Operation Caribe (39 page)

But this still meant someone had to sneak aboard the
Wyoming
to work a bit of sabotage on its electrical supply and then organize the evacuation.

Nolan was the first to volunteer for the job, but was voted down because he had only one good eye and moving inside a darkened, now off-kilter sub would be too time consuming for him. Batman couldn’t be the infiltrator either because he had only one hand. And Gunner was too large to move stealthily around the confined areas of the sub, as was the stocky Agent Harry.

That left Twitch.

*   *   *

BUT HOW COULD he get onboard?

Harry had that answer, too. The ideal portal would have been through one of the
Wyoming
’s two lockout chambers, the same means of entry the SEALs had used to take over the sub. But the lockout chambers’ close proximity to the conning tower made going through one of them too dangerous.

That left only one other place of access: the torpedo tubes.

The tubes were basically horizontal lockout chambers. Each had a muzzle door that opened outward to allow the torpedo to go on its way before closing again. This door was attached to the hull by a hinge, but it had no locking mechanism, so getting into it from the outside would not be a problem.

It was at the other end, the place the torpedo was loaded, where it got dicey. There was a breech door here and once Twitch went in, there was no way Whiskey could know if this door would be open or closed, locked or not locked. And if it was open, who would be on the other side? Friend or foe?

It had been a risky proposition, but they all agreed it had to be done. And unstable as he was, Twitch was raring to go.

So shortly after Ramon started his work at one end of the sub, Twitch went in at the other.

*   *   *

BY THE TIME Twitch set out, the lake was nearly drained. But, because of the sub’s slant, the starboard torpedo tube was still below the water’s surface.

Armed with a .45 automatic, a knife, two hand grenades and his night vision goggles all wrapped in a waterproof bag, the diminutive team member had slowly made his way to the front of the sub, using the darkness and the horrific weather as his cover.

Diving into the water, he’d gone under, found the starboard torpedo tube and opened its muzzle door with a tug. The rush of water filling the void actually sucked him into the tube, but just as they thought it would, the water drained away through a flood valve as soon as the muzzle door closed behind him.

From there, he’d faced a forty-two-foot crawl. The torpedo tube was dark, greasy and horribly claustrophobic, definitely
not
a place for Twitch’s troubled psyche. At one point he’d become so disoriented, he wasn’t sure which way was up or down.

He’d pressed on by pushing with his elbows and his knees in a painfully slow wormlike motion. However, the effort took a toll on his artificial leg. He did everything he could to keep the prosthetic attached, but by about halfway in, the brace that held it in place had snapped in two.

Still, he’d reached the breech door somehow. But then came the ultimate question: The door was closed, but was it locked? Twitch gave it a slight push, but it didn’t move. He tried again—still nothing. He’d fumbled around for some kind of latch or internal opening device, but there was none.

He’d faced a huge problem then: If he couldn’t get into the sub, how the hell could he get out? It had been hard enough crawling headfirst into the tube. He couldn’t possibly crawl out backward, push out the muzzle door and fight against the resulting rush of lake water coming in.

He’d tried to listen for any noises on the other side of the breech. Harry had told him that, because of its size, the torpedo room was sometimes used as an overflow sick bay. But Twitch had heard nothing, as the hatch was made of thick steel. So, he’d done the only thing he thought he could do. He pulled out his long, razor-sharp combat knife and banged on the breech door with its blunt end, praying someone friendly on the other side would investigate.

And someone
did
open the door.

But it was not a sailor, and he was not a friendly.

It was the SEAL named Elvis.

There was a weird moment when their eyes met and Elvis realized he’d seen this person before—at the Bunker briefing and later inside the
Mothership
’s CIC.

Elvis had exclaimed: “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

Woozy from his head injury, Elvis had assumed anyone knocking on the other side of the breech door was an enemy trying to get aboard the sub. But along with the shock of seeing someone he knew, he just didn’t have enough time to raise his assault rifle, point it inside the tube and pull the trigger. There were just too many moving parts required for that.

Twitch had been quicker. He’d lunged forward with his knife and caught Elvis just under the jaw, twisting it twice. Elvis went to the deck immediately, dropping his weapon. Twitch fell out of the tube, landed on top of his victim, and stabbed him twice in the chest, brutally but not fatally.

It was only then that Twitch noticed the renegade SEAL was missing his ear. This caused him to flash back to the night when Whiskey raided the Muy Capaz’s camp. All the pirates had had one of their ears lopped off by the SEALs before they were killed.

The
same
SEALs who had just killed the guy who had saved Twitch’s life less than a year ago.

Though Elvis had begged for his life, Twitch cut off his other ear and stuffed it deep into his mouth to prevent the SEAL from alerting others.

And though he would have preferred drowning him, the same way his friend Crash had died, Twitch had used his combat knife to finish the job.

*   *   *

TEN MINUTES AFTER hanging Elvis’s body in the equipment locker, Twitch found himself on the sub’s lower level, inside its electrical locker. Agent Harry had told him where he could find it, but the journey was almost unbearable. His artificial leg kept falling off and no matter what he did, he couldn’t get it to stay back on. As a result, he’d been forced to use Elvis’s purloined assault weapon as a crutch. Luckily, he neither saw nor heard anyone while making his way below.

Twitch had done a double up to blow the power cable, placing two grenades together, then pulling the pin on one. The power locker was made of reinforced steel, so he’d been well protected from the blast, and the sound of the double explosion had been muffled somewhat. He allowed himself a fist pump of triumph when all the lights on the sub went out.

But he also knew someone from 616 would soon come down and investigate the problem and he did not want to run into that person on his way out, especially with his balky leg. So he’d hidden in the shadows nearby and waited.

Two figures arrived at the power locker about ten minutes later. One was a member of the crew, an electrician. The other was one of the rogue SEALs, the one they called Smash. It was all Twitch could do to not attack the traitor. True, it would have meant one less asshole to deal with later, but after having already killed one SEAL, doing in another would have surely alerted the rest of 616 before Twitch had fulfilled his most important mission: the crew’s escape.

So he’d waited in the murk until the two men departed. Then he’d begun making his way back up to the sub’s higher levels. But that’s when things really started to go awry.

Bold as it was, Whiskey’s plan had been hastily conceived. For one, no one ever took into account that night vision goggles didn’t work well in complete darkness, the prevailing condition on most of the sub once the main power cable had been blown. A victim of his own success, Twitch had a hard time in the pitch-black passageways, limping mightily, with no clue what was around the next corner.

He was supposed to get to the sick bay next, as the thinking was that a lot of flu-ravaged crew members would be located here. But it was just too dark to find it. So, again falling back on his Delta training, after every few steps, Twitch had come to a halt and started sniffing the air.

And after a few minutes, he detected the unmistakable smell of antiseptics.

Then he just followed his nose.

*   *   *

THERE WERE TWENTY-SIX sailors in the
Wyoming
’s sick bay, a place built to hold a dozen.

Many had not eaten in days due to flu-induced vomiting and diarrhea. Others had severe sore throats and swollen necks. Some had so much fluid in their lungs they were slowly drowning. With the lights out almost everywhere, the deplorable conditions in the sick bay had only gotten worse.

Commander Beaux had left the infirmary not too long before, telling the corpsman not to give the sailors any more medication. It had been a moot order, though, because the sick bay had already run out of medicine.

That was the lowest point for the Navy medic. He knew then
none
of the sailors would survive. All of them in the infirmary and still on duty up on the CAAC would continue to get sicker by the minute until they finally dropped dead. And there was nothing the corpsman could do about it.

Into this swirl of misery limped the small, compact Hawaiian man whose name the corpsman would later learn was Twitch Kapula.

He was covered in grease and blood, was carrying a prosthetic leg under one arm and using a bayoneted M4 assault rifle as a crutch under the other. He looked quite sick himself, especially the way he practically fell into the darkened sick bay.

The corpsman was startled to see him.

“Who the hell are you?” the corpsman had asked him.

“I’m here to get you out,” Twitch announced in reply.

The medic was floored. It had never occurred to him that someone might actually come to rescue them.

“How many of you are onboard?” he’d asked Twitch anxiously.

“Just me,” was the reply. “I’m it.”

The corpsman laughed at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

The greasy, bloody little man had looked him straight in the eye and asked: “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

The corpsman pulled him to the back of the sick bay, out of sight of the passageway. He let Twitch quickly explain who he was. The corpsman soon realized that their rescue force wasn’t exactly the 82nd Airborne.

“Do you have a plan, at least?” the corpsman asked.

Twitch said he did. “I’m going to move all of these guys down to the torpedo room and they’re going out the starboard torpedo tube, one at a time.”

The corpsman was floored. “
That’s
the plan?”

Twitch just nodded again. He asked: “How often do the SEALs check on you?”

“That asshole Beaux was here a while ago,” the corpsman told him. “You probably came close to passing him on your way. But besides him, no one else lately. I think most of them are up on the bridge, in the middle of a gunfight. I treated one for a gunshot wound and put him in—well, in the torpedo room.”

“Consider that guy out of the equation,” Twitch replied sharply. “And my friends outside are keeping the others busy up top. So this is our window of opportunity. We got to take it.”

The corpsman then examined Twitch’s prosthetic leg.

“What happened to your appliance?” he asked.

“I tore the brace sneaking in,” Twitch explained. “I’ll have to leave it here for the time being.”

Then Twitch looked around the darkened infirmary again and said, “Show me the sickest guys.”

The corpsman just shrugged. “They’re all really, really sick.”

Twitch took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“OK, you’ll have to stay here,” he instructed the corpsman. “And if anyone comes down here checking on you, you’ll just have to fake it somehow, at least until we get most of them out.”

Then, without another word, Twitch picked up the nearest sick sailor, draped him over his shoulder and staggered away, once again using the M4 as a crutch.

And this he did, one man at a time, for the next hour, until all of the sick sailors had been moved.

36

IT WAS NOW four in the morning.

The storm was still raging outside the sub. Inside, it was still dark and full of weird noises and ghosts. Or at least that’s what Commander Beaux believed.

He was sick. He was vomiting. His neck was swollen, and his chest felt like an anvil was pressing on it. His skin had even turned a shade of blue—all symptoms of the H1N1-like virus sweeping the sub.

After last talking to NS Norfolk, he’d spent an hour close to the CAAC, in what was once the captain’s cabin, ostensibly reading over the Trident launch book, the document he’d killed the young ensign to get. He was so ill, though, he could barely think straight. He had no idea what was happening up top, and he just didn’t have the guts to go back below and cut down the body of his old friend, Elvis.

His grand dream was slipping away—and being replaced by a nightmare. What he’d hoped would be a smooth, clean operation had turned into a nonstop gun battle with a bunch of phantoms on the outside, and maybe something even worse on the inside.

The sailors still on duty on the control deck were useless at this point. Beaux could see them from his doorway and they were just as sick as he, if not worse. They’d stayed at their stations only because the last remaining petty officer alive told them to, so as not to risk getting anyone else killed by 616.

But clearly, it was all for show.

*   *   *

IT WAS ONLY that he wanted to get out of the foul smelling control area that Beaux finally managed to reload his M4, put on his flak jacket and head back up to the open bridge.

He could barely climb the conning tower ladder without stopping on every other rung; this is how weak he’d become. When he finally reached the top, he stopped, took a deep breath, and then pushed the outside hatch open.

He was greeted by the combined roar of the violent storm and the fusillades of bullets flying overhead. Ghost, Smash and now Monkey were up here, still pinned down, still firing only sporadically and still hitting absolutely nothing in the dark. They looked at him with a mixture of surprise and disgust—like someone who’d run from a battle and then for some reason decided to return.