Polaris (14 page)

“It's got a high-capacity battery, and only one speed,” said the captain. “It'll last about thirty minutes.”

Pete looked forward. Hana Moody was still standing on the front of the ship, waving his white shirt; she hadn't noticed him escaping with Finn yet. And Haggerty, he saw, was eagerly swimming away. Toward the Typhon boat.

“Haggerty!” shouted the captain. “We're over here!”

Haggerty looked back briefly but continued swimming toward the other submarine. It didn't surprise Pete at all: a final confirmation.

“Head for the shore?” said the captain.

“No,” said Pete. “The other direction.”

“To rescue Haggerty?”

“No—screw him. I just want to get close to them.”

“Why?” said Finn. “Don't they want to kill us?”

“Probably,” said Pete. “I'll explain later. But do me a favor—lie down. And try to look sick.”

The captain did as Pete asked, and he turned the boat toward the Typhon sub, about one hundred yards from the
Polaris
. They were gaining on Haggerty, who was frantically swimming away from them. Pete looked down at the captain, who looked, for all the world, like a dying man.

Pete saw a woman on the main deck, looking shocked as they approached. She gave an order, and men with rifles trained their guns and shot—bullets whistled over their heads. His gambit was having the desired effect. Pete began waving his arms frantically and pointing at the lifeless body of McCallister, as if begging Carlson to let them aboard. The small engine of the boat whined loudly, making it seem like they were approaching much faster than they were. In fact, they were moving against the tide and the waves, and were barely making progress. The distance and the motion of the waves, he hoped, would keep them out of the range of the riflemen.

A shot cracked against the casing of the motor, splitting it, but it kept running.

“Are you sure about this?” said the captain.

“Not at all!” Pete said. He kept the little boat pointed at Carlson.

They were close enough that he could see the concern in her eyes. Playing the part perfectly, McCallister began coughing violently, and leaned his head over the side to spit out a giant glob of phlegm. Carlson suddenly relented, shouted another order, and the ocean behind her began to churn as her submarine's massive engines turned and pulled the submarine away from them.

She was backing away from them, panicked that a deadly epidemic was heading her way in an orange life raft. Just as Pete had intended.

The huge engines worked quickly, and the drones continued to fly in their seemingly random patterns overhead. Carlson wasn't worried at all about the drones, Pete could see; she was fixated on the raft that seemed to be speeding toward her with a cargo of disease. She backed up twenty feet, then thirty. Even as they moved away, though, some of the sharpshooters' shots came closer to the raft, as the men adjusted their aim. Pete could hear bullets whistling by them in the boat, and some shots hit the water so closely that spray hit them, and drummed against the side of the raft.
Come on,
thought Pete,
cross that line.

The Typhon submarine continued to pull backward while the sharpshooters shot at them. The drones dived over both submarines and the raft without dropping their bombs.

Then finally, as Carlson and her ship crossed that invisible five-mile line in the ocean, the drones attacked.

The first bomb exploded on the main deck of the Typhon ship with a loud pop, seemingly causing no damage on the thick metal. It had landed on the aftmost part of the deck, far from where the men were boarding their inflatables—the part of the submarine, Pete realized, that crossed the five-mile radius first. Carlson's crew looked at her in shock. She looked at Pete with a grim smile.

“Kill the engine!” said Pete, and McCallister quickly sat up, turned off their small outboard, and turned the till so that they stopped moving forward.

While the first bomb had done little damage, the other drones were attacking in a frenzy now, dropping their bombs in a fury as the marines on the main deck took cover and scrambled to get in their small boats. The big submarine continued to move backward, exposing more and more of herself to the drones' attack. The drones ignored the inflatables, told by their programming to focus on the big target.

It was fascinating to watch.

The whole Typhon boat was now under attack. Some of the bombs began to have an effect, opening holes on spots on the deck that had previously been hit and weakened. Carlson realized what had happened and cut the engines, the water no longer churning behind the boat. But she weighed thousands of tons, and her momentum was slow to reverse, carrying her farther into the free-fire zone.

In the shower of bombs that the drones dropped upon her, one fell straight into the conning tower. A shower of sparks shot into the sky, followed by a column of black smoke. The other drones took note, and poured more bombs into the wound.

As they did, each flew away in an orderly straight line, back to Eris Island to reload.

The two inflatable boats from the Typhon were now full. A few men, some wounded terribly, were swimming in the sea. Their shipmates stopped firing at Pete and McCallister as they tried to pull their comrades aboard. The submarine was mortally wounded, smoke and fire pouring from multiple holes, the ship listing badly to port.

“She's dead,” said McCallister.

“You're sure?” said Pete.

“Listen,” he said. “You can hear the air banks exploding.…”

Pete did hear it, a series of deep explosions coming from beneath the waterline. He could feel the concussion in his feet through the soft bottom of the raft. A tower of flame now roared from the Typhon conning tower.

“All that compressed air is feeding the fire,” said the captain. “Turning it into a blast furnace inside. God help anyone who's still onboard.”

The ship rolled suddenly all the way on its side, toward them so that they were looking into the top of the conning tower.

“We need to get away!” said McCallister. “When that tower hits the waterline, it'll sink like a rock. The suction could take us with it!”

The conning tower drifted closer to the water, and just as McCallister had predicted, once the giant opening hit the waterline, the ship sank with stunning speed.

Pete could feel the suction at work, trying to pull their little boat backward. But they had gone far enough, had the tide working in their favor, and were soon speeding toward the beach. The small boats from Carlson's sub were still pulling survivors from the water, ignoring them for the moment.

“Let's go,” said Pete, pointing toward Eris. “We've got a head start.”

“Do I still need to look sick?” said Finn.

“No,” said Pete. “Look like a captain. And get us ashore.”

He quickly pulled the till, and turned them around.

Moody, still holding Pete's shirt, watched in shock from the deck of the
Polaris
as they passed.

“Fuck you!” she shouted.

Finn's eyes were trained on the shore. But as he kept his left hand on the till, he flipped her off with his right.

*   *   *

Commander Carlson jumped from the deck into one of the rubber boats, landing only halfway on; the sergeant of the marines pulled her the rest of the way aboard. “Get away!” she said, pointing toward the island. The drones continued hammering her submarine behind her, which was belching fire and smoke, and groaning as it died. Her small rubber boat pulled away, and the drones ignored it. They were prioritizing, she realized. Her dying submarine was a bigger, better target. As they sped away, she saw that they were in parallel with her other rubber boat. Her XO, Lieutenant Banach, was on that one. He gave her a slight nod, and she was flooded with relief to see that he was alive. She nodded back.

She'd been fooled, she realized. And it had worked because she'd been afraid. That little boat had started moving toward them, with the sick man onboard, and she had reacted out of fear. She was a woman who had stared down death a hundred times, from torpedoes and bombs, and the multitude of ways that the deep ocean can end human life. But for fear of a disease, she'd backed the big ship up, directly into a trap. They must have been inside some kind of safe zone, she realized now, a buffer around the island. She'd been trying to fool Hamlin, but he had fooled her instead. That clever boy had tried to get her to surface outside of that, and when that didn't work, he let her drive herself right out of it. He knew what she was afraid of. And because of that, she'd lost her ship.

She wouldn't let fear drive her again.

Banach's boat veered suddenly to port, drawing her eyes to the surface of the water.

It was Dr. Haggerty, her spy. He stopped dog-paddling and waved his arms wildly at her.

She'd never seen him in person, just a photograph in his file, but she knew it was him. That type of person, she supposed, and the intelligence he provided were vital to the war effort. To any war. Trying to trick Hamlin into cooperating had been his idea; he said they could convince Hamlin that he had worked for them all along. Said the man was unstable and distraught, and that he would be easy to manipulate. So much for that, she thought, as she looked back at her burning submarine. Because she was a warrior, she despised disloyalty, despised spies, even if they were working for her. And because she was smart, she knew she could never trust the doctor.

“Shall we stop?” yelled the sergeant as they neared him.

“No!” she shouted. “To the island.”

She looked back briefly at Haggerty as they sped by him. He continued waving his arms for a moment, but then seemed to realize that he'd been abandoned. He started swimming toward shore, but they were almost five miles away, and the doctor was old and out of shape. The swim would have been challenging even for an athlete. Carlson watched without emotion as his head went under, then disappeared.

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

McCallister and Hamlin waded to shore and onto a landscape that seemed vaguely familiar to Pete. They dragged the raft onto a rocky beach and hid it, barely, in a patch of weeds.

“This way,” Pete said, the geography slowly coming back to him. They crested a small sand hill that marked the end of the beach, staying low to be unseen.

Over the rise, they could now see the airfield. It was riddled with craters—artillery shells from ships and cruise missiles that had once tried to pound the island into submission, before the drones had turned them away. The outlying buildings around the field had mostly been bombed into rubble. But the tower, reinforced and strategically built into the surrounding landscape, still stood tall.

Drones were everywhere. They didn't need much runway to take off, Pete knew, could rise almost vertically, so the craters on the runway had little effect. Some were resting on the tarmac, their wings oscillating slowly in the sun. One rose up and circled lazily in the sky. Pete watched, fascinated, as an empty drone, perhaps one that had just bombed the Typhon sub, landed on the runway, crept slowly up to a free bomb on the field, and armed itself.

Not a human was in sight.

“You know this place?” asked Finn.

“I used to,” said Pete. He was lost in the sight, a grand vision of modern warfare, reduced, wounded, and bruised, but still murderously effective.
Perhaps,
he thought, as he looked in vain for another human,
even victorious.

“Look,” said the captain, tapping his arm. He was turned around, looking out to sea.

The two rubber boats from the Typhon submarine were fully loaded with heavily armed men in fatigues, making their way toward Eris. In the front boat sat Jennifer Carlson.

“Let's go,” said Pete. “We don't have much time.”

The drones took notice of the speeding Typhon boats but didn't bomb them, as they were now well within the safety radius. The drones also ignored Pete and Finn as they headed toward the tower.

At its base, Pete found the heavy door locked. On the small keypad next to it, he pressed his thumb. Nothing happened.

“No power?” he said.

“I don't think that's it,” said Finn, pointing up to the windows of the tower. “I can see lights inside. Maybe it's been locked from the inside. Or you've been taken off the access list.”

“Shit,” said Pete, looking back to the beach where Carlson's boats were quickly making their way toward them.

“Do we have any weapons?”

Pete reached in his pocket and pulled out Ramirez's small gun. “Just this,” he said.

He turned back to the keypad and noticed a small metal disc below it. It was corroded and rusted, but he managed to slide it over.

It revealed a small keyhole.

He pulled the red key from around his neck, and showed it to Finn.

“A key?” he said.

“Yeah. You submariners love this shit,” he said. He stuck it in the hole and turned it.

He heard a metallic click deep inside the door as a relay turned. He pushed, and the giant armored door glided open.

“Let's go,” he said.

They ran up the stairs as the door swung shut and locked behind them.

They bounded up the stairs to the top floor, where an unlocked door awaited them. Pete looked at Finn and drew the small handgun without a word. Nodding, they pushed the door open, Pete holding the weapon in a firing position.

“Pete Hamlin,” said an old man from the center of the hexagonal room. “It's about time you showed up.” He had a gray beard, and wore the shoulder boards of an admiral.

“Who are you?” Pete shouted over the sights of his pistol.

“That,” said Finn, wonder in his voice, “is Admiral Wesley Stewart.”

*   *   *

Pete allowed himself to take it all in for a moment before he began speaking. The familiarity of the control room washed over him; he knew he'd spent many days in there in the past, watching the drones below. Despite the carnage outside, the control room itself was in relatively good condition, the carpet still clean, just one of the surrounding windows cracked. Electric lights still illuminated the room, and the computers beeped, clicked, and contentedly reported their data. Somewhere far beneath them, he could feel the hum of a generator in his feet. He placed the small pistol slowly in his pocket.