“But,” Bobby continued, “even if you’ve got us on board, you’re still going to have a mega-problem here.” Sarah looked serious as she nodded in agreement. She knew full well what Bobby was talking about. “Lynch isn’t going to like this.”
The team’s mentor had been away for the past few days. He hadn’t said where he was going. But his presence was still very much with them.
“I know,” Kat said. “That’s why you’ve got to help me out. I need to find some way to break it to him. so that—”
Kat stopped talking as soon as she heard the familiar, deep voice behind her. “I believe it’s already broken,” said the voice.
Kat looked up to see Lynch standing in the open front door. He was still wearing his coat and holding a leather carry-on bag. There was no way to know just how long he’d been standing there.
Dressed in a jet black shirt and trousers, Lynch cut a commanding figure. He was well into middle age, but his body was as taut and muscular as it had been twenty years earlier. His mutton chops and widow’s peak accentuated the sharp angles of his scarred face.
As a general rule, Lynch rarely smiled. But even by his own standards, he didn’t look happy.
Lynch turned to the others. “Would you excuse us, please? Caitlin and I need to talk.”
“You got it!” “Sure!” “Glad to have you home, Dad!” “Oh gee, is that the time?”
Before Kat could blink, they vanished in a chorus of slamming doors.
Lynch chuckled quietly. He put down his bag near the door and hung up his coat. Then, without a word, he walked to the sofa. He picked up the remote control, and turned off the video that was still playing, long forgotten. Kat squirmed uncomfortably as she waited.
Finally, Lynch crossed over to her.
“I understand, Kat,” he said, breaking the silence with a sigh. “Truly, I do. Can you imagine how many times Fve had the same thoughts myself over the years? A normal job, a house in the suburbs, a couple of kids?
“But that’s not for people like us. We’ve got a different path to follow. Different responsibilities. We’re the ones who keep those people safe so they can have those lives ... and stay alive to enjoy them.”
Lynch paused. As usual, his face gave little indication of the thoughts running through his mind.
“Where would you kids be today if I had chosen that route years ago?” he continued. “Where will countless other people be if you try to choose it now?”
No sooner had Lynch finished than the words poured out of Kat in a rush. “I hear what you’re saying, Mister
Lynch—really,” she said. “But with all due respect, that’s a load of bull!”
Lynch reacted with surprise. He wasn’t used to hearing even such mild euphemisms from Kat.
“First of all,” Kat said, “you and I are not the same. I’m not about to go spend my life as some sort of government super-spy. I want to help people, sure. But you’re not going to find me running some ultra-top-secret unit at
I.O. for years and years. I respect you—a lot—and we share some of the same values, but there’s no way that we’re the same person or that we’re going to make the same decisions.
“Second of all, like I told the team, I have no intention of leaving. Taking a job is not the same as busting up Gen13. I’ll be here when you need me. But it can’t be all that I do.”
Lynch shook his head impatiently. “Kat, you have to be practical. If you think this through . .
“I have thought it through!” she answered. “I mean, think back to when we moved to New York. Weren’t you the one who said that, now that we didn’t have to run anymore, you wanted us out there living our lives?
“Well, that’s what I’m doing. I’m living my life. And you know what? In its own way, it’s scarier than facing a hundred I.O.’s!”
Kat’s voice trailed off. She stared down at her feet, and her words grew more quiet. “That’s why I need you to understand. See, even if you don’t agree. ... Even if you can’t be happy for me ...
“... I could really use your support right now ...” Lynch frowned. He thought long and hard.
“Your mind is made up, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes.”
“There’s nothing I can say to change it.”
“No.” ' '
“All right then,” he said. “I still think it’s a bad idea. However, if it’s that important to you, then go do what you have to do.”
Kat rushed forward and threw her arms around her surprised mentor. “Thank you!” she yelled, before releasing him and dashing off down the hall. “I’ve got to go write a resume!”
Off in her bedroom, Roxy took her ear away from the door. She lifted her hand and, with a sniffle, wiped away a tear.
CHAPTER 4
The fleet ballistic missile submarine USS Kolodny was not a small ship. The Kolodny was three stories tail and, if you could stand it up on end, it would be taller than the Washington Monument. For the past two months, it had been home to about one hundred and sixty crewmen, who had spent almost all of that time underwater.
Apart from the crew, the sub was also home to a fully-functional nuclear reactor, which provided its power, as well as twenty-four Trident ballistic missiles. That translated into twenty-four nuclear ICBM missiles, every single one of which had an effective range of more than four thousand miles and the capacity to destroy a city.
Essentially, the mission of the Kolodny was to avoid human contact. In the time since the sub had left its home port in Groton, Connecticut, it had crisscrossed the North Atlantic, over and over, along a variety of routes. It wasn’t that the ship was going somewhere in particular. The idea was for the submarine and its cargo to avoid being found.
Many of the crewmen stationed on the Kolodny had originally joined the Navy looking for adventure, only to discover that what they’d really signed up for was just a job. Countless months of routine maneuvers and tedious maintenance work had managed to reduce even the responsibility of manning a submarine that could wipe out a small country to nothing more than “same old, same old.” Even though all of the crewmen wore dosimeters attached to their uniforms, to warn of any potential radiation leaks, it was really just a standard precaution. The shielding on the reactor and the missiles was strong enough that there was never any problem. The last time an American nuclear submarine had sunk was all the way back in 1968.
The Kolodny was cruising along at a comfortable speed of twenty knots, nine hundred feet below the surface of the ocean, when all of that changed.
Not that the problem was the fault of the captain or crew. For the past year and a half, the Kolodny had been under the command of Captain Robert Tyler. Tyler ran a tight, disciplined ship, with good morale and a model safety record. A beefy man in his late thirties, Tyler easily fit the mold of what, in an earlier time, would have been called a man whose mistress was the sea.
In some ways, actually, the description was almost too apt for his taste. Back in high school, Bob Tyler had been quite the golden boy, the captain of the school’s football team (a captain even then!). And, to no one’s surprise, his heart belonged to the head cheerleader, Chrissy Regan. Their relationship was more than a cliche, though, and it continued long after graduation, when Chrissy went off to college and Tyler joined the service. They continued to write and call each other regularly, and they saw each other as often as their personal commitments allowed.
When Tyler’s tour of duty ended, though, the friction began. Chrissy had assumed that once Tyler’s obligation to the Navy ended, he’d be coming home. He’d get a job, they’d get married, and they would settle down to raise children. However, Tyler had been bitten by the bug. He had his eye on an officer’s track, and couldn’t wait to re-up so that he could get back to sea. He hadn’t imagined that it would interfere with any of their plans for their future. Lots of the guys were married, like Smitty or Dwight or Aryeh, and when they were at sea, their wives lived comfortably and waited for them in the homes
that the Navy provided back in port. But Chrissy had other ideas. After so much time apart, she wanted a family that wouldn’t be separated from each other for weeks or months at a time.
They tried to keep things going after that, but the lengthy absences and failure to compromise took their toll. Finally, Crissy gave Tyler an ultimatum: her or the sea.
The sea won.
Captain Tyler wasn’t'the first to man the bridge of the Kolodny, but it was his baby now—with all the pride, worry, and joy that implied. The Captain was in the mess hall, perusing the leftovers from that night’s dinner, when things started to go bad. There was a fair selection of midnight rations (or “mid-rats,” as they were known to the crew) to choose from. After a bit of consideration, Tyler stabbed a slice to meatloaf and added it to a late-night sandwich. As he squirted on some ketchhup as the finishing touch, he talked baseball with the ship’s supply officer.
“... Sorry, Captain. Looks like my Yanks are gonna go all the way again this year.”
“I don’t know, Evans. Don’t all those pennants get monotonous, year after year? The nice thing about us Bostonians is that being Red Sox fans teaches us humility.”
The two shared a laugh at that. But as the Captain looked back down at the table, he suddenly noticed the dampness on the floor. It was probably nothing—a simple spill, or leftover moisture from the last cleaning crew. But still . . .
The Captain called over the seaman who was manning the mess hall. The seaman didn’t know how to explain it either.
That was when the alarms started to sound.
The Captain dropped his sandwich and ran to the bridge. His feet splashed through water all the way along. It was almost ankle-deep in some places.
The sub had become a flurry' of action. Everyone aboard was moving. Running. Scrambling. Sealing hatches. Manning controls. Trying to do whatever they
could, without really knowing what was going on.
The bridge was even worse. Everyone was talking at once, trying to figure out what was happening while trying simultaneously to correct it.
Even as he stepped onto the bridge, the Captain took command of the situation. “Status report?”
“We’re taking on water, sir,” said the executive officer. “I can see that, Roman. Tell me something I don’t know.” The Captain turned to the planesman. “Initiate emergency procedures. Blow the tanks.” Blowing the tanks—forcing high-pressure air into the ballast tanks— would displace the sea water that they currently held and make the sub more buoyant. It was the fastest way to bring the ship to the surface.
“We already did, sir,” the planesman replied, trying to keep himself under control. “It’s not working. This isn’t a minor leak. We’re taking on water at least as fast as we’re pumping it out of the tanks.”
“Have we isolated the breach?”
“Breaches, sir,” said the chief engineer. He listened to his headset for a moment. “At least two. One in the engine room, lower level. The other on the upper deck.”
“Two? Where the hell did they come from?”
“I don’t know.”
“How big?”
“One’s about three feet long and a foot wide. The other one’s bigger.”
“My God . . .”
The Captain placed his hands on one of the consoles. He bent down and hung his head as the full enormity of the situation hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. But he also remembered that he didn’t have the luxury of being able to indulge his own feelings. He had a duty to uphold.
Captain Tyler stood erect, his jaw set. “Radioman?” “Mayday signal already sent, sir. Continuing to send at one-minute intervals.”
“Good. Roman, order the men into evacuation gear. I want all non-essential personnel lined up in an orderly fashion at the escape trunks. It’s going to take time to pressurize and de-pressurize the airlocks for each group. So let’s get them started now.”
“Aye aye, sir. But you know we’re at nine hundred feet. Even if they get out, the pressure out there—”
“I know. But right now, we don’t have a choice. Meanwhile, planesman, throttleman—”
"‘Sir.”
“Angle us up toward the surface. Throttle on full. Let’s try to get up there the hard way.”
“Sir, we’ve got electrical failures starting to hit all over the place. At the rate we’re taking on water, we can’t possibly make it...”
“No, but maybe we can get high enough to give us better odds for evacuation.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The Captain said a silent prayer.
The evacuation started out in every bit as orderly a fashion as the Captain had demanded. The Kolodny was manned by a carefully-screened, highly disciplined crew. Standard Naval emergency procedures had been laid out in detail and practiced in countless training sessions, until they were second nature. Those procedures were critical now.
Yet, as the water rose down below, the orderly evacuation dissolved into chaos. Fights broke out among the crew, as the desperate men tore at each other to be the next ones through the escape hatches. Panic turned people who had been friends only hours before into animals battling for survival.
In all the commotion, no one noticed three twelve-year-olds, two girls and one boy, standing in the shadows. The trio watched the scene with impassive expressions.
It took three hours for rescue craft to reach the USS Kolodny’s last known position. Out of the crew of one hundred and sixty, they found seventeen survivors.
Captain Robert Tyler was not among them.
It would take several hours more before deep-sea recovery equipment could be deployed to locate the wreck of the Kolodny on the ocean floor. Robot probes explored the ins and outs of the lost submarine, sending video images to the surface, where the recovery crew could puzzle over the tragedy and try to uncover some clue as to what had happened.
But as the robots made their way through the Kolodny, their most chilling discovery wasn’t any new revelation about what caused the submarine to sink.
It was the fact that, of the twenty-four nuclear missiles that the Kolodny had carried . . .
... only twenty-three were still on board.
“... calling this the worst American Naval tragedy in more than thirty years. Government sources are declining to release the names of those who were lost at this time, waiting until they can first contact the victims’ families. However, we have confirmation that the death toll has already climbed to well over one hundred, and recovery efforts are still underway.
“Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the deadly accident. This was the scene at dawn, when combined rescue teams from ...”
Lynch sat on the sofa and slowly took a sip from his cup of black coffee. He watched the early morning newscast through narrowed eyes, digesting the information.
Lynch didn’t know about the missing Trident missile. It wasn’t the sort of tidbit that was being handed over to the media, so the newscast made no mention of it. Still, the information that was reported was more than enough to capture Lynch’s attention anyway.
Several feet away, Sarah stretched and twisted her body before the picture window that looked out over the concrete canyons of Manhattan. Her routine wasn’t quite t’ai-chi, and it wasn’t quite yoga, although it incorporated aspects of both. Sarah preferred to do this part of her exercise routine here, rather than in the room that housed their gym equipment, to take advantage of the more attractive view that the picture window afforded. Which was ironic, actually, since Sarah generally worked her way through her routine with her eyes closed, seemingly oblivious to everything around her.
It was a familiar scene, one that could be found in the apartment almost every day at about this time. Ordinarily, unless you counted Grunge’s snoring (which had been known to elicit complaints from people two blocks away), the rest of the apartment was quiet in the early hours. Most members of Gen13 weren’t exactly morning people.
If truth be told,
Sarah treasured this time of day. No one would describe her as shy or retiring, especially when something threatened one of her causes or principles. Yet, compared to people like Grunge or Roxy, she was positively stoic. The quiet time gave Sarah the opportunity to center herself and set the tone for the day. It was a big part of what made her seem so much older than her teenage years. That, and boundless wisdom and maturity, she told herself with a smile.
In a couple of hours, the apartment would erupt into a raucous din of noise, music, and conversation. This time, on the other hand, was for her.
Or maybe not just for her. Sarah was also glad for the daily time with Lynch, who routinely rose even before she did. Lynch was a man of even fewer words than Sarah, and a hard man to know. They never said much of anything to each other during this time, other than wishing each other a good morning. But the simple proximity as they went through their morning routines with no one else around had given them something in common, and built some sort of a bond between them.
Today was different, though. The peace was shattered as Kat came barrelling out of her room like a runaway freight train.
“It’s after eight! Why didn’t anyone wake me? I’ve gotta go! I’m going to be late! Where’s my left shoe?”
Kat was dressed to the nines for her day of interviews—or mostly dressed, anyway. She was still buttoning up her white, ruffled blouse as she simultaneously dashed around the apartment, gathering her things. She started to apply lipstick while she ran toward the kitchen.
Sarah continued to do her lazy stretches without opening her eyes. Lynch spent another minute or so watching the newscast, until the story changed to a feature on high-priced holiday fashions for dogs. He used the remote to switch off the television, then took another sip of his coffee.
Kat came tearing back into the room, stuffing a bagel into her mouth with one hand while she pinned a stack of resumes under the opposite arm. She juggled it all successfully as she snatched her suit jacket off the end of the sofa. But when she raised her arms to put the jacket on, she lost her grip on the stack of resumes. They drifted down like Autumn leaves to scatter on the floor.
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