by John Hunt
“Well, time to pass on the bad news,” he said to his TACCO after they had a brief discussion about the message ending the operation. He picked an intercom microphone off the nav/comm station and squeezed the trigger with his thumb. “Men, I hate to be a welcher, but I can’t grant you the liberty I promised.” He waited, but there were no complaints coming from anywhere in the plane. With all the activity on the island during the night, the airmen would have to have been blind or stupid not to be aware that Paradise Island was in the middle of a major crisis. His crew was neither blind nor stupid. They knew enough not to be surprised by his announcement.
“There are two reasons for this. First, as you probably figured on your own, in about twenty-four hours there won’t be anyone left on the island to party with. They’re all shipping out. Second, we’ve been ordered to go home. I’m sorry about that. I’ll explain more once we’re ashore.”
Grover crouched next to his TACCO, who was noticeably pissed. In a conspiratorial tone Grover said, “No explanation why, but my bet is that it has something to do with the Mexican Navy heading this way. We knew from the get-go that we were operating in this area only with the permission of the Mexican government. I suspect that Mexico has revoked that permission. So, we’ll head back to shore so I can ensure the whole detachment gets packed up and out safely. We’ll get some rest, then file a flight plan and be on our way as well.”
Grover had just started back to the galley, where he intended to put together a checklist for getting everyone off the island and back home, when Sensor 1 turned, such that Grover could hear what he was telling the TACCO over the ICS.
“…really low-freq noise, maybe from a damaged screw. Just sort of popped up on the screen. Moving at four knots, and doesn’t appear to be on the surface. Definitely not a nuke. Based upon some of the other intermittent freqs, I’d say it’s an old diesel boat. Hell, I think some of their bearings are bad, based on the aural noise I’m hearing. I’d hate to be on it if it’s as old as it sounds. Doesn’t sound like any of the old Soviet Foxtrots or Whiskeys or, say, one of the older German 209s. World War II era. Two screws.”
Grover hurried back to the TACCO station to see where the difar buoy lines were crossing on Thompson’s scope. “How’s it look?”
Thompson was getting a rough fix despite the old boat’s still-quiet signature. “Target bears two-five-zero, forty-five hundred yards from buoy twenty-six. I’d be stunned if those bastards came up with an experienced crew that would go out in that clunker, so there’s a good chance that they’re not taking deliberate evasive measures. If the course has been steady, I’ld say she’s been hiding out in the ravines off Paradise 5.”
Grover burst into the cockpit and swapped seats with the third pilot who had already anticipated that it was time to let the old man in.
Epps had control and began banking the plane in a fairly brisk turn to a heading of 130 degrees.
While positioning his seat, Grover spoke to Epps. “We have to sink this one — real fast!”
“Even though we’ve been ordered away?”
Grover disregarded the comment and ordered the TACCO and Nav to step into the flight station ASAP. Thompson looked at his Nav/comm, Lieutenant (junior grade) Roy MacElaney, with a puzzled look, evidently wondering why their PPC didn’t just say what he needed to say over the ICS.
Once they were standing behind the cockpit crew, Grover looked at his Nav/comm and said, “Roy, how garbled was that message telling us to abort?” Message traffic came in scrambled over a high-frequency channel. It required onboard equipment to unscramble it before it could be read.
“Commander, it was perfectly clear.”
“Mr. MacElaney, I don’t believe it was clear at all. Please reply to sender that we were unable to read and that it needs to be resent. And when the new message comes in, show it to Mr. Thompson and ensure that you both read it very carefully and agree as to what it says. And in the meantime, you have a lot of tactical navigation to perform, while Mr. Thompson has a tactical plot that may mean life or death. Am I clear on this? I don’t mind taking the time to repeat it.”
“No, sir, you’re perfectly clear… much clearer than that piece of muddled crap message we received.”
Everyone in the cockpit knew that ICS chatter was recorded for post-flight analysis. Each also knew that what their plane commander had just ordered would be career ending — or worse — should any hint of it ever get out. Grover had proven himself time and again to be the sort of naval officer who would go to the mat for his troops. Now, it would be the troops who took the risk to go down with him.
It had been twenty-six hours since Khamil set Azid off with Baddori in the rubber raft. Twenty-six hours with no contact of any sort. It had been Azid’s explicit instruction that if no contact was made in twenty-four hours, Khamil should infer that his effort failed, and finish the job.
Khamil had urged Azid to launch the anthrax directly from the submarine. In the right place, at the right time, with the right breeze, it would just as certainly decimate the population of the island. But Azid had insisted. “What did we come here for,” Azid had said, “if not to destroy the fusion device? Anthrax will not destroy machines — only men.”
He had been right, of course. Khamil had lost track of their reason for coming. The fusion machine had to be destroyed before it became operational. Unfortunately, it seemed that Azid had failed in that endeavor. And it was probably the actions of Baddori that had caused him to fail.
Khamil assumed Azid was dead. Well, then Baddori would die too, and so would everyone else on that hellhole. He could kill them all from far away with the help of a specially modified torpedo.
“Captain, let’s lift ourselves off this muck and finish our job here.”
“Those planes are still up there, Khamil. I suspect they’re looking for us. They’ll certainly hear us if we start moving.”
“Well, then we had best move quietly.” Khamil had never been a good planner, and this was obvious right now. The important thing was that he did not care whether he lived or died. In fact, he was hoping to be killed today. He had no particular use anymore, and without Azid no one would even bother with him.
The captain sized up the situation rapidly. The unknown planes were far away and might be avoided. Khamil, on the other hand, was right here, and undoubtedly would kill him without hesitation if he did not comply. So he gave the orders necessary to lift the sub off the bottom of the small ravine where they had been concealed just west of Paradise 5.
“Reel in the antenna. Blow the ballast tanks. Ahead one third.” The sub moved out of its sandy sanctuary and into the briar patch.
It was not more than fifteen minutes before Khamil knew that he had made a serious mistake.
“Captain, sonar, we are picking up the signature of a P-3, flying low, coming from the west. I’m guessing he passed overhead within one kilometer.” The sonarman was obviously anxious. It had long been the case that if a P-3 flew low and close enough to a submerged submarine, most sonar operators could detect not only the discreet frequency of the plane’s four Hamilton Standard propeller blades, but also the direction it was headed.
“Engine Room, Full Ahead,” the skipper commanded. He turned to Khamil. “They heard us. They’ll try to sink us.” He looked hard at the disabled but deadly man. “What would you like me to do?”
“Are we in torpedo range of Paradise 1 yet?”
“No.”
“How long until we can fire?”
“It will take us another three minutes to get clear of this island. After that, we need to move a kilometer closer to Paradise 5. Even then, it will still be a long shot. It would be wiser to be three kilometers closer.” The captain looked at his watch. “But it does not matter. We do not even have five minutes.”
At that moment all of the ship’s crew heard the first ping of an AN/SSQ 62 directional active sonobuoy. It was the Cadillac of sonobuoys. The P-3s sensor operators controlled precisely when the buoy
pinged, and its hydrophone depth could be set for as shallow as 50 feet — an ideal depth for making contact with a target submerged at periscope depth. And this sonobuoy was less than a thousand yards off the sub’s bow. The pings repeated every five seconds, ensuring that the crew on the P-3 could log each move the submarine made.
Down below, everyone on the submarine now knew that they had ceased to be the hunter and had now become the hunted. Chaos emerged from the actions of a marginally prepared crew, and they exhausted sixty seconds that they might have used to maneuver when one of the sub’s sonar operators shouted, “Captain, we’ve got a splash and I hear a torpedo running!”
Now the crew heard a different set of pings. The Mk 46 torpedo had clearly been launched in active mode, sending out its own pings in an effort to locate anything within range and solid enough to return the signal. And at four knots, an old diesel boat in the hands of a part-time crew was outmatched by a very maneuverable hunter making ten times that speed.
The captain shouted, “Hard right rudder to 270 degrees!” but before he could even finish that short sentence, there was a massive explosion that knocked everyone to the floor or against the bulkheads. The sub rolled almost completely over from the percussion.
Khamil heard what sounded like a high-pitched siren, and knew that the terrible explosion had damaged his ears. The sub was now severely angled at the stern and slipping backwards into the depths. He looked around the barely lit room. People were moving to recover their positions. The captain was pulling himself to his feet.
The bridge was dry. No water sprayed from the high-pressure pipes. The same could not be said of the aft torpedo room. What had once been Azid’s small cabin was now completely filled with water. In the engine room, pipes had cracked and were spraying water — and it was more than a few jets; it was a flood.
Some leaks had sprung in various other parts of the hull. Amidships, parts of the system that controlled the submarine’s buoyancy had been damaged. High-pressure water was spraying though tiny cracks in the pipe — each invisible jet of water was powerful enough to cut off an arm. The crew worked rapidly to repair each defect, for failing to do so meant certain death.
Khamil called out, “What’s happening?”
“We’re going down by the stern,” the captain replied. “Engine room, we need Full Ahead, now!”
A muffled message came back from the engine room. “No power at all, sir. Things are bad down here!”
“We’ll hit bottom in a few seconds. Better hold tight!”
Moments later, the sub smashed stern first into the ocean floor at an angle of more than thirty degrees. The jolt was painful, like a low-speed car crash, but not devastating. It bounced slightly, and then its bow, too, settled into the rocky ocean floor.
It took a few moments to put the pieces together. “Captain, we’re on the bottom in one-hundred-sixty meters of water,” an older man with a scruffy beard reported to the skipper.
“What does that mean?” asked Khamil.
“That is below crush depth for this boat, even when it was in good shape.” The skipper was shaking his head. “Everyone to damage control stations! We must stop any more water intake. And I need a report of the damage. Move it!”
He turned to the sonarman. “Sonar, what do you hear?”
“I hear nothing but ringing, sir. I still had my headphones on when the torpedo detonated. I can barely hear you talk.”
The captain moved to the sonar room. He plucked the headphones from the desk, placed them on his head, and listened intently. In two minutes, he returned to the bridge.
“The plane has moved off already. That’s strange. I would have expected them to ensure their kill.”
Khamil had been unable to rise since the crash threw him to his knees. He struggled to stand up. The captain offered him a hand, which he refused.
“Do they have a kill?” Khamil asked.
“I do not think so. I do not think so at all,” the skipper replied confidently.
“Do we have a kill, Commander?” Lieutenant Epps was asking.
“Sonar, what’s the word?” Grover had to rely on the sensor operators to provide any information they could. The pilots could only watch for oil slicks and debris.
“TACCO/Flight, Sensor 1, there’s too much noise in the water to tell anything on the screen, but the noise in my headset says there’s failed metal. I’m guessing the sub is taking on water. Our Cadillac pings say she’s not moving anywhere other than down. No propeller noise at all. She seems to have lost power. She’s sinking.”
Grover interrupted. “TACCO, Flight, how deep is the water there?”
“Nav says the charts show eighty-five fathoms, maybe a bit over five hundred feet. Below crush depth for that old boat, I would think.”
“Listen for popping.”
“Still sinking. I’ve never heard a sinking submarine, but she’s gotta be popping some seams now…Whoa! Impact. The sub just struck bottom — and hard. I don’t hear any kind of implosion. The hull may not have crushed, but people are swimming in there, for sure. Captain, I think she’s a goner.”
“TACCO, Flight, it’s probably time to start acting like we received our orders to abort.” Grover turned to his copilot. “Mike, you’ve got the plane. Get us back to the airport so we can get everyone else headed home.” He was trying to turn his thoughts away from the people dying far below them. He knew there was nothing anyone could do to rescue the crew of that sub. And even though all Navy pilots are taught to compartmentalize their thoughts so that flying the plane safely was priority number one, Grover’s compartments were full.
“In-flight tech, Flight, how about sending up our 3P?” Grover needed to review the events with his TACCO, knowing that Thompson would be drafting the post-flight report that the entire chain of command would see.
He unbuckled his harness and seatbelt, but before he turned the seat over to their third pilot, he keyed his ICS button for the entire crew to hear. “We got her, men. That boat is toast! Congratulations! Lieutenant Commander Thompson can’t wait to buy you all three rounds as soon as you’ve showered.”
A loud and long cheer filled the already-noisy cabin. This was a story to remember for the rest of their lives. For the first time in any of their careers — and indeed for the first time for anyone — a P-3 had sunk an enemy submarine. This would soon be legendary throughout the anti-submarine warfare community. Only Grover declined to join in the celebration. He was not quite certain that the job was done.
46. Teaming Up
THE EVACUATION OF the Island was proceeding without significant incident. Planes were departing hourly, loaded with prized possessions, research apparatuses, and personnel. Families were sent on the comfortable passenger jets, while the material items followed in less comfort. It was an impressive undertaking, and Petur was proud of the efficiency of the people here.
Melancholy filled the air, unmistakably. The teenage girls bawled histrionically as they bid farewell to their close — and even their not-so-close — friends. The scientists and engineers felt like they were abandoning their labs, and this left voids in their souls. Mothers held their children’s hands as they took a last look at the island from the boarding ramps of their jets. It was as if the members of a community were abandoning their lifelong homes in anticipation of a volcanic eruption destroying their village. This analogy amused Petur, for in this case, it was the mountain’s fury that might just save this particular little village.
There was one more day before the Mexican envoy would arrive. There had been no further communication since the original message came through. That message had been simple: The Mexican government was reevaluating the lease agreement and tax status of the Paradise Islands, and would be sending representatives to discuss this with the leaders of the Island Project. It said no more than this. But Elisa, as always, seemed to know much more.
She sat across the table from him now in a quiet booth in the deserted restaurant at the top of Science
Hall. She shook her head.
“No Petur, it won’t be enough. Nuclear fusion has made the Island Project a worldwide household word in less than a day, but that won’t be enough to stop the Mexicans from following through with their plans.”
“Perhaps the nations of the world will pay greater heed to what goes on here now. Perhaps they will stand up for us.” Petur doubted this, but he was trying to find an optimistic angle. He wanted desperately to avoid any bloodshed.
“They will pay heed. They will watch closely. But no country is in a position to intervene, for all the same reasons that we discussed in the past. Nuclear fusion now exists, and the world knows it. This truth won’t be lost with the Project’s demise. But no white knights will be riding to our rescue.”
Petur sat calmly and contemplated what was to transpire in the coming days.
“I’m sorry, Petur. I wish I could have stopped this from occurring.”
“Elisa, you are the only person who even anticipated that this might occur. We are all very grateful for your foresight and knowledge. Without your warnings, we would not have been prepared in the least. We would be sitting back in our chairs, wondering how much money the Mexicans were going to demand from us to continue the lease. Instead, we are anticipating an unannounced and outright takeover, and we have had an opportunity to save much of the equipment.”
“But I have seen the dismay on people’s faces. Many are crying at having to leave their homes.”
“Yes, and many are ecstatic about the opportunity to get off the rock for good. Not everyone is happy on this island, Elisa. To some, the lack of sophistication and the absence of city culture is a great drawback. There are not just a few people I know who feel this way.”
“Of course. That’s to be expected. But it’s not like they were stuck here. Nobody here was indentured. Even the contracts are not particularly restricting or binding. Everyone has always been very free to leave.”