked.
“Sure, Sam, what have you got?”
“I’ve got a Garmin unit on my bass boat. It has a memory chip that saves the history you’re talking about. If we had that chip—”
“There’s a better answer, Jones. You need to find that chip.”
“Thanks, guys. That’s the answer I was looking for,” Gabe said.
Tom leaned in. “Do you know where they’re taking the sub, now that they’ve raised it?”
“The Coast Guard station on Galveston Island has facilities to handle it. The tug is already underway. Should be there in two hours or less.”
“Can we get a look once she’s out of the water?” Gabe asked.
“I don’t see why not,” Edwards said. “I’d like to see that too. I’ll make arrangements. Maybe we’ll have a matched pair by then.”
Through the periscope’s camera, Sebastian saw the barge with the crane and sub coming down the channel toward them. “That’s our way out of here,” he told Cristóbal and gave him range and heading toward deeper water. “We’ll let him come to us. No one’s going to be looking for us under that barge.”
“It’s getting hard to breathe in here, man. We’ve got to do something.”
“Okay. I see a channel buoy. We’ll surface beside it so the hatch is just breaking water and vent the boat while we wait for that barge to get here. Retract the wheels and let’s make the run on the batteries.”
“Ballast adjusted, wheels up, prop engaged, silent running. Take us in easy.”
It was a short run and, staying on the scope, Sebastian put them on the lee side of the big channel marker. They surfaced, and he opened the hatch and breathed in the fresh night air. “Thank you, mother of God,” he said reverently, and filled his lungs again.
The sub didn’t have a snorkel, but they moved the only fan into the hatch and dumped the foul air. Occasionally water splashed down the hatchway, but within minutes they were breathing again. They waited for thirty minutes. The barge was rapidly approaching.
“Time to go,” Sebastian ordered. He secured the hatch and they dropped to the bottom on the channel’s edge. Soon they could hear the tug’s engine and screws hammering toward them, and as the barge passed mid-channel, they lifted up from the clay bottom and slid forward directly under the 200-foot barge. “Easy money, you bet,” Sebastian said. This time sarcasm dripped from the words as they hung in the air.
Cristóbal turned their electronics back on and began computing the running time to the point where the Coast Guard station waited on the west side of Galveston Channel.
“Two hours, and we’re in open water. Then what?”
“Let’s go back to the Flower Gardens. We can rest in the shallows today and try to pick up shipping headed south tonight. Either that or we just go there and wait. There has to be something we can shadow in the next couple days.”
“Eduardo’s not going to last two days,” Cristóbal said.
“You’re right, but we can give him a sailor’s burial out there. Odds are they would find him here in this shallow water.”
“If we make it home, I’m quitting. I can’t take any more of this.”
“If we make it home, we may all be quitting. And I hope it’s no worse than that. Forgiveness is not a word El Patrón has in his vocabulary. If we make it out of here, my vote is we ditch the boat and move to Sweden.”
“I have a girlfriend and a baby. I can’t leave them,” Cristóbal said.
“It’s your funeral if you go back. Me, I’m going to Sweden. The women there are blonde and beautiful. I’m going to Sweden.”
“We saw you on TV,” Carol said. “The kids were so proud. You should have seen Paul. He thinks you hung the moon. Good news on that front. The charges against him in the death of that girl have been dropped. Detective Bob Spenser called yesterday. They arrested two of the kids from the house who admitted stealing the truck and dumping the dead girl in it. The medical examiner’s tox screen said she died of an overdose. She had enough coke in her to kill an elephant and wound a rhino. Stupid kids.”
“Too bad about the girl, but I’m glad for Paul. That’s a huge relief. How are you doing?”
“Still in shock. This place is such a disaster, but we found all the horses and mended fences. The horses are still pretty jumpy. They hate fire, but I think they’re going to be okay.”
“How about Diamond Jack?”
“He’ll have some scars, but he’s healing well. It’s amazing that he stayed with Emily. I’m sure every instinct, every fiber of his being wanted to run, but he stayed to protect her. Did you know a mare will stand in place for hours in the hot sun so that her foal can sleep in her shade? That’s what Jack did for Emily. That’s why I love horses.”
“Have you talked to your dad?”
“He’s with you, haven’t you talked with him?”
“Yeah, but not about home. His home. We’re still focused on the other sub, the one that got away.”
“Where are you now?”
“A Navy ship headed to the Coast Guard station at Galveston. That’s where they’re bringing the sub with the explosives. I want another look at it.”
“Be careful.”
“I promise. That’s really good news about Paul. And, no, I didn’t know horses would do that. Pretty cool.”
The USS Gabrielle Giffords continued her search for the sub the remainder of the way to the Coast Guard station at Fort Point on Galveston Island. There was time for a quick lunch in the officer’s mess and conversations with the other ships in the search party as well as the planes doing aerial surveillance. It was as if the little sub had vanished. No trace, no contact.
Dressed in fatigues and rubber boots, Commander Edwards with Gabe and Tom were waiting on the dock as the barge was tied up. They went aboard directly to the sub. It was impressive. More finished than they would have imagined.
Pumps were pulling the last of the water from the hull. Raising the boat from the water had taken time because the salvage crew was rightly concerned the water weight might overcome the structural integrity of the lightweight fiberglass hull. So they had raised it only until the hatch was above the surface and pumped the hull until the boat was floating on its own and nearly dry before trusting the slings to lift it to the barge.
Gabe dropped down the hatchway, which was still dripping the water from the refinery channel, and stepped into an inch of water sloshing across the deck as the barge rocked in the waves coming across the bay.
He waited for Edwards and Tom, then led the way with a bright flashlight, not as bright as his cave light, but bright enough. As they started forward, Gabe said, “Two things. I looked for tripwires or other detonators and didn’t see anything. I don’t imagine they were worried about there being anything left to find, but the fact that they smashed the electronics made me wonder. So watch where you step and what you touch. Second, look for anything that has a name on it.”
Tom understood Gabe would need a name if they encountered crew to be questioned. He nodded agreement.
“Got it. Thanks,” the commander said.
They worked their way to the single-seated helm, and Gabe removed the Garmin from its mounting bracket. The water had a rank smell and was dripping from the overhead and running down the interior bulkheads.
“Me too,” Tom said. “Gabe, I don’t know how you were able to work down here. I get claustrophobic in an elevator. I can’t imagine what this must have been like when it was full of water. God bless you, son. You’re more of a man than most.”
Gabe didn’t share the panic attack he’d experienced when he first entered the sub. That was a different story for a different time. He let them go up first, then made a final sweep, looking for anything that might have a name tag or any sort of ID. Convinced there was nothing, he climbed out of the conning tower and then down the ladder to the barge deck.
Glad to be back in the warm, morning sun, he toweled, then they drove to a hangar with the Garmin. The commander went back to the Giffords to shower and change.
Gabe dried the unit on a workbench and turned it face down. On the back was a removeable panel. The cover was gone and the chip removed.
“Look at this,” he said to Tom. “Someone was thinking. They pulled the chip.”
“Do you think,” Tom began, “if we could get that chip and it showed us their travels, we might be able to find their base, put trackers on the other subs, and follow them to their drop points? We could take out the subs as well as identify their distribution networks. We could do some major damage if we played our cards right. Let’s find that chip.”
Beneath the barge, huddled against the pier, the other sub waited. Everything except the scrubber and the fan were shut down. No one moved. No one talked. They barely breathed.
They needed darkness to make the run around Fort Point and out the channel. And darkness was several hours away.
Maria parked the Mercedes in a hotel parking garage, gathered her few belongings, and walked out of the building. She caught a bus and rode several blocks away to another hotel. She checked in, asking for conjoining rooms using false ID and cash, and after grabbing sandwiches, energy bars, and drinks from the gift shop fridge—where she also paid cash—she took the elevator to her floor.
Before entering the room, she walked the hall and found all the exits. In the room, she double-locked the door and propped a desk chair beneath the handle, closed the curtains after checking out the view of the street, inhaled a roast beef on rye, sipped a power drink, and then collapsed on the bed. She knew Caldera had eyes everywhere and that by now all of them were looking. In her purse was hair color, and in her backpack a change of clothing and makeup. It had been a well-dressed blonde who entered the hotel. It would be a gray-headed, bent, old woman who left it.
She set her secure phone on the bedside table and fell immediately to sleep.
It was dark when the phone awakened her. It took a moment to shake off her deep sleep. She hesitated before answering. She pushed the receive button and said, “Hola.” There was silence and then the connection was broken.
She fought back the panic. The silence on the other end of the call was the worst message she could have received. She got up, ran to the bathroom, dropped to her knees, and heaved the roast beef and rye. She flushed. The handle of her door quietly turned and the door pushed open against the chair and the chain. She grabbed her bags and ran to the double doors connecting the room next door and closed both behind her. She listened at the door, and when she heard the first room door crash against the chair, she opened the adjoining room’s door and peeked into the hall.
As the two men shoved the door into her vacated room, she dashed out of the other into the hall and to the nearest exit.
On the street, with no car and without a phone she could trust, she hurried through the crowded streets between the skyscrapers and ducked into a small restaurant. She took a table in the back and ordered coffee.
She opened her not-so-secure phone, took out the SIM card, and crushed it beneath her heel. She opened her wallet and counted the cash: less than two hundred dollars after paying for the room she could no longer go back to. She had credit cards she was afraid to use and debit cards for ATMs that were no longer safe either. Caldera’s network, his money, gave him unlimited access to her data. At least that was what she believed. “Tom, where are you? Don’t you know how much I need you?”
Tom had tried to call her numerous times with instructions for her extraction. Everything was arranged, but her number was inactive. He stood in the hangar with Gabe, who was still examining the Garmin and visualizing the tools he would need to retrieve the memory chip if they were able to find the second sub.
Tom interrupted Gabe’s train of thought. “Maria’s in trouble. I can’t reach her, and I think someone has tapped into our network. I’ve got our IT guys on it, but they’re not helping. She could be anywhere. I don’t know what to do.”
“Anyone you can reach out to?”
“If the cartel has tapped our phones, anything I put out there is only going to make matters worse. If he’s got this phone tapped,” he said, holding up his super-secret secure cell, “we’re dead in the water. He might even have people in NSA, God forbid.”
“Sounds like Maria’s on her own until she can figure out a way to reach us.”
“Even the phones at the ranch are out. And I haven’t a clue when we’ll have service again.” Tom ran his hands through his still-damp gray hair and shook his head. “Maybe we’re not going to win this one. Maybe Carol was right. Maybe I’m just an old fool jousting with windmills.”
“We just saved Baytown, the refinery, and hundreds of lives. That never would have happened without you. Don’t give up now. We’re not on our own.”
“I hope you’re right. But it sure doesn’t feel that way right now. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this alone.”
Chapter 34
SEBASTIAN AWOKE IN THE DARK. It was after ten, and he’d slept for several hours. His head pounded, and he suspected the CO2 level was on the rise again. He got up from his foam mattress on the deck and checked on Eduardo, who was in the bunk beside him. Still breathing, but with a deep rattle accompanying every breath. It wouldn’t be long now.
Sebastian took a small flashlight from his pocket and used it to see his watch. It was time.
He called to Cristóbal to turn on the dim lights, and there were groans in the dark before the lights came on and the crew began moving.
“The scrubber . . .” Cristóbal said.
“I know, and that’s the end of the Baralyme. We’ve got to get to open water where we can run on the surface.”
“But the planes and the—”
“No choice now. It’s cat and mouse and we’re the mouse. We’ve got to run the engine and charge the batteries. We’ll watch and dive when we have to hide. We just won’t be able to stay long.”
“Whatever you say.”
“We can’t stay here, that’s what I say. Crawl us out of here and let’s get in the channel.”
The electric engines purred to life and the sub slid out from under the barge and, moving only inches above the clay bottom, eased deeper into the channel. They heard patrol boats passing overhead, but their low profile and silent running was enough. In an hour they were out of the channel and entering the Baytown offshore oil field. They brought the sub up to periscope depth and ran to the nearest platform that appeared unmanned.
They surfaced beside the platform, opened the hatch, and turned on the fans. Sebastian climbed out on deck with a walkie-talkie and up onto the platform. He mounted the stair to the upper deck and made a sweep with his binoculars.
“It looks clear. Get everyone on deck. We’ll stay here a while.”
“I think Eduardo’s gone,” Cristóbal said. “What do you want us to do with him?”
“Find something to weight him down, and we’ll give him a sailor’s funeral like we said.”
�
�Good. We don’t need him stinking up the cabin. I’ll do it.”
“Okay. We’ll take turns on watch. You can see plenty from up here, and we all need fresh air and some rest. I’ll take the first watch, and then send someone up in four hours. It would be good to wash down the sub. Get rid of the smell and make sure to dump the bucket. We’ll stay here as long as we can and then make a run for the Flower Gardens tonight. There are deep-water platforms near there. Maybe there’s one we can use.”
While they rested in the shelter and shade of the oil platform, a P-8A Poseidon made passes over the Gulf. On its first pass over the Baytown field, the tired radar operator was distracted by a conversation about fantasy football in which he had an abiding interest. He looked away from his Raytheon monitor only long enough to miss the ghost of a pencil-shaped shadow beside one of the twenty platforms. The next pass wouldn’t be for several hours.
They buried Eduardo wrapped in a sheet, with shackles they found on the platform as weights. It was a short ceremony. They lugged him up the conning tower ladder with a rope tied around his feet and dropped him over the side. Sebastian saluted, said, “Adios,” and they were done.
Rested and with the sub full of clean, ocean air, when the sun was well set and the first stars shone in the heavens, they were ready. Sebastian had studied his charts, debating the best route. In the end he concluded it really didn’t matter. They would be a sitting duck regardless. He and Cristóbal agreed on a course, set the waypoint in the GPS, and they left the shelter of the oil platform for the six-hour run to the deepwater platforms on the edge of the shipping lanes that ran past the Flower Gardens National Marine Sanctuary.
In fact, before the submerged mountain tops—salt domes that 15,000 years ago had pushed their way toward the surface from depths of 700 feet—were declared a sanctuary, passing ships would drop 5,000-pound anchors on hundreds of feet of chain into the thriving coral, which had done acres of damage. The establishment of the sanctuary in 1992 made that illegal, and in following years a series of buoys was placed to provide legal and safe mooring for visiting research and dive charter boats.