The Gulf

by David Poyer

  There was a sudden jolt, not loud, but hard. It came through the water. Dan saw a plume of spray leap up from the short pier. Then another jolt, and the pier disintegrated, the little house disappeared, the boats disappeared, geysering upward on three huge underwater explosions.

  “Okay, let’s get the fuck out of here! Give me a course.”

  “One-seven-zero looks good.”

  “Left hard rudder, come to one-seven-zero,” said Charaler.

  “Mr. Charaler, did I direct you to come to that course?”

  “You said to get the fuck out of here, Captain.”

  “Okay, just checking.”

  “Bridge, DC central: Loamer here.”

  “Talk to us, Percy.”

  “Sir, we took three hits a couple minutes ago. Shell hit in Auxiliary Machinery Room number three. Fragment damage. Number-four diesel generator and number-five fire pump off the line. Hit in starboard helo hangar, class bravo fire. Fire boundaries set. Initiating foam flooding. Hit in chiefs’ berthing, class alfa fire, Repair Two’s providing.”

  “Percy, we’re gonna need the AMR back, give that priority unless the fires spread.”

  “Aye, sir. Uh, how’s it look up there, sir?”

  “Hell, I forgot all about the guys below,” said Shaker. “We’re doin’ good, kicking ass, on our way out now, I’ll talk on the 1MC after—”

  The flash and crack came simultaneously. Fragments clanged against the starboard wing. Before they could react, another shell exploded a few feet aft, on the signal bridge, another back by the 76. Dan caught muzzle flashes and grabbed the radio handset. “Lariat, this is Apache. Taking fire from shore. Gun battery on flat-topped hummock to the right of the pier.”

  “Apache, Lariat, roger, out.”

  “Ahead full,” shouted Shaker, his voice distant. Dan reached up to rub his ears. No, not distant, he’d been deafened. Good thing those hadn’t been armor-piercing. From the rate of fire, it must have been an AA gun, depressed to a horizontal trajectory.

  He checked the radar—it was still flickering like heat lightning, hopelessly jammed—and then the chart. McQueen’s track showed them headed fair for the lane out.

  He was taking a deep breath, ready to accept a strategic retreat, when he saw a piece of the burning pier, the one their torpedoes hadn’t hit, slide away from the rest. He stared at it in disbelief, then remembered his binoculars. He stepped out onto the wing, lifting them, and sensed something soft underfoot. “Who the hell’s lying down out here?”

  “He’s wounded, sir.”

  Dan caught the shape then in the twin circle of the night glasses. For an endless second, his mind refused to accept it. Then it did.

  “Submarine to starboard!” he screamed.

  Every man on the bridge spun around. Shaker swore. “What? Where?”

  “The long pier, alongside! Getting under way now!”

  Shaker’s binoculars came up for the first time during the action. After a long moment, he muttered “It’s him, all right. Camouflaged. He’s been sitting right here in Abu Musa. Good eye, Dan. Okay, call Lewis. Get the Phalanx on him.”

  “CIWS out of ammo!”

  “Shit! Get the 76—”

  “Still reloading, sir.”

  “Let Adams take her, sir,” said Dan. “Five-inch’ll crack the pressure hull—”

  “Jakkal’s headed out! He doesn’t see it—or doesn’t want to!” The massive head steadied on the shape that now accelerated, driving silently out from shore. Orange flames, parts of the pier, still flickered on its decks.

  “Let’s stand by outside the anchorage—” But even as he said it, Dan stopped. As soon as the sub cleared the island, it would submerge. And with sonar conditions as bad as they were, they’d never see it again. Till its fish slammed into another tanker.

  “Hard right rudder!” shouted Shaker. The helmsman responded instantly, repeating the command as he twisted the wheel.

  “There’s a shoal over there, sir!”

  “I think we can turn inside it—Lewis! Get that motherfucking gun reloaded! Now!”

  Van Zandt came around fast and tight at full speed, almost in her own length.

  They were halfway around when there was an ungodly noise from the wing. Dan stared out for a three-second-long year as Adams screamed by not fifty feet away, her blowers and turbines whining like a battalion of banshees. The steady flashes from her guns lit the smoke and spray of her passage. They lit startled faces on her bridge. They showed the old destroyer’s bow twisted and mangled as if she’d hit a wall. There were answering flashes, redder, from ashore.

  Shaker shouted, “Is the gun ready?”

  “Not yet, sir!”

  “Okay, fuck it! Ahead flank emergency. Let’s ruin this bastard’s paint job!”

  “Engines ahead flank emergency, steady as she goes!”

  A low black shape ahead, perhaps a hundred meters off the burning pier, its deadly bow swinging toward them … no other choice now, unless they wanted a torpedo up the ass … Van Zandt gathered speed fast as she steadied.

  He saw then what Shaker was going to do. There was nothing to say. No time to do anything but jump for the collision alarm, yank it over. Then grab a cable and brace himself.

  They hit with a long, grinding crash that threw every man on the bridge to his knees.

  0212 HOURS: U.S.S. CHARLES ADAMS

  Phelan was looking at the clock when the steel he was leaning against whip-cracked into his back. The fluorescents flickered, went out, flickered again, blue, then came on again full force. He half-scrambled up, but he was one of ten men sprawled and squatting on the deck, and gear covered the rest of it; he found no room to stand. With a hopeless moan, he sank back, feeling his bladder loosen suddenly, a warmth crawl down one leg.

  The repair-team leader yanked open the watertight door and stood in it, looking out. Bernard saw men running in the passageway outside. Like him, they wore dungarees, leather gloves, miner-style hard hats with lights on top. His bell-bottoms were tucked into his socks and his feet felt heavy and strange in the cracked old steel-toes they’d issued him for GQ.

  “Repair Two! Repair-team leader!” came a hoarse, scared voice somewhere forward.

  “Repair Two leader aye!”

  “Hit forward, suspected mine, vicinity frame ten, investigate and report.”

  The team leader yelled it back, grabbed his clipboard, and disappeared. The rest of the team waited, not talking, their faces varnished with sweat. The ventilation had been secured for GQ and the air was as close as if they were waiting in a stalled elevator.

  More boots thudded by outside and there were clangs and thuds from above. The lights flickered again. Phelan sat without looking, his brain empty of thought. His face was screwed closed like a jar, and he hugged his knees, rocking slightly in the cocoon of web belts, cables, fire axes, hoses, and line.

  They’d pushed him around when he reported to the locker. Laughed at him, thrown his gear at him. They didn’t care how he felt. Along with hurting like a rattler-bit dog, he was lonely and scared. Here in the repair locker, no one knew what was happening topside. Like coal miners buried by a cave-in, they knew of the world above only through sounds. There’d been a lot of noise, guns firing just above their heads. Noise over the 1MC, a voice shouting something about Iranians.

  But he didn’t care if they got hit. He didn’t care if they stayed afloat. He’d be better off dead. At least he wouldn’t need anything then.

  The team leader was back at the door, shouting. Vaguely he thought, Everyone’s shouting tonight. “Flooding forward. Mine hit. No fire, leave the OBAs here. Shoring and tools. Let’s go!”

  Before he could puzzle it, someone was shouting “Move, goddamn it,” in his ear, and yanking him to his feet. He grasped feebly at a heavy long chunk of wood someone thrust into his arms. A line clacked onto his belt. Like the last man in a chain gang, he was dragged out the door after the others.

  The passageway went dim a few yards
forward. Somewhere ahead battle lanterns flickered like heat lightning over the mesas. He was dragged toward them, the tail end of a snake of men. He blinked, suddenly understanding that the waviness under his feet was steel, rippled upward, deformed by some incredible force.

  All light ended. Blind now, the snake blundered through doors, into bulkheads, then crawled down a ladderway. His timber caught on the hatch cover and he almost fell.

  At the bottom his boots splashed into a foot of water. Helmet lamps and hand lamps flashed and dimmed ahead. He was lost. He didn’t know this ship or where he was. He didn’t have a light and only the line on his belt told him where to go. He tripped over things, sprawled, got up, reshouldering the heavy splintered beam like a driven Christ.

  The rapid clatter of hammers ahead, the whine of saws. Word came back for shoring and he pawed for the line, unsnapped it, shoved forward.

  The lights showed him men working frantically, some measuring, others cutting beams to fit, hammering in wedges, laying wires, patching broken pipes. The dark smelled of explosives, seawater, sawdust, shit, and fear. A door gaped open, a well of blackness, and from the far side came cries and screams.

  He pushed forward with his load. Somebody grabbed it, measured, and started sawing. In thirty seconds, it was part of a brace. He staggered back and leaned into a locker, gasping with fear, withdrawal, and exertion. What was he doing here? He didn’t know what was going on.

  His ear caught, then, one of the screams. “Corpsman! For the love of God, get a corpsman up here!”

  There was a battle lantern by his feet. On, but it didn’t seem to belong to anybody. There was also an olive-drab pack with a red cross on it. He hesitated, glancing around with his head down. Nobody was watching him. They were all busy, sawing, cursing, stringing lines.

  He grabbed the light and the kit and hobbled through the door.

  The space was, or had been, some kind of sonar room. The gear was wrecked. Glass all over, water up to his knees. The air was thick with a burnt heavy smell that made him think of firing ranges. He saw a hand sticking up out of the water. It didn’t move. The voice was farther ahead.

  Bernard saw him then, lying on top of a workbench.

  His eyes were closed but his face was warm. No shock yet, then. Blood all over him. Black man. Phelan tore open the med kit and began ripping off clothes.

  He found leg wounds and glass cuts. He was tourniqueting the legs when the man’s eyes opened and he screamed, right in his ear. Bernard said angrily, “Knock it off, way too loud. How you doing, buddy?”

  “Fuck. Fuck, ah, Jesus!”

  “Just hold on, now, you got the best medicine man in the Zuni Nation in charge, you gonna be all right now, hear?”

  He finished the bandaging, then searched through the kit. There they were. He tore open the little box, broke off the tip, and had the needle in the guy’s thigh before he thought, No, man, you just tourniqueted his legs. He shifted to an arm and squeezed the syrette empty like a toothpaste tube. “You gonna be all right, man,” he whispered over the clatter of hammers, the distant shouts.

  “Thanks, pal. Hey—” the eyes opened for a moment before the drug congealed them—“there oughta be another sonar tech up forward. See if you can find him, huh?”

  “I’ll get him. You take it easy.” Phelan patted him, then took out a ball-point and wrote across his forehead M 0220. He didn’t have a watch, but that was close enough for a dose time.

  So far, he hadn’t seen any litters. But the guy’d been moving his legs; probably his back was all right. He swung him up in a fireman’s carry, staggered through the water to the hatch, and screamed for help. Two seaman ran to grab him. He told them to get him some litters, he was going back in. As he turned, they shouted something at him, something about a door, but he didn’t wait for a repeat.

  The water was deeper now. Through the compartment, past the dead hand, into the next. He almost walked through the hole before he realized there was no more ship in front of him. Just a black gap where there’d been shell plating, and a waterfall roar outside.

  The moans he’d heard while he was taking care of the black guy had stopped. He flashed the lantern around the compartment, then around the hole, fascinated by it. Half-inch steel had been bent inward and upward. The sea bulged in every time the ship dipped her bow. It sucked in the light, gleaming blackly. He shuddered, and returned to the search.

  He found the second guy by stepping on him. Bernard hauled him up out of the water. He turned him over and pumped his arms. He’d done it a million times on the dummy. He got a weak cough and some retching. He turned him over and started work.

  When he was breathing again, Bernard realized this one probably wasn’t going to make it. He didn’t have much left of his guts. He gave him the shot anyway. Then stood up, trying to remember what it was he’d been about to do.

  Then he remembered.

  There were five more syrettes in the kit. And no more wounded up here. He picked one up and started to open it. Then he realized he didn’t seem to need it as badly as he had a half hour before.

  He felt weird and light-headed, he was shaking, but he didn’t seem to need a fix. He also realized then that the black man had been much bigger than he was, but he’d carried him out alone.

  Tuh, he thought. Maybe this was that natural high you were supposed to get in danger. It was a primo rush, all right.

  The bow dipped, the sea gurgled at his waist, and he started, suddenly realizing he had to get the guy out of here. He might die on the way, but for sure he’d drown here. They both would.

  He got him up on his shoulders and began wading aft. Through the sonar compartment, the water deeper here, too. Dark ahead, he couldn’t see the team’s lights. He came to the door. It was closed and dogged, solid as a safe.

  “Holy shit,” he muttered. He slammed at it with the lantern. The bulb broke with sparks and a fizzing pop. Now he was in the dark. He could hear them hammering faintly on the far side, and realized the last pieces of shoring were going into place. “Holy shit,” he said again, to the darkness, and the man on his back.

  The light on his helmet. He fumbled around the weight pressing him down and got it on. It was dim but he could see enough to navigate by.

  Phelan slogged his way forward again, through water to his chest, looking up at the overhead. Hoping for a scuttle, a ladder, any way to get out. There wasn’t any.

  “We got problems, man,” he muttered to his burden.

  When he reached the bow again, the gurgle was louder. Water streamed in, frothy-glowing, pulsing with weird green light. He shifted the body, hoping he wouldn’t have to do what he was thinking about doing. But the sea was still rising. He had no way of knowing when it would stop.

  He thought again of the morphine and knew that was impossible. He couldn’t use now. Or he could, but it would be the last hit he ever took. He stuffed it into his pockets instead and threw the rest of the kit away.

  The guy on his back had his Mae West on, like you were supposed to for GQ, but it wasn’t inflated. Phelan rolled him off into the water and slapped his face. He moaned.

  So he was still breathing. He unsnapped the life vest, pulled the collar over the guy’s head, and popped the inflator.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t have one for himself. He was in excess, and there hadn’t been any spares in the repair locker.

  The ship seemed to be picking up speed now that the shoring was completed. The water coming in was swift and strong. Phelan bent into it. It ripped at his chest and tried to tear the life jacket from his hand. He held on grimly, fighting his way, till he lost his footing. The current punched him backward and he felt jagged steel slice his flesh.

  He got up again and bulled forward once more, maddened now, screaming into the roar of the sea, and suddenly he was out, tumbling, sucked down helpless into a roaring void. His right hand struck out; his left cramped closed on his companion’s heel. He wasn’t going to let go. If they got separated, the poor b
astard didn’t have a prayer.

  Too late, just before they were sucked into them, Phelan remembered the screws.

  0225 HOURS: U.S.S. TURNER VAN ZANDT

  Eight hundred yards away, Van Zandt staggered slowly away from her collision with the submarine.

  At thirty knots her bow had bitten deep, but the damage went both ways. The impact sent her upward, over the pressure hull, crushing it down into the mud and sand. And then, backed by the incredible momentum of four thousand tons of steel, had kept going. The whole ship had groaned and shuddered, then pounded as the propeller chewed itself into junk against the sub’s conning tower.

  Now, as she drifted free, Dan felt her agony, her mortality, in the sluggish way she responded to Shaker’s shouted orders.

  The machine guns were still clattering from shore. And Van Zandt’s were still answering. There was no more heavy fire, though. Orange pyres soared upward from buildings and fuel dumps. They could see it all very clearly, see the tiny figures running about. Between bursts, they could hear shouts and screaming from the shore.

  “Cease fire!” Shaker shouted, and voices repeated it. The .50s hammered a last burst and fell silent.

  Shaker crossed to the intercom. He hesitated, then pressed the switch. “Main control, Bridge. Rick, are you there?”

  “Main aye. What the hell’s going on, Captain? Are we aground?”

  “No. We rammed a submarine. I didn’t mean to ride over it, but it was smaller than I thought. What’s the status?”

  “Well, I don’t think we have a prop anymore, Captain. The shaft ran away and I just shut it down.”

  “You don’t think we have power back there?”

  The intercom hissed, but the chief engineer said nothing. In the background Dan heard the crazy seesaw whine of electronic alarms.

  Shaker tried again. “Rick, we got to get out of here. See if you can deploy the bow thrusters.”

  “Stand by.” Guerra was back in a moment: “Starboard unit’s deploying. Port doesn’t respond.”

  “Steve, take control of starboard APU. Give it all the power she’ll take. Train it to zero-nine-zero and try to get us turned around,” the captain snapped to Charaler.