From where he lay on the bunk in the captain's sea cabin of the bridge of the Yorktown, Paul Talbot could see the helmsman's steering controls. The brass wheel rocked gently back and forth in random motions, which signified that the power for the ship's steering had earlier been shut off. Without engine power to propel them through the water, there was no need for them to steer the ship. Talbot kept his eyes on that wheel for as long as he could, until the pain from his wounds became so severe that he had no choice but to close his eyes again.
"Are you all right?"
Talbot forced open his eyes. He looked up at the woman who hovered over him — one of the group of passengers who had brought him up to the bridge and now attempted to nurse him. "Yes," Talbot said in a weak voice. He attempted to smile, but that was too much of an effort for him.
"Lie quietly. I've sent someone down to the airliner to get more first-aid kits. We should be able to find more medication to ease your pain."
Talbot nodded his appreciation. Although she was far younger, she had the same kind, generous face as Charlotte. It was that same benevolent expression that their daughter Amy had inherited from her mother. Talbot gestured for the woman to lean closer to him. "Please... promise me... you'll leave the bridge... if there's trouble. All of you."
"Don't worry. We know what we're doing." The woman carefully adjusted the blanket around the old man's body. "Just lie quietly."
Talbot began to pick his body up slightly, as if he were about to get up from the bed. But before he had raised himself more than a few inches, he began to cough. The deep sound from his fluid-filled lungs echoed through the small space of the Yorktown's bridge.
"Lie down. Try to relax." The woman, who had been joined by two others from the rear of the bridge, gently maneuvered Talbot back onto the captain's bunk.
"No. Wait." Talbot coughed again, the pain from his movements causing him to close his eyes in agony. After a few seconds, he managed to open his eyes again. "Can't lie. No more. Hard to breathe. Need to sit up..." Talbot ended his short sentence with another fit of coughing, this one louder and longer than the last.
"No." The woman tried to lay him back down again.
"Maybe we should let him sit up." The second woman looked down at Talbot's pain-wracked face. "I think I read somewhere that it's better to sit upright. To drain the fluids from the lungs."
"Are you sure?"
"No." The first woman looked down at Talbot, then shook her head. "I'm guessing. I wish I knew more than elementary first aid."
"Please. Let me sit up. In there." Talbot pointed feebly toward the corner of the bridge, the area surrounded by rows of black windows that displayed the impenetrable darkness outside.
"He means that chair in the corner." Both women looked out to where the upholstered captain's swivel chair sat on the left side of the ship's bridge. "We should let him do what he wants," the first woman finally said.
"You're right. Maybe he knows what's best. It might help."
"It might. Let me get the others." The second woman stepped out of the captain's sea cabin and came back quickly with several of the other women from their group. "Gently, now. Everyone grab hold — we're going to move him to the chair so he can sit upright." Without another word the woman picked Talbot up and carried him to the captain's chair on the bridge as carefully as they could.
The pain from the movement was so severe that several times Talbot thought he might black out. Hold on, stay conscious. I've got to see this through. Although he did think that it might help his breathing somewhat to sit upright, Talbot's actual reason for wanting to be moved was to make it possible for him to see the flight deck, to see if the plan he had given the hostages stood any chance of success. My fault, all of this. Please, God, let them get out of this alive.
"Careful. Use the blanket to keep him upright." The woman placed Talbot on the captain's chair of the Yorktown, then tucked the blanket around him so he would be in no danger of falling off.
Talbot, who had kept his eyes closed as they maneuvered him to the chair, began to listen to the sounds of his own heartbeat. His heartbeat had grown louder for awhile, but soon it had quieted down. Now, it seemed faint, irregular. Talbot opened his eyes. "What time is it?" he asked the woman who stood closest to him.
"4:15. It'll be dawn in less than an hour."
Talbot nodded, then glanced at the sterile blackness out the window. After a few seconds of looking blankly straight ahead, Talbot turned his attention below, to the scene on the Yorktown's flight deck.
Faint outlines of the airliner's wings and fuselage were barely visible from the small amount of light that poured out of several of the opened hatchways. Dozens of people swarmed everywhere on the deck, and the chugging noises of a tractor floated up through a mix of voices. Everyone sounded calm, professional, matter-of-fact. Beyond the far edge of the deck, nothing at all — not the submarine, not even the surface of the ocean itself — was visible, and that added ominously to its menacing feeling. Still, the activity on the flight deck was reassuring. From what Talbot could tell, the effort to clear the disabled airliner off the Yorktown was going very well.
"We've just received word from below that the B-25 appears to be in flyable condition," the first woman said as she leaned closer to Talbot. She spoke in a soothing, hushed voice. "The torpedoes, too, are proving to be less trouble than they first thought. The man in charge said he expected to have one ready to use by dawn." The woman could easily see from the old man's expression that these were the subjects his thoughts were on.
"Explosives." The word had come across Talbot's dry lips with an awkward sound to it because of the bile lodged in his throat. "The dog."
"Yes. You were asleep at the time. Aquarius found the hidden explosives that had been taken off the airliner. They were in a room in the forward part of the ship."
This time, Talbot managed a small smile before he began to cough again. There was, he could taste, something else in his throat now — blood, perhaps. He tried to put that thought out of his mind — except that this time he began to experience some difficulty in keeping his thoughts from becoming muddled. Dog. My blood. "They're out there — I know it," Talbot suddenly said, the outstretched finger of one hand pointed at the black void to the port side of the ship.
"Yes. We know."
"Bastards." Out of exhaustion, Talbot's head fell back against the chair. "They're still out there." Yang and McClure. "Got to stop them."
"We will," the woman answered in a calm, neutral voice. She knew that the old man had begun to hallucinate again — as he had so often during the last few hours.
"Bastards." They lied to me. Talbot coughed once, then his body trembled with a spasm. "We've got to stop them," he muttered, his voice now unintelligible. Stop them. They lied to me. Got to. Before they kill. Killed. Keith and Thomas. At the thought of his grandson's names Talbot felt his chest begin to constrict. His eyes, even though they had already been shut, had begun to ache from deep inside.
"Just relax," the woman who hovered over him said in a voice nearly too low to be heard. "We'll be very quiet now. You should sleep." The woman motioned to the others who stood on the Yorktown's bridge. One by one, the assembled group began to walk toward the hatchway that led to the gallery ledge outside. As they passed Talbot, a few of them reached up and touched him gently on the shoulder or arm, as a gesture meant to indicate that they would be nearby. But every one of them knew that there was nothing they could do for this gravely injured old man — nothing anyone could do.
Keith. Thomas. Amy. Paul Talbot opened his eyes slowly. He faced the black window glass of the bridge for a full minute before he found the energy to speak. "Amy... on my birthday," Talbot rambled, "... last year... Keith and Thomas..." Talbot sat himself further upright, using what little strength he still possessed. "Amy... gave that to me..." Talbot pointed toward the tape player that he had put on the ledge near the captain's chair.
The woman who stood nearest to Talbot wiped away the flood of tears that crossed down her cheek. She looked at Talbot's face — it was covered with perspiration. His thinning gray hair was also laced with rivulets of moisture. That moisture ran down the deep crevices of his neck and disappeared behind his shirt collar. The woman cleared her throat, then spoke. "Do you want me to play it? To turn the tape player on for you?" she asked, her lips close to the old man's ear, her hand resting on his shoulder. She didn't know what else to do. She could see the sudden change in his appearance the last few minutes — the drawn-down and glassy look to his eyes, the increasingly yellowish-white cast to his skin.
"Yes. Birthday. My Amy... turn it on."
The woman leaned forward and pressed the button. She then turned and walked a few steps away before the first sounds of the music began to come out of the tape player on the shelf next to Paul Talbot; she could not bear watching him any longer.
The cold blackness of the windows that surrounded the bridge somehow caused the sound of the melancholy piano to resonate even more sharply and hauntingly than it had the first time Talbot had heard it. When Willie Nelson's voice began, the notes that he sang were both thin and, at the same time, extremely rich. The words and the sounds flowed out of him as effortlessly as water being poured from a pitcher. It was the push of every note and phrase from that Willie Nelson recording that caused the old man to go back in time to that one moment he could not get himself past. Keith. Thomas. God help them. I've killed them.
Paul Talbot somehow found the strength to sit himself up even higher in the captain's chair on the bridge of the Yorktown. He focused as best he could at where the horizon line would meet the surface of the ocean to the east of the ship. Indistinctly, as if it were no more than a black-on-black canvas, he thought he could see the first hints of the early morning gray as it crept slowly up from its hiding-place like some timid animal crawling cautiously out of a dark cave. "Dawn," Talbot mumbled. But his voice was far too weak to be understood.
The music of Willie Nelson continued, its melody lying over Talbot. "September," he said very weakly, that single word falling quietly off his lips. Talbot's vision was blurred from the pain, from the fatigue, and from the swelling of tears that covered his eyes. Keith. Thomas. God, please, forgive me. Let them live. Let them all live.
The days dwindle down
To a precious few
September
November
And these few precious days
I'll spend with you
These precious days
I'll spend with you.
Talbot's hand, which had been raised a few inches off the woolen blanket that he had been carefully wrapped in, dropped down. The beating of his heart, which had become even more irregular during the last few minutes, beat only once more before it stopped completely. The final image that registered in the recesses of his mind was of that last day, more than one year before, when he had walked the deck of the Yorktown with his daughter, Amy, and his wife, Charlotte. Holding hands with him — their small fingers wrapped tightly into his, their faces turned attentively and glowingly upward as he pointed out the sights to them — were Paul Talbot's grandsons, Keith and Thomas. The boys' faces appeared the way Talbot would remember them last. The way he would remember them always.
<>
Jerome Zindell stood on the dark bridge of the U.S.S. Trout. The submarine rocked gently on the surface in the diminishing swells of the sea that they rode on. Zindell could see that, as forecast, the weather had improved rapidly. By mid-morning, at the very latest, the skies would be clear. Then the warm sun would give them yet another advantage. "The weather is in our favor. By noon, it'll be even harder to find us," Zindell said to make conversation with the two others who stood on the cool, damp submarine's bridge with him.
"That so?" Ed McClure leaned against the flat metal sidewall while he continued to stare straight ahead through the blackness. Tiny pinpoints of light several hundred yards away were the most obvious indications of the presence of the Yorktown, the light evidently coming through opened hatchways that led onto the ship's flight deck. "Why will it be harder to find us?" McClure finally asked with little interest. He did not bother to turn toward Zindell because he did not look forward to another dissertation on submarines. As far as McClure was concerned, if he never saw another of these foul, claustrophobic sewer pipes, that would still be too soon.
"Because the sun will warm the uppermost layer of ocean water. That cap of heat will make anti-submarine sonar gear even less reliable." Zindell forced himself to smile. The fact about the benefits from warming water was a big ace up his sleeve — it was something he had looked forward to telling McClure about. But, curiously, Zindell found no enjoyment in passing on the news. He guessed that it was because he had become too anxious, too nervous to feel anything other than the tensions of the last few hours. "Remember how long the Swedes hunted their own harbor for that mysterious submarine a few years back?" Zindell said, to get back to his point. "It was the varying water temperature that made the difference. That's why the Swedes couldn't find it."
"Exactly. We will get the same help from the water temperature,” Olga volunteered. “We will also get help from the noises that come from the sinking of the Yorktown." She peered toward the nearly invisible silhouette of the ship. "Because of that combination, the people who hunt for us will never find us."
"Right." Zindell glanced at the woman. She had taken another step to be closer to McClure — the man she had committed murder for a little more than an hour earlier. Lunatics. They deserve each other. Zindell would have attempted to add more, to say something placating to both of them — except that at that very moment he had become aware of the growing sound that they had all been waiting for.
"Look." McClure pointed toward the sky. Above the submarine was a single light, far in the distance. McClure grinned, ear to ear. "An airplane. Sounds like a turboprop. A Navy Hercules, I'd guess." He glanced down at his wristwatch. "They're a little late," McClure added nonchalantly, as if he were commenting on the late departure of a commuter train.
"Only five minutes late," Zindell answered automatically. He didn't need to look at his own wristwatch, he had counted each of the passing moments carefully enough to know exactly how late that airplane was. "Here comes the parachute," he said. The second chute that they had insisted on in their last teletype message to the Pentagon — the parachute with the flare hung beneath it — had been dropped a few seconds after the main one. The eerie phosphorous light that came from it lit up the area well enough to make the progress of the main chute plainly visible. That had been their intention.
"They seem to have complied." Olga put her hand on McClure's shoulder. "It is almost over, we have beaten them. All that is left now is for us to pick up the ransom money. Then we can submerge. Disappear."
"Don't forget one thing." McClure pointed straight across the submarine's bow. The outline of the Yorktown had become increasingly visible, a combination of the phosphorous glow from the flare as it parachuted down to a point some distance astern of the ship, plus the increasing dull-gray light of the approaching dawn. "First we need to sink the ship. After that, we can pick up the ransom."
"The sinking of the Yorktown seems more important to you than the money." Zindell worked hard at trying to keep his comment neutral, but it still came out as too brash, too much of a challenge.
"Maybe it is." McClure scowled. "That factor shouldn't make a damned difference to you. Our deal was that we were going to sink that ship. That's exactly what we're going to do." McClure took his eyes off Zindell just long enough, to glance at the enormous shadowy outline of the old warship that rode on the waves. It sat in full broadside view, no more than a few hundred yards away. The thought of sending that giant ship to the bottom was nearly enough to send a shiver of delight through him. It was something that the combined enemy forces of three wars hadn't been able to do — yet Ed McClure was going to accomplish it on his own. It would be the ultimate display of his superior military tactics, if he did say so himself.
"Don't get yourself worked up — I fully intend to sink that ship. Like I said before, we need the acoustical cover to guarantee our escape."
"So when in hell are we going to do it?" McClure did not want his own involvement diminished in the eyes of the other crew members.
"In a few more minutes. As soon as we get enough daylight to find the ransom buoy without a great deal of hunting." Zindell waved his hand toward the dark sea astern of the giant ship, toward the spot where the parachuted ransom container had splashed into the sea. The second parachute with the flare had dropped near it, but it had already extinguished itself in the water. "Once we send our torpedoes into the Yorktown, we'll have only a few minutes before this place is swarming with antisub aircraft. The noise from the ship as it sinks, plus the warming water, will provide enough cover for us to safely get our asses out of here. But we can't afford to float around the area on a pleasure cruise, we've got to make quick tracks."
"I understand." McClure was about to add something else when a sudden noise in the distance startled him. "What the hell was that?" He wheeled around.
"Look!" Olga stood with her mouth open. She pointed at the sight in front of them. Even in the half-light of pre-dawn, it was obvious that the Trans-American airliner had slid off the flight deck of the Yorktown and had fallen to the sea. At that moment only the aircraft's red tail still stuck up out of the water as it continued to sink quickly beneath the waves.
"How could that happen?" Zindell asked. He watched until the airliner had completely disappeared into the ocean before he turned to McClure. "I don't understand. How could that happen?”
"It must've been closer to the edge than we thought. Maybe Yang is still alive. Maybe the people on the ship strapped his ass in the airliner and sent him deep-six." McClure laughed loudly. "What the hell damned difference does it make? The airliner was going into the water in just a few minutes anyway."
"Yes, but..." Zindell nervously rubbed his hand against the stub of his left arm. He glanced first at the ship, then back at McClure. "It's not right. Something is wrong."
McClure opened his mouth to answer, but before his first words could come out, another new sound drifted across the open water toward them. It was a raspy, grating noise. "Give me the binoculars!" McClure ripped the binoculars out of Olga's hands before she had a chance to hand them over.
McClure focused the binoculars quickly. As he did, he was astonished by what he saw. "This is incredible! How the hell could they manage that!"
"What is it?!" Zindell snatched the binoculars away from McClure. He focused on the aft end of the Yorktown. "Damn it!" The grating, gnarling noises were engines. It was an airplane. It was sitting on the aft service elevator. "A medium-sized airplane. Both engines roaring." It was being raised up from the hangar bay to the flight deck on the hydraulically powered elevator. "This is impossible!"
"Wait..." McClure, who had found a second pair of binoculars on the submarine's bridge, focused in again on the aft deck of the Yorktown. "It's a B-25, a World War II medium bomber. It's that old display airplane they had onboard. They somehow got it to run."
"Yang must have helped them. He might even be with them. We must stop them." Without binoculars, Olga could not clearly see the aircraft on the Yorktown's deck — but she could easily hear the B-25's engines. They were being revved up. "The airplane sounds ready for takeoff! Do something! Quickly!"
"Fire our goddamned torpedoes, you moron!" McClure flung his binoculars down against the steel deck of the bridge. The binoculars shattered into several pieces. "Fire our torpedoes!" he yelled again.
"Yes. I will, yes..." Zindell spun himself around. He grabbed for the communications headset that lay on the ledge in front of him and strapped it on. "Control room!" he shouted, far louder than was necessary. "This is the Captain — prepare to fire all torpedoes!" Zindell glanced over his shoulder at the ship. The B-25 continued to sit on the aft end of the now-cleared flight deck, its engines running, its nose pointed straight down the deck's centerline.
"Do we need to prepare the torpedoes — is there anything we need to do first?" Olga asked. Her eyes locked onto the scene across the water.
"No. Nothing. Everything is ready." Zindell was thankful that he had the forethought to long ago prepare the torpedoes for firing. All four torpedoes had been adjusted and aimed hours before — all that was necessary now was to have the man in the control room push the master control firing buttons. "Fire the torpedoes!" Zindell shouted into the mouthpiece of the communications headset that hung around his neck. "Numbers one through four! Fire them all. Now!"