Silent Waters

Chapter 35

“Brody, put the gun down,” McCann ordered a second time, speaking in a low voice. But the young man’s aim didn’t change.

McCann looked intently at the man standing three steps away. The petty officer’s pistol was pointed directly at his face. A quick glance told him that the firearm had been Rivera’s.

Brody didn’t seem too steady on his feet. One look at his face and McCann could see that the young man hadn’t completely come around.

“You killed Rivera, sir.” His speech was slurred, but the note of accusation in his tone was unmistakable.

Brody must have been unconscious for some time. He clearly had no clue what was happening on the boat. At least, McCann thought, he wasn’t one of them.

“You killed… him,” he said, not taking his eyes off McCann.

McCann could take him out right now. He held his own pistol at his side. But he couldn’t do it. Brody was the only member of the crew left on the submarine that he could trust right now. And he needed the sonar man.

Still, time was running short. McCann was certain that whoever was running this operation must know by now that the loading of torpedoes had stopped. From the orders being barked into the headset, he also figured that there would be someone down here in a hurry. He didn’t want to hazard a guess how many would be coming.

“Listen to me, Brody,” McCann told the younger man with some urgency. “You’ve been out cold for hours. I’m the one who cut the tape binding you.”

“You—”

“Listen. Hartford has been hijacked. I don’t know by whom. But with the exception of you and me, I suspect everyone else who was left on board last night is either dead or cooperating with the hijackers.”

“You killed Rivera,” Brody repeated.

“Yes, Brody, I had to. He was helping to load and fire torpedoes at American targets. They shot their way out of New London harbor!”

The young man blinked a couple of times. McCann hoped this meant that the words were registering.

“Look at this man, Brody.” Slowly, he reached down and lifted the head of the hijacker who’d been operating the small crane. “Do you know him? Is he a member of our crew?”

Brody stared at the gun still in McCann’s hand before looking at the dead man. His confusion was obvious. He shook his head.

“He’s not one of ours,” McCann said.

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t know who’s behind the hijacking. One thing I do know is that a few of them will be coming down those steps any minute.”

Brody didn’t move. The gears in his head were not operating at full capacity.

“We can’t let them kill us, Brody.”

The hand wavered a bit. He still didn’t appear to comprehend what he was hearing.

“Petty Officer Brody,” McCann snapped in an official tone.

There was an immediate straightening to attention by the young man. His face cleared somewhat. The hand holding the weapon actually dropped to his side.

“Shit,” McCann cursed as he heard footsteps on the top of the stairs on the deck above them. “They’re here.”

He pushed Brody to the side just as the first shot was fired down at them, ricocheting off the torpedo rack near to where they were standing. They came down the stairs, guns blasting.

“They’re shooting at us,” Brody said in disbelief.

“Yes, they are. And they’re planning to kill us,” McCann asserted, moving along the end of the racks as he checked the weapon and what little ammunition he had.

“What are we gonna do?”

“We’re going to finish what I started. Kill them before they kill us.”

“How many are there?”

Brody’s brain was starting to work. McCann peered around one of the torpedoes. Two hijackers fired at him, the bullets striking the VLS panels behind him and causing the electronics to short out in an explosion of sparks.

“I only see three. There might be more,” he told Brody. “They don’t have a full crew. I think there’s only a handful of them trying to pull this thing off.”

“Tell me what you want me to do, sir,” Brody demanded.

“Distract them so I can get around the outside of the rack.”

Trust had once again been restored between them. There was no questioning, no doubt. The young man followed the orders as McCann slid around the rack.

The gunfire continued as he worked his way back from frame to frame until he reached the aft end of the torpedo rack. He could see the three hijackers spread along the racks.

This is it, he thought, taking a deep breath.

Aiming at the one closest, he fired at the man’s temple and then fired repeatedly at the two gunmen further along.

The first two went down, but he had no time to take any satisfaction in it. The third hijacker’s shot nicked McCann’s left shoulder, and he immediately felt the burn of the bullet and the numbing of his arm.

Brody fired a series of shots from his position as the hijacker ducked behind the corner of the rack. The firing stopped for a moment, and then the man broke for the stairs, shooting at Brody and McCann as he went.

McCann fired back, and at the base of the stairs, the hijacker ducked behind two large bottles of compressed air.

McCann could hear Brody uttering a string of curses. “Brody, are you hit?”

“It’s only my leg, Skipper,” Brody called back through gritted teeth.

The hijacker fired off a round in McCann’s direction.