Silent Waters

Chapter 33

Amy Russell helped build nuclear submarines, but not because she believed in war. She wasn’t a person who saw world domination through military superiority as a way of winning security for Americans. She hated the idea of superpowers, of the West dominating the East, and of the Third World resenting the industrial powers. She believed in diplomacy and in tolerance. It was true that she loved building these sleek, efficient machines, but Amy didn’t work at Electric Boat because she loved ship construction. The yard was a dangerous, tough, and dirty environment to work in. You were wet and freezing cold in the winter, and fighting for breath in the stifling heat of the summer.

Amy was there night after night because she had two mouths to feed and it provided the best paying position around.

Amy had never seen anyone die violently before. She’d seen the bodies of three welders taken out of a tank on one of the subs, asphyxiated by a gas leak. She’d seen a painter fall off the top of a section of a hull cylinder, hitting every metal bar and bit of scaffolding on his drop to the concrete pier.

She didn’t think she’d ever known anyone who was capable of ending someone else’s life. That included her ex-husband. Regardless of his career in the military, Ryan Murray could never take a life. But locked inside the tiny engineering office where McCann had left her, Amy had watched on screen two men shot dead in quick succession. Commander McCann had taken those lives without any hesitation.

And she’d silently cheered him on for doing it.

A bubble burst inside her. Watching him aim the gun at the camera, Amy realized she no longer hovered somewhere in a dreamland of idealism. At that moment, life and death became reality. And at that moment, she understood that she could do whatever needed to be done. There were lives out there that depended on them.

Then, just before the screen went blank, Amy saw a sailor coming up behind McCann.

She stared at the screen trying to comprehend all that she’d just witnessed, and then leapt out of the chair. The promise she’d made to McCann about staying where she was evaporated, forgotten, in an instant. She tightened her grip around the handle of the gun, slipped the safety, and opened the door.

There was no one waiting on the outside. She looked each way before running toward the ladder leading to the reactor tunnel.

Amy paid no mind to the warning signs posted in the tunnel. In a moment, she’d cleared the forward end of it and passed under the forward escape trunk.

She didn’t want to think about what she’d do if McCann was hurt. When she saw the man approaching McCann, she was certain he had a gun aimed at the commander’s head.

“Please be there,” she said under her breath, running past the crew’s mess.

When Amy heard the noise ahead of her, she instinctively ducked into the officers’ stateroom. She heard a couple of quick exchanges. A muffled gun shot. She shuddered, hoping McCann wasn’t the recipient of the bullet. She heard footsteps coming her way. Closing the door would draw attention. She looked into the room.

Three built-in bunks lined the far wall. A curtain closed off each one. To her right, two desks offered no place to hide. To the left, cabinets and lockers. They were useless to her. The bunks were her only choice.

The footsteps grew louder. She ran across the cabin and pulled open the bottom curtain.

Her hand involuntarily covered her mouth, and she gasped. Her stomach constricted as she fought back nausea.

She could not take her eyes off the body in the bunk. The dead man’s eyes stared up at her. Beneath the chalky face, the man’s throat had been cut. She looked at the machine-embroidered name on his one piece coveralls. Gibbs.

She had no time to be sick. There were men nearing the doorway. She pushed herself up against the wall beside a small built-in desk.

“They don’t come up those stairs alive. You hear me?” The commands were sharp.

“Aye, sir.”

“I have to clean up,” the same man ordered. “We engage at fourteen hundred.”

Amy pressed her body closer to the wall, hoping to go unseen. The men paused right outside.

“What’s going on, Kilo?” a new voice asked.

Amy jumped when two consecutive shots were fired. She tried to crawl on top of the desk as she heard the sound of bodies hitting the deck. A forearm of one of the victims flopped across the threshold.

She looked in horror at the door, waiting for whoever killed the two to step in and finish her, too.