Final Bearing

by George Wallace

  Glass stepped up onto the stand next to him.

  “Just crossed into the area, Skipper.”

  “All right, XO,” Ward said with a quick smile.

  Several times he had wondered if they would ever make it to where they were supposed to be. The old boat with her aging pains, the accident in the torpedo room, even the brief distraction of the odd transmissions they had intercepted seemed to all pile up. He had begun to consider the possibility of not being able to get to their assigned position in time to help Beaman and his men take out the target before Bethea decided to pull them out. That would have been an ignominious way for Spadefish to end her life. And it would have given the likes of Mike Hunsucker and Pierre Desseaux a reason to crow. All that aside, it also would have meant de Santiago could have continued making the deadly product bound for the States. That would have been the real tragedy.

  Looking to his left, Jon Ward spoke in a louder voice: “Officer of the Deck, man battle stations missile.”

  Beasley looked up from the chart he was reviewing and Ward imagined he could see a glimmer in the man’s eyes.

  “Man battle stations missile, aye, sir. Chief of the Watch, on the 1MC, ‘Man battle stations missile.’”

  Sam Bechtal jumped up from his seat and grabbed the yellow handle of the general alarm. When he pulled it through a short arc, the warning sounded loudly throughout the ship: “Bong! Bong! Bong! Bong!” He picked up the 1MC microphone and shouted, “Man battle stations missile!”

  The alarm, of course, was almost an afterthought. Everyone was already at his battle station, readying Spadefish to shoot her load of Tomahawk missiles. Unlike launching torpedoes, shooting Tomahawks required careful planning and several hours of work. There was no one jumping from his bunk, running excitedly through the sub to hurry to his station the way the movies usually portrayed such a procedure.

  Ward watched as his crew rolled into action. No wasted motion, no unnecessary talking, no missteps, simply professionals going quietly about their business, the way they had been drilled over and over.

  The captain turned to Beasley and said softly, “Okay Nav, lets go up and see what is on the roof. No sense in scaring the bejesus out of some poor fisherman.”

  “Yes sir,” Beasley answered. “We just completed a baffle clear. No sonar contacts. On course one-two-zero, depth one-five-zero feet, speed seven. Request permission to proceed to periscope depth for a look around.”

  Ward nodded and said, “Proceed to periscope depth for a look around.”

  “Diving Officer, make your depth six-two feet,” Beasley ordered.

  Spadefish’s deck visibly angled up as Beasley squatted to raise the periscope. Ray Laskowski, sitting in the Diving Officer’s chair, reeled off the depth changes in a calm monotone.

  “One hundred feet. Nine-five feet. Nine-zero feet…”

  Beasley gazed through the periscope as he stepped in a slow circle, “dancing with the fat lady.” He could see nothing but black. Occasionally a streak of florescence would flash through his field of vision. It reminded Beasley of tracer fire he had once watched in the sky during a night exercise off San Diego. Still, it was mostly only blackness he watched through the eyepiece. The only way he could tell which direction he was looking was by feeling what his butt was hitting as he circled.

  As he heard Laskowski say, “Six-four feet,” Beasley finally saw the darkness broken with streaks and splashes of dirty-gray white. He shouted “Scopes breaking!” The deep black of the ocean was replaced by a star-studded sky. The light of a glorious quarter moon caused the calm sea’s surface to shimmer a deep, silvery gray. Beasley quickly whipped the scope around in a 360-degree arc and reported, “No close contacts!”

  Normal conversation resumed in the control room as everyone went back to the business of preparing to shoot.

  Beasley made several slow circles with the ‘scope, carefully searching the sea surface for running lights, the sky overhead for aircraft, looking for any black shapes bobbing near enough to be in the way.

  Finally he said, “Skipper, made a careful search around. No contacts. Ain’t nobody out here but us fish.”

  Ward nodded.

  “Okay, Nav. Make your depth one-five zero feet. Get on launch course. Time to get this show on the road.”

  “Diving Officer, make your depth one-five-zero feet!” Beasley shouted. “Helm, come left to course one-zero-four.”

  The deck slanted downward again as Beasley snapped up the scope handles and lowered the scope into the well.

  Spadefish leveled out on depth and steadied on a course that pointed her bow almost directly at the spot on the Colombian coast the missiles would first cross. It was called the “landfall waypoint.”

  Ward stepped to the front of the control room. He faced the assembled team and cleared his throat before speaking in a loud voice.

  “Attention in the attack center. We will be launching a four-missile salvo, reloading, and launching a second salvo. We will then reload all tubes with Tomahawks and go to periscope depth. We’ll stand by there to see if any further missions are required of us. If any missiles fail, we will reload and shoot that mission as a single missile shot. Carry on.”

  Everyone turned back to his station. The excitement in the room was palpable. They were about to do what they had trained so thoroughly to do.

  Ward turned to Joe Glass and asked, “XO, are we ready?”

  Glass was standing between Stan Guhl, seated at the launch control panel, and Chris Durgan, seated at one of the fire control computers. Both of the young officers nodded their heads vigorously, but it was Glass who answered.

  “We’re ready, Skipper.”

  “Flood all tubes and make tubes one and two ready in all respects,” Ward commanded.

  Guhl passed the order down to Ralston in the torpedo room. There, he flooded seawater into the tubes, opened the outer doors for tubes one and two, then lined them up to be fired. Spadefish was equipped to fire only two of her four tubes nearly simultaneously. The outer doors on these two had to be closed before the other two tubes could be used.

  “All tubes flooded. Tubes one and two ready in all respects,” Ralston reported, fighting to keep his voice calm and businesslike, as if he shot off Tomahawks every morning before breakfast.

  Ward nodded and pulled a pre-printed three by five card from his breast pocket. Reading from the card, he said, “Firing point procedures for a four missile salvo launch, tube one first.”

  Beasley made one final check to make sure the ship was at the proper launch depth, speed, and course. He replied, “Ship ready.”

  Guhl checked that the missiles were ready to go and said, “Weapons ready.”

  Glass checked once more that the right missions were in the computer and the manual plot on the navigation table was set up. Once satisfied, he said, “Solution ready.”

  The control was deadly silent. No one there had ever before fired a weapon that would blow up things and likely kill people. The muscles on Guhl’s neck stood out as he tensed to “pull the trigger.” Glass unconsciously clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides.

  Seaman Cortez, the helmsman, belched loudly. The tension of the moment was broken and every man within earshot grinned.

  Ward, too, had a smile on his face as he ordered, “Shoot tube one.”

  Guhl flung the large, brass, firing lever to “standby” and shouted, “Stand by.” He flung the lever to “shoot” as he shouted, “Launch permissive!” to the people in the control room.

  Nothing happened. The room was quiet.

  The action had been set in motion. Down in tube one, the missile gyro came up to speed and the missile performed a series of internal checks, verifying it was ready to fly the ordered mission. When the checks were completed, interlocks switched, lining high-pressure air to the torpedo-tube flushing cylinder. The 1500-psi air forced the flushing piston down the cylinder, pushing high-pressure water up into the after part of the torpedo tube. Meanwhile, in t
he tube itself, the missile canister had opened a series of ports around its after part. The high-pressure water literally flushed the missile out of the canister and torpedo tube. It accelerated rapidly out of the tube and clear of the submarine. A lanyard, attached at one end to the missile and at the other to the canister, yanked taut and ignited the rocket motor attached to the tail of the missile. The missile roared up, out of the water and into the mostly-dark sky. The fiery lance of the rocket lit up the night like a Roman candle as it kicked the missile high into the starry sky.

  As the rocket engine burned out and dropped away, a sequence of events began that transformed the missile into what could best be described as a small robot airplane. An air scoop dropped open beneath the missile and two small, stubby wings scissored out from inside the missile’s body. The turbo-fan engine, now supplied with air from the scoop and ignited by a small explosive squid, came up to speed to give the missile power. The bird then dropped down almost to wave-top height and flew to the north, now beginning its pre-programmed flight.

  The bird in tube two quickly joined its mate in the air, circling instead to the south. The birds in tubes three and four followed a minute later. As the last missile transitioned to cruise flight, all four headed toward the Colombian coast, toward the landfall waypoint. Tiny antennas in their guidance systems locked in on NAVSTAR satellites in geo-synchronous orbit twenty-three thousand miles overhead. The birds made minor course corrections in response to the continuous GPS positioning information.

  They knew precisely where they were going. And there was no doubt what they would do once they got there.

  Back in the bowels of Spadefish, Bill Ralston and his crew were hardly finished. He shouted instructions at his reload parties. They were in a race to get the tubes readied and reloaded for the next launch. The canisters remaining in the torpedo tubes were jettisoned, pushed out of the tubes through the muzzle doors to sink slowly into the depths of the Pacific. With all the hardware out of the torpedo tubes, they were drained of seawater and checked for any damage or debris. Finally, the missiles that had been lined up behind each tube were slid into place, their complicated electronics connected, and the thick bronze breech doors were shut and locked once again.

  Ralston reported all four tubes loaded and ready. His team still didn’t rest. They positioned the third group of four missiles behind the tubes, ready for the next salvo to be loaded for use if needed.

  Four more Tomahawks were now ready to fly. The team on Spadefish once again stepped through the carefully choreographed sequence to send them winging toward de Santiago’s evil factory far inland.

  Not a man onboard the submarine had any qualms about what he was doing. The cheers that erupted throughout the boat when the last four birds were away confirmed it.

  The initial four missiles climbed steeply as they crossed the beach and headed purposefully inland. Using small downward-looking radars, each took a picture at pre-determined points in the flight plan and compared the returns with the expected radar pictures that had been stored in their memories. Each made ever-so-slight course corrections to bring them precisely on the planned route they were supposed to be following.

  As they flew deeper inland, two of the birds changed course to the south, while the other two veered more to the north. They soared through narrow mountain valleys and climbed over ridges as they climbed and dived to stay just above treetop level. Flying at a speed of mach 0.82, they whistled over villages and around towns, but mostly zoomed just above desolate jungle. There was practically no advanced warning when they finally arrived at the north and south ends of the target valley almost simultaneously.

  And once there, they did not hesitate.

  Lieutenant Commander Bill Beaman wearily lifted his head just above the rotten log that had been his mostly inadequate resting place for the past thirty uncomfortable hours. Nothing in the valley down there below him had changed.

  He crawled over closer to Johnston and whispered, “What do you think, Chief? They should have had those birds here by now. Do we stay here and risk them catching wind of us or do we bag it?”

  Johnston squinted in Beaman’s direction.

  “Aw, Skipper, we’ve come too far to bag it just yet. Why don’t we give it ‘til morning? We can get underway and out of their sites before daylight if it don’t start raining fire and brimstone before then.”

  Beaman knew his chief had the right idea. The longer his men stayed on position, the greater the possibility de Santiago’s men might stumble up on them. They had to have patrols wandering the jungle and his squad would be outnumbered. They were out of supplies as well as patience. They could not spend another day hunkered down here.

  He didn’t want to abandon the mission until they had seen it through. Not unless there was no other rational action. The price had been too high to quit now.

  Night or not, they could see the factory at full production in the valley. They had been able to bring in a tremendous amount of raw coca before Beaman’s men cut the supply route. Under the camouflage, dozens of men scurried between buildings as trucks backed up to loading docks to take on the newly manufactured product. Light poured through open doors. A radio was playing loudly. The irritating, tinkling music rose up the hillside. It was business as usual down there. Loads of coca leaves in one end, white death out the other.

  The team was bone-weary tired. So was Beaman. They had been on this mission far longer than they had planned. They had traversed great distances through trackless mountain jungles. They had fought a battle and lost teammates. They had even brought down a mountain. It had all been to arrive at this point. Now they were supposed to stay here to confirm that all the complicated calculations had come out right and that all the high-tech gizmos had worked correctly. If the missiles ever showed up.

  Bugs crawled all over him and the sweat stung his eyes. It had been for nothing. Frustration, anger, and plain old exhaustion were getting the best of him. His men were feeling it, too.

  Beaman cocked an ear toward the sky.

  Nothing. Still as death. The tinkly music, the happy shouts of some of the workmen in the factory jawing with each other, the buzz of the night insects all around them.

  LCDR Bill Beaman rolled over onto his back and watched the moon being swallowed up by a dark cloud. The stars were brighter, the moon mostly obscured.

  Then they were so bright they bathed the whole world in hot, white fire.

  The leading Tomahawk missile, coming in through the pass at the north end of the valley, snapped a picture of the terrain ahead of it just before reaching its target. It matched the digital picture it had stored in memory. It compared both pictures to a GPS plot in its memory bank. The missile’s electronic brain was satisfied. It had arrived over its correct target.

  A cover blew off the warhead section of the missile. It dropped hundreds of 2.2-pound bomblets as it flew over the factory complex. The bomblets fell through the camouflage, through the factory roof. They detonated with reverberating booms, destroying everything and everybody within range.

  The SEALs watched the last bomblet fall. The missile dived into the factory on a suicide mission. Its remaining fuel exploded, igniting a roaring fire that blazed out of control.

  The first missile was less than halfway through its attack when the second one, coming in low from the south, rolled in to launch its own bombing run. The third and fourth missiles arrived on the scene. The factory was a blazing, exploding inferno. A few of the workers ran wildly from the complex, screaming, disappearing into the jungle.

  The only other sounds were the continual explosions and the awful roar of the hellish conflagration.

  Bill Beaman watched in awe. He had not seen the Tomahawks approach. He had been watching for them. He knew they would be coming. He had jumped when the first bomblet exploded and shook the ground beneath him. Fire erupted all around him. It had not been that great an explosion. Others followed, the combined effect of the hundreds of bomblets adding up to a boom
that could be heard to wherever that bastard de Santiago slept.

  The rebel gunners stationed at both ends of the valley began firing wildly into the night sky. Assuming they were under attack from the air, they fired at a silent airplane. Their tracery laced through the night sky, adding to the general bedlam.

  Beaman grinned and nudged Johnston then raised himself up to get a better look at the destruction Jon Ward and his boat wrought from the west in the Pacific Ocean.

  “Do you believe that?” he whooped. “Whole damn thing is burning like crazy! Great!”

  Johnston grabbed Beaman and pulled him back down behind the log.

  “Skipper, get your ass back down. Wouldn’t be good form to get hit by a stray bullet from one of those crazy bastards shooting up in the air.”

  He exchanged a high-five with Beaman. Both men wore broad grins in the dancing light from the inferno that roared in front of them.

  By the time the second flight of missiles arrived, the factory complex was completely engulfed in flames. Those birds had little to do but add their own dose of destruction.

  Beaman whistled to his team to draw closer.

  “Come on, guys. Time to head outta here. It’s Miller time.”

  24

  Ward spun the scope around slowly, staring upward at the dark night sky. They were alone in this part of the southern Pacific. The shipping traffic tended to remain closer to the mainland and the fishing in these waters was hardly good enough to entice boats out this far. It was a beautiful night, though. The moon hung low on the horizon, paving a silvery trail to the west. The southern stars shown through occasional spaces in the few clouds that bounced along on the far horizon.