The Weapon

by David Poyer

  But he couldn’t just steam away. Leave him at the mercy of the Iranians. He might if he’d been sure Henrickson was dead. But could he say he thought that?

  He slammed his fist into steel, cursing Fate. What had Niles Barry said, when he’d assigned him to TAG? Don’t get any more guys killed.

  “Fuck it,” he shouted. “Rit. Rit!”

  “Still here, Commander.”

  “Right thirty degrees. Steady on zero nine zero.”

  “Right thirty, steady on zero nine zero,” he heard Carpenter pass to Vaught, presumably the one actually on the helm. “We out of the harbor already, sir?”

  He didn’t answer, looking over his shoulder. Back at the ruddy winking of heavy machine-gun fire, the green arcs of tracer. There wouldn’t be much room to do this. He’d have to judge it carefully. A tight turn to starboard, at exactly the right moment, to put her port side along the camel. Get everybody topside except maybe Rit and Vaught, lay down as much fire as they could, and somehow snatch Henrickson back aboard. Then thread the whole gauntlet over again, this time with alerted patrol boats waiting.

  He doubted they had much of a chance.

  “Henrickson!” he howled, despairing.

  “What?”

  He stood rooted. Frowned, cocking his head. The answering cry hadn’t come from the trunk. Nor from forward. The new rudder order was taking effect. They were starting to plow around. He shouted again. “Monty?”

  “What?”

  He poked his head above the coaming, puzzled. It sounded like it was coming from aft, from the pier itself, from which the fiery verdigris trails, like vertical shooting stars, were still floating up, despite the range growing long, at least for the small arms. Most were going high, though some furrowed up the water to either side, and an occasional lucky pull still clanged off steel, blowing off chunks of rubberized coating. It had been Henrickson’s voice, all right. He couldn’t be imagining it, could he? But where the fuck was the guy?

  Dan was wondering if he was going mad when he noticed a porpoise close alongside. He threw his muzzle over the coaming and triggered the SureFire. The illuminated circle lit not a porpoise, but a man in a wet suit, arms shot out straight ahead, being towed along on one of the spring lines. Then it twisted, and the beam lit Henrickson’s upturned face, contorted with the agony of holding on despite the massive force of the water rushing past.

  The indicator slammed over to CTOII. Dan yelled down, “Shift your rudder! New course, two eight zero!” Then leaned over the opposite side of the cockpit. “Teddy! Sumo! Hear me down there?”

  “Copy, Commander.”

  “Port side, aft of the sail. Henrickson’s towing alongside. Get him aboard. Get any other loose lines in, before they foul the screws. Then get him on the sat phone, or no, Oberg, you get on. Clue Honest Houston what’s going on. We need backup ASAP. We need air support.”

  “Copy,” Oberg said.

  Grinning, suddenly as lighthearted as he’d felt despairing ten seconds before, he aimed the HK astern and fired out the last magazine, aiming above the now receding gun-flashes to allow for drop. Probably not hitting anything, but why carry the rounds? They wouldn’t need them anymore. “Honest Houston,” Commander, Task Force 152, aboard USS Antietam, would have carrier air over them in half an hour. They’d run out to deep water, meet up with Mangum, pull the Shkval, and scuttle K-79. Let the Iranians sort out what had happened.

  Below, Sumo was hauling Henrickson up, grabbing an arm, gaffing him aboard. When the analyst wobbled and collapsed, Kaulukukui scooped him up and carried him forward, out of sight.

  Okay, back to getting the fuck out of here . . . the reversed rudder was taking effect, they were swinging back toward the breakwater . . . he knobbed the EOT indicator to , which he figured meant something like “standard.” He shivered again at how close they’d come to losing Henrickson. Then shoved it out of his head; he had to bear down and get them out of here. Holding that thought he tried to judge the turn, just by seaman’s eye, without knowing her tactical diameter or how fast she’d answer the rudder, and trying to remember what the photos and intel had showed of the breakwaters and the shoals on the way out. He bent and yelled into the tube, “Vaught! Left twenty degrees rudder. Come to course—call it—one nine zero.”

  “Left twenty, steady one nine zero. These courses you’re giving me, that magnetic, sir? I’m not sure what we got here is a gyro or what.”

  “Doesn’t matter, long as we’re looking at the same dial. Mark your head.”

  “Passing two six five.”

  “That’s what I’ve got here, we match, good to go. Make your new course one niner zero. Let me know when you’re lined up and I’ll adjust by eye.”

  He aligned the sonar fin on the bow with the pelorus stand and watched it slowly tick around to port. The rudder kicked to starboard ten degrees before the lubber’s line hit the new course and he grinned; Vaught would finish the turn exactly on course. He groped around and found a pair of binoculars dangling and focused on the breakwater. He lined up the bullnose between the beacons marking the channel out. Passed down a course correction—he’d turned a fraction of a minute too early—to 200.

  They rogered from below and Dan looked at the EOT again and then straightened and twisted to put the field of view of the glasses on the frigate nest, directly astern now.

  His heart fell again. More pier lights had come on, a muddy red-yellow sodium-vapor haze, and deck lights, too, whiter and lower to the basin level. The glasses showed lines being cast off, men boiling on the forecastles, the pale rectangles of lit pilothouse windows, running lights snapping on. He turned the indicator another notch forward. Maybe fifteen knots. Considering her hull form, and that her bow was still ballasted down, dragging through the water, he didn’t think she’d go much faster no matter how much power they cranked on.

  The frigates, turbine-engined jobs, would make thirty, thirty-five knots. The patrol boats nested cheek by jowl three deep would make even more. He had a head start, but not much of one. He looked at the indicator again, then cranked it over all the way. Ahead flank.

  Then he saw the boat. Lights off and low in the water, so he hadn’t made it out in the confused light and blowing dust. Maybe just coming in from patrol, maybe going out, maybe scrambled as the ready response, but there it was, crossing from starboard to port and turning into them, crewmen pointing, swinging weapons. Swinging a twin gun mount on the long forward deck.

  Bigger than a .50. An automatic cannon, Russian or Chinese, like the ZSUs he’d seen in Bosnia. He stared frozen as the barrel came around and steadied on the oncoming sail. Steadied right on him.

  Dan realized he was aiming the HK and pulling the trigger even though it was empty. But only for a moment, because the still-turning bow of the accelerating submarine smashed into the patrol craft. It rolled, the cracking and screeching of the fiberglass hull splintering apart coming clearly up to him even over the roar of fire from aft. The crew went flying. He lowered his weapon, watching men struggle to the surface of the dust-scummed water as the silent runaway swept past, watching bodies float up face-down, jostle as the bow wave foamed over them, then sink away.

  Forget that, stick to getting out of here. The flank bell was taking effect. They were tearing along now, pushing a big bow wave, though still with that eerie absence of vibration. He gave Vaught another course correction. They were in the narrows. A sand spit spread to starboard, the peninsula to port.

  Yeah, there were troops, personnel carriers, too, and they opened up all at once, muzzle flashes and then a solid wall of tracers, rising and then descending like a flight of arrows. He turtled violently, slamming his forehead into a helmet rack. He was loving the splinter plating until something paper-punched it with a clang like a cracked bell and pounded a big dent into the far side of the cockpit too before falling to the grating, spinning and skittering before chattering away down into the sheer void.

  He backed into the aftermost corner, putting a rada
r head between him and the incoming, and screwed his face into the binocs again. The breakwaters beckoned, outstretched arms fading into the dimness. Half a mile ahead the lights at their ends glimmered tangerine and turquoise, haloed by the blowing dust. He twisted the telegraph knob again, just to send the message he needed all the power they could give him, and flicked switches on a darkened instrument that might or might not be a fathometer repeater. The hydrography had shown shallows along the breakwater, but he couldn’t remember where. If they ran aground, they were finished.

  The fire grew more accurate. Slugs slammed into steel so near his head it felt like taking jabs from Evander Holyfield or Mike Tyson, but he centered the bow between the lights, adjusting till they ran as if on tracks down the midline of the channel, the gray rock and concrete of the breakwater equally distant in the blowing dust on either hand. Then retreated into the trunk, clinging to the rungs of the ladder as another banging whanged and jarred and echoed, like someone flailing on steel with an I-beam; more projectiles walking up the sail. White flashes jagged his vision, the clamor was beyond deafening, but unlike the splinter plating, the trunk’s walls were thick as the pressure hull; nothing short of a major caliber shell would penetrate it. He clung, eyes squeezed shut, enduring. If he could get outside the breakwater, get some air cover, the fighters could keep the destroyers off their backs long enough for them to rendezvous with San Francisco. After that, the Islamic Republic of Iran could have its sub back and welcome to it.

  He counted a hundred, then popped his head up again. The bluegreen pulse of the eastern light strobed gray wet rocks, breaking surf foaming at their feet. Past that was the darkness of the open sea.

  Open sea! Out there Mangum and San Francisco waited. The air assist would be here soon. They were going to make it. He gave Vaught five degrees to starboard and retreated to his rabbit hole again, wishing he had water. The dry wind, the gritty dust made his throat feel like a washboard road.

  A minute later someone tugged at his bootie. Dan looked into Oberg’s upturned features. “Commander? You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Carpenter’s got the scope up.”

  Dan looked aft. He hadn’t heard it extend, but the mast loomed above his head. “Yeah?”

  “He’s looking out ahead of us. There’s two flashing lights out there at about one-zero-zero. One’s farther away than the other.”

  “Two in line? That’s the buoyed channel.”

  “Uh-huh. Anyway he’s on the scope. So you can take cover, if you want.”

  “I’m fine here, Teddy. But have him look aft. See what those cans are doing. Vaught okay on the helm?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Did you get hold of the task force? Tell me they’re launching F-18s.”

  “Well, Honest Houston answered right up. Guarding the freq. Brought them up to speed on what happened and what we had to do.”

  Dan sucked air but choked on dust. “Great. When will the air cover be here?”

  Oberg averted his gaze. “Maybe you better get on the horn, all right? Apply some of that commander power. ’Cause what they’re telling me is, there isn’t going to be any.”

  Standing in the cover of the sail, the SatCom handset tight to his ear, he could just make out words over the hiss of sand-laden wind. The hollow ringing voice was that of a task force staffer three hundred miles to the north. She was saying, “That’s correct, Quick Snatch. The Iraqis shot down two Brit Tornados enforcing the no-fly zone. We hit the radar sites, but now they’re preparing a ground force to push down the road and clobber the Shiites again. Maybe even with gas. The UN’s approved pushing the zone all the way to Baghdad. The Air Force is scrambling out of Prince Sultan. Over.”

  A stray bullet clattered on thin metal. Somebody back there was still firing, though their target was past the breakwater. He screwed the phone tighter into his skull, perspiration greasing the plastic with a gritty paste. “And that’s got what to do with us? Over.”

  “The battle group’s being pulled up to Kuwait. Getting in range for backup strikes. We’re cranking on knots even as we speak. Over.”

  “But you’re on standby for us. You’ve got orders to—”

  “Negative.”

  “What do you mean, negative?”

  “I mean, we don’t have actual orders concerning your mission. Not through our combatant commander. We never did. Just back channel Navy, far as I know. Over.”

  The deck was canting, picking up a roll. Dan leaned past the sail and looked back through the darkness. He couldn’t see clearly through the scudding dust, but behind them, inside the basin, lights were separating from the piers. The frigates were backing out, turning to follow. Reacting faster than he’d hoped they would. One set of red and green and white already seemed closer.

  A flash lit the dark. A detonation rolled across the water. Something banshee-howled over their heads. It exploded ahead with a flash and seconds later, the distinctive crack of high explosive.

  He swallowed. One of the frigates had managed to man up a mount. The first shell had been long, but hadn’t been that far off in azimuth. Drop a few degrees, they could do that with whatever optical sight they were equipped with, and the next projectile could burst on the sail itself. The dust was obscuring things, but all those gunners had to do was catch them with a searchlight, and sooner or later a shell would arrive with their Social Security numbers on it.

  “Uh, this is Quick Snatch. We’re in trouble here. Operators need backup. You need to kick this up to TF Actual and get somebody detached to give us some support here. Over.”

  The voice turned apologetic. “Understand, will re-present, but we’re already running north. Try to hold your Indians off until we can clarify the situation. Honest Houston, out.”

  Dan glanced at the faces around him. No way they could outrace frigates. They’d be on them like pit bulls, and in not very many minutes, either. “Uh, Houston, stand by. This is Quick Snatch, Quick Snatch, stay on the line, Houston. Indians in hot pursuit here. We need air support. Air support! Do you copy? Houston, do you copy?”

  The only answer was a hiss like the sand-freighted wind.

  22

  The Strait of Hormuz

  Dan fought a blankness in his head, an absence where thought should be. Disappointment, stress, and the incredible noise seemed to have stopped his neurons firing. But this was exactly when he had to become an icy Jacques Futrelle thinking machine. He peered ahead, picking up a steady flash on the horizon. If it was the channel marker, it was pretty far off to port. Belatedly his brain kicked in again. The channel out into the Strait angled east to avoid a large island. Lorok? Larak? Anyway it was shallow here, real shallow, and they couldn’t afford to touch.

  He ducked inside and slid down the trunk.

  In the control room, keeping one ear out for the next order from above, Rit stared at markings in two different languages, neither of which made any sense. “Okay,” he mumbled. “Let’s look this cocksucker over.”

  It was obviously the ballast control panel, but not like any he’d seen. The lights were white and red, not red and green like on U.S. boats. Okay, let’s say red still meant an open valve. Red was the color of danger, and, aboard a sub, a valve open when it shouldn’t be was as dangerous as it came. Then white would mean closed, safe, good to go.

  Right? He glanced at the leather-sheathed bench where Vaught perched, nudging the rudder control once in a while. Im stood tiptoe behind him, keeping them on course. Those controls weren’t like the wheel and plane arrangements he was used to, either. They looked more like what you’d use driving a tank. But the guy seemed to be coping. He was on the right course, anyway.

  Lenson slid down the ladder two-handed from above, landing both boots at once with a thump that jolted the floorplates. “Carpenter!”

  Fucker sure was noisy. “Here, sir.”

  “Can you take us under?”

  Vaught’s head snapped round. Rit grunted, not surprised, he’d been
figuring they’d get to that sooner or later, but not feeling too hot about it. Not in a boat he didn’t know, guys who didn’t know the systems, labels he couldn’t even fucking read. “What’s the matter, sir? Thought we were going to meet up with some backup out here.”

  “There’s not going to be any support. Not for a while yet.”

  Lenson explained about trouble at the far end of the Gulf, the task force pulled off to bail out the Air Force and the Brits. His eyes kept magneting to the periscope, though, so Rit stepped to it and pulled the handles down. But the commander didn’t go to it, instead snapped his eyes away. “Can you take us under?” he repeated. “We figured out the ballast tank controls, didn’t we?”

  “Well, yessir, got that doped out. The manual controls. But we can’t run this boat manually. Not with eight hands aboard, and none of us qualified on—”

  “Can you activate the hydraulics? What do we need to do to submerge?”

  He cleared his throat and hitched up his wet suit bottoms. “Uh, well, got to have two things to submerge, sir. Ballast control and plane control. You can get your head under with just the tanks, but you want planes too. Or you’re always running back and forth, too heavy or too light, you never get the bubble just right, you’ll broach.”

  Vaught put in, “I think these are the planes.” He patted two yellow boxes at his right hand as he sat on the steering bench.

  Rit frowned. “Don’t look like ’em to me. No markings for angle down, angle up.”

  “Yeah, but watch.” Vaught rotated a forward lever that looked as if it had come off an old Ford tractor. A hum, a rattle of fluid pressure ratcheting against resistance. They waited. No question, Rit had to admit the deck slanted a little more.

  “Okay, then that lever like it just aft of it—”

  “Stern planes. What I figure.”