The Hike Read online

  She pushed the button to talk on the full face mask she was wearing. “Fifteen minutes, Matt. See anything?”

  Keller’s voice came across crystal clear in Shannon’s wet speaker that sat against her left ear. “Nothing, Chief. Cold, quiet, and dark.”

  Zumwalt’s command duty officer (CDO), the engineering duty officer (EDO), and the quarterdeck watch also had communications with the two divers via a net set up on a surface station that had a transducer cable lowered into the water. The CDO broke in, “All quiet up here.”

  The quarterdeck watch radioed in, “Your reliefs are on deck suiting up as we speak.”

  Shannon said, “Good to hear. Didn’t have to pull them out of their racks this time.” She turned in a slow circle away from the hull and pointed her light into the middle of the basin’s dark water. From the outer reach of her light’s beam, a shadow passed by. What was that? She kicked away from the ship, her light in one hand, her spear gun in the other.

  “See something, Chief?” Keller asked.

  She brought the hand that held the light to her face mask and pushed the talk button. “Saw a shadow at the edge of my light’s range. Checking it out.”

  “Roger that,” Keller said.

  Shannon appreciated his brevity. During the commissioning, she had been paired with Scroggins, who wouldn’t shut the hell up. Plus, Keller was thorough and smart—a pleasure to work with. She stole a glance back at the ship and saw Keller’s light moving aft along the hull.

  She went to aim her light in the direction where she had seen the shadow but felt a surge of water from her right. Turning just in time, she ducked and saw an enormous white underbelly pass overhead. She raised her light and focused the beam on the creature as it swam past her. Perhaps twelve feet long, there was no mistaking the conical snout, large dorsal fin, wide pectoral fins, and huge crescent-shaped tail: This was a great white shark. Having never seen one underwater before, the length was not what impressed her the most—it was the girth. She watched as the large fish turned and headed toward the middle of the basin and perhaps out to sea. Had it been circling her, waiting to attack, or was it just searching the port’s waters out of curiosity? There was no barrier to prevent sea life from entering the basin, but she had never seen a shark, let alone a great white, in the U.S. ports where she provided security. Dolphins and the occasional sea turtle? Yes.

  She keyed her microphone. “We’ve got a great white shark down here with us.”

  “Where? I’ve got to see it!” Keller said.

  She could see Keller’s light change direction and start heading toward her. “Too late, sport,” Shannon said. “I think he or she is headed back to sea.”

  “Damn,” Keller said, arriving next to Shannon. “Think it will come back?”

  She looked in his faceplate. “I hope not. Beast’s enormous. It’s one thing to see it from a distance and watch its beauty and grace. It’s another thing to have that sucker come out of the gloom of this shitty-visibility water.”

  “How big?” Asked Zumwalt’s CDO.

  “Around twelve feet—big enough. You should let Carney and Hué City know, sir,” she said. “They have divers working who would appreciate the heads up.”

  “Roger that, Chief,” the CDO said.

  “Hey, at least you’ve got another check on your bucket list now,” Keller said.

  They had been talking for the past few weeks about all of the underwater sea creatures they had seen throughout their years of diving: blue sharks, bull sharks, mako sharks, oceanic whitetip sharks, tiger sharks, grouper, moray eels, stingrays, sea turtles, manta rays, etc. But neither of them had seen a great white. “Helluva way to do it,” Shannon said. “I had envisioned checking that one off in the clear blue water off of South Africa or Australia, both of which I plan to visit when I retire.” She smiled, her eyes betraying a slight hint of greed. “Now that I’ve seen one, though, I’ve got to see another one.”

  “Okay, stop rubbing it in,” Keller said.

  They both aimed their lights into the basin and moved them together, first up and down and then side to side. The shark was nowhere to be seen. “Let’s do our last sweep,” she said. Their lights were now pointing up at their masks, and they could see each other while they spoke. “You move forward to aft, and I’ll move aft to forward.”

  Keller nodded, and she gave him a wink. Then, she put her spear gun under her arm and, with her free hand, made a fin and moved it toward Keller’s mask. “You’ll get your chance.”

  “Yeah, right,” Keller said.

  They kicked back toward the ship.

  Standard procedure for turning over the watch meant that the reliefs would start a walk-through about thirty minutes before assuming the watch and then meet up with the off-going watch approximately fifteen minutes later. However, for underwater security watches, the reliefs only needed to be in the water with the off-going watch for a few minutes. There were either enemy divers in the water, or there weren’t, and any other piece of information that the on-coming watch might need could be learned from the quarterdeck watch. If they were further south in warmer water, then the watches could be as long as three hours, but, thankfully, Shannon thought, because of the current water temperature, their watches had been reduced to two hours with a tank change at the one-hour point. The MSST had enough divers to ensure that they would get a solid seven hours in the rack before their next two-hour dive at 8 a.m.

  Shannon spoke to the quarterdeck watch. “Making our final run. Except for the shark, everything has been quiet,” she said. “We are ready to be relieved.”

  “And ready for a mug of hot chocolate and some sleep,” Keller added.

  On the quarterdeck, the two divers taking the next watch were almost suited up. Hearing the report, they gave a thumbs up to the officer of the watch, who said, “Quarterdeck, aye. Next watch getting wet in five minutes.”

  Shannon and Keller acknowledged.

  ✽✽✽

  The cool night air stung Lieutenant Marissa Avery’s face as she jogged along the base’s white strip of beach. The rest of her body was covered in cold-weather running gear, including a watch cap and a thin pair of gloves. Since she had been running for nearly forty minutes to clear her mind after having trouble falling asleep, her sweat seemed like it was starting to freeze between her skin and the tight outer garments she had on.

  Twenty more minutes to go, she told herself. C’mon legs. Don’t abandon me now.

  The nearly full moon slid behind a cluster of clouds, and, to her right, the ocean water darkened from slate gray to black. She looked ahead. There was approximately a half-mile of beach left before she’d have to turn left, follow the seawall along the river that branched off into the basin, and then complete her loop around the perimeter before arriving at the base’s Bachelor Officer Quarters, the BOQ, where she had a room. One more week of training left, and she’d be headed back to Norfolk Naval Station, where her ship was homeported. She’d checked in after dinner with her husband and toddler, who were back home in Virginia. It had been a trying three weeks away from them. Beyond the physical and emotional separation—no, the Navy had not and would never be able to bridge that gap—her training school schedule had been demanding. Up at 0500 and not returning to her BOQ room until dinner, day after day, was starting to wear on her. In fact, as good as the training had been, it was getting repetitive. But that was an area of Navy pride: repeating everything a million times in the name of safety and training. Her word to describe this philosophy? Overkill. However, she was in the home stretch now, and her spirits were rising. What had kept her awake tonight was worrying about what would happen two weeks after she arrived home. Her ship was leaving on a six-month deployment; it would be mid-summer when she saw her family again. How much do two-year-old boys grow in six months? She pushed the thought away and focused on her breathing as each footstep patted the sand.

  About two hundred yards from the seawall, she noticed something moving irregularly in the
waves off to her right. She slowed, eventually jogging in place, and focused on the spot of ocean that had caught her attention. She squinted. Was that a boat out there? She stopped jogging. Yes, it was a boat. A cabin cruiser, painted jet black and around forty feet with no running lights on, bobbed at anchor about fifty yards offshore. There was nothing unusual about a boat anchoring close to shore. However, there was something strange about one that did it and didn’t display anchor lights. Maybe the boat was having electrical problems? She could see no one topside, but the cruiser’s dinghy was still secured up forward, so whoever was on board had a way to reach the shore for help.

  After a minute, she started to walk, still keeping her eyes on the craft. Maybe there was nothing wrong. Perhaps they had a little too much beer, or, tired after a day of cruising, they simply nodded off and forgot to turn on their anchor lights. It had happened before. She started to jog. After a half-a-dozen strides, a little voice inside her head told her to report it when she got back to her BOQ room. If you see something, say something. It had become a cliché since 9/11. The wind started to chill her as she picked up her pace, but her body still felt healthy and strong as she welcomed the cold air into her lungs and then exhaled loudly through her nose.

  She neared her turn and jogged backward for a few seconds. The boat was still there, no lights on. She turned and kept going. She’d call base security when she finished her run and make a report. It would clear her conscience even though—she snuck one last look—there were probably just a couple of yo-yos out there passed out below deck.

  She turned and ran along the massive seawall. Up ahead, the basin full of ships loomed in the darkness.

  ✽✽✽

  The two men kicked slowly along the mucky bottom. They neither used nor carried dive lights. According to their dive computers, which had backlighting and integrated compasses, they should be in the center of the basin by now, where the depth was just above fifty feet. The man on the right had taken on the name of Bill Johnson, according to his forged passport, and the man on the left, Henry Peterson. He, Bill, was the underwater demolition expert. Henry was there to make sure that he was able to complete the mission—Henry was expendable, but he was not. Tonight’s target: the Americans’ newest machine of death, the USS Zumwalt.

  A man whom they had never met before, known only as Marcus, was on board a cabin cruiser, anchored off the coast, waiting to pick them up once the explosives had been placed on the hull and the timer had been set for an hour. This would give them plenty of time to climb aboard, weigh anchor, and travel down the coast for thirty minutes until they were directly offshore the beach house that had been purchased a year ago for the mission. Marcus would drop them off close to the beach, and they would swim ashore in just bathing trunks while Marcus headed out to sea to sink the boat in deep water. Then, Marcus would motor back in the dinghy, sink it in water approximately one hundred yards from shore, and swim in. They would all stay the night in the beach house, and in the morning, Marcus would take them by car to an airport. Twenty-four hours later, they would be back home across the Atlantic Ocean. Where would Marcus go after that? Perhaps back to the beach house. Perhaps elsewhere. Bill didn’t know.

  They approached using closed-circuit rebreathers, which reused the gas that the divers exhaled, enabling them to use the replenished air for their next breath. This gave them three advantages. One, because of the increased efficiency, they could dive longer. Two, because the rebreathers recycled all of the gas they used, there would be only a few bubbles that escaped, meaning their approach would be very quiet, and the lack of bubbles rising would not give away their position to someone looking at the water from above the surface. Three, because they were breathing gas that had already been warmed by themselves, the rebreather would keep them warmer, which was perfect for this cold-weather dive tonight. They had drysuits available on the boat but had decided to go with wetsuits since they wouldn’t be in the water that long. Plus, Marcus had explained that if they were a little colder, then they would concentrate harder and be more efficient. Bill thought the logic was sort of sound, but now he wished they had chosen the drysuits.

  There was nothing ahead, and, for a moment, Bill started to second guess himself. Were they headed in the wrong direction? Was the compass not working? His doubts vanished after a few more kicks. In the distance, two yellow beams swept along the hull of their target. He reached down and felt the bag with the explosive charges and timer. Everything was perfect. As he brought his hand up, he felt a pinch in his thumb. He tried to pull his hand up, but it was caught on something sticking up from the bottom. He grabbed Henry’s arm, and they stopped. As soon as he got in position to see what he was stuck on, his hand popped free. At first, there was a kind of pulsating relief, and he rubbed his thumb with his other fingers. Then, he could feel warm fluid ooze from just below the knuckle. Blood. If he had a light to shine on his thumb, at this depth, the blood would appear green. How bad was the cut? He straightened and bent his thumb a few times with minimal pain. He’d be fine. What in the hell had been on the bottom? He looked down and saw nothing but darkness.

  A foot away to his left, he could see Henry’s right arm, the hand holding a spear gun. He couldn’t see but knew that in Henry’s other hand was a stainless-steel dive knife. He gave the right arm a squeeze, and they began to fin toward the ship again. Bill looked at his watch. If everything went as planned, they would have a few moments when the two security divers would swim together and exit the water behind the stern just after the next team entered. Hence, with all four security divers aft, this would give them the opportunity to quickly affix the explosives and timer to the hull near one of the seawater intakes located amidships. It would still be visible, but placed right next to the intake, it would take a slow, detailed inspection to see it. And from what they had observed on a dive earlier in the evening, the security divers didn’t go slowly enough all of the time to see everything. The odds of success were good. They continued toward the ship, the golden yellow dive light beams of the security divers growing larger and larger. Meanwhile, green liquid slowly left his thumb, leaving a trail behind them.

  ✽✽✽

  “You ready to head up?” Shannon asked Keller.

  “All good on my end,” Keller said. He was at the stern, looking up at Zumwalt’s two enormous shafts and propellers. Shannon was forward, past the bow, turning around.

  “I’m headed to you,” she said. “Quarterdeck, we’re coming up.”

  The officer of the watch acknowledged and then notified the two divers waiting on the pier. They gave a thumbs up and walked down, fins and dive lights in hand, to the sea ladder at the end of the pier.

  Shannon finned up to a depth of twenty feet, and her dive light’s lemon beam bloomed against the port-side hull. All of the appropriate equipment aboard Zumwalt that would pose a threat to divers had been tagged out after the ship had entered the port and switched from ship to shore power. Still, she kept her distance from any intakes, not wanting to get a part of her body sucked up into the hull. Even though she and Keller had verified the tags prior to diving, accidents had happened before. She descended back down to forty feet and swam toward Keller’s beam.

  The mammoth shark appeared on the edge of her beam’s reach. “Keller! The white is back! Swim toward me.” Shannon watched as the large fish ignored her and swam past, heading toward the bow of the ship.

  Keller arrived next to her and aimed his light in the same direction as Shannon’s. “I see it!” he said. “Let’s follow it forwa—wait a minute, what’s it doing?”

  Suddenly, the shark bolted toward the bottom. Shannon and Keller followed, continuing to shine their lights in the direction the shark had gone. A few kicks later, they witnessed horror as the shark had snapped its jaws around a diver and was shaking its head from side to side as blood billowed out from its mouth.

  “Jesus Christ!” yelled Keller.

  “What’s going on?” shouted the CDO.

 
; Shannon swam down toward the shark. The diver’s head and one arm hung out the right side of the fish’s mouth, and out the left side was...nothing. She aimed her light and saw two legs with fins, bitten off just above the knees, lying on the basin floor—a cloud of blood rising from them. A spear entered the shark’s snout, and Keller’s beam found a second diver, a few yards away from the great white. The diver let his used spear gun fall as he swam up to the fish and started to bang on its skin with one hand and repeatedly puncture it with his knife in the other. The shark opened its mouth, and the diver’s corpse slipped out—a bloody hulk of shredded neoprene, bone, and gore. The diver with the knife kicked backward, avoiding the agape mouth packed with white, serrated teeth. The shark made a few strong strokes with its crescent tail, cruised by him, and left.

  Shannon said, “CDO! We’ve got two divers down here. One has just been attacked by the shark, and one is—what’s he doing?”

  She watched as he swam down to what remained of the other diver and started cutting a bag away that was attached to the corpse’s midsection. She aimed her speargun at him and approached. Keller was holding his position in the water, approximately ten feet above and behind the man, his spear gun also trained on the diver. “Matt, I don’t like it. Whatever he’s cutting away is important. He’d be outta here by now if it wasn’t,” she said. “I’m going to get a closer look.”

  The CDO came on the net. “There are no other divers who are supposed to be in the basin right now. All divers working on Carney and Hué City have been accounted for. Bring this guy up, Chief. Your reliefs are on their way to help.”

  At that moment, both divers sitting on the edge of the pier put on their fins and jumped in.

  Keller watched as the diver freed the bag. Holding it in one hand and his dive knife in the other, the man turned and looked up at Keller and Shannon.