Final Bearing

by George Wallace

  Ward looked over at Bill Ralston, sitting in front of the BCP. The man was holding on with both hands and his skin had a peculiar green tinge to it. He clutched his legs around a trashcan, mute indication of the submariner’s weakness for seasickness. Ward felt sorry for the suffering chief, but times like these came with the job.

  “Chief, raise the BRA-34.”

  Ralston nodded and let the trashcan settle back onto the deck at his feet. He quickly rose, flipped the switch to raise the mast, and plopped back down hard. He dropped his face into the trashcan, his shoulders heaving pitifully as he retched.

  “Radio, put me on the freq for area ASW operations, secure voice,” the skipper ordered.

  After a minute, Doug Lyman answered.

  “Conn, Radio. You’re on the freq. Skipper, ESM reports picking up a sonobuoy uplink signal. There’s for sure a P3 out here looking for us. Or for somebody.”

  Ward scooted around Durgan and stumbled on the unsteady deck to the back of the periscope stand. He dropped onto the stool and grabbed the red radio handset. He grasped a pipe stanchion and held on as he jammed himself into the corner to fight the pitch and roll as he pushed the talk button.

  “This is Spadefish calling P-3 in op area Charlie Three Delta, over.”

  “Spadefish, this is Papa-Victor-Four.” The reply was almost instantaneous. “Thought that was you we had on the DIFARs. What are you doing out here? We haven’t seen you since that emergency surface a couple of months ago.”

  “Papa-Victor-Four, glad to se you guys again. We’re conducting a classified surveillance op and I need some assistance. Do you have contact on a freighter about five miles from me?”

  Pruitt looked back at Sheppard, who nodded affirmatively.

  “Yep. We’re painting him now. Really getting tossed around in that crap down there.”

  Another wave slammed Ward back into the corner. He got himself steadied somewhat before he talked again.

  “Yeah, tell me about it. Can you get an ISAR picture of him?”

  The Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar was designed to take detailed radar pictures of Soviet warships and do it while the P3 was flying outside the warship’s anti-aircraft missile range. It used radar imaging. It worked just as well at night or through clouds as it did on a bright, sunny day. The pictures were so good that details as small as a foot long could be seen. Papa-Victor-Four could snap a few pictures of the Helena K without anyone on the rogue freighter even knowing there was a plane flying above her through the soupy, thick cloudbank.

  “No problem,” Pruitt answered. “Just consider us your friendly neighborhood ‘Fotomat.’ Who do we deliver these to…or do you want to drive in and pick them up?”

  “No, thanks! Can you get them to John Bethea at JDIA?”

  Pruitt had heard of the agency. He just wasn’t sure what it was or what it did or what Spadefish’s business might be with them. He did what the skipper requested.

  “Sure. We’ll downlink to the TSC and have them landline them. This Bethea guy should be looking at some nice shapshots of your freighter in an hour.”

  He couldn’t help but wonder why the sub was tailing this particular boat so tightly. Or what interest the JDIA had in the freighter that necessitated Spadefish wallowing around down there in that mess. It wasn’t his job to ask such questions.

  “Much obliged.”

  “Just another satisfied customer.”

  Pruitt banked the big, ungainly bird and brought it on a course parallel to the Helena K. He looked over his right shoulder back to the radar operator.

  “Shep, snap some pretty pictures of this guy as we fly by. I’ll do a pass down his starboard, then across his stern, up his port side, then across the bow. Get as many shoots as you can.”

  Kevin Sheppard glanced up from staring at his radar picture and flashed a grin and a thumbs-up.

  “Tell ‘em to smile and say, ‘Sex!’ I’m snappin’ pictures for the yearbook.”

  Down below, Ward held on tightly as another wave washed over the scope and tossed the sub onto its side. The bubble inclinometer, mounted on a brass plate above the front of the periscope stand, read twenty degrees at the bottom of the roll. Durgan pitched back from the scope. His tight grip on the handles kept him from being thrown across the control room. He glanced at Ward and calmly said, “’Scope’s under.”

  Ward nodded and spoke into the handset.

  “Papa-Victor-Four, can you stay on station and help us track this sucker through the Op Areas? I’m afraid in this weather we’ll lose him and track off onto someone else we’re not supposed to be following.”

  “Don’t see why not,” Pruitt answered. “We have seven more hours of on-station time. We’re supposed to be finding some Japanese sub that’s hiding out here but we don’t show him anywhere nearby. I’d have to hit his sail with a buoy to find him in this crap now. Meteorological reports call for it to get progressively worse. Just don’t expect us to be late for happy hour at the officer’s club.”

  Ward looked around the control room. Ralston was head down in his trashcan. He was sharing it with Seaman Cortez. Master Chief Mendoza strapped himself in the diving officer’s chair and was using every trick he knew to keep Spadefish at periscope depth and to keep the churning seas from sucking her to the surface. The helmsman and planesman were pushing and pulling their control yokes as the sub rose and fell inside the waves. The quartermaster and the fire control technician were sharing their own trashcan over behind the plot table. The ventilation fans had the air moving just enough to keep the stench at a barely tolerable level.

  The crew could put up with this for a few hours but the constant pitching and yawing sapped their strength. It was near impossible for them to rest. The seas would toss them from their bunks. Cooking was impossible. That was just as well for most of the crew. Food was the very last thing they wanted to think about. There was the ever-present danger of a wave catching someone off-balance and tossing him into a piece of equipment or a sharp edge, or sending someone plummeting down a ladder.

  They had had enough injuries for one run. They had to get deep where the water was calm.

  Ward needed help and there was nothing to lose by asking for it.

  “Papa-Victor-Four, request you ask TSC to task a hot turnover for you. JDIA will authorize. It will take fifteen hours to clear the area and maybe weather will be better by then.”

  Pruitt listened to the sub skipper’s voice. The guy sounded worried, tired and beat-up. The pilot was glad he wasn’t down there. Not that this bird was giving them a calm, smooth ride through the swirling clouds, but it wasn’t the heaving and tossing the sub was getting.

  “Roger, Spadefish. We’ll ask,” he answered. “It may take a little time. We’ll drop an SUS when we have an answer, then again before we go off station.”

  An SUS, or Sound Underwater Signal, was a small bomb-shaped device the P3 could drop into the ocean near the sub. Once in the water, it sent out a loud, coded, acoustic signal that a sub could hear on its sonar from a distance of several miles.

  “Roger. Going deep. Spadefish out.”

  From the tremor in his voice, it sounded as if the skipper might be taking a punch or two in the gut as he spoke. Pruitt reached across and tapped Dalton on the arm.

  “You take the bird. I’m going back to grab a cup of coffee and a sandwich. Want something?”

  “Not right now. I’ll get lunch in a bit. There’s no point in offering those guys down there anything either.”

  He nodded downward, where the sea boiled angrily below the cloud cover. Pruitt shook his head sympathetically and headed on back to get his sandwich.

  29

  Jose Silveras leaned back and smiled contentedly as the gray box on his desk hummed away. This new computer the Norteamericanos had supplied his department now made his job so much easier and his alternate pursuits so much safer and effective. All he had to do was sit back in his desk chair and sip strong coffee as he watched the computer do all the tas
ks that El Presidente’s government required of him. The work for which he received the few pesos they paid him each week. He had once labored away over files for days to perform the same tasks this machine accomplished in mere minutes. It was a marvel.

  The computer ground away, digesting innumerable bits of mundane data for the government bureaucracy. Hidden deep in the microchips of its inner workings, the machine was crunching away on another task. One infinitely more important and dangerous. What was it that pimply-faced gringo computer technician had called it? “Working in background.” If the kid had known what task Silveras’ computer was accomplishing “in background!”

  While he moved boring government files around, the machine was searching cyberspace for specific and vital information required by El Jefe. It was churning, electronically sifting through file drawers, rifling through bank records, reviewing shipping manifests, doing all the work and taking all the risks that Silveras once had to face in person.

  An icon popped up on his screen with a faint “ding” sound. To anyone watching, the innocuous little lightning bolt wouldn’t mean anything, and, unless they knew the special keystrokes, no one would ever be able to find out.

  Old habits die hard. Silveras looked around his cramped little office to make sure before he touched the keys. No one was anywhere around. He was all alone. With a few keystrokes and a quickly entered password, he was looking at a long list of files that contained any of the search words El Jefe had requested.

  So, Senor Holbrooke was planning a little trip to Europe. That was something El Jefe would be interested in. It looked as if the banker was moving money…a great deal of money…from his personal bank accounts. Very interesting indeed.

  Silveras read through the files carefully, looking for anything else that might jump out at him, all the while committing every detail to memory. Once he was certain he would forget nothing, that he had gleaned all he needed from the documents, he closed the special program, stepped out of his office into the narrow hallway and locked the door behind him.

  He had developed quite an appetite. It was time for an early lunch and a special phone call.

  Bill Beaman squirmed around in the web seat. He tried to find some reasonably comfortable position. The C-130’s massive turbo-props roared at what seemed to be just inches from his ears. He would rather bed down for a month in the roughest jungle, the most barren desert terrain, than have to ride for any length of time on one of these pregnant albatrosses. It didn’t matter how many times he made these trips. There was no way to make the flight more endurable. Between the noise, the cold, and these damned seats, there was no way he could find sleep.

  Beaman stared in awe at Dumkowski, seated across from him. The man was sleeping peacefully. A string of drool dangled at one corner of his mouth.

  These missions all started the same. Unending hours of sitting on a C-130’s canvas benches, facing his team, going over every detail in his mind, imagining everything that could go wrong. There were always the questions. Who would get hurt? Who wouldn’t be coming back at all? What could he do to make it more likely that he could bring them all home safe? Would they accomplish the mission?

  Impossible questions to answer, but impossible to ignore. And that’s why they swirled about in his head the whole way as he tried to wiggle into some position that would give him some rest.

  Chief Johnston plopped down beside Beaman. He had to yell to make himself heard over the continual roar of wind and airplane engines. As usual, he seemed to read Beaman’s mind.

  “Worrying yourself sick again, Skipper? How many times do I have to tell you, it don’t help?” Johnston grinned and slapped the SEAL Lieutenant Commander on the knee. “Besides this one is gonna be a cake walk. Just a little stroll in the park.”

  Beaman managed a tired, wan smile and yelled back.

  “Sure thing, Chief. I’m not worrying,” he lied. “Just a walk in the park.”

  “Checked everyone’s gear. Everything’s ready. No last minute glitches, so far. Talked to the aircrew. Twenty minutes to the drop zone. Forecast for unlimited visibility. Winds over the zone are five to seven knots from the southwest. Be like dropping in at your mother’s for dinner.”

  Beaman smiled a little more.

  “Oh, so you’ve tried my mother’s biscuits. Best secret weapon we have. Better‘n depleted uranium. Those bastards are guaranteed to pierce any armor known to man.”

  Johnston grinned back and slowly stood, bracing himself against the slight sway of the aircraft.

  “About time to roust the troops. We need to start getting saddled up for the jump.” He walked down the fuselage of the plane, waking the other team members, mostly with the toe of his boot. There were only a total of six men this time. The vast cargo bay would have been cavernously empty if theirs had been the only mission for this bird. Instead, they were little more than a minor detour. The C-130 would continue on to Bogotá with a cargo of critical military supplies. That trip served as a nice cover for the SEAL drop. With the security leaks from the last trip down here and the resulting ambush, Beaman was mighty thankful for the cover story.

  The jumpmaster tapped Beaman on the shoulder.

  “Time to go!” he yelled over the noise of the turbines and pointed aft toward the huge cargo door.

  Beaman rose stiffly, stretched, then strapped on his equipment. He double-checked every piece. He cross-checked every piece of Chief Johnston’s gear before Johnston inspected his, each man following the usual pre-jump ritual. Wouldn’t be good form to forget to fasten the chute harness or to have the ripcord wrapped around a strap. That kind of thing was difficult to fix while plummeting to the ground like a dropped rock.

  The six men walked aft and lined up in front of the cargo door at the rear of the airplane. The jumpmaster talked briefly into his helmet intercom then pushed a button on the starboard bulkhead. The door slowly rattled down, opening the back of the plane to reveal a star-studded night sky above them. Beaman looked out and could see the ground ten thousand feet below them. There wasn’t a light anywhere, only darkness, inviting them down.

  The little red light high up on the starboard side of the cargo door went out and the green one came on. The jumpmaster signaled the SEAL leader that it was time to go.

  Beaman casually walked out onto the end of the ramp and stepped off into nothingness. The rest of his team followed closely behind.

  Once out and falling, Beaman held the altimeter on his wrist in front of his face, watching it as he dropped through the night sky. It rapidly counted down until he was only a thousand feet above the ground, about the height of a typical television tower. Only then did he yank the “D” ring to deploy his main parachute and instinctively looked up to watch it unfurl above his head. The large, aerodynamically shaped canopy immediately filled with air, jerking him hard as it slowed his descent.

  Beaman could just make out the dark shapes of his team stacked above him, their forms outlined against the field of stars. He counted. One, two three, four, five. Good, all five chutes accounted for. He yanked on the harness to turn and steer his canopy for the drop zone, now coming up to the northwest. The rest followed as if they were a choreographed dance line.

  Beaman made a running landing almost precisely in the center of the little clearing. He tripped face first into thick, juicy mud. So that was why this space was cleared and open. They were coming down in a damned bog. He climbed to his feet and pulled in his chute as Johnston landed right beside him. He fell too.

  The chief rose, cursing roundly as the other four men dropped within a few feet of them. Johnston directed the team as they buried their jump gear and prepared to move out.

  “Skipper, we’re all ready to go…them that ain’t been swallowed up by this damn mud. We don’t need any camouflage. We look like we been rootin’ around like a bunch of hogs.” He slung away a handful of mud that he had scraped off the front of his suit. “I already sent the ‘safe arrival’ message and got a response.”


  “Okay, no sense hanging around here. We’ve got a mile of jungle to cross yet. And I’d like to get to those haunted ruins before daylight, just in case the damned ghosts around here get up with the chickens.”

  They were quickly lost in the thick overgrowth, leaving behind no signs at all of their ever having been there.

  Commander Jonathan Ward eased down at the wardroom table. Joe Glass sat to his right, busily attacking a huge omelet. They were all by themselves since the hour was still early. The rest of the officers were either on watch or still sleeping. This made it a good time for them to talk and turn over what was happening on the mission. Ward had spent the night in the control room, watching every move of the Helena K, as well as observing his own crew. Once he finished his big plate of eggs, Glass would spend the rest of the day in the control room while Ward worked and rested.

  Ward sipped from his coffee cup while his XO labored on his massive breakfast.

  “Sure you don’t want to try one of these, Skipper? Cookie is a magician with these frozen eggs. Best cheese and mushroom omelet this side of the Hotel Del.”

  Ward chuckled.

  “I see you got your appetite back once we got deep. We’re lucky we didn’t get somebody hurt up there.”

  Glass nodded, his mouth full of egg. He swallowed before he answered.

  “Yep. We were lucky. What’s happening with the weather by now? Any letup?”

  “Sonar shows that it’s backing around to the northeast. Looks like the front has passed. Sonar sea state is down to a three or so. We went up a bit ago for a look around. Still choppy, but calming, or we would have likely disturbed your beauty sleep when we got up there. Our friend is still ahead of us, still heading to the northwest.”

  Glass took a swig of coffee.

  “Good, we can get back to business. Our P-3 buddies still around?”

  Ward shook his head.

  “No, I sent them home about two o’clock this morning. Sonar returns are solid and we’re clear of the fleet exercise area, thank goodness. I didn’t figure we needed them anymore. No sense in making them miss their time in the rack if they don’t need to.”