Terminal Run

by Michael Dimercurio

  He still had emergency hydraulics, so he pulled back on the bow planes and the stern planes and held the up angle at fifty degrees, dumping the unconscious bodies behind him into the aft bulkhead, perhaps even injuring them worse. But Farragut had been trained in the submariner’s mantra by Lieutenant Commander Phillips: “Save the mission, save the ship, save the reactor plant, save the crew, in that order.” The mission was beyond his ability to save, but he could save the ship, and he fully intended to surface the flooding submarine if the ship systems cooperated. He had no depth gauge and no Cyclops

  inclinometer, but he hit the battle lantern switch, the light shining on his panel. There, mounted in the overhead, was an old fashioned water-filled bubble inclinometer. The ship’s up angle was approaching sixty degrees up. He fought the bow planes down, wondering how long the hydraulic pressure would last, and was able to get the angle down to fifty degrees. A brass Bourdon-tube pressure gauge was also nestled in the overhead, for use in extreme loss-of-all-power emergencies, and its needle was climbing rapidly past three hundred feet. They’d break the surface in no time.

  The problem was, when they did, how long would they stay with a flooded torpedo room and the damage from the detonation of that torpedo? As the ship broached and came back to a zero angle, Farragut couldn’t help wondering how the torpedo, which had been so far astern, had managed to do this much damage. There must have been a second torpedo they hadn’t seen, he thought, and it had pursued them from directly astern. After the ship reached the surface she sank again, to two hundred feet, then returned sluggishly to the surface, the deck rolling in the swells. Farragut ditched his helmet, hit the quick release on his harness, and jumped out of the ship-control console, and turned on the control room battle lanterns. The litter of dead or unconscious bodies was ghastly, but what made his heart pound even faster was the fire roaring out of the aft bulkhead.

  Farragut grabbed an extinguisher and ran to the fire, the unit empty while the fire continued to grow. It was only a fist grabbing his coverall sleeve that stopped his frenzied search for another fire extinguisher. He looked up to see the XO’s grime smeared face. Only her eyes and her grimacing teeth shone white.

  “Farragut!” she shouted at him, her words coming in slow motion from the adrenaline of the moment. “The torpedo room is completely flooded and we’re flooding aft. She won’t last more than a few minutes. We have to abandon ship. Get to the forward escape trunk and open both hatches. Then get back here and help me with the wounded.”

  As Farragut ran out of the space to the forward ladder, Phillips went to Captain Dixon’s cubicle. She knelt at his body and pulled off the Cyclops helmet, gently pulling the boom microphone out of his cheek.

  “Sir? Sir? Can you hear me,” she asked, touching his face, then slapping it.

  Dixon opened his eyes, the room blurring and spinning. “Donna,” he croaked.

  “Sir, the ship was hit. The flooding in the torpedo room is catastrophic. We’re flooding through a twenty-one-inch open torpedo tube. I secured the hatches, but the bulkheads are leaking and we’reshipping water through the shaft seals and the main seawater system.”

  “Can we restart the reactor?” he asked, his eyes glazed.

  “Captain, the ship is doomed, we’re sinking fast. We have to abandon ship, sir. Farragut’s opening the escape trunk now. We need to get you out of here, sir. We’ve only got a few minutes to get you out of here.”

  “You go,” Dixon said. “I’ll stay behind and hit the self-destruct. The Reds won’t salvage the Leopard, not on my watch.”

  Dixon faded back into unconsciousness. Phillips pulled him to his feet, and when Farragut returned, they carried him up the ladder to the upper level.

  “Get him through the hatch, Farragut,” she ordered. “I’m going to look for other survivors.”

  Commander Donna Phillips had taken command of the operation to abandon ship, and had personally walked every passageway on the ship, making her way through the flooded lower-level engine room and pulling the injured to the access hatches. The junior officers stationed there lifted the barely breathing to the deck above. The torpedo room hatches had been shut and dogged. The flooded space was a total loss, the dozen crew members there consigned to the deep. The dead crewmen littered the deck of the operations compartment, and as the last of the living were hoisted out of the hatch, Phillips

  hurried to the control room, hoping with the flooding there was still power from the battery. With the flooding continuing, it was possible the battery compartment would explode, but the control room uninterruptible power supply should at least keep the ship-control circuits active until they too were underwater.

  Control was a wreck. She found the sub-sunk buoy and coded in a sub-sunk message, typing quickly that they had attacked the surface force and been blindsided by a counterattack, and that the captain was down and she intended to self-destruct the ship. She loaded the buoy and armed it. She flipped back the toggle switch cover and hit the switch. The light energized to show the buoy was away. It would start sending their position to the overhead server, and with better luck than they had had so far they would be rescued.

  There was only one thing left—she found the panel cover over the self-destruct circuit and punched in the code to open the cover. The panel came open, revealing a simple arm toggle switch, a red mushroom button, and a dual timer display. One was a timer setting, the second the time left to auto destruct She set the timer for ten minutes, armed the circuit, and punched the mushroom button. The second display counted from ten minutes to 9:59, rolling downward. Phillips shut the cover and took one last look around the room, then dashed to the ladder to the upper level and out the hatch. She tapped twice on the hatch ring’s steel, her farewell to the Leopard, then dived off the hull and swam to the nearest life raft.

  “Paddle away from the hull,” she ordered loudly. “Taussig, did you find the emergency locator beacon?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Pull the pin and make sure it’s transmitting.”

  The USS Leopard settled slowly in the water. Fifty yards to the east, three four-meter life rafts floated in the four-foot swells of the East China Sea. Lying in them were a total of forty-one survivors, sixteen of them unconscious—including Captain George Dixon. For those in the life rafts, there was nothing left to do but watch the ship sink. The nose cone and

  the sail were all that were visible. The aft deck vanished beneath the waves. The ship took a severe up angle until it faded backward The forward hatch went underwater, the sail vanished, then finally the bullet nose of the bow lowered until it disappeared between wave crests, and the Leopard was gone.

  A tear rolled down Phillips’s cheek just as the double rolling booming noise of the plasma destruct charges exploded far below them in the depths of the sea. For them. Phillips thought, the war was over.

  19.

  Patch Pacino shivered in the cold of the command module of the Piranha’s deep submergence vehicle. The space heaters had been consuming too much power, and Captain Catardi had switched them off a few hours ago. He would only use them to keep the space’s equipment running, and the machinery functioned perfectly at freezing temperatures. The four survivors would try to fight off hypothermia by using warm blankets and warm liquids.

  Alameda and Schultz had not yet awakened. Pacino had bundled them tightly together, keeping only one thin blanket for himself and one for Catardi. The women’s faces were covered except for their noses and mouths. He could see the vapor plumes of their breathing. He checked them every hour, and their temperatures seemed normal. They were slumbering through a cold winter night.

  The issue was whether they would be found and rescued. There were no procedures for this, according to the captain. The DSV was a temporary addition to the spec-op compartment, which had been hastily reconfigured for it in a shipyard availability, and it had been scheduled to be removed, a new mission and a configuration change awaiting the ship in the next dry dock avail
ability. The fact that they could not use the sub-sunk buoy would doom them, and the pitiful pounding of the emergency percussion device—the automatic hull-hammerer-was not enough to attract serious attention unless

  someone hovered directly over them, and even then, with the strong layer depth overhead, the sounds from it might just bounce back deep. So they were all trapped in an HY-100 steel tomb, surrounded by eighty-three dead crew members.

  “Patch.”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “What happened to Keating?”

  “He was smashed up inside the escape trunk. I was in the water hanging from the operating wheel of the hatch, so I should have had it worse, with explosions in water being deadly. But I guess the chief was tossed into the bulkhead.”

  Catardi stared at him. “Wait a minute. You were outside the ship?”

  “Yes, sir. I heard the incoming sonars. I saw the torpedo hit the engine room. It blew my mask off and the regulator out of my mouth.”

  “So how did you—what did you—you came back in? What the hell did you do that for?”

  “I don’t know, Skipper. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “Oh, God, your dad is going to kill me. Why the hell didn’t you go topside? You realize what a boneheaded move that was?”

  “I know, sir. I should have lit off the emergency beacon.”

  “Hell with that. You should have saved your skin. Dammit, now I feel worse—at least you could have lived. Now you’re going down with us.”

  “You don’t think there will be a rescue?”

  “I don’t think so, Patch,” Catardi said gently. “We’rein the middle of nowhere. All the other submerged units were either in the Indian Ocean or the East China Sea or on the way there. We’re off the great circle route to the IO from the U.S. East Coast. We can hope for merchant shipping traffic to hear the hammering device, but odds are, even if someone were to hear it, they wouldn’t know what it was.”

  Pacino nodded. “How long till the atmosphere runs out?”

  “We’ve probably got five days, if the cold doesn’t get us

  first. I’m sorry, Patch. It’s a bad death, but can you think of a good one?”

  “Well, at least we’re dying with our boots on.”

  “Hell, we didn’t even get a counterfire in the water. We’re dying after getting bushwhacked by that damned robot sub.

  Hell of a useless way to go.”

  There was nothing else to say, so Pacino just stared at the deck until he felt too sleepy to keep his eyes open.

  “Admiral, flash traffic for you, coded personal for commanding admiral,” the radioman said as he woke McKee and handed him the pad computer.

  McKee clicked into it, the message a transmission from the Leopard, which had been setting up to attack Battlegroup One at the Formosa Strait when he and Petri had called it a night and retired early. McKee expected an after-action situation report. McKee’s orders to Leopard gave her captain, Commander Dixon, wide latitude to either watch and report on the Chinese battle group and wait for reinforcing submarines, or fire on the task force and take out as many high-value units as his weapons load and tactics would allow. Knowing Dixon, the Southerner would consider it a matter of honor to launch the entire torpedo room at the surface force.

  But the message was not the expected pre formatted after-action report. McKee’s face dropped into lines of sadness as he read the body of the Email:

  242058Z JUN2019

  FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH

  PERSONAL FOR COMMANDING ADMIRAL //

  PERSONAL FOR COMMANDING ADMIRAL

  FM USS LEOPARD SSN 780

  TO COMUSUBCOM

  SUBJ SUB SUNK

  TOP SECRET BLACK WIDOW

  AUTHENTICATOR TWO SIX NINE ECHO MIKE

  FOUR

  AUTHENTICATE ONE FIVE FOUR NOVEMBER

  DELTA FOXTROT QUEBEC TANGO

  //BT//

  1. (TS) JULANG SSN DETECTED, RANGE TWENTY THOUSAND (20,000) YARDS ON A 254 HERTZ DOUBLET, BROADBAND AND

  ACOUSTIC DAYLIGHT. JULANG-CLASS ENGAGED

  WITH VORTEX AND LEOPARD

  CLEARED DATUM, BELIEVE JULANG SSN DESTROYED.

  2. (TS) PRIOR TO JULANG SINKING, JULANGCOUNTERFIRED A SUPERCAVITATING

  UNDERWATER

  MISSILE. LEOPARD EVADED BUT HIT

  AND DAMAGED.

  3. (TS) LEOPARD ON SURFACE WITH CATASTROPHIC

  FLOODING AND SEVERE CREW

  CASUALTIES INCLUDING COMMANDING OFFICER.

  SHIP IS SINKING AND SELF-DESTRUCT

  CHARGES BEING ARMED. CREW IS ABANDONING

  SHIP THIS APPROX POSITION.

  4. (TS) LATITUDE 24 DEC 23 MIN 56 SEC NORTH LONGITUDE 121 DEC 32 MIN 04 SEC EAST,

  ERROR CIRCLE TWO ZERO NM.

  5. (TS) EXECUTIVE OFFICER LCDR. D. PHILLIPS SENDS

  //BT//

  McKee handed the pad computer to Petri. “Goddamned communications work-around,” the admiral muttered. “This supposed flash message is two damned hours old.”

  Petri read the message, her expression falling. When she was done, McKee pushed the machine over to Judison, and while he read it McKee glared at his chief of staff. “Captain Petri, go to the stateroom and work on a recommendation to

  vector in the nearest submerged units for a rescue, and draft a forwarding message to Admiral Ericcson with this. I want aircraft overhead that position to see to the status of the survivors, and make sure we keep any Red surface units away from them. I want them out of the water in twenty hours. As a lower priority, draft a sitrep for Admiral Patton.”

  “Yes, sir,” Petri said, hurrying back to the stateroom. McKee’s face took on the harsh lines of fury.

  “Conn, Sonar, loud broadband transient detected, bearing north,” the overhead speaker crackled.

  “Sonar, Conn, aye,” Lieutenant Commander Ash Oswald said in a deadpan voice to the bombshell the sonar supervisor just dropped. Oswald was the navigator and Section I officer of the deck of the USS Hammerhead, standing the watch during an uneventful afternoon spent in a flank-speed transit to the intercept point on the anticipated track of the Snare. Oswald glanced at the junior officer of the deck, Lieutenant Junior Grade Melissa White—a talented nonqual air breather who worked for the chief engineer and was a month from earning her gold dolphins—then glanced at the sonar screen on the command console, selecting the waterfall display. There at the bearing marked 000 was a blooming light trace on the dark background. “So how long will that god damned hillbilly sonar supe take to share some information with us?” Oswald said sarcastically to White. “Sonar, Conn, sonar supervisor to control.”

  “Yes sir,” a voice immediately said behind him. The sonar chief had been standing there all along. Sonarman Chief Petty Officer Stokes, a strapping and aggressive young technician from western Kentucky, stood leaning with his massive forearm on the stainless-steel rails that surrounded the conn.

  “Dammit, Chief,” Oswald snarled, “don’t do that to me. And get your paws off my conn handrails or you’ll be polishing them on the mid watch

  “You done ranting, sir?” Stokes asked, his face pleasant.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. The transient sounded like an entire arsenal exploding. We’ve also got bulkheads collapsing. Someone sank. I’m analyzing the tape now to see if we can pick anything up just prior to the detonation.”

  “Prior to it? Like what?”

  “Torpedo sonars, depth charges splashing, that kind of thing.”

  “You’re talking like it was a sub that went down.”

  “Could have been a skimmer, sir. But with the Snare to the north of us coming south, and the Piranha doing a squeeze play from further north of the Snare, doesn’t it just seem logical that when we hear a booming noise from the north, we correlate it to fisticuffs between those two?”

  “Fisticuffs? You mean they exchanged weapons and the Snare is on the bottom. Regrettable that Piranha got to that robotic piece of dung first, but at least
now we can run to the south and get to the IO, where the action is.”

  “Unless it was Snare that did the shooting,” White interrupted.

  Oswald stood on the conn with his mouth open for several seconds. It had never occurred to him that the robot sub could have beaten a Seawolf-class. Especially the Piranha, which had given the Hammerhead a bitch of a battle in an exercise six months ago. The Seawolfs had an overall acoustic advantage against the Virginia-class unless the Seawolf sped at flank speed by an idling Virginia; at slower speeds the Seawolf would detect a Virginia four thousand yards before the Virginia knew they were being targeted. Which meant that if a Seawolf-class had just been beaten by the Snare, the Snare had a large acoustic advantage over a Virginia-class like the Hammerhead. Especially if the Virginia-class were going fast. Like they were now. At flank speed.

  “Diving Officer! All stop!” Oswald yelled. The order was as good as a 1MC announcement of “Captain to control,” since the minute the deck stopped shaking, the commanding officer would bulldoze his way to control to find out why. “Maneuvering, Conn,” Oswald shouted into a 1ME mike, “downshift reactor re circ pumps and rig for natural circulation!”

  “All stop, Dive aye, throttles retarding to idle, answering all stop, sir.”

  “Conn, Maneuvering,” the 1Me box blared, “downshift main coolant pumps and rig for nat circ, Conn, Maneuvering, aye. Conn, Maneuvering, main coolant pumps off. Reactor is in natural circulation.” “Maneuvering, Conn, aye,” Oswald said. He turned from the 1MC panel to see Captain Judison, Admiral McKee, and Chief of Staff Petri all standing there, looking at him expectantly.

  “Captain’s in control,” Oswald announced to the control room. He leaned toward the senior officers. “There’s a problem, Captain, Admiral, ma’am,” Oswald said. “Tell us all again, Chief Stokes.”

  The three listened. Judison pulled the admiral and his staffer aside, the three of them talking in their huddle for some time. Finally the admiral and his chief of staff left, and Judison approached the conn.