The SEALs evacuated the chamber, helping the injured down. Because of the bloody bandage over his upper chest, they offered Hamilton a backboard. He refused and climbed down, using his right arm to support him. Kristen came down and was greeted by helping hands gripping her legs and torso as she descended the ladder. Choi was already on a backboard with both corpsmen around him, and Kristen saw the Korean growing agitated.
She had a splitting headache and felt emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted. Any sense of euphoria she felt for having survived in one piece had been offset by the sheer terror of the journey back through the narrow channel. The two bullets that penetrated her LAR-7 had spent themselves against her bulletproof vest. But, although the bullets hadn’t penetrated the vest, they’d cracked several ribs and her breathing was painful. They weren’t certain if a bullet or a rock fragment had torn a gash in her right arm, plus she had some deep scratches on her face. With the LAR-7 damaged, she’d been forced to leech off Hamilton’s auxiliary air supply as they swam back to the SDV.
Then the real horror began.
The North Korean patrol boats had closed in on them as they embarked on the SDV and headed back into the channel. Then grenades had rained down from above and detonated all around the mini sub as they made their escape. The SDV had been damaged almost immediately before they could descend into deep water and make their escape. Despite Hamilton’s evasive action, they’d been unable to dislodge their antagonists on the surface. Assuming the North Koreans had spotted the GPS antenna on the surface, they’d been forced to bring it in and then resumed trying to evade. But there simply hadn’t been enough deep water to hide in, and they’d finally settled onto the bottom in fifty feet of water as grenades continued to be dropped into the water above them.
The concussions of the grenades had damaged the SDV’s air supply and on board navigation system. The result was everyone had to go back on their LAR-7 rebreathers. But with hers damaged, she was forced to leech off the others. The result was she’d been on the edge of panic for the last several hours, fearful of running out of breathable air, fearful of the North Korean’s damaging the SDV further, fearful of drowning, and fearful of being captured. However, despite the terror she’d felt, she’d been forced to set her own fear aside so she could handle Choi.
The doctor had been revived from his sedated state by the cold water. So, in addition to the constant concussions of grenades in the water above them threatening to further damage the SDV or kill them, and her having to suck oxygen from others, she’d been forced to constantly reassure Choi they were going to be okay. She’d managed to hide her fear, but it hadn’t simply gone away. Instead, the fear, the tension, the stress had built up within her, and it felt almost overwhelming now as she fought to hold it together.
Doc Reed asked, “XO, can the Lieutenant come with us to sickbay to help communicate?”
“Yes, but get moving, we don’t have a lot of time,” Graves warned as he hung up a ship’s phone.
“What’s wrong?” COB asked.
“The torpedo has locked on to us, and the skipper is trying to evade.”
“Torpedo?” Kristen asked not certain she could handle much more. The proceeding few days had been a rapid fire series of traumatic events starting with Vance’s suicide. She now felt punch drunk and wasn’t certain just how much more she could take.
The
Seawolf
heeled hard over and accelerated as four men prepared to lift the stretcher and get the doctor to sickbay. Once Choi was all strapped in and ready to transport with the oxygen positioned between his legs and an EKG rolling, Reed looked to the XO.
“Sir?”
“Go!” Graves ordered as the next group of SEALs appeared from the escape trunk.
With COB leading the way, the four men hoisted the stretcher and started to run. Kristen ran along with them as the
Seawolf
reversed her turn. They moved forward and came to the first dogged hatch. COB immediately began opening it while the men carrying the stretcher set it down and grabbed onto whatever they could find as the
Seawolf’s
turn became so severe it seemed the submarine might roll completely over.
The blare of the collision alarm sounded throughout the boat, alerting everyone on board that the torpedo was expected to hit. With this warning, COB immediately reversed loosening the latches, sealing the hatch he’d been opening and once more secured it. Kristen understood. If the
Seawolf
was hit and began to take on water, their only hope for survival would be to control the flooding by maintaining enough watertight compartments intact so they could remain sufficiently buoyant to reach the surface.
Everyone clung to whatever they could.
Kristen could see terror on many faces. But she felt no fear any more, just a numb acceptance regarding what might happen if the torpedo hit. Instead of fear, she focused on Choi, strapped helplessly to the stretcher. While everyone else grabbed hold of something to brace themselves, she lowered herself over him. She could see the abject fear in his eyes as he lay helpless on the stretcher, and she covered him protectively with her own body. “It’s going to be okay,” she told him over and over again, trying to make herself believe it.
The deck beneath them was literally shaking as the sub’s reduction gears and steam turbines were thrown past red line, driving the
Seawolf
forward ever faster. She continued whispering to the doctor, fighting to hold it together. Then she heard a sudden, ear-splitting hissing noise above her head. Her first thought was that a steam pipe had burst above her, but then she recognized the sound of high pressure air rushing into the ballast tanks, forcing the water out and making the
Seawolf
lighter as the bow planes turned the nose of the
Seawolf
upward. Within seconds, she felt the deck arching up at an impossible angle.
She gripped the stretcher with one hand and a pipe with the others to keep her and Choi from sliding along the deck as the submarine shot upward. “It’s okay,” she kept whispering into Choi’s ear as the
Seawolf
suddenly leveled out and turned back in the other direction, reversing the turn again. At the same time, the bow came back down and they dove back toward the depths.
Then, just when it seemed things couldn’t get any worse, the torpedo detonated.
For a brief moment it felt as if the deck beneath her had been suddenly removed as the
Seawolf
was thrust forcefully downward from the blast. The lights flickered and the entire ship shuddered frightfully. She grimaced, tensing every muscle in her body to prevent herself from screaming in terror.
The lights flickered again and briefly went out before coming back on as alarms sounded from several directions. The roar of high pressure water spraying against a bulkhead from a ruptured pipe also greeted her. But, before she could even look up, COB was already reaching for a shut off valve to seal the ruptured pipe.
“Move! Move!” COB ordered as he worked to stop the water spraying from the pipe with the speed of a bullet.
The stretcher team grabbed the litter and resumed heading for sickbay. As they moved, they came across an injured sailor with a wicked laceration across his forehead who was trying to stem the flow of blood with a rag. Graves split from the stretcher team and ran up a ladder to the control room while Kristen and her team continued to sickbay.
Choi was sweating as they reached the small sickbay where he was set on a table. Kristen stood by his head, holding the oxygen mask in place, aware the
Seawolf
was no longer diving and twisting in evasive maneuvers but was once more cruising straight and level. Doc Reed began checking Choi while she continued talking to him, trying to keep him calm and hopefully prevent him from having a heart attack.
Reed started an IV. “Tell him I’m giving him a little something for his heart and also to help him relax,” he explained.
A few feet away, seated in a chair, Hamilton was already stripped to the waist and being treated by Hoover for a gunshot wound to his upper chest and shoulder region. Kristen thought Hamilton looked far too relaxed as he sat calmly chomping on a piece of gum. She stared at him briefly, wishing she could be so calm, but at the same time wondering just what his life had been like that allowed him to appear so relaxed despite all they’d been through.
“You all right, Ell-Tee?” Hamilton asked.
Kristen nodded slightly, not certain she would ever be okay again, but unwilling to admit it to anyone but herself. Hoover paused attending Hamilton and looked her way.
“You want a tranq, Ell-Tee?”
“A what?”
“A tranquilizer,” Hoover offered, “I’ve got some pretty good shit in my bag that’ll settle you right down.”
Kristen shook her head, “No.” She then added, looking at the bullet wound in Hamilton’s shoulder, “Just take care of Mister Hamilton.”
Hamilton seemed to think anyone calling him “Mister” was humorous and chuckled, “You crack me up, Ell-Tee.”
“Humor,” Kristen said without a hint of it in her voice, “just one of the many services I offer.”
“I’m beginning to like you, Ell-Tee,” Hamilton chortled.
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” Kristen replied as the medicine started to take effect on Choi and his eyes began to drift.
Hamilton looked at her, and as he did, his expression became serious for a moment, and he shook his head. “No,” he said simply and in all seriousness, “I don’t.” He then grimaced slightly despite a local anesthetic Hoover had given him.
“It looks like the bullet bouncer ate most of it,” Hoover said easily as he took a pair of tweezers and prepared to remove the bullet. “It didn’t even reach the bone.”
With Choi drifting off into a drug-induced sleep, Kristen took a seat along the wall. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Images of the firefight were still fresh in her mind. But with the images of the traumatic escape came the emotions she’d experienced during the SDV’s run for safety. The visceral feeling of terror she’d felt as the grenades had exploded all around them was just as real now as it had been when they were under attack.
She opened her eyes and saw that not only was her left hand trembling, but her leg was, too. She clenched her fist, trying to suppress the gut-wrenching fear.
“How’s your arm, Lieutenant?” Reed asked, watching her with concern.
Kristen looked down at the battle dressing, having forgotten about it. “It’s…” she shook her head in exhaustion, “it’s nothing.”
“Are you sure I can’t get you something, Miss Whitaker?” Reed asked, still watching her with worry on his face.
“I’m okay.” But even as she spoke, she gripped the arm of her chair with her right hand when she noticed it shaking, too.
The door opened and Fitzgerald appeared, holding a hand towel to a laceration on his scalp. Outside the hatch, there were five other men who’d been injured when they’d been knocked about during the torpedo attack. “Corpsman!” Fitzgerald’s voice was panicky. “I’m wounded.”
“Take a number,” Hoover offered unsympathetically as he pulled the bullet out of Hamilton’s shoulder and calmly handed it to the SEAL. “Here you go, Trip, add this to your collection.”
Hamilton took it, studied it briefly and then tossed it up in the air and caught it as it came back down. “This one almost had my name on it.”
Fitzgerald, not seeing the corpsman rushing to his aid as he expected, pointed out angrily, “I’m bleeding, dammit!”
“I’ll be with you in a few minutes, sir,” Reed told him. “Until then, just keep applying direct pressure.”
Fitzgerald didn’t look satisfied with the answer, but Reed didn’t look to care as he continued working on Hamilton. Then Fitzgerald saw Kristen seated against the bulkhead. “Jesus,” he exclaimed, “you look like hell, Kristen.”
“Not now, okay?” She didn’t have the energy left to deal with Fitzgerald, but he walked over anyway.
“What happened?” he asked. “I heard you went in with the SEALs.” Unlike everyone else onboard, Fitzgerald was too insensitive to recognize none of the SEALs—and certainly not Kristen—were ready to talk about it yet. “Was it bad?”
“Why don’t you leave her alone, jack-off,” Hamilton warned.
“Cool it, Trip,” Hoover warned and placed his own strong hands on his friend’s arms, “Remember what happened at Oceania.”
Fitzgerald looked at Hamilton, who was now glaring back at him with venom in his eyes. “You better listen to your partner,” Fitzgerald warned. “Or haven’t you noticed I’m a Lieutenant Commander?”
Kristen tried closing her eyes again, but a never-ending reel of horrible images and the accompanying emotions with each image seemed to be playing on an endless loop in her head. She opened her eyes and saw Fitzgerald staring at her. She looked away, not wanting to deal with him.
“Hey, Kristen,” he offered, moving a bit closer, “if you want to talk…”
Kristen massaged her throbbing temple, shaking her head slightly. With the operation over, she felt the carefully crafted and meticulously maintained veneer of self-control all but gone. She didn’t cry; she never cried. But she felt like the emotional dam within her was on the verge of a catastrophic failure, unleashing a flood that might overwhelm her.
“Hey,” Hamilton snapped angrily in her defense as he came out of his chair, a blood-stained, filthy finger pointing at Fitzgerald dangerously. “I said leave the lady alone. Can’t you see she doesn’t want to talk about it?” He was holding a bloody bandage on his shoulder with one hand as he glared dangerously at Fitzgerald. Not only was the fiery Hamilton on his feet ready to square off with the Fitzgerald, but so was Hoover, who looked just as irate as Hamilton.
“It’s okay, guys,” she told them even as she fought to hold it together.
“What’s it to you anyway, Sailor?” Fitzgerald asked, not smart enough to sit down and shut up.
“She’s with us,” Hoover warned heatedly.
“Guys—” she began but was interrupted by the door opening abruptly.
Brodie came in, his face twisted in a scowl. “What’s all the racket about?” the captain demanded, a hard edge in his voice.