The Steel Shark

Chapter 44

Joe woke with a start when someone touched his ribs. “Ouch!”

“Sorry.” Captain Glascoe sat on the edge of the bed. “Tell me what happened.”

Joe felt better than he had since he got on board the Voyager. His stomach was calm and his head was clear. “Water.”

Captain Glascoe handed him a glass of apple juice, and Joe drank it in a single long, glorious swallow. His mouth tasted and felt a lot better.

He summarized everything that had happened since he’d left the boat. The captain gave him a glass of water when he was finished.

“Vivian,” Joe said. “Tell me what we’re doing for her.”

“Not a whole hell of a lot we can do.”

“Not good enough.” Joe struggled into a sitting position. “What happened to her? How did you know she wasn’t coming back to the boat?”

“Things would be the same if you’d been with her.”

Joe shrugged that off. If he hadn’t let her onto the boat in the first place, she’d be safe and sound back in New York. “Tell me what you know.”

“She’s a brave soldier, your Sergeant Torres.”

“She is.”

“After you were separated, something must have gone wrong with the little wire-control sub, because it looks like Torres swam out to the sub to attach a transponder by hand.”

“That wasn’t the plan.” She wasn’t supposed to get close.

“But it happened.”

“How do you know?”

“She activated one and stuck it onto the hull of the submarine.”

Of course she did. She got results.

“But it fell off.”

“So we can’t track the sub?” His head throbbed. They’d lost her. His fault, and they’d lost her. “What about the other transponder?”

“It was activated, too, and it moved to the surface in a controlled ascent, which means she was probably carrying it, and she was probably alive at that time.”

Probably. At that time. Not reassuring. “And?”

“We have drone footage of her being taken out of the water, standing on the deck, and then being marched into the submarine. After that, the transponder stopped transmitting, which makes sense since it can’t transmit through steel.”

They hadn’t killed her right away. Vivian might still be alive! Joe still felt weak. His seasickness had retreated, but the long swim and the dehydration had taken it out of him. It didn’t matter — he didn’t have time for weakness. He had to find her. Both he and Captain Glascoe knew she might already be dead, but both of them were acting like that couldn’t be true.

“I’ll call the Navy,” Joe said. “Get reinforcements.”

“Sure,” said Glascoe. “They’ll send someone right out.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t help.”

“Nope,” Glascoe said. “And neither will the Navy.”

He walked out and left Joe alone with Edison. Joe lay there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling. Then he checked his email.

A message from Vivian’s mother, asking if she was OK. Apparently, she’d been emailing her mother every night before bed so her mom would know she was fine. How could Joe tell her that she wasn’t?