Ted Bell - Phantom

The second thing he noticed were lights up on the bridge deck. He could see figures inside the wheelhouse, and black smoke was pouring out of the two big red stacks amidships. No sign of Darius Saffari and no gangplank available for him to board the ship.

“Gangway must have retracted into the hull,” Hawke said to Stony and Stoke, who’d arrived first. “See that section that looks like a very large hatchway in the hull? Has to be it.”

“Yeah,” Stoke said, “but explain why there’s no crew on the deck, heaving lines ashore, casting off, getting under way.”

“Good question,” Stony said. “Let’s get aboard and find out.”

“Get aboard how?” Stoke said.

“SEALs carry grapnel hooks now, old-timer. We can get aboard anything.”

“Old-timer? Shit. Son, my SEAL team in the Mekong Delta was carrying grapnel hooks before your mammy met your pappy.”

“Sorry, sir. You’re an ex-SEAL? I didn’t know. No excuse. I apologize.”

“No time to apologize. Just get your hooks up on the gunwales and let’s get aboard this damn ghost ship.”

Four grappling hooks flew into the air simultaneously, easily catching the gunwales high above.

Stoke looked at Stony and smiled. “All is forgiven,” he said.

W ith four lines dangling down the side of the hull, it didn’t take long before every man was aboard, assembling on the foredeck and awaiting further orders from Hawke.

Hawke stood in the center of them, staring up at the illuminated wheelhouse on the bridge deck. He could see men up there behind the windows, but there was no movement, nor any movement anywhere. The big ship felt deserted, devoid of any crew at all. A ghost ship. Something was clearly wrong with this picture. But Stony had seen Darius flying down the pier toward the yacht.

He was either aboard.

Or he’d elected suicide over capture and was now at the bottom of the sea.

“Spread out,” he told the men. “We search this ship from stem to stern, every inch of the damn thing. Unless our little flyboy decided he was better off in paradise, he’s on board this yacht. We’re going to find him, and we’re going to kill him. That’s a direct order. I’ve no intention of taking him alive. Go.”

Hawke grabbed Stoke’s sleeve.

“Stick with me. We’re going directly up to the bridge. I want to check something out.”

There was an exterior metal staircase, four flights, that led directly up to the bridge wing outside the entrance to the wheelhouse. Hawke, followed by Stokely, took the steps two at a time.

They reached the top and burst inside, weapons at the ready.

“Cardboard cutouts,” Stoke said.

“Yeah.”

There were five of them. One at the helm, and two on either side.

“He’s playing for time,” Hawke said, disappearing down an illuminated staircase that led to the interior of the deck below. “C’mon, old-timer!”

The staircase ended at a small corrugated steel platform, semicircular with a railing. More steps led down from it. It was virtually pitch-black, with a faint reddish glow visible far below.

“Say something, Stoke. Loud.”

“Something!” Stoke shouted as loudly as he could.

The word reverberated, echoing loudly within the steel hull.

Hawke snapped on the powerful light on his M-16. Stoke did the same. The two brilliant white beams pierced black nothingness beyond and below. He’d known there was something odd about the vessel the instant he’d seen it. Now, he knew. Cygnus was an empty shell and nothing more. But why? What was the point?

“Where the hell is everybody?” Stoke said.

“Locked out. I’m sure all the hatches and doorways are sealed shut. Just in case somebody got curious. Let’s go down and find out where that red light is coming from.”

“Navy Blue, this is Big Red One,” Hawke said. “Call off the search. The only way inside the hull is an internal staircase inside the wheelhouse. This entire vessel is an empty shell. No decks, no propulsion, no systems, no crew, no one aboard. We’re going down to the bilges. There’s some kind of light down there we want to check out. Post guards on deck all along the portside rail. The bad guys aren’t done yet. They might well be gathering inside the wall for an assault on this vessel. Stony, come down here and take a look. Ask Mr. Brock to keep me informed of any unpleasant developments within the citadel.”

“Affirmative. Five minutes.”

Hawke and Stoke each put fresh mags in their M-16s before they began their descent. There could well be an unfriendly reception committee waiting down in the bowels of the ship. Hawke didn’t mention it to Stokely, but he was also concerned about the possibility of IEDs, pressure-sensitive explosives under one or more of the metal steps they were descending. Every step they took could mean instant death. Or, not.

In any case, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

Reaching the bottom of the staircase safely, they found themselves in a darkened room. The SureFire lights on their weapons revealed a sizable space full of all kinds of equipment. A massive, humming generator dominated one bulkhead. A large air compressor was still running, and there was a control panel where numerous systems could obviously be monitored.

“Damn,” Stoke said.

“What?”

“I just tripped over something.”

Hawke lowered his beam to the deck. Covering the surface was a mass of writhing snakes, thick black cables of all shapes and dimensions that disappeared around a bulkhead to their left.

“You thinking what I’m thinking, boss?”

“No doubt. Let’s see what’s at the other end of these cables and I’ll be able to answer your question more definitively.”

They moved cautiously around the bulkhead and discovered a long dark corridor. The cables ran along the floor and disappeared through an open hatchway.

Red light was emanating from whatever lay beyond.

The two comrades quickly moved toward the light and ducked their heads to step through the hatch.

“Holy shit,” Stoke said.

“Precisely my thinking,” Hawke said.

It was a submarine pen. An empty submarine pen.

A large rectangular opening cut into the keel in the bottom of the hull, with black seawater sloshing up onto the surrounding deck, the deck strewn with countless disconnected but live cables, hissing and spitting fire in the dampness.

The submarine was gone and Darius was aboard it.

“Lost him, boss. I’m sorry.”

“Maybe not,” Hawke said, ripping the battle radio from the Velcro on top of his black battle helmet.

“ Blackhawke, Blackhawke, Blackhawke, this is Big Red One.”

“This is Blackhawke, First Officer speaking; go ahead, sir.”

“Is Captain Carstairs on the bridge?”

“Affirmative, sir. He’s standing right here beside me. Hold on.”

“Carstairs.”

“Laddie, Hawke. Target slipped the noose. You now have a minisub in the water; judging by the size of the pen and the electronic support systems, she’s a Koi class Chinese two-man, no more than twenty meters long. Powered by proto-lithium batteries so you won’t pick up her screw signatures. You have our coordinates. The sub is probably on a heading from the mouth of the marina en route to the Strait of Hormuz and out of the Gulf. Alert the sonar officer. Tell him the minisub will present a very small, faint picture on his screen. Easy to miss. If you get a contact, initiate hot pursuit. The second he’s within torpedo range, destroy him.”

“Affirmative. What’s your exfil situation? Do you require assistance?”

“Negative. We have taken minimal casualties. We have not yet found the machine. We will continue search-and-destroy mission. We’ve posted guards on the patrol boat. If we need a hot extraction, you’ll be the first to know.”