The Weapon

by David Poyer

  “Commander. Commander!”

  Wenck’s head poked through the watertight door. He looked shocked. “What, Donnie?” Dan yelled. “I told you to get topside. Get your gear on. Sumo! We’re extracting!”

  “Oberg’s calling down from topside, sir. On the voice tube.”

  “What?”

  “Bad news, sir. The pilot of the SDV says it’s dead.”

  Dan was looking at Im, how he sat slumped, eyes leaden, plucking at his ears. Blood was trickling down his neck, from his chest, from his feet. “What are you talking about?” he snapped.

  “The battery, he can’t get power. And he says . . . Obie says . . . he says . . .”

  “Lights on the pier,” Kaulukukui shouted from the control room. “Headlights, coming down the pier.”

  “Did you copy me, sir? What I said?”

  Wenck’s voice shook. Dan stood kneading his cheeks, watching green water surge and boil up through the deckplates, flooding toward the watertight door where he stood.

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “I hear you. I hear you both.”

  V

  HAULING

  ASS

  20

  Bandar-e Abbas Naval Base, Iran

  The first thing Dan did was snap at Henrickson to close the inner door to tube 3. He slapped the ballast wheel. “Close this, too.” Then bent-and-hurdled through the watertight door heading aft, thinking, through some obscure chain of reasoning, of Rumpelstiltskin.

  The control room. He found Kaulukukui in the navigation cubby, fins slung over his back, gloves on the ladder into the sail. “Where you headed, Sumo,” he muttered, noticing only now Wenck had followed him aft.

  “SDV’s tits down. V-dag can’t get the prop to turn over.”

  “V-dag,” for some reason, was Vaught, the vehicle’s pilot. “The battery?” Dan asked him.

  “My guess. But who knows.” Kaulukukui looked up into the inverted well of the trunk. “Gotta get up on deck. Obie says there’s a truck headed our way.”

  “If our vehicle’s hosed, we’re going to have to extract overland.”

  “That’s the plan.” Kaulukukui took two rungs. “I’ll report back.”

  Dan nodded, then grabbed his bootie before he got out of reach. “Can we swim out of this harbor, Sumo?”

  The SEAL didn’t look down. “Obie and me could. I don’t think your guys would make it. In the dark. With them dropping antiswimmer explosives, boats swarming all over? You think so, Commander?”

  He let the foot go.

  Thirty feet above, Oberg crouched in the cramped cockpit atop the sail, hand on the open voice tube. But he wasn’t speaking. He was frowning down from his eyrie toward a point half a mile away. Where one after the other, three trucks followed their headlights, turning slowly at a crossroads or traffic circle to the northeast. They’d come out of what intel had labeled as a housing or barracks compound to the east of the base a few minutes before. Stopped for a time, stationary, then rolled again.

  He suddenly bent and rummaged in a hinged box near a folding windshield, gyro repeater, and phone jacks with a headset hung on them. He was rewarded by a plastic case and, inside, a pair of binoculars. Focusing, he caught military six-wheelers. Too dark and far to make out much, but they looked like old deuce and a halfs, with the steel grids on the grilles, though they might be ZILs or UNIMOGs. Their humped canvas might cover beds full of supplies.

  Or troops. No way to tell from here if it was a logistics caravan or a troop movement.

  A clank. He turned to Kaulukukui emerging from below, MP5 slung.

  “Somebody’s headed our way?”

  “Not sure yet. Movement. Three vehicles.”

  He handed his swim buddy the glasses. Kaulukukui observed for a few seconds. “Turning this way. But looks like, outside the perimeter fence.”

  Outside was good. But where could they be headed? That road led past the harbor, curved out onto the short peninsula that comprised the inlet’s eastern side, and petered out a few hundred feet short of the shore. Changing the guard? Sentry relief? Not three trucks’ worth. He checked his watch. Three A.M.

  “Security drill?”

  “All I could think of. They ready to start the extract down there? Where’s Vaught? Was he below?”

  “He’s aboard? The 8’s dead on the bottom?”

  “You got it. He came up over the camel, same way we did. Almost shot his ass. Flashed him with my Surefire and we had a talk off the other side of the sail. Sounds like complete battery failure. He ran down the checklist and couldn’t even get a voltage reading.” Teddy took back the binoculars and aimed them past the warehouse.

  “What if they turn onto the pier?”

  “First we make sure they’re after us. If they are, neutralize as many as we can, grenade the shit out of them, and fight a rear guard down to the beach.”

  “These Charlie guys aren’t up to that.”

  “Well, they did Thunder Ranch—I mean, GrayWolf. And they held together on Mindanao. They ought to be able to hold off a couple dozen Iranian conscripts, if we take out the noncoms. Anyway,” Oberg finished, “it ain’t like we’re gonna have a choice. Remember the hostage crisis? In Teheran? I’ll eat a grenade before we surrender to these pricks.”

  Kaulukukui meanwhile had been feeling around the cockpit. “I already checked for weapons up here,” Teddy added. “Uh—wait a minute. One of ’em’s stopping.”

  They watched as the farthest-away pier light illuminated the last truck in line rolling to a halt. Distant figures jumped down. A shout drifted across wire and sand. The figures went to their bellies, became shapeless bundles.

  “Gimme me one of your HK mags.”

  “Fuck you. You wanted to bring a Sig, shoot your fucking Sig.” He pushed the Hawaiian’s glove off. “You getting gay on me? Okay—hold on—the other trucks. They’re turning again.”

  He watched, then flipped the cover up on the speaking tube. “Wenck? Obie. Three trucks. One’s between us and the beach. Deploying a stop line. The other two are coming back on the inside road, heading for our location. Tell the commander, right now.”

  He pulled grenades out one after the other, lining them up along a steel shelf in the cockpit as he spoke.

  Dan listened to the hollow voice. It sounded like doom and its message was a sentence. Troops deploying between them and the beach, across their escape route. More trucks, headed for the submarine piers.

  Crap! The patrol had never come back to check on the dead sentry. Or had he? And they’d just not seen him? But the Iranians wouldn’t call out the react team just because they couldn’t find a pier sentry, would they? He couldn’t believe they knew they were here. But if they did . . . how had they found out?

  He clenched his fists. Had someone up the line sold out TAG Charlie?

  He turned, then started as he confronted a face he didn’t recognize. Then he did. The SDV pilot, face strangely inhuman without neck or hair, ovaled by the wet-suit hood. “Vaught. You lost propulsion?”

  “Right, Commander. No instruments or comms, either. Tried emergency power, tried bypassing the panel. Shit works. It’s dead.”

  “This happen before?”

  “Not to me. Happened to another Mark 8 in Westpac once.” The driver looked like he was just barely keeping his cool. “Uh, so, the alternate extract—over the beach—”

  Henrickson leaned into his tunnel vision. “Dan? Hear that?”

  “Yeah, I heard it. Escape route’s cut off, guys. Looks like base security troops. We may have to swim for it, Monty.”

  “You mean, out of the harbor? On the Draegers?”

  Dan nodded.

  “And then what?”

  “And then . . . the sub picks us up, I guess. This wasn’t in the plan.”

  “Inside territorial waters? Or how far are we supposed to swim?”

  “I don’t know. This wasn’t supposed to happen, the SDV breaks down, the Iranians wake up—” He jerked his head, to see Carpenter waiting as
if to report. “Rit?”

  “Tube three outer and inner doors secured. Forward ballast flood secured.”

  “Uh, uh, that’s good. Very well, Rit.”

  He stood irresolute, mind hunting this way and that. Trying to avoid the gazes around him. Then grabbed the ladder, and went hand over hand toward the darkness far above.

  When he got to the top of the sail Oberg was looking forward. Dan peered over, too, gaze sweeping the pier. He caught the shapes lumbering around the sharp curve to the southward.

  “Coming in through the south gate,” Oberg commented. Dan noticed the grenades set out in front of him.

  “Can we extract? The E&E plan?”

  “They dropped a blocking force between us and the beach.” He pointed, and after a moment Dan made them out, dark figures against the lighter dark beyond the perimeter fence, stretching from the warehouse down he couldn’t tell how far to their right flank.

  “There a way out of this, Teddy?”

  “Not many choices left, Commander. We either break out, Custer in place, or extract by sea. Any of those strike you as a better idea than the others?”

  “Can we break through that line?”

  “We can try.”

  “Where’s Sumo?”

  For answer Oberg pointed. The big SEAL was a slow shadow, easing his way down the camel toward the oncoming trucks. He was toting something gingerly in front of him. “Where’s he going?”

  “Give ’em something to think about.” Oberg blew out. He chewed loudly.

  “Is that gum? Got any more?”

  “Sure.” The SEAL pulled it out of his mouth, pinched off half, and offered it.

  “That’s all right,” Dan said.

  Oberg shrugged. He braced the HK on the coaming, thumbed the safety off, and aimed. “Through the windshield.” The shot made a pop louder than in the movies, but not nearly as loud as it would have been without the suppressor.

  A hundred yards down the pier the truck halted in a screech of brakes so hard it slewed around. The second was following too close to stop, and they collided with a slam like a load of iron being dropped off the back of a dump truck.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Keeping the range open. Uh, better get your guys ready, you figure to break out.” He aimed again. A figure leaped down from the cab of the first truck. The submachine gun popped and it went down.

  But more were boiling out of the backs of the trucks, armed troops, distinct now under the pier floods. One ran off to the side, where he began gesticulating, pointing toward the Juliet. Oberg’s weapon jerked and ejected and the man wavered, then sank as if melting.

  Dan wondered why they weren’t shooting back. They must not have realized yet they were being fired on, the suppressed HKs were so quiet. Down on the camel, Kaulukukui, screened from the milling troops by the lip of the pier, reached up to place something in the shadow of one of the bollards.

  “Give it to me no shit, Teddy. Can we make it to that beach?”

  “Some of us might. If we haul ass before they call in reinforcements.” Pop. Pop. “After that, I don’t know. Want a shot?”

  Oberg seemed cool for a situation that was looking more and more like the Alamo. “No, you’re doing okay. But how long can we hold them off?”

  “Not very fucking long, is my guess. Like I said, if we’re going to break out—”

  His sentence was cut off by a tremendous flash and crack, followed by screams from the trucks. Men staggered away and fell. Others had gone down at once. Those who remained hit the deck and began ripping off long bursts of full automatic fire, not just at the sub, in every direction. Through it Oberg’s weapon searched here and there, jerking slightly each time he depressed the trigger. Pop. Pop. A siren began to wail to the north.

  “What was that?”

  “Claymore.”

  “How’ll we get through that blocking force?”

  “Like I said, not all of us will.” Oberg ducked as a bullet clanged off steel below them. “Took ’em long enough.” He adjusted his rear sight and fired again. He cracked his gum. “Honest opinion? If we were all operators, we might get through. No offense, but your guys aren’t. At least, the kind we need now.”

  Dan ducked too as another bullet hiss-zipped over. The Iranians had taken cover, some behind the trucks, others behind the buildings inboard of the pier. No leader seemed to have emerged to grip them again, drive them forward, but he had no doubt one would any moment now. Or soon arrive, given the racket of automatic fire they were filling the basin with. He caught another siren, no, a general-quarters alarm, from the nest of destroyers across the water.

  They weren’t going to make it, swimming out. His guys weren’t trained in underwater navigation. They’d never find the inlet with patrol boats swarming over them, swim miles in the dark, end up at a rendezvous point.

  He didn’t think they could make it to the beach, either. The emergency extraction plan hadn’t anticipated a gauntlet of troops. The open field between K-79 and the perimeter fence was killing ground. The fence would hang them up while they cut their way through it. Past that, another half mile to the beach. And once they reached the surf line, if any did, they’d still have to swim.

  But standing pat wasn’t an option either. Oberg and Kaulukukui could hold the reaction force at arms-length for a while, but not forever. Not against the heavier weapons that were no doubt already on their way.

  That left one alternative. One he hadn’t planned, wasn’t prepared for. But the only one, in the circumstances, he could come up with.

  He flipped up the lid on the speaking tube. “Carpenter?”

  “Here, Commander.”

  “Rit. You were a bubblehead, right?”

  Carpenter didn’t answer and he hurried on. “Didn’t you have to qualify on every station on the boat? To get your dolphins? Know all the systems, so everybody can do everybody else’s job?”

  “Well . . . yeah. Especially on the old diesel boats. World turns to crap, there’s no time to wait for the guy, that’s his watch station. You don’t know which valve to close, you better hope you can breathe water. ’Course, they never qual’d us on any of the reactor stuff—”

  “I’m not talking reactors. Can you get the engines started on this thing?”

  “On this boat? The engines? Uh—you talking diesel, or electric?”

  “I don’t care! Whichever gets us off the pier faster.”

  “That’d be getting underway on the battery. Line up the right switches and engage the electric motors, you’re good to go. Diesels, you need fuel, air, starter motor—”

  “Go aft and get them lined up. Take Donnie. Take Im, too. How’s he doing?”

  “Still deaf. Hey, I don’t know if I—”

  “Don’t tell me you can’t, Rit. Just tell me how long it’ll take.”

  He got silence, so he added, “Get back there and pass me word up how it goes. Uh, hold on. Send everybody else topside, with their weapons. Through the sail trunk, not up forward. Tell them to exit on the starboard side, they’ve got cover there. For the moment, anyway. And do it fast, Rit. Hurry.”

  He explained to the SEAL, who listened expression-lessly, only his jaw moving, as they watched troops knot behind the nearest truck. “That sound good to you? Tell me if it doesn’t.”

  “At least we’ll all go together.”

  “Don’t leave anyone behind.”

  “Right, Commander. If we can pull it off.” He aimed, and Dan made out Kaulukukui sprawled, firing, too, from a hide position near the bow. He could barely see the guy, and he was looking down on him; to their besiegers, the fire must be coming from everywhere. But they wouldn’t stay pinned forever. “If we don’t, we’re not gonna have anything to worry about, anyway. Not for long. Okay, I’m gonna go down and get things organized. You got it. Make ’em count.”

  Oberg folded and ladder-slid down the trunk, leaving Dan alone at the top of the sail. “Uh, Obie—Obie!”

  But the SEAL
was gone. He had to hold the fort up here while Oberg did his thing. He checked the HK, seated the mag, and fed a round with the awkward left-handed operating handle. He noticed Oberg had left the grenades in their neat little row. He stuck his head up, picked out a target, and began firing.

  A hundred feet below, aft of the main engine compartment, Rit Carpenter hitched up his wet-suit bottoms, looking doubtfully at a chrome-yellow-painted console that extended from the deck all the way up to the overhead. Two rows of five gauges each at the top. To the left, a vertical string of six lights. Below the gauges were black Bakelite knobs, and below them three handwheels, rims bright red, spokes bright green. At the bottom of the cabinet a humongous green and black lever a yard long stuck out. Each gauge or control was carefully labeled, both with a small bronze plaque, original to the equipment, and below that a newer, computer-printed sticky label.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, hitching his pants again. The bronze callouts were in Cyrillic. The others were in squiggles he guessed had to be Iranian.

  Neither of which he could read a word of. “You make any of this out?” he mumbled to Im. Half turned when the Korean didn’t reply, then cursed; the son of a bitch was just standing there looking blank, holding his ears. “You’re gonna be a lot of help.”

  He studied the gauges again. That many of them, all alike, they had to be battery bank indicators. He couldn’t think of anything else a submarine had ten of all alike, except maybe torpedo tubes, and they weren’t controlled from the engine spaces. The handwheels were probably rheostat controls. He tried the biggest one. It turned left and right but not all the way, and he got a “clunk” of relays going over somewhere below at full right. He studied this a while, then tried the smaller handwheel to the left. Five of the vertical lights above it came on, the bottom five.

  “Okay, this makes sense,” he muttered. He turned the left handwheel and the five lights went off; turned it back and the lights went on. Interesting. Not the way U.S. boats did it, but it probably meant he had five sixths of a charge in the can. He turned it off again, to save juice, and tried the other handwheel. It went around but didn’t seem to do anything and he didn’t hear any relays. He tried it with the big wheel in the “on” position and still didn’t get anything.