Mark Greaney: On target

He'd managed to get Hightower inside without one iota of assistance from him. By the time they'd made it back on deck, it was listing at twenty-five degrees. Every bit of strength in Court's good arm was put to use sliding Zack up to the railing and over the side. Skittering together down the wet hull to the sub, the satellite phone popped out of Gentry's pocket and bounced off into the ocean. Court found a latch on the outside of the canopy and popped it open. He struggled to get Hightower's dead weight slid into the rear recumbent position. Court buckled him in like a child in a car seat and scooted down into the front.

Exhausted, once enclosed in the small cockpit, he took a few seconds to recover. Then he called back to his unwilling passenger, "Come on, buddy! Give me a hint! What do I do?"

"I'd love to help, bro. But my orders are to terminate you. This is kind of a roundabout way to achieve my objective, but…" His voice had grown much weaker after the strain of movement, even if his attitude remained in full effect.

"Fuck your orders. Let's go for a ride!"

Zack did not reply.

Court went back to feeling around at the controls.

A sudden, loud screech filled the air, and a shell landed in the water twenty-five yards short of the sub. The small craft shuddered, and foamy water splashed on the Plexiglas like a mini-hurricane was passing overhead.

"I guess their smoke break is over," muttered Hightower from the backseat.

"Shit!" Court began fingering all the dials in front of him, found nothing that felt right to flip or twist or punch. He wanted to activate everything; it might still come to that, but he was scared to do so. He really had no idea what he was getting himself into, only that the alternative was to sit on a sinking ship and dodge high-explosive shells from the patrol boat's deck gun.

He ran his fingers faster on the controls, feeling for some sort of power button, which he imagined to be larger and more pronounced than what his fingertips had so far come across in the darkness. His hands next moved to either side of him, to the outside of the vinyl armrests, along the walls. On the left side his hand wrapped around a simple lever with a ball extending three inches horizontal from the wall. It was in the "up" position. With nothing else feeling right, he pulled the lever.

Immediately the front of the sub disengaged from the cable attached to the suction cup on the hull of the yacht. The nose dropped towards the water, and Gentry slammed forward into the cockpit controls.

He had neglected to fasten himself in the seat harness as he had Hightower behind him.

He screamed in pain. With all his might he leaned back, felt above him for a lever aft of the one he pulled, and he found it and yanked it down.

The rear cable disengaged, and the midget sub slid off the angled side of the Fatima and plunged five feet down to the black water, nose-first.

Upon hitting the sea, the craft righted itself for a moment, and Court used the time to fumble back into his cockpit chair. It was difficult to do, but he managed, had only just snapped the clasp when he felt the weight of gravity on his right side. The water around the Plexiglas's bubble was an opaque dark green, so Gentry waited for the sub to come back up to the surface so he could get his bearings.

For five seconds he waited to resurface, and all the while he felt the pull harder and harder to the right, as if the sub was somehow beginning to roll.

At ten seconds he realized it was rolling, but the pull to the right seemed to stop. The sub was still submerged.

He pulled the small folding knife from his pocket, held it in his lap, and let it go.

The knife flew upwards, just missing his chin and nose, before bouncing on the plastic canopy and sliding forward.

Court realized then that they were inverted, and they were sinking.

"Zack! Zack!" Gentry's ears popped, and he fought a wave of panic. He had no situational awareness whatsoever now, completely entombed as he was in a dead craft in dark water.

Hightower did not reply.

Above him he heard a shell hit the yacht, a two-stage explosion, the first being the warhead and the second, undoubtedly, the fuel tanks. A shock wave buffeted the bottom of the sub.

Gentry could wait no more. His hands reached out in front of him, his right index finger found a button, an arbitrary button, as there were dozens, and he could not even see what color they were much less any writing on them.

Fuck it. He pressed down.

Nothing.

His ears popped again, and a sustained pressure entered his head. He had no idea how deep the water was here, but he neither wanted to keep dropping nor hit the bottom, especially canopy first.

He reached for the next button. Pushed it. Then a third. Then a fourth. He wondered if he was releasing fuel or opening a cargo door or triggering a self-destruction sequence.

Court did not know the first goddamned thing about submarines.

He pressed a fifth button, and immediately warm infrared lighting illuminated the cabin.

His head was killing him, and nausea ripped through his body from his intestines to the back of his neck.

With the new light he quickly scanned dozens of choices, looking for anything to turn on. His finger stopped at a button labeled HUD, and he pressed it without hesitation. The laser head-up display came online, projecting all sorts of data on the windscreen in front of him. Speed and Current Depth increased by the second, an artificial horizon turned slowly clockwise, and a compass heading revolved steadily around the dial.

He wanted situational awareness, and he got it. Now, after the onboard computer told him that he was cork-screwing down to his death, he realized that he really didn't want that info after all.

The pain in his head worsened. He vomited water and bile; some of it spewed through his nose and followed gravity's path, running into his eyes. He smeared away the burn with his sweaty arm, put his hand on the joystick on his right, and tried to right the craft, but it had no effect whatsoever. He pushed the lever that he took for a throttle with his left hand. Again, nothing doing. He stomped his bare left and right feet down, kicking out for rudder pedals that were not there.

The submarine passed sixty feet.

Court fought another wave of nausea and a further increase in panic.

Then he stopped playing with the controls, brought his hands into his lap.

"Zack. You awake?" Court's voice was calm now, no sign of panic or threat to the other man in the doomed submarine.

"Yeah. Just enjoying the ride, bro." Zack's voice was incredibly weak. He'd likely be dead soon, Court realized, no matter what happened to Court. Still, Gentry knew Zack well. He was not as calm as he pretended to be.

Zack Hightower didn't want to die, either.

"I can't make this thing work." Gentry pulled his Glock-19 and held it up in the red light for his rear passenger to see. "But I can make this thing work."

"Really? You're threatening to shoot me? That's all you got, dude? Pretty fucking lame."

Court ignored him. He said, "I've trained without oxygen at depths of one hundred thirty feet. If I blow this hatch in the next minute, flood the sub, and make it to the surface, I figure I can find some floating debris from the yacht to grab on to. With a little luck I should make it back to shore by nightfall."

"And then what?"

"I make it out of the Sudan."

"Right. That's gonna happen."

Court paused. Then said, "I'm the goddamned Gray Man, remember? I'll get it done."

All quiet in the rear seat now.

"But that's one ride I can't take you along on. You understand, don't you, bro?" He mimicked Sierra One.

Again, Zack did not respond. Court took that as a good sign. Hightower was never at a loss for words.