Chapter 32

 

USS Hartford

12:05 p.m.

 

“Rivera, what’s the goddamn status?” Mako snapped into the headset.

Silence greeted him. But the noises he’d heard before still rattled in his head. He thought he’d heard a gun shot that coincided with the firing of the torpedo. Seconds later, more shots. But nothing after.

“Outer doors three and four open, self-checks complete, no fish loaded,” the man at the firing panel announced.

“Status of tubes, Shayne,” Mako said into the headset at the second man in the torpedo room. Again, only silence at the other end.

He moved to the MFD screen and switched to video. The view of the torpedo room was blank.

“Fuck,” Mako growled, stepping down from the starboard side of the conn and moving past the attack-center consoles to the open door of the sonar room.

“Out,” he snapped at Cavallaro, who was standing at one of the sonar stations, monitoring any movement around them. “Take the conn.”

The young officer jumped at Mako’s command and quickly moved into the control room.

Mako shut the door behind him and switched the channel on his headset. “Kilo, where are you?”

There was a three-second delay before his right-hand man answered.

“Second level, forward, sir.”

“The shit has hit the fan in the torpedo room. It has to be McCann. Send a couple of your men down there,” Mako’s voice was loud and razor sharp.

“I’ll go after him myself.”

“No, I need you for Code Brown. Read me? Code Brown.”

“Time of engagement?” Kilo asked.

“Fourteen hundred. You have a lot to do.”

“Consider it done, sir.”

~~~~