Retribution Road by Jon Coon (e reader comics .TXT) 📕

Gabe was exhausted, but they flew out to the USS Gabrielle Giffords and landed the chopper on a helipad. He and Tom were going to join the search for the second sub.

They were invited to the officer’s mess, fed a good meal, and tanked up with strong coffee. Almost as good as an eight-hour nap. Commander Edwards was an excellent host.

On the bridge, he explained the search and showed the navigational equipment. Gabe noticed how the nav-plotter plotted. It left a trace of the vessel’s course as well as showing course and speed.

“Captain, the Garmin nav unit in the sub was smashed. Could that have been because there was a trace like this that could be retrieved if the unit was recovered intact?”

“It’s possible,” Edwards answered. “But I don’t know how submersion would affect the electronics. Smitty, do you know?” the captain asked of the sonarman.

“With the right care, the unit might be salvageable, sir.”

“Then there’s your answer, a definite maybe. Why? What are you thinking?”

“It would help us to know their point of origin. If there’s a base there, it could be one step closer to their command center, if they even have one.”

“Sir, if I may?” the first officer asked.

“Sure, Sam, what have you got?”

“I’ve got a Garmin unit on my bass boat. It has a memory chip that saves the history you’re talking about. If we had that chip—”

“There’s a better answer, Jones. You need to find that chip.”

“Thanks, guys. That’s the answer I was looking for,” Gabe said.

Tom leaned in. “Do you know where they’re taking the sub, now that they’ve raised it?”

“The Coast Guard station on Galveston Island has facilities to handle it. The tug is already underway. Should be there in two hours or less.”

“Can we get a look once she’s out of the water?” Gabe asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Edwards said. “I’d like to see that too. I’ll make arrangements. Maybe we’ll have a matched pair by then.”

Through the periscope’s camera, Sebastian saw the barge with the crane and sub coming down the channel toward them. “That’s our way out of here,” he told Cristóbal and gave him range and heading toward deeper water. “We’ll let him come to us. No one’s going to be looking for us under that barge.”

“It’s getting hard to breathe in here, man. We’ve got to do something.”

“Okay. I see a channel buoy. We’ll surface beside it so the hatch is just breaking water and vent the boat while we wait for that barge to get here. Retract the wheels and let’s make the run on the batteries.”

“Ballast adjusted, wheels up, prop engaged, silent running. Take us in easy.”

It was a short run and, staying on the scope, Sebastian put them on the lee side of the big channel marker. They surfaced, and he opened the hatch and breathed in the fresh night air. “Thank you, mother of God,” he said reverently, and filled his lungs again.

The sub didn’t have a snorkel, but they moved the only fan into the hatch and dumped the foul air. Occasionally water splashed down the hatchway, but within minutes they were breathing again. They waited for thirty minutes. The barge was rapidly approaching.

“Time to go,” Sebastian ordered. He secured the hatch and they dropped to the bottom on the channel’s edge. Soon they could hear the tug’s engine and screws hammering toward them, and as the barge passed mid-channel, they lifted up from the clay bottom and slid forward directly under the 200-foot barge. “Easy money, you bet,” Sebastian said. This time sarcasm dripped from the words as they hung in the air.

Cristóbal turned their electronics back on and began computing the running time to the point where the Coast Guard station waited on the west side of Galveston Channel.

“Two hours, and we’re in open water. Then what?”

“Let’s go back to the Flower Gardens. We can rest in the shallows today and try to pick up shipping headed south tonight. Either that or we just go there and wait. There has to be something we can shadow in the next couple days.”

“Eduardo’s not going to last two days,” Cristóbal said.

“You’re right, but we can give him a sailor’s burial out there. Odds are they would find him here in this shallow water.”

“If we make it home, I’m quitting. I can’t take any more of this.”

“If we make it home, we may all be quitting. And I hope it’s no worse than that. Forgiveness is not a word El Patrón has in his vocabulary. If we make it out of here, my vote is we ditch the boat and move to Sweden.”

“I have a girlfriend and a baby. I can’t leave them,” Cristóbal said.

“It’s your funeral if you go back. Me, I’m going to Sweden. The women there are blonde and beautiful. I’m going to Sweden.”

“We saw you on TV,” Carol said. “The kids were so proud. You should have seen Paul. He thinks you hung the moon. Good news on that front. The charges against him in the death of that girl have been dropped. Detective Bob Spenser called yesterday. They arrested two of the kids from the house who admitted stealing the truck and dumping the dead girl in it. The medical examiner’s tox screen said she died of an overdose. She had enough coke in her to kill an elephant and wound a rhino. Stupid kids.”

“Too bad about the girl, but I’m glad for Paul. That’s a huge relief. How are you doing?”

“Still in shock. This place is such a disaster, but we found all the horses and mended fences. The horses are still pretty jumpy. They hate fire, but I think they’re going to be okay.”

“How about Diamond Jack?”

“He’ll have some scars, but he’s healing well. It’s amazing that he stayed with Emily. I’m sure every instinct, every fiber of his being wanted to run, but he stayed to protect her. Did you know a mare