he took the hint and kept quiet. It was nervous talk. And pointless. Whatever was happening inside, they were going to be in the middle of it shortly.
When they were in the lee of the ship, the enormous raised black bow blocked out most of the sky. Crush damage to the forward keel was considerable. It was impossible to tell whether the interior hull had been damaged. As they stepped up beside the hull, the ground trembled underfoot.
Reuben Starkey had learned Russian at the military language school in Monterrey, California. He had visited the Severodvinsk shipyard as an official observer, and had guzzled vodka with Russian submariners, designers and builders. As the ENR’s expert in Russian technology, he knew what had to be on board, and what might be on board. His wife, Sandy, and their three kids were in Silverdale, one hundred miles away, on the far side of the Olympics and the Hood Canal. Whatever happened here, even if it was thermonuclear, they would be safe. He took comfort from that, and he was thankful he’d made the time to kiss them all and say goodbye.
The SEALs on deck deployed rope ladders, and Starkey and the others began to climb them. Commandos on the ground hooked up other dangling lines to the assortment of ENR gear, and the men above hoisted it up, hand over hand.
The deck angle seemed even steeper when Starkey was actually standing on it. SEALs had already rigged safety cables to the sail. The vibration was tremendous, as was the noise. Starkey found it disorienting to look downward aft and see the wash deck half-submerged.
He tore his gaze from the white water roaring behind. He proceeded with one hand on the safety line to the sail’s fixed ladder, then started up. The Coast Guard helicopter hovered above him at about one thousand feet. As he swung a leg over the sail’s rim, he looked back, across the air strip at the cop cars and fire trucks. Seven stories high, he could see the camera flashes going off along the line of backed-up civilian traffic. Rubbernecking idiots, he thought.
The smoke had definitely thinned out some by the time Starkey hopped down to the bridge deck. He wasn’t just sweating inside the fire suit. He was lubed, head to foot.
Munsinger’s round, tanned face was speckled with soot; it was on his teeth when he smiled and nodded a greeting. In a gloved hand he held his machine pistol pointed in the air, the ejector port resting against his meaty shoulder. Two other SEALs stood on the bridge like statues, aiming their stubby weapons at the closed hatch.
“Still no response?” Starkey asked into the mike so he could be heard over the ambient roar. The smoke had a definite electrical tang to it.
Munsinger shook his head and said, “Maybe they’re playing possum.”
One by one, in rapid order, the other ENR guys piled over the sail’s rim. Then Starkey ordered lines dropped to the wash deck so they could haul up their dry chemical fire extinguishers and other gear. With five of them pulling, it took no more than three minutes to raise the cylinders and gear bags to the bridge. When Starkey put on his air mask, the rest of his team followed suit. They turned on their compressed-air tanks, switched on the headlamps and pulled on gauntlets. That done, they helped one another shrug into the straps of the backpack fire extinguishers. They then armed one another’s extinguishers by pulling the safety pins and cranking down the levers that punctured the CO2 propellant cartridges.
“Open it,” Starkey told the SEALs.
When the hatch cover fell back to the deck, it released another puff of smoke, only much less black. With the hatch open, a warning klaxon could be heard belowdecks, its shrill pulsation barely audible over the engine and prop roar. The SEALs retreated a yard or so, still covering the entrance.
As the smoke continued to rise, Starkey lifted his mask, leaned over the hatch and shouted down in Russian through a cupped hand, “You are about to be boarded by the U.S. Navy. This is a rescue operation. Do not resist. We’re here to help you.”
If anybody heard him, they didn’t answer.
If anybody answered, he didn’t hear them.
As Starkey straightened, Howe passed him the hand-held NIFTI—navy infrared thermal imager—and power pack.
“We sweep before you go down,” Munsinger said as he stepped forward. “Make sure any hostiles are pacified. It’s procedure.”
“Blow it out your ass, Munsinger,” Starkey said. “The situation can’t wait for a sweep. We’ve got to put out the fire and shut down propulsion, ASAP.”
“SEALs will take the point, then.”
“Without canned air, you’d last maybe three minutes before you passed out. Stand clear, Captain. Do it now.”
Reuben Starkey pulled his air mask over his face and descended into the column of smoke.
CHAPTER FOUR
Highway 112, ten miles west of Port Angeles,
7:05 a.m. PDT
Clallam County Deputy Sheriff Hiram Turnbull hunkered down beside the roadside ditch. The drainage channel was overgrown, but the bright red soles of a pair of short rubber boots were visible sticking up out of the weeds. He gently pushed the grass aside with the tip of his baton. There were legs in the boots, in jeans. The rest of the body was out of sight, head down in the ditch.
A quarter mile north of Highway 112, a squadron of Navy fighter jets screamed over the strait, flying very low just off the coastline.
On any other day, finding a corpse in a ditch would have been a big deal.
Not on this day.
“Was it a hit-and-run?”
Turnbull rose from the crouch and turned to face the speaker. He towered over the dried-up little guy in the leather porkpie hat who had reported the body. The concerned senior citizen wore a white goatee and a red plaid shirt, and carried a leashed, plaid-caped Chihuahua in the crook of his arm.
“Can’t tell yet,” Turnbull answered. “Why don’t you stand back a bit, sir? Or better yet, take a seat in the back of the squad car while I do what I have to do.” The sheriff’s cruiser stood parked in the middle of the two-lane highway’s westbound side, its roof beacon flashing. Turnbull opened the rear door and gestured for the man to get in.
“Am I a suspect, Officer?”
“Sir, I don’t want you or your dog stepping on anything, or getting clipped from behind by a log truck. It’s for your own safety. When I’m done looking over the scene, we’ll talk.” After the old guy sat down and swung in his legs, he shut the door.
Turnbull hurriedly pulled on latex gloves, then, baton in hand, skidded down the side of the ditch fifteen feet from where the body lay. The drainage gulch was waist deep; he couldn’t see the bottom for all the weeds and blackberry brambles. When he hit bottom, icy cold, flowing water surged over his shoe tops.
“Shit!” he said, remembering the hip boots he kept stowed in his cruiser’s trunk, boots he’d forgotten to put on.
Sweeping aside the undergrowth with his baton so he could see where he was stepping, the deputy worked his way down the narrow channel. There was enough water running to wash away any light debris that had fallen in with the body. As he got close to the corpse, he smelled something nasty. Parting the weeds
