THE MARINE SHOVED ME IN THE PENTAGON—THEN THE CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS SAID MY NAME

The drydock basin was a concrete kill zone.

Sixty feet deep, five hundred feet long, with vertical walls of sheer, slime-coated masonry. The only exits were two narrow steel emergency ladders bolted to the headwall, and a single vehicle ramp at the seaward gate that was now blocked by three armored patrol trucks sporting high-mounted searchlights.

PING-PING-CRACK!

Rifle fire from the gantry rained down like hail. High-caliber rounds spattered against the bronze blades of the carrier’s four thirty-ton screws, sending glittering fragments of lead singing through the air.

Blake shoved Commander Hayes ahead of us, gripping the back of the naval officer’s collar with one hand while keeping his sidearm leveled with the other.

“Inside the rudder access trunk!” Blake yelled over the deafening clatter of gunfire and the howl of the security sirens. “Move, Commander, or I’ll use you as a sandbag!”

We scrambled beneath the immense, angled overhang of the carrier’s twin rudders. The steel plating formed a natural cavern of thirty-inch armor plate, shielding us from the plunging fire from above. Above our heads was a low, oval maintenance hatch leading into the ship’s emergency steering room—the steering ram compartment located in the deepest, most fortified section of Hull 79’s stern.

Blake hit the mechanical dogging levers with the heel of his boot. The heavy steel hatch swung open with a screech of dry gaskets.

“Get in!” Blake barked, hoisting Hayes up by his belt and tossing the disgraced officer through the opening like a bag of laundry.

I grabbed the coaming, swinging my boots inside just as a burst of automatic fire chewed through the concrete ledge where I had been standing a second before. Blake followed in a fluid, explosive roll, slamming the armored door shut and spinning the central locking wheel until the six heavy steel dogs seated into their sockets.

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG.

Bullets struck the outside of the steel hatch with dull, hollow thuds. Inside, the noise was muffled, replaced by the deep, cavernous echo of the carrier's interior.

The emergency steering flat was massive, dominated by four hydraulic rams the size of oak trees that connected directly to the carrier's rudder stocks. The air in here was stagnant, chilled by the ship’s auxiliary ventilation, smelling of hydraulic fluid and fresh gray paint.

Hayes sat on the diamond-plated deck, his back pressed against a hydraulic pump, hyperventilating.

“We’re trapped,” Hayes moaned, clutching his knees. “You don't understand the Admiral's security setup. Vance-Holloway has the base communications center locked down. He’s jammed all civilian and tactical satellite links over the harbor using the electronic warfare array on the naval station tower. No distress call is getting out!”

I pulled my satellite transponder from my pocket.

The screen confirmed his words. A blinking amber warning icon filled the display: SIGNAL BLOCKED – LOCAL RF CARRIER JAMMING DETECTED.

“He’s thorough,” I admitted, catching my breath, brushing concrete dust from my hair. “He knows that if General Vance or the Pentagon receives a single byte of telemetry from my tablet, the Marines from Camp Smith will descend on this base in thirty minutes. So he’s going to execute us inside this drydock, claim we were foreign saboteurs attempting to detonate an explosive device on the carrier, and present himself as the hero who secured the ship.”

“And Hayes?” Blake looked down at the trembling commander with cold contempt. “What was your role in the script, Commander?”

“I... I was supposed to be the tragic casualty,” Hayes whispered, his voice shaking with absolute horror as the reality dawned on him. “The brave shipyard officer who died trying to stop the infiltrators. That’s why he sent those two contractors with me. They weren't just here to swap the valves. They were supposed to shoot me once the work was done!”

“Poetic,” Blake spat, wiping sweat and grease from his eyes. “You sold out your uniform for a man who had you measured for a casket.”

I stood up, walking toward the emergency damage control terminal mounted against the forward bulkhead. I slid my access key into the reader.

The console lit up with a green wireframe of Hull 79.

“We’re cut off from Washington,” I said, tracing the ship’s internal layout with my finger. “But Vance-Holloway made one critical miscalculation.”

Blake stepped up beside me. “What’s that?”

“He thinks the only way out is through the base gates,” I said, tapping the lower section of the schematic. “The carrier's secondary auxiliary generator is online, running on shore-power umbilical cables. If we can reach the main engineering control room on Deck 4, I can bypass the shipyard’s shore-line choke points. I can route an un-jammable laser-optical transmission through the carrier’s primary navigation radar mast.”

“Direct to the satellite?” Blake asked.

“Direct to the communications tower at Marine Corps Base Hawaii on the other side of Oahu,” I replied. “The Kaneohe Bay station has a direct hardline connection to the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. If that signal hits Kaneohe, General Vance gets the telemetry, the audio confession from Commander Hayes, and the live video of Vance-Holloway’s mercenary strike team attacking us.”

Blake smiled—a sharp, predatory flash of white teeth in the dim red battle lights of the steering flat.

“Deck 4 is three decks up and two hundred yards forward,” Blake said, checking his ammunition. “Between here and engineering, there are about thirty shipyard security contractors who think they’re hunting two helpless civilians.”