Blank Slate (A Kyle Jackle Thriller) (20 page)

Tasha continued craning her neck around the corner of the hatch monitoring the progress of the boat pursuing us. After ten more minutes she said, “I think you’re right. It looks like they’re falling further behind.”

“Thank God for small miracles,” I muttered under my breath. The GPS showed another half-mile to the mouth of the river. In another five minutes, we entered the bay and I started a beeline straight for the narrow cut on the other side of the bay that would give us access to the open Atlantic. Here in the bay, the water was calm and ranged from seventy to eighty feet deep. The sun was just beginning to brighten the horizon with a faint glow followed a minute later by a golden orb as it broke free of the Atlantic and signaled the beginning of a new day. It also revealed the Lucia Marie sitting just outside the bay blocking the only exit to the Atlantic. With their fifteen-foot draft, they had no chance of clearing the bar and coming into the bay. Standoff for now-my first thought, rapidly dispelled by the sight of a bright flash coming from the bow of the Lucia Marie.

“Incoming! Close the hatch!” I said as I twisted the helm hard over to port. A second later, a splash erupted one hundred yards off the starboard bow as the first shell arrived from the three-inch deck gun of the Lucia Marie.

“It’s closed,” said Tasha over my left shoulder as she watched the scene unfold through the view screen.

“Flooding the tanks,” I said pushing the levers to vent air from the main and auxiliary ballast tanks and allow seawater to flood in through the bottom. “Tasha, shut down the diesel and close the engine air valve.”

After a few seconds, “Done.”

“OK, let’s see how good a submarine this is,” I said pushing the control yoke forward to engage the bow planes. The bow tilted gradually downward and the water flowed up the deck and gurgled against the view screen as we dove for the relative safety of the depths.

A sound like the thunder of a hundred sledgehammers came from the stern. Not a direct hit, but very close. The under water concussion threw us against the rough fiberglass walls of the submarine. I glanced over at Tasha. “You OK?”

“I’ll live. I’ll probably have a knot on my head,” she said gingerly touching the area where she had bounced off the bulkhead. Any further conversation was cut short by the sound of water in the stern running down the tilted deck toward the bow of the boat.

I took one look at Tasha, slipped out of the seat and ran to the stern steadying myself with handholds as I ran. Two thirds of the way back, I saw the problem. The concussion hadn’t been enough to completely blow a hole in the hull, but the impact had created a thin crack between the layers of fiberglass about two feet long that allowed a steady spray of water to shoot into the engine compartment. I ran back forward and settled into the helmsman’s seat.

“Tasha, we have to level her out. The water running forward will tilt us bow down and we’ll crush the nose when it hits the bottom. I’ll need you to blow the forward trim tank while I try to level us with the planes. Ready?”

“Yes,” Tasha said with her hand wrapped tightly around the valve lever.

“OK, do it now,” I said pulling back hard on the yoke. I heard the high-pressure air rushing into the forward ballast tanks. The submarine felt sluggish. With the weight of several hundred gallons of water already in the nose, the controls fought my efforts to level her out. Slowly, I felt the bow begin to claw its way upwards until she was sitting level. All the water that had been forward now sloshed backward and we found ourselves with our feet in six inches of water. A few seconds later, the submarine slowly settled into the sandy bottom of the bay as its forward momentum slowly ground to a halt.

“Back in a minute,” I said as I went back to the stern. The good news was that we had bottomed at probably seventy or eighty feet. The bad news was at that depth the water pressure was accelerating the rate of water flowing into the submarine and there was nothing we could do to stop it. I took a last look in the engine compartment. Might be fifteen minutes before the water reached the main battery bank and shorted out the propulsion system. I closed the hatch and dogged it down. At least we could keep the forward compartment from flooding for now. The only bright spot was that the batteries were split into two banks-the propulsion bank was in the aft compartment, but the house bank was located forward and would give us power for the lights and instruments for at least a couple of days.

Miller looked up from the monitor and rubbed his eyes. The day started too damn early with his five o’clock arrival at the Honduran office. He wanted to be online when the satellite made its first pass over the area where they had last seen Dolce Vita enter the bay the day before. The satellite, thanks to the Search Aperture Radar could see through clouds, in complete darkness and even had the ability to pierce the heavy jungle canopy.

The search was made easier, largely because the area was almost completely devoid of civilization with only the occasional fishing boat breaking the solitude as it chugged up and down the river. Miller quickly found the location where Dolce Vita was anchored on the previous night-no sign on the infrared of any people on board and no heat signature from the engine told him that she had been sitting there all night. He then zoomed out for a broader view and started a search up and down both banks of the river at a resolution that would pick up any vessel over fifteen feet.

After a fruitless hour of aerial searching, he welcomed the interruption as Davis and Ramirez wandered into the office to keep him company.

“Any luck yet?” Rivera asked.

“Nothing yet. I think I’ll make another sweep of the river upstream and see if I missed anything.” Miller placed his cursor on the bay and zoomed back in to survey the area again.

“What’s this?” he asked looking at the image of a small coastal freighter sitting at the mouth of the bay. “These guys weren’t here an hour ago. It also looks like another fishing boat is coming out of the river into the bay. And here…” he said as he zoomed in on a darker spot creating a faint wake as it moved through the water, “ we have our missing submarine.”

Rivera and Davis crowded in to take a better look. Rivera pointed at a deck crew working on the foredeck of the coastal freighter. “What are these guys up to? Looks like they’re pulling a container to the rear with a cable.”

Their purpose was soon revealed as a naval gun on the foredeck was revealed. “What do you think it is?” asked Davis.

“Hard to tell,” replied Miller squinting at the coarse detail revealed on the monitor. “Fair sized deck gun-three or four incher. Similar to what the Coast Guard cutters carried thirty years ago. An antique, but still lethal as hell if the gunners are any good. What are these guys up to?”

That question was quickly answered as they saw a flash bloom at the muzzle of the gun followed a second later by an enormous splash a few yards away from the submarine. “I think we can assume that’s where Kyle is. That guy seems to have an uncanny knack for pissing people off.” He fell silent as they watched the submarine desperately try to evade the incoming fire.

“He’s diving the boat. Another few seconds and they’ll be out of range,” said Miller. Just as the stern was slipping beneath the waves, the next round arrived on target and detonated in the water next to the submarine. They watched intently as the shadowy form of the submarine began to slowly fade from sight while continuing to descend to the bottom of the bay.

“Switching from visual to SAR,” said Miller as he toggled the view from the satellite. The Synthetic Aperture Radar punched through the eighty feet of water and revealed the shape of the submarine lying motionless on the bottom of the bay. “Looks like the hull is intact. My best guess it that they’re about a mile from where they submerged and were damaged by that last round. Hopefully, that will be enough to keep them hidden.”

Miller grabbed the phone on the desk. “Chief, I need the big RIB that you guys have at the dock and three of your best men armed and waiting. And I need it now,” he said hanging up without even waiting for an acknowledgment. “Gentlemen, time for us to go. We’re about fifteen miles from where the submarine went down.”

Escabado handed Popov a cigar. “It seems you were correct my friend. I actually thought they would surrender after we fired the first shot at them.”

Popov bit off the end as he lit the cigar and puffed until the cabin filled with fragrant smoke. “Not this one-I know him too well. He would try to escape even if it cost him his life. Too bad, I would like to have killed the girl slowly and made him watch. Now I have lost both that pleasure and my two million dollar submarine. It seems it’s time for me to return to Miami,” he said as Pedroza appeared in the cabin.

“Jefe,” Pedroza said to Escabado. “We have the Bandito standing by for you to go to the lobster boat to search for the submarine. I will wait here for you in the Lucia Marie until the search has been completed.”

“General Popov, I will have one of my best men take you in a small fishing boat to an airfield twenty miles south of here. Better to go disguised as a fisherman and not attract the attention of the Nicaraguan Coast Guard ”

“Excellent,” boomed Popov as Escabado strode from the bridge. “I need to be back on my yacht off Miami within the day. It will be good to be as far away as possible from here. Too many questions, I choose not to answer.”

“General, I will locate what remains of the submarine and destroy all traces of their existence,” said Escabado as he clambered down the ladder to the waiting Bandito.

Escabado started the big twins and let them warm up a minute while crewmen released the lines. He swung the bow away from the Lucia Marie and punched the throttles forward. The Bandito jumped on a plane and screamed across the shallow bar towards the Liwa Mairin All too soon, he had to slow as he reached the side of the lobster boat. The crew was waiting as he shut down the engines and raised the cockpit hatch to clamber up the boarding ladder attached to the hull. As Escabado stepped onto the bridge, he saw Reginaldo manning the helm. The bridge was crowded with the survivors from the jungle camp who were armed to the teeth and seemed disappointed that their quarry might have already died and escaped their vengeance.

“Reginaldo, I want you to locate the sunken submarine. Pronto”

“Si, Jefe,” he said with a look of puzzlement. “But I thought they were sunk by the big guns.”

“I think so, but I personally want to drag their bodies out of the sea, cut them up and feed them to the sharks,” said Escabado with a smile that did nothing to reassure Reginaldo.

Reginaldo started a sweep pattern with his depthfinder looking for any object that stood out on the smooth sandy bottom below. He knew this bay as well as his backyard and there were no irregular features in the center of the bay except for the rusting hulk of a fishing boat that had sunk many years before. He had also been fortunate because when the submarine had been fired on, it had been lined up with a hill on the other side of the bay, so he at least had a reference point to begin the search.

He motored slowly staring intently at the depth finder screen slowly scrolling in front of him. After a couple of fruitless passes, he adjusted his course slightly to the side and motored over the bay again. Almost at the end of the track, there was a hump on the seabed that looked like a long ridge stretching for a hundred feet or so. It shouldn’t have been there.

“Son of a bitch,” swore Escabado. Reginaldo flinched like he had been struck, sure that the invective had been directed at him. As he looked up from his screen, he saw the object of Escabado’s wrath as a thirty foot Rigid Inflatable Boat roared over the bay directly towards them.

Miller grimly hung on to the grab rail as the RIB crashed over the waves. The boat was similar to many of the boats used by the Coast Guard for patrol work. It was an efficient workhorse with dual three hundred horse Mercury outboards hung on the stern that could propel them at almost sixty miles an hour. It was a sight that struck fear into the hearts of drug smugglers everywhere.

With the addition of the three additional DEA agents from the Honduran station, they had a total onboard of six-far fewer than Miller preferred, but what they lacked in numbers, they made up for in firepower. In addition to the issue M16 and pistols that each man personally carried, the RIB also had a bow mounted .50 cal machinegun.

“Everyone locked and loaded?” yelled Miller straining to be heard over the noise of the outboards and the RIB pounding through the waves.

“Good to go!” said Davis.

From the others, a few thumbs-ups and nods of the heads as everyone finished a last second gear check. As they closed to within a quarter mile, one of the DEA guys manned the .50 and began scanning the ship they were rapidly approaching for any signs of a hostile reaction. His concern was quickly justified as three crew members from the Liwa Mairin popped up from behind a metal bulwark and opened fire with AK47s on full auto. At the same time, they saw the go-fast boat they had seen earlier on the surveillance satellite roar away from the Liwa Mairin toward the Atlantic leaving a towering roostertail in its wake.

The first burst killed the DEA agent on the .50 and the other agent standing beside him. The agent on the port side spun in a circle and groaned heavily as a round took him just above the hip. Rivera instinctively ducked as one round cracked by his head and then his Marine training from Desert Storm kicked in as he ran forward to man the big .50 on the bow.

Rivera wrapped his hands around the worn grips of the machinegun and squeezed off a three second burst that deafened everyone on board. The massive recoil of the gun could be felt hammering through the structure of the boat as the rounds flew toward their target like a cloud of lethal lead bumblebees.

Some things are a matter of luck, others good planning. Reginaldo would give credit to God that day as the heavy rounds splintered the bridge of the Liwa Mairin. The cabin exploded in a spray of broken glass and splintered wood as the men standing on the bridge were torn to shreds. Reginaldo escaped with a cut over one eye from a flying shard of glass and a splinter embedded in his thigh.