The door was a heavy steel hatch with a small window set at eye level. All he could see in the window was black smoke and the haphazard orange flash of flames.
For a fraction of a second Pacino froze in place. If he opened the door, he would admit air and oxygen into the existing conflagration, making it worse. But then, he reasoned, what was burning inside didn’t need the oxygen out here; it had plenty in liquid form.
He opened a locker marked o2a and pulled out a large contraption resembling a scuba buoyancy compensator, a sort of artificial lung with a gas mask — OBA stood for oxygen-breathing apparatus. He pulled it on, leaving the mask hanging by its hose, and grabbed a cartridge, a chemical oxygen generator, from the rack inside the cabinet. He inserted the canister, pulled the pin on it, and lit it off. The cartridge took thirty seconds to come up to temperature and generate the oxygen Pacino would need inside the space.
“Fire in the torpedo room,” the circuit one PA system boomed from a speaker in the overhead. “Fire in the torpedo room. Casualty assistance team, lay forward. Admiral Pacino is in charge at the scene. Ship is emergency-blowing to the surface. Prepare to flood the torpedo room.”
Pacino was joined by a burly man, his shirt soaked in sweat.
“Who are you?” Pacino asked through his gas mask.
Taking one last breath, he ditched the mask and put his face into the new mask of the OBA. The air in it was rubbery and hot, but he took a breath. It would keep him alive, if barely.
“Chief Hanson, torpedoman, sir,” the burly man said.
“I’m getting an OBA on myself.”
“I’m going in and forward,” Pacino said to the chief. “I’ll hit the liquid-nitrogen suppression system. If I can, I’ll get the LIN hose on the fire from forward, you get it on from aft. Then let’s get the room empty. You know how to handle weapons from the aft panel?”
“Yessir,” Hanson said.
Four more men showed up. Hanson had already donned his O2A, his canister lit off.
“Get them in OBAS and into the room. Chief. Let’s get these missiles out of here! If we get a solid-rocket-fuel fire, we’re all dead men!”
The solid-rocket fuel of a Vortex missile would put a four-foot hole in the hull, pressurize everything inside to a thousand pounds per square inch, and fill the ship with hydrogen cyanide, a gas capable of killing a man from a teaspoonful in a gymnasium.
“Sir, you’ve got to get into the steam suit or you’ll be burned alive!”
“No time!” Pacino shouted.
“Take the gloves, then!”
Pacino strapped on the gloves the chief handed him.
The chief hit the hatch lever and opened the hatch. Pacino stepped in, not believing what he saw or felt. It was as if someone had unlatched the gate of hell itself.
Flames blasted at him through the hatchway as he ducked in. Rolling black smoke engulfed him. By feel Pacino ran around to the side, where the liquid-nitrogen suppression emergency button was. Like so many cures on the sub, this one was potentially as dangerous as the threat. The liquid nitrogen, or UN, at minus 190 degrees was cold enough to kill human tissue on contact. A splash on a hand doomed it to amputation; a drop on the skin caused a cryogenic burn. In addition, as liquid nitrogen vaporized, it filled the space with nitrogen gas.
A single breath of pure nitrogen could instantly shut down the functioning of the human respiration center of the brain. A breath of high-concentration nitrogen would kill a man, switching off his breathing like a switch. For that reason the liquid-nitrogen fire-suppression system was not entrusted to a computer or electrical system, but set off physically by a button. Pacino felt the cover over the button, yanked it off against a massive spring, and hit the mushroom cap, The room hissed like a giant cat as liquid nitrogen hit the flames and weapons. The UN system sprayed the room for a full two minutes, filling the space with the inert gas. Immediately, Pacino ducked under a hood beneath the button to avoid the fluid hitting his poorly protected skin. He could hear the hissing easing as the system ran out of LIN, and he stood.
Hanson’s voice erupted behind him. “Forward, Admiral. I’ve got the aft hose. Jenson! Get the valve!”
Pacino advanced into the flames. Intense heat invaded every pore of his skin. His flame-resistant coveralls started to smolder, his sleeves smoking as the material caught. By the time Pacino reached the middle of the room, he realized he was on fire.
And there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. The first faint breeze of fear touched him, chilling him, slowing his steps. The alarm picked up until panic filled him, a gale force forcing away all logic and reason.
The effect of the paralyzing panic was more frightening than the fact that his clothes were on fire.
He’d just about stopped moving when he felt a body beneath his right foot. The form lay facedown on the deck, dead. The scorched skin of the body crunched under Pacino’s foot. Suddenly he wondered if the body was Colleen.
Colleen! his mind screamed. She would be directly over his head, and she might be dying right now. He had to get to her, he had to save her. With that thought the panic that had grabbed him by the throat was thrown off. Pacino ran to the forward bulkhead, his heart pounding, not with fear but with anger. He had finally found the one for him, and he wasn’t going to be robbed of her before they even had a chance to get started.
At the panel, he grabbed the LIN hose, opened the valve. The liquid nitrogen blasted out at the hottest spot of the fire — he couldn’t even see it, he could only feel it. The room seemed to cool for just a second, enough for him to scream at the chief: “Jettison the weapons! Chief!”
“Mark 52s going now. Admiral,” the chief called back.
The next sound was the crash of a torpedo tube launching a weapon. Pacino shut the LIN hose nozzle, waiting. Vaguely he was aware that the nitrogen around him was putting out the flames on his clothes. He couldn’t feel any damage to his skin, but then, perhaps that was because he was numb. He pushed the thought away as a second crash sounded. The second torpedo tube had launched. A third and fourth tube-launch crash slammed his eardrums. The room grew hot again, and Pacino sprayed the LIN hose in spurts. The LIN in the aft section began to hiss as the supply ran low.
More torpedo tube doors opened. Vortex missiles rolled silently into the gaping maws on hydraulic rams as Hanson fed the tubes, then launched them into the sea. Pacino kept spraying, hoping the LIN would hold out until the weapons were jettisoned.
Finally the LIN hose ran out. Abandoning it, Pacino felt his way through the black smoke to a vertical runged ladder heading up to a hatch in the overhead.
“Chief, I’m out of LIN. Are you done yet?”
A torpedo tube-launch crash was his answer.
“Two more, sir!”
“Hurry, the flames are starting again!”
Hanson rammed in a Vortex, shut the breech door, and launched the tube. Then he opened the final breech door on the port side.
But it might be too late, Pacino thought as the fire roared out at him with renewed fury. The sound of it was enough to stop a man’s heart. A vibration started jangling at his breastbone — the timer on the canister. It had been set for fifteen minutes, the unit only good for eighteen. Pacino had to wait, though, because if he went through the hatch now, the flames would spread up into the computer room, and the toxic gas of the smoke would kill Colleen within a few seconds. But if he stayed, the flames would kill him. He could already feel his lungs straining to pull the oxygen out of the rubber lungs.
The final torpedo crash came as the flames licked up into the overhead. Pacino could feel his hair starting to singe, his rubber mask melting, the oxygen going, going.
He began to feel dizzy, dim words coming into his mind, the words swimming slowly at him, his grip on the ladder becoming tentative.
“Flooding the space. Admiral! Get out the hatch! I’m going aft!”
Pacino heard the mighty roaring of water flooding the space. Within moments he felt the co
ol of something at his feet, the water. It rose quickly to his chin, cooling him, mercifully cool after walking through hell. The OBA gave up then, and Pacino ditched the mask. The toxic smoke of the fire invaded his lungs. A black dizziness overcame him, sapping his mental strength. He forgot what he was about to do. He knew it was important, but it seemed to float just out of reach. The water level was now just two feet below the hatch to the computer room.
Pacino’s head collided with the hatch-release wheel.
That made him remember, he had to turn to spin the hatch. But he was too weak. The water kept rising as he tried to get a grip on the wheel. Counterclockwise, you have to turn the wheel counterclockwise to open it. He pulled as hard as he could, and the hatch undogged. He pushed on the hatch to open it, but succeeded only in pushing himself into the water. The water had grown hot from the fire. The fuel was still burning even under a roomful of seawater. They would need to flush water through the space to keep it cool, he thought, keep the fire from eating through the hull. At last he found a ladder rung, and with one last push of his hand and foot, he opened the hatch.
Up into the opening he put his hand, but he couldn’t seem to get a grip. The water level rose fully over his head, claiming him, the air gone. As he sank back into the water, he thought that maybe it just didn’t matter anymore.
USS PIRANHA, SSN-23
“Aircraft noises from bearing two seven zero. Captain,” Master Chief Henry called.
“Take her upstairs, Off sa’deck,” Bruce Phillips commanded.
The ship came shallow, Phillips himself taking the periscope as the ship came up. Water and foam washed over the lens until the scope broke through, the film of water washing away. It was pitch black outside, with no close contacts.
Phillips did an air search, but he saw nothing.
“Sonar, Captain, jet or prop?”
“Turboprop, Captain. Be careful, it could be maritime patrol. Maybe the Reds have MPA planes.”
“OOD, arm the SLAAM 80,” Phillips ordered. The Mark 80 missile, called a SLAAM, was a submarine-launched antiair missile, mounted in the sail, capable of finding a heat source on an aircraft and bringing it down.
“Shifting to infrared,” Phillips said. Immediately he picked out an airplane flying low on the horizon toward them. The effect was strange, the infrared showing heat sources as patterns of light, allowing Phillips to see inside the plane at the interior consoles and equipment, a sort of X-ray vision. The plane came down lower, then hit the water.
“Seaplane!” Phillips called. “The plane’s landed, bearing mark!”
“Two one zero.”
“Helm, right full rudder, steady course two one zero, all ahead two-thirds.”
The ship came around, closing on the seaplane rolling in the swells, its propellers stopped, quiet on the water.
Phillips shifted to high-power magnification, making out the form of men leaning out a hatch to pull other men in from the water.
“He’s doing a rescue, it’s the Reds,” he said, not quite believing it. “OOD, take the scope, surface the ship, take it over to the seaplane at full. Use HP air, no time to use the blower, and rig the bridge for surface. Move it!”
Phillips grabbed Whatney and ran to the middle level, to the small-arms locker in the centerline passageway.
Whatney fiddled with his key, finding the right one. The locker opened, and Phillips loaded Whatney with weapons.
Grabbing an automatic M-20 rifle and a Bereta 9mm pistol, he ran for the upper level.
At the ladder going up into the tunnel to the bridge on top of the sail, he bolted upward, making the thirty steps to the bridge in record time. He emerged through the grating at the top of the hatch to the night air, crisp and cool and smelling wonderful after he’d been locked in the ship for so long.
A bow wave washed up the bulbous shape of the cigar of the hull, splashing spray up into the bridge. Phillips grabbed binoculars and hoisted them to his eyes. There, dead ahead by five hundred yards, the massive Red Chinese seaplane was hauling floating survivors into the hatch. The men seemed in no hurry. Phillips aimed the M-20 at the men in the hatchway, the rifle set to full automatic.
“Hey, assholes!” he shouted, then let loose with a burst of automatic-rifle fire. The bullets slammed into the tail of the seaplane, into the water, the racket loud and furious. Whatney, joining him on the bridge, aimed his M-20 and let loose with a burst of automatic rounds.
Under the hail of bullets, the raft exploded and sank.
Bullets stitched curving lines in the aluminum airframe of the plane. The night was split by the roaring of a turbojet engine spinning its propeller. The plane was attempting to get away. Phillips shouted down the tunnel! “Ahead flank.” The second prop roared to life. Closer now, he aimed his rifle and hit the trigger, but the clip was empty.
“Clip,” he shouted in frustration. Then Whatney’s rifle clicked impotently. Phillips pulled his 9mm handgun out and fired it out over the water, but he was still too far away to guarantee a hit. “Dammit,” he cursed as the 9mm clicked in his hand, out of ammo. The two props came to full revolutions. The seaplane rolled on the sea, the wake behind it white and phosphorescent as the plane sailed off to the west.
“Let’s shoot it down,” Phillips said to Whatney. “Get down there and tell them to shoot a Mark 80 at that son of a bitch. He’s getting away.”
“Sir, it won’t fire from the surface. It’s a gas generator — come on, we’ve got to submerge so we can launch a missile.”
Phillips slid down the ladder, pausing only to shut the hatch. “Go on, get this tub submerged, quick!”
But as he emerged into the control room, the OOD shook his head from the periscope.
“We can’t get her down. Sir, even with max bow planes at flank, the buoyancy’s too high. All main ballast tank vents are open, and the SLAAM 80s will just explode in their tubes if we try to launch them dry. He’s gone, sir. I can’t even see him anymore.”
“Dammit,” Phillips cursed. “After all that mess those idiots caused, and now they get away scot free.”
Then he looked at Whatney — both men said the word at the same time: “Air strike.”
Phillips stepped to the radio panel, yelling into the overhead open microphone to the radiomen to bring up the convoy aircraft carrier. A couple F-22s could put the seaplane into the ground, Phillips thought.
* * *
Three minutes later, four F-22s lifted off the deck of the USS Douglas MacArthur at full throttle, full afterburners, shrieking skyward and soaring over the East China Sea.
USS DEVILFISH, SSNX-1
The hands that grabbed him and pulled him out of the hatch were strong and many. Pacino had the impression that a single person with six arms had pulled him from the gaping maw of the submerged torpedo room.
He coughed, spitting up the water in his stomach, coughing up more that had reached his lungs, then vomiting, his body convulsing and heaving. His frame was folded up in a fetal position, his eyes shut, tears squeezing out. When the convulsions ended, his breath wheezed in and out of him frantically. Finally that too slowed. The dizziness ended, the room’s spinning coming to a slow stop, his eyes able to focus.
He took a deep breath, and it seemed to clear his mind. He was lying in a puddle on the deck of the middle level. His coveralls were soaked — what was left of them, the fire having eaten gaping holes. He opened his eyes, blinking against the glare from the overheads. His retinae had been burned by the flames in the torpedo room. A face floated above his own, the bone structure narrow, with pronounced cheekbones, deep eye sockets, heavy black eyebrows beneath the diesel-oil black hair.
Captain John Patton was staring down at him, frowning.
Now why, Pacino thought, would he be frowning?
“Colleen,” Pacino said, his voice a croak. “Where is… Colleen?”
“I’m right here, Michael,” her voice came, low and sweet. “Captain Patton sent one of his officers in here. I was on the flo
or coughing my face off, but they got a mask on me and got me out of here.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?” His arm rose to reach up to her, but her hands put his arm back. At her touch pains shot up his arm. Pacino looked over at Patton, then back at Colleen, both of them staring at him.
“What is it, John? Am I okay? Did I get burned?”
An image of himself — horribly burned and disfigured, his skin mottled and stretched too tightly across his skull, his hair gone. Did he look like that? Why were they staring?
“You look like the day I first met you. Admiral,” Colleen said, smiling.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You saved the ship, sir. We’d have gone down if not for you.” Patton was talking dazedly, as if in a trance. “It would have been just like the Annapolis sinking— the smoke — it smelled the same. It was a torpedo-fuel fire. That’s what happened to us!”
“Two torpedo-room fires in one operation,” Pacino said, struggling to sit up. “No one should have to go through that.”
“I can’t believe you went in there, sir. It was… amazing.”
“Didn’t have a lot of choice, John. It was go into the torpedo room or go down with the ship.”
“How do you feel?”
“Terrible. Am I burned?” He looked down at his skin — most of his legs was red or blistering. His hands were blistered, his face feeling sunburned.
“Minor, Admiral. You look like you’ve been to Club Med.”
“John, I need to talk to Colleen. Could I have a minute?”
After Patton excused himself, Pacino leaned against the equipment cabinet, his eyes half shut, feeling more exhausted than at any time in his life.
“Don’t try to talk, honey,” Colleen said.
“I have to,” he said. “I need to tell you. I—”
“I know,” she said, one finger over her mouth. “Hush, we’ll do that later. It’s not right here, not inside a sub with all these Navy guys and all this equipment. Give a woman some romance.”
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