Cold Barrel Zero

by Matthew Quirk

  Hayes brought her arms over his shoulders and turned the mouthpiece on his Dräger around.

  “Byrne, can you make it out of here in one?”

  The air felt like fire against the swollen, burned skin of my mouth.

  “Yes.”

  He held Nazar’s arms tight against his chest with one hand, held his regulator in the other.

  “If you spit this out, we’re all gonna die. Understand?”

  She nodded. Hayes pushed the regulator into her mouth and opened the valve. He watched her suck the air in.

  “Slower,” he said.

  Nazar was still in shock, taking short, shallow breaths as the water rose over her chin and lapped against the overhead.

  “We’ve got to go,” Hayes said. He dived through the door and entered the passageway. I took a long last breath. It was twenty-five meters to the breach. We had done fifty on one breath during training at Camp Pendleton. I had this, I told myself, ignoring the years since and the fresh trauma to my body.

  I slipped under the water. We turned back the way we had come, toward the room where we had blasted the larger hole.

  Hayes stopped, grabbed my shoulder, and pointed up. There was a small pocket of air trapped in a hatch. I came up inside it.

  Metal clanged ahead of us.

  “What is that?”

  “They’re opening the door. They carry scuba on every deck. They’re coming for us.”

  “What?” If they opened the doors, a second watertight compartment would flood, and the Shiloh would barely be able to float. “But anything goes wrong and the ship will go down.”

  “That’s how bad Riggs wants us.” He grabbed Nazar and held her above the water, dunking his own head for a moment.

  A red light strobed below us. The door was opening.

  “I’ll hold them off,” Hayes said. “Bring her to the other breach.” He started to remove the Dräger.

  “You’ll need it more,” I said. “We can make it. I’ll get her out and come back for you.”

  “No. Stay with her. She’s more important.”

  Hayes pulled his knife from the sheath on his chest rig. “I’ll be behind you with the loop if you run into trouble.”

  The siren sounded and the door shuddered in its track. I wrapped my arm around Nazar’s chest like a lifeguard, dived, swam in the other direction, past the vault and toward the second breach. I hauled her through the door and saw the hole through the hull. It was smaller, and jagged around the edges, but Nazar and I would be able to get out one at a time. The alarms seemed to grow louder, and I could hear and feel the grinding of a motor through the water. Nazar started to panic. I grabbed a pipe next to the breach, took off my small inflatable vest, and looped it over her neck. I pointed through the hole. The veins bulged at her throat; her chest spasmed. Her limbs started to shake.

  Divers called it the sambas. She was working too hard. I pushed her toward it. She groped for me, knocked my mask to the side.

  Gunshots behind us, low poofs underwater. The door was open. If we didn’t get through that hole right now, we were done.

  I shoved her through and put my chest and shoulder out halfway at the same time. The metal tore through my wet suit, cut my ribs. Cold water flushed down my side.

  A current streamed through the breach into the ship, growing stronger by the second. They had opened the door behind us, and as it flooded it was pulling water down the passageway and in through the holes.

  Three more gunshots cracked behind me, where Hayes had gone.

  I fought against the current and yanked the red tab on the vest. It inflated instantly, and Nazar began to rise outside the ship. I grabbed for her ankle but the torrent of water picked up and pulled me back through the breach. I held it off for a moment, but now it was like a waterfall. I grabbed hold of a pipe and tried to fight against the weight of all that rushing water.

  The current grabbed her, slammed her into the side of the ship, but as she bounced off the steel, the buoyancy took hold, and she began to rise toward the surface outside the ship.

  My arm trembled, and gave out. I shot toward the passageway. I reached for the bulkheads, for anything, cut up my fingertips against a bolt, then finally caught a handle as the water rushed past me. The desperation built. My chest bucked for oxygen.

  I looked back down the compartment. There was no sign of Hayes. The ship began to heel to one side. Nazar was floating up there on the surface, easy pickings for Riggs and his men. I had to get out to get her. I had to get out to breathe. I dived down, fought the easing current, grabbed the rough edges of the main breach, and hauled myself through.

  I stroked for the surface as my body shook harder, my burned mouth screaming in pain, my vision narrowing to a pinpoint. The surface seemed to move farther away with every stroke.

  I broke through, gasping the second my face hit the air, sucking in diesel fumes and the water I churned up.

  Through the fog, there was no sign of Nazar, only the rolling swells crashing me into the side of the ship. I looked up. The starboard gunwale was moving closer, the hull leaning farther and farther. Ships can shift ballast to offset flooding, up to a point, which the Shiloh had long since reached.

  The twenty-foot-high side of the ship slowly tilted down over my head. I swam hard as it moved faster. The rush of displaced water picked me up and washed me out as the steel loomed. The tilting slowed as the ship found its new equilibrium, the main deck just a few feet off the water.

  Gunfire snapped overhead. I swam away as fast as I could. The fog gave me some cover. A hundred meters out, I turned on my back, taking in great breaths as the pain finally cut through the adrenaline. My body was wrecked, the skin over my ribs shredded and bruised.

  I checked my watch; fourteen minutes since Hayes had called out Jericho. It had felt like an eternity.

  I scanned the water. Nothing but spilling whitecaps. “Hayes,” I said into my radio. “Nazar,” I said, then again, louder.

  The only answer was the splashing of water as the rifles closed in on my voice.

  Moret came on the channel. “Byrne. Are you okay? What’s your location?”

  “Midship, starboard. A hundred meters out. They’re shooting. I can get farther away.”

  “I’m coming, lights on.”

  I reached for a small infrared beacon on my shoulder and flipped the switch on the side. I couldn’t see it shine, but she would. I tried to raise Hayes, but heard nothing. Then a roar grew on my two o’clock: a diesel engine.

  “Is that you?”

  “Yes. Be there in a few seconds,” Moret said.

  I detached my submachine gun and brought it up just in case. The diesel coated my skin. The fumes were overpowering. I started to retch, and every gag scorched the burns inside my mouth.

  The RHIB materialized out of the fog. I lifted the beacon. Gunfire burst behind us, threw curtains of water. The men on the Shiloh must have gotten their own .50 cals going.

  As she angled toward me, I braced for the impact. She passed close and I grabbed for the rope, wrenching my left shoulder out of the socket. The boat dragged me along, planing on the surface of the water. My right hand closed on a plank seat and I hauled myself over the gunwale as the gunshots walked closer and closer. Moret threw the boat into a 180-degree turn.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  My teeth ground together from pain. I shoved myself across the deck to the center console of the RHIB. After two deep breaths, I gripped my left arm with my good hand, raised it up and behind my head, and pulled hard. The joint wouldn’t reduce. I steeled myself and pressed my elbow against the console until the humerus popped back into place with an audible snap.

  A string of obscenities poured out of my mouth and my vision started to darken; I was on the edge of passing out.

  “I’ve had better days,” I joked to Moret, but the words were unintelligible. I sounded like Frankenstein’s monster.

  “What?” She turned and got a good look at me for the firs
t time. “Jesus, you—”

  A bullet tore through her right shoulder. She grunted and went down, grabbing the wheel. The boat lurched hard to port and buried the gunwale in the water. I slammed into the pedestal, planted my feet, fought my way against the spin toward the throttle, and pulled it back.

  She was on the deck, eyes shut, blood streaming from her shoulder.

  “Stay with me, Moret.” I stood and gunned the engines on the RHIB to get us out of range.

  “I’m all right,” she said, and tried to sit up.

  “No, you’re not.”

  Once we were clear, I checked the wound: in and out under her right armpit. That’s high-value real estate, brachial plexus and the brachial artery. She could be dead in a minute.

  I pulled the shredded fabric back and checked the wound channel. No frothing, no pulsing, no arterial blood.

  “Can you move your hand?” She touched her thumb to her index finger. “Good,” I said. “I’m going to put something in it to stop the bleeding. It’s going to hurt.”

  She nodded.

  I pulled out the QuikClot and stuffed it into the hole. She gritted her teeth and groaned as I leaned her forward and plugged the exit wound. I could fit four fingers in it.

  She took long, deliberate breaths. I could see she was counting them out.

  “That’s good. You’re going to be fine.”

  “Where’s Hayes? Did you get the woman?”

  “Nazar got out. Hayes, I don’t know.”

  “Find them. I’ll hold up.”

  I took the wheel and lifted her NVGs. The whole field of vision blazed white. I took them down, figuring they were broken, and then saw red light flare through the fog, and smelled the acrid petroleum smoke.

  The water was on fire.

  The flames illuminated the sea near the ship, under the bank of cloud. I scanned the surface again; no sign of either one. Near the bow of the ship, I caught a white flash, the reflector built into my buoyancy vest. My breath caught. It was Nazar. The rush of water must have carried her there. A massive slick of diesel covered the water between us and her, covered the entire starboard side of the Shiloh. The fires near the ship hadn’t ignited all of the fuel yet but would any second.

  I reached for the throttle.

  “Mako One, Mako One,” a voice came over the radio. It was Hayes. He was alive.

  “This is Mako One. Where are you?”

  “Twenty meters out from the stern, starboard side.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Where’s the woman?”

  “In the water. Starboard bow. I’ll—”

  “Get her first,” he said.

  I turned the wheel to port to take us to Hayes.

  “I’ll get her after—”

  “This is all about to burn. You don’t have time for both of us. Get her first.”

  “You have your rebreather. Dive. I’ll find you.”

  “Don’t worry about that. Get the witness. Take her home.”

  The flames jumped from puddle to puddle across the water. The whole slick was ready to blow. I knew the choice he was making: he was trading his life to clear his name, to finish this.

  Another one who trusted me. Another one dead. I couldn’t.

  “I’m coming for you.”

  “This is what I want, Byrne. Now go.”

  I growled in anger and kicked the pedestal so hard I shattered the fiberglass, then I gunned the throttle and turned the wheel hard the other way, heading for the bow. The flames raced us to Nazar. They moved closer, rose behind us as we threw a giant tail of water, making straight for her. I switched hands, held the wheel in my right, and leaned toward the gunwale.

  I could smell the nylon and rubber burning behind me. Nazar splashed in the water, then looked back to see the wall of fire speeding at her. It was so loud.

  My hand skimmed over the surface of the water. I braced, grabbed her life vest with my left hand, and hauled her through the water, away from the flames. I lifted with both my legs, threw her onto the deck, and spun the boat around. The shoulder didn’t dislocate again, but the pain tore through the whole left side of my body. My vision tunneled for a moment, and my legs went weak, but I held on.

  I flew at the edge of the flames toward the stern, toward Hayes. The heat choked me, left me coughing.

  “You’re going to lose the boat, Byrne,” Moret said. “It’s too hot.”

  There was no oxygen. I couldn’t see through the fire. I reached the water near the stern, at the border of the fire, ran out, turned back for another pass. Bullets ripped by. Two more passes. A gunshot blew out the Plexiglas on the pedestal. Fire raged where I had last seen Hayes. I turned away, scanned the water, yelled for him on the radio.

  “He’s gone, Byrne.”

  “He can’t be.”

  “Mission first,” she said. “It was his choice. Getting us killed won’t save him.”

  The enemy .50s threw a torrent of bullets our way, sent a wall of water at the RHIB. I pulled away, choking from the smoke.

  “We have to go, Byrne,” she said. “We can finish this.”

  I circled the flames as they spread farther and farther, well beyond the distance Hayes could have swum.

  “I couldn’t save him,” I said quietly. I pictured him floating dead in the dark water and knew that the image would never leave me.

  “You got her. You got the truth. You saved all of us. Now turn to shore.”

  Chapter 46

  I POINTED THE boat to the east, away from the wreckage. Our shadows flickered in the orange light, growing longer. After we’d gone one hundred meters, Nazar cried out, “My son.”

  It was a relief to hear her talking.

  “My son!”

  I thought it was shock at first. I brought the boat to neutral and knelt over her. The veins in her neck stood out like thick, dark cables. They were massive, distended.

  No.

  I tore open her shirt and searched the skin with my light. It was a small red dot just beside her sternum that looked like a speck of paint. A puncture wound to the chest. The bruises around it were growing quickly, indicating major trauma. I took her pulse, rapid and weak, then listened to her heart. It sounded muffled, distant, like it was beating under the sea.

  She put her hand to my face, stared at me, and screamed, “Son! No. Please!”

  Altered mental status. With the other signs, that confirmed it. She had a cardiac tamponade. Her heart was drowning in its own blood. When the heart bled, it filled the sac surrounding it, and the pressure built, constricting the heart, killing her with every milliliter.

  She had vital signs. But that wouldn’t last.

  I reached for the trauma kit, pulled out a 16-gauge needle, and attached it to a 20 cc syringe. My only hope was to buy her time.

  “Do you need help?” Moret asked. “Is she okay?”

  “It’s all right. You rest.” A piece of metal must have stabbed Nazar in the chest, probably in the chaos as I helped her through the breach. I had missed it, and now she was dying.

  The pressure was increasing on her heart as it pumped less with every beat. She blacked out. Two more breaths, then nothing.

  The RHIB rocked on the swells. The burning Shiloh cast a faint red glow through the fog.

  I sterilized the skin just below her sternum. You enter there, at the base of the sternum, aim the needle at the left shoulder, and drive it in at a 45-degree angle toward the heart. In hospitals, they use ultrasounds to help guide the needle, but I didn’t have that option. I had to stab her in chest, break through the pericardium—the sac around the heart that was now filled with blood—and stop before I hit the ventricle and killed her. It was a margin of millimeters.

  The RHIB slid down the back of a swell.

  Hayes had traded his life for hers, and I had squandered it. Another woman dying in my hands. Another shade.

  I lifted the thick needle and pressed it to the left of the bottom of her sternum. The skin tented, and then th
e needle broke through. I slid it forward as I pulled back on the plunger, my body moving with the rolling ocean, my eyes fixed on the syringe, waiting to puncture the membrane around her heart, waiting for the blood to pour out.

  Suddenly I was back at Dagger, covered in blood to the elbows, Emily’s heart in my hands.

  Gunfire tore through the night. I pushed the needle in deeper. A wave crashed into the gunwale.

  Blood spurted into the syringe.

  Chapter 47

  RIGGS STOOD ON the tilting fantail of the ship and reached for the rail. The men squinted as the diesel smoke blew into their eyes and the flames roared off the side of the Shiloh. This was supposed to be a straightforward coastal run—with a skeleton crew and the close-in weapon system off—and now they were crippled, under full attack.

  “What’s happening below?”

  “They breached the crypto vault.”

  “Nazar?”

  “She’s gone. We saw a RHIB take off.”

  Riggs placed his hand over his mouth, then brought it down. It was impossible to believe. The attackers were still out there. They might lose the ship.

  “Hayes is close. He wouldn’t come this far and not finish it. He’ll come back for us. You get the fuck out there, all of you, and search that water until you find him. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go!” Riggs shouted, and then crossed the deck. He went in and kept to the high part of the passageway. The metal was warm to the touch, but at least he wasn’t on the main deck, where swells and fire washed over the side.

  He could hear the water splashing below him. Two compartments had flooded. The ship was barely above the waterline.

  He keyed his radio. “All available men out?”

  “That’s right,” Hall replied.

  “And we’re seaworthy?”

  “For now.”

  “What about support?”

  “The Marines are sending Super Cobras from Pendleton.”

  Attack helicopters. Riggs killed the radio, laid his arm over the top of a coiled fire hose, and rested his forehead against it.