Don Pendleton - Ramrod Intercept

Space enough between them, which meant they wouldn’t accidentally cut each other with their knives while stroking.

“Gary and I will watch the flanks and the rear. It shows up and wants a late-night snack, go for the eyes.”

“I suggest we swim to the bottom, hug the deck all the way in,” James said. “When they strike, they usually come up from below.”

“Understood. Keep the headlights on us to light the way in,” McCarter told the submariner. “All right, mates, let’s saddle up and hit the hatch. No fish is going to keep us from going to the dance.”

BROGNOLA RAISED McCarter just as Phoenix Force was fully suited up, lined up and set to go out the hatch. He gritted his teeth until the blood pressure throbbed in his eardrums, the mere thought of what waited for them outside the minisub cutting a primal terror through the Justice man, the ungodly likes of which he hadn’t known in some time. A part of him wanting like hell to tell McCarter to scrub the mission for the time being, they’d find another way.

“I don’t like it, David,” Brognola said, checking the sat imagery from the X-ray eyes in the sky. “It’s either left the area or gone too deep to pick up on our end. We’ll be out of touch until you reach shore. You don’t even have a weapon—except a commando dagger.”

“We’re here and the troops are tired of sitting around, cooped up on a sub, Chief, thumbs up the old sphincter. We’re gone. I’ll phone home as soon as we hit the beach.”

“Good luck, and godspeed,” Brognola muttered, but he was talking to dead air.

“Torpedo just went ashore,” Akira Tokaido announced, but no one in the Computer Room looked hardly relieved by that minuscule piece of good news.

Brognola watched the monitor as, one by one, the five white ghostly shapes of Phoenix Force left the hatch and started swimming for the bottom. A hundred yards, he thought, the length of a football field. It might as well be a hundred miles.

THE END OF THE LINE, of course, for each and every man or woman was death. The journey along the way shaped, forged and revealed a man’s character before the Grim One rolled the dice and the man crapped out, ticket yanked.

No problem, as long as a man was somewhat in control of the journey, and could die on his feet, in battle, with honor intact, he thought. Thomas Jackson Hawkins, as a warrior, never had a problem with the concept of his own death. He never dwelled, much less brooded, on the idea of a world without him tomorrow. He was in the business of death, after all, preferably dispensing it, but he knew someday, somewhere he would go down and not rise up. As a warrior, dying in combat was accepted going in, part of the high-stakes game of being a balls-to-the-wall commando. Combat to him was as natural as breathing.

The problem he had, as he breaststroked ahead, knife in hand, was being chomped in two by a creature three times his length and fifteen to twenty times his weight. Something as old as the earth itself, which knew no fear, and had no known enemies.

Something that had put the fear of God into him, and any human being, he imagined, who had ever laid eyes on it. It always galled him, he thought, when some skipper and National Geographic types hit the waters off Australia or South Africa, in search of man’s greatest fear, camera ready, Budweisers in hand. Spouting off—in nervous laughing voices from the safety of their deck—how white sharks were misunderstood, weren’t really the ferocious man-eaters the uneducated believed them to be. All of it just myth, you see, fabricated by folks with too much time and imagination on their hands. So, why, then, he wondered, did they always go down into the water in titanium-reinforced cages?

Call it twenty, twenty-five yards tops of visibility on the flanks, with James and Encizo beside him, Manning and McCarter on the far outsides, the big Canadian and the former SAS commando lagging a little behind, doing a slow circle to watch their rear.

Ten inches of steel against a submarine with teeth. Man alive, he thought, they had to be crazy.

It was a straight plunge of roughly thirty feet to the ocean’s bottom, the halo of yellow light from the minisub losing its glowing shield the more distance he put from the craft…and closer to shore. Could the monster home in on the hammering of his heart? Could it smell the undeniable and understandable fear, leaking out in great streams of sweat beneath his wet suit?

Don’t think about it. He knew he wasn’t alone.

Small comfort, to be damn sure.

The sandy bottom began to run off on a gradual downward slant, and he was thinking another fifty yards or so.

An eternity still.

He decided to look back, found McCarter falling behind, eyeing their rear through his mask, as if he sensed its presence.

And the massive shadow of the great beast appeared, materialized out of the darkness beyond the minisub. For some reason the monster was taking another look at the minisub, holding, some black demonic apparition, then slowly worked its massive body around the craft. Hawkins felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked at Encizo, the Cuban shaking his head, indicating with his knife they keep moving.

Not a problem. But why was McCarter trailing them? he wondered. What the hell was he doing?

A moment later Hawkins saw the ex-SAS commando fall back in, resume stroking with a renewed burst of energy.

IF THE MONSTER CAME for them, McCarter decided he would sacrifice himself if that meant the others could reach shore in one piece. He knew they wouldn’t allow that, not if they wanted to get up the next day and look themselves in the mirror. But if the creature started ripping him limb from limb, he could only hope primal fear and good sense would take hold of the others and send them shooting like human bullets for the beach.

It was a false hope they would leave him to die one of the most horrible deaths he could imagine, but the mission was more important than the life of any single man on the team.

Still the behemoth appeared more curious about the minisub, circling the craft, nudging it with its great torpedo head. He gave the blacksuit submariner a mental salute. The guy was staying put, lighting the way to shore.

Nothing but steel balls. There was never any doubt.

McCarter turned toward shore, figuring another thirty yards or so, arms sweeping, legs scissoring. The team had pulled ahead, with James and Hawkins looking back, peering at him, aware, most likely, of what he was thinking if it went to hell. A few more strokes and McCarter was in line, but craned his head around every few yards. It wasn’t much longer and he felt his knees scrape bottom, his head poking out of the surface. Twenty yards and they surfaced to a man. As luck would have it, they caught a decent wave, and began stroking now like Olympic swimmers as they rode it into shore.

Rebreathers were out and tanks were stripped off. The heavy breathing of Phoenix Force slashed the calm quiet of the beach as flippers were removed and they made solid land.

McCarter gave the smooth glass surface out to sea a search. No giant fin knifing out of the water, just a soft glow of light beneath the surface where the minisub was parked. He checked the troops, and his chuckle carried a heavy note of grim relief. “Anybody have to change his shorts first?”

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

BROGNOLA COULD BREATHE again, but it would take a few minutes, he knew, before the trembling left his hands. McCarter was on the satlink. “All present and accounted for. We’re changed, locked and loaded. Titan on the way back to the mother ship.”

“Grimaldi will be wheels up in two minutes, David,” Price said. “We’ll monitor your march and alert you to any locals or army units on the prowl.”