Prologue
Axel Salisbury almost leaped out of the office building; he was so happy the day was over. He’d been training on a software inventory management system. Office work. Ugh. As far as he was concerned, it was a load of crap. But their skill sets had to be updated on a regular basis. He’d much rather go out for target practice or for a workout in the gym or even for basic maintenance on their gear, but it wasn’t to be. Today was all about paper-pushing. He was a fighter, not a writer. He shuddered at that. As he threw his bag into the back of his Jeep, a shout came across the parking lot. He turned to see Mason. Axel walked across, shook his hand, and said, “You look like you recovered from that lovely trip we just completed.”
Mason nodded, his face grim. “That was a mess, wasn’t it?”
“The place wasn’t so bad,” Axel said, “but the people? Wow.”
“The company’s going through quite the headaches right now, between the government court cases and overhauling their employment practices, not to mention dealing with the fallout from the sabotage and the lawsuits from the sexual assault victims.”
“Sounds like they needed to do something about it a long time ago,” Axel said, shaking his head. “And, so far, it’s been quiet since we got home.”
“Not anymore,” Mason said. “I need you on a team with me right now.”
Axel looked at him in surprise. “Now?”
“Somebody’ll be in front of your place in thirty minutes,” he said. “We’ve got a submarine down with eleven men and one woman on board.”
“One of ours?” Odd that it would have so few crew.
“It’s a new generation sub, smaller, more agile. Crew went down, doing some testing on it. And they’re stuck. We’re flying out in ninety minutes.”
At that, Axel nodded and said, “I’ll go home and grab my to-go bag.” He walked back to his Jeep, hopped in, and drove toward his apartment. He parked, grabbed his laptop bag, went in, his mind already sorting through what he might need to add to his already prepped to-go duffel. He prided himself on being ready in minutes. Lives often depended on it.
He was outside and waiting as a truck came by and picked him up. Mason wasn’t among the crew. Someone said he had taken an earlier flight with Nelson. Both would meet them on the next leg. Axel nodded and took the last empty place in the vehicle. “Do we have an update on the sub’s crew?”
“Last communication said they were alive, but that was over an hour ago,” the driver stated, “but they’ve been beached on the sea floor.”
“Anybody know why?”
“An onboard explosion.” came the driver’s terse answer.
Axel nodded and thought about that. “So oxygen’s the issue.” He studied the three guys with him. He knew Dane and Cooper from Mason’s crew. But the guy beside him, he didn’t know. He reached out a hand and said, “I’m Axel.”
“Baylor Massey.”
Axel nodded and didn’t say anything. He’d heard a lot of names before, but that one was a first.
They hit the naval airport, loaded onto the cargo plane, and were airborne within another twenty minutes. Sitting in the back, it was noisy, and nobody did any talking. Axel wished to heck he had a little more intel. He hated walking into a scenario blind, but, in these rescue situations, it often came down to a need-to-know basis. When they landed, he knew they would hit the ground running. He tried to nap as much as he could, so he had some energy for what was about to come.
Chapter 1
Once they landed, they were picked up and taken to the dock area.
“Are we ready to head out to sea?” Axel asked Mason, who stood, hands on hips, studying their new surroundings.
Nelson remained silent beside Mason, only a chin lift as his greeting to Axel.
Mason gave a hard, clipped nod. “Yes.” With that, they all marched down the dock, jumped onto the Zodiacs, and headed out to a destroyer.
As he climbed on board, Axel asked, “Any briefing?”
“Not much to tell you, as the information is thin on the ground,” Mason said. “Looks like we’ll have to go down in the rescue subs to see what’s up.”
Axel nodded at that. This six-man team would all ride in one pressurized submersible for the initial search. Other rescue subs were available as needed. Hopefully the rescue subs would have more occupants on the way back up. However, only one rescue sub could attach to the downed sub at a time. “Are we expecting to actually see something?”
“We will. They’re not all that deep,” Mason said. “But we’re hoping this rescue mission is not a recovery one. And, if we can save the sub itself, we need to do that too.”
“Got it. Any communication with those on board?”
“Not for two hours.”
Axel winced. There could be a lot of reasons for that, but none of them were good. He’d never been in one of these new subs and was thrilled to check it out today, except for the reason why he was here. Fully geared up and ready to hit the water at a moment’s notice, he stood inside the rescue sub as they slowly descended.
“We’re twenty-four minutes away,” Mason said, as an aside.
Axel nodded, watching out the windows as the ocean moved around them. Down here, they were the ones out of their element. They were the intruders. Everybody else resided here. But, just like going to a foreign country, here they were the ones who stood out. Axel heard the engine puttering gently inside and saw the lights of the other subs as they came down.
When they finally found the sunken sub, Axel leaned forward, looking for any available information. They were using powerful lights to see what they could, but, as they slowly skirted alongside the sub, there was nothing to see. “So where is the damage?” he murmured, through the intercom in his helmet.
Everybody stared outside, and communications were sporadic among them. “I’m not seeing any damage to the exterior,” Mason said.
“No,” Axel said, “so the problem’s got to be internal.”
He nodded. “We’re going in,” Mason said.
Their sub had a special lock that attached to the hatch of the disabled submarine. As theirs descended, they quickly prepared to board. As it locked around the bottom hatch, with the water draining out, they opened the hatch into the grounded sub. Axel was the first to jump down. Fully geared with oxygen, he slowly made his way into the new prototype sub. Behind him, the other five men were coming just as fast.
Once they were in, Axel headed forward. He wasn’t even sure what he would find at this point. As he got closer to the engine room, where they expected to see people, he found two men, both dead. As he slowly checked them over, he saw bullet holes in their foreheads. He held up a hand, stopping the men behind him and pointed downward.
Mason was right behind Axel when he saw the bullet holes. Mason stared at Axel, who responded with a grim nod and moved forward. Now it was a whole different story. This didn’t look like an accident at all; this was sabotage. What he didn’t know was if any of the twelve-person crew was alive. With the other men spreading out, Axel would check the engine room. Two more dead had been found aft, and, as Axel went down, he found another four bodies. Now they had eight, all dead, all shot with a single bullet hole in the forehead. He came back up to find the rest of his group standing together. “So we’re missing four then?”