by Noah Mann
“Go, Fletch.”
* * *
Chris Beekman and I retraced our path back to the flight deck, moving through twisted corridors and crossing the same precarious pair of balconies. We crossed the hangar deck and shimmied up the rope a final time, jogging past the quieted jamming transmitter before climbing into the Cessna, its fuselage matching the list to starboard, the angle growing more severe with every passing minute. The Vinson, still under power, had seen its intended course upset by the impact of the torpedoes. The growing weight of water filling its hull was pulling the mighty ship into a wide turn to the right. It would never reach Bandon.
We might not, either.
“This is gonna be tricky,” Beekman said once he was belted in, his headset on. “If that’s even the right word. Insane also comes to mind.”
“You can do this at this angle?”
He started the aircraft’s engine, the propeller spinning up past the rain-splattered windshield.
“If I can’t, at least we’ll make a nice boom on impact with the water,” he said, tipping his head toward the back seat.
I looked and saw what he was referencing. In the excitement below, I’d forgotten that he’d loaded the plane with C4. From the looks of it, the 300 pounds Schiavo requested had been fulfilled, and then some. There was enough explosive material onboard now to—
The thought, the possibility, hit me in a flash, memory and plan coalescing in that instant.
“Stop,” I said, as Beekman was about to advance the throttles.
“What is it?”
I took my headset off and unbuckled my safety belt, then pushed the passenger door open and stepped out onto the flight deck.
“Fletch!” Beekman shouted, stripping his own headset off. “What the hell are you doing?”
I tipped the passenger seat forward and grabbed four individual C4 charges, two pounds each, with detonator and blasting caps already stuffed in a small gear bag.
“How long can you wait?” I asked Beekman.
“Fletch, you—”
There was no time to entertain any protests he had in mind. I needed an answer to quickly gauge the usefulness of what I was thinking.
“Give me an honest answer. Best guess. Whatever you have.”
Beekman gaped at me, processing the almost impossible question. Weighing the deteriorating condition of the ship, the weather, and the capabilities of the plane. And of himself.
“Ten minutes,” he said. “But what are you going to do?”
I shoved the C4 in the gear bag and slung the collection of demolition materials over my shoulder.
“If we’re not back by then, take off,” I told him.
“Fletch, what the hell are you going to do?”
I didn’t even know how to describe it in a way that wouldn’t take minutes. Minutes that I didn’t have. There was a way to lay it out to him, though. A way more rooted in truth that any technical explanation would be.
“The impossible,” I said.
Twenty Nine
Once more, for the final time, I hoped, I descended into the bowels of the dying ship. The emergency lights were humming and crackling, on the verge of failing completely, and every wave which slammed into the leaning ship as it turned felt like it was going to push it fully over onto its side.
But they didn’t. Through the strobing lights and a mist developing within the ship’s passageways, I pressed forward, and downward, reaching the spot where Schiavo and Martin held each other, the sound of rushing water plain just two decks below them.
“Fletch,” Schiavo said, upon seeing me. “There’s nothing you can—”
I held the bag of demolition gear out to her and handed Martin my shotgun.
“There’s something I can try,” I said. “Look, all we need to do is loosen the floor structure below you. If that shifts eight inches, six inches, you’ll be freed.”
“You want to blow the structure beneath us?” Martin asked, not quite shocked by what I was proposing.
“Down one deck and thirty feet to port,” I said.
“And that eight-inch movement could just as easily be in the other direction,” Martin reminded me. “That would kill her.”
I had to accept his premise, but I had to believe that there was a chance it would work. Maybe one in ten. But it was her only chance to escape being entombed in a watery grave.
“Your call, Angela,” I said.
She looked to the battered floor, and to the hole she’d been pulled into. The mix of overpressure from the rushing air and the moisture within the vessel had let a fog build, obscuring much of what lay just a few yards away. But she could feel what was coming. She could sense, and hear, the water rising below. She would either drown when it rose to this deck, or when the Vinson finally capsized and slipped beneath the sea.
“Angela,” I began, prompting her to make a decision quickly. “I survived that blast in the pit up in Skagway. You all dug me out of that. I’m not going to stand by and let you die if there’s a chance I can return the favor and get you out of here.”
She looked quickly to Martin. He was either going to watch her die in a hail of fire and twisting steel, or when water filled her lungs. Or, he could have some hope that the best worst option this time would work in our favor.
He nodded and Schiavo looked to me.
“Do it,” she said.
“I’ve got a one-minute fuse,” I said, grabbing my shotgun from Martin. “When I fire, that’s the countdown beginning.”
I stood and, without any further exchange, raced off down the hazy passageway.
* * *
The deck below was a disaster zone when I reached it. Through a web of broken, jagged metal, where floor and walls had been peeled apart, I could just see the bottom of Schiavo’s boots. Her legs rested upon a length of piping that had been almost knotted by the impact of the torpedoes. This, I knew, was my mark. I had to set the charges a dozen yards past where I stood. There, they would blow and relieve the strain which had buckled the lower decks upward, pinning my friend in the hole that opened beneath her.
That was the plan.
I pushed forward through the mist, acrid hints of fluids from burst pipes thick in the air. In places, water already sloshed around my boots where the floor sank and rose. Everything around me informed my realization that, despite any drawbacks, haste was the order of the moment.
The ship could sink. Another shift could crush Schiavo. Beekman might not be able to take off.
Time...
I had to hurry. For her sake. For everyone’s. I wanted to see my family again, as much as I wanted to save my friend. There was no time I could afford to waste.
Obstacles before me I simply ignored, crossing them or, if possible, heaving them aside. When I’d moved the correct distance from Angela’s location I began setting the charges, placing the four packages in a line that stretched from the corridor into an adjacent compartment. I connected them together, inserting the blasting caps, each silvery plug slipping into the plasticky material. The end of the fuse that ran from charge to charge was topped by a simple plunge detonator. Once I pushed it down, I would have one minute to return to my friends.
One minute...
I aimed the Benelli into a side corridor and fired. The crack of the shot echoed sharp as the double ought pellets ricocheted off into the distance. My thumb depressed the synthetic plunger and a soft hiss sounded as the fuse was lit, a bright flame sizzling slowly along its length toward the charges.
Go...
I retraced my steps, climbing over debris, the water near my knees now in places. All I had to do was make it through the opening at the end of the passageway and up a steep set of stairs, and I would be back with Schiavo and Martin, ready to hold onto her as the blast was set off.
That never happened.
The Vinson did not cooperate, a shift in the massive ship causing the fractured floor beneath me to drop just shy of the stairs. My feet slipped out from under me, the
shotgun tumbling from my grip and sinking as I plunged into black water.
Thirty seconds...
That was how long remained, I estimated, before the eight pounds of C4 detonated. If I remained where I’d fallen, submerged in the space below, all the structure above which I’d wanted to free would come crashing down, trapping me, if not killing me outright.
“Fletch...”
I heard a faint call. It was Martin’s voice, obviously wondering where I was after signaling that the fuse had been lit. He’d obviously heard and felt the further collapse of the space below, but he could do nothing for me. He had to stay with his wife and keep her from falling once the charges freed the section of floor pinning her.
I was on my own.
The power of the rising water surprised me, but only until I realized that the full power of the ocean was pressing on the hull, and forcing seawater through the breech at tremendous pressure. It pushed me against submerged pieces of the broken structure, sharp metal jabbing my sides, My legs. My arms.
Twenty seconds...
Those sharp lengths of steel clawed at me as the water threw me against them. Quickly, though, I realized they might be the very things that saved me.
I planted one boot on the lowest one and stepped on it, lifting my body partly out of the water. Then I stepped onto the next one, using each like rungs on a ladder. Quickly I was able to reach a section of the floor above and both pull and push myself toward it, climbing free of the water.
Ten seconds...
I grabbed a length of exposed pipe as I swung a leg onto the floor and rolled onto the open section, just ten feet from the stairs.
Five seconds...
With only seconds left until the blast, I knew it was going to be close. But not as close as it turned out to be.
Thirty
Five steps shy of the top of the stairs, the C4 went off. I felt the treads drop beneath me, the whole space seeming to shift away from the explosion. The mist which had formed within the ship was blown clear by the rush of hot gasses expanding from the point of detonation. I rolled away from the violent force, then righted myself and scrambled up the remaining steps on all fours.
“Fletch!”
Martin, again, was calling out to me, though now he sounded almost frantic. I left the stairs behind and ran the short distance to where I’d left them, where I found him holding his wife by the hands as the rest of her dangled over a watery abyss.
“Help!”
I did as he asked, and needed, taking one of Schiavo’s hands from him and pulling as I planted a foot against the weakened wall for leverage. The charges had done just what I’d hoped, collapsing the structure beneath away from her. She swung her freed legs, searching for a foothold as Martin and I hauled her upward.
“We’ve got you,” I said.
In the next few seconds we had her back on, relatively, solid ground.
“I’ll hug you both later,” she said, instinctively reaching for her weapon, but it was gone.
“Nothing left to shoot at,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Martin was the only one of us still armed, his M4 lay snuggly slung across his chest as we raced through the ship, up stairs, back across the balconies, which now tipped frighteningly close to the cresting waves below.
“This list is bad,” Martin said as we reached the hangar deck.
“He can do it,” Schiavo said.
I, too, had faith in Chris Beekman. But the reality was, I had no idea if he was still up there, on the flight deck. I’d been gone more than ten minutes. If he’d taken my word as an order to be followed at all costs, the three of us were going to go down with the Vinson.
Schiavo was first up the rope. I went next. Martin tied the end of the rope around his waist and we pulled him up, his injured leg swinging away from the edge of the elevator well as he swung back and forth. In less than a minute we had him topside.
Then, as best we could, we ran toward the jamming apparatus, nearing the edge of the cube where we would be able to see if the Cessna was still there. Before we ever reached that point, though, we knew.
Chris Beekman crossed in front of us, carrying an armful of C4 to the edge of the ship, where he tossed it into the sea. He saw us coming and waved at us to hurry.
“I cleared out the charges,” he said.
The back seat was clear now. Schiavo and Martin climbed in. I took the front seat as Beekman sat behind the controls and started the engine once again. As he did, the Cessna began to slide, skidding a few inches at a time in the direction of the list, the damp deck only aiding the slippage.
“Hang on,” Beekman said. “We’ve only got one shot at this.”
He held the brake and revved the engine, the throttles firewalled. The plane shook around us, horsepower building, the propeller a deadly blur before us. He wanted to rocket away from a standstill, not slowly accelerate, something he’d done already.
But the ship was on an even keel on his previous takeoff. And the weather had not deteriorated to intermittent squalls, which were dragging curtains of rain across the flight deck, moving from port to starboard. This, I knew, as did Beekman, was going to be a takeoff to remember.
If it worked.
“Hang on,” he said, and released the brake.
The Cessna lurched forward, toward the stern, drifting left with the list. Beekman compensated with rudder, building speed, the end of the truncated runway coming up fast.
“If anybody prays, now would be a good time,” Beekman told us.
But there was no time to utter even a request to the Almighty, as the stern of the ship ended just beyond a sheet of rain, black ocean and snarling whitecaps past the windshield. Beekman eased the yoke back, bringing the nose up and leveling off into a shallow left turn.
“We’re up,” he said.
I looked back to my friends and saw Schiavo laying across Martin, holding him, neither bothering with seatbelts. The moment was too raw. Too real. They simply needed to embrace each other.
“That was incredible,” I said, looking to Beekman.
He stayed focused ahead, but I saw him nod slightly at the compliment which he’d heard through the headset.
“Dave Arndt said I should take flying lessons,” I told Beekman.
“He’s a good pilot,” Beekman said. “Had a sketchy instructor.”
“All the same, I can’t imagine doing what you just did.”
“A couple days ago, Fletch, neither could I.”
We continued to gain altitude until we were a few hundred feet over the dying ship, ambient moonlight filtering through the storm allowing enough definition to see that the Vinson was in its final minutes.
“She’s down by the bow now,” Martin said.
She was rolling onto her right side, with the front of the ship beginning to slip under the waves. We stayed in a low orbit over the Vinson as more and more of her settled beneath the roiling sea.
“There she goes,” Beekman said.
In an almost graceful manner, the leviathan rolled fully over and dove, bow first, at a gentle angle, into the Pacific.
“What if the nukes go off?” Beekman asked as we watched the frothing spot on the water where the Vinson had just been. “Can they still explode down there?”
“Under seven thousand feet of water,” Schiavo said. “We may never know.”
Could the bombs still detonate if submerged? If they did, would they all work? And, if so, would the sea mitigate any effects. Visions of some tsunami triggered by a nuke briefly occupied my thoughts, but there was a lot of water to absorb and dissipate such a thing, I thought. Still, I would sleep better when days had passed with no indication that we were still facing some threat.
“How long until we’re home, Chris?” Schiavo asked.
“Ninety minutes in this weather,” he said, leaving the orbit and turning us toward shore.
“Okay,” Schiavo said, letting herself rest against Martin’s chest again as she closed her eyes. “Okay.”
She was exhausted. Martin, too. Beekman had to be.
I was not.
We’d all been through so much. Martin had been hurt. Schiavo was banged up. Bruises and cuts dotted my body. A finger was broken. For some reason, though, my mind was alive. Sharp. Thinking.
People had given up, to be certain. In many places across the globe they had simply laid down and accepted their fate. Starvation, in most cases. Fewer had chosen Lana’s path. One of an aggrandized self-loathing. Playing the blame game on humanity. We were bad. Evil. An evolutionary mistake unworthy of the planet which had harbored and sheltered and nourished us.
I didn’t buy that one iota.
Something about the very act of despising others, members of the human race, to the point of designing an end to everything, gnawed at me. Judge me, not the me whose perception is based upon your experience with others. Hate the act, or the perpetrator, but not those who tread the same ground. Sitting at the same table as Lana, facing her, feeling her elevated disdain, I knew that she was incapable of such selective discrimination. Long ago, for her own twisted reasons, she’d decided that all were guilty.
Even herself.
We had enough to deal with without needing to concern ourselves with lunatics such as her who would wipe us out given the chance. That only reinforced my belief that Bandon had to evolve. It had to change. No longer was it the place where we were safest.
Somewhere was, though. Many somewheres were. We just had to find them.
Thirty One
We returned in as anticlimactic a manner as imaginable. The airwaves clear, Beekman reported that we were inbound. Despite the hour, just after dawn, it was Krista who received the radio call, relaying wind and precipitation readings from the town’s weather station. The Cessna lined up on the runway from the south and settled onto the rainy runway with hardly a jolt to signal our return to terra firma.
We did not arrive to an empty field, however.
A Humvee and a pickup truck sat near the hangar, engines idling and their lights on in the stormy morning light. It was my pickup, I saw when Chris Beekman turned us off the runway. Our pickup.