Counter Poised

by John Spikenard

  “Interesting.” Buffalo noted. “Right along the line in the sand. I think that pretty much confirms his target. Operations, I want a firing solution as soon as you have it.”

  “Captain, he’s well beyond wire-guided range,” the ops officer responded. “On a rendezvous course at flank speed, it will probably be another twenty minutes before we’re in range. We have six Mark 48 advanced capability, ADCAP torpedoes aboard, and we could fire one now in autonomous mode. We can set it to use its own active or passive sensors to execute a programmed target search, acquisition, and attack procedure. If we set it to run at top speed, it may not quite have the range, but we can program it at a slower speed, and it will probably get there.”

  “Go ahead and program it for high speed.”

  “Sir?”

  “Program it for high speed, autonomous search and destroy.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  Two minutes later, the ops officer responded, “Torpedo programmed and loaded in torpedo bay number one, Captain.”

  Captain Buffalo Sewell checked his watch. “Very well. Stand by.”

  The ops officer and XO exchanged puzzled glances. A minute later, Buffalo checked his watch again. “Open outer door, torpedo bay number one.”

  “Outer door opened, sir.”

  “Fire one!”

  “Torpedo one away!”

  “Load a second Mark 48 ADCAP in torpedo bay number two,” the captain ordered. “Program it for low-speed autonomous search and destroy. And stand by.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  About twenty minutes later, Buffalo asked sonar for an update.

  “Torpedo one running smoothly, sir. Estimate fifty thousand yards to target. Our range—approximately ninety thousand yards to target.”

  “Very well. Open outer door, torpedo bay number two.”

  “Outer door opened, sir.”

  “Fire two!”

  “Torpedo two away!”

  USS Louisiana

  After ten minutes on an easterly heading of 090 degrees, Captain Adams and MacKenzie both heard the faint telltale signature of a torpedo in the water. Ominous…its high-pitched whine indicating it was traveling at high speed.

  “You hear that, Captain?”

  “I do. We’ll maintain course for another ten minutes.”

  “But Captain, with a heading of zero-niner-zero we’re headed right back into it.”

  “Roger that, Mac. We’ve got a little over nine and a half minutes until we turn north.”

  Those nine and a half minutes seemed like an eternity. The torpedo noise grew louder and louder, and each minute on the clock seemed to take an hour.

  “Captain, I hear a second torpedo in the water—fainter, so farther away.”

  “Roger that. Maintain your heading.”

  Finally, when MacKenzie could barely stand it any longer, Captain Adams ordered, “Come left to zero-one-zero. I’m making our depth fifteen hundred feet.”

  “Fifteen hundred, sir? That’s below max operating depth!”

  “I know that, Mac.”

  “Sir, that isn’t going to help much if those are Mark 48 ADCAPs! They can easily get us at fifteen hundred feet!”

  “You’re right, but they’re still a long way away. I don’t plan to be here when they arrive.”

  “Well, how do you plan to get out of here, sir? We’re at twenty-five knots, and not getting any slower. If we keep going down, we’re going to hit forty or forty-five knots by the time we get to fifteen hundred feet. Max speed for fighter launch is only ten knots!”

  “We’re going to take care of that right now, Mac. I want you to make your way to SF-1 and get her fired up. Since we don’t have engine control, we’re going to pull about twenty degrees up-bubble and bleed off this excess speed. When we hit about three knots, which by my calculations should be at about five hundred feet, I’m going to nose her over into a dive. Keep the hatch open and ready to go, because I’m going to be flying your way!”

  “Aye-aye, sir!”

  MacKenzie dashed to SF-1 and started the pre-launch checklist. He would have her ready to go by the time the captain pulled off his crazy maneuver and made it to the fighter. He felt the nose of the fighter go up as the captain maneuvered the Louisiana to twenty degrees up-bubble, and the fighter rode along with her. That should certainly be sufficient to bleed off that excess speed. He knew, too, that once the captain nosed her over into a steep dive, there was no way to pull out before hitting crush depth.

  MacKenzie felt the Louisiana level off, and he knew the captain would be there any second. Everything was ready to go. Suddenly, the captain was scrambling through the lower hatch.

  “All right, Mac, let’s go!” The captain ordered as he squeezed into the fighter and closed the hatch.

  “Aye-aye, sir. She’s all fired up and ready to go!”

  “I’ve got the controls. Release the latch.”

  “Aye-aye, sir!”

  MacKenzie struggled with the large release bar attached to the latching mechanism holding the fighter securely to the deck of the Louisiana. But while it usually swung up freely, this time it didn’t budge.

  “Sir, I’m trying, but it seems to be stuck!”

  “Stuck?! We’ve got to release that latch, Mac. This boat’s going down, and there’s no stopping her!”

  “I know, but I’m pulling as hard as I can. It’s stuck, Captain…IT’S STUCK!”

  USS Texas

  About ten minutes after firing their second torpedo, the silence of the Texas control room was broken by the sonar operator. “Captain, Sonar.”

  “Go ahead, Sonar,” responded Captain Sewell.

  “Strange sounds, sir, coming from the target—lots of creaking and buckling noises. Sounds like she may be trying to run deep, too deep!”

  “Where are our torpedoes?”

  “The closest is still at least twenty thousand yards out.”

  “So what’s going on here? Is this another one of Adams’s tricks?”

  “No sir,” responded the sonar operator excitedly pulling his earphones off his head and then replacing them. “Sir! Total hull failure! She’s gone below crush depth, and the pressure hull has failed! You can’t fake this noise, Captain, this is total destruction!”

  Chapter 46

  USS Louisiana

  The captain and MacKenzie continued to struggle with the latch holding SF-1 securely to the deck. Meanwhile, the Louisiana began to nose over into an unrecoverable dive into the depths of the Kermandec Trench. Her speed built quickly.

  “Captain, we’re at ten knots and the latch is still STUCK!” MacKenzie screamed.

  “I know, Mac. We have to get it loose or we’re dead!” In the cramped cockpit of the sub- fighter, George reached across MacKenzie’s lap and grabbed the lever. “On the count of three, pull with everything you’ve got! One…two…three…PULL!”

  Together, the two men pulled with all their might…Nothing! The lever didn’t budge. They were still latched firmly to the deck.

  “Captain, we’re at two hundred and fifty feet, ten degrees down-bubble. Speed accelerating through twenty knots!”

  At this accelerating speed and rate of descent, the captain and MacKenzie had only a few seconds remaining to get the sub-fighter off the deck of the Louisiana.

  “All right, Mac. Cinch your harness belts tight. I’m going all ahead full on the impeller. Stand by to engage the SQID drive!”

  “While we are still latched, Captain?” MacKenzie asked incredulously.

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures. It’s now or never. The SQID drive will put a hundred times more pressure on that latch than we can ourselves.”

  George put the impeller throttle full forward, and SF-1 began to strain against the latch, trying in vain to move the sub-fighter at fifty knots while the Louisiana accelerated through twenty-five. But George knew this would not be enough—this was the same setup they had used to silently propel the powerless Louisiana around Cape Horn, right u
nder the noses of the world’s premier attack boats. If the sub-fighter hadn’t broken free then, there was not much reason to think it would now.

  “SQID drive charged…Engaged!”

  The squid drive roared to life, and almost immediately there was the sound of wrenching metal as SF-1 lurched forward, stopped momentarily, and then finally broke free of the Louisiana with a violent jerk.

  “Hooray! Thank God!” MacKenzie shouted. “We did it—we’re free!”

  The sub-fighter soared away from the Louisiana as the lumbering giant disappeared into the murky depths below. They celebrated as George turned west toward Kermandec Number Nine and started to climb back toward the surface.

  Their elation, however, was short-lived.

  “We have a problem here, Captain.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Flooding! We’ve got water rising through the deck plates!”

  “Holy cow! We must have ruptured the hull when we broke loose. We have to get to the surface NOW! That water will short out the batteries, and without juice we have no propulsion. And in a sub-fighter, you know what that means…”

  “Yes, sir. No propulsion means ‘Hello Davy Jones’!”

  As the cockpit continued to fill with water, George pulled up the nose of SF-1 and hit the SQID drive again, rapidly propelling SF-1 toward the surface. Just then, the rising water inside the fighter shorted out the batteries. Luckily for the two occupants, the fighter’s momentum carried them to the surface, and George was able to hold it there because of their forward velocity…at least momentarily.

  “Get that topside hatch open, Mac. We’ve got to bail out!”

  “I’ve got it, sir. She’s swinging open!”

  Water began splashing in the open hatch as waves broke over the top of SF-1. They had to hurry. When SF-1 slowed to less than five knots, George would no longer be able to hold her on the surface.

  “Get your ass out, Mac. I’m right behind you!”

  “Sir, you should go first. I’m just a lowly petty officer…”

  “There’s no time for arguing—Go! That’s an order!”

  MacKenzie unlatched his harness, reached up, and placed both hands on the lip of the open hatch. He pulled himself up so that both feet were in his seat. In one swift movement, he jumped through the opening while guiding himself out with his hands. He rolled off of the top of the sub-fighter into the sea.

  Just then, SF-1 slid below the waterline and a torrent of water plunged though the hatch into the cockpit. There was no way George could fight his way out through that torrent. As the cockpit rapidly filled with water, George took a deep breath and waited, knowing that the torrent would stop once the cockpit was full. When he felt the current subside, he repeated MacKenzie’s actions and propelled himself through the hatch, approximately twenty feet under the surface of the water. George swam to the surface, arriving only ten feet away from where MacKenzie treaded water, dazed and shocked.

  “Captain!” MacKenzie shouted as George surfaced, facing the opposite direction. “Over here! Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” George coughed. “I just need to catch my breath and get my bearings.” It was late afternoon, so the sun was starting to set in the western sky.

  They were alone in the shark-infested waters of the South Pacific, dressed only in their submariner’s blue poopie suit uniforms and sneakers. They had no floatation gear and were treading water twenty miles from the nearest land. Even worse, an international armada was about to descend on their location and start an exhaustive search for survivors of the Louisiana. George and MacKenzie knew very well the dire consequences that awaited them if they were captured. Public humiliation…a sham trial for treason…a media circus…and probable execution. And they floated at the mercy of the South Pacific current.

  “I figure we’re about twenty miles east of Kermandec Number Nine, sir. That’s the closest land. How are we going to get there?”

  “We’ll get there slowly but surely. The current is in our favor. It’s pretty strong, and it flows east to west in this area. So it should help carry us back toward the island. Even if we just float, we should get there in eighteen hours or so.”

  “Eighteen hours! I don’t think I can swim that long, Captain.”

  “We need to conserve our strength.”

  “In water survival school, they taught us a drown-proofing technique where you take a breath and just relax face down in the water until you need another breath. Then with just a gentle kick, you raise your head and take another breath. It’s supposed to minimize your energy usage. Do you remember that class, Captain?”

  “Yes I do, but that technique is really designed for a situation in which you’re shipwrecked and waiting for rescue forces to pick you up. We’re not in that situation. We don’t want to be found, so we need to put as much distance between this location and ourselves as quickly as we can. Which means we need to do some swimming.”

  “Well, we’ll get tired pretty quickly if we try to do the crawl, Captain.”

  “Yes I know. I recommend doing the backstroke with a frog kick. Take your sneakers off and put them inside your poopie suit. That will make it easier to swim, and we’ll need those shoes when we get to the island.”

  “Yeah, if we get there.”

  “Positive thinking, Mac—it works wonders.”

  “Yes, sir—I meant when we get there.”

  “We want to move toward that setting sun as quickly as possible, but without a lot of splashing around.”

  MacKenzie chuckled. “Captain, I don’t think those subs out there are going to hear a couple guys splashing on the surface.”

  “It’s not the subs I’m concerned about—it’s the sharks.”

  “Sharks! Holy crap!”

  “Now don’t get too excited. We shouldn’t have a problem if we don’t attract their attention. People have this false image that sharks are always swimming around on the surface with their dorsal fins sticking out of the water. But in reality, sharks in the open ocean rarely come to the surface. They’re usually swimming around a couple of hundred feet down. That’s where their normal food supply is. They only come to the surface when one of their prey is wounded and is bleeding or splashing around up here.”

  “Okay, Captain. You won’t hear a single splash from me!”

  George and MacKenzie swam and rested and swam some more throughout the evening, using the setting sun to guide them westward. Once darkness came, it was more difficult to tell from the southern hemisphere sky which direction was west. So they floated with the current throughout the long night, which seemed like it would never end. Off and on through the night, MacKenzie used the drown-proofing technique they had learned in water survival school, but George had never been comfortable with his face in the water. So he floated on his back where he could breathe freely. At first light the next morning, they began to swim away from the rising sun. By midmorning, Kermandec Number Nine was in sight, and they wearily let the surf wash them ashore.

  Chapter 47

  The Nuku’alofa had stayed at the rendezvous point for an hour beyond the appointed time, but could not stay in the area any longer due to the expected arrival of forces searching for the Louisiana. By the time George and MacKenzie washed ashore, the Nuku had long ago moved to its normal cargo route west of the island and proceeded back to Auckland.

  “We have to hide on this island,” said George. “This whole area will be swarming with search crews and salvage ships from all over the world. For the first couple of days, they will probably fly some reconnaissance flights over these islands, too. We can’t let them find us.”

  “But how long can we stay here? How are we going to get off this island? And how are we going to get back to our two-man teams?”

  “All good questions, Mac. We need to scout around and see if we can find a source of fresh water. Water will be the critical factor for survival. If we can’t find any, our time on this island may be very short.”

&nb
sp; “Well, I see lots of palm trees, so we can get plenty of coconut milk. And there may be pools of rainwater collected in the rocks further up on the island. Hey, if Tom Hanks can survive as a castaway for four or five years, we ought to be able to survive four or five days, don’t you think?”

  George laughed. “That’s true, but that was Hollywood, and this is real life. Still, if we find water, I don’t think we’ll have any problem. And if the XO did his job, SF-2 is hidden in a little cove on the west side of the island. We should be able to use it to get out of here when the time is right. I’d like to make it to Auckland within a week.”

  “But what then, Captain? I know where my teammate was supposed to go, but he can’t do it alone, so he’s probably changed his plan now and joined with another team. I have no idea where they would be going. All of the locations are secret, and even you don’t know where anyone else is going. And what about Leona? Isn’t she your teammate?”

  George shook his head. He and Leona had thought they were being so clever in hiding their relationship. He still couldn’t believe everyone on the Louisiana knew their secret!

  “I truly hope I can find her, Mac,” George said with a lonely sadness in his voice. “It would be a tremendous loss if I never see her again. And it would be even worse for her, because she has no way of knowing whether we’re dead or alive. We’ll just have to see what we find when we get to Auckland. Right now, we need to find some shelter and get a little sleep. We will both be thinking more clearly when we’ve had some rest.”

  George and MacKenzie hid out over the next couple of days surviving on coconuts and papayas. Several times, aircraft from a U.S. aircraft carrier flew search missions over the island. The second day, a U.S. Navy helicopter slowly circled the entire island. George and McKenzie hid behind a rock outcropping to avoid detection.

  “Keep solid rock between your body and that helicopter at all times,” George had warned MacKenzie. “The infrared sensors they have these days can detect body heat right through foliage. But solid rock will shield us.”