Axel: SEALs of Honor Book 25

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About This Book

  Complimentary Download

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  About Baylor

  Author’s Note

  Complimentary Download

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  About This Book

  Life was never boring, but, for Axel, things kick up a notch when he helps in an underwater rescue of a downed submarine that’s low on oxygen. What they find is nothing like what they expected. All the crew but one was dead—as in shot to death. The last remaining crew member was alive but in rough shape. What the hell happened here?

  Allee woke up in the hospital and barely remembers how she got here. But a fuzzy memory only compounds the horror when the investigation ranks her as their number one suspect in the nightmare that won’t quit.

  As the investigation takes a darker turn, so does her life, as someone decides a dead patsy is better than one who can talk …

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  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?”

  “Nope,” Mason said. “I found two in the kitchen, so we’re only missing two.”

  “One’s dead in the bathroom as well,” Dane said. “So we’re missing only one.”

  “Looks like the same gun took out the ones I’ve seen,” Axel said.

  “Exactly,” Mason said. “I’m assuming our missing man is the one who did this.”

  “Then where is he?” Axel asked. He looked around at the sub. “And what did he do to bring it down?”

  “Looks like the navigation system is fried,” said Cooper in the back, as he worked on the instrument panel.

  “Can we get the sub to rise?” Mason asked.

  “Not by its own power, but we can do a rescue mission and lift it to the surface,” Cooper said. “We’ll have to replace this entire panel before we can figure out what’s going on.”

  “So how did the last man get out?” Baylor asked.

  “Likely from the torpedo tube,” Mason said, his tone grim. “It would take a bit of a trick though.”

  “Meaning, they needed somebody inside to actually operate it?” Axel asked.

  Mason frowned. “I don’t know for sure. We’d have to check on how these new torpedo tube launchers work. Usually the idea is that they’re locked and loaded, then fired. If the last man was inside a missile tube, he couldn’t have done the job by himself.”

  “Unless there were two saboteurs,” Axel said slowly. “And one killed himself on board.”

  “It’s possible.” Baylor added, “One man here is sporting a broken leg and a bullet down low.”

  “Does he also have a bullet in his forehead?” Axel asked. “Where is he?”

  “Outside the torpedo room,” said Baylor.

  “Let me take a look,” Axel replied.

  “We’ll all take a look,” Mason said, “but we also need to relay what we found.”

  “So we either do a recovery or take the entire sub up as it is,” Axel said.

  “We’ll bring down a repair crew to see if they can get this mobile. We’ll move all the bodies into one area,” Mason said. “But let’s check this one out first.” Upon closer review, they confirmed that this man had, indeed, been shot low and had a broken leg, with a crutch close by. “I’ll say this was the guy. He was attacked, knew he wouldn’t make it, and took his own life. That bullet’s in the temple, not in the forehead like the rest.”

  “Right, so we need to gather all the information we can on him,” Axel said.

  Mason nodded. “There’ll be a full investigation into this,” Mason said, “but that’ll come later.”

  “Do we know for a fact that our shooter is gone?” Baylor asked.

  Mason turned, looked at him, and said, “Do you have reason to believe somebody else is on this ship?”

  “You’ve got to wonder,” Nelson said.

  “Check it out then,” Mason ordered.

  And, with that, the four men took off, leaving Axel and Mason. “What about the other rescue subs?”

  “They can’t come in while we’re locked onto the hatch,” Mason said. “While we’re doing recon and relaying the information upward, they’ll prepare a crew to come down and see if they can fix this enough to make it rise. Otherwise, they’ll have to use the balloons to bring it up.”

  “That will take a couple days. But, if nobody in here is left to save, the timing won’t particularly matter, I guess,” Axel said. He shook his head. “Damn, boss. I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it.”

  “No, it’s not what we wanted at all,” Mason replied.

  “So, the last communication was recent, like, two hours ago?”

  Mason nodded. “According to my intel anyway. More like three hours plus now,” he said. “And that intel hasn’t been too accurate so far.”

  “Do we know who sent the last communique?”

  “Private Hostettler,” he said. “I’ve got the rest of my team topside gathering all communications to and from this sub.”

  Axel bent and checked the name tag on this last man. The one with the injured leg and the gunshot in the temple. “Hostettler, that’s this guy,” he said.

  “So we’re assuming that he wasn’t calling for help then?”

  “It was a garbled message,” Mason said. “Sounds like the radio guys couldn’t make much sense of it.”

  “I’d say it didn’t,” Axel noted with a frown, “but, at the same time, we have no way to know what really went on down here.”

  “Well, we do know a lot more now,” Mason said, “but none of it’s good. Eleven dead men on board. Damn it.”

  “What do you want to do with the bodies for now?” Axel asked.

  “Let’s put them in that one stateroom,” he said. “Makes for an easier recovery. That way the new crew can come in here, see if they can fix the sub, and bring it to the surface.” And that’s what they did. When the others rejoined them, Mason looked over and asked, “Did you find anything else?”

  The men shook their heads, but a frown was on Baylor’s face. “No, but—”

  “What made you think we aren’t alone?” Mason asked.

  “I thought I heard something earlier, but we couldn’t find anything.”

  “Anything else?” Mason asked, trying to clarify this issue.

  Baylor shook his head. “No, but—did you ever just have a feeling somebody was there?”

  “We can’t let another crew down here without resolving this,” Axel said.

  “Let’s do a full sweep then,” Mason ordered. “We’ve all had that feeling enough to know not to discount it.”

  They started at the aft and slowly worked their way through, checking everywhere—up and down, shafts, compartments, looking at every possible hiding place. With the blueprints in his head, Mason quickly directed them through every section. When they came to the engine room, he stopped and said, “Okay, so there should be a twelfth person on board,” he said, “and it’s possible that’s the person who left the sub,” he said.

  “Wait. Something’s not right,” Baylor said. “Damn it all, I should have put this together before. That twelfth person isn’t a guy.”

  “Right. One woman is on the crew,” Axel stated.

  “Exactly. But not just a crewman. It’s Dr. Ally Minga,” Mason said with a nod.

  “So, if she’s here, do we really suspect she’s the one who’s done all this?” Axel motioned to the devastation behind them.

  “I wouldn’t think it likely,” Mason said. “Tesla’s worked with her some before.”

  “Well, she’s obviously not one of the bodies,” Baylor said. “So where is she?”

  “We haven’t exactly identified ourselves,” Axel said. “If she’s alive, she could be hiding and thinking this sub is still
under siege.”

  “True enough,” Mason said. He walked over and hit the sub’s PA system, and, after first identifying himself, he continued, “Dr. Minga, let us know where you are. If you’re injured, we’re here to help. Eleven dead men are on board. We have a downed sub, and you’re the only one unaccounted for. Oxygen will be a problem soon, so we need to locate and remove you quickly.”

  When he stopped speaking, they all were silent and listened. Within seconds, an ever-so-slight tapping sound could be heard. Axel looked up and headed toward the main hallway. Up above was one of the tunnels for the HVAC system. A little farther on, he found a somewhat removable screen. With a tall stretch he could just about lift it. Behind him, Baylor gave him a boost, and Axel popped the screen off to the side. Jumping, he grabbed hold of the edges of the opening with both hands, and, with a little more help from Baylor, he lifted himself into the tunnel.

  “Dr. Minga?” Axel called out. More tapping came from farther down. He slowly worked his way through the HVAC system. Subs were meant to be highly efficient, and every square inch was important, so maneuvering in the tight space was not an easy chore. He didn’t get very far when he saw something up ahead. “Dr. Minga?”

  Again the tapping.

  As he got closer, he realized she faced him, her head and arms mostly visible. But she was pinched in where the system narrowed. He reached out a hand and squeezed her fingers. “Are you hurt?”

  She squeezed back twice.

  “Can you move at all?” He heard a slow exhale.

  “Yes,” she said, “with help. It’s my leg.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll back up, and I want you to come toward me.” He slowly shifted her arms until they were stretched out in front of her. He backed up a few inches at a time and slowly dragged her toward him, clearly causing her pain. When he got to the opening, he knew Baylor would be there, ready to help. Alex slid down partially and found Baylor ready for him.

  “I’ve got Dr. Minga here, but she’s hurt. I’ll have to pull her down headfirst.” Immediately, willing hands reached up, and Axel slowly lowered the woman from the hatch and passed her headfirst to Baylor. Mason and Nelson were there as well, supporting her torso as it appeared. With Axel slowly moving her out of the shaft to the men below, he tried to support her legs, but one was clearly badly broken. He could see her wince and could feel her shudder. He heard her whimper as her leg went over the edge and down.