On target

FIFTY-ONE

Court pulled the small canopy shut. From the difficult action of the closing mechanism, and the absence of a good handhold on the inside of the Plexiglas, he got the impression there was some sort of a button or knob that would cause an automatic shut and seal, but Court couldn't even see the dials and gauges in front of him in the dark, so yanking it tight with his fingertips would just have to do.

He'd managed to get Hightower inside without one iota of assistance from him. By the time they'd made it back on deck, it was listing at twenty-five degrees. Every bit of strength in Court's good arm was put to use sliding Zack up to the railing and over the side. Skittering together down the wet hull to the sub, the satellite phone popped out of Gentry's pocket and bounced off into the ocean. Court found a latch on the outside of the canopy and popped it open. He struggled to get Hightower's dead weight slid into the rear recumbent position. Court buckled him in like a child in a car seat and scooted down into the front.

Exhausted, once enclosed in the small cockpit, he took a few seconds to recover. Then he called back to his unwilling passenger, "Come on, buddy! Give me a hint! What do I do?"

"I'd love to help, bro. But my orders are to terminate you. This is kind of a roundabout way to achieve my objective, but…" His voice had grown much weaker after the strain of movement, even if his attitude remained in full effect.

"Fuck your orders. Let's go for a ride!"

Zack did not reply.

Court went back to feeling around at the controls.

A sudden, loud screech filled the air, and a shell landed in the water twenty-five yards short of the sub. The small craft shuddered, and foamy water splashed on the Plexiglas like a mini-hurricane was passing overhead.

"I guess their smoke break is over," muttered Hightower from the backseat.

"Shit!" Court began fingering all the dials in front of him, found nothing that felt right to flip or twist or punch. He wanted to activate everything; it might still come to that, but he was scared to do so. He really had no idea what he was getting himself into, only that the alternative was to sit on a sinking ship and dodge high-explosive shells from the patrol boat's deck gun.

He ran his fingers faster on the controls, feeling for some sort of power button, which he imagined to be larger and more pronounced than what his fingertips had so far come across in the darkness. His hands next moved to either side of him, to the outside of the vinyl armrests, along the walls. On the left side his hand wrapped around a simple lever with a ball extending three inches horizontal from the wall. It was in the "up" position. With nothing else feeling right, he pulled the lever.

Immediately the front of the sub disengaged from the cable attached to the suction cup on the hull of the yacht. The nose dropped towards the water, and Gentry slammed forward into the cockpit controls.

He had neglected to fasten himself in the seat harness as he had Hightower behind him.

He screamed in pain. With all his might he leaned back, felt above him for a lever aft of the one he pulled, and he found it and yanked it down.

The rear cable disengaged, and the midget sub slid off the angled side of the Fatima and plunged five feet down to the black water, nose-first.

Upon hitting the sea, the craft righted itself for a moment, and Court used the time to fumble back into his cockpit chair. It was difficult to do, but he managed, had only just snapped the clasp when he felt the weight of gravity on his right side. The water around the Plexiglas's bubble was an opaque dark green, so Gentry waited for the sub to come back up to the surface so he could get his bearings.

For five seconds he waited to resurface, and all the while he felt the pull harder and harder to the right, as if the sub was somehow beginning to roll.

At ten seconds he realized it was rolling, but the pull to the right seemed to stop. The sub was still submerged.

He pulled the small folding knife from his pocket, held it in his lap, and let it go.

The knife flew upwards, just missing his chin and nose, before bouncing on the plastic canopy and sliding forward.

Court realized then that they were inverted, and they were sinking.

"Zack! Zack!" Gentry's ears popped, and he fought a wave of panic. He had no situational awareness whatsoever now, completely entombed as he was in a dead craft in dark water.

Hightower did not reply.

Above him he heard a shell hit the yacht, a two-stage explosion, the first being the warhead and the second, undoubtedly, the fuel tanks. A shock wave buffeted the bottom of the sub.

Gentry could wait no more. His hands reached out in front of him, his right index finger found a button, an arbitrary button, as there were dozens, and he could not even see what color they were much less any writing on them.

Fuck it. He pressed down.

Nothing.

His ears popped again, and a sustained pressure entered his head. He had no idea how deep the water was here, but he neither wanted to keep dropping nor hit the bottom, especially canopy first.

He reached for the next button. Pushed it. Then a third. Then a fourth. He wondered if he was releasing fuel or opening a cargo door or triggering a self-destruction sequence.

Court did not know the first goddamned thing about submarines.

He pressed a fifth button, and immediately warm infrared lighting illuminated the cabin.

His head was killing him, and nausea ripped through his body from his intestines to the back of his neck.

With the new light he quickly scanned dozens of choices, looking for anything to turn on. His finger stopped at a button labeled HUD, and he pressed it without hesitation. The laser head-up display came online, projecting all sorts of data on the windscreen in front of him. Speed and Current Depth increased by the second, an artificial horizon turned slowly clockwise, and a compass heading revolved steadily around the dial.

He wanted situational awareness, and he got it. Now, after the onboard computer told him that he was cork-screwing down to his death, he realized that he really didn't want that info after all.

The pain in his head worsened. He vomited water and bile; some of it spewed through his nose and followed gravity's path, running into his eyes. He smeared away the burn with his sweaty arm, put his hand on the joystick on his right, and tried to right the craft, but it had no effect whatsoever. He pushed the lever that he took for a throttle with his left hand. Again, nothing doing. He stomped his bare left and right feet down, kicking out for rudder pedals that were not there.

The submarine passed sixty feet.

Court fought another wave of nausea and a further increase in panic.

Then he stopped playing with the controls, brought his hands into his lap.

"Zack. You awake?" Court's voice was calm now, no sign of panic or threat to the other man in the doomed submarine.

"Yeah. Just enjoying the ride, bro." Zack's voice was incredibly weak. He'd likely be dead soon, Court realized, no matter what happened to Court. Still, Gentry knew Zack well. He was not as calm as he pretended to be.

Zack Hightower didn't want to die, either.

"I can't make this thing work." Gentry pulled his Glock-19 and held it up in the red light for his rear passenger to see. "But I can make this thing work."

"Really? You're threatening to shoot me? That's all you got, dude? Pretty fucking lame."

Court ignored him. He said, "I've trained without oxygen at depths of one hundred thirty feet. If I blow this hatch in the next minute, flood the sub, and make it to the surface, I figure I can find some floating debris from the yacht to grab on to. With a little luck I should make it back to shore by nightfall."

"And then what?"

"I make it out of the Sudan."

"Right. That's gonna happen."

Court paused. Then said, "I'm the goddamned Gray Man, remember? I'll get it done."

All quiet in the rear seat now.

"But that's one ride I can't take you along on. You understand, don't you, bro?" He mimicked Sierra One.

Again, Zack did not respond. Court took that as a good sign. Hightower was never at a loss for words.

"So I'll live, and you'll die. Which means you fucked up. If you would have helped me with the sub, we both could have made it, meaning you could have lived to kill me another day. Ultimate mission success by temporary delay of mission resolution. Even Denny Carmichael would agree that that is a valid strategy for a good soldier like you to take. You just aren't smart enough to know a good deal when you see it."

Still nothing from behind.

"I'm sure there's a better way to pop this hatch, but the only control I know how to work in this goddamned tub is the trigger of this gun. Wish I could leave the Glock behind for you to shoot yourself before you drown, but it may come in handy onshore."

Zack remained silent. Court hoped he was thinking and hadn't just fallen asleep.

Gentry's head was killing him. His sinuses felt like they would burst open any second with the pressure and the acidic puke in his nose.

"Passing one hundred ten feet." Court began filling his lungs with air. A rapid deep breathing to increase lung capacity. In between breaths he said, "It was a pleasure serving under you most of the time, Zack. I'll send a letter to Langley and tell them you went down with the ship." A few more deep breaths.

Court pushed the barrel of the gun to the Plexiglas's canopy, ducked down away from it.

Zack coughed weakly.

Fuck, thought Court. He's not going for it.

"See ya," Gentry said, stalling an instant more, and then he moved his finger to the trigger and sucked in a full, deep breath of the cabin air.

Here we go.

"Down by your right knee. Dial that says BAL. Turn it all the way to the left to neutralize the ballast. Next to that is a square button that says PROCON. That's propulsion control. Push it now." Zack's voice was weak, but the words sure as hell came out fast.

Gentry lowered the gun, found the dial, and turned it, then found the button and pushed it. Immediately a loud metallic noise filled his aching head. A 2-D computer rendering of the submarine appeared on the HUD. It started as a cigar-shaped image, but when the metal noise stopped, the image had wings and tail fins and looked like a single-engine fighter plane.

"Give it some thrust. Just a touch."

Court tipped the throttle, and he felt a slight engine rumble and sensed gentle forward movement. A HUD reading that had been zero slowly climbed from 5 percent to 10 percent to 20 percent as he pushed the throttle a bit more.

"Now, use the joystick to level her out. It's fly-by-wire. Pitch, yaw, roll, all controlled by the joystick. Kind of like an airplane." Zack coughed. "You crashed a plane once, didn't you?"

"Crash-landed," Court clarified. He'd gone from near post-panicked resignation of his imminent death to near jubilant euphoria at his high prospects for survival, all in the last thirty seconds.

"That was in Kiev, wasn't it?"

"Tanzania, Zack. You were there."

"But again, in Kiev? You crashed there, too, didn't you?"

"No comment."

Quickly he had the descent under control, and then the machine leveled out. A few seconds more, and he had the compass heading pointing due east.

"Headlights," instructed Zack from behind.

"Where?"

"Have you ever been in a car, dumb-ass? Same place."

Court reached to the left in front of him and, yes, the light switch felt just like it did in most wheeled vehicles he'd driven.

He flipped it on.

And shouted in shock. "Oh shit!"

The sub moved quickly along the sandy ocean floor, which was not more than ten feet below.

Court began hyperventilating slightly. He pulled back on the joystick and pushed the throttle forward to 40 percent.

"Okay. Now, a four-position dial on your left, about eleven o'clock."

With the dim red lights it was hard to find, but Court got his fingers around it.

"Turn it all the way. Oxygen scrubbers. We're breathing each other's carbon dioxide at the moment. This will clean the air."

"Roger that."

After Zack's tired voice instructed Court through turning on the O2 system and activating the sub's laser collision avoidance feelers, Court piloted the sub to the east for another minute, getting the feel of the craft. Once confident he had the hang of it, he called back to Hightower again, "How am I doing?"

"You suck. You can't drive cars for shit; you can't fly planes for shit. You'll probably steer this thing up a whale's ass in a minute."

Court could hear the relief secreted in the injured man's admonitions.

Two hours later, Court felt certain they were well out in international waters. He could hear soft moaning and an occasional wheeze from the man behind him. Zack babbled incoherently at one point. Gentry knew Hightower could still die from his wound or from an infection, even if he made it to top-flight medical care in the next hours. Sir Donald would have to come through big time to rescue them.

The irony was not lost on the Gray Man. He'd saved Sir Donald a few months earlier, told himself he'd never trust him again, and now the portly knight was Court's very last hope.

The sub finally surfaced at eight fifteen in the morning. The sun was well up now, straight off the bow of the little vessel. Gentry used it to orient himself as the HUD was difficult to read with the bright daylight penetrating the cockpit. Court activated the FM beacon and waited.

They bobbed up and down on the open sea.

A little after ten he saw the ship. It was a huge tanker, and as it loomed above the submarine, loomed above Gentry's head right at the waterline, it seemed as high as a skyscraper and menacing with its jet-black hull. The ship took nearly a half hour from first sight to the point at which a ladder was lowered to the sub and Court popped his canopy. He called out for help, and two men came down on separate ladders, secured Hightower in a harness, and had him lifted three stories up to the railing.

Court climbed up the ladder under his own power, though his shoulder burned with the strain, and he vomited in the heat as the huge ship rose and fell with him hanging on alongside. He'd nearly made it to the top when he passed the big letters on the port side bow. He had to lean back to read the name of the craft that rescued him.

"LaurentGroup Cherbourg."

"Perfect," he said. Court had had dealings with LaurentGroup, the huge multinational corporation that had tried to kill him the previous year. He never thought he'd willingly climb aboard one of their vessels but, again, desperate times called for desperate measures.

Court continued up the ladder to the railing and was pulled over the side by a crew of Indonesians.

Zack was laid out on a stretcher and rushed hurriedly away. Court himself fell to the deck, was lifted by his arms and legs, and then more dragged than carried into a cool hallway in the superstructure of the ship. Within minutes he asked for morphine, a syringe appeared, and shortly thereafter, he was out.

When he awoke, he'd already been transferred to another boat, a tall sailing ship owned by a Welsh media tycoon and, as it turned out, a friend of a friend of Sir Donald. Court asked about the condition of the man brought aboard the tanker with him, but the crew of his new vessel had no information.

Four days later, they made port in Alexandria, and Court Gentry slipped ashore and away. The crew of the sailing ship never saw him leave.

They just awoke one morning and found him gone.