Warshot (The Hunter Killer Series Book 6) by Don Keith (dark books to read TXT) 📕

McDougal closed the grip more on the cable cutter. She grasped the manipulator in a vise grip, as if her pressure on the controls would help the blades cut through the steel miles below them. “Mitch, I’m giving it all the close pressure I can muster. Let me know if the claw position is making any dent in it. And when it is fully closed.”

“It’s bit into the bastard just a tad. But still only at three centimeters.”

Not a person in the room breathed. The research ship rocked gently in the sea swells. O’Donnell fairly whispered the next reading.

“Two centimeters.”

Either the cutter was making progress, or the blades were simply skewing against the hard cable, giving a false reading of its progress.

A red light flashed on the control panel and an especially loud alarm bell sounded. O’Donnell silenced the alarm bell with a slap of a switch.

“Low cell voltage warning on the starboard battery,” he reported. “One centimeter on the cutter.”

“One centimeter.”

Brrrnnnggg! Another raucous warning.

“Low cell voltage alarm on the port battery now. She’s spent. She’s spent, Sandy.”

Every screen went dark. McDougal looked up. Sweat poured from her forehead and down across her chin. There were tears in her eyes.

“Dammit, Mitch. We lost it. We were so very close.” She glanced at her watch and wiped away drops of perspiration from its dial face. “And we still had fifteen minutes of air.”

Sun Ryn stepped over to one of the Fendouji control panels on the other side of the compartment.

“We can only hope you got all the way through the cable when we lost power.” He flipped a couple of switches. “The vessel has some natural buoyancy, but we can help her if she is free of the cable. Just in case. It is our only hope. And I doubt the men down there would begrudge our trying.”

Sun opened a little cover and flipped a switch.

“Help?” McDougal and O’Donnell asked in unison.

“There, that shifts control of the Fendouji to us and simultaneously initiates an emergency surface.” He checked a digital clock on the wall of the compartment. “From that depth, if my mental calculations are correct, it would take about ten minutes for the Fendouji to transit to the surface. Assuming, of course, that she is freed. And I choose to so assume. I suggest we all go out on the main deck to watch. It should be quite exciting.”

Mitch and Sandy looked at each other. Slight as it was, there was still a chance.

The group moved outside onto the deck, stepping into the bright late-afternoon sunlight. It felt good. The control room had deliberately been kept cold. Everyone watched the sea around them, unsure where the DSV might surface. If it ever would.

But the deep, blue sea was empty and undisturbed. Nothing to the horizon in any direction except for the three ships, clustered together, as if holding hands for a homecoming.

Nothing. Eight minutes. Nine minutes. Ten minutes had passed and still nothing. McDougal and O’Donnell exchanged a mournful glance, no interest in sparring for the moment. It had been a long shot from the beginning. A literal shot in the dark.

McDougal fought to hold back tears. The worst thing was that she had seen movement inside the little stranded submersible. Somebody alive in there. Someone whose hopes were raised when Sea Raptor showed up, lights shining.

But it was not to be.

Then someone at the north rail let out a whoop.

“I see something! Look! Out there!”

A half mile to the north. It was an orange and white shape shooting impossibly high out of the water, and at an impossibly upward angle. Broaching like a freed whale. The thing splashed back down and bobbed on the surface. They could just make out its tiny sail.

A pair of RHIBs shot out from the Zhang Jian just as the MH-53 helicopter spooled up and pulled away, headed off to the little mini-sub. The King Stallion was there almost immediately and began hovering ten feet above the sub, its rotor wash kicking up a storm of sea spray. Four divers stepped off the back ramp of the helo and dropped into the water. They were still struggling to inflate a float collar around the sub when the RHIBs arrived on the scene. It took the divers several minutes to undog and open the damaged access hatch. They had just pulled out the two unconscious men when the hastily rigged float ring failed.

Without the buoyancy, the capsule, which was already flooding through the open hatch, quickly sank back into the sea like an unleashed boulder. As if the vessel really preferred being down there in the dark deep.

But the survivors were out and the divers clear. The two rescues—all two dead weight, not conscious—were quickly hoisted up to the helicopter for the flight back to Pago Pago and medical attention.

Back on the Zhang Jian, everyone cheered and slapped each other on the back. Mission accomplished.

Mitch O’Donnell and Sandy McDougal joined hands, looked into each other’s grinning faces, and then danced an especially spirited Irish jig, even without the proper fiddle-and-pipe accompaniment. Then the two fell easily into each other’s arms, held each other tightly for a long while, not really caring what anybody thought about the two usual adversaries embracing.

Then they kissed. Long and deeply.

When they finally pulled apart, Sandy looked up, staring deeply into Mitch’s eyes.

“I told you all along the auto shutdown routine should cut power at two percent, not three,” she scolded.

“And you know this battery technology can get awful nasty under load with insufficient voltage available!” he shot back.

They were still chirping at each other—but holding hands—as they went below with the others for a celebratory round of drinks.

Epilogue

President Stan Smitherman slammed the phone down with such force, it bounced right back off its cradle and to the Oval Office floor.

“Tan Yong is a conceited, overblown, two-faced ass,” he growled, primarily at Secretary of State Sandra Dosetti. “The son of a bitch is demanding that we release those two ships