Silent Waters

by Jan Coffey

  Chapter 46

  USS Pittsburgh

  2:12 p.m.

  “Torpedoes away.”

  The second pair of torpedoes sped off into the dark waters of the Sound.

  “Close outer doors three and four. Drain tubes and reload.”

  The orders from the commander of Pittsburgh continued, and Captain Whiting, supervising the action, saw the effects of good training. It was a shame they were about to take out one of their own subs.

  “Fire Control, I want a new solution on target.”

  Whiting knew it was difficult for the skipper of the sub, too. He couldn’t bring himself to refer to Hartford by name. The deck officer approached the conn and handed the C.O. a message board.

  The commander read it, looked at Captain Whiting, and handed the board to him.

  Looking at the message, Whiting felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. One minute would have made all the difference. Now it was too late. It would take less than ten minutes for the fish to reach Hartford. If only this message had come in a minute earlier.

  “It’s from Commander McCann, sir,” the young deck officer said, as if Whiting couldn’t read the damn thing himself.

  “The authenticity code?” the commander barked.

  “It matches, sir. It’s from Hartford. From McCann.”

  Whiting read the short message again. McCann had regained control of the ship. The hijackers had left by way of what he suspected was a DSRV. The reactor plant was scrammed, and he was working on auxiliary to bring them to the surface. Three people were trying to run that goddamn sub—one of them a civilian.

  They’d never make it.

  The skipper was shouting orders. Radio was messaging the surface. Search for the DSRV would go to units in the air. Washington and Norfolk had to be immediately notified of the situation.

  Whiting watched him turn to his combat. “Status of torpedoes?”

  “At their cruising speed on the intercept course to the target,” the young petty officer told him.

  “With his power shut down, he has no chance to outrun them,” Whiting commented. “He’s going to take the hit.”

  One minute would have saved those three people’s lives. The commander had another communication sent, this time ordering the deep water rescue equipment.

  “You might try the electronics, Skipper,” Whiting suggested.

  “The fish are too far out,” the C.O. replied. “They’re out of range.”

  ~~~~

  Chapter 47

  USS Hartford

  2:18 p.m.

  The battery charge was getting very low because of the life support systems and the sonar. Sonar by itself was a power hog. McCann had to keep it operating at full capacity, and the system’s seawater pumps, required to cool its computers, were an awful power drain.

  He looked at the display that showed the power on the grid from the ship’s turbine generators.

  “Come on, Amy. Fire that baby up.”

  Another few minutes and they’d be dead in the water.

  “Come on…”

  The display started to come alive.

  “You’re doing it, Amy,” he said into the mouthpiece.

  She had the auxiliary engine running. McCann watched the battery charge gauge jump.

  “Yeah, baby,” Brody shouted. “She’s real good, sir. We’ve got to get us one like her on board for the next patrol.”

  “Where are you, Amy? Get up here,” McCann said into the mike.

  “I’m coming. I’m coming,” she shot back. “Will you please stop being so bossy?”

  “Conn? Sonar,” Brody shouted. “Multiple torpedoes in the water. Bearing on us. I read four fish, Skipper.”

  “What’s the range gate?”

  “Prolonged pinging, sir. Lead torpedo is maybe six thousand yards.”

  He’d known it was just a matter of time. They hadn’t gotten their message off soon enough. McCann left the conn and ducked into Sonar, looking briefly over Brody’s shoulder and checking the speed and coordinates.

  They had only minutes.

  Amy burst into the control room as McCann stepped back onto the conn. She was greasy and dirty and had blood stains on her clothing, and McCann thought he’d never seen a more beautiful woman. He watched her come to a halt and stare at the bodies of Cav and Dunbar, lying by the navigation panels where he’d dragged them.

  Considering what was going on right now, McCann shouldn’t have felt so defensive. But he felt the urgent need to explain everything to her. An urge brought on by the stark uncertainty of whether or not they’d get out of here alive.

  He went to her. “Here’s the ‘cleanup’ you heard about. They were dead when I got up here.”

  Amy looked away, obviously accepting his words. “I’m reporting for duty, Skipper. What else do you want me to do?”

  He smiled. “I’m going to put you at the helm.”

  “Driving the sub?” she asked, her eyes rounding. “I can’t do that.”

  “It’s not much different than driving a car. I’ll show you.” He took her by the arm and seated her, starting to show her some of the controls.

  “Conn? Sonar. Range gate dropping,” Brody told him.

  McCann knew he had no ability to fire off counter measures that would draw the fire of the torpedoes. There was no running away from these fish, either, not with the reactor shut down.

  “How far do you figure, Brody?” The sonar man could judge the distance of the torpedo by the time between active sonar pings. The shorter the intervals between pings, the closer the torpedo.

  “Range is about three thousand yards,” Brody responded.

  They were a sitting duck, fat and passive while a death blow drew nearer.

  “No,” McCann muttered. “There is one thing we can do.”

  He leaned over Amy.

  “Heads up, Brody,” he shouted. “You too, Amy. Emergency blow, fore and aft. We’re taking her up. Amy, pull back on the yoke and try to keep it at a twenty-degree up bubble.”

  Amy looked over her shoulder at him, nervously. He gave her a reassuring nod. If this worked, he might get up above the ceiling setting of the weapons…if they had them programmed for it. And even if they were hit, if they could make it to the surface, McCann thought he could somehow save Amy’s and Brody’s lives. A very big somehow.

  McCann slammed two steel levers into their cradles above his head, and the sound of high pressure air displacing the water in the ballast tanks blasted in their ears. As the water was forced out of the tanks, the submarine immediately became lighter and began to rise with rapidly increasing speed. As the deck tilted upward, McCann put his hand over Amy’s and helped her keep the ship’s ascent at twenty degrees.

  The numbers on the depth indicator flickered as the ship shot up from the depths. The speed indicator read fifteen knots. Eighteen knots. Twenty-one knots.

  Over the roar of the emergency blow, McCann could hear Brody calling out the distance of the lead torpedo on their tail. The depth indicator showed three hundred feet to the surface. Two-fifty. Two hundred. He hoped there were no surface vessels above. There were going to burst up through the surface like a rocket.

  “Continuous ramp wave on the lead fish.”

  The torpedo now had a precise fix on the sub’s location. McCann glanced once more at the depth indicator. One hundred feet.

  They weren’t going to make it, he thought, and then three successive explosions rocked Hartford.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 48

  USS Pittsburgh

  2:36 p.m.

  Captain Whiting and the C.O. of Pittsburgh stood on the bridge and waited. The C.O.’s headset crackled.

  “Bridge? Combat,” the voice came through. “Only three of our fish detonated, sir. One torpedo is still on target and closing.”

  “Shit,” Whiting muttered. Using their sophisticated electronics, they’d tried to reprogram the torpedoes speeding toward Hartford. It was a miracle they’d been able to
get three of them to self-destruct. The problem was that only one MK-48 torpedo was enough to annihilate the submarine.

  “Shit,” he said again.

  Pittsburgh had surfaced only moments before. Cruising at only one hundred fifty feet below the surface, the sub had risen to the surface after attempting to short-circuit their torpedoes.

  “There she is,” the C.O. said to Whiting, but the older man’s binoculars were already locked on the sight.

  The bow of the submarine shot up out of the water, her tremendous speed driving her upward until the sail cleared the surface. More of the sleek black hull followed, like the body of a great whale about to breech, until the massive weight of the vessel once again became the dominant force, plummeting the bow of the submarine back to the surface. As she reentered the waters of the Sound, a huge wall of water rose up around her.

  At that precise moment, the single remaining torpedo struck the underside of Hartford and exploded, the powerful blast lifting the bow of the submarine out of the water.

  With the eye of a seasoned veteran, Whiting judged that the fish must have struck the hull just aft of the torpedo tubes.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 49

  USS Hartford

  2:52 p.m.

  They’d been hit, and Amy’s ears were ringing from the blast of the torpedo.

  She looked around. It appeared that there was little damage to the control room. Even the lights, which had flickered several times, still lit the interior of the sub.

  Amy leaned to the side and looked at Brody. He had his head back and was looking up into the overhead. Amy didn’t know if he was saying a prayer or meditating, but it didn’t matter. Somehow, they’d gone through hell and survived. She swung around in her seat to look for McCann. He was flipping switches and pressing buttons. He finished what he was doing and their gazes locked.

  “Is it over?” she asked in a whisper, afraid she might be dreaming. She was terrified that they weren’t really on the surface, but dead.

  He nodded.

  Amy got up from the chair and closed the distance between them. Throwing her arms around McCann, she pressed her face against his blood-soaked shirt. He wrapped his arms around her.

  “Thank you,” she said brokenly, overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude. “Thank you. Thank you for saving our lives.”

  He raised her chin, and she felt her heart skip a beat. There was no time to say or do anything before McCann’s lips closed over hers. She kissed back hard. It was the hungry kiss of two people who’d just been given a second chance at life.

  “We couldn’t have done this without you,” he whispered in her ear as he ended the kiss. But he didn’t let her go.

  They both turned and looked at Brody. He was staring at the sonar screen.

  “Good work, Brody,” McCann told him.

  He turned in his chair. The loss of blood seemed to have caught up to him. His face was very pale and his eyes lacked focus.

  “Skipper, I know why they didn’t ask me to go in with—”

  Before he could finish, an explosion ripped through the upper deck, tearing the deck plates and blasting a twenty-foot hole in Hartford’s hull. Amy found herself on the deck inside the Communication Center, one of the operator’s chairs on top of her. Her ears felt as if they were blocked. But she was still alive.

  She tried to sit up and looked around frantically, trying to find McCann and Brody. What she could see of the control room through the radio room door was a disaster area. The main lighting was out, but the emergency lights were somehow still working.

  Daylight was pouring in along with the sea. As the green water rushed in, Amy thought that they couldn’t have been hit by another torpedo. There’d been nothing else on the sonar.

  It was either the navy bombarding them from above, she decided, or it was a present that the hijackers had left behind.

  At that moment, the vessel pitched, and she looked up in time to see one of the radio panels directly above her tip precariously right before it crashed down on her.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 50

  White House

  3:00 p.m.

  “My fellow Americans. Once again, good has triumphed over evil. Once again, in the face of danger, the best of America has showed itself.” President Hawkins paused and looked into the cameras. “The crisis is over. As I speak to you, the men and women of our military forces are preparing to board the disabled submarine Hartford. The hijackers that have survived are on the run. Our nation, our way of life, is safe.”

  He smiled and then grew serious again. “This has been a trying day for every one of us. Today, the very foundations of America came under attack. But our belief in freedom and our ability to resist evil never faded. Our light never dimmed. We went out there and fought the terrorists who brought this fight to our door. We stood our ground and proved to those nations who support such actions that we are not weak or unprepared or lacking in our determination to stand up for our beliefs. America is strong. We have showed the world that we stand together and that we will never be defeated.”

  The President continued to read the speech on the teleprompter in front of him. As always, Bob Fortier was prepared with the message they wanted to convey at just the right moment. And this was their moment. Every voter west of the Mississippi was glued to their television, and those on the east coast who were not in front of their TVs were listening to him on the radio. All programming was pre-empted. This was his time. His show.

  Tomorrow, they would go to their polling places and vote. And who would they be voting for? William Hawkins.

  The president read on, smiling occasionally, sounding confident and showing his pride in being an American. The speech touched on what he’d accomplished in the past four years in preparing America’s defenses for this kind of assault. He referred to the course of action he planned to keep the nation on for the next four. He talked about the hijacking and made it clear that his foreign policies must be credited for their ability to quash this threat and force these terrorists to abort their plans. Strength was the only way to answer terror, he told the nation. American strength.

  Hawkins knew John Penn must be squirming in his small mansion in Rhode Island. There would be no rebuttal this time about the need for “balancing the interests of America with our responsibilities to the people on whose backs we’ve grown wealthy.” This was no moderated debate. Will Hawkins, President William Hawkins, had the platform all to himself.

  He folded his hands in a prayerful attitude. Looking straight into the camera, he finished the speech with his own words.

  “Tomorrow, as a nation, we will go and exercise the right that Americans have fought and died for. No terrorist will ever jeopardize that freedom while I stand watch. Go, my fellow Americans, with the secure knowledge that the future is safe for you and your children. You, my brothers and sisters, who are on the road, return to your homes. Here in the White House, we have kept the light burning for you.”

  The director motioned for the camera crew to stop filming as those in the Oval Office started to cheer.

  Hawkins moved from behind his desk and circulated among the crew and his staff and the members of his party’s congressional leadership that had come to share in his glory. Now he could do what he was even better at—shaking hands and making small talk.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 51

  USS Hartford

  3:02 p.m.

  The wall of seawater rushing in with each rise and fall of the vessel was washing away everything, including equipment that had been bolted in place.

  The blast had separated McCann from Amy, and he remembered that his head had smashed against something. Now he was lying on top of the Fire Control panel and seawater was slapping against his face.

  McCann had no idea what time it was, or if he’d been knocked out or not. He could see light coming in from somewhere beyond the periscope platform and the cascading water. The battle lanterns above him were still burnin
g. Beneath him, he could hear the banging bass sound of deep water. The forward compartment was filling quickly, and that meant the lower levels must be full.

  If the ship went down now, they’d all go with it. He looked around madly but he could see no sign of Amy or Brody. He remembered holding onto her until the blow.

  He rolled off the panel and was nearly swept under by the turbulence of the seawater in the compartment. The water came almost to his chest. Wading through the control room, he clung to anything he could get a grip on.

  It seemed like forever before he made it to where he’d last seen Amy. Filling his lungs with air, he went under. Darkness was all around him. He searched where she’d been standing before. He came up for air and looked around, shouting her name, before diving again.

  The water was rising even higher. He could see where the light was seeping in. Back near the escape trunk, the explosion had torn open a gaping hole in the hull. Everything surrounding it was demolished.

  He went under again and pulled himself toward Sonar. There was still no sign of Amy.

  Surfacing, he pulled open the door to the Sonar Room. Brody was unconscious and still in his chair at the sonar station. His face was barely above water, and there was blood on his forehead. From the spider web breaks in what was still visible of the monitor screen, McCann guessed the young man’s head had been driven into it by the force of either the explosion or the rushing water. He grabbed his man by the collar of the shirt and tried to lift him from the chair. No luck. Brody’s leg was caught on something.

  McCann didn’t know if Brody was alive or already dead, but he had to try to get him out of there. The water was continuing to wash in around them. He reached down, yanking at the table that trapped Brody’s legs. Brody’s body started moving away from the chair. He was free.