Ward barely nodded to set his crew in to action, whipping into the wake of the other submarine. They were hidden by the enemy attack submarine’s own noise, a ghost entering a house on the heels of its earthly owner.
“Slowing,” reported sonar.
Ward anticipated a quick spin around to try to see if something else was there. They prepared to respond.
“Harry goes left,” said the exec.
“Yes,” said Ward. He was in the enemy control room, standing with the captain, giving the order. He was very sure of himself, Harry, but not so arrogant as to turn on his active sonar, for that would be sure to give him away. Harry was the consummate shadow player.
“We’ll stay between them and the port,” Ward told his men. “We’ll see what he does.”
They had just slipped into their position when the sonar operators announced another contact—a diesel sub on the surface, approaching from the south. It was a small boat, too small to be anything but a North Korean. He was very close, less than a half mile away; most likely he had been submerged until a short while ago, traveling on his batteries.
“He’s moving in our direction,” said the exec.
“Or the direction of the Russian sub,” said Ward. “Or simply across the mouth of the port, patrolling.”
“Must’ve surfaced to recharge his batteries.”
“Or to get orders.”
There were now three submarines within a mile of each other. Did the other two know he was here? If they did, what would they do?
If he were to attack, Ward would strike the Soviet nuclear boat first; it would be several times more formidable than the diesel, which in all probability was Korean and at least a generation behind the times. But the older boat was likely to be extremely quiet when it ran on batteries, as quiet if not more so than Swordtail Finding it might require going to active sonar, which of course would alert not only the diesel but the subchaser and anyone else listening above.
Or below, for that matter.
His job was not to attack. A boat on a covert mission never attacked, no matter the circumstances. His job was to be patient, recover his men, return. No one should know he was there.
“Harry hasn’t surfaced and hasn’t gone to active sonar,” noted the XO. “I think he’s hiding from the Koreans.”
“Yes,” murmured Ward. “Yes.”
He saw the Russian commander again, pacing patiently. The Koreans were allies, but they could not necessarily be trusted.
Or else the Russian and the Korean worked together, one showing himself, the other hiding.
“Patrol boats moving across the harbor,” reported sonar. “Two.”
Ward plotted their positions in his head as they cut between him and the diesel sub on the surface. The Victor boat Harry, meanwhile, had swung around and taken up a station barely a hundred yards to his east, utterly unaware of him.
Everyone was unaware of something. What was Ward unaware of?
He glanced at his wristwatch. Two and a half hours before he had to go back for the rendezvous.
“I’m going to get some coffee,” he said aloud. As he took a step away, the ship reverberated with a loud crack and the deck below him shuddered so severely he fell against the chart table.
Winslow had both his knife and his gun ready as the Koreans came down the steps. But Caruth gripped his arm, holding him back—the two men passed right next to them in the dark, continuing toward the mess. Caruth slipped out and went up quickly; once again Winslow had to nearly run to keep up. He struggled to step lightly, keep himself from making a sound. They passed portals to the outside of the ship, continued along a narrow corridor, Caruth stopping every so often to listen. A dark shape stood in front of one of the portholes—the back of a guard, no doubt. Winslow held his breath as he crossed behind him, certain the man’s Kalashnikov could easily penetrate the thin metal of the ship’s superstructure and walls.
It wasn’t until they reached the hatchway that the SEAL realized their destination was the commander’s quarters, one of the sites Caruth had pointed out on his diagram in the helo. The spook held his pistol—a nine-millimeter silenced Sig—out at his side as he approached the open doorway; in a blink he had spun himself into the room. A bee buzzed inside. Winslow was no more than two steps behind his companion, but by the time he reached the room everything was over. Two bodies slumped against the bed, draped over the side, blood oozing from them.
“Not here,” said Caruth, already backing out.
“We going to—”
“He’s not here,” repeated the spook, passing back out. They traced their steps back down the ladder to the lower deck toward the mess room.
“What are we doing?” Winslow asked.
Caruth held his gun up. “Be ready.”
A figure started to emerge from the hatchway when they were less than five steps away. Caruth leveled his gun and fired into the man’s belly. As the Korean spun backward, Caruth leapt ahead. Winslow ran, too. There was an explosion in the room, gunfire—Winslow felt his eardrums thump with the metallic rumble. He pushed forward, squared his body, blinked his eyes against the smoke, saw nothing, swung left, back right, scanning for a target. The metal wire of the Kulspruta poked into his side, prodding him to fire, but Winslow had no target.
Caruth barked something inside, speaking in tongues. Winslow squared, checked outside, spun back. Caruth’s words came in English now.
“Where is he?” the spook said. “Where?”
Three bodies lay on the floor to Winslow’s left. At his feet was the Korean Caruth had shot from the passage. Another man was slumped over a table at the far end near the galley area. Blood bubbled from the top of his head as if he were a fountain.
Caruth stood over a man in the comer, holding his gun to his head. Unlike the others, this one wore blue pants. As Winslow took another step toward him to see what was going on, Caruth repeated his one-word question, “Where?”
“Hey,” said Winslow.
Caruth spun suddenly, leveling his gun toward Winslow and opening fire. He threw himself down. As he hit the deck he realized Caruth was firing on a man just coming through the hatchway. There was another shot, screams outside; the SEAL got to his feet with a burst of anger, mad at himself for screwing up, not securing the passage as he should have. He made up for it now, hurling himself out into the hallway, firing half a dozen Parabellum rounds from his machine pistol into the face of a guard just as the man saw him. Winslow grabbed the Korean’s rifle, then emptied the thirty-six-round box of his Carl Gustav into the two guards who appeared at the far end of the passage.
Something tugged at the back of his neck.
“This way,” said Caruth behind him.
“But the man inside?”
“He’s not here. Go!”
The first thing Ward thought about as he slammed into the side of the chart table was the reactor. The auxiliary-man screamed something, and the navigator tumbled over him; Ward jumped back to his feet, vaulting like a jack-in-the-box.
“Report,” he said, firmly and calmly. The tone of his command was as important—more important—than the actual words. He wanted order, and his voice immediately instilled it. He had to make sure his will was the submarine’s once again.
The overhead lights flickered on and off. Ward could hear the sea in his ears, the endless rush of water that every mariner hears, the raging blanket of horror and calm. But death was not inevitable; he steadied himself on his feet and held his mind firm. This was the one thing there was no question, no ambiguity, no darkness about.
His men snapped to like a series of switches channeling the flow of electricity. They retook their stations, scanned for damage, secured problems.
“No fires,” said the XO.
Ward listened to the rest of the reports. They had not been hurt, at least not badly enough to lose control of the vessel. No floods, no fires.
There seemed no reason to surface. He held off using his active sonar as well, thou
gh anyone nearby would have heard the concussion and realized that he was here. But turning the gear on would remove all doubt, shine a beacon in a dark room. His exact location would be revealed.
A second diesel had hit them. How it had managed to get so close without being detected was a mystery. Perhaps it had been trailing the Soviet nuclear submarine, and somehow managed to hide from Ward in the noise of the Victor boat. Or perhaps Ward’s sonarmen had missed it—listening to the ocean speak was an art, not a science.
Two men had broken bones; one of the cooks had gashed his face in a fall. Otherwise, Ward’s men were all right. The external ballast tank had definitely been hit, but there was no sign of severe damage.
They would hew to their plan, move back slowly for the rendezvous. Harry made no sign that he had heard the collision—though of course he had.
The Korean diesel on the surface began moving in their general direction. So did the subchaser.
“The submarine that hit us is surfacing,” reported the XO. “Subchaser’s approaching. Sierra Two, the Korean diesel, she’s diving.”
Ward nodded.
“Sir—the sub—the diesel that hit us. It’s an American boat.”
Winslow pushed through the hatch to the deck, unsure exactly where he was on the target ship. He took two steps to the rail, then realized he’d come out on the side opposite the rope they had climbed.
Caruth came through the passage, whirled, started toward the stem. Winslow trailed, unsure what his companion would do next.
A figure appeared in front of them. The man said something in Korean but never finished his sentence—Caruth greased out three shots from his gun, then tossed it down and knelt as the man crumpled. Winslow pushed forward, raising the AK-47 as two more Koreans came down a ladder near their fallen comrade. He emptied the gun as the men fell; he whirled in time to see Caruth toss a grenade up onto the deck above them.
“Get off the ship,” said Caruth, his voice as dead cold and even as it had been in the helo out to the sub. He pushed him toward the rail.
Winslow leaned against the metal and raked the top of the ship with his Kulspruta, burning the clip. “Let’s go!” he yelled to Caruth. He threw the gun down, then went over the side. The spook followed, landing in the water so close that his foot struck Winslow’s back. Winslow spread his arms in the darkness, propelling himself away from the hull of the boat. He stayed below the surface of the water as long as he could, knowing that the sailors aboard the ship would be looking for him.
He broke the water briefly, gasped air, sank back. The second time he stayed on the surface long enough to see he was barely ten yards from the ship; lights were now ablaze, and there were sparks of gunfire from the deck.
The third time he broke water his arm struck something hard and he cursed, thinking he had gotten so scrambled around that he had swum back into the ship.
Then he realized he had hit Caruth’s foot.
He pulled at him, reaching to show him he was okay. Then he realized Caruth was dead.
His first impulse was to push the body away from him, as if death were an infectious disease. Then he grabbed it back, determined not to leave his companion’s body as a trophy for the enemy. But as he curled his arm around Caruth’s, the water exploded and he felt a pain in his leg beyond anything he’d ever thought possible. An anchor wrapped itself around his chest, and Winslow sank into blackness.
Even if only lightly damaged, the American diesel would be easy pickings for Harry and an inviting target for the subchaser and the smaller patrol craft.
Ward could sink them all, but to do so he would not only expose his own boat but jeopardize the covert mission.
The mission had the highest priority. His job was to let the diesel go. While he had never been quite in this exact situation during his years of command, what he must do now had always been clearly laid out. He had contemplated similar situations a thousand times.
Yet he did not hesitate now.
“Prepare torpedoes,” he ordered. “Active sonar. Target the surface vessel approaching the damaged submarine. Target the Korean and the Victor boat. Prepare to fire.”
His XO jerked his head around.
“Those are my orders,” said Ward.
Winslow was unconscious, but he swam nonetheless. This had happened to him before, the mission near Haiphong. One of the charges they had set to blow out a pier had gone off prematurely. He’d swum back with Duffy and the others to the insertion boat, nearly a mile out. Duffy swore he was laughing and joking the whole way, but he had no memory of it, not then, not now. Docs said he had a mild concussion, though they couldn’t explain why he didn’t even have a headache.
His head didn’t hurt now, but his leg sure as hell did. Something bad had happened to it.
“All Along the Watchtower” started playing in his head again. Hendrix jammed in the darkness. Horses rose from the water, riding alongside him.
Winslow swam and swam, the sea shrouded around him. When he finally regained consciousness, at least enough for him to take stock of where he was, he discovered that he had swum about four hundred yards away from their target but on a diagonal deeper into the harbor. He could see figures running back and forth aboard the ship, but no one was firing anymore. Vehicles were moving on the shore; there were lights behind the ship.
He had to swim past the ship to get back out to the raft. He could do that, and if he did that—when he did that—he could make it back to the rendezvous point.
His leg hurt so bad he thought it had been bitten off by a shark. But if that had happened, he would have bled to death. So he must be okay. It was just the cold bothering him, and cold was nothing but bullshit. Cold you could live with.
Slowly, Winslow put his cheek against the hardness of the ocean. He began to swim. Sounds came at him, shapes and colors. Hendrix faded. Pain pulled at his head; his ears twisted back with it, some trick of his nervous system. He passed abreast of the ship, passed the ship, saw the buoy.
The man Winslow had stood over in the mess—had he been an American? Why was he there with the Koreans? What had happened to him?
The raft was less than a hundred yards away, but the wind started to pick up. He swam. Oil and bilge and scummy algae soaked into the bottom of his chin, poisonous Vaseline smearing his skull. He swam.
If the rubber raft wasn’t there?
He would swim all the way to the submarine. He would swim all the way to Japan if necessary.
His raft moved away from his hand as he reached for it. Then something lit bright red on the water a half mile away, and with a shudder the raft sailed into his grasp.
Only one of the MK 37 torpedoes hit the subchaser, but it snapped the small ship nearly in two. A few seconds after the torpedo hit home, the enemy diesel submarine opened its torpedo tubes.
“Fire torpedo three. Fire torpedo four,” said Ward, giving the order to launch the weapons already targeted at Sierra Two, the Korean diesel. As the order echoed around the boat, Ward put himself back in Harry’s head. The Russian boat sat only a few hundred yards away, as quiet as before the collision.
There was a collision less than a half mile off my stem. An American submarine has just appeared on the surface; another, less than three hundred yards away, has just sunk two of my ally’s ships.
What do I do?
I can try to sink both boats, or I can remain in the darkness.
If I fire, I probably will sink at least one of the subs. But I risk being sunk myself.
Worse, I will step from the darkness. All will know I am here.
I observe. This is not my fight.
Every man in the control room cheered as the two torpedoes they had fired on the small Korean sub hit home. Ward felt a slight tinge of sadness.
“Pay attention to the Victor boat,” he said aloud, reminding himself as well as his crew. He felt sure he knew what the Soviet captain would do—and that certainty made him extremely vulnerable.
“Harry is holding st
eady,” said the XO.
The diesel that had hit them was still on the surface, making only two or three knots. Was it the Sunray, his old boat? Or the Duce maybe, his friend Jack’s command? Greenfish, the always unlucky Greenfish!
“Come to periscope depth. Let’s take a look,” said Ward.
They moved upward slowly, still wary of damage from the collision. But if the outer hull was bashed and battered, it gave no sign; they came up without a problem, the planesman’s soft touch driving the boat up fifty feet in the space of a few thoughts.
Ward debated whether he should try to rescue the men on the diesel if necessary.
Of course he would rescue them. Most were friends.
And so it was he finally realized he was in fact ready to retire.
The subchaser burned ferociously in the screen of the attack periscope. The Korean diesel submarine had begun to break up and then disappeared from their acoustical net after the torpedoes struck; there would be no survivors.
He couldn’t find the American that had surfaced and had to ask for a bearing. He checked and double-checked the mark, couldn’t find it.
“Making two knots,” relayed the sonar operator.
Two knots—it must be damaged. It could drift faster.
“Harry’s moving off—Captain, the Russian is going away.”
“Thank you,” Ward told his XO.
A dark shadow moved in the right side of his screen. Slowly his eyes focused on the silhouette. The American boat. Its conning tower listed to the side.
Something else moved beyond it. A small patrol boat.
“Prepare to surface,” he said.
The XO hesitated just long enough for Ward to realize he disagreed, then relayed the order.
Winslow lay on his belly in the raft, paddling from a kind of semicrouch. His right leg had been badly mangled; once again he was slipping in and out of consciousness.
What the hell had Caruth been up to? Why didn’t they blow the stinking ship when they had the chance?
Crash Dive Page 5