Chapter One
May 10, 2006
Naval Submarine Base, Kings Bay, Georgia:
David Bass, a stocky man in his early twenties, sat before the reactor panel, a sprawling table of controls and gauges that climbed up the forward wall of the engine room’s maneuvering control center.
Beside him, a junior electrician named Dowd bit his nails while glancing at displays that resembled the reactor panel but instead routed electric power. To Bass’ other side stood the steam panel that controlled vapor flow to the submarine’s twin main engines.
Bass heard Lieutenant Jake Slate’s voice crackle through the wireless unit at his hip.
“This is the duty officer,” Jake said. “Report shore power load.”
Bass glanced over Dowd’s shoulder at gauges on the electric panel.
“Nine hundred amps aft, eight hundred forward, sir.”
Bass reached behind his shoulder for the engine room announcing circuit. He pulled the handset to his mouth, clicked it, and paused. The microphone click signaled his accomplice to join him in maneuvering.
“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?” Dowd asked.
“I was going to ask Gant to run forward and get me a Coke, but then I remembered that the crew’s mess is not a happy place right now.”
“No kidding! Running a security drill the night before patrol is a bunch of crap. Everyone is just trying to get some sleep. I can’t believe Mister Slate would do that.”
Bass pretended to listen as Michael Gant, a lumpy, bucktoothed Tennessee native in his mid-twenties, snuck up to maneuvering’s open entryway and struck Dowd’s head with a three-foot torque wrench.
Dowd recoiled onto the electric panel. He staggered to his feet and pressed his palm against his wound. Bass punched him in the stomach as Gant crashed the wrench down again. Dowd fell to the floor.
While Gant mummified his victim with industrial tape, Bass reached for the electric panel. Trembling hands twisted voltage and amperage control knobs, straining the submarine’s battery and reducing the load on shore electricity. Bass returned to the reactor panel and called Jake Slate.
“Sir, we’re set down here,” he said. “Ready to divorce from shore power and commence a reactor start-up.”
“Got it. What about Dowd?” Jake asked.
“He’s wrapped up.”
“No problems?”
“It’s fine. Everything’s fine,” Bass said.
“Okay, commence a reactor start-up. Have Gant bleed steam around the number two main steam valve and start the port side of the engine room. Cut any corner to get it done.”
Paranoid, Bass glanced down the eight-foot wide tunnel, a radiation-shielded passage through the reactor compartment that provided the only path between the engine room and the rest of the USS Colorado. No one was coming.
He crossed in front of maneuvering where gray towers of reactor circuitry covered the deck plates. Kneeling between symmetric panels, he slid a toolbox to his knees and flipped open the lid to expose the specialized fuses that operated the reactor’s control rods. He unlocked a Plexiglas shield and popped a fuse in a socket, completing a circuit to a motor on top of the reactor.
Gant appeared from behind the corner.
“Bass, I bypassed the port main steam valve,” he said. “I need to place the aux steam reducer on line and draw vacuum in the condenser. Then I’m going to place feed and condensate on line. It’s going to take me a while by myself, but I’m making good time. How are you doing?”
“Don’t worry, dude. We’re going to limp out of here on the emergency propulsion motor anyway. We’ll have the main engine up before anyone even knows we’re gone.”
Bass could see the veins in Gant’s neck throbbing. He heard tension in his voice.
“I think I killed Dowd. Are we crazy, man?”
“Get over it,” Bass said. “He’ll be fine. The whole crew is going to be fine. Hell, they ought to thank us for getting them out of the patrol. We take this pig and they get a vacation. And we get ten million each. No more debt and no more Navy.”
“What if something goes wrong?”
“It won’t. Mister Slate knows what he’s doing. This is money in the bank.”
Topside, Jake scanned the explosive handling wharf to verify that no one was watching him. Below the pier, two of the six Taiwanese commandos who had just swum to the submarine slinked along a wooden catwalk toward electrical junction boxes.
Jake tugged his ball cap. The Taiwanese swimmers tripped breakers that cut the Colorado from shore power and left it to rely on its battery. The commandos slipped into the water and mounted the rounded bow where they unraveled nylon ropes from the submarine’s cleats.
Jake shifted his gaze to the stern and saw swimmers unscrewing shore power cables from the Colorado’s aft external power connections. He craned his neck the opposite way and studied two more commandos as they removed the forward electric cables.
Pierre Renard, an international arms dealer, and Sergeant Kao Yat-sen, a veteran Taiwanese commando, waddled toward Jake in swim fins while balancing the weight of their rebreathers. Panting, Renard seemed uncomfortable with the equipment. Kao appeared older than Renard but moved fluidly.
“Mister Slate,” Kao said in accented but confident English, “I am Mister Lion, leader of your commando team. Have you prepared the ship for boarding?”
Renard had informed Jake that the Taiwanese Para-Frogmen at his disposal would guard their identities. Mission names had to supplant real names, and Jake had suggested predatory felines. Given that the Taiwanese culture respected large cats – naming most of its submarines after them – the names fit.
“We’re ready,” Jake said.
Kao snapped an order in Mandarin. Two men dropped mooring lines and walked toward Kao, their fins slapping the hull with each step.
“The rest will join us after the electric cables are removed,” Kao said. “May we begin the insertion?”
“Follow me,” Jake said.
Jake descended a ten-foot ladder through a dual hatch into the Colorado’s missile compartment. Green lights on parallel gray switchboards indicated that the submarine’s battery bore the electrical load. No loss of lighting or equipment had alerted the crew.
Three commandos and the Frenchman surrounded him at the bottom of the ladder. They tossed their fins, rebreathers, and facemasks behind a switchboard.
Jake felt the commandos’ eyes on him as he trotted to a metal locker. He reached for a key dangling from a lanyard on his belt and slid it into the Colorado’s gun vault. The door creaked open, revealing rifles, pistols, shotguns and ammunition. Commandos encircled the locker.
Jake slid to a nearby workbench. He jammed another key into the bench’s top drawer and pulled out a Jacksonville Jaguar gym bag that contained silencers, ski masks, and sunglasses. It also held three pairs of handcuffs he had purchased from a pawn shop.
Jake watched the warriors attach silencers to the barrels of their small arms and prepare rifles for their comrades who remained topside. The eldest commando readied a pistol for Jake.
“The weapon is silenced and loaded with seven rounds. The trigger safety is engaged,” Kao said. “Your backup clips hold seven rounds each.”
Jake pushed the slide safety of his Beretta to the right with his thumb, arming the weapon. The remaining commandos descended into the missile compartment and grabbed weapons from their comrades.
Six armed commandos, disguised in black, faced him.
“Which ones are Mister Cheetah and Mister Tiger?” Jake asked.
Two frogmen raised fists. The duo represented the insertion team’s physical extremes.
Cheetah stood five and a half feet tall. Jake noticed small bumps on his wetsuit that indicated lean muscle underneath.
Wiry guys are scrappy, Jake thought.
Tiger stood over six feet tall, and his shoulders spanned nearly as wide. He stared at Jake with an arrogant smugness.
Shit, he’s big, Jake thought.
“Mister Cheetah and Mister Tiger,” Jake said, “climb back up the ladder and guard topside. The rest of you put your sunglasses on.
“Mister Renard, go to maneuvering,” Jake said. “We already control it. You’ll be safe there.”
Jake sent Renard, the only other hijacker who could navigate the submarine, to the engine room as insurance in case he took a bullet while taking the Colorado.
“You can do this, mon ami. I have the utmost confidence in you,” Renard said.
“At this point,” Jake said, “you have no choice.”
Renard left Jake with four commandos.
“Okay. You guys - over there.”
Jake pointed, and as commandos hid behind cabinets, he stepped deeper into the missile compartment.
Containing little more than manholes bolted over missile guidance innards, the compartment’s upper level was a barren land. Jake expected no company but threw his voice into a forest of missile tubes.
“Rover!” Jake said. “This is the duty officer. Is the rover watch in upper level?”
Relieved by the silence, he snapped a handset from a brass cradle. He telephoned CAMP, the control and monitoring panel, one deck below.
“CAMP,” a watchman said.
“CAMP, Duty Officer,” Jake said. “Have the rover report to your station. I want to talk to both of you on my way by.”
While Jake marched back to Kao’s team, he heard the watchman’s voice crackle over the missile compartment announcing circuit.
“Rover, come to CAMP.”
“The rover should be at CAMP soon,” Jake said to the masked commandos. “When I secure the two men there, I’ll give the signal.”
“In two minutes, we move regardless,” Kao said. “There are silencers on these weapons for a reason.”
Gym bag in hand, Jake scurried down the staircase to the missile compartment’s second level.
Wide orange tubes containing missiles twenty-three and twenty-four stood before him. He stepped around them and passed equipment that controlled the temperature and humidity within each missile’s housing.
Near an alcove between towers of electronics, a boot from the CAMP watch, Missile Technician Second Class Joseph Ellen, rested in Jake’s path.
“Did the rover acknowledge?” Jake asked.
“Yes, sir,” Ellen said. “Here he comes now.”
A man with sandy blond hair turned the corner around tube one. Over his bell-bottom trousers, he wore an olive web belt with a forty-five-caliber pistol and two clips.
Jake knew that Sonar Technician Second Class Welch was happier sitting in front of the displays in the Colorado’s air-conditioned sonar room than marching around the missile compartment. His frown revealed his frustration in being interrupted from his rounds.
“What’s up, sir?” Welch asked.
“Not much,” Jake said. “I just need you and Ellen to go stand over there.”
Jake withdrew his pistol from the gym bag and pointed at a towering electronic cabinet.
“What the fuck?” Welch asked.
Jake pointed the barrel at Welch. He put his free hand into the bag, pulled out a pair of handcuffs, and slid them across the deck.
“Welch, put this around your left wrist,” Jake said.
Shaking, Welch picked up the shackles and obeyed.
“Now stand next to Ellen. Run the cuffs through the metal bar and put the open end around Ellen’s right wrist,” Jake said. “Toss that pistol into the outboard.”
Welch’s weapon bounced off the hull’s insulating lagging and clinked against pipes on its way to the bilge.
Jake picked up a microphone and signaled Kao.
“Rover, come to CAMP,” he said.
*
Kao whispered orders.
“Mister Jaguar, lower level,” he said. “Mister Leopard and Mister Panther, third level. I will handle second level. Move!”
As Kao swept through the compartment’s second level, he glanced between the tubes and caught a glimpse of Jake’s handcuffed prisoners on the other side. He high-stepped over bunking racks that protruded into the passageway.
Checking for stray crewmen, he brushed each rack’s privacy curtain aside with the silencer of his M-16 rifle. Finding no one, he reached the forward bulkhead of the missile compartment.
Jaguar, like the other commandos, had just graduated with the latest class of Taiwan’s Para-Frogmen special forces.
A deck below Kao, on the third level, Jaguar watched his compatriots, Leopard and Panther, trot down a corridor between the missile tubes that separated the crew’s bunkrooms.
Alone, Jaguar scanned the empty machinery space before hopping down a steel ladder into the submarine’s depths.
His bare foot touched the cold steel deck plates of the compartment’s lower level. He stared down a central walkway lined by gas-generators, man-sized cylinders of explosives used to jettison and launch Trident Missiles.
Seeing no activity, Jaguar trotted along the centerline corridor. He passed each missile tube and gas generator in hypnotic repetition, listening to the rhythmic cadence of his footsteps echoing through the bilge under his feet.
The commando passed between missiles one and two and stopped at the watertight bulkhead of the forward compartment. Pipes, hoses, and valves wove a tangled mural around him. Jaguar found the endless mechanical jungle of the Colorado alien.
Squatting below a ladder, he leaned his rifle against his thigh and waited until he saw Leopard’s masked face above. Leopard offered a thumbs-up, indicating that he and Panther had found no one in the crew’s bunkrooms.
The eleven-man team of Kao’s men, Jake’s Colorado accomplices, and Renard controlled the engine room and the missile compartment. Only the forward compartment and a few dozen tired men separated them from control of the submarine.
Ducking through a machined circular door into the forward compartment, Jake turned into the missile control center. Towers of aging computers spanned the dimensions of a racquetball court. Two sailors sat at panels that directed the launching and guidance systems.
“What’s up Mister Slate? We heard the rover paged twice,” Missile Technician First Class Brady asked.
“I found him. You guys alone?” Jake asked.
“Yes, sir. Everyone who’s not on watch should still be in the crew’s mess.”
“Good. Now get up,” Jake said and pulled the pistol from behind his back. “I’m stealing the ship - with some help.”
Jake sensed the all-black image of Kao in his wetsuit, ski mask, and sunglasses slide beside him and raise a silenced M-16 rifle.
Jake tossed a pair of handcuffs to Brady.
“Cuff yourselves together.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Brady said.
Jake aligned his pistol’s rear and barrel sites with Brady’s thigh and squeezed the trigger. A kick recoiled at his wrist, a silencer whined, and crimson splashed from dark blue trousers.
“You bastard!” Brady said.
“He’s serious. Just do what he says,” the other sailor said while tightening the cuffs around his wrist.
“Good,” Jake said. “Now step outside with my colleague, head to CAMP, and cuff your free hands like Ellen and Welch.”
Jake moved deeper into the forward compartment and yelled for the final watchman.
“Belowdecks! This is the duty officer. Belowdecks watchman, can you hear me?”
Jake dug the silencer of his pistol into his belt at the small of his back and tiptoed up a staircase to the control room. The belowdecks watchman, a pudgy, acne-faced teenager, sat at a panel copying data into his logbook.
“Sir?” Seaman Williams asked.
“I know you’re busy, but I need you to come to the crew’s mess,” Jake said.
“The security drill was that bad, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Sir, do you smell gunpowder?”
The residue in my pistol, Jake thought.
Jake raised his fingers to his nose and sniffed.
“Yeah. I think I smell it, too. It’s probably because the duty chief and I ran an inventory of the gun locker after the drill. That locker stinks.”
“I’ll say. What do you need, sir?”
“Finish taking your logs later. Just hurry on down and join the rest of the guys.”
Jake backed down the ladder. At the bottom, he pressed against a wall to keep his weapon hidden.
“Williams, tell the crew I’ll be there soon.”
Jake retraced his steps to Kao and led him down a stairway to the crew’s mess. He overheard his duty chief keeping the duty section under control.
“Look, I know he’s been gone a while, but the belowdecks watchman just said Mister Slate was coming back. Quit whining. I know you’re all tired, but we’ll be able to hit the rack soon.”
Jake entered the mess and stood behind a table that would serve as a barrier against any would-be heroes.
“Where have you been, sir? We missed you,” the duty chief said.
Jake surveyed the duty crew, a fraction of the entire ship’s complement. The fatigue in their faces confirmed their desire to return to their racks to sleep.
“I know you’re mad that I ran the drill,” Jake said.
He waved his pistol over his head. Fifty-six bleary eyes opened wide.
“I’m stealing the Colorado. If you want to live, keep your mouths shut and do what I tell you.”
Jake nodded as Kao slid through a back doorway.
“This is some sick joke, right?” the duty chief asked.
Jake leveled the pistol at the man’s leg and squeezed off a round.
Flesh wounds heal, he thought. Pain and fear will keep them disciplined. Discipline will keep them alive.
“I said, keep your damn mouths shut! You will all remain here under guard while I get the ship underway. If you speak or move without being told, my men will kill you.”
The fear in the crew’s eyes told Jake that they believed him.
“When instructed, you will enter the missile compartment, take the ladder to second level, and then go to the missile compartment hatch,” Jake said. “Once there, you will don life jackets and head topside. En route, you will free the men handcuffed at CAMP.”
Jake tossed the handcuff keys onto the nearest table.
“When you are topside, you will jump overboard and swim to land. The strong swimmers will help the weak and the injured. You may jump overboard whenever you want, but I’ll secure the screw so you don’t get sucked under. A man at every corner of your evacuation route will prevent any stupid ideas of heroism. If you have to use the head, go in your pants.”
Jaguar stepped beside Jake. Leopard and Panther slid behind Kao.
“Remember, keep your damn mouths shut! No talking. Nod your heads if you understand.”
As heads nodded, Jake looked at Kao.
“Let’s get this pig to sea.”