Final Bearing

by George Wallace

  He was having trouble finding breath. He repeated the call. He said a silent prayer that someone…anyone…was close enough to hear the radio’s weak signal.

  The radio behind Ward's head crackled as the scope broke the water. He could clearly hear Roddie Macallister's desperate plea for help.

  He could see the Helena K slowly circling the burning wreckage like a blood thirsty shark, the machine cannon on her main deck firing viciously into the defenseless hulk. It was an image he would not soon forget. Nor would he be able to forget the agonizing appeals of the wounded Coast Guardsman on channel sixteen, the sounds of machine gun fire in the background.

  There was only one thing to do and he knew they had to do it quickly.

  "Snap shot, sierra nine-two, tube one!” Ward shouted. “Set surface settings, high speed, Doppler enable in."

  What he was about to do was a calculated risk. The two ships were only a hundred yards apart. The torpedo could easily hit the wrong one. The weapon was set to go for the moving target; the one whose sonar return showed a Doppler shift. It was a risk Ward had to take. The pleading voice on the radio would have convinced him to go ahead even if nothing else had.

  Stan Guhl's fingers danced across the torpedo-firing panel as he talked to Chief Ralston down in the torpedo room. To Ward, watching the scene unfold above, it seemed to take forever. Twenty seconds passed. Guhl shouted, "Ready, snapshot tube one."

  Glass nodded and shouted to Ward, "Solution set."

  "Shoot tube one!" Ward ordered.

  He simultaneously felt and heard the surge of high-pressure air as the ADCAP torpedo was flushed out of the tube.

  "Normal launch, running in pre-enable!" Guhl shouted,

  "Conn, sonar. Hold own ship's unit running in high speed."

  The ADCAP was on its way.

  The freighter was steaming across the stern of the Cyclone now, hiding it from Spadefish’s view.

  "Good,” Ward muttered. “Just stay like that for a minute, you son of a bitch!"

  At this range, the torpedo had four minutes to run before it reached its target. Nothing to do but watch and wait. There was nothing Ward could do to make it get there any faster. He watched the computer simulation play out on the screen and looked through the periscope.

  He decided there was no sense in wasting any time. The closer Spadefish was to the wreck when the torpedo arrived, the quicker they could begin pulling survivors from the water and off whatever was left of the PC.

  "Ahead full. Make turns for fifteen knots," Ward ordered.

  The periscope started to buck against the force of the sea pushing against it. Ward looked aft and saw the scope was kicking up a high, white rooster tail. Normally that was a definite problem, but right now he really didn't care if the murderous scum saw them or not. His blood boiled as he thought of that cannon pounding away at the helpless sailors on the deck of the damaged boat.

  "Two minutes run time,” Guhl called out. “Torpedo in active search."

  The torpedo activated the sonar hydrophones in its nose. The active sonar pulses were tuned to search the water in a cone sixty degrees wide in front of the torpedo. It was essentially a fast, deadly bloodhound on a very long leash.

  Ward turned to Beasly and ordered, "Nav, have the search and rescue party and four riflemen stand by at the ops compartment hatch. And a gunner ready to go to the bridge. Get side arms for you and me." Beasly looked quizzically at the skipper. "As soon as that SOB is on the bottom, we're going to rescue all the survivors. I expect a few of the ones from the Helena K may be stupid enough to resist our help."

  The torpedo started receiving returns from its active sonar. The pulses were matched in its memory processor to the ones it expected to see from a surface ship. The returns showed Doppler, telling the torpedo its target was moving.

  It was satisfied. This was the target.

  "Detect! Detect!” Guhl yelled as he read the signals the torpedo was sending back to his computer screen. “Acquisition! Weapon is homing! Coming up in depth!"

  Ward pressed his eye to the periscope. Everyone else watched the video monitor.

  "Final arming sequence!" Guhl called out.

  Just seconds now.

  The torpedo ran up to a depth of thirty-five feet. The active sonar in the nose was pinging rapidly now. An electronic switch armed the electromagnetic detector. It tried to sense any large metal body nearby. A small, upward looking hydrophone listened for any sonar signal from directly overhead. When the torpedo was eight feet directly under the freighter, both the metal detector and the hydrophone saw what they were searching for. An electric pulse flashed through the firing circuit to the warhead detonator.

  As if in slow motion, the sea beneath the Helena K appeared to rise up, improbably lifting her midsection. Then the ocean fell out from under her, leaving her supported only from the bow and stern. An orange flash shot up the side of the dying drug runner. A tear started down by her keel and shot up either side. In the blink of an eye, the freighter broke in half and the bow and stern rose high in the air. The containers on her deck broke free of their lashings and plunged heavily into the water, heading for the bottom. The ship’s huge bronze screw still turned slowly as the stern section slid into the sea.

  The bow floated for a few more seconds, pointing almost straight up and bobbing gently like a huge cork. Slowly, it slid backward, disappearing beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean with barely a splash.

  A loud cheer broke out in the control room as soon as the torpedo detonated. It stopped almost immediately as the warriors watched the death throes of their enemy. Witnessing the demise of a ship, even one as evil and odious as this one, was a terrible thing. Good or bad, people were dying up there. Ward's crew instinctively sensed it was nothing to cheer about.

  When the bow disappeared, Ward shouted, "COB, broach the ship! Chief of the Watch, line up to put a low-pressure blow on all main ballast tanks."

  Ray Laskowski turned to Cortez and MacNaughton.

  "Full rise on the fairwater planes. Zero the sternplanes." Spadefish shot upward, held on the surface by her speed. "All ahead flank."

  She strained to race at top speed to where the sea battle had taken place, to rescue any survivors. Ward waited as the low-pressure blower forced air into the ballast tanks and shoved the seawater out. Laskowski was satisfied.

  "On the surface and holding, Skipper."

  Ward strapped on the holstered 9mm Berretta that Beasly handed him and rushed up the ladder to open the bridge hatch. Beasly and the rifleman followed.

  Ward slowed the sub as they approached the wreckage, coasting to a stop once they were almost touching the remnants of the Cyclone. The bullet-stitched hulk was barely afloat, streaming smoke from fires that were still burning inside. Bodies lay where they had fallen during the ambush. A battered group of ten men, beaten and stunned at the ferocity of the ambush, stood on the fantail waving wearily at Ward.

  "Search and rescue team, lay topside," Ward commanded.

  The hatch opened on the main deck a few feet aft of the sail and ten sailors poured out. Four stood watching the water with their M-16s at the ready. The rest pushed equipment up the hatch and laid it out.

  The last man up the hatch was Joe Glass. Ward shouted down to him.

  "XO, I'll bring us alongside. Get those men onboard and send a party over to search for any more survivors and to retrieve the bodies."

  Chief Macallister was the last one lifted over. There were no more. From a crew of twenty-eight, only ten would be coming home alive.

  Doc Marston had his hands full tending to the wounded. The wardroom and the mess decks once more became the emergency hospital. Cookie Dotson helped suture wounds and clean burns while Doc worked on Macallister's leg. His seemed to be the worst injury and no one could imagine how he was able to crawl the length of the deck and reach the bridge-to-bridge radio.

  With all the remaining Coast Guardsmen, both living and dead, aboard, Ward cast off the Cyclone and move
d over to check the debris left from the Helena K. One of his crewmen spotted someone floating, clinging to a piece of wreckage, calling drunkenly for help. He was big, blonde, and had an obvious Swedish lilt in his voice. Captain Serge Novstad offered no resistance as he was plucked from the water and rudely shoved down the hatch.

  They found no other survivors from the Helena K.

  The bridge announcing system speaker squawked.

  "Bridge, radio. Request the captain pick up the JA."

  Ward reached over and grabbed the handset.

  "Captain."

  "Captain, this is Chief Lyman. We are in contact with Coast Guard Station Port Angeles. They have a C-130 on the way out. ETA one hour. Cutter getting underway from Cape Flattery, ETA in twenty-four hours. They request we stand-by here."

  "Chief, tell them we have wounded onboard who need hospitalization. We will be making best speed to Cape Flattery. Also, tell them we have the Captain of the Helena K in custody. Name of Serge Novstad. Claims Swedish citizenship. They can have the slime ball just as soon as we get back."

  "Aye, sir."

  Ward looked down at the main deck. Everyone was below and the hatch was swinging shut. He turned to Beasly.

  "Well, Nav. Looks like we’ve done all we can do here. Let's head for home."

  “Aye, sir.”

  35

  Tom Kincaid watched as the police launch glided through the mist back toward the spot where he waited on the pier. It stopped alongside, its exhaust burbling gently in the clear water. Ken Temple was standing in the after cockpit and tossed Kincaid a line. He wrapped it a couple of times around a cleat on the pier.

  "What did you find?" the DEA agent yelled, even before the detective could get off the boat.

  "The guy was on the receiving end of some kind of automatic weapon. He had at least ten holes in him. The medical examiner’s man says it doesn’t look like he’s been in the water very long."

  Temple hopped up onto the pier while Kincaid reached out and grabbed his arm, giving the big man a lift up. Temple shook the rainwater off his bright yellow poncho, then reached into a pocket and pulled out a Ziploc bag that held a water-soaked man’s wallet.

  "He had this on him. It says his name is Bert Jankowski and lists an address in East Cromwell. That's just across the bridge, a couple of miles to the east. Nobody’s reported him missing so that sorta backs up the opinion that he’s only been in the drink a little while. I called from the boat and had ‘em send a black and white out to the address to give somebody the bad news, maybe see why he was out here in the first place." He laid the wallet on the top of one of the pier pilings, flipped open his notepad and studied what he had written there. "Also says he's a retired chief from the Navy, aged sixty-five. Tommy, I don't think this guy is one of your druggies at all."

  Kincaid nodded his agreement.

  "Probably not. I’ll bet you he stumbled up on them before they got the shit unloaded and they took him out."

  Before Temple had a chance to agree, they were interrupted by a shout from one of the uniformed officers waving to them from the head of the pier.

  "Hey, detective, over here. You might want to see this."

  The two men walked quickly to the end of the pier and stepped onto the abandoned blacktop road, now cracked and broken from the elements, weeds and small trees growing through in spots. The officer led them toward an old metal warehouse. On the way, Temple pointed at the ground.

  "Looks like there’s been a good bit of traffic over this area in the last several days,” the detective said. “See how the grass and weeds are trampled down."

  “I noticed that, too,” the officer said. “And there are plenty of truck tracks in the mud around there, too.”

  They walked on to where the sliding door to the warehouse stood open. The inside was dark and empty, the air stale and dank like any long abandoned place. There was also the faint, unmistakable odor of tobacco smoke. Even a hint of marijuana.

  Temple looked sideways at the young patrolman.

  "Any of your guys been sneaking a smoke in here out of the rain?"

  "No, sir. This is what I wanted you to see. It’s not like the Navy to leave a building unlocked when they leave it." He held up a large padlock, the hasp cut neatly in two. The lock was rusty, but the cut metal was bright and shiny. "We found this over there in the brush next to the building. The door was standing open when we got here. Somebody’s been here. Lots of ‘somebodys.’ But it looks like they left here in a hurry. See the tire marks over there?"

  He pointed to several pairs of black skid marks on the concrete floor inside the shed. Temple nodded.

  "Good work. We need to send some officers out to question the locals. See if anybody saw anything unusual around here lately. I don’t hold much hope, though. Fox Island is pretty secluded. People move over here for their privacy. And this place was out of the way, even for Fox Island. Still, if there was this much traffic down here, maybe somebody noticed something.”

  “Or heard something,” Kincaid added. “Somebody made a lot of racket plugging our poor Navy man out there.”

  “Yessir. Maybe we’ll get lucky, Mr. G-man.”

  “Yeah, maybe. And it’ll be about damn time.”

  John Bethea rested his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes hard with his fingers. Things were moving way too fast. No surprise there. That’s the way these things usually happened. Like traffic in Southern California, things would creep and crawl for a ways, then it was all zoom zoom.

  First there had been Tom Donnegan's call from Hawaii to tell him that Spadefish was operational again, but at the price of two badly injured crewmen who had heroically done their duty, no matter the consequences.

  Then there was El Falcone's report, the word that de Santiago had finally flipped and was planning an assassination of the president of his country.

  Next came the angry call from the Commandant of the Coast Guard, giving him mortal hell for sending the Cyclone into an ambush that ultimately cost the lives of eighteen fine young men and a good ship.

  That was the worst blow. Bethea had been disconsolate enough about that tragedy already.

  He also knew this was war, and a shady one at that. A war that claimed victims just as all wars do, whether they are sailors manning gun positions on a patrol boat or stupid kids looking for a thrill and a high.

  They had successfully kept the details of the ambush from the media so far. Spadefish was not mentioned. It was just an attack on a Coast Guard patrol boat by an especially vicious group of drug smugglers, the patrol boat able to sink the ship with return fire, an unknown number of smugglers lost, the contraband cargo gone, but the ship’s captain captured.

  The real question that nagged at John Bethea was how in hell the Helena K got herself so well armed without him knowing about it. They had boarded the bastard and inspected her while she was steaming off Columbia. Then they had tracked her and kept her under surveillance from underwater, from the air and from space for days on end. The only time the freighter was out of their sight was during the storm when it had moved west of where it dropped the mini-sub. They must have met up with someone out there then. And Jon Ward had reported noticing freight lashed to her deck just before he blew her to smithereens, containers that had not been there before.

  They’d never know now what was in those containers. Or who the Helena K might have hooked up with out there in the middle of the North Pacific. Whoever it was would have long since been gone.

  Now, to top off his perfect day, here was Tom Kincaid on the line, reporting that they had pulled an innocent civilian out of Puget Sound, an apparent victim of Ramirez and de Santiago and their malignant commerce. And Kincaid said that there was no sign of the mini-sub or the smugglers other than tire tracks, tobacco smoke, and the dead man they had left behind. That meant the whole lot of deadly coke was loose somewhere in the country and there was nothing they could do now but try to find yet another needle in a much bigger haystack.

 
; This war could quickly turn into mass murder if that dope was as deadly as the last stuff had been.

  This was not a good day.

  Bethea had been around long enough and had been hit by enough bad news to know what to do. He had said it often enough that one of his daughters had made a plaque with the words on it as a craft project at summer camp years before. It was right there on his desk, just as it had been ever since she first gave it to him.

  “Fix what you can. Feel bad about the rest when you have time.”

  He managed some semblance of a grin as he reached for the red secure phone and punched in a series of digits. When the call was answered on the other end, he launched into his message immediately, without any of the customary pleasantries.

  "El Presidente Guitteriz, I have important information. Please listen carefully."

  Ken Temple searched his pockets, trying to locate the cell phone. The damned thing’s annoying buzz was interrupting his thinking. He found it in his raincoat pocket and flipped it open.

  "Temple!" he growled.

  He and Tom Kincaid were hitching a ride back over to SEATAC with a black-and-white squad car to pick up their own vehicles. The DEA man complained mildly about being stuck in the back seat, in the cage, but it was the quickest way to get back. The helicopter had to go on back without them while they inspected the abandoned Navy site. Now, they were high over the Tacoma Narrows on the broad span of the bridge, watching uncomfortably as it swayed noticeably beneath them in the wind. It didn't help any to remember that this bridge's predecessor had collapsed in a breeze no more pronounced than this one the day it was first opened to the public.

  "Detective, this is Officer Watson," the voice on the phone said. The name didn't ring any bells with Temple until the caller added, "You know, the patrol officer over on Fox Island."

  "Oh, yeah. The one who found the warehouse lock. Good work, Officer Watson. That was very observant."

  "Thank you, sir." The young patrolman sounded pleased. Praise from Detective Temple was hard to win. He had the reputation as a cop's cop. "The reason I called was to give you some more information we came up with. We canvassed all the residences on Fox Island like you asked. One of them turned up something."