PointOfHonor

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  Lucy nodded agreement. “Okay, so let’s think about what was happening. You are the captain of a crippled submarine. I mean the noise we heard on their sonar tapes certainly wasn’t the sound of something healthy.” She tapped the photograph from the U-2 displaying an opening on the deck. “Now, suppose the reason you made all that noise is because you have a big hole in your deck and you have cavitation where there never used to be.”

  Andy nodded as he pulled theMystic away from the404’s bow. “That would mean the boat would be light in the bow relative to the stern. An emergency blow might lift the bow ahead of the rest of the boat at maybe a forty-five-or even sixty-degree angle.” He stopped imagining the deck sliding upwards beneath their feet seconds before the first of four torpedoes hit. People, charts, books, and anything else not secure would flutter in a deadly blizzard through the interior of the boat.

  “The hull is already weakened by the initial problems. They probably couldn’t take much more stress. So they take a desperation gamble hoping to ride out the explosion as they head for the surface,” continued Lucy, tapping the monitor. Her finger traced the rupture line along the forward ballast tank.

  Andy snapped his finger. He rolled a second camera back towards the conning tower. “Of course, the first torpedo explodes based on proximity to the target. It figured out it was suddenly increasing the distance and triggered the first explosion.”

  Lucy followed his gaze to the monitor displaying the conning tower. He manipulated a second light rack and sent a blaze of several thousand candlepower. “But the second torpedo hit high. It must have compensated for the movement of the404 .”

  “Yeah, yeah. But the first blast took out the ballast tanks, or at least caused them to start leaking badly.”

  Lucy was into the mind game now. She visualized the slant of the deck and the angle of the initial two torpedoes. “But now the boat is starting to drop and the second torpedo is too close to compensate.” She tapped the center of the screen. “No wonder the conning tower is gone. The torpedo plowed right into the top and exploded due to impact.”

  “Blasts on top and bottom—that would account for the twisting effect on the hull. They snapped the hull in half most likely, and what we don’t know is how shallow she was when she was hit. But judging from the troughs in the sea bed she must have hit pretty hard.”

  Lucy shook her head. “I don’t think the conning tower hit was enough to break the hull.” She traced a scorch mark running diagonally down the side of the hull. She tapped the video monitor screen. “This looks like it hit sideways and slid along the hull until it exploded. It could be the pressure hull was already compromised and maybe that lessened the blast damage.”

  Andy was quiet for a moment. “You think they were still alive after the second torpedo?”

  She shrugged. “I doubt there was much that could save her by then. But this shallow, there might have been a chance to get some of the crew off alive.” She manipulated the camera angle and zoomed out, providing a more wide-angle view of the wreck. “ I suppose the rest of the boat is over there.” She cocked a finger.

  Andy pushed the throttle forward and spun the agileMystic in the direction Lucy indicated. However the powerful halogen lamps did not find the rest of the404, nor did the powerful sonar equipment image the shape. Instead, the radioactivity detector alarm sounded. TheMystic stopped its forward progress and floated upwards until the alarm snapped off.

  “Guess the reactor core isn’t as secure as we thought,” he murmured.

  Both of them were already angling the camera towards the bottom to find the hazard. The reactor vessel was producing enough heat to create steam at a depth of five-hundred-fifty feet. A steady stream of bubbles gurgled from a dented, spherical, blackened steel chunk. What was left of the core was dissipating radioactivity and heat into the greater ocean.

  “The core dropped right through the hull,” suggested Andy. “That would certainly weaken the hulls’ integrity.”

  “Just about snap it in half, and give anyone still alive a lethal dose. That assumes they survived the blast resulting from this disaster,” she sighed. Radiation burns were akin to being cooked alive from the inside out. It was not a pleasant thought to consider men still alive in stale air and a watery tomb to be finally cooked alive by their own systems.

  Andy pushed the control yoke forward and steered theMystic beyond the reactor core. Someone would notice the sudden release of energy on the ocean floor via satellite. He only hoped that it was American satellites that saw the blast and not a Russian or Chinese bird in orbit. Anyone who came to look would recognize obvious external blast damage and come up with aggressive action. No one would want to advertise torpedoes had been fired in anger.

  “You figure it’s farther east?”

  Lucy nodded.

  They found the other half of the404 some fifteen minutes later. Clearly, it had suffered blast damage from the final two torpedoes. It was a twisted and mangled hulk hanging over the lip of a shallow canyon. The massive screw lay shattered on the bottom several yards distant, and the massive holes created by direct hits testified to the sudden end for the404.

  Andy brought theMystic over top of the404 . The hard radiation from the core was far enough away to not set off the alarms. He glanced at the U-2 photographs and tapped the one where a square patch appeared on the deck of the boat. “Louis said the NRO people thought this was where the missile hatches should have been.”

  Lucy nodded as she worked the camera bank to point straight on. Andy swung theMystic to point straight at the missile deck. The Halogen lamps swept up over the ocean floor to stabilize on the deck, and both stared at the digitally enhanced picture displayed on the monitors. The video recorders continued to capture every moment. The audio recorders heard their first impressions. The enormity of their discovery first came from Lucy.

  “That’s an elevator—like on an aircraft carrier.”

  Andy nodded. “Only smaller.” He flipped one of the zoom lenses and fed the video to the central monitor. “You see that?” He worked a mouse cursor to point towards his interest.

  “Uh huh.”

  “That’s a cable and it’s fouled in the jamb of the elevator platform." He shifted the focus, displaying the shredded remains of a neoprene covering. “The cable must have slapped the side of the boat until it shredded the sound insulation.” He backed off the magnification. “There, there, and there,” he said, spinning the pointer to different points on the screen.

  “The whole compartment must be flooded.” She tapped out a calculation. “No wonder she was so noisy and sluggish. If a space equal to the missile bay were flooded, it might not be possible for her to ever surface again. She might have been too heavy to make it to the surface.” The remains of the404 lay sideways tilted more than ninety degrees over the keel. Even if watertight compartments remained, there was no known method to extract men from those compartments with a vessel at such an extreme attitude.

  TheMystic rested ten feet away from the elevator platform. Deftly a metallic arm unfolded from beneath the light and video array. The arm extended about seven feet beyond the forecastle of theMystic before Andy snapped the hydraulic locks in place. He nudged the boat ahead dead slow.

  “I’m going to bet this platform was held in place by some sort of hydraulic system. Now, since it never locked in place, there aren’t any interlocks to prevent us from moving it. The only thing that could stop us is if the hydraulic lift is still functional.” He shrugged. “My guess is that every pipe that could be ruptured was—when the reactor hit the water, or the last two ADCAPs hit this sub.”

  The leading edge of theMystic’s arm came to rest on the center of the platform. Andy started applying thrust, and somewhere above two knots, the elevator platform moved. He reversed thrust and pulled theMystic away, fearful that they might smash into the dead hulk and tumble into the canyon they hovered above.

  The elevator platform slid about six feet before stopping. It hung wit
h a dark frame of the broader opening below and grinned like a jack-o’-lantern beckoning them towards tricks.

  Andy was working the fiber optic video and light probe that he had used on the torpedo tube when Lucy screamed. He snapped his head up to see a yellow suited sailor floating into their lights. His features were twisted in agony and his suit was perforated with acid like burns. Andy choked back the bile rising in his throat and pulled theMystic from the ugly grip of death hovering outside their antiseptic world.

  “Biohazard suit!” exclaimed Lucy. “He’s wearing a biohazard suit,” she gasped trying to regain her composure.

  “Didn’t do him much good,” joked Andy.

  She choked off a nervous laugh. “Guess not.”

  Andy used the arm to push the dead man out of the way. The yellow clad corpse bobbed away from the opening. The fabric flapped in the motion of the currents and flashes of dead white flesh peeked out. Most of the facemask was clouded with blood and a milky white substance. Whatever had happened to the sailor, it happened a long time before the four torpedoes from theSpringfieldarrived.

  They returned to the grim opening where the missile bay should have been. The probe snaked into the dark opening. Both of them ignored the monitor displaying the entrance of the probe and concentrated on the high gain display. Coupled with the fiber optic probe were two hundred-watt dime-size halogen bulbs.

  The ruptured remains of a barrel lay on its side. It looked like it had bounced around on the deck. “You know, this looks like it got crunched in the elevator.”

  Andy grunted and moved the probe to the side of the crumpled barrel. “That looks like a bullet hole to me.”

  Lucy leaned over his shoulder and squinted at the ragged oblong hole. A steel jacketed 123-grain round from an AK-47 could easily punch through stainless steel. Lucy’s father had learned that the hard way by shooting an MAK-90 at a half-inch steel plate. Instead of causing the plate to spin, the rounds punched holes right through the steel plate. The Norinco Munitions Company produced steel jacketed ammunition for a variety of clients. Iraq was probably number one on the client list.

  “I wonder if the stuff was under pressure.”

  “You think we found one of the barrels?”

  Lucy nodded. “It would be better if we had one of the barrels intact. But that would be asking too much.”

  Andy twisted the joystick again to pan the rest of the storage chamber. He stopped and stared at the screen. There strapped to the deck was a stainless steel barrel with Chinese characters—an international biohazard symbol in reflective orange blinked back at them.

  He pushed the probe closer, examining the barrel. It appeared to be intact. “Well, we’ve got hard evidence. I wonder what they’ll do with it?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  New Jersey Turnpike

  Sunday, November 16, 1997

  9:00 P.M. EST

  Trooper Margaret Daniels cruised through Sunday night traffic in one of the Crown Victoria Stealth cruisers. She was the first female trooper to be assigned one of thesuper cars. The conventional overhead lighting and siren systems had been removed to provide a sleeker silhouette for traffic enforcement on the thirty-four thousand miles of roads patrolled by the New Jersey State Police. The prominent triangular-shaped State Police logo was imprinted on the door panels.

  The cruiser was another advance from a paper system to a fully computerized and nationwide integrated law enforcement network. It had specialized cameras, computers, and a communication array mounted in a touch screen package between the two front seats. A wire mesh cage barrier separated the driver compartment from the holding area in the rear seat. The Remington 870 shotgun was mounted vertically next to the driver and a Colt AR-15 rifle was tucked away in the trunk.

  Margaret took great pride in the fact that she was the first female trooper assigned a Stealth cruiser, or that she was one of the pathfinders in the previous all-male domain of the State Police. She made sure her uniform was perfect every day, and worked very hard to place towards the top in weapons training and qualifications. Every day she made sure the uncomfortable Second Chance bulletproof vest was secured beneath her clothing. The Heckler & Kock Service pistol chambered in .40 S&W was strapped securely to her web belt along with mace, handcuffs, two additional high capacity magazines, a telescoping baton spot, a spare set of keys, and a power pack to manage the remote radio clipped to her shoulder.

  The nearest troopers were probably twenty-five miles down the turnpike patrolling their own sectors. The radio chatter disappeared into the background and the comfort of the Crown Victoria surrounded her like a cuddly blanket. Tomorrow would be a day off. Margaret planned to spend it painting the back bedroom. Her sister was planning to visit for Thanksgiving in a week and a half. The bedroom needed a fresh coat of paint, and of course, the meal needed to be planned. She already had a department turkey in the freezer downstairs.

  She thought about her niece and nephew who were growing up faster than she cared to remember. She pushed from her mind a failed marriage and her lack of children. After all, she had her career to keep her company. Somehow, a career was always the right kind of company she needed. Most times of the year, she could push the need from her thoughts, but the holidays from Thanksgiving to Christmas and New Year’s seemed to get harder each year. The holiday instituted by Abraham Lincoln to remember God for his bounty during the year past, and the celebration of the Babe in Bethlehem left her cold.

  The impending arrival of her sister would help her get through Thanksgiving, and she had already scheduled herself to work during the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Working was a remedy—for now. She knew instinctively it would not be a remedy forever. She could feel her biological clock ticking, and the desire for her own baby and family continue to press itself closer and closer to her conscious reality. For now, she had the job and the duty. For now, it was enough.

  She swung through an interchange to start back on her loop. As she accelerated back onto the turnpike, she saw the Virginia license plate out of the corner of her eye. Virginia plates were not unusual. The compact nature of states in this part of the country and relatively easy two-hundred-twenty-mile drive along the Washington/New York corridor certainly brought all nature of travelers along the road.

  It was the car, and the plate described by the Federal Fugitive Warrant that had arrived in the thermal fax printer a couple of hours ago, that caught her attention. She flipped to the warrant on her clipboard and checked the plate number against the car ahead of her. A charge of adrenaline sizzled through her small frame. The plate numbers matched!

  She dropped the clipboard back to the seat and clicked the radio mike. “This is Sierra Tango four seven zero. I am in pursuit of Federal Fugitive Warrant; requesting backup.”

  She slid the cruiser to the fast lane and angled to the left rear quarter of the other car before hitting full lights and siren. She reached down and unsnapped the retention strap on her holster before placing both hands firmly on the wheel.

  While it was never truly dark on the turnpike, this was a rural stretch of highway and the number of cars was sparse by this point on a Sunday night. The illumination of all the cruiser’s lights was akin to lighting the White House Christmas Tree. The cruiser brought immediate attention to anyone driving. She punched the gas, feeling the power rush up from the engine and grab the road. Within seconds, she was next to the other car and pointing towards the side of the road.

  An oriental man looked at her with a confused expression, before nodding and easing the car onto the shoulder. Margaret let up on the gas and pulled in behind the Virginia car. The dashboard camera was already delivering a live feed broadcast to the nearest State Police Headquarter station. The spotlights on either side of the Crown Victoria were painting her fugitives with in excess of four hundred watts.

  She killed the siren and said, “That was easy.”

  Getting out of the car, she put her hat on and let her right hand drift down to the
grip on the H&K pistol. She stood behind the barrier of her open car door and watched as two men got out of the car in front of her—one on each side.

  She stepped around the open door and said in her command voice, “Put your hands on your heads.”

  Her reactions were far too slow in attempting to draw the H&K. The second man on the passenger side did as he was instructed, but with one exception. His hands held a Taurus Model 669 .357 Magnum revolver. It had a blued finish, making it virtually invisible in the dark. It was only the gleam off the muzzle that first drew Margaret’s attention.

  Time suddenly slowed down as she started to drop into a crouch and pull her service pistol. However, the Taurus muzzle continued to rise towards presentation. She knew the statistics as well as anyone. They had been drilled into her head at the Lethal Force Institute. The average person can fire four rounds from a double action weapon inside of a second. The Taurus held six rounds.

  A scream erupted from her lips as the muzzle blossomed with an angry flame. The load was 125 grain Golden Saber round. The first one hit her in the left breast and pancaked to twice its size. It slammed into her at slightly less than six-hundred-foot-pounds of force; enough force to lift Margaret backwards and arch her back. The second shot took her square on the solar plexus, driving all wind from her lungs and shutting down her hearing and vision. The third shot walked up towards her sternum. By then, she was already turning and spinning towards the hard pavement in front of her cruiser—its lights, electronics, and marvelous gadgets useless.

  The Kevlar vest saved her life, but the impact of the heavy magnum rounds at a distance slightly of less than ten yards drove the air from her lungs. The impact on her solar plexus converted her world from terrible panic to mushy grayness. Light and sound retreated from her senses and her head swam. Her knees buckled, as her body’s stop button had been punched mercilessly by the 125 grain round. The final round scrambled her heart’s normal electrical pulse and consciousness winked out.