Piranha Firing Point

by Michael Dimercurio

  More torpedo tube doors opened. Vortex missiles rolled silently into the gaping maws on hydraulic rams as Hanson fed the tubes, then launched them into the sea. Pacino kept spraying, hoping the LIN would hold out until the weapons were jettisoned.

  Finally the LIN hose ran out. Abandoning it, Pacino felt his way through the black smoke to a vertical runged ladder heading up to a hatch in the overhead.

  “Chief, I’m out of LIN. Are you done yet?”

  A torpedo tube-launch crash was his answer.

  “Two more, sir!”

  “Hurry, the flames are starting again!”

  Hanson rammed in a Vortex, shut the breech door, and launched the tube. Then he opened the final breech door on the port side.

  But it might be too late, Pacino thought as the fire roared out at him with renewed fury. The sound of it was enough to stop a man’s heart. A vibration started jangling at his breastbone—the timer on the canister. It had been set for fifteen minutes, the unit only good for eighteen. Pacino had to wait, though, because if he went through the hatch now, the flames would spread up into the computer room, and the toxic gas of the smoke would kill Colleen within a few seconds. But if he stayed, the flames would kill him. He could already feel his lungs straining to pull the oxygen out of the rubber lungs.

  The final torpedo crash came as the flames licked up into the overhead. Pacino could feel his hair starting to singe, his rubber mask melting, the oxygen going, going.

  He began to feel dizzy, dim words coming into his mind, the words swimming slowly at him, his grip on the ladder becoming tentative.

  “Flooding the space. Admiral! Get out the hatch! I’m going aft!”

  Pacino heard the mighty roaring of water flooding the space. Within moments he felt the cool of something at his feet, the water. It rose quickly to his chin, cooling him, mercifully cool after walking through hell. The OBA gave up then, and Pacino ditched the mask. The toxic smoke of the fire invaded his lungs. A black dizziness overcame him, sapping his mental strength. He forgot what he was about to do. He knew it was important, but it seemed to float just out of reach. The water level was now just two feet below the hatch to the computer room.

  Pacino’s head collided with the hatch-release wheel.

  That made him remember, he had to turn to spin the hatch. But he was too weak. The water kept rising as he tried to get a grip on the wheel. Counterclockwise, you have to turn the wheel counterclockwise to open it. He pulled as hard as he could, and the hatch undogged. He pushed on the hatch to open it, but succeeded only in pushing himself into the water. The water had grown hot from the fire. The fuel was still burning even under a roomful of seawater. They would need to flush water through the space to keep it cool, he thought, keep the fire from eating through the hull. At last he found a ladder rung, and with one last push of his hand and foot, he opened the hatch.

  Up into the opening he put his hand, but he couldn’t seem to get a grip. The water level rose fully over his head, claiming him, the air gone. As he sank back into the water, he thought that maybe it just didn’t matter anymore.

  USS piranha, SSN-23

  “Aircraft noises from bearing two seven zero. Captain,” Master Chief Henry called.

  “Take her upstairs, Off sa’deck,” Bruce Phillips commanded.

  The ship came shallow, Phillips himself taking the periscope as the ship came up. Water and foam washed over the lens until the scope broke through, the film of water washing away. It was pitch black outside, with no close contacts.

  Phillips did an air search, but he saw nothing.

  “Sonar, Captain, jet or prop?”

  “Turboprop, Captain. Be careful, it could be maritime patrol. Maybe the Reds have MPA planes.”

  “OOD, arm the SLAAM 80,” Phillips ordered. The Mark 80 missile, called a SLAAM, was a submarine-launched antiair missile, mounted in the sail, capable of finding a heat source on an aircraft and bringing it down.

  “Shifting to infrared,” Phillips said. Immediately he picked out an airplane flying low on the horizon toward them. The effect was strange, the infrared showing heat sources as patterns of light, allowing Phillips to see inside the plane at the interior consoles and equipment, a sort of X-ray vision. The plane came down lower, then hit the water.

  “Seaplane!” Phillips called. “The plane’s landed, bearing mark!”

  “Two one zero.”

  “Helm, right full rudder, steady course two one zero, all ahead two-thirds.”

  The ship came around, closing on the seaplane rolling in the swells, its propellers stopped, quiet on the water.

  Phillips shifted to high-power magnification, making out the form of men leaning out a hatch to pull other men in from the water.

  “He’s doing a rescue, it’s the Reds,” he said, not quite believing it. “OOD, take the scope, surface the ship, take it over to the seaplane at full. Use HP air, no time to use the blower, and rig the bridge for surface. Move it!”

  Phillips grabbed Whatney and ran to the middle level, to the small-arms locker in the centerline passageway.

  Whatney fiddled with his key, finding the right one. The locker opened, and Phillips loaded Whatney with weapons.

  Grabbing an automatic M-20 rifle and a Bereta 9mm pistol, he ran for the upper level.

  At the ladder going up into the tunnel to the bridge on top of the sail, he bolted upward, making the thirty steps to the bridge in record time. He emerged through the grating at the top of the hatch to the night air, crisp and cool and smelling wonderful after he’d been locked in the ship for so long.

  A bow wave washed up the bulbous shape of the cigar of the hull, splashing spray up into the bridge. Phillips grabbed binoculars and hoisted them to his eyes. There, dead ahead by five hundred yards, the massive Red Chinese seaplane was hauling floating survivors into the hatch. The men seemed in no hurry. Phillips aimed the M-20 at the men in the hatchway, the rifle set to full automatic.

  “Hey, assholes!” he shouted, then let loose with a burst of automatic-rifle fire. The bullets slammed into the tail of the seaplane, into the water, the racket loud and furious. Whatney, joining him on the bridge, aimed his M-20 and let loose with a burst of automatic rounds.

  Under the hail of bullets, the raft exploded and sank.

  Bullets stitched curving lines in the aluminum airframe of the plane. The night was split by the roaring of a turbojet engine spinning its propeller. The plane was attempting to get away. Phillips shouted down the tunnel! “Ahead flank.” The second prop roared to life. Closer now, he aimed his rifle and hit the trigger, but the clip was empty.

  “Clip,” he shouted in frustration. Then Whatney’s rifle clicked impotently. Phillips pulled his 9mm handgun out and fired it out over the water, but he was still too far away to guarantee a hit. “Dammit,” he cursed as the 9mm clicked in his hand, out of ammo. The two props came to full revolutions. The seaplane rolled on the sea, the wake behind it white and phosphorescent as the plane sailed off to the west.

  “Let’s shoot it down,” Phillips said to Whatney. “Get down there and tell them to shoot a Mark 80 at that son of a bitch. He’s getting away.”

  “Sir, it won’t fire from the surface. It’s a gas generator—come on, we’ve got to submerge so we can launch a missile.”

  Phillips slid down the ladder, pausing only to shut the hatch. “Go on, get this tub submerged, quick!”

  But as he emerged into the control room, the OOD shook his head from the periscope.

  “We can’t get her down. Sir, even with max bow planes at flank, the buoyancy’s too high. All main ballast tank vents are open, and the SLAAM 80s will just explode in their tubes if we try to launch them dry. He’s gone, sir. I can’t even see him anymore.”

  “Dammit,” Phillips cursed. “After all that mess those idiots caused, and now they get away scot free.”

  Then he looked at Whatney—both men said the word at the same time: “Air strike.”

  Phillips stepped to the radio panel,
yelling into the overhead open microphone to the radiomen to bring up the convoy aircraft carrier. A couple F-22s could put the seaplane into the ground, Phillips thought.

  Three minuteslater, four F-22s lifted off the deck of the USS Douglas MacArthur at full throttle, full afterburners, shrieking skyward and soaring over the East China Sea.

  USS devilfish, SSNX-l The hands that grabbed him and pulled him out of the hatch were strong and many. Pacino had the impression that a single person with six arms had pulled him from the gaping maw of the submerged torpedo room.

  He coughed, spitting up the water in his stomach, coughing up more that had reached his lungs, then vomiting, his body convulsing and heaving. His frame was folded up in a fetal position, his eyes shut, tears squeezing out. When the convulsions ended, his breath wheezed in and out of him frantically. Finally that too slowed. The dizziness ended, the room’s spinning coming to a slow stop, his eyes able to focus.

  He took a deep breath, and it seemed to clear his mind. He was lying in a puddle on the deck of the middle level. His coveralls were soaked—what was left of them, the fire having eaten gaping holes. He opened his eyes, blinking against the glare from the overheads. His retinae had been burned by the flames in the torpedo room. A face floated above his own, the bone structure narrow, with pronounced cheekbones, deep eye sockets, heavy black eyebrows beneath the diesel-oil black hair.

  Captain John Patton was staring down at him, frowning.

  Now why, Pacino thought, would he be frowning?

  “Colleen,” Pacino said, his voice a croak. “Where is… Colleen?”

  “I’m right here, Michael,” her voice came, low and sweet. “Captain Patton sent one of his officers in here.

  I was on the floor coughing my face off, but they got a mask on me and got me out of here.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?” His arm rose to reach up to her, but her hands put his arm back. At her touch pains shot up his arm. Pacino looked over at Patton, then back at Colleen, both of them staring at him.

  “What is it, John? Am I okay? Did I get burned?”

  An image of himself—horribly burned and disfigured, his skin mottled and stretched too tightly across his skull, his hair gone. Did he look like that? Why were they staring?

  “You look like the day I first met you. Admiral,” Colleen said, smiling.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You saved the ship, sir. We’d have gone down if not for you.” Patton was talking dazedly, as if in a trance.

  “It would have been just like the Annapolis sinking— the smoke—it smelled the same. It was a torpedo-fuel fire. That’s what happened to us!”

  “Two torpedo-room fires in one operation,” Pacino said, struggling to sit up. “No one should have to go through that.”

  “I can’t believe you went in there, sir. It was… amazing.”

  “Didn’t have a lot of choice, John. It was go into the torpedo room or go down with the ship.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Terrible. Am I burned?” He looked down at his skin—most of his legs was red or blistering. His hands were blistered, his face feeling sunburned.

  “Minor, Admiral. You look like you’ve been to Club Med.”

  “John, I need to talk to Colleen. Could I have a minute?”

  After Patton excused himself, Pacino leaned against the equipment cabinet, his eyes half shut, feeling more exhausted than at any time in his life.

  “Don’t try to talk, honey,” Colleen said.

  “I have to,” he said. “I need to tell you. I—” “I know,” she said, one finger over her mouth. “Hush, we’ll do that later. It’s not right here, not inside a sub with all these Navy guys and all this equipment. Give a woman some romance.”

  “I’d be happy to,” he said. He felt her arms go around him, supporting him. The feel of her, the smell of her skin, was deeply relaxing. He fell asleep instantly, without realizing he was utterly spent.

  The seaplane had struggled to get airborne, one of the turbines damaged from the fired bullets. The American fighters had flown high overhead, searching for them while the seaplane hugged the coastline, almost on the water. Eventually, the fighters had given up and flown back to wherever they came from.

  Admiral Chu Hua-Feng sat in the canvas seat, holding the bleeding and dying form of his second in command, Lieutenant Commander Lo Sun, in his arms. Lo was bleeding from his chest, and Chu was covered with his blood.

  “I’m so sorry, Lo,” Chu said, low enough that no one else could hear him. “I lost your brother, I lost him. He was my best friend, the best weapons officer a pilot could have. He was my friend when no one else would be because I was the admiral’s son. And he’s gone. Now, Lo, you are my friend, the best friend in the world.

  You’ve gone into two hot submarine hijackings with me.

  You’ve been my first officer. You’ve taken down a whole convoy with me. We fought for the ship together, and we escaped when it was lost. Lo, please don’t leave, don’t go, don’t die. You are my friend. Please, Lo, I’m so sorry.”

  Why did it have to be Lo? He prayed. Why couldn’t he have taken the bullet?

  “Chu,” Lo Sun said, his eyes half open. “I’m dying. I can feel it. I’m cold. But there is a light. You must talk to… my mother. Tell her—”

  “What?”

  Lo’s eyes shut. His lungs hissed, a rasping rattle, and his body was still. And Admiral Chu Hua-Peng, Red Dagger mission commander, wept, his tears washing over the younger man’s face.

  Hours later, when they landed in Tianjin, he stepped out of the hatch, carrying Lo’s body like that of a child’s.

  A crew of paramedics took Lo Sun from him. Gently laying his corpse on a white-sheeted gurney, they loaded it into a van and drove off. Chen Zhu and Xhiu Liu came by, putting their hands on his shoulders, then walking off down the pier. The rest of the crew followed them, all the others of his unit surviving except Lo.

  For what seemed an hour Chu stood on the pier after the van with Lo’s body drove off. The cold eased as the sun rose in the east, shining out over Go Hai Bay, and he realized he wasn’t alone.

  “I waited for you,” she said, the voice music. “I heard that one crew survived, and I was hoping it was you.

  But no one knew. You’re alive.” “Mai,” he said, his tone saying everything he wanted to say to her. He stood, looking at her, the weight of the world on his shoulders, the mission behind him, but still vivid in his memory. Impulsively he walked to her and hugged her hard, her arms wrapping around him.

  He could feel her heart beating through her tunic, her slim body small in his arms.

  “What happened?” he asked. “What is the news? Did we succeed?”

  The sadness in her eyes told him all, all of it. “All of the Rising Suns were sunk. The American backup force headed into the East China Sea. Chairman Yang watched them on the news. I was with him when he saw.”

  “What did he do?” “I’m sorry, Chu. He said, ‘Sue for peace. Give the Whites whatever they want. Just don’t let the Americans on Chinese soil, whether Red or White.”

  “Then what?”

  “Phone calls were made. Our PLA is withdrawing from all fronts. The Whites have taken more territory to the west. We still have Beijing. Peace talks start tomorrow, but the American fleet is ten kilometers off Shanghai, their guns and missiles pointed across White China at us. It’s over. It almost worked, Chu. Almost.” “Almost is never good enough,” he said.

  “Who cares?” She said, burying her head in his shoulder.

  “At least you’re safe.”

  He held her, thinking about Lo Sun, the submarine, the Americans, and what the future would bring. Somehow, none of it seemed so bad with Mai Sheng beside him.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “I want to get away from the water. All water.”

  EPILOGUE.

  FRIDAY NOVEMBER 8 east china s
ea As the sun rose over the sea, the nuclear submarine Arctic Storm rose slowly to the surface, her buoyancy just slightly positive. The fin penetrated the sea’s surface, then the hull The empty ship was silent and abandoned, the last fact underscored by the open forward escape-trunk hatch through which the Red Dagger platoon had left.

  An American destroyer arrived a half hour later when the radar contact had been classified a surfaced submarine.

  The USS Princeton pulled alongside and threw over eight lines, made up from the destroyer’s deck cleats to the sub’s. Slowly the ship towed the shutdown submarine back home.

  When Princeton docked at Yokosuka Naval Seaport, a man named Akagi Tanaka was waiting on the ridge, looking down on the channel. The submarine being towed in represented the fruit of many late nights. As it sailed by, he waved at it, sniffing as it vanished around the corner of the ridge and out of sight.

  yokosuka naval seaport yokosuka, japan As the USS Piranha first came into view around the corner of the ridge, cheers burst out, a band began to play, confetti and ribbons started flying. On her bow and stern a hundred sailors and officers stood at rigid attention.

  Dressed in pressed service dress blues, the men faced the pier. The wind whipped around the dark uniforms, and the American flag flying on the sail flapped in the stiff breeze.

  As she pulled up, a hundred ships in the bay began sounding their horns in salute. On the flying bridge, a set of stainless steel handrails on top of the sail. Captain Bruce Phillips, in his dress blues with full medals, stood tall. As the horns blared, he raised his hand to his forehead, the salute not required, but seeming to come of its own volition. Piranha threw over the first line to the pier, the ship back from the mission, the party only beginning.

  He looked down on the crowd milling on the pier, the SNN reporters, the cameras, the women, the children, the families flown over by the Navy for this homecoming, particularly celebrated since a dozen submarines would not be returning today. Phillips searched the crowd, looking for her, but Abby O’Neal wasn’t among them.