The Passage (71 page)

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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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He cursed himself, understanding too late that he should have charged at the same instant Vysotsky had; one of them would have made it. He started to step forward, but from behind the console came the clang of the empty shell being ejected. “Leave him alone,” the masked figure shouted. “Don't touch him. Get back.”
Dan lost it then.
Lost it and charged, right into the gun. The masked eyes widened. The muzzle came down from where it had been pointed at the overhead as the second shell was jacked into the breech, came down, but not quite fast enough to be aimed at him when it went off, right past his ear.
He slammed into man and gun with a full body block, elbow in his throat, and the impact and the recoil of the shotgun carried them locked together back into the bulkhead, into the coffee mess. Stainless pots and mugs clanged and spun to the deck. Dan got in a punch, hammering the other's head back into a corner of the 1MC panel.
The other man wedged a knee between them, got an arm across Dan's face, and started forcing him back. The shotgun clattered to the deck at the same time he chopped Dan across the bridge of the
nose, a short blow that didn't hurt as much as it would have if he'd had more room to swing, but it still made him gasp. As he staggered back, Dan grabbed at the other's head, an instinctive clawing to keep them locked together. If the other broke free, he could get the gun. He had to stay on him until one of them went down for good. But instead of flesh, his taloned fingers snagged wool, and the balaclava came off in his hand.
He stared into Casey Kessler's eyes, astonished—till the ASW officer levered him off suddenly, and he reeled, staggering backward.
The steel edge of the helm console caught him right in the kidneys. He screamed at the sudden obliterating pain. Kessler swayed in front of the door leading aft, dragging an arm across his face, bleeding from a saber cut across the scalp. Then, as he started toward Dan again, his boot struck the stock of the shotgun. He stared down, blinking through the blood, then stooped.
Bent double with the pain in his back, Dan shoved off the console into a low, crabbed tackle, hitting Kessler as his extended fingers brushed the gun. He crashed backward, but his head snapped forward as it hit the jamb of the open door with a crack. The lieutenant turned away and ran, staggering a few steps down the short passageway behind the bridge, then suddenly faced Dan again, punching him painfully in the cheek. Dan, still unable to straighten, hit him as hard as he could in the belly, driving him back another step down the passageway. Then he bulled forward and butted him in the chest.
Kessler screamed, arms windmilling, and toppled backward into the ladder well leading down to the next deck. Aluminum crashes and heavy thumps and thuds came back up. But Dan wasn't listening. He was crimped over, fists to his knees, panting hard and staring at a nothingness flecked with pinpoints of light. His ear was still ringing from the blast. He felt like he was going to pass out. Then he heard someone yelling below him. “Hey. Hey!”
“Yeah?” He lurched forward, grabbed the rail at the top of the ladder, looking down.
Kessler lay facedown on the polished green tile outside the captain's in-port cabin. Standing over him was another man without a face—just an olive drab head, with eyes that now looked up at Dan through the peep sight of an M14 pointed at his chest.
A
T the bottom of the ladder, Kessler moaned and stirred. Lenson stared with terrible fascination at the rifle. Why didn't the man fire? He'd seen him knock Kessler down the ladder. Why didn't he shoot?
Then, to Dan's astonishment, he let the barrel drop. “What happened?” he yelled up. “I heard shooting. Would've come up, but I'm supposed to stay here.”
He looked down at himself, bleeding and disheveled, and suddenly understood. In his hand—still clutched where he'd yanked it off Kessler's head—dangled the olive drab hood.
Harper had compartmentalized his teams, so that not even they knew one another. Clever, clever, Dan thought. But maybe also a weak point.
Kessler grunted and tried to hoist himself up. “Stop him,” Dan yelled. The rifleman jumped back, then brought down the rifle butt savagely.
Dan swallowed with a dry throat. With a last glance around the bridge—at Vysotsky's body, his blood painting the deck like spilled primer; at the vacant helm droning to itself—he pulled the balaclava over his face, then went forward to pick up the shotgun. Remembering
Razytelny,
he checked her through the shattered Plexiglas. She was hove-to now, a half mile away. A boat lay alongside; the boarding party was climbing down into it. He returned to the ladder, cursing as pain kicked his kidneys, and started crabbing his way down.
“Sons of bitches tried to knock me down, take my gun,” he growled. “Almost made it.”
“I heard two shots.”
“I got one of them—the XO. Where's Harper?”
“I thought he was up there with you.”
“No.” Dan got to the bottom and shifted his grip to the barrel of the shotgun. “What, he's got you guarding the captain?”
“Yeah. I was in there with him, then I heard the shots.”
“He in there now?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit! Look out!”
The other whipped around, and as soon as his back was to him, Dan swung. The stock cracked, but the guy went down.
Dan stepped over him and tried the door—unlocked. He slid in, closing it behind him. He felt incredibly alert now. Colors seemed brighter. Sounds seemed louder. He wanted to think, wanted to try to get his mind around some things, such as Casey Kessler being one of
them
. But there wasn't time to think. His only advantage was that no one knew he was free yet. But what should he do? Maybe Leighty would know. “Captain,” he whispered. “Captain!”
Puzzled, he looked around at an empty cabin. His eyes snagged on the porthole, swinging slowly, undogged. Beyond it, sky. Not much of an opening, but Leighty wasn't a big man. Could he have escaped through it? Was he the one Vysotsky had seen on the boat deck? He moved toward it, letting the shotgun droop.
Then he stopped, going rigid as an edge dug into his throat. “Don't move,” Leighty whispered into his ear, pressing it deeper. Dan couldn't tell what it was, but it felt slicing-sharp. “Drop the gun or I'll cut your head off.”
“Sir, it's Lenson. I'm on your side.”
“
Drop the fucking gun.”
Dan threw it onto the sofa. Eyes still on the porthole, he muttered again, “Sir, I'm on your side. If you'll open your door … I just took out your guard. Just got free myself a minute or two ago. That was the shooting you heard.”
Leighty didn't answer, but the door opened, then closed. Then footsteps came back, quick and light. Dan felt the shotgun placed back in his hand.
When he turned, the captain was checking the M14. A letter opener was tucked into the belt of his whites. Trop whites, white shoes, ribbons, the uniform he wore every time they went into or out of port. He looked small and fine and freshly shaven and the weapon seemed too large for him, like a boy with his father's gun.
“First thing, we have to get to the 1MC,” Leighty said. He released the operating handle and the breech slammed closed. “Who's on the bridge?”
“What for, sir?”
“To announce what's going on—that this isn't a security drill, that someone's actually trying to take over the ship.”
“Sir, it's past trying. They've got it.” He explained as quickly as he could about Harper, his spying, passing key lists and classified
equipment, how Dan suspected him of killing Sipple to cover his tracks. The captain's face stilled as he listened. “He's got thirty people with him. They drilled this in advance. Everybody else is locked below. More bad news—we're being escorted by gunboats and MIGs to Santiago. And there's a Soviet destroyer off the bow, getting a boarding party ready.”
Leighty touched his teeth with his knuckles. “And you think we're the only ones free? How about George? Felipe?”
“Sir, the only other loyal man I've seen was Commander Vysotsky. And he's dead; he died on the bridge, fighting. I wouldn't be here without him.”
“I've been doing some thinking while they had me locked in here. I've also been doing some listening.”
“Listening, sir?”
Leighty nodded into his bedroom, and Dan saw the phones on the bulkhead. “On the internal circuits. There's not much going on. In fact, there's no chatter at all. From that, I deduce he doesn't have thirty men. If he did, he could set a normal under-way watch. And I can't believe he'd find that many disloyal men aboard, whatever he offered. Where'd that figure come from?”
“From Harper.”
“It's smoke, bluff. You've seen—what, three, four?”
Dan thought. “Maybe four. It's hard to say who you've seen twice. The ski masks.”
“That's a smart tactic. But I don't buy thirty. I don't think he's got more than six or seven. And maybe less.”
“You might be right, sir.” He'd been banging his brains against that, too, wondering who Harper could have turned. And he'd come up with a few names. But Leighty was right: Thirty sounded way too high.
“We've got to stop him, take the ship back, and beat off the Russians and Cubans.”
Dan said, “Sir, I was thinking, too, when they had me up there conning at gunpoint. If we could get the conn and weapons systems back, we could try to fight our way out. But I don't think we can hold the bridge. Even if there aren't thirty, there are more than there are of us. I think we should try to disable her, buy time. Eventually, somebody's going to notice we've missed our ETA, start looking for us.”
“Does anyone know we've got a problem? Did we get any comms off?”
“No, sir, I don't think so, but we were supposed to pick up the pilot off Leeward Point at dawn. They've got to wonder where we are. If we could get to the engine room, disable the engines—”
The captain said slowly, “The reduction gears are the most vulnerable point. Get the covers open, dump in some tools—then when
they turn over, they chew themselves apart. We wreck those, she's not going anywhere.” Leighty eyed him. “If we get separated, or one of us doesn't make it, the other keeps going. Agreed?”
“Yes, sir.” He felt relieved to have an order to follow, to be back under command. He crossed to the door, cracked it, and peered out. Then he checked his twelve-gauge. The butt was cracked, but it should still fire. His mouth was raspy-dry, but he seemed to be getting used to the idea he could die any minute. If Jay Harper was around the next corner, great, let it be.
“All right, let's go,” said Leighty, slipping past him.
 
 
DAN bent to check the guards as they stepped over them. They'd be out for a while yet. He pulled the balaclava off the one he'd slugged and held it out. The face under it he only distantly recognized; it wasn't one of his men. Leighty hesitated, looking at it. “Your shirt, too, sir,” Dan prompted. Finally the captain stripped it off and threw it back into his cabin. He pulled on the olive drab wool.
“Let's go,” Leighty said again. But instead of heading aft, toward the engineering spaces, he ran forward.
“Shit,” Dan whispered, but he followed.
He expected Harper and his entire crew. But the pilothouse was still empty, the helm still humming untended, throttle at stop, 55 rpm, zero pitch. To port, one of the gunboats lay to, rolling, although the sea looked calm, the Cuban ensign hanging limp and then stretching out and then returning to curl around its staff. Then he saw the first boat of armed sailors headed toward them from
Razytelny,
drawing a widening V over the mirror-skinned sea.
Leighty straightened from Vysotsky's body and saw them, too. “Ahead full,” he yelled, sprinting out onto the wing. Dan grabbed the handles and rang up “ahead full.” The bell pinged as Main Control answered.
A shot whiplashed, making him jump. He saw Leighty aiming again, the rifle propped on the splinter shield.
He couldn't tell if it was the captain's intent or if his sights were still set point-blank, but both bullets fell short, raising brief spurts of foam between
Barrett
and the oncoming boat. Whichever it was, it wavered, then came right, rocking, as it sheered off.
Suddenly foam shot out from beneath the gunboat's stern, and it leapt ahead.
Leighty spun and ran back inside. “That should slow down the boarding process,” he shouted as he went by. Dan followed, almost falling as he tried to change direction on the slick tile.
Downward and aft now, ladder after ladder. Dan wondered how
far they'd get. The reduction gears were all the way aft and five decks down. Harper had said he had a team in Main Control. He and Leighty would have to deal with them somehow to destroy the gears.
They clattered through the 01 level, ran aft, and rounded another ladder. Aft again now past the locked doors of the ship's offices, the dark display windows of the ship's store, the mess deck, tables and serving lines echoing empty. It was day topside, but the interior was still at “darken ship,” and the dim red night bulbs cast long shadows. Ideal cover for an ambush. He'd never expected, ever, to have to fight
within
his own ship. Leighty was ahead now, pounding into the dimness. Dan wished the captain would take it slower and make less noise. Fingers slippery on the shotgun, kidneys jabbing him at each step, he trotted after him. Leighty seemed to be banking on speed, hardly glancing down side passageways as they ran. Granted, they had to reach the engine room before the Russians recovered and boarded. But he'd have felt better if they'd advanced leapfrog-fashion, covering each other.
Two detonations shook the deck, muffled, but not gunshots. He didn't know what they were.
Three men burst around the corner of the barber shop. Masks covered their faces. Seeing Lenson and the captain, they slowed but didn't shoot. Dan grinned tightly under the hot wool. They still didn't know they were being challenged, that there were loyal men still free aboard USS
Barrett.
Leighty fired from where he stood, right in the middle of the passageway. Navy M14s weren't set to full automatic, but he fired so fast, it sounded like a burst. The men scattered instantly, rolling to cover behind bulkheads and doors. One ended up behind a scuttlebutt, inadequate cover. Dan dropped to one knee and fired, and he abandoned the watercooler, scrambling backward.
Muzzle flashes lighted the passageway as they returned fire. Dan rolled to the side and came up against a gear locker. As he wrestled the heavy watertight door open, a bullet clanged into it, right opposite his head. And suddenly, he couldn't see. He was down, clawing at his eyes.
Leighty was still standing out there, trading shots with men behind cover. “Shit,” Dan muttered, blinking the passageway partially back into focus through tears and maybe blood. What was he trying to do? He thrust the muzzle around the door and pumped three loads of buckshot down the passageway, flinching each time it jolted his shoulder before it clicked. Oh no, he thought. “Captain! Get back here!”
“It's Leighty,” someone shouted. “And another guy. Just two of 'em, I think.”
He heard a reply but couldn't make it out. He stuck his head out
again. “Captain!” Another bullet hit a bulkhead fire station, raising a smoky cloud as it punched through a hose. He smelled burning rubber and gunpowder. “Get back here! I can't cover you!”
All at once, the firing stopped. Leighty stood alone in the center of the passageway. Smoke drifted toward the overhead, ghostly in the red light. Dan's ears were ringing and his eyes were running fluid. But he was alive. So far.
Leighty came walking back. Dan couldn't believe he hadn't been hit. The captain looked behind the door. “You okay?”
“Paint chips in my eye. But I'm out of ammunition.”
“Me, too.” Leighty glanced back down the passageway, and, peering out, Dan saw that it was empty. “I don't think we'll get to the engine spaces. They pulled back in that direction. I think it was Harper giving the orders. They're probably going to—”

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