he said, “is that we only have twenty-two Trident missiles on board and the rest have twenty-four.”
With that, Beaux ended the conversation.
But not necessarily the transmission.
Aboard the Wyoming
“ARE YOU SURE they can still hear us?” Beaux whispered to the sub’s communications specialist.
“I’m sure they can,” the sailor replied quietly. He pointed to the switch on his communications console that showed the Narrowband IP’s phone line to NS Norfolk was still open.
Beaux said to the sailor: “Stand by.”
There were about twenty other crewmen crowded on the sub’s control deck. Each was at his station or watching over someone performing their duties. Another twenty or so sailors were being held in the passageway nearby. All of them were under the eye of a SEAL holding a gun.
Just as they had been during Beaux’s phone conversation, the two sailors who were working the sub’s steering yokes nearby were verbally counting out their depth numbers: “We are at nine hundred feet and holding steady…”
The helmsman was calling out his numbers: “Seventeen knots, true…”
The electrical officer was checking his equipment and announcing minor fluctuations in power. Sonar men were calling out contacts: “Range—three miles off port.” The electronic warfare officer was keeping track of his equipment, as was the weapons officer. In effect, more than a half-dozen conversations were going on at once, the normal chatter of a submarine making its way through the ocean depths.
Through it all, Beaux remained seated at the communications suite. He had a prepared script in front of him.
It contained all the talking points he’d wanted to get across to NS Norfolk: The sub was under his control. This was a teachable moment. The payment demand. The circumstances of escalation. The blanket immunity and the worldwide TV and movie rights.
He put a check mark next to all these things.
Unchecked, though, was a section that began with: “If you doubt our resolve, look for three holes in Blue Moon Bay.”
Beaux scratched out the comment. “Better I left that unsaid,” he whispered to himself.
Beneath it was another section left unchecked. It read, “We regret the loss of Commander Shepherd.”
He crossed out that section, too, as well as one that read, “We regret the loss of the torpedo officer.”
He looked at his watch. The Narrowband IP phone line had been open without any direct communication from him for about a minute. He decided that was enough. He nodded to the communications specialist, who reached over and flipped the switch, finally ending the transmission.
Ghost was standing nearby, M4 assault rifle in hand. Beaux looked up at him and nodded.
Ghost yelled, “All quiet!”
Every sailor at his station immediately stopped what he was doing. Some slumped forward in their seats. Others simply collapsed.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” Beaux said, not bothering to look up from his notes. “Your group performance was worthy of an Oscar.”
Beaux then said to Elvis, “Check around up top, will you? We haven’t done that in a while.”
Elvis walked past the sub’s periscope and out of the control room altogether. He climbed the ladder up through the sub’s massive conning tower to the bridge above. He stopped before he reached the main hatch, though. What was the last depth reading that had been called out? Nine hundred feet below the surface? And what had the helmsmen said was their speed? Seventeen knots?
Elvis smiled and finally opened the main hatch. Not a drop of water came in on him.
He poked his head outside—and felt only the warm breeze on his face.
What he saw was not the rolling waves of the Atlantic, but many overhanging branches belonging to dozens of strangler fig trees. And around him were the waters of a large rectangular lake, much of it hidden from view by these same dangling tree branches, suggesting a thick Louisiana bayou. The underside of the sub was resting on the lake’s smooth, muddy bottom. The lake water covered the remainder of the hull to a point about five feet up to the conning tower, and again, the overhanging strangler fig branches hid the rest.
The sub’s ballast tanks were full. If the Wyoming had to move, all they had to do was blow these tanks and the sub would gently come off the bottom. Then they could turn it around and be on their way.
Not that they were planning on leaving anytime soon.
Not when they were in the perfect hiding place.
Elvis had to hand it to Commander Beaux. He’d found them the ideal spot to stash the Wyoming. Totally isolated, absolutely uninhabited. Few people even knew this