Chapter 4 / Page 4

Wong hit the biohazard klaxon. Instantly, special biohazard and watertight doors dropped inside the 404. A seal was created around the storage and elevator rooms, where the casks were stored. Anyone who remained in the biohazard area was a walking dead man. Once the biohazard doors dropped inside the 404, they could not be raised again until they returned to their homeport. Wong was trying to save the rest of his boat. He had no idea how many men he had just condemned.

Incredibly, the Iraqis started shooting. Three Iraqis opened up with automatic weapons—as if steel core bullets could cripple the death spewing from the cask. It was panic fire. The bullets went wide, walking across the deck and ricocheting into the men still standing. Eventually, something important came under fire as well. A submarine has a variety of sensors in the periscopes jutting like misshapen sticks from the sail. The main periscope was shattered by a lucky shot, and all crew on deck that night were cut down.

The Iraqi crane operator yelled for someone to grab an axe. With the clattering of automatic weapons, no one heard him. If there had been enough light, they would have recognized the atomization of the chemical weapon. It began to drift like a cloud over the open elevator shaft, slowly settling towards the deck and seeping into the bowels of the submarine. Fright overrode discipline, and no one noticed the coating of death drifting towards the Iraqi boat in the aftermath of the accident.

Realizing no one could hear him, the crane operator found an axe and chopped through the steel cables holding the ruptured cask. The lines snapped like angry snakes hoping for one more kill before sliding away from the Iraqi barge. The cask could not have landed more squarely on the elevator—still leaking its green death. The cables attached to the hook swung around in a vicious tangle, and the elevator platform continued to lower into the hull of the boat. What little chance the men inside the biohazard chamber had for life ended as the cables and cask snagged the machinery necessary to bring the elevator back up and close the hull.

The engines on the barge surged to life. One of the Iraqi sailors had dropped his AK-47. He was clawing at his air mask. Somehow, he ripped it off, gagging for air his lungs could no longer process. His lungs were disintegrating with each beat of his heart, and soon it, too, would be nothing more than ruptured tissue. His crewmates delivered the same fate they had rendered to the Chinese. Rifle bullets ripped into his body. The bullets’ impact shoved him over the side. Less than ten seconds had transpired since the cask first ruptured.