The Victoria Stone

by Bob Finley

  "Ironman, we have swimmers in the water. Request permission to take them aboard."

  But Swansong didn’t wait. He'd already broken the holding pattern and come wings level. The co-pilot, acting in her dual role as tactical coordinator, began running the series of checklist procedures that would assure success of the mission. The pilot, a quarter mile out now, heeled the huge aircraft into a tight starboard turn and visually lined up on his target. He began the gradual descent that would put his craft directly above the swimmers.

  "Stand by the divers," the co-pilot told the crew chief back in the cabin. The four suited men moved to the starboard five-by-five-and-a-half foot hatch door, checking each other’s gear one last time.

  "Stand by the winch."

  "One hundred yards, one hundred feet" Swansong said into his mic, warning his crew chief and co-pilot of their distance to target and altitude above it, as well as informing the carrier of their progress.

  "I count at least ten swimmers in the water," the crew chief said over the radio. The pilot knew the man, who had replaced the normal complement of two sonarmen on this mission, had to be lying on his belly and half-way out the doorway in order to see ahead of the aircraft.

  "Fifty yards, fifty feet."

  The two, big fifteen hundred horsepower General Electric engines were thundering their protest now as they strained to convert the Sea King's forward momentum into a stationary hover, and the huge rotors that were as wide as four automobiles parked end-to-end changed pitch and voraciously chewed the air to keep the 20,000 pound craft from falling out of the sky.

  "Swansong, this is Ironman. Over."

  "Ironman, Swansong, go ahead."

  "Swansong, latest advisory indicates the volcano one hundred yards at your two o'clock has gone critical. Multiple explosions and seismic activity estimated at 5.6 Richter. Probability of imminent, catastrophic detonation is 87% and rising fast. Acknowledge."

  "Ironman, did you say ‘detonation’?"

  "Affirmative, Swansong. And that’s the good news."

  "Do I want to know the bad news?"

  "Swansong, we have confirmation of the sinking of the minisub the terrorist leader escaped in. He is presumed dead."

  "Isn’t that supposed to explode the nuclear device inside the target?" the pilot asked.

  "Affirmative. But, so far, nothing's happened here and nothing’s been reported anywhere else, either."

  "So, if the nuke doesn’t go off, what kind of explosion are we talking about?"

  "Either of delayed nuclear weapons origin or an undersea Mount St. Helens, if you’ve read about that one."

  "How much time do we have, Ironman?"

  "All we were told is ‘imminent’. All shipping has been ordered from the area. A tsunami with one hundred-foot waves is possible."

  There was a long pause.

  "Roger, Ironman. Copy that."

  "Ah, Swansong...per authority of the Captain, you are authorized to abort the mission at your discretion. Please acknowledge."

  The pilot looked over at his second. She just shook her head. He smiled.

  "Ah, Ironman, this is Swansong."

  "Swansong, Ironman."

  "Negative on the abort. We’re good to go."

  "Understood. Negative on the abort. Good luck, Swansong. Ironman out."

  "Good," the pilot muttered. "Now maybe we can get some work done."

  The Sea King came to a standstill forty feet above the wave tops. Though equipped to land on water in an emergency procedure known by the Canadians as ‘water birding’, the pilot wanted to stay highly mobile. Rotor wash churned the sea below into concentric circles of white froth. Swansong rotated the big ship forty-five degrees to put the open hatch at the rear of the cabin where the crew chief could oversee the rescue efforts and operate the 600 pound-capacity winch.

  "Divers stand by," the co-pilot intoned. "On my command. Divers, in the water...go,go,go!"

  One at a time and seconds apart, the four Navy divers dropped like black seals from the helicopter into the sea forty feet below, careful to cross their legs and grip their facemasks.

  The crew chief had already engaged the winch to start the hook on its way down toward the pale, wave-tossed faces staring wistfully back at him. He knew what they were feeling. He’d survived two crashes at sea himself.

  "I have eleven...repeat, eleven, swimmers in the water," he told the crew in the cockpit, so they could relay the information to the Washington that they had all survivors accounted for...if, of course, they didn't lose anybody.

  The divers in the water had already established priorities for bringing the swimmers aboard, based on their physical condition and how much at ease they were in the water. The first two hostages were helped into the rescue harnesses and the signal given to winch them in. The co-pilot had come aft to help the crew chief swing them inboard, wrap them in blankets and secure them in the drop-down webbed seats along each bulwark.

  Swansong was left to monitor the cockpit instruments in case anything went wrong during the automated hover. A drift of the aircraft by as little as ten feet could leave an exhausted swimmer chasing the rescue sling and mean the difference in whether they lived or died.

  Half the swimmers were aboard when the sea suddenly heaved and boiled just a hundred feet from the group still in the water. A column of smoke and gases belched from the waves, followed seconds later by a remarkable upward bulge in the ocean's surface that was fifty feet across. Then a column of water seemed to rise of its own accord, like a liquid dowel ten yards across. A huge bubble burst from its base and a cloud of sulfurous gas rolled across the sea’s surface, gagging anyone unfortunate enough to be in its path. The shock wave of the relatively small eruption from a newly-opened fumarole two hundred feet down pummeled those still in the water with enough pressure to hurt.

  Frank Sheppard, already in the chopper, recognized the event’s significance. He hastily unbelted himself and crossed to the co-pilot at the open hatch. Grabbing her by the sleeve, he shouted into her face, but she couldn't understand what he was trying to tell her over the noise of the engines. She tried to push him back toward his seat, motioning for him to strap in. But Frank had had enough of people not taking his predictions seriously. He jerked away from her grasp and pushed her away. The look on his face as he defied her and yelled and gestured angrily made her reconsider. She slid the commset ear muff off her ear and motioned for him to yell directly into her right ear. After a moment, she stepped back and searched his eyes. Finally, she nodded and slid the ear muff back in place, motioning at the microphone that curved around in front of her lips. She talked into it for thirty seconds. When she finished, the crew chief, who'd been listening on the circuit, turned and looked at them both. Then, nodding, she motioned for Frank to take his seat and she quickly crossed to the open door. She helped the chief swing the winch out and away and knelt there, watching its progress. To speed up the recovery, in light of what Frank had just told them, the pilot took over manual control and dropped the aircraft down to thirty feet. With sixty feet of rotor and only thirty feet of air space under him, that left him no recovery time if anything went wrong, but it speeded up the rescue. This time, from the crew chief’s hand signals, Cy Wojecki and Bill Layton clambered into the harness, and one of the TRAP team stood on the hook to which the harnesses were attached. Lifting three at a time wasn't standard operating procedure, but they were on borrowed time and every moment could be their last, if Frank Sheppard’s warning was accurate. So far, his record was ominously correct.

  Only Matsumoto and Strickland remained to be rescued before they could all run for the barn, the Navy divers having already come aboard while helping the others. The crew chief sent the winch down for the last time. He anxiously watched it drop, dwelling on the nerdy hostage’s gloomy warning.

  There was another violent explosion somewhere below them. The shock wave reached the swimmers in a fraction of a second, its violence evident a few seconds later when a geyser of
water burst from the sea fifty yards away and blew water in a column more than twice as high as the helicopter. A curtain of spray drifted downwind and temporarily enveloped the aircraft, swirling away violently in the rotor wash.

  "Get those people aboard, NOW!" yelled the pilot into the radio.

  "The cable’s drifting in the wash," the co-pilot called into her headset. "Come to your two o'clock about ten yards and hold up."

  The pilot, blind to the swimmers directly beneath him, cajoled the huge bird into creeping ever-so-slightly in the direction his Number Two was feeding him, but he overshot and dragged the rescue cable even farther away from the two men below.

  Strickland had insisted on helping Kim into the sling first. But now they were both swimming after the sling and cable, which were dragging in the water. But the hovering rotors were pounding the surface so violently that the spray was blinding both of them as it whipped their faces relentlessly, even making it difficult to take a breath without gulping a mouthful of spindrift. Finally, Strickland, the stronger swimmer, reached the sling and, yelling over the roar of the chopper, tossed it to Matsumoto. Kim busied himself getting into the harness, twice having to duck below the surface so he could open his eyes underwater enough to see to wriggle into it. At last, he succeeded.

  Kim Matsumoto turned to help the TRAP team leader into his harness. But Strickland was twenty feet away. He was staring at Kim and there was a strange look on his face. In just seconds, he was thirty feet away.

  "What’re you doing?" Kim yelled, knowing he probably couldn't hear the answer. But Strickland just moved farther away, and seemed to be moving at an impossible speed for someone who was supposed to be treading water.

  "What’s going on?" The co-pilot said to nobody in particular. Both she and the crew chief noticed at the same instant that the small Asian man, who was in his rescue harness, had now moved away from the ship also, and was angled away from the aircraft like a fishing float drifting downriver. Kim reached the end of the slackness in the cable. As he did so, an eddy appeared in the lee of his body. Strickland was now seventy feet from the aircraft and steadily pulling away. But not in a straight line. He seemed to be...curving...away.

  "What in the name of..."

  A guttural, sucking, hissing sound overpowered the noise of the chopper, growing rapidly in intensity. Several of the rescued hostages and a couple of the TRAP team unbuckled and crossed the six feet to the open hatch. Each one in turn stared open-mouthed at the strange scene. Finally, Frank Shepherd could stand it no longer. He also went to see what was so interesting. It only took Frank a few seconds to understand. He spun around to the crew chief.

  "Get them up! Get them up, HURRY!"

  Alarmed now, the co-pilot looked into his face.

  "What is it?" she yelled, knowing it wouldn't be good news.

  "There’s no TIME! Get'em up NOW! NOW!!"

  Janese Cramerton grabbed him by the arm and turned him. He was wild-eyed and scared. She grabbed his face in both her hands and forced him to look at her.

  "Frank! What is it? Tell me!"

  For a moment, his eyes focused on hers. And then his face disintegrated into anguish and desperation.

  "The plug is gone," he said, almost childlike. "It’s a..."

  "Whirlpool!!" Someone behind them gasped.

  "Yes! That’s what I've been trying to tell you! The plug has collapsed into the volcano and the sea is being sucked down into it! That’s why the whirlpool. We’ve got to get out of here!" His voice had risen to a crescendo.

  "Why?" the co-pilot yelled at him.

  "Because...don’t you see? The cold water and the boiling lava...it's going to EXPLODE! I mean, really...EXPLODE! Really!"

  The co-pilot spoke quickly into her headset, giving the pilot up on the flight deck a sitrep. She looked out the hatch at the sea. It was a scene unlike any she'd ever seen, nor ever wanted to see again.

  There was a hole in the sea. A hole half the size of a football field. A hundred feet from the helicopter, the sea was in motion, sliding by them at what she estimated must have been thirty miles per hour, and rotating left to right. And just beyond that, there was a hard edge to the water, like looking at the horizon line of a waterfall from a canoe upstream. And then, beyond that...nothing. A cliff. A liquid, rotating cyclone a hundred fifty feet across.

  "It’s just like a giant bathtub whirlpool!" someone said loudly enough for her to hear.

  "Yeah. I'll never mention ‘pulling the plug’ on anything again," she said in the direction of the comment.

  "It’s more like looking at a tornado from up on top of the clouds."

  "That thing is FLYIN’!"

  "Look! There's Major Strickland!" one of the TRAP team members yelled and pointed.

  They all followed the pointing finger and saw Matt Strickland being swept rapidly toward them along the edge of the vortex. They could easily see that he was having to work hard to stay afloat, as the irresistible current was trying to pull him over the edge and down into the watery chasm. Having been drawn almost to the edge now, he was being pulled along at more than fifty miles per hour. The funnel was accelerating and widening and he flew past them, now only a little more than the length of the helicopter away from them. They could see his face as he flashed by, a study in defiance even as he had to know he couldn’t survive against the monster that had him in its teeth.

  "Get that swimmer up!" the black-suited Monk Jeffries commanded the crew chief. The man jumped to the winch and wound Kim Matsumoto in like a yearling bass. Kim had barely reached the hatchway when Monk reached out and grabbed him.

  "Kick it loose!" he yelled, nodding at the winch's brake release. Seeing his intent, the chopper crewman threw the ratcheting device into neutral, and Monk literally snatched Kim Matsumoto bodily into the cabin. Kim had more help getting disentangled from the sling than he really wanted, with hands pulling and tugging at him.

  Monk jerked the sling loose and stepped into it almost in one motion. He turned to the co-pilot and yelled, "Tell that junk-jockey up there I’m going water skiing!" He turned to the crew chief, who had already anticipated what was coming next, and was nodding even as Monk commanded, "Freefall and plenty of slack!!" He crouched, stepped into the hatch opening, and jumped into space. There were startled shouts from the hostages and the whine of cable paying out at high speed.

  The crew chief was hanging out the door almost as soon as Monk had cleared it, watching the black-clad soldier all the way to the water. He let the winch run out extra cable before he set the brake. He whirled to the co-pilot, who was speaking rapidly into her headset, and gave her two quick thumbs-up. Then he spun around to the crowd behind him.

  "Hunker down, boys, we're goin’ calf ropin’!"

  Two seconds later the sound of the rotors downshifted to a deep-throated roar and the aircraft vibrated violently. The scenery out the hatch swirled as the pilot spun the big ship on her axis, climbing quickly as he did so. He jumped the chopper to a hundred feet altitude and heeled into a gut-wrenching starboard turn, standing the cabin floor on a 45 degree downslope. Those who’d managed to get buckled in were glad and those who hadn't were wrestling their way into the nearest seat and grabbing ahold of whatever was handy. The pilot stood the Sea King on its nose and poured the power to her throbbing engines. The helicopter gained forward speed in seconds and the pilot leaned forward in his cabin to watch for the small dot that was Major Matt Strickland, U. S. Marine Corps.

  It took forty seconds to catch him. Monk Jeffries had been unceremoniously dragged at high-speed through the water behind the perfectly good airplane he'd jumped out of and then jerked clear out of the water when the cable ran out of slack. Now he was slowly twirling at the end of his tether forty feet above the sea at close to sixty miles an hour. He could only hope that pilot up there knew what he was doing.

  They quickly realized that they had a problem. With the whirlpool rotating counter-clockwise, the helicopter was forced into a continual left turn. This
put the pilot in a good position to look out his left side window and see the swimmer, the better to match his speed and position. But, to do so, he had to fly almost fifty feet to the right of the man he was trying to rescue, which put the winch, which was on the other side of the aircraft, completely in the wrong place. The three crew members quickly discussed their options, which weren’t many. Finally, the pilot suggested a solution.

  "I’ll fly sideways and a little ahead of the swimmer, with the hatch toward the victim. That'll put the guy on the end of the wire a little ways behind him. Then, I’ll just drag the guy on the wire across the one in the water, and they can grab onto each other. Once we get ’em away from the whirlpool, I can let ‘em down into the water long enough for both of them to get on the sling and we ‘ll winch ‘em in."

  There was a silence. Finally, the co-pilot said, "You’ve not only got to fly sideways, you’ve got to fly in a circle while you're doing it. Which means, part of the time you’ll almost be flying backwards."

  "Yeah?"

  "You can do that?" she asked incredulously, knowing full well she couldn’t do it herself.

  "Sure."

  "Have you ever actually done it?"

  "No."

  The co-pilot and crew chief looked at each other and both rolled their eyes.

  "I might need a little help," the pilot mused.

  "What kind of help," she asked warily.

  "Look out the hatch. Watch the guy on the wire. Tell me when I’m gettin' off course."

  "When?"

  "If."

  "Right."

  "If this guy goes over the edge, he’s a goner," the co-pilot warned after they missed the first two tries.

  "Why do you say that?" the pilot asked, frustration and irritation showing in his voice.

  "Because the size of our rotors won’t let us get close enough to a vertical wall, even if it is water, to reach him with the wire. They’d hit the surface and we’d crash."

  "I’ll fly in a tight turn. That’ll tip the rotors up at an angle and we can still get him."

  "Won’t work," she shot back. "The diameter of the vortex is smaller than our turning radius. Even you can’t fly in circles that small."