Final Bearing

by George Wallace

  “Okay, Eng. Anything change?” Ward asked as he stepped up onto the short platform around the periscopes and looked at the sonar displays. Nothing there.

  “No, sir. Still no contacts,” Kuhn answered.

  Ward nodded.

  “Alright. Proceed to periscope depth.”

  Standing beside the navigation plotting table, Earl Beasley nudged Stan Guhl and nodded toward where Kuhn was about to grab the periscope.

  “Watch this, Weps,” he whispered, an odd grin on his face.

  Kuhn snapped the red overhead control ring to the raised position and squatted to wait for the eyepiece to clear the deck. He slapped down the control handles and glued his eye to the eyepiece.

  “Dive, make your depth six-two feet.”

  Spadefish rose from the depths. Kuhn kept his eye pressed on the eyepiece and watched the deep blue of the depths slowly turn to lighter turquoise, then to sky blue. He spun the scope around in two complete circles.

  “No close contacts.”

  “Thirty seconds to the twenty-two hundred broadcast,” Radio Chief Lyman reported over the 21MC. “Request you raise the BRA-34.”

  Kuhn stepped back from the scope for a second to give the order to raise the radio antenna.

  “Chief of the Watch, raise the BRA-34,” he said and glanced toward the navigator.

  Beasley and Guhl erupted into laughter.

  “Nav, that’s beautiful,” Guhl said between guffaws. “Haven’t seen the old shoe-polish-on-the-eyepiece trick in a long time. Old Davey looks like a one-eyed raccoon.”

  Doug Lyman’s voice over the 21MC speaker interrupted the hilarity.

  “Conn, radio. In sync on the broadcast. We have traffic aboard and JDIA requests the skipper come up on secure voice.”

  Ward was studying the sonar display and had not noticed the practical joke that had been played on Kuhn. He grabbed the microphone and answered, “Patch it to the conn. I’ll talk to him from out here.”

  Joe Glass stepped onto the conn and asked, “Skipper, anything on the broadcast?”

  “Just a second, XO. Getting it now. Bethea is on secure voice. I’m getting ready to talk to him.”

  Just as Ward finished speaking, the 7MC speaker squawked. It was Chris Durgan, back in the maneuvering room.

  “Conn, maneuvering. We have loss of ‘open indication’ on the port main coolant valves. Request the Engineer lay aft.”

  Ward grimaced as he handed the red handset to Glass. Was this old boat going to hold together long enough for them to complete this mission?

  “XO, you talk to Bethea. I’ll relieve the Engineer since I have a better handle on what’s happening out here.” He turned to Guhl. “Okay, Eng, head aft and find out what’s going on back there. I’ve got the conn.”

  Ward stepped up to the number two periscope as Guhl disappeared out the back of the control room. He spun the scope around until he faced the eyepiece. As he leaned over to look out the scope, Earl Beasley shouted, “Skipper! Hold on a minute!”

  Ward looked quizzically at his Navigator.

  “What is it, Nav?”

  “Let me take the scope. You shouldn’t have to do that.”

  “Okay, Nav. It’s all yours. Just get over here and keep an eye peeled for anything up above us.” Ward leaned over and said quietly, “You aren’t worried about a little shoe polish are you, Nav?”

  Beasley grinned sheepishly and said, “Okay, Skipper, you got me.” He was glad the skipper didn’t seem mad about the trick.

  Glass looked toward Ward and raised an eyebrow. He had the red handset firmly planted to his ear. He had been listening for several minutes. The pad of paper on which he had been taking notes was filled with scribbles.

  “Skipper, we got work,” he whispered, even though he was listening to Bethea. “New targeting being downloaded now. Have to launch tonight. Looks like an eight-bird mission.”

  Stan Guhl jumped over to the fire control system and started typing something on the keyboard. The computer screen in front of him began to scroll numbers and letters. What appeared to be gibberish was vital information to the missiles down in the torpedo room.

  Ward stepped over and looked at the plot. He grabbed the pair of dividers Beasley had left laying on the chart and measured the distance between their current position and the launch basket. He shook his head and looked over his shoulder at Joe Glass.

  “XO, you better tell Bethea if we’re going to get there in time, we’ll have to stop this chit-chat and go deep and fast.”

  Guhl looked up and said, “I’ve got the targeting onboard. Everything verified correct. I’m ready to go.”

  Ward laid down the dividers.

  “Okay, people, let’s get out of here. XO, say ‘good-bye’ to Bethea. Nav, lower all masts and antennas.” Then he remembered they had yet another problem with the old boat that was still pending. “Oh, and ask the Eng how fast we can go until he gets his little problem fixed. We need to move our butts.”

  When he glanced around the control room, Jonathan Ward couldn’t help but notice the determined looks on the faces of his crew. They were on the way to strike a blow for what was good and right. And, even if his boat wasn’t, his men were definitely ready.

  Serge Novstad, Rudi Sergiovski, and Philippe Zurko sat around the dinner table in the captain’s stateroom on the Helena K. The remains of the lobster dinner littered the table. The bottle of Chilean chardonnay was empty. The cognac snifters were charged with Napoleon brandy. The three leaned back and puffed on Havana cigars.

  Novstad sighed deeply, contentedly.

  “It’s good to be back out to sea again. I feel cleaner already, being away from that pest-hole of a port.”

  Sergiovski shook his head in agreement.

  “Da, it is good. Now if we only had some vodka instead of this brandy. That is a man’s drink.”

  Zurko merely sat back and listened to the banter. These hired mercenaries had no appreciation for his people or his homeland. The blood of Pizarro and the Conquistadores flowed in his veins and mixed with that of the ancient Inca emperors. His ancestors had ruled vast empires while the forbearers of these louts were still huddling around peat fires and chasing reindeer.

  He held his tongue, sucked on the cigar, and let them carry on their foolishness. They were a necessary irritation. For the good of the revolution. For the security of his and his family’s own future once El Jefe controlled all of their beloved country.

  Sergiovski glanced at the ship speed repeater mounted on the bulkhead beside Novstad. The polished brass case gleamed against the dark teak paneling. The digital read-out showed Helena K’s forward speed. The Russian sat up and squinted hard at the numbers.

  “Captain Novstad, that says we are only making twelve knots. Shouldn’t we be going faster?”

  Novstad took another sip of his brandy before he answered.

  “The underwater door mechanism has a small problem. They did not shut completely after we housed the Zibrus. An alignment problem, my engineer says. Until we get it repaired, this is as fast as we can go.”

  Zurko slammed down his snifter in exasperation.

  “You bloody fool! Don’t you understand this will set back the whole timetable? We must tell El Jefe at once.”

  Even before the words were out of his mouth, he was trying to figure a way to avoid making that call.

  “Take it easy. Have a drink.”

  “Why can’t just one thing go right?” Zurko sputtered. “Why must there always be complications that will only serve to ignite El Jefe’s temper? Do you not understand? He has severed heads and hung them on stakes for less.”

  Zurko seized the snifter and drained the rest of the brandy in one burning gulp. Why did these problems always seem to happen on his watch?

  Was someone conspiring against him?

  What had he done to anger God?

  23

  Dave Kuhn leaned back exhausted. He propped himself against the instrument panel, easing his tired muscl
es. His neck throbbed and his back ached from bending awkwardly over Bert Waters’ broad shoulders, trying to watch what the reactor operator was doing inside the drawer crammed full of electronic components. The narrow passage between the two rows of panels made viewing unwieldy. The oscilloscope and the digital voltmeter sitting on the deck between them were in the way. He didn’t dare move away. He had to watch the operation in progress.

  Waters looked back over his shoulder and spoke.

  “Eng, the waveform on the ‘scope looks good. What’s the next step?”

  Kuhn read from the heavy black technical manual he was holding in his sweating hands.

  “Says here if the waveform is good, we have an open primary detector in the reactor compartment. It says we have to shift to the backup. You should see a red lead on terminal J-202 and a white lead on terminal J-203.”

  Waters squinted into the drawer through his rimless eyeglasses.

  “Hmmm. Yeah. See ‘em.”

  “Okay. Swap the red one to terminal J-207 and the white one over to terminal J-208.”

  Waters grabbed a nut driver from his pocket and reached into the panel. In a few seconds he leaned back on his heels and grunted, “Done.”

  “Okay. Let’s check to make sure. The red one is now on J-207 and the white one on J-208?”

  Waters looked in the panel and nodded. “Yeah, Eng, I can take direction.” Neither took the banter seriously. This ‘reader/worker’ technique and double checking every step was a normal part of safely operating the reactor. They had both grown up in this environment and regarded it as a normal part of life.

  Kuhn read the next paragraph in the manual, his lips moving slightly.

  “Only thing left now is an alignment check next time we cycle the main coolant cutout valves. Button up the drawer and stow the test gear. I’ll give the skipper a buzz and fill him in.”

  Kuhn groaned as he rose, rubbing his back. He reached over Waters to grab the sound-powered phone. It was mounted on a small recessed panel outboard of the after row of instruments along with several other pieces of internal communications equipment. The passage between the two rows of instruments was so narrow there was no way to step around the kneeling Waters so he had to ignore the painful cramp in the muscles in his lower back.

  He selected the control room on the phone and spun the growler. Almost immediately he heard Ward’s gravelly voice say, “Conn, Captain.”

  “Captain, Engineer,” Kuhn said. “We have completed repairs to the valve position indication for the port main coolant cutout valves. We had to put the backup detector coils in service. If they go out, we’ll have to scram reactor and do an emergency reactor compartment entry to replace them.”

  He could hear the captain groan on the other end of the phone. An emergency reactor compartment entry was a major and uncomfortable procedure. The reactor operated inside a locked space, the reactor compartment. With the reactor critical and supplying power, the radiation levels in the compartment were high enough to cause a slow painful death from radiation sickness for anyone who entered. However, the radiation died off quickly once the reactor was shut down, so there was little danger from that happening.

  There were two real problems, though. For the people entering the compartment to work, the air temperature was equivalent to a very hot sauna and all the exposed metal was blistering hot to the touch. Contact with skin would cause instant and very painful burns. Just to make the job more uncomfortable, everyone had to wear heavy, protective, yellow anti-contamination suits and bulky emergency air-fed breathing masks, called EABs. Most people could only work for fifteen minutes before they had to come outside to cool off.

  The other problem was also related to time. With the reactor shut down, the only sources of power were the battery and the emergency diesel. This meant that Spadefish would be stuck at periscope depth for the entire time the repairs took while the diesel sucked outside air, and their speed would be limited to about three knots. At the same time, the rocking and rolling of the sub near the ocean’s surface added to the discomfort and danger for the people working in the reactor compartment.

  Ward hesitated for a second, pondering the possibilities.

  “All right, Eng. Get everything ready, just in case. Draw the parts from supply, write a repair procedure, brief everyone, but let’s hope we won’t need to do it before they finally cut this old girl up.”

  Kuhn answered smartly.

  “Roger that, Skipper. We’ll be ready if we need to do it. Reactor power limit now one-hundred per cent.”

  Ward turned to Beasley and ordered: “Officer of the Deck, ahead flank. Let’s get our asses on down the road. We’ve only got two hours to get into the box and I doubt those SEALs are interested in hearing our miseries.”

  Beasley winked and promptly got to work.

  Bill Ralston was a busy man and would continue to be for the next couple of hours. He had over sixteen years experience working in the torpedo rooms of various submarines and this was the first time he was going to shoot weapons in anger. And he was going to make damn sure they worked right.

  The four missiles already in the torpedo tubes were wired to the fire control system. Brass signs hung from each torpedo tube breech door. Large red letters on the signs said, “Caution! War Shot Tomahawk Missile Loaded.”

  The fire control technicians were making sure the system was talking to the missiles in the tubes. One of the men sat next to Ralston at the launch control panel between the two banks of tubes. He watched the lights on the panel and talked over the phones to his co-worker, sitting at the fire control panel up in the control room.

  So far, these birds were checking out fine. More missiles waited patiently in line to be loaded after the first four were out of the tubes and on their way. Ralston watched as two more sailors on his team hooked up a test device to each of these birds. The test set checked out all the circuits in the birds, almost as if they were already in the torpedo tubes and talking to the fire control system.

  Two of his torpedo men were checking out the emergency loading equipment, a simple but massive block-and-tackle system meant to move the behemoths by muscle power if the hydraulic missile loading system failed for some reason. Ralston had personally checked the hydraulic system, though. Hand-over-hand, checking every pipe and every valve. He had done the same thing for the high-pressure air and seawater systems, too.

  His team was ready. Ready to hurl one big handful of destructive might out those tubes and into the Pacific sky.

  Ralston felt his pulse quicken as he sighed deeply and went on back to look at the hydraulics one more time.

  Joe Glass stepped into the wardroom. His immediate thought was that this was not the wardroom he was accustomed to.

  Stan Guhl sat at a position in the middle of the table in front of a laptop computer. He was surrounded by quartermasters and fire control technicians; some banging away on computer keyboards, others plotting courses on charts that covered all the available vertical space in the room. Piles of paper, open manuals and half-empty coffee cups filled every square inch of the table’s surface.

  Glass glanced over Guhl’s shoulder at the image on the computer’s screen. It was a graphical simulation of a proposed missile flight plan.

  “How is it going, Weps?”

  Guhl looked up, rubbing his eyes as he answered.

  “Almost there. Way I have it figured, we’ll launch the first four birds and set up the flight plans so they all arrive on target almost simultaneously.”

  He hit a couple of keys. The screen shifted to a chart of the waters off Colombia with their launch basket outlined in red. The map continued over land to include the highland valley with its hidden factory. A dot marked the launch position for Spadefish while a large, ominous, black “X” marked the target.

  Guhl turned his face back to the screen, the colors reflecting off his intent face as he continued.

  “Watch this, XO. This is playing at times-ten speed now so every second of t
he simulation will be ten seconds of actual flight time.”

  As he spoke, he hit a key on the keyboard. A yellow line started from Spadefish’s launch position and made a large slow circle to the left. Three seconds later, a blue line started from the same point, then circled to the right, its arc just a little smaller than the first one’s had been. Five seconds later, a green line started and traced its own small circle to the left. Three more seconds passed then a purple line started, but it headed directly for the beach, the rough silhouette that marked the Columbian coast. Meanwhile, the other three colorful streaks had already stopped their circling and headed east, too, following the purple marker.

  Guhl glanced up at Glass.

  “I calculated a total of one-hundred twenty seconds to get all four birds in the air.”

  All the lines crossed the beach at the same time and continued their relentless progress toward the east, as if they were dutifully heading off to intercept the rising sun out there somewhere beyond the South American continent.

  “But this is an eight-bird mission,” Glass said dryly.

  “I know. There’s no way we can get them all in the air together. The first four wouldn’t have enough gas to reach the target if they had to stay around, circling to wait for the second four to get launched. I didn’t figure target alertment was too much of a problem here anyway.”

  Glass rubbed the stubble on his chin.

  “You’ve got a point there. All Beaman saw was a bunch of Stingers. Not much they can do with those babies once we light a fire under them. I’ll go tell the Skipper you’re about ready. Only about half an hour now and we’ll be on the spot.”

  The weapons officer turned back to the computer screen, hit the key again and watched the rainbow-hued lines as they once again appeared, circled and headed off into the night.

  Ward glanced up when his executive officer appeared. He had been sitting on the stool at the back of the periscope stand reading through the Tomahawk launching procedures by the dim red light that was hanging there. He could recite most of the manual from memory, but one more review wouldn’t hurt. The control room was dark except for a few muted red lights and the glow of the computer screens. Even those were covered with thick, dark-red plexiglass. It was important to protect both his and the Officer of the Deck’s night vision, just in case.