he stumbled onto an aisle that was slightly wider than the rest; it also had a red line running down the middle. Nolan began dragging Twitch along this aisle, even as he could see the ghostly shadows of Beaux and Smash moving through the Forest parallel to him. And through it all, Twitch was still trying to reattach his artificial leg.
The two SEALs began taunting Nolan.
“Throw us your weapon and we can talk about this,” came Beaux’s distinctive twang. “Nothing is so bad that we can’t hash it out.…”
Nolan responded by firing his .45 twice in the direction of the SEALs. The bullets ricocheted wildly around the missile compartment, causing an earsplitting racket.
“You’re fucking crazy, man!” Smash yelled, ducking behind a tube. “One bullet in the wrong place and this boat will go up and take half the East Coast with it.”
Nolan fired two more shots at the disembodied voices. Again, the bullets crashed loudly around the missile tubes, throwing sparks everywhere.
“You’re going to kill us all!” Beaux yelled. “Be reasonable! We can all get out of here in one piece.”
But Nolan wasn’t really listening. He was desperately looking for some way out of the missile hall. He still couldn’t tell forward from aft. Not that it made much difference. Considering how intense the smoke was getting, returning to the front of the sub, to the conning tower or the torpedo room, would be suicidal.
So what could he do?
There was only one option left. Nolan knew the Forest contained two lockout chambers, one of which the SEALs had used to come aboard in the first place. If Nolan could find them, maybe he could use one to escape.
Perhaps attuned to his thinking, the SEALs opened up on him with their assault rifles. Nolan hit the deck, shoving Twitch behind him as the barrage went overhead. He raised his pistol and squeezed off a shot, only to hear his clip pop out.
Damn … His pistol was out of ammo.
Nolan threw the .45 away and raised the M4 he’d taken from Monkey. He squeezed the trigger; the weapon bucked once, firing a single round—and then its ammo clip popped out.
“Son of a bitch,” he cursed.
The rifle was also out of ammo. It’d had just one bullet in it all along.
It was at that odd moment, with them pinned down and defenseless, that Twitch came out of his fog. Suddenly he seemed aware of what was happening around him. Or so Nolan thought.
Because at that point, Twitch looked up at him and asked, “Are we still in Shanghai?”
Dozens of bullets were zinging off everything around them, lighting up the near darkness. Nolan could only imagine this was how the SEALs felt when Whiskey had them pinned down atop the conning tower earlier. He just hoped the missile compartments could take a bullet or at least deflect one. If not, they could all be turned into radioactive dust at any moment.
Nolan knew the lockout chambers were located among the forward tubes—he just didn’t know which ones. Using the light created by the SEALs firing at him, he finally regained his bearings and spotted the forward part of the Forest. He started dragging Twitch in that direction, trying to keep both SEALs in sight as they continued firing in his direction, with no idea that he was now without a weapon.
“We’ll cut you in on the deal—our team and your team,” Smash was yelling, as the gunfire died down. “We’ll give you points on the movie.”
“And that’s on the gross, not the net!” Beaux echoed.
Nolan finally reached the forward part of the missile compartment. But he soon discovered none of the tubes here was marked any differently than the rest. There was nothing indicating which tubes were the lockout chambers.
So he randomly selected one tube and yanked open its hatch, only to find a huge Trident missile inside. Suddenly Beaux and Smash renewed their barrage. Their bullets went over his head and started ricocheting off the missile poised inside the tube.
Nolan quickly pushed the hatchway closed, then held his breath.
He waited about five seconds—and nothing happened. No explosion, no sound of the missile taking off. No start to Armageddon.
Then from the darkness, he heard more taunting.
“If we have to shoot you we might all go up together!” Beaux yelled.
“Then no one wins!” Smash added.
Nolan pulled Twitch along again and made it to the next tube. He yanked this hatch open—only to have a body fall right into his arms.
The corpse almost embraced him. It was