Dragon Fire (The Battle for the Falklands Book 2)

by Bleichert, Peter von

  A machinist managed to restart the undamaged generator and selectively got power flowing to the fire-fighting pumps and interior lighting. Sailors pounded wooden wedges into bulkhead leaks with mallets. Clothing, mattresses, and pillows were also brought into play to slow down the leaks. Portable eductor pumps began to suck water from the now-flooded main engine and auxiliary machine rooms. The pumps dispatched water overboard from vents and hoses snaking from other hull openings. But despite valiant efforts, Iron Duke began to ride lower and lower. After leaning overboard to check the waterline, an officer ran down a darkened passageway.

  He passed a burned and bloodied man, naked save for the blanket draped over his shivering shoulders. The officer stopped and, gasping, pointed the way to triage that had been set up in the mess. He then continued on to the bridge, where he went to the officer-of-the-watch and reported: “Sir, we are sinking ourselves.”

  The reason was firefighters had sprayed tons of water into the ship’s skin, and the pumps were being overwhelmed by the accumulating water. This spurred a counter-intuitive order that crackled over the ship’s public announcement system: “Cease all firefighting efforts.” The captain ordered a damage report.

  Inside and out, sailors went about inspections. On the upper deck, the rain, even though lighter now, sizzled on hot metal. Fires flashed, sparked by the hot superstructure, and deck cracks opened everywhere. Smoke billowed from the stricken ship. None of the sailors crawling over Iron Duke’s pitching hulk saw the enemy periscope peeking from between waves.

  Everyone in San Luis II’s Control Room stared at Captain Matias, silently willing him to give the order to launch another torpedo—to deliver the coup de grâce on the British vessel. He scanned their faces.

  “¿Señor?” Ledesma prodded his captain.

  “Take us down to 95 meters; course zero-four-zero. Make turns for five knots,” Matias ordered.

  Several submariners turned back to their panels, hiding their disgust. Ledesma did not respond at first and simply stared at his captain. Matias had reasoned that the British frigate was combat-ineffective and he refused to slaughter men for no reason. A flame flickered in Matias’ eyes. Then he seemed to grow taller and his gaze became stern. Ledesma saw this. Finally, he acknowledged and repeated the order.

  The submarine’s bow planes tilted downwards. San Luis II dived and leaned into her turn. The British survivors had been granted a chance to return home to their families.

  4: SHIPWRECK

  “Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance.”—Sun Tzu

  Ominous black thundercaps blanketed the horizon, a wall of flashing, billowing moisture marking the edge of the massive storm. The weather radar display on HMS Dragon’s bridge showed a swirling mass of greens, yellows and reds, with patches of blue indicating hailstones. Lightning crackled, fizzled, and ripped across the flashing sky. Rain pattered the ship’s windows, and thunder arrived, a rolling boom that trembled the ship. Though gusts still howled outside and the sleek grey hull rose and fell with the churning sea, the tempest moved off. Dragon followed a course to skirt the fury’s periphery and deliver the warship to her rendezvous with Iron Duke.

  “Hold onto something,” Lieutenant Commander Williams shouted. His voice betrayed the fun of it all. The bridge crew leaned on walls and clutched fixtures as the ship rode up a surge, tipped down again and dove into a deep trough. The ship’s prow dug in and heeled before popping up to point skyward again. Someone laughed with glee.

  “Dragon…” Fryatt whispered her name. He was a proud man.

  Dragon, too, was happy. She was in her element and doing that for which she was built. The sharp triangle of her bow buried itself again in the green wash of cold Atlantic water. The ship’s bones vibrated. Then the bow came up again, a clawed, snarling, winged, whip-tailed red wyrm painted upon her grey skin. An allusion to figureheads-of-old, the ship’s sigil charged through the sea’s icy green foaming fingers, warded off evil spirits and sea creatures, and trembled enemies by its ferocity. White spray washed over the wyrm and hissed. Heavy with fuel provisions from her stopover at Ascension Island, Dragon steamed south by west toward her rendezvous point.

  The revolving spiked ball atop the ship’s faceted main tower scanned the airspace for hostiles. Aft of this array and the ship’s stack, just forward of the large, flat early warning radar, the communication mast received a flash transmission from Navy Command Headquarters.

  ◊◊◊◊

  “What a mess,” Fryatt said to Williams as he read the report. Iron Duke had been severely damaged by what was reported as an accidental detonation of her magazine. While she awaited tugs to tow her back to Ascension, Dragon was tasked to provide the stricken frigate cover before continuing on to the warzone.

  “Detonation?” Williams asked.

  “The storm… A missile must have broken loose of its rack and its propellant ignited. You know how unstable ammonium perchlorate is. It probably set off a chain reaction in the magazine,” Fryatt posited.

  “We are to continue on without a frigate?” Williams added glumly.

  “Argyll will join us in five days. How long until we get to Iron Duke’s position?”

  Williams checked their own coordinates, and said: “Within the hour.”

  ◊◊◊◊

  By the time Dragon came up on Iron Duke, the sea-state was down, the water swelling gently into rounded hills. Iron Duke rode low by the stern and wallowed in the gentle undulation lapping at her freeboard. A slick surrounded her. Fumes gathered and burned the throats of those on Dragon’s decks who leaned against the rails to gawk and offer salutes to any of the frigate’s hard-working crew that stole a gaze at the passing destroyer. On the bridge, Captain Fryatt raised his binoculars.

  He scanned Iron Duke’s hull. He saw some charring, and the pumps busy sending water overboard through multiple openings. Fryatt looked to Iron Duke’s mast. The colors flew at half height. His magnified view blurred as it shifted toward the frigate’s flight deck where an honor guard went about its solemn duty.

  Heads were bowed as a prayer was recited. The heads then raised and salutes were thrown. A body slid from a flag-draped board into the sea. The flag was closed up and encased, and the guard broke up and returned to duties to keep the ship afloat, and to prepare her for a tow.

  Accidental detonation. These words stuck uneasily in Fryatt’s mind, and the little hairs at the back of his neck stood on end. He surveyed the vast open ocean.

  “Power-up the sonar,” he ordered. “And get the Merlin up. Cold pattern.”

  Dragon’s MFS-7000 sonar array broadcast a powerful active pulse. Steam bubbles formed around the bow’s bulbous protuberance, and a deafening WHOMP emerged. The medium frequency waves propagated through the water for several miles.

  In Dragon’s Op Room a midshipman studied his sonar screens. He awaited the return of reflected sound waves, awaited the computer’s analysis, and looked for a blip that would allow him to yell out: ‘Contact.’ He was certain that, if anything was submerged within five miles, he would find it. He clicked away at his keyboard and scrutinized the results. Nothing, he thought, disappointed.

  “Thermocline at 400 feet deep,” Dragon’s sonarman unenthusiastically told the Operations Director. This meant that warmer water sat atop the colder depths, and thus created an inversion layer where the two varying water masses converged. This layer was impermeable to sound waves, and acted like a false bottom that bounced Dragon’s sonar right back at her, providing protection to anything that lurked beneath it. “Otherwise, sir, the scope is clear,” the sonarman added.

  “Helo’s launching,” the director responded. The ship’s helicopter would use its dipping sonar and sonobuoys to penetrate this layer and expand Dragon’s view of the subsurface world.

  ◊◊◊◊

  San Luis II steamed along, doing four knots at 500 feet, some 100 feet beneath the thermocline. The Argentine submariners kept their distance from where they had prosecuted Iron
Duke, and listened as a new target entered the area. After twenty minutes of analyzing the screw and powerplant noise that the passive sonar had collected, San Luis II’s sonar technicians determined they were hearing a Daring-class guided-missile destroyer. They designated the surface contact as ‘Delta 1.’

  “Report,” Captain Matias ordered.

  “We heard a medium-frequency active sonar. Its transmitter was about eight miles off at one-nine-seven.” The sonarman’s face shriveled as he listened close. “Señor, Delta 1 is slowing.”

  Matias looked to Ledesma.

  “If I was their captain,” Ledesma offered, “I would be launching my helicopter.”

  “Yes, Santiago,” Matias confirmed, proud of his protégé.

  “Sir, the D-class has the Merlin,” Ledesma added with a worried look.

  Both men had a healthy respect for this particular type of anti-submarine warfare helicopter.

  “Take us deeper, Santiago. Two hundred fifty meters.”

  “Sí, señor.”

  ◊◊◊◊

  The Merlin HM2 helicopter emerged from its hangar and traversed onto Dragon’s stern flight deck. A haze-grey machine, the Merlin wore a radome on its chin and was configured for anti-submarine warfare with two Stingray lightweight torpedoes and two Mark 11 depth charges slung beneath its parallelogram-shaped fuselage. Emblazoned on the helicopter’s side was ‘ROYAL NAVY’ and a red, white and blue roundel.

  The Flight Deck Officer saluted to the helicopter’s pilot, indicating the flight deck chief had the wheel chocks in place and there was no sign of foreign objects that the Merlin’s engines or rotors could suck in. The Merlin’s pilot—Lieutenant Seamus McLaughlin from Enniskillen, Northern Ireland—loved to fly. Beneath his flight helmet, Seamus the pilot had fire red hair and a ‘full set’—Royal Navy-speak for a beard and mustache. Seamus moved a control panel lever, and the helicopter’s five main rotor blades unfolded from their ship-stowed position and locked in place. With a nod from the Merlin’s secondary pilot, Seamus started the helicopter’s three turboshaft engines. The engines coughed black smoke as they ignited and then whined as they spun up. Seamus performed his pre-departure radio checks.

  “Draig, Kingfisher 21, radio check, over,” Seamus said into his headset. Due to his thick Irish accent, he had learned to speak slowly and clearly when using the radio.

  “Kingfisher two-one, Draig, loud and clear, over,” Dragon’s air traffic controller responded.

  The helicopter pilots went through pre-flight checklists in the front of the machine, and in its rear cabin, the Merlin’s observer and aircrewman went about their own tasks. The observer was Ordinary Seaman Rodi Dando whom hailed from Dockyard on the Spanish Point of Bermuda and was the descendant of an African privateer. Also operating in the rear cabin was Merlin’s aircrewman, Leading Seaman John Mcelaney.

  Aircrewman John Mcelaney was a wide-shouldered lad from Liverpool. He had grown up in New Brighton on the Wirral Peninsula where sandy beaches overlooked the River Mersey and the Irish Sea. Working these waterways, John had hauled in crab traps and fishing nets for his father and uncle, a job that built his upper-body strength and log-like arms. When the waters had become overfished and the ill-maintained family boats leaked more than floated, John sought to see more of the world. With college funds scant, it was a Royal Marine recruiter who had bought him a pint in the pub and seduced him with tales of adventure and travel. John signed on the dotted line. He awoke to a headache, sour stomach and a lecture from his mum and dad, but he soon embarked to Commando Training Centre Royal Marines in Lympstone, Devon. Thirty-two weeks of hell followed.

  At Lympstone, John learned combat skills—to march and look after his kit and weapons—and he earned the vaunted green beret. Fit and as sharp as a sword, John volunteered for transfer, and after grading at an air force base, he was sent on to anti-submarine training. Ten weeks at 824 Naval Air Squadron’s Basic Acoustic Course followed.

  John seemed to have an innate talent for the fine art of sonar and sensor operation, and this was recognized and nurtured by instructors. High marks and performance reports drove advancement to an operational conversion unit.

  At the OCU, John met the love of his life—the Merlin HM2—and worked alongside a pair of pilots and an observer. He had learned the art of active and passive anti-submarine warfare, as well as search and prosecution techniques. It was not long afterward that he was honored with assignment to HMS Dragon.

  John powered-up and then checked the helicopter’s various defensive and offensive systems, including chaff, flares, and the FLASH dipping sonar. The FLASH—Folding Light Acoustic System for Helicopters—could lower by cable a tube-shaped low-frequency sonar transducer down to 700 meters beneath the sea.

  The Merlin’s cockpit screens flashed and became populated with brightly-colored data as the computer examined the helicopter thousands of times per second and delivered the diagnoses to its human operators. With all indicators in the green, Seamus engaged the rotors and started them spinning.

  “Sir,” John’s voice crackled on the intercom, “All systems are go.”

  With a “Ready,” from his secondary, Seamus clicked the transmitter:

  “Kingfisher 21, ready for departure.”

  Clearance was received and blade revolutions came up to take-off power. The Flight Deck Chief indicated chocks were out and that no tie-downs were in use. Then the Flight Deck Officer saluted and, slowly flapping his arms, marshaled the Merlin off the deck. Seamus raised the collective. The main rotor tilted and bit into the air, where vortices formed at its shovel blade-shaped tips. The Merlin rose over Dragon’s stern.

  The helicopter hovered over the flight deck and swiveled into the relative wind. It then flew sideways to a hover position alongside the ship. Clear of deck hazards—the hangar, the masts, and radar arrays—the Merlin began a straight climb and fell back as Dragon continued onward at seven knots. Holding a hover at 300 feet, Seamus surveyed the instruments, switched to the high-frequency radio, and confirmed their machine was healthy and under positive control. He requested permission to depart the pattern.

  “Kingfisher two-one, Draig, roger, commence your turn on course,” the ship’s air traffic control responded.

  Seamus pushed his boot against a pedal and pointed the Merlin’s nose in the desired direction, nudging the cyclic. The big helicopter leaned forward and headed away from the churned, light-blue wake of the destroyer. In the distance, where the last of the rain darkened the horizon line, a cloud discharged and sent a forked bolt snaking from the sea to high in the sky. Seamus started down the first leg of his pattern. In the rear cabin, John prepared to lower the dipping sonar while the observer, Rodi, peered out the window.

  Dragon circled Iron Duke in a mile-wide circle. Far on the horizon, the smoke trail of the Royal Navy tugboat became visible.

  The tug was Capable, an Adept-class large harbor tug based in Gibraltar. Dragon had her on radar, and Lieutenant-Commander Williams was talking to her by radio. As a harbor tug not ideal for the mission of getting Iron Duke to safe waters—especially all by her lonesome—Capable had adequate power. If only the weather held, she also had the seaworthiness to depart the near-shore environment for the open sea. If all went well, Capable would pull Iron Duke back to Ascension for temporary repairs, freeing Dragon to race to the Falklands. It would be hours until Capable could arrive on-scene, however. Several long, dangerous hours. Captain Fryatt paced the bridge.

  Fryatt felt the gentle roll of the ship in his ears and made a picture of the battlespace in his mind’s eye: Iron Duke was at the center as Dragon swept around her; the Merlin was off doing its task, dropping sonobuoys and listening to the ocean, making sure no submarines could sneak in to threaten either vessel. Then Fryatt’s mind’s eye dove beneath the waves. He pictured the thermocline that shrouded the deeps, and he saw what he knew of the bottom at this part of the Atlantic: mud flats and rocky foothills that climbed to become the craggy peaks of the Mid-Atl
antic Ridge, Earth’s longest mountain range, the ‘spine of the world.’

  5: CAT AND MOUSE

  “When the mouse laughs at the cat, there’s a hole nearby.”—Nigerian proverb

  They called him ‘Raton.’ Not, mind you, because of any inherent trait, nor for any physical resemblance to the little furry, whisker-twitching mammal. For Raton’s face was flat, almost indented, and lacked the rat’s snout-like structure. Though his first name was Gaston—a convenient and almost lyrical rhyme with his nickname—Corporal Second Class Bersa earned his moniker by the style of life he lived aboard San Luis II.

  Gaston Bersa came from Salta, a small farming town in the Lerma valley of Argentina's northwest. His family farm would be desert dry if not for the water delivered by canal and pipe from the snow-capped mountains that towered above it. With this precious moisture, lemons and oranges grew where only dust devils and brown brush should flourish. Days of hard work were broken by reading in the shade, moments where he would take out his tattered Cuban-translated copy of Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea,’ digesting it for the hundredth time and reciting each word as if by memory. And dreaming of the blue open sea and the freedom it imparted.

  A sustained drought had come, causing the government to divert water to the thirsty cities. Soon the groves browned and died and Gaston’s father had taken to doing odd construction and repair jobs in town, leaving him to watch his small sister and his broken-down mother. One day the pages of his novel had finally fallen out and been taken by the wind. They scattered over the bones of the citrus trees. That day, Gaston had dropped his shovel and walked the six miles to town. He did not even know why he made the trek, and he could not argue with the sensation of being drawn that way. Once among the town’s squat buildings and dust-choked streets, he trudged past out-of-work farm hands and right into a government office.