China Star

by Maurice Medland

  Matt stood in the center of the control room, feet apart, bracing himself, watching the depth gauge. The sub dove like a rock. His guess had been right. Like the old German U-boats she was copied from, the Romeo’s hydroplanes were low on the hull, allowing for a rapid dive. Lien was staring at him as though he was insane. Matt couldn’t blame him. It was an insane move, one you wouldn’t find in any book. Shoot at close range, dive, and try to pass directly beneath the destroyer after it had taken two torpedoes. He had no idea if it would work, or if the sub would disintegrate from the proximity of the blast and debris.

  An explosion slammed him to the deck. The pain in his side cut through him like a knife. Chen’s final shot must have broken a rib. A second, almost concurrent explosion rattled the sub violently. He’d never been in a boat that had been depth-charged before, but his uncle had told him what it felt like. The vibration penetrated his very soul. He heard the sound of debris raining down on the hull of the boat. He held his breath, waiting for the crack to appear that would take them to the bottom. It didn’t come.

  “Damage report,” Matt said, coming to his feet, wincing. “Zero the planes at five-zero meters.” He stepped over to the sonar speaker and raised his hand for silence. The sound of high-speed screws had been replaced by the sounds of a ship breaking up, a low steady roar punctuated by the sound of compartments imploding. He looked at Beth to see if she was okay and did a double take. Lien, Beth, Sam, and the rest of the control room crew were smiling at him.

  “Damage control reports no discernible damage,” Lien said.

  “That was brilliant,” Beth said.

  “We got lucky.”

  “What about the other ships up there?” Sam said.

  “They’re busy fighting a fire and taking on passengers. And now picking up survivors. I’m not worried about them, and I don’t think they’re worried about us. They know we’re not going to stick around to do them any harm, but there’s another sub out there somewhere.”

  Lien nodded. “The 225. Another Romeo-class.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Submerged, screening for enemy subs. They won’t be able to communicate with her until she surfaces.”

  “I’m sure she picked up all this ruckus on her sonar. We’ve got to get out of here.” He groaned and gripped his side.

  “What is it?” Beth said.

  “That third shot knocked me around a little.”

  “You might have a broken rib.”

  He walked carefully over to the plotting table.

  “Where are we going?” Beth said.

  Matt glanced up at the overhead. Due west to the nearest land, if he could control his panic attacks long enough to get there. Concentrate. He pointed to the coast of Sumatra.

  “We’re about 135 miles from the coast, about eighty miles from the easternmost tip of this island here, Pulau Lingga. That’s where we’re headed.” He nodded to Lien. “Set course two-seven-zero. All ahead full.”

  He paced the control room, struggling to control his claustrophobia, all but reeling from the pain in his side, while the boat churned westward, running submerged on battery power at her top speed of thirteen knots. After a half-hour, he was so desperate to get out of there he decided to come up for a look. If the coast was clear, they’d surface and run on diesels. They’d be exposed, but at least he’d be able to breathe, and they could run faster.

  “Take her up to periscope depth.”

  He raised the search scope, which had a greater magnification than the smaller attack scope. Plumes of black smoke billowed up on the horizon. The platform was still ablaze. The destroyer Harbin was hove to in the debris field where Zhuhai had gone down, fishing survivors out of the burning water. Had Captain Chen survived? His unspoken agreement to stop the launch had made them partners in a Faustian bargain. Any time you make a deal with the Devil, his father had told him, you’re going to be the junior partner, and it was true. Even though Chen had tried to kill him afterward, which Matt understood was part of the deal, he felt bad about killing him. But whatever empathy he may have felt for his old classmate and the crew of Zhuhai, it didn’t extend to the Bobbsey Twins or Lieutenant Tan.

  He focused on the command ship. The fire had spread into the superstructure and was blazing out of control. The two frigates were standing off, streaming seawater from fire hoses onto the ship, helping passengers in lifeboats clamber aboard. From the look of things, they were going to be busy for a long time. Beth’s hotshot cousin would have his hands full. He’d no doubt dispatch the other sub to deal with them, but so far there was no sign of her.

  “Prepare to surface,” Matt said.

  After all the preparations had been made, Lien keyed the microphone and said, “Surface, surface, surface.”

  The roll of the sub told him that the conning tower hatch had cleared the surface. Matt cracked the hatch, ducking the seawater that poured in, and breathed in a lungful of moist, fresh air. He painfully climbed the ladder to the bridge and stood there, sucking in air, scanning the area with binoculars. There was nothing in sight except the frantic activity on the horizon. Thank God.

  “Start diesel engines. All ahead full,” he shouted down the trunk. “Course two-seven-zero. Line up a battery charge. Lookouts to the bridge.”

  Lien repeated the order from the control room, and the diesel engines rumbled to life. Matt felt the surge of the screws biting into the water. The two lookouts scrambled up the ladder and took their places in the shears. Beth came up behind them.

  “Hey, junkman,” Beth said. “Who says you don’t know how to make junk?”

  Matt nodded toward the horizon. “I think we created some problems for your cousin.”

  “I’d say he’ll be the first one off that thing. Leave the mess for others to clean up.” Beth smiled at him. “What happened to that claustrophobia?”

  “I was fighting it the whole time. Good thing I was a little busy.”

  “You were a little brilliant, is what you were,” Beth said. “Now I understand what Sam was talking about.”

  “Where’s your shotgun?”

  “Gave it to Sam. We won’t need it - this crew will follow whoever they think will keep them alive, and right now they think you walk on water.”

  “If I could, I’d get the hell off this thing.”

  “How long do you think it’ll be before we see some land?”

  “We’re making about fifteen knots on the surface. Pulau Lingga is maybe eighty miles away. We might see the tip of it in four or five hours.”

  “What do we do then?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think we’d get this far.” He winced and gripped his side.

  “If that’s what I think it is, you’d better take it easy,” she said. “You could puncture a lung with a broken rib.”

  They cruised in silence for an hour, enjoying the view from the bridge. Lien shouted up the trunk from the control room.

  “Sonar reports submarine, bearing one-three-five. A Romeo. It has to be the 225.”

  “Dive! Dive!” Matt hit the lever for the Klaxon horn and shoved Beth toward the hatch. He waved the two lookouts down, swung down the trunk behind them, and sealed it off. At a bearing of one-three-five, the sub must be on their port quarter. He had to bring her around to line up for a stern shot. He’d done the math so many times in “mental gym” in sub school, the number instantly popped into his head. One-three-five plus 180 equaled 315, the reciprocal heading he needed to be on.

  “Make your depth five-zero meters. Right full rudder. Steady on three-one-five.”

  “Depth five-zero meters,” Lien said. “Right full rudder. Steady on course three-one-five.”

  Matt looked at the compass. Two-eight-zero. They were coming around, but not fast enough. “Starboard engine back full.”

  “Starboard back full,” Lien said.

  “What’s happening?” Beth said.

  “She’s coming up on our flank for a shot. We’ve got to make ourselves small an
d line up for a stern shot at the same time. That’s all we’ve got left.” He turned to Lien. “Mark your head every 10 degrees.”

  “Now passing two-nine-zero,” Lien said.

  “Enemy submarine close aboard,” the sonarman shouted in Mandarin. “Torpedo in the water! Torpedo in the water!”

  “Flood tubes seven and eight,” Matt said. “Open outer doors on seven and eight. What’s our heading?”

  “Now passing three-zero-zero.”

  “Turn, you son of a bitch, turn.”

  “Passing three-one-zero,” Lien said.

  “Mark range to the Romeo,” Matt said.

  “Five hundred meters.”

  “Helm, mark your head.”

  “Heading, three-one-five.”

  Now. “Fire seven! Fire eight!”

  He felt two thumps, the welcome sound of torpedoes leaving the boat. “All hands forward. Close outer doors on seven and eight. Close all watertight doors aft.”

  “Both units running hot, straight, and normal,” the sonarman said.

  Matt held his breath and waited. A torpedo fired by your own boat was called a unit, and an incoming was simply called a torpedo. He heard one of the torpedoes scrape along the hull of the sub, just above the ballast tanks on the starboard side. From the sonar speaker, he heard the other one go churning by on the port side, a clean miss.

  “I think they both missed,” the sonarman said.

  In the distance, Matt heard the sound of an explosion.

  “The sub is breaking up,” the sonarman shouted. He turned the speaker volume up so they could all hear. “You can hear the bulkheads collapsing.”

  A cheer went up in the control room.

  “Ten-degree rise on the planes,” Matt said. “Make preparations for periscope depth. We’ll take her up and look for survivors.”

  The cheer died in the sonarman’s throat.

  “Torpedo in the water! Torpedo in the water! They must have got two more off before they were hit!”

  God help us all. There was nothing he could do but hold his course and pray. “Steady on course three-one-five.”

  He heard the screws of the first torpedo churn by the port side of the sub and trail off into the distance, another miss. He held his breath, listening to the screws of the second torpedo growing louder. Seconds ticked by.

  A violent explosion slammed him to the deck.

  “Blow all tanks! Emergency surface!”

  The crew aft came scrambling forward. The last man into the control room slammed the watertight door that separated it from the engine room and dogged it closed.

  “The after battery room is flooding,” young Wen said in Mandarin.

  Matt looked at them. Wen, Wu, and three crewmen he’d never seen before.

  “Charlie. Where’s Charlie?”

  He peered through the eyeport to the engine room and saw Charlie on one knee, struggling to close the watertight door that separated the after battery room from the engine room. His right leg seemed to be injured. Seawater swirled around him. Diesel fuel from a broken line streamed out onto a motor-generator set. Praying that it wouldn’t ignite, Matt undogged the door and started through the engine room. The bow tilted sharply upward, sending him skidding aft. The sub was sliding backward, sinking by the stern. The weight of the water in the after battery room was overwhelming the electric motors, pulling the boat down.

  Matt closed the watertight door and dogged it tight. He threw Charlie up on his back, the pain in his side blinding him, and slogged forward through the engine room, now at a 20-degree up angle.

  An electrical control panel exploded, shooting sparks. The fuel from the broken line erupted into a fireball. Looking through the flames, the faces that haunted him danced before his eyes. His little brother, the man who’d died on the sub. Not this time, by God. Not this time.

  He picked up a fire extinguisher and blasted his way into the flames, his mind terrorized. His shirt ignited, then his hair. He could feel the skin on his hands melt. The pain seared into his brain. He stumbled through the door into the control room and dropped Charlie on the deck. Beth and Sam started beating the fire on his clothes and hair out with their bare hands.

  He turned and tried to pull the door closed behind him, but the angle of the sub was now so steep he couldn’t budge it. He felt Sam behind him, trying to help, but there wasn’t enough room for two people to get a grip on it. If he let go, the door would swing so far open they’d never get it shut. First the fire, then the water would spread. Summoning strength he didn’t know he had, he pulled the door into place and held it while Sam dogged it.

  He dropped to his knees on the deck of the control room, grimacing from the pain. The stern of the sub eased into the soft floor of the ocean. The bow settled down, and the sub came to rest on her keel, slanted upward a few degrees. The emergency lights came on, flickered, and went out. A battle lantern near the control panel came on with a yellow glow. He crawled to it and pulled it from its bracket. He shined it on the depth gauge. Forty meters. More than 130 feet down.

  No one spoke. The only sound was the creaking of the sub, shifting its weight, settling. The sub groaned and shifted a few degrees to starboard.

  He crawled back to the bulkhead and leaned against it. He looked at the backs of his hands. Blisters were starting to form. He could feel the heat from the fire through the bulkhead behind him. The water would put it out as the sub settled. The water. The cold nausea of claustrophobia gripped him. How many tons of water above him? Around him? Don’t think about it. In the sweat of the control room, he could smell the stench of his own fear. Sam, Beth, and Charlie were staring at him, waiting to see what he’d do. He wasn’t afraid of dying - right now he’d welcome it. He was afraid of how he’d die. He didn’t want to die a raving lunatic, held down by Sam, staring up with screaming eyes. Get a grip. He’d gotten through the fire. He could get through this, too. He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. Don’t think about where you are. Concentrate on getting out. One step at a time. He ran his tongue over dry lips.

  “Everybody sit down,” he said, his voice trembling. “Distribute the weight evenly. Don’t move around anymore than is necessary. At this depth, we must have settled on a shelf. We don’t want to jar this thing loose.”

  “You mean it’s deeper than this?” Beth said.

  Matt didn’t want to think about it. He’d looked at the charts earlier. There were some holes in the area that went down for miles. He couldn’t let himself think about it. If they were on a shelf, and they stayed on it, and he could pull himself together, they might have a chance.

  “Let’s not talk any more than we need to,” he said. “Every breath we take we breathe out carbon dioxide. Lien, do you have any CO2 absorbent aboard? Any soda-lime?”

  “About a half-dozen cans.”

  “Move easy, but set out a couple. It’ll help keep the air clean for a while.”

  “Why bother?” Beth said. “We’re not going anywhere. We might as well get up and dance, have a party.”

  “Listen to the skipper, miss,” Sam said. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  “Is the escape trunk in the forward torpedo room operable?” Matt asked.

  Lien nodded in the dim light. “Yes. We’ve done drills with it.”

  “Sam, very gently go forward and find it. See if you can release the emergency buoy. There should be a lever in the overhead.”

  “Aye, Skipper.”

  Matt heard several bangs on the hull, followed by the screech of a cable unwinding from a steel spool as the buoy rose to the surface.

  “That’s the sweetest sound you’ll ever hear.” He turned to Lien. “Any Steinke hoods aboard?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Combination breathing apparatus and life jacket. Upgraded version of the old Momsen lung. Any Chinese version of that?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, you can forget it,” Beth sai
d. “There’s no way we can do that.”

  “Sure we can.”

  “How? You just heard the man. He doesn’t have any of those hoods.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Matt said.

  Sam tiptoed back into the control room. “It might work, Skipper. I got the buoy off. The trunk’s old and rusted and painted over, but it might work. There’s a couple life rafts the first two out can send up.”

  “What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” Beth said.

  “At this depth, we don’t need them. We’ll do a free ascent.”

  “Are you crazy? Nobody can hold their breath for that long. You’ve got to have some kind of breathing apparatus.”

  “That was the conventional wisdom for decades,” Matt said. “Just before World War II, a naval officer named Swede Momsen developed a device called the Momsen lung. He also developed the first submarine rescue bell. Used it to get every surviving sailor out of Squalus alive. He was a real hero, his rescue bell saved a lot of lives, but the sad truth was those lungs of his killed more people than they saved. They made people think it wasn’t possible to get out on their own. After the war, they looked at the numbers. Of all the subs that went down, the Momsen lung was credited with saving only five of the men who were still alive. That’s when they scrapped it and started to teach the free ascent method.”

  “How can-”

  “Sam’s locked out and done it 100 times. Tell her, Sam.”

  “Skipper’s telling you straight, miss. What you do, you fill your lungs with air, let yourself go, and exhale on the way up. What happens is, the air in your lungs expands as the pressure around you decreases. So you never run out of air. You don’t have to adjust to high pressure, and you don’t have to worry about getting the bends. Works great down to about 300 feet or so.”

  “Throughout history, the conventional wisdom has almost always been wrong,” Matt said. “The best technology is sometimes no technology. But that doesn’t mean it’s without risk. You’ve got to know what you’re doing. There was a Peruvian diesel boat called the Pacocha, it was a former American sub, sank a few years ago in water about as deep as this. There were twenty-two men trapped aboard. They used free ascent, and they all got out.”