Attack Of The Seawolf

by Michael Dimercurio

  See them? Get the ones furthest aft, then work your way forward.”

  “What do you mean ‘get them’?”

  “Smash them with the hammer. Hard. Hard as you can. Get your face away from the vent once it opens,” Vaughn said, “or else it’ll be like staring into Old Faithful just as it’s erupting. And hurry it up because once those vents start venting the ship is going down.”

  Morris climbed over the lip of the sail and lowered himself down to the cylindrical deck of the ship, then walked back aft. Vaughn watched Morris work his way aft, letting out his tether as he went, until he was at the far aft-point of the hull where it sloped down into the water. Morris then hit the first vent-valve with an overhead smash.

  Nothing happened. Morris raised the sledgehammer again, high over his head, and brought it down in a rapid arc, his muscles straining.

  The hammer hit the vent-valve plate with a solid thunk, and a tremendous spray of water roared out of the opening, knocking Morris down to the deck and nearly washing him overboard. The water sprayed out like a firehose, rising over forty feet above the deck.

  Morris got to his feet on the wet deck and moved forward to find another set of vents further forward.

  He repeated the action, smacking the valve as hard as he could. Another spray of water blasted out of the vent. He continued forward to the last set aft, opening it, then headed forward.

  As he reached the sail the ship was already submerging, the deck sinking into the sea. Morris hurried toward the forward deck, the water beginning to rise on the cylindrical hull until only a few feet of width remained. He glanced aft long enough to see that the after-deck had vanished into the water, which left only the forward deck exposed. He found the first of three forward vents and smashed the first, running from the spray, then hitting the second, the spray from it knocking him to the deck. He somehow regained his footing, smashed the third and let go of the hammer.

  Morris now began the walk aft along the sail to climb back up, but by this time the ship had settled into the water so that only the sail remained above the waves. The water flow over the hull was only five knots but as the hull sank into the flow the water washed Morris off the deck.

  He shouted up at Vaughn as the sail went by.

  “Slow down. I’ve got to hand-over-hand the lanyard to get back to the sail.”

  “I can’t! If I slow down we’ll sink. Our speed over the bow planes is all that’s keeping us up!”

  Morris didn’t care what the reasons were. He pulled in on the lanyard, seeing the sail slip away from him, continuing to grow smaller as the ship drove on, still sinking.

  The lanyard began to pay out. Morris spun in the water as the lanyard untangled itself from his shoulder, where he had coiled it as he had walked forward.

  He decided to wait until the lanyard unwound so he could pull himself up on it. Even though it would be a two-hundred-foot trip to the sail, at five knots the hand-over-hand was not much … he had done this hooked onto a ship plowing through the water at twenty knots with a five-hundred-foot line testing a counterterrorist insertion method.

  But when Morris saw the rudder approaching, only the top of the vertical surface showing, his confidence vanished. Being this close to the rudder meant that the screw was just a few feet astern of it, and the screw vortex from ascimitar-bladed submarine screw would suck him in immediately and grind him into shark bait. He grabbed his lanyard and pulled with all his strength, trying to avoid the screw. Hand-overhand he climbed, taking in the lanyard, thinking he was still going to make it—when the lanyard behind him caught in the screw and began pulling him toward it.

  Morris saw the rudder coming up on him, the tail of the ship fast approaching as the screw pulled his lanyard in like a fishing reel. He knew he couldn’t fight against the horsepower of the screw. When the rudder went by he was dragged underwater. Now only a few feet from the screw, he frantically tried to detach his lanyard, searching his harness for the release hook.

  He couldn’t find the lanyard release, he was about to go into the screw

  …

  CHAPTER 25

  SUNDAY, 12 MAY

  1945 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

  hangu P.L.A naval air force station 0345 beijing time

  Leader Tien Tse-Min spoke into a microphone as he looked out the tower window at the Nimrod antisubmarine patrol plane idling on the runway.

  “You have orders to release weapons and sink the submarines. Any submarine contact you find will be a hostile target. Sink it. There are two subs, one crippled, possibly on the surface, the second submerged.”

  The patrol craft’s engines roared from the end of the runway as the oddly shaped plane prepared to takeoff, its bulbous bow and stinger-tail making it appear ungainly.

  “Understood, Leader Tien. We’ll search until we run out of fuel or weapons or both.”

  The Nimrod released its brakes and accelerated, finally lifting off the runway and turning to the south, to search and destroy the enemy submarines.

  USS tampa

  “STOP THE SHAFT! STOP AND LOCK THE

  SHAFT!” the walkie-talkie blared in the maneuvering room. The throttle man at the steam-plant control panel slammed the ahead turbine throttle shut, spinning the wheel two turns until the poppet valves of

  the throttles seated on the casings of the huge main engines. He looked up at the panel and saw the steam box pressure falling to vacuum, then whipped open the smaller chrome wheel set inside the larger wheel.

  The small wheel was the throttle valve for the astern turbines. By applying steam to the astern turbines there was a chance that they could counteract the momentum of the heavy drive train and bring the shaft to a stop. But the problem was control—the astern turbines had a tendency to be either shut tight or wide open. Not enough steam and the shaft would continue rotating—too much steam and the screw would begin to spin rapidly in the astern direction. The other problem with sticky throttle valves was that when they slammed open they could pull so much steam from the boilers that the reactor could overpower and shut down the entire system on a power-to-flow scram.

  Then the shaft would certainly continue spinning in the ahead direction with no brake to stop it.

  The throttle man sweated as he watched the steam pressure gages on the astern turbine steam boxes, heard the Engineroom Supervisor shouting out “more steam” and “less steam” trying to stop the tons of steel spinning a hundred feet aft. As the attempt to stop the shaft entered its second half minute the throttle man wondered why he was stopping the shaft. There could only be two reasons:

  either there had been a complete loss of the main lube oil system … or there was a man overboard.

  The MLO system was fine, which meant that if he failed to stop the shaft, he could be grinding somebody to a bloody pulp … “More steam!” the ERS called. The throttle man puffed the astern turbines one last time.

  “Shaft is stopped, lock the shaft,” the ERS shouted.

  After a moment, the throttle man heard the report:

  “Shaft is locked.”

  He shut the throttle wheel and sat heavily in his seat, the sweat pouring over his face, wondering if he had been in time.

  Jack Morris shut his eyes as the screw approached, its vortex roaring in his ears as the blades spun in the dark water. When the screw hit him, the blades were frozen in the water. The ship was still moving from its own momentum, but the screw had stopped. He was pinned against three curved, polished brass scimitar blades.

  It was only after being trapped against the screw by the water flow for another minute that Morris realized he had been underwater for maybe three full minutes.

  He had survived only because his lungs were so used to diving. Although he was too disciplined an underwater swimmer to thrash for air and gulp water, he well knew that in another ninety seconds or so he would be faint from lack of oxygen, and thirty seconds after that he would pass out. He reached down to his waist to feel for the lanyard hook but couldn’t fin
d it. He reached around to the small of his back, remembering that the lanyard’s shock absorber was hooked onto a metal loop in his back—rigged that way so that if it pulled him hard his momentum would bend him rather than break his back as it surely would if he had worn it in front. As he searched for the lanyard, he felt his ears pop. A moment later they popped again.

  This meant the submarine was sinking, submerging with him wired to the screw by his goddamned lanyard.

  He gave up trying to reach the back hook, pinned as he was to the screw, and began to try to undo the straps of the safety harness. If he could escape the harness it wouldn’t matter what the lanyard was doing.

  As he pulled on the straps of the harness his ears popped again. His body longed for air, even to the point of tempting him to breathe water. He struggled against the harness, loosening one leg strap but realizing he had one more leg strap, a chest strap and two arm straps to go.

  Never make it, he thought as he struggled against the straps. He began to suffocate, his body beginning to react to his brain stem alone,

  ignoring the higher levels of his mind. He was thrashing hard, left and right, the convulsions beyond his control, like a fish pulled from the water on a hook. He had one clear thought … remembering that when he instructed recruits in Survival Swimming School he used to call the near-drowning panic “seeing God.”

  And Jack Morris was about to see God.

  The ship settled into the water faster than Lube Oil Vaughn would have thought. The main ballast tanks were flooded, thanks to the SEAL commander, and the shaft of the screw was stopped and locked. But now that the ship was heavy, with no speed, it had begun to sink. The only thing keeping her sail above water had been the bow planes and stern planes the water flowing over them giving the control surfaces enough lift to be able to “fly” the ship up over the surface. With the screw stopped, she was losing the lift, like an airplane trying to take off with failing engines.

  Vaughn couldn’t even emergency blow back to raise the ship back to the surface—the vents were jammed open and the EMBT blow system had no more highpressure air left.

  The water came up to the lip of the sail and began to flow over it, running down to the deck of the bridge and down the access trunk. Vaughn could hear the shouting from the control room below, the men wondering if he was still on the bridge. He could sense their instinct to shut the lower bridge-access tunnel hatch to save the ship. That was the code of the Silent Service—save the ship, save the plant, then save the men.

  And yet, even though the ship was flooding, and he might be washed overboard, he couldn’t just dive down the hatch and leave Morris out there. Without Morris the crew would still be in Chinese hell, dying of starvation or beatings by now. But he also couldn’t order the engines to add speed, because turning the screw might well mean carving up Morris’s body if he were caught on the blades.

  But Vaughn wouldn’t be much use dead, to Morris or the ship. Reluctantly he finally left the bridge, fought the water flooding the access trunk, jumped down the hatch and shut it after him. He hung onto the ladder in a blacked-out tunnel, dogging the hatch above. He climbed down the ladder in the unlit tunnel and banged on the lower hatch. He could hear the latch being spun open, then saw the crescent of light from the passageway below as the hatch was opened.

  He stepped down onto the step off pad and into the control room, soaked, and found the men in the room looking at him. He could see the questions in their faces. Where was Commander Morris … ?

  He told them without being asked … “He’s overboard,” Vaughn said, his voice dead.

  “His lanyard got caught in the screw.”

  “I know,” Commander Lennox said, lowering the periscope.

  “I saw it all in the type 20. Vaughn, there was nothing you could do.”

  Vaughn looked at Lennox in surprise for a moment, wondering if the XO had gotten over his dazed confusion when the ship went aground. He seemed to be functional now, if still somewhat haunted. Perhaps thinking he was losing Vaughn had startled him back to reality, for if Vaughn had gone overboard with Morris, Lennox would have been the only man capable of driving Tampa to freedom.

  “Is the screw still stopped?”

  “Yes,” Lennox said.

  “I took the conn when it looked like you were having trouble, but we’re still at all stop.”

  “Order up ahead standard and plane up to the surface,” Vaughn said.

  “Do an Anderson turn and come around to the point we lost him. I’ll try to see if I can spot him. You keep looking on the scope. Get a boat hook from the first lieutenant’s locker and pass it up.”

  “Helm, all ahead standard,” Lennox ordered.

  Buffalo Sauer turned the needle on the engine indicator to STANDARD. An answering needle matched the ordered needle.

  “Maneuvering answers ahead standard,” Buffalo called out.

  Vaughn waited at the ladder to the bridge, his face grim.

  Through the haze of panic that had taken over Jack Morris’s mind, there was, amazingly, still a kernel of rational thought, though it was fast disappearing. It was that one point of dim light left in his mind that allowed him to feel the screw begin to rotate again, slowly at first, then speeding up, spinning Morris like a pinwheel. As the massive brass screw moved it sliced through the canvas of his lanyard. The screw turned even faster until the blood rushed to Morris’s head, the force of the motion nearly snuffing out what little life was left in him.

  At sixty-four RPM of the fifteen-foot-diameter screw, Morris’s remaining harness strap broke, and the motion of the spinning propeller sent him twisting off into the sea. His body rose up toward the surface some twenty feet above with such force that he was tossed out of the water and up into an arc. Finally he crashed back down into the black bay water, submerging again for just an instant, then bobbing back to the surface.

  Instinctively his body coughed up a lungful of water and sucked in the air.

  He was not aware of breathing or coughing or floating.

  He had lost consciousness, partly from the lack of oxygen, partly from the rush of blood to his head while spinning on Tampa’s propeller. He floated in the water of the bay, his face raised to the cloudy sky, wheezing as he breathed in the sea air. Off to the south, lightning flashed. Moments later the thunder rolled over the water and the rain began.

  “I see him,” Vaughn shouted into the radio.

  “All stop.

  Right full rudder … rudder amidships! All back one third. All stop!”

  Vaughn had pulled the ship up so that Morris was just a few feet forward of the sail, against the hull, but the hull was thirty-three feet in diameter, which put Morris sixteen feet away from the deck. At least where the deck used to be—as soon as Vaughn stopped the ship it began to sink. It was trimmed too heavy, and in spite of pumping out the depth-control tanks and the bilges, the ship was too heavy to stay up on the surface at low speed with the ballast tanks full. As Vaughn watched, calling out to Morris, the sail was going down until the water lapped at the lip of the sail. Once again Vaughn dived down the hatch and emerged below, the boat hook in his hands.

  “You want to try again?” Lennox asked.

  “I couldn’t pull that close to him in ten years of trying,” Vaughn said.

  “Without being stable on the surface I can’t reach him. And I can’t maneuver because I’ll suck him into the screw.”

  “He might already be dead—” “We. He was breathing.”

  “You could tell that in the dark, in the rain?”

  Vaughn was silent.

  “Lube Oil, we have to leave him. It’ll be light in a few hours and with the rain we may never see him again. Save the ship, Eng.”

  “Wait.” Vaughn moved to a console set into the overhead immediately aft of the periscope stand. He screwed in two fuses that were taped to the front of the console and nipped up a toggle, pulled a microphone off a hook, stopped and looked at Lennox.

  “We got a call sig
n

  Lennox nodded.

  “We’re Black Sheep. The Seawolf is Sheepdog.”

  “Seawolf came for us? I’m surprised they risked her.” Vaughn spoke into the microphone, his voice bouncing back at him as if coming from the bottom of the sea.

  “Sheepdog, this is Black Sheep. Sheepdog, this is Black Sheep, over.” Stupid goddamn call signs he thought.

  The console’s speaker sputtered. It was the UWT, the underwater telephone, an amplifier tied into the sonar system’s active transducers, that transmitted human voices in the ocean rather than pulses or beeps.

  “BLACK SHEEP, THIS IS SHEEPDOG. GLAD

  YOU MADE IT, OVER.”

  “Skip that,” Vaughn said, trying to speak slowly and distinctly.

  “We have a man overboard at our position.

  Vents and blow system broken. Need you to rescue.

  Do you copy, over?”

  “ROGER, BLACK SHEEP. WE HAVE YOUR

  POSITION CHARTED AND WILL ATTEMPT RECOVER.

  PROCEED TO POINT GOLF-SUB-ONE.

  SHEEPDOG OUT.”

  “Pacino will handle it if anyone can,” Lennox said.

  “Meantime we need to get out of here. Take us deep and head for golf-sub-one.”

  “Pacino? Name rings a bell. Who’s he?”

  “Seawolf’s captain, new guy, just took command.”

  “Okay. Point golf-sub-one, here we go.” Vaughn looked down at the chart table at the chart of the Go Hai Bay. The bay seemed terribly big. At standard speed it would be another twelve, thirteen hours before they reached the Lushun/Penglai Gap, the exit of the bay.

  “Helm, all ahead one third, turns for two knots.”

  Buffalo acknowledged. Vaughn continued to look at the chart, taking in hand some dividers and a calculator.

  After a few minutes Vaughn spoke again, still examining the chart.

  “Helm, all ahead standard, steer course one zero two. Maintain depth eight zero.”