The Wrecking Crew

CHAPTER 8

Alexis scanned the control panels of the Fool’s Errand’s engine room. Green across the board. A true rarity for an engine room so complex. The humming Purcell engines were finicky at best, demanding the same exacting attention as a fussy derby stallion. Take your eyes off them for too long, and, well, something was bound to go wrong. Even the wrong toned hum in one of the turbines could mean the system was about to throw a blade, leaving them dead in the water. But for now, all was in working order.

She tiptoed over to the main door and checked the access hallway. Empty. She pulled the door shut, hurried to the nearest computer terminal, and pulled up a hidden subroutine, her way of tapping into the internal security system to keep an eye on her new shipmates. Though she’d long known about the vulnerability, she’d never had a reason to exploit it before. She’d buried her new code under half a dozen unrelated protocols, even masked the signal by passing it through a data conduit normally reserved for air quality analysis. Too bad she didn’t think to do a little investigating on the suspiciously quiet day before she found out she’d been stolen along with the Conqueror. Even so, Jonah seemed like a pretty sharp guy. She didn’t know what he’d do if he found out. Best to keep it secret. Maybe he’d shrug and wander off without saying another word. Maybe he wouldn’t. She’d seen his scarred-over knuckles, the residual hardening around his eye socket and jaw. This was a man who knew violence intimately, a man capable of inflicting it as well.

She sat back in her chair and folded her legs up underneath her. So far, being kidnapped hadn’t changed much except that she was in charge of the engine room now and there was no dress code. She wore a pair of cutoff jean shorts and yoga tank top that would have been expressly verboten under the no-nonsense chief engineer of the Conqueror. The outfit didn’t exactly go with her steel-toed workboots, but who cared? Dr. Nassiri certainly wasn’t paying attention, not since their awkward little moment on Anconia Island. Or maybe he was paying attention, just in the sense that he went out of his way to avoid even crossing her path.

Dr. Nassiri. She needed to flat-out stop thinking about him, stop hoping she’d run into him on her way to the bridge, the kitchen, her bunk, or hell, even the head. She wasn’t about to go full circle back to her upbringing in Amarillo, Texas, a town where the general consensus was that big hair and long legs would get a girl a lot further than what was between the ears. Still, she did wonder about him. For instance, she genuinely couldn’t grasp his need to rename the ship Fool’s Errand of all possible new names, especially since going after his mother’s body and recovering her research didn’t sound very foolish. It seemed noble, somehow. Not a fool’s errand at all. And although she realized a stolen ship would need a new name, to her, it was and always would be the Conquerer.

Men, she thought. Her dad would tell her to forget about them, that her job was to look after herself and keep the engines purring. Her mother would find the whole thing hilarious — well, not the kidnapping and pirate stuff — but that Alexis was worried about what some Moroccan doctor thought of her. They’d always been the kind of parents who went their own way, that gave a tomboy the latitude she needed to pursue whatever interested her. And here she was, an engineer on a beautiful ship in a dangerous part of the world, occupying herself with thoughts of a moonlit evening on the high seas with Dr. Tall Dark and Handsome. Jeesh.

The surveillance system blinked to life on her screen. Alexis hopped up and took one last look down the hall to make sure nobody was coming to check on her. Paranoid much? Probably, but she liked her life like she liked her engine room, with as few loose bolts lurking around as possible.

The screen flicked over to the bridge. Dr. Nassiri stood lone watch, binoculars in hand. How old was he, maybe early to mid-thirties? A bit older than she was, but not ridiculously so. He certainly wore it well — smooth skin, high cheekbones, intelligent, dark eyes. She’d already recognized the initial fluttering of attraction, and had told herself, in no uncertain terms, to get real. Maybe this was what Stockholm syndrome felt like, but she doubted it. Sometimes a handsome doctor was just a handsome doctor, even if he did inadvertently kidnap you.

The screen flipped over to the galley.

Hellooooo Jonah.

Jonah Blackwell stood in the center of the dining area completely naked, his collection of diving gear spread across the floor in neat, squared-off little piles, wetsuit carefully folded on one side. Alexis hit the stop button almost unconsciously, preventing the camera from switching away from the voyeuristic view.

He stood without moving, gaunt, tanned muscles glistening, even in the grainy display of the surveillance system. She watched as he gathered the folded wetsuit in his hands and stepped into it. Her friends at home would be swooning at his lean body, broad shoulders, and fuck-all-y’all attitude, but Alexis felt something entirely different when she looked at him. Danger — a trait she found very unattractive.

Leaning in closer to the screen, she caught a brief glimpse of stitching under his left ribs as he pulled the wetsuit up his abdomen and over his shoulders. Holy shit, it looked like someone had stuck a knife in him, and recently.

Alexis flicked through the other screen views, passed on the option to watch Buzz, binoculars clamped to his face, scanning their wake for company, and then flicked to the bridge with an overhead view directly down at the consoles. Jonah, now dressed in the wetsuit, placed his hand on the finely-machined aluminum and carbon fiber joystick as he wordlessly piloted the yacht. According to the high-resolution digital nautical charts displayed on the consoles, the ship and her illegitimate crew were now well into the lawless Red Zone.

Earlier in the day, Jonah, Buzz, and Alexis had cleaned, loaded, and test-fired all of the weapons in the collection. They wouldn’t fend off an attack for long. She wished they could have picked up more weaponry at Anconia Island, but the security forces weren’t selling. Frankly, the crew of the Fool’s Errand were better set to defend a Chicago bathtub distillery than a megayacht.

In the surveillance screen, Jonah picked up the walkie-talkie from the console and pressed the button to talk.

“How we doing in the engine room?” Jonah’s voice, crackled over the speaker making Alexis jump — for a moment it sounded like he was right beside her.

“We’re five-by-five down here,” she said into her own walkie. “Barely ticking over. When you need power, you’ll have it.”

“Nice work, Alexis,” Jonah said.

Over the surveillance screen, Alexis caught Dr. Nassiri glaring at Jonah’s back. The doctor obviously didn’t appreciate the familiarity with which he’d spoken to her. What, was he jealous? An unbidden smile spread across her face. Flattering, yes, but the timing really sucked.

Jonah put his hand back to the joystick tiller and snuck a glance at the radar screen. Alexis pulled up the radar feed on her own system but saw nothing but coastline. Good. They were close, maybe just a few minutes away from their destination.

Jonah disappeared from the screen and Alexis flicked over to the dining area again. He walked into view and she watched as he programmed his dive computer and then went out to the back deck of the ship where he arranged his tri-mix SCUBA gear, including several tanks of different air mixtures, lift bags, high-intensity xenon lights, reserveair pony bottles, vest, weights, and multiple regulators. Since it was newly purchased from Anconia Island, he was triple-checking everything — even though she could tell it was all top-of-the-line and meticulously maintained.

Jonah had explained the plan. It was simple, he’d said, a 300-foot plunge to the bottom as fast as possible while using the transponder signal to stay on station. He called it a “bungee dive,” and said planes were easy to get into. Big sections of the thin carbon fiber skin were most likely weak or missing. He’d get inside, grab the transponder, hard drives, and whatever else he could find and stick it in the lift bag. Dr. Fatima Nassiri’s remains as well, assuming he could get to her. Maybe the other ones, too, but that would be seriously pushing his eighteen-minute bottom window. Just in case, he and Buzz cleared out enough room in the walk-in freezer of the Fool’s Errand to fit all five bodies.

Alexis hoped Dr. Nassiri was ready to see his mother in a bad way. A month on the bottom of the ocean didn’t do a body good. She’d seen it before, when the Conqueror assisted with a drowning recovery. She shuddered just thinking about it.

Dr. Nassiri appeared next to Jonah. Alexis could tell he was tense. The doctor began to open his mouth to ask something, but then — Alexis couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was just wrong.

She took a step back from the console. The engine pitch had changed. In fact, it wasn’t just the engine, it was the entire acoustic signature of the Fool’s Errand, a change so imperceptible Alexis could scarcely drag it into her conscious mind. Nothing on the radar — but something was still wrong.

Acting on instinct, Alexis changed the feed channel to an external view, flicking through the screens as quickly as possible. Nothing whatsoever, then—

Holy fucking fuck there it was, a shape just a hundred feet off the starboard quarter, a long, dark streak under the water paralleling the course of the Fool’s Errand. It resembled a shark or a whale, only much too large. The craft didn’t move with the flow of an organic creature; it moved unnaturally straight and parallel to the yacht. Alexis felt a sudden chill come over her, as if they were being stalked.

“Is that—?” she started to say, as the conning tower of a massive, matte-black submarine sliced through the waves, parting a frothing white-foam bow wake. The submarine rose, revealing itself to be even longer than the Fool’s Errand, stretching well beyond the aperture of the surveillance camera. The bow broke from the water as one last wave crashed over the deck. A massive four-barreled anti-aircraft weapon grew from a rear-deck raised platform just behind the stage. This was no pleasure craft, the submarine was built to intimidate, every line deliberate and menacing, more than enough firepower to take on even the largest pirate mothership.

Alexis snatched the radio in her hands. Shit, she knew she had to call this in to the bridge. Shit, they were going to know she had access to the surveillance cameras. Shit. Shit-shit-shit.

“Unidentified contact!” she shouted into the radio. “Port side aft!”

Alexis opened the surveillance feed to the bridge on a secondary monitor, watching as Dr. Nassiri briefly froze, unsure. She could see behind his eyes as he dug into the dark recesses of his brain to remember which side was port and which was starboard. Jonah didn’t hesitate; he stuck his head out the window immediately, cocked it briefly, then returned to his station and snatched the marine radio.

“Unidentified submarine,” said Jonah into the microphone. Alexis heard the call over her systems. “This is the yacht Fool’s Errand. Please state your intentions.”

The radio crackled, but no answer returned. Alexis bounded up the main staircase, just in time to hear Jonah repeat his hail over the emergency frequencies. Hell, it didn’t even matter if the submarine could hear their radio calls or not… the pirates certainly could, and were no doubt already mobilizing to investigate the sudden electronic chatter deep within their territory.

“Who are these people?” she demanded, clad in her cutoffs and tank top and self-consciously smelling of highoctane marine fuel and engine lubricant. “Why are you breaking radio silence?”

“Alexis, I need you back in the engine room.”

“Why?” she retorted.

“Alexis!” shouted Jonah, loud enough that Alexis flinched. “Engine room! Now!”

Without another word, she turned and practically sprinted back down the stairs. She allowed herself a single backwards glance at the bow, where Buzz stood like a mermaid figurehead, his weird soviet SCUBA-gun in hand, leaning far over the railing as if pressing himself over it could somehow allow him further sight. Even with her limited knowledge of firearms, she knew the Russian weapon belonged in a museum, not on the deck of a ship plunging headlong into the most dangerous waters on the planet. At least Buzz looked scary as hell, with his scarredup shaved head and weirdo assault rifle.

Alexis threw herself back in front of her console station, just in time to see a single figure emerge from the top hatch of the submarine. She squinted at first, then realized what she was looking at. The man looked like one of the Anconia Island mercenaries, a welcome sight. An intense wave of relief washed over her as the soldier smiled and saluted the Fool’s Errand.

On the bridge, Dr. Nassiri smiled and waved. Jonah yelled at Buzz to stop pointing his ‘fucking rifle’ at the new arrivals.

Alexis allowed herself a little smile as her tension faded; the cavalry had made quite an entrance. It appeared Dr. Nassiri’s money went further than expected; this was a brilliant show of force. In fact, it probably didn’t even matter that Jonah had broken radio silence. If any pirates showed up, the mounted cannons could open up and it’d be over before it even started.

“Unidentified submarine, we’re happy to see you,” said Jonah over the radio. “Appreciate the escort, we will stop engines and stand by for instructions.”

“Roger, stand by,” confirmed a harsh voice over the radio.

On the bridge monitor, Dr. Nassiri stopped his schoolboy waving, but kept the foolish grin plastered over his face. Alexis brought the engines to full stop, feeling the slight vibration as they spun down to idle.

Over the video feed, a single shaved-head mercenary, rifle slung behind him and armored vest heavy with equipment, removed the stoppers from the barrels and connected the weapon to an unseen ammunition feed in the deck. He swung the quad-gun back and forth towards the horizon, testing the articulation of the impressive weapon.

Alexis froze as the gunner suddenly swiveled around, training the massive quad-barrels on the bow of the Fool’s Errand.

“What the hell—?”

The gunner fired, blinding the security camera with light, noise deafening as the four barrels of the anti-aircraft weapons lit up in succession and laser-like tracer rounds ripped through the unprotected engine room of the Fool’s Errand. Fire blasted apart the thin carbon-fiber skin of the yacht and cut the supporting rib structure to pieces as Alexis held her hands over her ears and screamed. Overhead florescent lighting flickered and died as daylight streamed through the Swiss-cheese hull and deafening ricochets tore through the upper structure of the megayacht. Alexis instinctively hit the deck as a hail of broken glass, splintered fiberglass and red-hot aluminum shrapnel rained down around her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t move, her entire adrenaline-compromised perspective a grey, gun-slit view of her own hands as the console behind her exploded in a shower of flames and molten glass. The monitor bank on the console tipped and fell, slamming into the unyielding metal grating with a flash of electrical arcs.

The live feed from the bridge continued to play. Dr. Nassiri curled up in a fetal position soundlessly screaming on the monitor.

Oh great, thought Alexis. I’m going to die watching television.

In slow-motion, Jonah scrambled to his feet, trying to reach a walkie-talkie as a second barrage tore through the bridge.

From the bow feed, Alexis watched as Buzz jumped to his feet, Soviet rifle already shouldered as he stood on the extreme end of the bow, possibly the most exposed position on the entire ship. The submarine crossed their bow, firing as Buzz leaned over the bow railing.

“Run!” screamed Alexis at the security feed. She realized she could scarcely hear her own voice in her blastdeafened ears.

On the bridge, Jonah tried in vain to impart the same message. Find cover, you stupid fuck, he mouthed, waving his arms, oblivious to his own safety.

Buzz didn’t hear Alexis, didn’t hear Jonah, could not have possibly heard them. Alexis saw the Moroccan man in fragments, tiny mosaics as the engagement played out. Buzz’s face, dripping blood from a massive cut across his forehead and scalp. His hands, grainy specs over the security feed, aiming his strange rifle at the submarine’s conning tower. Buzz pulling the trigger, firing a single ineffectual burst towards the man at the quad gun.

He held down the trigger, muzzle climbing as the continuous burst of fire danced across the hardened steel skin of the submarine, missing the anti-aircraft gun entirely and spilling bullets ineffectually into the ocean. The mercenary turned — those reflexes—and took aim.

Pulling his own trigger, the gunner emptied bullets into the bow of the Fool’s Errand, obliterating it. It was almost as if Buzz had said, and for my next trick, I will disappear as he was enveloped in a cloud of fire and pink mist. And that was that, he was just gone, along with the entire bow of the ship, both taken off the face of the earth as if they’d never existed.

At least Jonah still appeared to have his faculties. Alexis saw him find the pearl-handled handgun with one hand and jam it into the belt of his wetsuit. And then he called her over the radio.

“Full power to the engines!” he shouted. She noticed a brief silence — as far as the mercenaries aboard the submarine were concerned, the Fool’s Errand was a burning, shattered hulk. The one remaining console to her right flashed bright red; half of the compartments on the port side were taking on water as one critical system after another died in a cascade of technological failure.

The turbine engines roared to life, propellers supercavitating seawater into frothing bubbles as they spun up to a screaming pitch. Perhaps the Fool’s Errand had a trick or two yet — the props bit into the sea, throwing Alexis to the deck of the engine room as the yacht leapt forward, narrowly cutting across the stern of the attack submarine, full power to the engines, lazily wallowing to starboard as seawater rushed into the lowest deck.

The Somali coastline loomed in front of the bow feed as hurricane-force headwinds and roaring seawater ripped through the bullet-shattered hull of the engine room. Behind them, the submarine took lazy potshots against the stern of the vessel, forcing Alexis to duck as they ripped through critical systems.

She wrenched valves and switches, bodily throwing herself at the remaining hydraulic controls, trying to correct for the highly compromised hydrodynamics of the rapidly leaking hull.

“Come on you bastard!” she screamed at the controls.

Just moments, that’s all she needed. Just moments to get them close to the coastline, away from the submarine. And then probably get captured and executed by pirates. Goddamn fantastic.

The massive turbine engines of the Fool’s Errand sputtered once then caught again. Shit, fuck, shit shit SHIT! The coolant system was shot to pieces, no pressure, the engines already reaching critical temperatures. If one or both of them went — well, the resulting explosion wouldn’t just leave them dead in the water, it would turn the entire stern of the Fool’s Errand into a smoldering ruin.

“Alexis, what is happening down there?” shouted Jonah into the radio. Over the bridge security feed, Dr. Nassiri was on his feet, shell-shocked, staring empty-eyed at the gaping maw that was once the bow.

“It’s bad!” she yelled into the radio.

She realized she sounded scared, terrified. Not the impression she wanted to convey. He could probably hear the screaming mechanical distress of the engine room over the radio. Jonah would know whatever was happening down here couldn’t be good.

“Report!” he shouted.

“We’re shot to pieces!” said Alexis, her own voice distant over the sound of the wind. “All coolants systems are gone; we’re taking on water fast. I’ve bypassed every safety system just to keep us moving but we’ll be dead in the water in seconds.”

Silence over the radio as Jonah weighed his options. No lifeboats; but they’d just be floating orange target practice anyway. The submarine wasn’t here to take prisoners, that much was clear.

Jonah hadn’t released the transmit button on the walkie, and Alexis could hear Dr. Nassiri on the marine radio, screaming out a jumbled distress signal for anyone who would listen, anyone who would help. He pleaded with the submarine to stop the attack, to take mercy on the mortally wounded ship. Alexis could see he wasn’t even transmitting, the marine radio had taken a stray bullet, spilling the electronic guts of the device halfway across the shattered bridge.

“Give me one last burst of engine power,” growled Jonah over the radio. “Anything she’s got left I’ll need over the next fifteen seconds.”

Jonah thrust the joystick to port, bringing the Fool’s Errand around in a violent buttonhook, throwing Alexis to the deck again.

Last stand, thought Alexis. There wouldn’t even be anything left to bring to Texas, she’d just be some dumb American girl who disappeared from a godforsaken part of the world she was never meant to be in the first place.

With immense calm, Alexis bypassed the last of the safety measures and set the engines to full power. She dropped to her knees as the Fool’s Errand thrust forward, ruined bow pushing upwards into the sky as the turbines howled with fury. The Fool’s Errand completed the turn as unrelenting thrust accelerated the burning hulk forward.

It was funny how the mind remembered the little things in a time like this. Like when she first stepped foot on the Conqueror. A few days after walking up on stage to get her diploma for a masters in mechanical engineering with a focus in naval architecture. She’d read about the ship porting in Galveston, so she drove her shit-box car there, stepped on board, demanded to see the engineer and told him she could increase the power of the engines by 8.5 %. The moxie got her an interview; an 11.3 % improvement got her the job. She wondered if her car was still parked at the dock, rusting and moldering away unattended, windows clouded with dust, tires flat, batteries long since dead. She probably should have sold it.

The Fool’s Errand bore down on the submarine, gaining speed. Her instincts were right. Jonah was not a man who liked to lose. Over the video feed, she could see him crouched by a console, Dr. Nassiri at his side.

Surprised by the suicidal act of its cornered prey, the fire from the submarine stopped as the gunner took stock of the changed situation. The moment was all Jonah needed as the Fool’s Errand surged toward the submarine, passing sixty knots in speed, bearing down like a freight train.

“Brace for impact!” shouted Jonah over the radio, his voice echoing through every compartment of the stricken ship. Dr. Nassiri crumpled into a ball and rolled underneath the nearest console as tracer fire arced over the ruined bow and lit up the bridge and engine room with brutal intensity, raining sparks and metal fragments onto Alexis as she tried to find a position where she could survive the coming crash.

The destroyed bow of the Fool’s Errand dropped as the yacht reached hydrofoil speeds, the ship skipping across the water as it zeroed in on the submarine. The gunner froze as the Fool’s Errand threw her keel across the platform, a symphony of destruction. The impact hurled Alexis forward, smashing her face and head against a bulletriddled console.

For a brief moment, all was silent as Alexis struggled to remain conscious. Her gray, swimming vision lied to her, and she stumbled as she reached for something to hold on to. Her fingers tapped across the deck grating, touching burning lubricant and broken glass. The acidic smell of leaking fuel filled her nose and lungs. Nevermind that… the entire ship had shattered itself across the back of the submarine just aft of the conning tower, large scarred patches of the matte-black steel skin of the sub showing through gaping holes in the Fool’s Errand’s hull.

She crawled up the main staircase, trying to keep underneath the growing billows of black smoke. Her fingers touched the Winchester shotgun as if it’d been placed there as a sign from the Almighty himself. God wanted her to fight.

Rolling on her back and cradling the shotgun in her arms, she racked a round into the chamber. She pushed herself to her feet and made her way to the bridge, surveying the jungle of hanging wires and wrecked consoles around her. Dr. Nassiri looked up at her, eyes wide, still in shock.

“What do we do?” asked Alexis. Jonah was already gone, to where she did not know. But some part of her knew he had a plan.

“We follow Jonah,” croaked Dr. Nassiri. He glanced at her shotgun, then down at the 9mm pistol he had in his own hand. Billowing black smoke filled the bridge, and Alexis tried to force open one of the doors. A twisted frame kept it jammed in place.

Dr. Nassiri didn’t wait, he crawled on top of the consoles and through the shattered front windscreen. Alexis followed, more falling than stepping out of the window towards the bow of the crashed yacht, shotgun in hand, intense sunlight splaying across her face as she stepped outside. The yacht had obliterated the quad gun and gunner.

Alexis kicked a deck chair out of the way, winced and pulled a piece of glass out of her leg. At least she wasn’t hit, not as far as she could tell. Adrenaline could do funny things to the brain, she actually felt pretty fucking good right now.

Jonah’s SCUBA gear lay scattered across the deck. One of the anti-aircraft rounds had pierced the rear of a trimix tank in the ensuing chaos, detonating it and putting a massive splintered crater in one corner and embedding jagged shrapnel in the deck, bulkheads and chairs.

And then there he was. Jonah stood perched on the side of the yacht, 1911 pistol in hand, taking a perfect overlook position on the conning tower at just ten feet away. He took a bead on the hatch, waiting for it to move, twitch, anything that would justify sending a hollow-point round through the brainpan of first man to pop his head out like a whack-a-mole.

A wave of uncontrollable laughter washed over Alexis.

Sorry Dad, her brain spat out between shaking giggles. Accidentally wrapped the family Volkswagen around a telephone pole. It didn’t make sense, which made it all the funnier, so much that her eyes teared up and every impulse to fight the inappropriate laughter just made it that much more intense.

Apparently sensing a moment to prepare, Jonah unzipped the front of his wetsuit halfway down his chest, grabbed a pressurized pony reserve bottle of pure oxygen from the deck, and stuffed it in.

Taking a position behind him with Dr. Nassiri at her side, Alexis sincerely hoped if Jonah was shot, it’d be in the heart or head, not in the pony bottle. An explosion like that, so close to his soft tissue and hollow organs would blow him to pieces. Hell, it would be pretty spectacular, probably enough to kill her and the doctor as well. The potential energy stored in air tanks, even in the little ones, was substantial.

The hatch in front of him flew open, articulated by an unseen hydraulic system. All Alexis could see was a Yankees ballcap. The mercenary didn’t even make it to eye level before Jonah pulled the trigger. There was no way Jonah could miss, not at this range. The shot impacted just above and to the left of the white Y, splatting skull against the back of the hatch. The body tumbled down and out of view, landing below with an audible, sickening thump. Jonah hurled the pony bottle after him, hoping it’d go unnoticed with the chaos of a dead man dropping in from above.

Fucking whack-a-mole, thought Alexis as she watched Jonah take a step back, launch into a running start and leap though the air towards the conning tower, gun in hand. He landed with difficulty, catching the railings right in his ribs, knocking the wind out of his lungs. He slid over the hatch entrance and looked down, handgun at the ready. She watched as he took aim at the pony bottle and fired and could feel the shock wave from fifteen feet away as the conning tower shook and belched out a big cloud of white oxygenated vapor.

Jonah stole one glance towards Dr. Nassiri and Alexis with an intense look that made Alexis cold and hot all over, and then he disappeared into the submarine. She heard gunshots, multiple weapons of multiple calibers. The American was in it now, a straight-up, close-quarters, old-school gunfight.

“What do we do?” asked Dr. Nassiri.

Alexis didn’t know and knew the doctor didn’t either. She looked behind her. The ragged hulk of the Fool’s Errand had already given up the ghost, its shattered frame slowly slipping beneath the waves and pulling the submarine down with it. They wouldn’t have their little perch for long. “We follow Jonah,” said Alexis. Forcing her muscles to unfreeze, she pushed herself back, launched into a run and leapt for the conning tower. Unlike Jonah — and with no small amount of pride — she landed perfectly, both feet on the tower, one hand on the railing and one on the shotgun. Must have been all those dance and cheerleading practices before she knew how explain to her mother that she loathed everything about them.

Twelve feet below, in the red-lit control room of the submarine, the mercenary with the Yankees hat lay on his back, one dead, accusing eye staring directly up at Alexis. An entire quarter of his head was completely missing, as his still-struggling heart pumped a seemingly endless supply of blood into a gathering pool. Dr. Nassir made the leap too, landing awkwardly beside her and almost losing his handgun in the process.

Alexis straddled the hatchway, crossed her arms like a mummy, and simply allowed herself to drop. This was going to hurt, a lot.

She fell fucking hard, landing awkwardly on top of the body of the head-shot man, rolling to the side, trying to take some of the momentum laterally without breaking an ankle.

Beside her writhed the two sailors Jonah had hit with the exploding bottle trick. Both were dead, but they didn’t know it yet. They trembled on the ground, mouths foaming with pink-flecked bubbles, lungs destroyed by the concussive force. Alexis had never seen it before; but some deep part of her knew the men had seconds before they lost consciousness, minutes before they were dead. The horror overwhelmed her, and in that moment she would have done anything in her power to save them.

Alexis heard movement from her right and swiveled the shotgun to take aim at a young man, dressed in the horizontal stripes of a Russian sailor’s uniform halfway slumped over a pilot’s console. The young man held his chest, eyes closed in pain, unarmed. The Russian sailor was a slight, good looking man, the type that could have modeled if he were taller. A picture of him wearing a vintage sailor suit in a Ralph Lauren ad flashed before her eyes. Jonah had put two rounds directly into his sternum, throwing him back against the instrumentation panel with a violent impact, splattering blood across the dials. He sputtered, coughing up blood, as he compulsively touched his wounds, stared at his hands, and touched his wounds again.

“Alexis!” shouted a voice from above the conning tower. She looked up to see Dr. Nassiri leaning in like he were at the top of a wishing well. Too scared to shout back at him, she urgently waved him down. She heard a gunshot, felt the fragment of lead fly by her face, heard the zing of a too-close bullet. Gunshots chattered away from the unseen bow section of the submarine. Some of them sounded like automatic rifles — Jonah wouldn’t last long against that volume of firepower.

Dr. Nassiri slid down the ladder, dropping down beside her. She watched as he holstered his pistol and triaged the head-shot man and the two now-silent, foam-spitting sailors, no hope of survival. His eyes fell on the handsome Russian with the two chest wounds, and his training took over. Dr. Nassiri put both hands on the slight man, dragged him to his feet and slammed him on top of a chart table, then went to work to save his life.

“Give me the medical kit from the wall,” he ordered.

Alexis looked over and saw it — it was one of the massive full-emergency-care ones, including emergency oxygen facemasks and splints. But the nature of his demand completely baffled her as gunshots continued to echo through the claustrophobic chamber.

“Are you for real?” demanded Alexis.

“Please!”

With no time to protest, Alexis crawled across the compartment, grabbed the medical kit and heaved it towards the doctor.

“Thank you,” said Dr. Nassiri, ignoring her glare.

Jonah started shouting at them from two chambers up in the bow, his words scarcely intelligible over the din of the fighting.

“I’ve got two pinned down here in the bow!” he shouted. “Alexis, Doc — if you’re alive, I need you to capture the stern!”

Alexis racked another slug into the shotgun and considered his words. Goddamn fucking motherfucker. She really didn’t want to do this and certainly not alone. She was fucking scared, really fucking scared. And there was the doctor, wrist deep in one of their enemies, trying to save a life while bullets rained down around them.

“Doc, you hear that?” she shouted. “Let’s go, let’s move!”

Doctor Nassiri ignored her. She could see on his face that he’d completely fallen back on his training. Maybe he couldn’t even hear her. In the midst of the carnage, he had become a battlefield surgeon once again.

Screaming inside her own head, Alexis grabbed the 9mm out of the back of the doctor’s waistband and stuck it into the front of her cutoff shots.

And there she was, shotgun in hand, skinned-up knees, and wet, tangled hair. At least she had on her utility boots. Weapon leveled, she charged back into the throbbing engine room. Movement on her left — she fired, blasting apart a chunk of the battery bank, spitting debris in all directions. The sailor — maybe an engineer? — swore and twisted away, trying to escape the leaking acid. She fired again, the slug ricocheting off the interior walls of the submarine. Movement, and she fired again, blasting apart an instrumentation panel. And there he was, an older, darkly tanned man with a gaunt face and a buzz cut holding a steak knife.

Alexis took aim and pulled the trigger, but the shotgun clicked empty. Knife in hand, the engineer lunged towards her as she dropped the shotgun, drew Dr. Nassiri’s pistol and traced five shots into his upper chest.

Alexis burst in through the next hatch, 9mm raised, fully expecting to find herself in a hail of bullets. In most military submarines, this compartment would have been the aft torpedo room, perhaps with a few bunkbeds. Instead, Alexis found herself within the most spectacular armory she’d ever seen — even better than a Texan gun emporium — rows and rows of German assault rifles, handguns, grenades, breaching charges, all manner of armor, and both engineering and combat SCUBA gear.

Gunshots rang out from the command compartment, two compartments forward. It sounded as if Jonah had been forced to retreat, assuming he was still alive. She knew he wouldn’t last long, not with a rapidly diminishing supply of ammunition and two trained men after him.

Alexis snatched the nearest weapons she could find, a phosphorous grenade and a breaching explosive, then charged headlong out of the compartment towards the command compartment. Bullets zipped around her, as expertly-placed shots rang out from the forward bunkroom, the last stand of the surviving crew of the submarine. She headed back towarad Dr. Nassiri, and fired a few shots at the unseen attackers as Dr. Nassiri just stood there, not ducking, not even wincing at the loud retorts.

Jonah was still a chamber forward, no help to her. And there was no way she could get the grenades to him without being shot herself.

As if to add to the perfect scene of chaos, a thousand gallons of freezing seawater poured down the conning tower ladder, gaining momentum like a flash flood down a box canyon. The cold water jolted Alexis out of her shock. She leapt to her feet and ran over to the control console, fingers dancing over the complex, seemingly endless control schematics, looking for a solution to the rapidly filling submarine.

“Are we sinking?” shouted Dr. Nassiri. At least he’d found his wits.

“I found it!” sounded Alexis. With a mechanical whine, the hydraulics to the hatch kicked in, forcing it shut. The massive surge of water cut off immediately, leaving a strange silence as seawater dripped from the closed hatch. Then more gunshots. Jonah shouted something to her, but she couldn’t make it out.

The submarine creaked loudly, a metallic moaning sound ringing throughout every compartment, structural members shifting and settling as the pressure around the vessel increased.

“I think we’re still sinking,” said Dr. Nassiri, quieter this time. Alexis looked up, seeing an analog depth gauge central to the command panel where the Russian sailor had been shot. The needle of the gauge edged slowly to the right as the submarine plunged ever deeper. They were sinking fast — too fast. Eighty feet. A hundred. The ribs of the submarine shuddered with the rapidly increasing pressure. Alexis heard a loud scraping sound, and the entire submarine shuddered again.

Then she realized what was happening. It was the wreckage of the Fool’s Errand, still clinging to the submarine, dragging all aboard into the crushing abyss.