Piranha Assignment

by Austin Camacho

  “What did you do?” Morgan asked. He turned to Felicity, who was staring at her palms. Pain creased her face.

  “Swung on that overhead pipe,” she said, shaking her hands. “Must be a steam pipe or something. Glory, that hurts.”

  Morgan swung the rifle sling over his shoulder and grabbed Felicity’s hands, turning them up for inspection. Her palms and fingers were red and tender. He thought he saw a couple of blisters forming.

  “The great genius engineer didn’t wrap the steam pipes,” Morgan said. “Come on.”

  “There’s no time,” Felicity said as Morgan shoved her down the hall. “It’s for sure somebody heard those gunshots.” Morgan snatched a first aid kit from the Cuban sailor’s belt and followed Felicity down the hall to a latrine. He hustled her inside, stoppered the sink and turned the cold tap on full. While Felicity stood with her hands under water, he unwrapped the sterile gauze bandage.

  “That feels better, but is it really necessary to wrap my hands?”

  “Only if you don’t want serious pain and infection when those blisters break,” Morgan said. He lifted her hands and with unexpected patience, blew them dry. Then he tore the dressing in half and gently wrapped each hand. He held her eyes with his while he rendered first aid. She tried to turn away, but he could see in her eyes that the pain was returning to her now dry hands.

  “Now what?” he asked when he finished. “They’ll be searching the sub for us. Want to try to find the control room?”

  “No search necessary,” Felicity said, forcing a smile. “I know where it is. We do have the advantage of surprise. I’ve memorized the schematic of the sub. Let’s go.”

  Felicity led them down a narrow gray passageway. The control room was just aft of their position in this three story vessel’s top level. Morgan held the heavy rifle at port arms. The thought of being trapped in these narrow quarters chilled him. He was not a man prone to fear, he had to admit he did not like their survival chances at that point.

  “You actually bothered to escape.” Bastidas’ too high voice gained an eerie, ghostly quality coming over a public address system. Morgan jumped, and Felicity stared around for the speaker.

  “I’m impressed by your pointless gesture of defiance,” Bastidas’ disembodied voice said. “I’d come out and talk, but I’m running this thing, aren’t I? I’d be asleep right now if you weren’t so blood thirsty, Mister Stark. As it is I can spare only a handful of men to patrol the sub, looking for you.”

  “Coming up behind us,” Felicity said.

  “I felt it.”

  “The control room is heavily guarded,” Bastidas said. On cue, Morgan stepped around a corner and came face to face with four guards. He fired quickly and sprang back. He heard two voices cry out in pain. Felicity led him to a gangway and they dropped a level.

  “I also have guards posted at the reactor and the turbo generator.”

  “Yeah, and I’m out of ammo,” Morgan said under his breath.

  “The communications center is disabled and the escape towers, fore and aft, are sealed. Not that it matters when you’re more than five hundred feet below the surface. Of course, maximum security surrounds the helicopter. You may as well relax and enjoy the cruise.”

  After a minute’s silence, Felicity said, “Wonder how long until we go boom?”

  “Well, he must have pulled out into the Pacific before turning back toward the canal,” Morgan said. “It’s real shallow by the coast. If we’re five hundred feet down we’re outside the Gulf of Panama.”

  They paused in an empty passage, crouching on their haunches for a moment. Felicity nodded, as if having a private conversation inside her head. “Doesn’t sound like we’re in much immediate danger,” she said. “With my mental map of the sub, your sense of direction and our combined awareness of approaching danger, we could avoid his boys for days.”

  “Yeah, but he ain’t worried about us, either.”

  “Couldn’t you hear the strain in his voice?” Felicity asked as they began walking again. “He’s almost hysterical.”

  “Maybe, but he ain’t scared. And I hate being ignored.”

  -34-

  “Not bad for a late supper,” Morgan said, dunking half a donut in his cup.

  “Yeah, maybe the last supper,” Felicity said, but her smile never wavered.

  They were holed up in the galley. It reminded Felicity of a cramped college dining facility, except that the lights weren’t as bright. Morgan had heated two trays he called Trations and they had inhaled their contents. Felicity had a cup of coffee. Morgan chugged six. Now they were devouring some donuts they found in a cupboard.

  Until Morgan’s comment, conversation had been almost absent. Felicity sat on a plastic chair across a table from Morgan, trying to flex her fingers. She was putting off the inevitable. Her mouth dried thinking about the conversation she knew they would have to have, and she knew she had to start it.

  “Morgan.” Her voice croaked, as if it had not been used in days.

  “Yeah, Red?”

  Felicity smiled at the nickname, hating the tears trying to squeeze out her eyes. “We can’t get off the sub, can we?”

  “No way I know.”

  “What do you want to do?” she asked.

  “First, stay alive to the end. Never know what’ll turn up. Maybe Barton will get the Navy here in time. Maybe Bastidas will change his mind and sell the sub to the Iranians. Hell, the crew could wise up and mutiny.”

  “You don’t believe that,” Felicity said quietly.

  “Nope.”

  “You scared?” she asked.

  “No. Pissed.”

  “I think we’re going to die in this big tin fish,” Felicity said, fighting to force the rest out. “But we can’t let him blow up the canal.”

  “I ain’t no hero, Red, but I sure would like to kill Bastidas before I go. I’d blow this bitch up if I could.”

  “You can,” Felicity said after a short pause. “What would happen if you put a bullet into one of the torpedo warheads?”

  “This thing’s got torpedoes?”

  “Four,” she answered, watching Morgan lift his coffee cup slowly to his mouth.

  “I don’t have a bullet.”

  “What would happen?” she asked again.

  Morgan considered while he swallowed. “Hell of a big bang. Maybe rupture the superstructure. For sure blow out the torpedo shutters and flood the boat.”

  “Bastidas told us where he put the security,” Felicity said, some of the old sparkle returning to her eyes. “He never mentioned the arms room.”

  “You’re right, but how do we get in. It’s got to be locked up, and you sure can’t pick a lock like that.” He pointed to her bandaged hands.

  “No, but you can,” she said. “I’ll talk you through it.”

  “Right.”

  Morgan sat quiet for a full minute, staring into his cup. Finally, Felicity said “Well, what do you think?”

  “Do you know what General George Patton said at times like this?”

  The idea struck Felicity as comical, or maybe it was the tension. She looked around at where they were, chuckled and played along.

  “No, Morgan, I don’t. What did General George Patton say,” stopped by a giggle, “at times like this?”

  “He said: ‘A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.’”

  -35-

  In front of the arms room it did not seem like such a good plan. Morgan sat on his heels jiggling a lock pick in the keyhole. Felicity stood behind him, cursing her aching fingers while battering her partner with a steady stream of instructions.

  “Come on, feel it. Easy. Easy! You can’t bully it.” Morgan’s fingers, long and thin for a man, pushed and pulled at the little pick, yanking it left and right. Once he twisted it almost to the breaking point, but lost his grip on the tumbler he was trying to push. In frustration Felicity dropped to her knees, resting her forehead on his shoulder. Her tears finally
rolled out.

  “Oh, God, you can’t do it. You’ll never do it. Jesus, Morgan, why aren’t you scared?”

  Morgan smirked, still working at the lock. “I’ve chosen death as a companion, Red. From the first day I landed in Vietnam, a sixteen year old boy, I been looking the grim reaper in the face. I ain’t in no hurry, but eventually, I guess I’ll have to regroup with all those guys I sent ahead of me.”

  Felicity was still surprised at those moments when Morgan Stark, mercenary soldier, suddenly became Morgan Stark, philosopher. The fear in her faded, leaving in its place something akin to despair. She turned to sit on the floor with her back to him and crossed her legs. She laid her useless hands in her lap and leaned her head back on his shoulder.

  “It’s hopeless,” she said. Her voice was barely a murmur. He ignored her and kept trying. She knew he would. He accepted and just would not quit because that was his nature. But he had to know he would never open that lock. If only she could hold that pick. But the work was too delicate for her stiff, burned fingers. As if to reinforce that, a wave of pain rolled up her arms.

  Then her breath caught in her throat. Somehow, she was holding the lock pick. Her hands were big, as if she was wearing gloves. Her nails were short. The edges of her palms were callused. And the strength she felt in her hands astounded her.

  Felicity remembered that day, so long ago, in New York. She had known Morgan only a few days. Passion had driven them together in bed. In the heat of that moment they had become so close, she felt what he felt loving her and he experienced sex from the woman’s side.

  That was a terrifying experience. This was a little less so. She was in control this time. In control of a foreign pair of hands.

  Behind her, Morgan’s breath caught in his throat. His eyes grew wide and his mouth gaped open. He could feel his hands but not control them. His fingers moved by themselves, as if some spirit had possessed them. Every story he had ever heard about ghosts and zombies flitted through his mind, backed by jump cuts from a dozen movies of demonic possession. Then a different idea struck him and he knew it for the truth immediately.

  His closeness to Felicity, his caring, the tension, her heightened emotional state, all had combined to let her experience the tactile sensations flowing in his hands. In some way he would never understand, nerve impulses leaving his fingers were switchboarded into her brain.

  Morgan tried desperately to relax and let it happen. He had done plenty of delicate work before, he reminded himself. Fixed radios. Built bombs. This was no different. Yet he watched, fascinated, as s/he moved the spring steel with a light, gentle touch in the small keyhole.

  There was a click. The door swung in on new, squeaking hinges. Man and woman closed their eyes. Morgan curled fists that were again his own.

  Felicity sat up straight, reacting to the footsteps.

  “Incoming,” she said.

  “Move!” Morgan said, and stiff-armed her down the corridor.

  Felicity had taken four big steps before she realized she was alone. She turned in time to see the arms room door swing closed. She knew then she must lead the search party away. She waited at the corner until a follower spotted her, then she ran with everything she had.

  -36-

  Long red tresses hung under the bright orange rack. Felicity knelt beneath a rack of twenty-one inch torpedoes, with her hands pressed together. She was ashamed of how unfamiliar the posture was.

  She had led the guards on a wide tour of The Piranha. They had run down past the reactor control center and dropped a level into the turbo generator area. She had gone forward to the diesel generator, then back up to the second level’s crew accommodations. She had a close call near the communications center. By the time she settled into the torpedo storage area, Cubans were wandering in three different directions. With any luck, they would be shooting at each other.

  Now Felicity knelt, wrestling with the hardest thing she had done in a decade. Raised Catholic, brought up by her uncle, a priest, the reverence was buried deep in her heart and mind. But when Felicity left her only kin behind in Ireland she embarked on a long, twisted road of survival that led her to become her generation’s most gifted thief. In the process she had abandoned the childish trappings of religion. Or so she thought.

  Then she met Morgan Stark. He loved her, not her body. He was as close as a brother would be, strong and in his own odd way, kind. With Morgan in her life she came to rely on someone other than herself.

  Now she saw that leaning on something was not so bad, calling for help not so awful. That is what she would do now, if she could only remember how.

  “Lord?” she whispered, with every ounce of sincerity in her heart. “I haven’t come around for a long time, I know, but I hear the switchboard’s always open. I don’t imagine there’s much of a suite for me in your house after the life I’ve been living, but maybe you know my Uncle Sean? One of the best, he is, one of your soldiers for sure. Maybe you can give me a listen for her sake. Besides, this time I’m trying to do something good.”

  Something was thickening in her throat and she had to swallow hard to clear it. “Lord, I think we can save a lot of kids and mothers from that wacko up the control room of this boat, and when I get up there to your house I’ll try to explain why I did some of the things I did. Anyway, I’m not calling for me. You know Morgan Stark? He’s spent a lot of years trying to fight for what he thought was right. All I’m asking is, don’t let him die. Please? It looks bad, but I know you can figure a way. Just give us half a shot, okay? Thanks. Our Father, who art in heaven…”

  “There you are,” Morgan said, stooping to get into her hiding place. “Good news. I can get you out of here. Look what I found in the arms room.” Felicity looked up. Two automatic pistols were jammed into his belt. All his shirt and pants pockets bulged with loaded magazines. He was holding a rope that trailed out behind him. At the other end of it was a net filled with gear that he must have dragged through the submarine.

  “What is all that stuff?”

  “Everything you need,” Morgan said with a cold smile. “Aqualungs, fins, wet suit, mask, weight belt, regulator, even a depth gauge. Don’t know how we can open those torpedo shutters yet. That’s a three thousand pound hydraulic lock. But soon as I figure that bit out, I can put you out the torpedo shutters and when I blow the torpedoes…” Felicity interrupted by diving into him, smothering him with a hug.

  “You great, big, beautiful teddy bear of a man, you,” she said through a laugh. “You did it. We’ve got a shot now. Both of us.”

  “No,” Morgan said, pushing her away. “You were right. I’ve got to sink the sub.”

  “Sure, but we’re not going to do it that way. There’s a better answer, and I’ve had it all this time, right in the palm of my hand.”

  They crouched around a corner from the control room door, dressed in wet suits. Morgan had returned to the storage room for a duplicate of all he had gotten for Felicity. He held his two pistols high.

  “First, let’s lock that door,” he said. He stepped suddenly into view at the end of the corridor. He fired the first two shots in this war’s last battle, not at the four armed guards, but at a pipe over their heads. A blast of hot steam burst forth, angled at the control room door, searing paint from it. It would be suicide to open that door so, in effect, Bastidas was sealed inside. Before the guards knew what was happening, Morgan and Felicity had disappeared.

  Minutes later, having eluded any followers, they were back at the starboard turbo generator.

  “Franciscus said it himself,” Felicity said, shouting against the turbo whine. “What really powers the submarine is steam. If you puncture enough of those pipes the pressure will drop. No way they can patch them all. They’ll have no drive power, no hydroplanes to steer, no air circulating. They’ll literally be dead in the water.”

  “Well, let’s get to it,” Morgan said, cheerful at the prospect. He fired, and a jet of steam shot down, creating a tiny tropical storm o
ver the generator.

  Further forward, Morgan punctured a pipe over the diesel generator. Upstairs at the reactor control center, he ducked around a corner and shot the steam pipe above a guard’s head. The Cuban screamed as live steam burst into his face. That passageway would be impassable for a while.

  Morgan felt like a kid playing hide and seek, or tag. He remembered being good at that stuff as a kid in The Bronx. On the lower level he shot out a pipe outside a room full of auxiliary machinery. On the center level he hit a pipe outside a crew bay. Then he hustled back down to blow out a pipe outside the communications room. Then he sealed off every approach to the torpedo storage racks and tubes with a few well placed steam sprays.

  “We’re committed now, Red,” Morgan said. “So what about the torpedo tube shutters?”

  Felicity pointed and backed away. “Here and here. And be careful.”

  Morgan stood to the side and carefully placed two shots. This time, instead of steam a thick fluid flew out like a Texas gusher. The oily liquid flooded the passage, pointing away from them.

  “That ought to take care of the hydraulic pressure, but we don’t have a lot of time,” Felicity said. They helped each other into masks, fins and tanks, hurrying but not rushing. Each wore two aqualungs. Morgan looped a rope around Felicity’s waist with a bowline knot, then did the same for himself. With another line he lashed four extra tanks to himself.

  “This could be a pretty scary experience, Red,” Morgan said. “Any questions I might have forgot about?”

  “Well, remember, I’ve only dived in pretty shallow, tropical places. You know, looking at the fish, ten feet down. I’d sure like to get to do that again. But I’ve heard some horror stories about deep dives. Are we going to get the bends?”

  “That’s the one bit of luck we didn’t earn,” Morgan said, adjusting her regulator. “Decompression sickness happens because nitrogen bubbles out of your blood. This deep nitrogen narcosis is also a threat, so submarine crews get special diving gear for emergencies. The gas mixture in these tanks is called heliox. Just oxygen and helium. No nitrogen, no decompression sickness. As long as we keep our breathing fairly shallow, we shouldn’t have any real problems.”