Barracuda: Final Bearing mp-4

by Michael Dimercurio

  SUV–III-987 CURTAIN OF FLAMES

  OFFICIAL DECK LOG OF UNDERWAY MISSION NUMBER 118, COMMENCING 20 DECEMBER

  MISSION 118

  OFFICIAL DECK

  LOG ENTRY 39:

  Current position — thirty kilometers west of island Onaharajima, forty kilometers south of the mouth of Tokyo Bay. This unit is at mast-broach depth observing the American aircraft carrier, hull number CVN-76, as it takes the last of the twelve torpedoes launched against it. Ship is taking on water, continues to settle, torpedoes pounding into it. Carrier was a survivable ship, this unit thinks, because it took hit after hit and remained afloat. For a moment this unit thinks even with twelve Nagasakis hitting it carrier will remain afloat. But hull starts listing more, center settling further into the sea. Helicopters lift off deck. Large boats lowered into water.

  This unit trains periscope to bearings to destroyer and cruiser to see if sinking from their hits. Cruiser is bow down, sunk to the aft superstructure, screw pointing up to sky, ship sinking lower. Only tip of destroyer’s bow above water.

  Periscope trained back on carrier. More helicopters leave, then return. This unit not certain regarding reason for this action. They are hovering over deck of carrier, listing now to forty-five degrees. Picking up survivors? Carrier capsizes, forward and aft hulls roll to port, only keel sticking up, bow and stern sinking into water.

  This unit turns periscope to find destroyer. It is gone. This unit sees cruiser sink.

  Periscope trained back to carrier. It is almost gone. A man stands on hull near fracture. Jagged line traverses keel, cuts ship in half. Man stands on hull shaking fist. He must not know that the suction of a hundred and five thousand tons of ship sinking will drag him to the depths with the vessel. Hull goes under water, man going with ship. In ultrahigh optic power, no sign of man shaking fist. Surface of ocean quiet, oil fires going out, sounds from under water violent.

  This unit listens to sounds on sonar, finally single crash as hulk of carrier hits rocky sea bottom two kilometers deep. Even now, some compartments must have stayed intact, air trapped aboard, men inside trapped. Could explain banging noises that continued for next four hours, banging growing faint, less frequent.

  Sun rises over Pacific, sea quiet again.

  CHAPTER 22

  ARCTIC OCEAN, UNDER THE POLAR ICECAP

  USS PIRANHA

  The ship had been able to pull back from the ridge, but now there was no place to go but back. It was like finding a way through a cave, Phillips thought. When one path didn’t work he had to backtrack to a common branch and go another way. It could take forever. A claustrophobia seized him, a driving urge to get the hell out of the Arctic and back to open water.

  He knew what he needed. He looked over at Katoris.

  “Hover here and wait for me.”

  He went to his stateroom. Deep in his locker he found the bag that he’d packed when he’d thought about this situation two weeks ago. Then, it was just brought along for good luck. Now he’d have to execute his wild scheme. He withdrew the bag and found the dirty jeans.

  He pulled them on. They were loose over his butt. He took off his sleeved T-shirt and put on the dingy sleeveless one, stuffing his pillow underneath the generous cut of the material so it looked like he had a beer gut. Next came the work boots, the tool belt and the worn leather gloves. Philips looked at himself in the mirror. Not quite right yet. He took some soap and a razor and cut the soap into dust, smeared it over his face, took some dirt from behind the door hinges and smeared that on his face. Better. The week’s growth of beard helped too.

  Finally he put on the old yellow hardhat, the outfit complete.

  He opened the door to the control room and strutted in.

  All eyes were on him as he walked up and stood on the conn. Even Whatney, who had lived with Phillips for the last two years and thought he’d grown used to his stunts, stared at him.

  “Gentlemen,” Phillips said, “the Bruce Phillips construction company is here. Let me amend that. The Bruce Phillips demolition company. Did I ever tell you guys I worked during summer leave with a wrecking ball in center city Philly? No. Well, you know it now. XO, do you have any idea what I’m going to do now?”

  “I’m afraid, sir, that I do.”

  “Officer of the Deck, do you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How about you. Dive?” Phillips asked the diving officer.

  “Yes, Captain. You’re going to do some demolition work on the ridge ahead.”

  “That’s exactly right. We’re here to do some demolition work. Since you got that answer right. Dive, how am I going to do it?”

  “Torpedo, sir?”

  “Dive, do I look like a wimp to you?” Phillips puffed out his fake beer gut.

  “Sir, I’m not sure what you look like.”

  “I look like a real man. And do real men use wimpy torpedoes?”

  “No, sir,” Whatney said.

  “That’s right.” Phillips reached for the microphone for the circuit-one. “ATTENTION ALL HANDS. THIS IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE BRUCE PHILLIPS DEMOLITION COMPANY. WE’VE ENCOUNTERED A WALL DOWN HERE THAT WE’RE GOING TO BLOW THROUGH. WE’RE GOING TO USE A VORTEX MISSILE TO BLOW A PIRANHA-SIZED HOLE TO DRIVE THROUGH. WHEN WE’RE DONE YOU MAY ALL COME TO THE CONTROL ROOM ONE BY ONE TO THANK ME. UNTIL THEN, FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS.”

  Phillips put the microphone in the holder and squinted at the crew. “Get the weapons officer in here — ah, here he is now. Weps, I didn’t think you would hold out long after that.”

  The weapons officer, a lieutenant named Tom McKilley, worked for Scott Court. McKilley was a redhead, although his hair was trimmed too close to his round head to see that. The Irishman was fond of Ray Ban sunglasses, cigars and a new BMW sport coupe.

  Just before Phillips had arrived, McKilley had married a beautiful blonde woman, a marketing executive who worked in D.C., the two commuting between D.C. and Norfolk, seeing each other when they could. As far as Phillips was concerned, McKilley was too shy, but any man who smoked cigars — and could prove he did it before Phillips arrived aboard — was okay with him.

  “Weps, the show is all yours. I want you to put a Vortex right into that ice bank ahead.”

  McKilley didn’t say a word, he just plopped down in the weapons-control console. The console powered up, the displays rotated through as McKilley powered up one of the forward Vortex missiles.

  “Bow cap is opening, okay, the missile is clear forward. Aft breech door is jettisoned. The missile tube is clear.”

  “Status of the missile?” Phillips asked, still wearing his hardhat and construction worker outfit.

  “Power is go, missile is armed. Distance to ridge ahead?”

  “Range is…” Phillips stepped to the SHARKTOOTH console. “Two hundred yards.”

  “Too close, sir,” McKilley said. “I need at least a mile standoff, preferably two.”

  “Come on, Weps, I can’t do that. It’ll take forever. And there’s no room to turn around, so I’d have to back up for a mile. Just override the interlock and shoot the bastard.”

  McKilley turned in his control chair to face Phillips.

  “You don’t understand. Captain. This thing is as powerful as a small nuke. If we fire from here we’ll go up with the ridge. And the last thing we want is to have a big hunk of the icepack fall down on us when that explosion goes up.”

  “Okay, okay. Helm, lower the outboard and train it to one eight zero.”

  The outboard, a thruster that could lower from the bottom of the hull at the lower level of the aft compartment, was used for maneuvering in close to piers.

  Phillips intended to use it to drag the ship backward.

  “Outboard’s down. Skipper.”

  “Very well, start the outboard.”

  In the video displays the ridge ahead grew smaller as the ship backed up.

  “Sir, we have room to turn around now,” Katoris said from the SHARKTOOTH panel.

  “Helm,
stop the outboard, train to zero zero zero and raise the outboard.”

  “Aye, sir, outboard coming up. Outboard is up.”

  “Ahead one third, right twenty degrees rudder, steady course north.”

  Phillips watched as he withdrew along the track he came in on. He looked up to see Roger Whatney’s face staring at him.

  “What is it, XO?”

  “Sir, could I have a word with you?”

  “Sure, XO. Officer of the Deck, keep driving us back, I’ll be in my stateroom for a few minutes.” Phillips led Whatney to his cabin and shut the door behind him. “What’s going on, XO?”

  “Sir, I was going to mention this when we were in open ocean so it wouldn’t distract you. But I just found a report about the Vortex missiles in the computer systems of the ship. Sir, this missile’s bad news. It blows up its launching tubes.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, sir, I’m not sure I’m all too enthusiastic about using a weapon that’s a suicide machine. The test submarine sank when they fired the test missile. I saw the video, sir. The tube blew right open and the missile vaporized the forward half of the ship.”

  “Roger, listen to me. All that’s true, but that’s why we’ve got these tubes on the outside of the hull. The back tube cap comes off and the missile exhaust just blows astern. There’s no pressure boundary to rupture. Those things are more guidance cylinders than weapon tubes.”

  “I thought of that. Captain, but it wasn’t just the pressure. The exhaust itself is white-hot. It could melt clear through our hull. These external tubes haven’t been tested.”

  “Well, XO, they’re about to be. Now get back in that control room and put your god damned warface back on. I don’t want the men to know you’re nervous about this.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Phillips walked back into the control room, tried to reassure himself that Pacino had fixed the problems with the missile, or else they wouldn’t have been sent out with it. In any case, they’d soon know.

  The ship had finally put several miles between itself and the ridge. Phillips turned the ship around and again faced the ridge.

  “Ready, Weps?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Okay, here it is, men. Firing point procedures, Target One, the ice ridge ahead. Vortex unit one.”

  “Ship ready,” Katoris said.

  “Weapon ready,” McKilley said.

  “Solution ready,” Whatney said.

  “Hit it,” Phillips said, wondering if those would be his last words.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Oh, right, fine, shoot on generated bearing.”

  McKilley hit the firing trigger and the noise from outside blasted into the ship. Phillips held his ears, realizing he had just launched a solid-fuel rocket with its engine little more than twenty feet away. The video screens at the bow went to white-out, the rocket motor exhaust blinding them.

  “Dammit, the video’s probably a goner,” Phillips said, a smile coming to his lips as he found Whatney’s face in the room. The missile had worked. It had launched without killing them. Now if it could just do its work on the ridge ahead.

  “I’m dropping the unit-one guidance tube,” McKilley said.

  “Jettison the tube.”

  “Tube one disconnected.”

  A click and a slight bang and the guidance tube outside the hull for the Vortex missile disconnected from the ship and fell away.

  The noise of the weapon was still loud but it was fading now.

  “Impact in three, two, one…”

  Phillips watched the bow video display, which had refocused on the sea ahead, no longer blinded by the missile exhaust.

  The explosion was so violent it threw Phillips against the chart table, gashing his forearm. The lights flickered. Phillips’s ears rang. The video display had whited-out again, only now coming back to normal.

  “Well, XO, let’s go back and see if there’s a Piranha-sized hole up ahead, or if we made it worse.”

  “You think it could be worse?”

  “Sure. This is a cave. We might have caused a cavein. No way to tell until we see it.”

  It seemed to take forever for the ship to move back to where they had been. When they got to the ridge Phillips stared at the video screen, amazed at what he saw. The ridge was gone, and there was a half-milewide patch of open water above. The heat of the fireball had vaporized ice two hundred feet thick.

  “Bring us under the open water, Katoris. I want to grab our radio traffic and tell Pacino what’s up.”

  Katoris gave the orders. Piranha came slowly up to periscope depth while hovering, the periscope mast able to receive the satellite transmissions. Phillips looked out the scope, saw the water around the ship begin to freeze in the arctic cold. It was only a few minutes before Katoris was ready to go deep, and already the water had skinned over to ice a quarter-inch thick.

  Back deep, Phillips watched the video and sonar screens as Katoris drove them on. He was afraid that there would be another ridge, or that the missile had blown up prematurely and the original ridge would be waiting for him, but the ice overhead seemed thinner.

  And then the ocean floor below got deeper, falling away under him to form an arctic trench. Phillips looked at the fathometer and the SHARKTOOTH and realized he could make twenty knots for the next few hours. He gave the orders, the ship accelerating. Soon he’d be out in the Pacific, with a chance to hit the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. Or so he thought until he saw the message the ship had received while at periscope depth.

  A bead of sweat ran down his forehead, and suddenly Phillips realized he was out of uniform. Slowly he walked to his stateroom, handing the Writepad to Whatney just before he shut the door. He took off the construction worker’s duds and slowly put his poopysuit back on.

  He could not believe it. The entire USS Reagan carrier-action group. Sunk. Down. Every god damned ship blown away except for one mid-sized radio command and control ship, the Mount Whitney, which had picked up survivors. No one knew why the Japanese had let the Mount Whitney go, except perhaps because it had no weapons, no gun-mounts or torpedoes or missiles, just radio antennae. Maybe that last was the point — they wanted Washington to listen to what had happened from their own people.

  CHAPTER 23

  WM 25 NORTHWEST PACIFIC

  USS MOUNT WHITNEY

  “Admiral? Sir? Can you hear me?”

  Pacino’s head was swimming. He tried to open his eyes but saw nothing. He put his hand to his head and felt the gauze wrapping around his face.

  “Where?”

  “Sir—” It was Paully’s voice. He sounded okay. “We’re on the Mount Whitney, the command and control ship. For some reason the Japanese spared it and let the helicopters drop us here.”

  “What — my face?”

  “A little glass in the eyes. Your right eye is actually okay but the left got surgery this morning. Also a bad concussion. You’ve been in a coma.”

  “How long?”

  “Day and a half.”

  “Jesus, we’ve got to get moving! What’s the deal with the battle group?”

  “Sit back down there. Admiral. I’m afraid the blockade is history.”

  “Any orders from Warner?”

  “She made a statement that the Japanese sank our surface ships but she said that the force commander in the Pacific had a fleet of American submarines headed for Japanese waters to neutralize the threat.”

  “Donner. Where is he?”

  “Admiral, you’re the Pacforcecom now. Donner never made it out of the Reagan. In fact, everyone in ASW Control bought it. One of the torpedoes detonated right against the hull there. We were just damned lucky we made it out.”

  “How did we do that?”

  “Just lucky I guess.”

  “Don’t listen to him, sir,” a female voice said.

  “That’s Eileen, your nurse.”

  “Admiral,” the nurse said, “Commander White pulled you out of the bridge, down
four levels to the flight deck and out to the port side, then flagged down one of the helicopters that was waiting to get survivors.”

  “Sir, I just did it because you were the only other guy on the stinking carrier wearing submarine dolphins. I couldn’t let you go down.”

  “We lost Donner. What else?”

  “Sir, they got every single ship. Every one in the battle group except Mount Whitney, and we’re hightailing it out of here at flank. No one knows when they’ll hit us but everyone is wearing lifejackets.”

  “How many survivors?”

  “Couple hundred.”

  “Paully, there were six, seven thousand men in the battle group.”

  “I know, sir.”

  Pacino’s mind tumbled with the news. He had been right, but he hadn’t thought they’d try to sink the whole battle group.

  “It’s worse, sir.”

  “Worse?”

  “The two other carrier groups that sailed out of Pearl last week. Abraham Lincoln and United States. The two Nimitz-class carriers. They sent Destiny III’s out into a Pacific deep penetration. The robot subs had the carrier groups targeted—”

  “Wait, slow down. Where are the Abe Lincoln and US battle groups?”

  “Same place the Reagan battle group is. Admiral.”

  “What about their submarine escorts?”

  “That’s the only silver lining. And also the reason Warner hasn’t thrown her hands up yet. The two subs, the Tucson and the Santa Fe, did well. Tucson was as signed to the Lincoln. When the fighting started her captain vectored in on the source of the torpedo shots and determined that there were four submarines sent in to get the battle group. Not one of them seemed to care, they just fired away, oblivious to the Tucson.”

  “Her captain, John Patton, right?”

  “Right. Patton unloaded a torpedo bank into the first Destiny sub and blew it to the bottom. Then he had to drive fifteen miles to get to the next, and four torpedoes later the next sub was down. By then the Lincoln was dead in the water, listing, internal explosions going off, not a pretty picture. The third took an hour to find and put down, and by the time he zeroed in on the fourth it was out of torpedoes.”