Attack of the Seawolf mp-2

by Michael Dimercurio

  CHAPTER 33

  TUESDAY, 14 MAY

  0004 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

  BOHAI HAIXIA STRAIT

  0804 BEIJING TIME

  The ASW officer, Lieutenant Victor Samuels, sat in the rear starboard seat of the S-3 Viking twin-jet submarine-hunting aircraft, staring at the magnetic anomaly detector display.

  “Anything cooking on MAD?” his sonar technician asked.

  “Maybe,” Samuels said. “I’m getting four detects in the area but the whole channel has been like this.”

  “All four are weak on the sonobuoys,” the technician replied.

  “Same detects we’ve been hunting all night.”

  “Hey, guys. Momma’s calling. Playtime’s over,” the aircraft’s pilot said on the intercom.

  “Give me one last active dipper,” Samuels replied.

  “These four detects are still bugging me.”

  Down below, a LAMPS III Seahawk helicopter hovered over the spot marked by the Viking, dropped its dipping sonar and sent out a series of active sonar pings. Twenty-five hundred yards to the west a second Seahawk dropped a dipper, and the two choppers pinged over the area, hoping to come up with something solid over the four MAD detects.

  Samuels listened on his radio to the LAMPS choppers for a moment, then nodded somberly and called the pilot on the intercom.

  “The LAMPS guys say the detects are the hulls of the destroyers and some helicopter debris. Nothing strong enough to be a nine-thousand-ton submarine. Let’s bug out.”

  “Roger, concur.”

  Samuels pulled off his sweaty headset and looked down one last time at the bay water south of the Lushun peninsula. Somewhere down there were the bodies of over a hundred Navy submariners. Out the window the sun had risen high over the bay, the water reflecting a deep blue. The western Korea Bay was a shimmering landscape — it would have made a beautiful painting. Samuels leaned his head against the window and shut his eyes. It had been a long night.

  * * *

  Below them, in the area that had been searched by the Seahawk helicopters, four hulls lay on the bay bottom, two hundred and forty-five feet deep at that point. One was the broken and burned-out remains of the Udaloy destroyer Zunyi, the second and third the forward and aft halves of the Luda destroyer Kaifing, sliced cleanly in half by the sail of the Seawolf. The fourth hull was the Seawolf, lying inert, her misshapen sail tipped over in a twenty-five-degree roll, her anechoic tiles blown off her hull, the steel of the cylindrical hull almost completely buried in the silt of the bottom from the explosions of the depth charges.

  * * *

  The S-3 Viking flew in on final approach to the aircraft carrier Reagan, Samuels on the radio to flight ops that all detects of the night had proved to be either outcroppings of rocks or the hulls of other ships known to be sunk in the previous day’s battle.

  * * *

  Inside the hull of the half-buried Seawolf all the lights were off. Only the dim beams of battle lanterns fought the darkness. The atmosphere was close, stuffy, damp.

  The decks were tilted into a twenty-five-degree roll to starboard. Men lay scattered on the tilted tiles of the decks, some half-conscious, most out cold. Of those unconscious, several were out because of injuries, others because of the diminishing levels of oxygen.

  In the control room Pacino tried to open an eye but couldn’t. Had he gone blind? He reached up and put a hand to his face and felt that his right eye was swollen shut. His left seemed normal. While he tried to open his good eye, he tasted copper, as though he were sucking on a penny. He stuck his tongue out in distaste, but his tongue seemed to dissolve into a ball of sparks, the feeling from his mouth turning into an odd combination of partial numbness and coppery taste. He felt something with a part of his tongue that wasn’t numb. A tooth. He spit it out, tried to raise his head but vertigo hit him so hard that he had to drop his head again.

  After a moment he heard a pinging noise, a sonar ping. Only then did he fully realize where he was. He grimaced as he tried to stand, pulling himself up to a seat at the attack center’s Pos Two console. He looked around the room, his good eye blurry, and saw only dim lights. He took a headset and called into it for someone, anyone. He tried to move to the aft end of the room but immediately felt tired and dizzy. He found a cubbyhole locker and pulled out a gas mask, wrapped it on his sore face and plugged it into an air manifold in the overhead.

  He took a slow breath, wondering if the air system might be contaminated, it seemed dry and stale. He took another deep breath, feeling his head clear. It had to be the levels of oxygen in the ship. For a moment he considered going to the lower level to the oxygen bottles and opening up the bleed valve, then dismissed the idea. Oxygen was not enough — they needed to clear the air of carbon dioxide. Hell, they needed to get the hell out of the bay.

  Pacino began to make his way aft to the shielded tunnel, unplugging and re plugging his mask every forty feet until he was in maneuvering. He pulled a mask out of the overhead and strapped it onto the engineer’s face. Ray Linden opened his eyes, shook his head to clear it.

  “We need to restart the scrubbers and burners,” Pacino told him.

  “We need to restart the reactor,” Linden managed to get out.

  “The battery’s down, must have shorted out and opened the battery breaker …”

  “We’re in big trouble with no battery,” Pacino said.

  “Don’t need it to restart,” Linden said, getting fresher.

  “The reactor protection circuitry has backup batteries and we don’t need coolant pumps. You say the word and we’ll start this thing out of here.”

  Another reverberating sonar ping through the hull.

  “Not yet, they’re still looking for us. Get everyone into a mask. I’ll call you.”

  Pacino headed forward to the control room and began strapping masks on the men. When two, then three regained consciousness Pacino told them to help get the rest of the crew in masks and went into the sonar room and found Chief Jeb in a mask staring at him, his face badly swollen.

  “Hear the pinging?” Pacino asked. Jeb nodded.

  Pacino figured as long as they could hear the pinging through the hull they wouldn’t need sonar and could stay on the bottom.

  After a few moments the pings died down.

  Pacino went back into control, trying to find out how many men were hurt seriously. So far the worst had been some broken bones. The men had fairly well recovered with the breathing air, but the supply was limited. One way or another they had to get the hell out of the bay. He checked his watch. It had been a half hour since the last sonar ping he could remember.

  He called Linden aft.

  “Start up the reactor and get the atmospheric equipment up, full power lineup, but no main engines yet.”

  In twenty minutes the fans were working, blowing cool air into the stuffy room. The ESGN navigation system came on with a moan, its ball spinning up to several thousand RPM. The firecontrol and sonar screens lit up as the ship’s computer came back to life.

  The control panel’s displays flashed up. Seawolf was back.

  Pacino pulled on his headset over the straps of his air mask.

  “Chief Jeb, can you hear me?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Is sonar up? I’m getting a waterfall screen.”

  “I’m initializing, sir, but we’ll be up in no time.”

  “Listen for surface and aircraft contacts. I want to know if they’re still waiting for us. There hasn’t been an active ping in a while.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Pacino hoisted a phone to his ear.

  “Eng, how’s the plant?”

  “Normal full power lineup, turbines working in spite of the heel. But I’d like to get us horizontal. The condensers don’t drain very well like this.”

  “I’ll get back to you. How’s the air?”

  “Analyzer says we have high CO and CO2, very low oxygen. We should all be dead.”

  “Clean it up
as fast as you can.”

  “Conn, Sonar,” Jeb’s voice announced, a ring of pride coming through.

  “Sonar’s up, no surface contacts, no air contacts. We’re cleared for takeoff, Captain.”

  Pacino liked the sound of that.

  “Eng, start the main engines and prepare to answer all bells.”

  Pacino leaned over the chart, wondering where the ship was. The navigation systems were out of line after the depth charging.

  “Conn, Maneuvering. Propulsion is on the main engines, ready to answer all bells,” Linden said.

  “Diving Officer, blow depth control number two empty and don’t let us broach if that’s too much buoyancy. Helm, all ahead two thirds!”

  First water, then air blew out of the Seawolf’s underside as the depth control tank went dry. The propulsor aft spun, still submerged in silt. As the ship grew buoyant she lifted out of the mud, righted her roll and surged ahead, the stern lifting out of the silt.

  The deck leveled and the speed indicator rolled the numerals up on the ship control display.

  “Helm, all ahead full. Steer course east. Depth one five zero.”

  When they had gone down, Pacino remembered having less than ten miles to go. At full speed he could be out of the Go Hai Bay before the Chinese realized he wasn’t dead. He watched the chart and when he was sure they’d gone at least twenty miles he stood up on the conn, grabbed the microphone to the Circuit One PA. system and put the mike to his gas mask exhalation filter.

  “Attention, this is the captain.” His voice rang out through the decks and the compartments of the submarine.

  “We are now in international waters in the bay of Korea. Because our atmosphere is still contaminated I intend to surface, which will give us a chance to check out the sail and see how bad the damage is. That’s all, carry on.”

  He took a last look at the sonar display console. The surface was clean.

  “Diving Officer, surface the ship.”

  “Surface the ship, aye. Chief of the Watch, prepare to start the low-pressure blower on all main ballast tanks. Bowplanes to full rise, five degree up angle on the ship. Depth eight zero, seven five, six zero, sir. Depth three eight, three seven. Open inboard induction, drain the header, okay. Open the outboard induction valve, and, Chief, start the blow.”

  “PLACING THE LOW PRESSURE BLOWER ON ALL MAIN BALLAST TANKS.”

  With a howl from the fan room aft, the huge displacement blower began blowing the ballast tanks dry.

  Ten minutes later the Chief of the Watch stopped blowing air into the tanks and began to ventilate the ship with the same blower.

  “Captain,” the Diving Officer announced, “the ship is on the surface, atmosphere is in spec. Recommend securing air masks.”

  “Very well,” Pacino said.

  “Mr. Keebes, announce to the crew to remove air masks and let’s get a navigation fix, then get Mr. Turner up here to check out the sail. If it will work let’s get the radar mast up and find out where the surface action group is. Once you’ve got their position, recommend a course to intercept the task force.”

  “Yes sir,” Keebes said, already working on the navigation system.

  Pacino sat back down on the Pos Two control seat and put his feet up on the console. The best feeling on the run was taking off the gas mask and breathing pure, clean outside air.

  USS REAGAN

  Admiral Richard Donchez stood on the starboard bridge wing looking out to sea, chewing on a cigar that had gone out a half hour before. Next to him Captain Fred Rummel waited for Donchez to speak.

  “I’m sorry, Fred, what did you say?”

  “We’ll have to notify the Pentagon, sir, that Seawolf is lost.”

  Donchez stared at the blue waves running down the starboard side of the massive aircraft carrier, not seeing the waves but the face of a man he considered his own son.

  “Admiral, sir, the Officer of the Deck wants you,” an enlisted man announced from the bridge.

  Donchez walked into the bridge.

  “Sir,” the commander said, “we have radar contact on an unidentified submarine that just surfaced about two minutes ago, about twenty miles east of the line marking international waters.”

  Donchez dropped his cigar.

  “What are you doing about it?”

  “Trying to raise it on UHF. So far no reply. But she’s giving off radar that’s classified as a BPS-14.”

  “What radar did the Seawolf have?”

  “BPS-14, sir.”

  The VHF radio monitor blared out into the room the unmistakable voice of Michael Pacino.

  “USS REAGAN, USS REAGAN, THIS IS U.S. NAVY SUBMARINE SEAWOLF, I SAY AGAIN, THIS IS U.S. NAVY SUBMARINE SEAWOLF, OVER.”

  Donchez grabbed the VHF microphone, not quite believing it.

  “Goddamnit, Mikey, where the hell you been?”

  “WE WERE LOST, BUT NOW WE’RE FOUND.”

  Donchez smiled and handed the microphone back to the OOD. He walked out to the bridge wing and stared back out to sea, the wind howling in his face.

  Down below, a school of dolphins began to jump in the waves of the ship, as the carrier plowed through the bay, heading south toward the waters of the Yellow Sea, and from there to the Pacific.

  EPILOGUE

  MONDAY, 20 MAY

  YOKOSUKA NAVAL STATION PIER 4

  USS SEAWOLF

  “I’m glad you could make it, Sean, but you sure you’re okay to sit through all this?” Pacino asked, holding onto Murphy’s arm as he walked slowly to the seat in the front row.

  “I’m fine, Patch, better than I’ve ever been, thanks to you and your crew … and those SEALs.”

  “Well, take it easy, and if you don’t feel good get out of here.”

  “I wouldn’t miss this for anything, old buddy.”

  “Hey, I’m just giving the ship back to Captain Duckett. That’s not such a big deal.” Especially since privately he hated separating himself from the Seawolf. But that was the deal from the first.

  Pacino moved back down the aisle of chairs to the south wall of the pier and looked out over the spread.

  On the north wall of the pier the Seawolf was tied up, her sail ruined, smashed almost in two on the front edge. The jagged metal at the top of the sail begged for a shipyard crew to come and torch it off. Almost all the anechoic tiles were blown off her deck, revealing bare metal beneath — not even the paint remained after she had been depth-charged. She looked like hell, but she was his beauty. Or had been … Big white letters had been hung on the ruined sail that read SSN-21 SEAWOLF. Along the pier and draped over the ship were red, white and blue banners.

  American flags whipped in the wind of the sunny day. All over the pier sailors and officers stood in their dress whites.

  Pacino’s own whites were starched so hard they felt like cardboard, the high choker collar coming almost to his chin. Over his left pocket the gold of his submarine pin gleamed in the sunshine. Around his neck he wore the Navy Cross — Donchez insisted he wear it.

  On his left hip he wore a ceremonial officer’s sword and on his head he wore a new white senior officer’s cap, the gold scrambled eggs shining on the brim. His captain’s shoulder boards were brand new, the four broad stripes laying perpendicular to the line of his shoulders.

  On the sub’s deck a carpenter’s crew had made a platform and handrails, and on the platform was a podium with a microphone and the emblem of the Seawolf, its head facing out at the crowd.

  Admiral Donchez came up to him.

  “How do you feel, Mikey?”

  Pacino let out a breath. How did he feel to be returning command of the Seawolf to Captain Duckett? Over the last ten days he had become a part of the submarine, and it of him.

  “I’m gonna miss this girl, Admiral. I admit it. Well, I guess I’d better get up there, we’re already late.”

  Donchez reached into his pocket and handed Pacino an envelope.

  “Here are your orders, Mikey. Now get up ther
e and carry on.”

  As Pacino moved down the aisle and up the gangway to Seawolf’s deck he heard the Circuit One PA. system blast out one last time: “SEAWOLF … ARRIVING!”

  He proceeded up to the platform that extended most of the length of the hull aft of the sail, the seats near the sail for senior officers like Donchez and for him and Duckett. Pacino nodded at Captain Henry Duckett, the permanent commander of the submarine.

  Donchez went to the podium, spoke a few words, led the crowd through the national anthem and a prayer. Pacino then stood, pulled his orders out of his pocket, and walked up to the podium.

  The sun was in his eyes as he looked out over the crowd but he could identify the men from Tampa who had been well enough to leave their beds for the ceremony.

  There in the front row were Sean Murphy, Kurt Lennox and their engineer, Vaughn. To their right, filling the rest of the front row and nearly all of the second, were the contingent of SEAL Team Seven, Jack Morris actually smiling up at him. For a moment Pacino stared as he saw his wife in the second row and next to her their son, Tony. The crowd quieted down as Pacino opened the envelope and laid the orders out on the podium, telling himself to get on with it, give Duckett back his ship and get on with his life.

  But he held back, folded the orders for a moment and stepped up to the microphone.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, before I turn over this lady to Captain Duckett, I’d like to say a few words. Less than two weeks ago … it seems like a lot longer … I took temporary command of this submarine for a particular operation that went pretty well, thanks to the SEALs of Team Seven and to the men of the USS Tampa and the Seawolf’s crew. To all of you, I want to say thank you. Thank you.”

  The crowd was silent as Pacino unfolded his orders and squinted through the sun at them as he read:

  “From NAVPERS, Washington, D.C.” to Captain Michael A. Pacino, U.S. Navy. You are hereby ordered to take permanent command of the USS Seawolf and—”

  Pacino stopped, stared into the crowd that burst into applause. It went on so long it was embarrassing. He felt his good eye blurring with water as if it were as sore as his injured eye.