First Salvo

by Charles D. Taylor

  What he still had was sonar contact, and he conned his ship down the throat. He intended to take the second sub with him. Closing was difficult. His speed was diminished and Perry had been holed below the waterline. As he moved through the water, he was forcing the ship to fill faster than it normally would have. He was shortening her life—the weight would slow her and lessen her maneuverability. But that was his last concern at the moment.

  Sonar had a solution: they could fire their remaining torpedo! He brought Perry to the recommended firing course. He saw his own torpedo hit the water, porpoise for an instant, then dive.

  “Sonar reports torpedo running smoothly. Sonar reports other torpedoes in the water.” The Russian submarines had also fired at least two tubes. They waited.

  Perry was now leaning heavily to port, smoke pouring astern. But she still was able to make about ten knots—she might still have a chance. The captain eased her on to a new course, directing his bow toward the oncoming torpedoes, and waited.

  The first hit was Perry’s. It was definite. The cheering from sonar spread to the bridge. But the last report from sonar was of torpedoes closing. The sonarman had been making his report just before their own hit. Now they would hear nothing after the explosion in the water; they would not be able to track the incoming torpedoes.

  Wham! Perry’s bow rose out of the water from the impact, the explosion of the Soviet torpedo lifting her, shaking her 3,500 tons like a child. When she settled back, the bow, from the missile launcher forward, was gone. There was no need for a second torpedo. Flames licked back over the forward section of the ship. Before the captain could give orders to abandon ship, the missiles in the forward magazine exploded. What was left of the little ship plunged like a rock.

  A helicopter from one of the two remaining frigates arrived on the scene moments later. It found Perry’s sister ship still burning. It found remnants of Perry herself. And in separate locations, it identified what were later considered remains of two submarines.

  Oliver Hazard Perry had begun the legend of the Battle of the Mediterranean one day prior to D-Day!

  SPITZBERGEN

  Ryng was aware of an internal struggle. It was the body’s automatic reaction to returning consciousness… get those eyes open… identify your surroundings… let the rest of the body know where it is.

  One eyelid opened slightly. A sliver of light penetrated, but something else held firm. He reached up tentatively. The eye was crusted. Cautiously, he rubbed, gently removing whatever held it partially shut. He removed his hand. Light flowed in, creating a sharp pain. He blinked, closing his eye, then opening it slowly until the discomfort subsided.

  Ryng knew instinctively that he must locate his surroundings before moving. But nothing registered. Nothing. Sand, gravel, pebbles. A breeze blew something that brushed his face. He rolled the eye up. A bush of some kind.

  Svalbard! That was it! Spitzbergen—that island in the middle of nowhere. Longyearbyen! Russian bombers. Black Berets. Their boat. Theirs? That’s right. Denny? Forget it. Denny’s dead—no head left. I’m alive.

  Why? Rockets… machine guns… depth charges…

  Hold it! That’s it…depth charges. That’s what happened. Son of a bitch!

  It came back now… flash… flash… flash!

  The tremendous kick in the guts… shit, no! All over. That’s what happened. I swam for it. Helo disappeared for some reason… smoke! That’s it! That’s why I’m still alive. The son of a bitch couldn’t stay up any longer… maybe thought I was dead. But, a signpost in his unconscious flashed—I survived!

  Smell returned. And with it his stomach churned, for he was lying in his own vomit. It wasn’t just salt water. That’s why his eyes were stuck shut—must have been face down in the stuff!

  Cautiously he rubbed around the other eye, gently blinking it open. Christ, they stung. Why the hell shouldn’t they? Salt water, gravel—what a hell of a paste.

  He rolled slightly to search for the sun. Forget it! Almost twenty-four hours of sun up here—no way to tell the time.

  He was about to get to his knees when something in his subconscious rebelled. Listen!

  There it was, only louder now. The realization came quickly. Only one thing made that steady, monotonous tone, that thrum, that relentless beat as it drew closer. He couldn’t see it, but he knew without a doubt it was a helicopter.

  No dummies, those Soviet marines! They knew better. They were trained just like he had been. No body, no proof of death. Bring back the body and that job’s finished, then get on to the next body.

  That helo that had gone down smoking must have informed base that they were dropping depth charges, using their last available weapon because they’d seen a body still moving down there. They’d all know there was no reason it should survive a depth charge. But they were also the type that knew, just like he would, that you never trust to luck—or even probability—that your enemy is dead if your enemy had just done what Ryng’s team had. Bring us a body, their leader would say, or just part of one. An arm or a leg will do. But bring back something to prove we don’t have to worry for the time being.

  Whump… whump… whump. Now he knew where it was— almost overhead. They hadn’t seen him or the change in rotor beat would have indicated that they were hovering.

  But they were covering that forsaken beach very slowly, looking for any trace that would either prove he was dead or tell them where he’d gotten to.

  Ryng rolled his head, staring up. He was looking through the branches of the scrub brush. He put his head back down, satisfied that he was under some sort of cover for the time being. He felt the ooze as he rested his head on the ground, but there was no point in moving. Even as the stink came back to him again, he knew he would be crazy if he moved another muscle.

  Almost on top of him now. He could feel the draft of the rotors. He caught the first movement of the bush above him, then the increased shaking as the helo passed directly overhead. Dust churned up around him, assaulting his eyes, working into his nose and mouth. Instinctively, he moved both hands over his face, covering it as best he could without moving the rest of his body. He would be harder to see through the dust, but he was damned if he’d do anything that would give them the slightest chance. There wasn’t much cover around him. The brush was about the only thing he remembered that gave any shelter as he crawled up that beach. But when? Minutes, or hours ago?

  Don’t move, he ordered himself. No automatic reactions. Don’t roll over. Don’t pull your knees up. Don’t do a damned thing but cover your face. Save those senses ’cause you’re going to need them later. Blow it now, and all you’ll know is lead. The last sound you will hear, Mr. Ryng, his brain repeated again and again, is your own scream. So just take your shit like a man and in a few moments they’ll move on and you can take inventory. In just a few moments, you’ll find out whether you can move, whether you’re going to have a chance of getting your ass out of here, or whether carrion-eating seagulls are eventually going to lead them to your body. Again and again, the same voice repeated itself, just as he had trained himself to do years before, letting the mind take over, letting it control the body. Sometimes it made the body do superhuman things and sometimes it taught the body to stop.

  The helo drifted away, moving on down the beach slowly in a crisscross pattern. Ryng rolled over now and peered out. The water was twenty-five yards away from where he lay. Must’ve been a hell of a crawl, he thought. Why no trail? He dug at the ground. Nothing could leave much of a path in this crap. It was hard—sand and mud packed together. Like the silt that came from under glaciers, he realized, only this stuff had had time to harden. There was gravel too, and some pebbles, but no rocks. They likely had been ground into those few pebbles by some past glacier.

  Inland, away from the water, no more than another 100 yards away, the mountains rose up sharply from sheer cliffs. Nothing grew on them; nothing could grow between the climate and the vertical surface. That’s what made it so easy f
or that helo. The space between the water and the cliffs, which no man was going to climb, couldn’t have been more than a 150 yards. It was simple to swing the bird back and forth. No need for a search plan. Just cover every inch of ground.

  It was also no place to stay. He looked toward the west, where the safety of the open ocean should be, where the remainder of his team was supposed to meet sometime. But he had no idea when. He had no concept of time, how long he’d been unconscious.

  There were two items that occupied Bernie Ryng’s mind at this stage. The first was wholly instinctive—survival—and was the first order of business. But the second meant almost as much to him, for he was a military man and order and discipline were vitally important. He had been sent on a mission by a man he loved and respected and who was depending on him. It was vital that Dave Pratt know that much of the mission had been carried out. The decoys that had already been unloaded at Longyearbyen airport had been destroyed. The aircraft intended to carry them would never fly again. Most important, the ship that carried those decoys to Spitzbergen, and still had much of that cargo on board ready to be unloaded and taken to the airport, had been sunk in deep water. That last element was the most critical, the factor that North Atlantic strategy would be based upon in the coming hours. He had to get that information to Pratt.

  Ryng reached inside his shirt, searching for the chart of the harbor area. What he extracted was a soggy mess, still neatly folded but decidedly wet. With the care and precision brought on by years of training, he unfolded it gently. Open it to the first fold, he told himself. Stop. Pat it flat out. Make sure no edges are tucked under that are going to tear on the next fold…

  As he followed each step of the process, a chill came over him. He shivered involuntarily. His shirt and pants were damp but not wet. That meant he’d been out of the water long enough for the combination of body heat and air to evaporate much of the water. But then again, his uniform was designed to dry quickly for just such occasions.

  Not more than two hours, he determined, otherwise he might be even colder, his body temperature lower. Then hypothermia. That would be his greatest enemy. This time of year, a fifty-degree day was balmy. But at least the sky was clear, the air dry.

  The chart lay flat in his lap. He saw where he was and what he would have to do. The map was printed to withstand immersion. And now he silently thanked some cartographic clerk back in the States who’d made sure the job was done right when he transposed the satellite data onto the chart.

  Ryng saw the glacial stream that came down near where he now sat, the one they’d seen from the boat before the helo attacked. He stood up to check—a couple of hundred yards away. Using his thumbnail, he marked the rough surface to the meeting point. Twelve, fifteen miles, no more. Nothing like thumbnail navigation.

  A couple of miles down the beach, he saw the helo turn out over the water and head back toward its base. But don’t kid yourself. They’re not going to give up that easy. Maybe they’ll go back, but just maybe they’ll swing out and then dash back to see if they fooled you. Remember, there’s no such thing as a dead man until you have a body—or a piece of one! Grab your ass and lead on out of here, but remember that body they want. Better yet, think about a separate arm or leg!

  The next instant when he raised his head, the helo had reversed course, returning to his side of the harbor, just as he’d suspected!

  With that he started out, moving from one clump of scrub to the next, mindful of the helo which now seemed intent on searching a section of water a few miles farther on. “Thank God you had the good sense to keep these shoes,” he muttered out loud to himself. He could feel the sharp pebbles through his soles, some smooth like bullets, but others, rolled the wrong way underneath all that ice, were sharp as arrowheads.

  At the glacial stream, he stopped to check the helo. It was still zipping back and forth on some inane path in an exercise that didn’t make sense. The stream wasn’t at all deep. It was a miniature flood plain, a delta at the base of a tiny glacier now receded back into the mountains. This time of year, it exuded a steady flow of water, but not enough to cut a deep trench.

  Gingerly, he stepped out, his eye already on more scrub fifty yards away on the other side. He lurched forward, his foot sinking up to the ankle. Taking a second step, he again sank in. Pulling, the rear foot made a sucking sound as it escaped from the grayish-brown silt. Wherever the water ran, the damn stuff was just mud, he thought. Each step was an effort, the mud clinging, pulling relentlessly at his shoes. It would take twice as long as he’d estimated to get across. If the helo came back…

  He struggled on, trying to move faster. But he could only move so fast. The last half-dozen hours had taken their toll. No one could put his body through what his had already done and cut through this stuff like a sprinter.

  The water and the mud were cold—ice cold, glacier cold. He could feel the creeping numbness in his feet. Perhaps it would be easier if he couldn’t feel anything. Just plod along, steady pace, no discomfort, perhaps eventually move faster.

  He was finally halfway across. No wonder I wanted to get the boat to the other side of this crap before they attacked, he thought. He’d forgotten to look more closely at his map to see how many more of these little streams there were.

  Too many and he might as well kiss it all good-bye. It was taking so long it was more like crossing a river.

  He looked back out to the helo. Same place. No, wait a minute. He remembered the peak he had been sighting it against. The helo was to the left of that now. As he staggered along, muddy step after muddy step, he watched its perspective change. Damn! He’s headed back this way.

  He thought of his tracks and then he thought of a wounded animal in the snow. No shit, Ryng, you should have waited until he got low on fuel and headed back for a drink. Now you’ve got yourself in a hell of a fix! He felt his heart beat faster, partly from exertion, partly from fear, as he attempted to pick up the pace, one sucking, muddy, numbing footstep at a time.

  The helo wasn’t racing back. No need to. No one on that godforsaken coastline was going to go anywhere fast. He knew it. They knew it. Shit!

  He faltered and stopped for a minute as one of his shoes began to slip off. It would be foolish to leave it behind, just on the off chance that he might get away this time. He stopped, reset his foot in the muck, gripped with his toes, and lifted. The foot came out with the same sucking sound, the shoe still on it, covered with mud, only the small amount of sensation he had left in his feet convincing him that the shoe was still there.

  Checking the angle on the helo, he saw it closing in steadily but still not quickly. Perhaps there was a chance to make it. With ten yards to go, he literally dove toward the scrub, arms stretched in front, waving in the air.

  And then he was free, his feet suddenly released from the mud. It threw him off balance, and before he could catch himself, he was pitching forward, no longer held up by the thick silt. Putting his hands out, he covered the last few yards on all fours like a crab, rolling under the brush. Breathing with deep, racking sobs from the exertion, he pictured tracks across the mud of that stream pointing out his frail hiding spot—just like landing lights.

  The beat of the rotors were sharper than when he awakened before. Now all his senses were alert. Not only did he know where he was and what he was trying to do, he also knew that he’d now covered all of three hundred yards and was cowering under a bit of scrub brush like a dog waiting for the whip to fall. The deep breathing helped. The oxygen, the blood racing through his system, all of his muscles active for a few brief moments, each of these were warning him, making him more alert. Moments before, he had been thinking hypothermia, that slow reduction in the body’s temperature until all feeling and caring disappeared and you gave up. Now there was no intention of giving up. Just don’t be so damn stupid next time—if there is a next time. Don’t try to outthink a helo, Ryng. If you let it go away, it’ll let you go away.

  And then it was directly o
verhead, the rotors again beating the dust and pebbles into his skin with a deafening roar. It banked slightly, passing within yards of the cliff, then swung back over him, crossing the stream toward his first hiding place, then again sweeping back over the stream.

  This is it! Ryng thought. It’s following the goddamned wounded beast, the blood in the snow. But it passed overhead again, moving down the shoreline, then out over the water.

  Ryng waited, his body immobilized, his brain still unable to ascertain why the helo hadn’t gone into a hover directly above him before blasting wildly with its machine guns. Then the sound drifted farther away. He turned his head. Off over the water, he could see the helo headed in the direction of Longyearbyen. He could tell by the sound of the engine that it was traveling close to full speed. It wouldn’t be back—at least not until it was refueled.

  He sat up amazed, shaking his head over his good luck. Then he stood, searching the stream. There were no prints! Looking more closely, he saw that the water, an opaque, milky mixture from the detritus that flowed from the glacier, had quickly covered his tracks. Already the silt was beginning to fill the holes where his feet had been.

  With the knowledge that there was no time to ponder his good luck, he turned west, moving off at a good pace. If he were hiking under normal conditions—on flat ground, no mountains, no streams, no tundra—he could cover the distance in five or six hours. He was in good enough condition, but there was that slight problem of mountains and streams and tundra, not to mention the beating his body had taken recently or the probability that helicopters, perhaps more than one, would be back. And there was another problem—the fact that he had no weapons.

  As he traveled, sometimes changing his pace to a trot, he reviewed the time that had passed since landing on Spitzbergen. He decided it had to be mid to late afternoon, and that he had anywhere from eight to ten hours left before the others were picked up by the Norwegian boat.

  An inlet lay ahead that cut into a narrow valley. Ryng wanted desperately to get away from the narrow beachhead he was now covering. Its 150-yard width offered very little protection, a thought that kept him looking over his shoulder in the direction of Longyearbyen every minute or so. His chart showed a stream, a real one this time, that coursed out of the mountains to this inlet. It appeared narrow and deeper than the glacial runoff that had almost trapped him.