by David Poyer
“Run way to the left and right of centerline from us to the target.”
“Uh, yeah. I would assume.” Monty was nervous, knowing how much was riding on them getting this right, or at least, right enough to fire. If the thing would fire. He scrubbed his sweating palms down his thighs.
Lenson was still thinking aloud. “So we need him in close. To cut down on that angular error. Maybe . . . two thousand yards?”
Monty swallowed, not saying anything.
“And that’s going to put us in Limbo range, with him getting firing data both from his own active sonar and from that fucking helicopter. We’ll have to keep the bow pointed right at him to shoot. Which means we can’t go evasive.”
“Go evasive how?” Monty asked him. “We can’t go fast and we can’t go deep. And what if we miss, or the fucking thing doesn’t work?”
“I heard that, too,” Carpenter said from the sonar compartment.
“Vaught, you holding up?” Lenson asked the helmsman. Monty turned to stare as the man suddenly stood, leaving the helm unoccupied.
“V-Dag? Need a relief?”
“Yeah. I need a relief.” His tone was flat and he didn’t have any emotion in his expression either. He put his mouthpiece back in and went aft.
Lenson looked nonplussed, but after a moment’s hesitation crossed to where the pilot had sat and took the controls himself. “Rit, what were we on?”
“One niner five.”
“Monty, you and Donnie set up the Uzel. I’ll give you a firing bearing. If it doesn’t work, or we miss, I’m going to surrender.”
“Scuttle and surrender?”
“No, surface and surrender. Maybe if they get their boat back when we could have sunk it, they’ll go easier on you guys.”
“On us? How about on you?”
“I can’t let them question me,” Lenson said.
Monty didn’t answer for a moment. Lenson had never spoken about it, but he’d heard the guy had been tortured by the Mukhbarat, Saddam’s Gestapo. Maybe if you’d been through that, you didn’t want to ever again. He didn’t particularly want to be a hostage, a captive, himself, but it’d be better than dying down here. Wouldn’t it?
Finally he said, “It’s gonna work, Dan. And if it doesn’t, the Navy could still show up.”
Lenson’s bag deflated, as though he was taking a deep breath. He took his mouthpiece out again. Coughed, and coughed; stood from the bench and pressed the intercom switch above him. “Teddy, Sumo, status on flooding?”
“Over the lower level deckplates.”
“No joy on the pumps?”
“Had them going. For about eight minutes. Then the water hit the breakers and they tripped off. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. How much juice we got left?”
“I don’t know how that motor’s turning over on what we’ve got. Don’t count on more than three or four knots.”
Lenson’s face sagged. He held down the button for a few seconds. Then let it up slowly, having said nothing at all.
He shook his head, flinging off sweat as he sucked again on the breathing tube. His chest hurt. He couldn’t decide. Couldn’t decide.
Surrender, or attack?
The bubble kept drifting forward. She was nose light, tail heavy. Vaught had left his post with the planes pointing up, and Dan gave them another five degrees, but the nose kept creeping skyward.
She was slowly sinking. Forty-five meters, where not long before the gauge had read forty. He pulled the control columns all the way back, all the way into the stops. The water might be getting warmer as they neared shore—yeah, that’d make them heavier, warmer water was less dense. He needed Im back on the ballast panel, a few more tons of buoyancy in the after tanks.
Where the hell was Vaught? If he’d gone to take a leak he should be back by now. “V-Dag,” he shouted over his shoulder. No answer came.
“Control, Torpedo,” said the intercom.
“Go, Torpedo.”
“Shkval in the tube, electrically connected, inner door closed, impulse tank seventy-five percent charged, in the green.”
“Double check that inner door. Then open the muzzle door.”
“Confirm white light on inner door. Have to flood to sea before we open the outer door. Flooding to sea . . . white light. Manually opening . . . stand by . . . red light. Muzzle door open, tube three. Standing by to fire photon torpedo, Captain Picard.”
It didn’t sound like Wenck, except for that last crack, and Dan could imagine Im standing beside the kid, those black eyes boring into him. “Control aye. Vaught up there?”
“V-Dag? No, he ain’t. He supposed to be?”
“No. If he shows up, send him back here. Send Im back, too, Donnie. Need him on the ballast control, I can’t hold the bubble.”
“Want me, too?”
“No. Has he shown you how to fire it? The tube, I mean?”
“Yeah. We’ve got a string on it.”
He didn’t want to know what that meant. “Okay, you stay there, we might have to fire manually if this system doesn’t cooperate. I need him here. We’re getting awful short handed.” He craned around again. “Rit, still with us?”
“Still here. Fucker’s starting to really hurt, though.”
“Vaught in there with you?”
“Not in here. Oh. I’ve got something big out at two three zero.”
“Something big?”
“Don’t know what. Good hard return. Probably metal. A big tank of some kind. Maybe, air inside? A hollow return, like a chime.”
“Range?”
“Six hundred. Time to turn! Next course will be to port.”
“Where’s Sierra One?”
“Constant bearing . . . high rep rate pinging . . . still out of my active range, but he’s getting gradually louder. Picking his way through the oil field. Just like we are, but faster.”
“I’m coming to starboard instead, Rit. Aim me just south of whatever you’re looking at over there.”
“That’d be two two five.”
“Coming to two two five.” He held the helm stick over, coughing into the breathing tube, then pushed it all the way to the right. The rudder indicator swung, they still had hydraulic pressure, but the gyro ticked over all too slowly. Not many more minutes and they’d be dead in the water, batteries exhausted.
Five hundred yards; three knots. Five minutes, his increasingly worn-out mind computed. He couldn’t tell if he was fainting or if the lights were fading. The emergency lanterns were the dim orange eyes of tarsiers. “Rit, give me a mark on five minutes and take one ping. I’m going to lurk behind this thing, whatever it is.”
“He’ll see us when he opens the bearing. Unless we’re right on top of it. And he’ll hear us, if we make any noise at all.”
Dan didn’t answer. He was seeing the engagement as Im had sketched it out. But something about it he hadn’t liked tactically. As in, meeting the enemy bow to bow. The face off. The showdown.
But this wasn’t Colt to Colt at high noon. It was an alley fight. Knee to groin, thumb to eye. And there was only one rule in an alley fight. Always play dirty.
How could he play dirty now?
“We’re losing altititude,” Henrickson called from forward. “How deep is it here?”
“Shit,” Dan muttered into the mouthpiece. Passing fifty-five and dropping fast, he wasn’t sure where the bottom was but it couldn’t be far. There didn’t seem to be a thing the planes could do about it, he had them at full rise. He hit the intercom. “Electrical, need power. Give me more knots, we’re losing depth control here.”
No answer. But thank Christ, here was Im. Dan didn’t ask what had taken him so long coming back three compartments from the torpedo room. The Korean tripped as he came through the door, catching his foot on the lower sealing rim, and fell heavily. Hoisted up to all fours after a moment, then came on, but he left bloody tracks on the deck and panted like a dying dog. Dan grabbed his arm as he slagged by, jabbed at the depth gauge
. The Korean nodded dully. His hand caressed the knife at his belt.
“How long now, Rit?”
“Two minutes gone, three minutes remain.”
“Belay my last order, about the ping. Just give me a mark on five.”
“Mark on five, no ping, aye.”
“Electrical, Control: hear my last?”
Kaulukukui answered, voice heavy, drugged, like a recorder played too slow. “We copy.”
“We need power up here.”
“Wait.”
“Sumo, I need turns on that shaft. I have to get to cover here, and I’m losing attitude control.”
“Wait.”
“What the fuck,” Dan muttered, and caught himself swinging off course. He reversed rudder to bring them back. Feeling in the back of his neck, like many tons of steel hanging above his head, the approaching frigate. Skippered by someone who didn’t forgive mistakes, and didn’t make many of his own. Whatever the other’s name or beliefs, Dan respected him. He’d read about this, the uncanny sense of the other player that hunter and prey in the undersea jungles developed during the long game. He could almost see his adversary on his bridge, forehead in his hands, trying to probe in his turn the intentions of the other mind below him.
Their mutual aim being each to destroy the other.
“Mark, five minutes, Dan.”
“Got it.” He considered countermanding his countermand, telling Carpenter to go ahead and ping, make super sure they weren’t going to run headlong into something hard and huge and metal, but kept his mouth shut. One emission could give the game away.
They’d slowed, so he gave it an extra thirty seconds, then eased the rudder over fifteen degrees. Not to full; a good sonar operator could hear the flow noise over a fully turned rudder. It would take a while to come around, but when they did they’d be facing back east, crouched in the acoustic “shadow” of whatever they were behind. If that fucking helo didn’t out them . . . “Rit, that chopper? Where is it now?”
“Haven’t heard it since the last Limbo shot. We’re pretty far out in the Gulf for a chopper out of Iran. Not much stay time.”
Good, he was thinking, maybe this could go our way, when he noticed the needle on the depth gauge tremoring just short of sixty. As he stared, disbelieving, it dropped to sixty-one. He wheeled instantly on Im, to be confronted by as cold a look as he’d ever met.
“Cannot hold her,” the Korean said, each word pronounced precisely and almost without accent. “All reserve buoyancy gone with flooding aft. Enough HP air for one half blow. When that gone, never come up again. Also, you smell?”
“What?”
“You smell?” The Korean put his finger under his nose, lifted it, mimed sniffing. His hand rested on the panel. “I blow?”
Dan pulled off the nose clip and took a tentative sniff. Nothing new. Or maybe, the faintest odor of bleach.
No one spoke. He swallowed, mind hopping from thought to thought. Trying alternatives, but coming up short. He hit the intercom again, as much to buy time as for any other reason. “Sumo? Teddy? What’s going on back there?”
“Bad news, skipper. It’s V-Dag.”
“What kind of bad news?”
“He’s dead.” Oberg began coughing, then continued in a choked voice. “Can’t talk . . . found him on the lower level, face down on the deckplates. No breathing gear.”
“No gear? Where was it?”
“Don’t know. Not with him.”
“What was he doing back there, Teddy? He just up and walked away from the helm. We thought he was going to the head.”
“Well, maybe . . . there’s a head back here, but he was down by the diesel log station.”
“You’re sure he’s dead? No pulse?”
“Face down in the water, boss.”
Why now, when they needed every hand? The SDV pilot had given the impression of moving closer to some rash act ever since the attacks began. Had he just taken off his gear, knowing that in a few moments what he breathed would finish him? Or had his breathing cartridge failed? In which case he’d been operating with clouded judgment. Could have gotten confused, lost, stripped off his gear looking for a fresh cartridge, finally passed out.
No time for regret or anger. “Teddy, that’s bad, but we’re in a tight situation. Im thinks he can get us to the surface one last time. If he does, can you start the diesels?”
Oberg coughed and coughed. The intercom went on and off. Finally he got out, “Don’t know if we’ve got enough power left, boss. Those starters eat a lot of amps. Another thing, we’re starting to get chlorine back here. Getting pretty thick.”
That was it, what Im had detected first: the bleach smell. Dan hit the intercom instantly. “Grab Sumo and haul ass up here, Teddy. Slam your rheos all the way forward, full power to the motors, all you have left. Bring V-Dag if you can, but dog each door as you come forward, and secure the bulkhead ventilation isolation valves.” He let up on the switch and snapped to Im, “Get us to the surface. Prepare to surface! Monty, we ready on fire control?”
“Bringing the computer up.”
Sluggish thuds sounded fore and aft as Im sent the last air hissing into the tanks. He grunted in Korean and stepped back, rubbing his hands with the air of one finally through with a demanding task.
“Rit, hear me? I’m surfacing. Where’s Sierra One?”
“Lost track, Sierra One. Last bearing zero two five true.”
“Goddamn it, Rit! What was he doing when you lost him?”
“Same’s before. Frequent maneuvering, but coming up our ass fast. Then I look again and he’s off the scope.”
Dan cursed silently, but only for a second. “Stay on the stack. You’re doing a good job. Busted arm and all.” He cleared his throat and added, “You did a real good job.”
A second’s pause. Then the sonarman’s voice floated out. “No prob, Skipper. You did pretty good yourself.”
Oberg and Kaulukukui appeared shuffling and bent in the passageway on the far side of the after door, dragging a burden. They paused to dog the engine room door, then came on. They laid out the corpse on the deckplates outside the galley and came the rest of the way into Control. Before they could speak Dan said, “Do we need that door closed, too? The batteries are right below it.”
“I’m pretty sure they vent into Electrical.”
“Okay, leave it open. Sumo, you look like shit.”
“I better sit down.”
“If you have to sit, take the helm. Keep her on this course till I tell you otherwise. Teddy, where’s your weapon? Your MP5?”
“Stowed.”
“Grab it. And load it.” He looked at the depth gauge one last time. It read ten meters and was moving up, not fast, in fact very sluggishly, but going up. “We’re going topside. Everybody else, man up to fire. But if this doesn’t work, get ready to abandon ship, too. As soon as they spot us, they’ll hit us with everything they’ve got.”
When he got to the top of the ladder leading up through the tight echoing trunk from Control to the sail, the hatch wouldn’t open. Steel protested around them, creaking as the boat picked up the surface swell, as he and Oberg, locked like climaxing lovers, four feet on the same rung, struggled to turn the handwheel. It yielded not an inch. “Jammed by the shock,” the SEAL muttered into his ear.
“Once more.” Dan wondered if he smelled as awful as Oberg. Probably. The knowledge that in a few seconds they could be breathing fresh air made his frustration as overpowering as his fear. He had to get topside. If he couldn’t see he couldn’t aim, and if he couldn’t aim, surfacing with the Iranian near meant quick death for them all.
“Depth gauge shows we’re surfaced,” Kaulukukui shouted from below.
“Get your leg around me. Shove when I pull. One, two, three.”
“Fucker moved! Hit it again.”
“One, two, three.” A muscle tore in his arm, but the wheel grated around a quarter turn. They heaved again and the dogs stuttered as they withdrew. They both s
hoved and his wrists pained but it popped violently free, almost blew open. A reeking wind from below nearly ejected them out of the open trunk, so that he stumbled, going to one knee.
In the orgasmic delight of his first lungful of air that hadn’t been rebreathed into a miasmic stew he didn’t care that it was hot and freighted with grit and smell. Only that it had oxygen and tasted wonderful.
Then he blinked and ducked, cowering within the open cockpit.
This upper world flickered windblown, orange-tan, howling with the continuous thunder of a great waterfall, and lit by flame. He blinked around, having not expected whatever this was. A cursing Oberg was fighting the sling of his HK, which had snagged on the handwheel. It was night, but everything was lit by wavering brightness. Hands clamped over his ears, Dan blinked at a dented-down mass of bent plates and wreckage that looked as if an asteroid had impacted the trailing edge of the sail. The scope was bent forward, the radio mast gone, what must be the induction plenum was split apart and buckled. He shivered. Ten feet aft and the mortar round would have hit the pressure hull, flooding the engine room and hauling them all down to a watery grave.
Then he looked to port, and ducked, flinging up an arm to shield his face.
The platform loomed over them, so close the heat from the massive wavering torch at the end of the trusswork-supported tube that cantilevered out scorched his cheeks like instantaneous sunburn. Shockwaves played in the yellow-white flame like imps made of incandescent gas. The massive light lit the sea around them, lit K-79 as she wallowed bow high, stern submerged, in the howling sand-laden wind. The brightness was dazzling. Like an actor on stage, he could see nothing beyond it.
“Where’s the frigate?” Oberg howled in his ear, and Dan stumbled forward, feeling for the voice tube, then spinning off the knobs and latching up the steel covers that protected it and the rudder and engine order indicators. The thick glass was cracked on the dials but they were still registering. Thank God for Russian engineering. Sumo had them pointed east, so they were still making steerageway. Though no more than a knot or two, to judge by their sluggish parade through the sanded-off waves that sparkled dully, like cast bronze, in the light of the flareoff.
