by Kevin Miller
For junior officers like her, opportunities to handle Cape Esperance in the SCS surrounded by surface contacts and under the captain’s watchful eye, to learn and make good decisions under pressure, were rare. And once past the shoal, the plan was to transit around Luzon into the Phil Sea and open water—fewer challenges, more boredom. Right now, the action for an aspiring Surface Warfare Officer was topside on the bridge, and in CIC…anyplace but here in Central Control, her ear-splitting personal hell. She lamented that she wasn’t scheduled on the bridge watch team. Damn XO!
Four bells sounded on the 1MC: 1400. Two hours of the afternoon watch complete with two more to go. Ugh.
Returning to CCS, Ensign Manning made a log entry: “Answering all-ahead one-third bell for 7 knots; steaming as before.” Sigh.
Eight decks above on the busy bridge, Captain Ron Thompson studied the boats he saw off the starboard bow as they emerged from the mist. Bancas by the look of them, he thought. He focused his eyes. What are they doing?
He grabbed the binoculars by his bridge chair and found the boats. If they weren’t just wallowing in the swell, they were maneuvering in an unusual manner. He then saw two of the bancas collide. Who the hell are these guys? The Keystone Cops?
Thompson turned to his Officer of the Deck, Lieutenant Hal Wagner, a mustang with lots of shiphandling experience. “Hal, look at these knuckleheads…I don’t know what they’re doing.” Thompson picked up the phone and dialed his XO in the Combat Information Center below.
“XO, sir.”
“Mike, do you have the contacts zero-four-five at about 4,000 yards?”
Lieutenant Commander Mike Eddins answered him. “Yes, sir, looks like a nest of fishing boats about 2,000 yards off the bank. North of them are a few bigger boats that we think are Chinese. Trying to get a positive ID on all.”
“These banca boats off our bow are all over the place, and I just saw one run into another. No real factor but we’re gonna come left a few and give them a wider berth. Yeah, I see the boat to the north, a trawler. Have you got emissions on him?”
“Yes, sir, and another is north of that contact.”
“Roger, can’t see him yet with this mist. We’re gonna come left now, but please recommend a heading to stay 3,000 yards from the larger boats, especially if Chinese.”
“Aye, aye, sir, I’ll send it to the OOD.”
“Very well,” Thompson said as he cradled the receiver and called to his OOD. “Mister Wagner, let’s come left ten degrees, please.”
“Aye, aye, sir, coming left ten degrees,” Wagner replied, and then repeated the orders to the Conning Officer who then repeated them to the helm in a familiar and ancient seafaring ritual of verbal command, verbatim acknowledgment, and physical action.
“What’re they doing?” a young Quartermaster standing near Thompson asked himself. Thompson saw where he was looking and followed his eyes. Forward of the forecastle, both sailors standing force protection watch on the .50 cal mount were down, one rolling on the deck and the other kneeling next to a bollard. Both appeared to be in great pain.
“What the fuck?” Thompson muttered, and he turned toward Wagner to find out.
Just then, an alarm squealed and the stunned bridge team looked at each other in confusion. The Chem/Bio alarm? Is this some kind of drill?
Thompson looked back at the sailors on the bow, one of whom was no longer moving.
“Sound general quarters! Activate the emergency countermeasure water washdown system!”
As soon as the words left Thompson’s mouth, he felt headache pain worse than any migraine he had ever experienced. And he couldn’t catch his breath. Others on the bridge were convulsing and struggling, falling to their knees and gasping for air, their eyes showing confusion—and fear. Thompson grabbed the sound-powered phone to Combat in an effort to have them conn the ship out of this unseen danger. He could only croak out the words “left full…” before he was overcome with excruciating pain. He thrashed about on the deck under the Captain’s Chair in agony, exerting great effort to take just one breath, thinking about nothing else.
Below the bridge in Combat, the watch team members who huddled over their scopes in the darkened and cool space seemed to seize up in unison as the ventilators delivered the deadly vapor into the ship. At least the washdown system was activated. Inside the ship, hundreds of sailors going about their normal duties were gripped by a sudden sensation of pain and drowning. They noticed one another as they fell but were unable to help each other or even blurt out a warning as their survival instincts drove them to somehow take one more breath.
Chief Tobin, who had come up as a Gas Turbine Technician, was speechless when the garbled order to activate the emergency water washdown system was received from the bridge. Conditioned by his training, he activated it at once. His bored and preoccupied ensign was now focused.
“Ma’am, emergency countermeasure washdown system activated on orders from the bridge. I don’t know why—unless it’s the real thing.”
Isabel put down her smart phone as Chief Tobin monitored the gauges. With the chief expecting an answer, she picked up the sound-powered phone to the bridge. She heard no answer. She tried to call them on the bitch-box. Nothing.
She then tried Combat where her roommate Abby was on watch, having all the fun. She waited longer than usual for an answer. Hearing no response, she turned to Tobin in concern.
“No answer from the bridge or Combat,” she whispered, careful not to alarm the others.
Cape Esperance drove ahead at 7 knots on her assigned track, a gentle spray now covering the ship as the washdown system bathed it in seawater to remove whatever agent she had encountered. However, no humans on the bridge or in Combat controlled it, and over eighty percent of her crew was dead or dying. There were pockets of safety deep inside the ship, and one of them was Central Control where Ensign Manning was the senior member of the watch team.
“Ma’am, something’s not right up there,” Tobin said in an effort to prod his ensign into action. With a realization born of fear and concern, Isabel gave her first order. “Secure ventilation. Secure ventilation!”
“Secure ventilation, aye—ventilation to Engine Rooms One and Two secured. Securing habitability zones forward, midships, and aft.”
“Nobody leaves this space. Check this space for MOPP gear or masks. How many watchstanders do we have here?”
“About six, ma’am, including us, and ten each in the main engine rooms, including the rovers.”
“Call and check on them, and check if anyone answers in aft steering.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.” The chief turned to his leading petty officer as Isabel checked the engine indications and rudder position. Still set for 7 knots and both rudders were left 5-degrees after a small course correction a few minutes earlier. On the Voyage Management System she noted Cape Esperance passing through 350. Checking the time, she knew they were in the vicinity of the shoal, and it dawned on her that the ship may not be under command.
Minutes passed and there were no 1MC announcements, no new orders to the helm, and no answer. Isabel’s thoughts were of Abby. Is she okay? Did we really get slimed? With what? Do we have enough antidotes aboard? Who? Why?
Chief Tobin returned with his report.
“Ma’am, we have CBR suits for everyone, some SCBAs and plenty of EEBDs. We can outfit a runner to check topside, but recommend we maneuver clear of any contamination before we breach the space. And Petty Officer Brister is on station as helmsman in aft steering, just him. The others are down.”
Tobin stepped closer to Isabel and spoke in a low tone. “Ma’am, you are the only officer in engineering and maybe the only one aboard that’s alive… standing by for your orders to the helm.”
Isabel blinked at him as it sank in. Cape Esperance was steaming into the unknown at 7 knots and not under command, but she and the snipes in engineering could control her from CCS as long as required, and Brister in aft steering could turn the rudders. She kne
w the ship was heading north. To her east—right—was shoal water… But who knew what was around them? She formed a plan.
“Okay, Chief, we’re gonna get out of here. Get me comms with Petty Officer Brister.”
Chief Tobin grabbed a sound-powered phone set and handed it to Isabel, who spoke into the transmitter. “Aft steering, Central Control.”
“Aft steering, aye,” Brister answered at once.
Isabel took a breath. “Petty Officer Brister, this is Ensign Manning—and I have the conn. On my mark I want you to take steering control.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Brister answered. Isabel sensed he was unsure.
She looked at the bulkhead clock and saw the sweep second hand approach 12 and again depressed the switch. “Three, two, one, mark! Rudders Amidships!”
“Rudders amidships, aye,” Brister answered, and after he manipulated the rudder controls, he called. “Ma’am, my rudders are amidships.”
“Very well,” Isabel answered.
“What’s your plan, ma’am?” Tobin asked.
“We’re gonna pivot west, then sprint for five minutes. Get ready.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
On her computer screen Isabel pulled up the VMS and, after a quick review of the track, saw only minor course changes since before the afternoon watch.
With the sailors in CCS waiting, she took a breath. “All back full!”
At that, Chief Tobin and the others swung into action.
“All back full, aye! Engines making turns for back full!”
Isabel and the other braced themselves as the deck pitched forward from the sudden decrease in momentum. She watched the VMS speed readout count down, and at one knot gave her next order.
“Right engine – ahead full!”
With one shaft backing and the other pushing, the cruiser pivoted in the sea like a teen maneuvering a skateboard. The gyro repeater arced to the right, and Isabel assessed the rate of change. Now.
“All ahead flank!” she boomed, and the ship shuddered as both screws bit into the sea and propelled it forward. The compass settled on 265, and Isabel ordered Brister to maintain 280. She hit her wristwatch stop feature, and realized she hadn’t been logging her own orders to the helm. The turbine engine whine permeated the compartment.
Are we heading into passing traffic? Is there a bank or shoal to the west we could run aground on? Isabel did not know and could not know as Chief Tobin tried in vain to get anyone topside to answer on any circuit. She had to get the ship clear, and her best guess was all Cape Esperance had at the moment by way of navigation.
Cape Esperance was now on an even keel and accelerating blind to the west at over 30 knots inside a South China Sea that was always choked with surface traffic. The deck below their feet steadied out to a gentle pitch as the ship bounded through the waves.
Isabel sensed on her the uneasy eyes of the young snipes, no older than she was, as they waited. Theirs was a desperate run to what they hoped was clear air, and they still didn’t know the situation of the crew—their friends—on the decks above them. And she, Isabel Manning, was in charge, less than a year from her commissioning.
She watched the VMS, as they all did, in their high-pitched metallic cocoon, for the moment safe from whatever evil was on the other side of the bulkheads. She knew what she had to do, and turning to Chief Tobin, she lowered her voice.
“Chief, after we finish this run, I’m going topside, and I want one man with me. We’ll go dead in the water and put on the two chem/bio suits. Want a guy, a big guy.”
“I’ll go with you, ma’am.”
“No, Chief, want you here and in charge. We’ll have everyone don a gas mask before we go through the hatch, and you can dog it down after we leave. We’ll either call you when all clear or come back.”
“Won’t you be contaminated?”
Isabel considered his words. He was right. It would be a one-way mission.
“Yeah, well, we’ll go to the bridge and assess, and get a radio call off to…. I don’t know. Who should we call?”
Tobin gave her a hard look. “Ma’am, that topside stuff is all yours, I just keep the engines running.”
Isabel nodded as she realized the truth in his words. While she knew enough to be dangerous, none of the snipes around her had ever spoken on a radio frequency. She had wanted to be back in navigation and operations, and she had gotten her wish. Both were now her show.
“Okay, I’ll figure it out. Williams…he’s a big guy, and I may need some muscle power. I want to take him.”
“You gonna ask him, ma’am?”
“No, you are going to order him,” Isabel answered, her eyes locked on her chief, both knowing what she was asking.
Tobin nodded, turned to the group, and bellowed, “Williams! Break out a chem/bio suit and get in it. You’re going topside with the ensign. Salazar and Bennett, help him.”
As the sailors set about their tasks, with a wary Seaman Williams not sure why he was chosen for this, Isabel noted the time. One minute to go.
They had been steady on their present course and speed for the past two minutes—the equivalent of a mile—and the initial acceleration and deceleration after she had given the order would account for another mile. Close enough, and once on the bridge, she could at least steer Cape Esperance clear of additional dangers. She gave the order.
“All stop.”
Chief Tobin manipulated the throttles a second time. “All stop, aye… Ma’am the engines are at idle, prop pitch neutral.”
“Very well,” Isabel replied as the turbines’ rotation slowed and the cruiser coasted to a stop. She fought to remain calm as she donned the chem/bio suit, wondering what she and Williams would find topside.
