Silent Waters

Chapter 5

More than fifty feet above the blazing roof of the old shop, flames and sparks mingled with the dense clouds of smoke. The roar of the fire was deafening now, and the heat was rolling off the building in waves. Most of the Groton firefighters and their trucks were already here. More from the neighboring towns were arriving by the minute. Three ambulances sat in a line by the main gate. So far, there had been no need for them. But smoke inhalation was always a serious concern.

Some of the firefighters battled the inferno while others hosed down the corrugated steel walls of the Ways next to the shop. No one wanted to let the high walls melt and buckle in the intense heat. If that happened, the structure of the building would be compromised, and the weight of the huge cranes situated just under the roof could bring the entire building down.

The old wooden shop would be a total loss; everyone could see that. A relic of the early 1940s, when the shipyard had expanded like a gold rush town to meet the wartime demand for fleet-type subs, the shop had gone up like a box of forty-year-old matches, in spite of the rain. The three men inside barely escaped the cluttered space, and the equipment left inside was history by now.

Everyone moved back from battling the blaze as the roof collapsed inward, sending another shower of sparks upward into the misting predawn sky.

The general manager of the shipyard had been called in, along with his top managers. Whoever hadn’t arrived already was on their way.

Hale, the shipyard director of security, crossed the wet pavement to where the Groton fire chief stood looking for other potential problems that the fire might trigger.

“We’ve shut down the gas lines through the building,” Hale shouted over the roar of the fire.

The chief nodded and gestured toward the huge bay doors leading through the Ways. A small door for foot traffic was swinging open in the breeze. The steel wall was showing signs of buckling.

“You need to have your guys make a more thorough sweep of that building,” he said. “If that wall starts to come down — and it might — we want to make sure that there’s nobody in there.”

“I have a group going through there right now,” Hale replied. “You’d figure that with all these sirens a person would have to be deaf or dead not to get his ass out of that building.”

The security director’s walkie-talkie crackled. He turned away from the fire, bringing it to his ear. “Hale here. Go ahead.”

“Need… bod…” The words coming through kept breaking up.

“Repeat. Do you read me?”

“… bulances…”

The communication was from the men he had inside the Ways. Turning to a security guard and two firefighters standing by, he pointed to the building. “They need help in the Ways.”

The three men rushed toward the door.

The walkie-talkie came alive again. “… need ambulances…”

Hale shouted to the fire chief over the din. “Ambulances. They need help in there.”

As the fire chief called for the ambulances, Hale rushed toward the door himself. The smell of melting paint burned his lungs. His men could have been overcome with smoke. As he reached the door, one of the security guards who’d been inside stumbled out, clutching the walkie-talkie in his hand. He doubled over, retching as Hale bent over him.

“What is it?”

“They’re dead.”

“Who?”

“Brian and Hodges. Dead.” He looked wildly into Hale’s eyes. “Somebody fucking stabbed them.”

Hale straightened up, stunned by the words. It took couple of seconds for him to find his bearings. The names rushed through his mind. They weren’t on the detail clearing the building. They must have been in there earlier. He thought of the young men, their families, their children. They were stabbed?

Hale yanked open the door. The handle burned his hand, and he jerked backward, startled. Before he could go through the door, an ambulance screeched to a stop behind him and the EMTs leaped out. He held the door open with his foot as they scrambled through carrying tanks of air and stretchers.

Shouting cut through all the other noise, drawing Hale’s attention. Everyone was looking toward the pier, and two security guards were running in that direction. Hale turned to look.

The footbridge to Hartford was dangling from the pier, one end of it in the river. With no tugboats in sight, with no one visible on the bridge at the top of the fairwater, the submarine was backing away from the pier, operating under its own power.