Silent Waters

Chapter 15

Mako glanced at his watch. Everything was moving according to schedule. Perfect. He mounted the conn and looked at the displays, the status board, and the plotting of the course. He reached up and pressed a button.

“Radar? Conn.” His voice rang on the communication system. “Anything happening with the sub hunters overhead?”

A couple of planes equipped with air-drop torpedoes had joined them a few minutes earlier. Now that they were almost out in open water, Mako wouldn’t put it past the brass at Atlantic Fleet to return his earlier gesture by launching a couple of torpedoes at them.

“Nothing, sir. The three choppers are holding their position and the two planes continue to circle.”

Mako stepped up onto the periscope platform and swung around, looking to their stern. Far off in the distance, smoke continued to belch into the air above what was left of the lighthouse. The New London Ledge lighthouse had been a square, stone-and-brick edifice rising right out of the water, but now it was smoke and rubble. Beyond the lighthouse, the Coast Guard cutter they’d clipped with the torpedo was listing to one side and a tug was alongside, assisting her. He swung the periscope around and noted that the two navy launches were now keeping a respectful distance.

Above them, he could see the three helicopters. One was from a news station; two belonged to the navy. Mako guessed that they were not firing any torpedoes because they were about to drop a dozen navy SEALs out of those helicopters in an attempt to try to land them on the bridge at the top of the sail. A few minutes later, they’d blast open the hatch. That meant he had another ten minutes, tops.

He wouldn’t need that much time.

They were vulnerable as long as they stayed on the surface, but he knew these waters like the back of his hand. He knew when and where he should dive. And they were almost there. In another thirty seconds they’d be in water over eighty feet deep. Twenty seconds. Ten.

“Down periscope.” Ten seconds. “Take her down to sixty feet. Ten degrees down angle. No alarm prior to diving.”

“Aye, sir.” The orders were repeated.

Seconds later, the deck angled downward as the helmsman followed the orders. The hull groaned slightly and the sub leveled out moments later. Mako ordered some quick checks for water integrity. Everything moved smoothly. The boat settled. The first leg of the mission was complete.

There was no point to go any deeper now. He didn’t want to hide. The threat had to lurk right at the edge. He just had to stop them from trying to land on him.

From the periscope stand, Mako studied his crew. Every one of the men in the control room was an absolute expert in taking and executing his commands. But something in the navigation area caught his attention. A screen blinked a couple of times and went dark.

“What the hell is going on there?” He crossed to the panels.

Paul Cavallaro, noticing the same thing, was there before Mako and sat in the chair in front of the dead screen.

“They must be cutting the juice to it.” He started running some tests. “Shouldn’t we let them know?”

“Hardly,” Mako replied. “You know what your orders are.”

The screen at the next panel started acting up, going blank a couple of seconds later.

“They keep this up, we’ll lose sonar,” Cav said over his shoulder.

Mako motioned his man Kilo to the conn. He spoke in a low voice to him.

“Send two men down there now.” Kilo and his men had been signed to handle situations such as this. He’d done a good job taking care of the security guards. “Make sure they keep McCann alive. We might need him yet. Just stop him from doing any more damage. But that yardbird is a nuisance. We should have finished her hours ago. Have them do it now.”