She crawled up the main staircase, trying to keep underneath the growing billows of black smoke. Her fingers touched the Winchester shotgun as if it’d been placed there as a sign from the Almighty himself. God wanted her to fight.
Rolling on her back and cradling the shotgun in her arms, she racked a round into the chamber. She pushed herself to her feet and made her way to the bridge, surveying the jungle of hanging wires and wrecked consoles around her. Dr. Nassiri looked up at her, eyes wide, still in shock.
“What do we do?” asked Alexis. Jonah was already gone, to where she did not know. But some part of her knew he had a plan.
“We follow Jonah,” croaked Dr. Nassiri. He glanced at her shotgun, then down at the 9mm pistol he had in his own hand. Billowing black smoke filled the bridge, and Alexis tried to force open one of the doors. A twisted frame kept it jammed in place.
Dr. Nassiri didn’t wait, he crawled on top of the consoles and through the shattered front windscreen. Alexis followed, more falling than stepping out of the window towards the bow of the crashed yacht, shotgun in hand, intense sunlight splaying across her face as she stepped outside. The yacht had obliterated the quad gun and gunner.
Alexis kicked a deck chair out of the way, winced and pulled a piece of glass out of her leg. At least she wasn’t hit, not as far as she could tell. Adrenaline could do funny things to the brain, she actually felt pretty fucking good right now.
Jonah’s SCUBA gear lay scattered across the deck. One of the anti-aircraft rounds had pierced the rear of a trimix tank in the ensuing chaos, detonating it and putting a massive splintered crater in one corner and embedding jagged shrapnel in the deck, bulkheads and chairs.
And then there he was. Jonah stood perched on the side of the yacht, 1911 pistol in hand, taking a perfect overlook position on the conning tower at just ten feet away. He took a bead on the hatch, waiting for it to move, twitch, anything that would justify sending a hollow-point round through the brainpan of first man to pop his head out like a whack-a-mole.
A wave of uncontrollable laughter washed over Alexis.
Sorry Dad, her brain spat out between shaking giggles. Accidentally wrapped the family Volkswagen around a telephone pole. It didn’t make sense, which made it all the funnier, so much that her eyes teared up and every impulse to fight the inappropriate laughter just made it that much more intense.
Apparently sensing a moment to prepare, Jonah unzipped the front of his wetsuit halfway down his chest, grabbed a pressurized pony reserve bottle of pure oxygen from the deck, and stuffed it in.
Taking a position behind him with Dr. Nassiri at her side, Alexis sincerely hoped if Jonah was shot, it’d be in the heart or head, not in the pony bottle. An explosion like that, so close to his soft tissue and hollow organs would blow him to pieces. Hell, it would be pretty spectacular, probably enough to kill her and the doctor as well. The potential energy stored in air tanks, even in the little ones, was substantial.
The hatch in front of him flew open, articulated by an unseen hydraulic system. All Alexis could see was a Yankees ballcap. The mercenary didn’t even make it to eye level before Jonah pulled the trigger. There was no way Jonah could miss, not at this range. The shot impacted just above and to the left of the white Y, splatting skull against the back of the hatch. The body tumbled down and out of view, landing below with an audible, sickening thump. Jonah hurled the pony bottle after him, hoping it’d go unnoticed with the chaos of a dead man dropping in from above.
Fucking whack-a-mole, thought Alexis as she watched Jonah take a step back, launch into a running start and leap though the air towards the conning tower, gun in hand. He landed with difficulty, catching the railings right in his ribs, knocking the wind out of his lungs. He slid over the hatch entrance and looked down, handgun at the ready. She watched as he took aim at the pony bottle and fired and could feel the shock wave from fifteen feet away as the conning tower shook and belched out a big cloud of white oxygenated vapor.
Jonah stole one glance towards Dr. Nassiri and Alexis with an intense look that made Alexis cold and hot all over, and then he disappeared into the submarine. She heard gunshots, multiple weapons of multiple calibers. The American was in it now, a straight-up, close-quarters, old-school gunfight.
“What do we do?” asked Dr. Nassiri.
Alexis didn’t know and knew the doctor didn’t either. She looked behind her. The ragged hulk of the Fool’s Errand had already given up the ghost, its shattered frame slowly slipping beneath the waves and pulling the submarine down with it. They wouldn’t have their little perch for long. “We follow Jonah,” said Alexis. Forcing her muscles to unfreeze, she pushed herself back, launched into a run and leapt for the conning tower. Unlike Jonah—and with no small amount of pride—she landed perfectly, both feet on the tower, one hand on the railing and one on the shotgun. Must have been all those dance and cheerleading practices before she knew how explain to her mother that she loathed everything about them.
Twelve feet below, in the red-lit control room of the submarine, the mercenary with the Yankees hat lay on his back, one dead, accusing eye staring directly up at Alexis. An entire quarter of his head was completely missing, as his still-struggling heart pumped a seemingly endless supply of blood into a gathering pool. Dr. Nassir made the leap too, landing awkwardly beside her and almost losing his handgun in the process.
Alexis straddled the hatchway, crossed her arms like a mummy, and simply allowed herself to drop. This was going to hurt, a lot.
She fell fucking hard, landing awkwardly on top of the body of the head-shot man, rolling to the side, trying to take some of the momentum laterally without breaking an ankle.
Beside her writhed the two sailors Jonah had hit with the exploding bottle trick. Both were dead, but they didn’t know it yet. They trembled on the ground, mouths foaming with pink-flecked bubbles, lungs destroyed by the concussive force. Alexis had never seen it before; but some deep part of her knew the men had seconds before they lost consciousness, minutes before they were dead. The horror overwhelmed her, and in that moment she would have done anything in her power to save them.
Alexis heard movement from her right and swiveled the shotgun to take aim at a young man, dressed in the horizontal stripes of a Russian sailor’s uniform halfway slumped over a pilot’s console. The young man held his chest, eyes closed in pain, unarmed. The Russian sailor was a slight, good looking man, the type that could have modeled if he were taller. A picture of him wearing a vintage sailor suit in a Ralph Lauren ad flashed before her eyes. Jonah had put two rounds directly into his sternum, throwing him back against the instrumentation panel with a violent impact, splattering blood across the dials. He sputtered, coughing up blood, as he compulsively touched his wounds, stared at his hands, and touched his wounds again.
“Alexis!” shouted a voice from above the conning tower. She looked up to see Dr. Nassiri leaning in like he were at the top of a wishing well. Too scared to shout back at him, she urgently waved him down. She heard a gunshot, felt the fragment of lead fly by her face, heard the zing of a too-close bullet. Gunshots chattered away from the unseen bow section of the submarine. Some of them sounded like automatic rifles—Jonah wouldn’t last long against that volume of firepower.
Dr. Nassiri slid down the ladder, dropping down beside her. She watched as he holstered his pistol and triaged the head-shot man and the two now-silent, foam-spitting sailors, no hope of survival. His eyes fell on the handsome Russian with the two chest wounds, and his training took over. Dr. Nassiri put both hands on the slight man, dragged him to his feet and slammed him on top of a chart table, then went to work to save his life.
“Give me the medical kit from the wall,” he ordered.
Alexis looked over and saw it—it was one of the massive full-emergency-care ones, including emergency oxygen facemasks and splints. But the nature of his demand completely baffled her as gunshots continued to echo through the claustrophobic chamber.
“Are you for
real?” demanded Alexis.
“Please!”
With no time to protest, Alexis crawled across the compartment, grabbed the medical kit and heaved it towards the doctor.
“Thank you,” said Dr. Nassiri, ignoring her glare.
Jonah started shouting at them from two chambers up in the bow, his words scarcely intelligible over the din of the fighting.
“I’ve got two pinned down here in the bow!” he shouted. “Alexis, Doc—if you’re alive, I need you to capture the stern!”
Alexis racked another slug into the shotgun and considered his words. Goddamn fucking motherfucker. She really didn’t want to do this and certainly not alone. She was fucking scared, really fucking scared. And there was the doctor, wrist deep in one of their enemies, trying to save a life while bullets rained down around them.
“Doc, you hear that?” she shouted. “Let’s go, let’s move!”
Doctor Nassiri ignored her. She could see on his face that he’d completely fallen back on his training. Maybe he couldn’t even hear her. In the midst of the carnage, he had become a battlefield surgeon once again.
Screaming inside her own head, Alexis grabbed the 9mm out of the back of the doctor’s waistband and stuck it into the front of her cutoff shots.
And there she was, shotgun in hand, skinned-up knees, and wet, tangled hair. At least she had on her utility boots. Weapon leveled, she charged back into the throbbing engine room. Movement on her left—she fired, blasting apart a chunk of the battery bank, spitting debris in all directions. The sailor—maybe an engineer?—swore and twisted away, trying to escape the leaking acid. She fired again, the slug ricocheting off the interior walls of the submarine. Movement, and she fired again, blasting apart an instrumentation panel. And there he was, an older, darkly tanned man with a gaunt face and a buzz cut holding a steak knife.
Alexis took aim and pulled the trigger, but the shotgun clicked empty. Knife in hand, the engineer lunged towards her as she dropped the shotgun, drew Dr. Nassiri’s pistol and traced five shots into his upper chest.
Alexis burst in through the next hatch, 9mm raised, fully expecting to find herself in a hail of bullets. In most military submarines, this compartment would have been the aft torpedo room, perhaps with a few bunkbeds. Instead, Alexis found herself within the most spectacular armory she’d ever seen—even better than a Texan gun emporium—rows and rows of German assault rifles, handguns, grenades, breaching charges, all manner of armor, and both engineering and combat SCUBA gear.
Gunshots rang out from the command compartment, two compartments forward. It sounded as if Jonah had been forced to retreat, assuming he was still alive. She knew he wouldn’t last long, not with a rapidly diminishing supply of ammunition and two trained men after him.
Alexis snatched the nearest weapons she could find, a phosphorous grenade and a breaching explosive, then charged headlong out of the compartment towards the command compartment. Bullets zipped around her, as expertly-placed shots rang out from the forward bunkroom, the last stand of the surviving crew of the submarine. She headed back towarad Dr. Nassiri, and fired a few shots at the unseen attackers as Dr. Nassiri just stood there, not ducking, not even wincing at the loud retorts.
Jonah was still a chamber forward, no help to her. And there was no way she could get the grenades to him without being shot herself.
As if to add to the perfect scene of chaos, a thousand gallons of freezing seawater poured down the conning tower ladder, gaining momentum like a flash flood down a box canyon. The cold water jolted Alexis out of her shock. She leapt to her feet and ran over to the control console, fingers dancing over the complex, seemingly endless control schematics, looking for a solution to the rapidly filling submarine.
“Are we sinking?” shouted Dr. Nassiri. At least he’d found his wits.
“I found it!” sounded Alexis. With a mechanical whine, the hydraulics to the hatch kicked in, forcing it shut. The massive surge of water cut off immediately, leaving a strange silence as seawater dripped from the closed hatch. Then more gunshots. Jonah shouted something to her, but she couldn’t make it out.
The submarine creaked loudly, a metallic moaning sound ringing throughout every compartment, structural members shifting and settling as the pressure around the vessel increased.
“I think we’re still sinking,” said Dr. Nassiri, quieter this time. Alexis looked up, seeing an analog depth gauge central to the command panel where the Russian sailor had been shot. The needle of the gauge edged slowly to the right as the submarine plunged ever deeper. They were sinking fast—too fast. Eighty feet. A hundred. The ribs of the submarine shuddered with the rapidly increasing pressure. Alexis heard a loud scraping sound, and the entire submarine shuddered again.
Then she realized what was happening. It was the wreckage of the Fool’s Errand, still clinging to the submarine, dragging all aboard into the crushing abyss.
CHAPTER 9
The submarine plunged into the depths, steel hull groaning with long, low rumbles, creaks, and the pinging of re-settling rib joints. As gunshots continued to ring out within, Dr. Nassiri hunched over the chart table in the command compartment, his forehead sweating the type of itchy beaded sweat that only forms when your hands are inside the chest cavity of a living patient. The young man in front of him, mid-twenties at most, stared up at him, passing in and out of consciousness.
My kingdom for an anesthesiologist, thought Dr. Nassiri. But this was battlefield medicine in all its butchery, a fight between him and hemorrhaging wounds. No intubation, no ventilators, just a blade, bandages, and bare hands.
His young Russian patient came round into consciousness with an ugly, violent flailing that knocked off his own oxygen mask, gasping, wheezing, spitting up foam and blood. Sometimes they did this towards the end. Eyes wide, the man screamed in Russian. Something-something-something-babushki. Dr. Nassiri tried to translate it in his mind, but only recognized the word grandmother. The Russian didn’t have enough undamaged lung tissue to spare, and his left lung immediately began to collapse. He lapsed into unconsciousness again.
The doctor snuck a glance towards the gunshots echoing from the corridor leading towards the bow. Jonah and Alexis had taken cover behind a locker. Through the open hatchway, Dr. Nassiri had seen Jonah turn and catch his glance for a moment. Jonah’s look wasn’t judgmental, it was a quizzical what the hell are you doing? Why help a man who tried to kill us? Jonah would have no idea as to why he’d even attempt to save the Russian—after all, Jonah had done his utmost to put the man down for good. But when bullets started flying, all Hassan Nassiri knew to do was save lives.
A barrage of small arms fire rang out, and he heard Alexis cursing like he’d never heard a woman curse before. He wished he hadn’t allowed her to take his sidearm. Still, his gun was best with her—he preferred the knife if it came to that.
Another round of fresh creaking and groaning filled the air around them, echoing like a cathedral antechamber.
“We’re sinking,” announced Alexis, as if she hadn’t already said it just moments before, as if the ongoing gunfight was not enough to worry about.
More bullets flew down the corridor, bisecting the space between Dr. Nassiri and the two Americans.
“Want to take a stab at the crush depth?” asked Jonah without turning around.
“No idea,” said Alexis.
“What do we do?” shouted Dr. Nassiri to the Americans through the hatchway.
“Glad you could join us on Planet Earth,” said Jonah. “We can’t fight our way out, not unless they get sloppy.”
“Are they getting sloppy?” asked Alexis.
“No,” answered Jonah over the seemingly nonstop din of incoming bullets.
Theoretically speaking, they had to run out of ammunition at some point. No—no—no—more blood from some unseen nicked artery. Dr. Nassiri pressed his fingers deeper into the wound, trying desperately to find the source, somehow stop it.
“Hey fuckers!” shouted Al
exis at the two mercenaries holed up in the forward bow. “We’re sinking! Cut this shit out!”
Jonah waved his hand in the corridor; the mercenaries tried to blow it off. Apparently they weren’t in a talking mood.
“Jonah, I have grenades,” said Alexis. “Two of them.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” said Jonah, smirking. “Worst I’ve heard all day.”
Without another word, he yanked one out of her hands and chucked it down the corridor.
“Cover!” screamed the mercenaries in near-unison.
The guns-for-hire dove into the far forward section, too fast for Jonah to get off an accurate shot, and slammed the heavy steel door behind them. Before they could change their minds, Jonah bolted after them, caught the handle and held it shut. Dr. Nassiri adjusted his body so he could watch the developments down the accessway while still keeping pressure on the Russian’s wounds.
“Is this your plan?” asked Alexis as she went after him, picking up the grenade. “I think you’re supposed to pull the pin.”
“I’m not suicidal. Fire in this compartment could set off the whole ship,” Jonah said. He winced and braced himself against the kicking door as the two men inside struggled to get it open again. Jonah had the upper hand, not from raw strength, but because he’d managed to brace himself in a way where it’d take a hydraulic press to budge it from the other side.
Jonah took his free hand and pointed up at a series of metal tubes running between their compartment and the barricaded bow compartment.
“Alexis, get an axe,” shouted Jonah. “And Doc, get the fuck in here, I need a hand.”
“I’m a bit busy,” snapped Dr. Nassiri from down the corridor.
The Wrecking Crew Page 12