Morris scrambled down the ladder, annoyed but glad to have someone on the bridge who seemed ready to take charge. As he entered the control room he saw Lennox sitting at the ship control panel.
“Lennie,” Morris said, “where are the emergency blow levers?”
Lennox pointed to the BCP. Morris went to the levers and waited for Vaughn’s orders.
On the bridge above, Vaughn’s radio crackled.
“BRIDGE, WE HAVE PROPULSION!”
“Bridge aye,” Vaughn replied.
“Shift the coolant re circ pumps to fast speed and prepare for a flank bell.”
Vaughn looked up from the chart and checked the water below one final time. He was gambling that the ballast tanks had leaked air out over the last five days in captivity, letting in water from the vents below.
Usually that happened in port, and when at the pier the daily routine called for the duty officer to blow the ballast tanks full of air. Otherwise, after a week or two, the ship would lose a foot of draft. Left unattended and with no ballast tank blow a submarine would probably sink after a month at pier side
The way the vents had jammed in the struggle with the Chinese, and with the port list, there was a good chance the tanks had a considerable amount of water in them, which meant they were low in the water. If he could blow the tanks and refill them with air it might give him some added buoyancy to get off the sandbar. But he couldn’t use the blower — that would take a half hour to fill the tanks and time was what they did not have. He would have to use the emergency blow system — the EMBT blow system would force the water out so violently on the surface that the air flowing out of the tank gratings at the ship’s keel might blow the sand away from them. The blow would empty the highpressure air bottles, making it impossible for them to emergency-surface once they were submerged, but that was a problem that might never come.
So, the emergency blow and a max speed order might get them off the sandbar … then again, it might just dig them deeper into the sand. And if that happened the only alternative would be to get the rescue sub to surface, throw them a line and get towed off the bar. Odds were that the two operations would take so long that the Chinese would recapture them… They could, he supposed, abandon ship and get aboard the rescue sub, but that would take even longer than being towed off the bar. Which meant that either the emergency blow worked or it was back to Xingang for everyone aboard Tampa. Vaughn took a deep breath and spoke into his lip mike.
“Emergency blow! Hit the levers!” Almost immediately a violent foam of bubbles boiled up around the bow and stern, the air from the ballast tanks blowing out as the emergency blow system engaged.
“All ahead flank!” Vaughn ordered into the radio.
The deck of the ship began to tremble as the water aft of the rudder erupted into foam and the screw began to spin at maximum RPM. The ship eased up off the sandbar, just slightly, in reaction to the emergency blow in the ballast tanks. Then in a sudden surge the port list came off the ship and the submarine accelerated forward, the waves protesting and boiling up at the bow as the ship plowed into the channel.
The ship drove ahead, the bow wave building up over the sonar dome, the piers of the P.L.A fading behind. Vaughn ordered the rudder left and right, following the course of the channel until the ship was five miles away from Xingang and into deeper water.
Vaughn looked at the water of the bay around him, allowing himself a moment of satisfaction. They might not be home free yet, but at least, it seemed, they were on the way home.
GO HAD BAY, XINGANG HARBOR
P.L.A NAVY PIER 1A
Leader Tien Tse-Min fumed at the commander of the Huchuan-class fast-attack torpedo boat. The twenty two-meter-long patrol craft was a hydrofoil boat capable of going sixty clicks armed with two type-53 torpedoes and two twin 14.5-mm guns. Its commander was a short, slight southerner, probably from Shanghai or one of the cities in rebellion, Tien thought.
“Start your engines and get out on the water now.
We have to get that American sub. Can’t you see it?
Two torpedoes and we’ll blow it apart. We must keep it from escaping.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Commander Soo Chi Meng said, realizing what he was about to say might well determine whether he lived through the night.
“The diesels are not in good shape. Two were being worked on at the time of the missile attack on the destroyers. The third was bounced around by the shock. My engineering technician says it has wiped its bearings.”
Tien glared at the commander.
“Show me. I will start the diesels myself.” Tien, of course, was bluffing.
He had no idea how to start a diesel engine.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.
It could be dangerous, it could explode and wound you.”
“Commander, I am ordering you to start the motors on this boat and go after that submarine. Do I need to get you on the radio to Chairman Yang?”
“Sir, you must believe me — the engines are not working.” Soo felt sweat drip down his forehead. If the senior officer actually boarded his ship and checked the engines he would find the engine room spotless. As for starting a diesel engine, there was not much to it. The officer would only need to find the red button on the control panel marked START and push it. Ten seconds after one of the diesels roared to idling speed, the officer would shoot him. But he felt it was worth the risk, after seeing what the invisible submarine had done to the frigate that had chased it, the entire bow of the supposedly invincible frigate blowing up, sending the sub-killing ship to the bottom in less than a minute, not to mention how it had managed to down two massive Hind helicopters and sink the pier side destroyers too. Somewhere out there that rescue submarine lurked, waiting to sink any ship that threatened the captive submarine.
For a moment Tien simply stared into Commander Soo’s eyes, trying to look into the man’s mind and see if he were telling the truth. Off in the distance of the bay water the formerly captive submarine kicked up a spray of water from its tail and surged ahead, obviously free of the sandbar it had been stuck on, and began sailing off into the distance. Tien felt like grabbing the patrol boat commander’s face and smashing it, but he realized it was too late. The patrol boat would probably be sunk just like the Nantong. As he watched, the submarine’s hull shrank into the distance until, even in bright moonlight, he could no longer see it. Commander Soo continued to stand in front of him.
Finally Tien turned away, walking down the pier to a P.L.A command vehicle he had commandeered from the armored force, got in, stared at Soo one more time, and drove off.
Soo’s sense of relief was what any condemned man might feel at the news of an unexpected reprieve.
An hour later at Hangu navy base Tien was linked into a UHF secure voice circuit to Fleet Commander Chu Hsueh-Fan at Lushun. Chu had been asleep and was annoyed to be awakened. Tien’s report on what had happened made him wish he were still asleep and this was only a nightmare.
Tien waited for the jet that Chu had sent for him, a vertical takeoff jet that would take him to the aircraft carrier Shaoguan, Fleet Commander Chu’s ship.
He might have lost the American submarine out of Xingang, but there was no way that sub would get out of the Go Hai Bay alive, not through the tight channel at the Lushun/Penglai Gap. The northern fleet at Lushun was a formidable force, enough to kill the submarines, not the P.L.A Navy skeleton force that had been tied up at Xingang.
There would be two destroyed subs by the time he returned to Beijing, Tien told himself. If not, he might as well never go back to Beijing at all.
USS TAMPA
A half hour after leaving the harbor of Xingang, Vaughn had managed to get the control room operational — at least, the equipment was operational. The crew were still in shock from their captivity. Vaughn scanned the horizon with his binoculars. The night sky had grown overcast with the approach of a storm. That could only help, lowering visibility for t
he forces that would inevitably begin searching for them. Vaughn called into his VHF radio down to the control room:
“Control Bridge. Morris, where are you?”
“I’VE GOT YOU, OVER.” Morris’ voice was calm.
“What’s going on there? We need to submerge ASAP.”
“I KNOW. LENNOX IS READY TO TAKE THE CONN. I’VE GOT SEALS ON THE HELM AND planes AND I’LL BE ON THE BALLAST PANEL.”
SEALs driving the submarine out? Vaughn had to find out what had happened to the men held up forward — he’d heard they were all like zombies. It would be a hell of a transit without a competent crew. But before he could take on that, he had to get the submarine down. He pulled all the clamshells up except the one on the starboard side of the bridge. He had rigged the bridge for dive, with the exception of latching up the final clamshell and shutting the upper hatch to the bridge-access tunnel. Baron von Brandt’s body had been lowered down the tunnel and was in the frozen stores room. Vaughn called Lennox to the radio and passed on his course and speed and approximate position, then handed over the conn. After a last look at the surface he closed the clamshell, ducked into the bridge-access trunk and shut the hatch above him.
He came down the ladder two rungs at a time and dropped to the deck of the upper level passageway, shutting the lower hatch and spinning the operating wheel to engage the dogs. He stepped into the control room.
“Last man down, hatch secured, Chief of the Watch uh, Commander Morris,” he said once he’d dropped to the deck of the control room.
He looked at Executive Officer Lennox. The man’s eyes were sunk into his skull, dark bags below them; his mouth was slack, his posture a slouch. Still, there was some intelligence in his eyes, which was more than could be said for some of the men who had been held forward, if Morris’s report was to be believed.
“XO, you want to take her down or do you want me to?” Vaughn asked.
“You do it, Eng,” Lennox said dully.
“Aye, sir.” Vaughn looked around at the control room for a moment, the operating stations manned with SEALs who didn’t have the slightest idea what they were doing. In spite of his audience he announced formally, solemnly, “This is Lieutenant Commander Vaughn. I have the deck and the conn.” He waited a moment, then spoke to the SEAL at the helmsman’s station.
“You at the helm. Say, ‘helm aye.””
“Helm aye,” Buffalo Sauer said, trying not to smile.
“XO, raise the number-two periscope. Commander Morris, open all main ballast tank vents. Oh hell, move over a second.”
Vaughn stepped to Morris’s console and snapped to the up position six toggle switches — the solenoid valves to the main ballast tank vents. He then reached into the overhead and rotated a handle on a communication box and the ship’s klaxon horn blared throughout the ship its OOH-GAH OOH-GAH. Vaughn raised a microphone to his lips and ordered, “DIVE, DIVE” on the Circuit One, expecting to hear a cheer from the crew in the middle level, but there was no sound except the growling of the ventilation system.
Vaughn watched the ballast control-panel vertical console waiting for the indication that the ballast tank vents had opened. But in the next seconds, no red telltale circles appeared; the old green bars remained lit. Vaughn stepped up to the conn, took hold of the grips of the periscope, trained it forward and aft. No sign of any venting from the tanks.
Vaughn told Lennox: “Damned vents are stuck shut. Still frozen from the depth charging.”
“What now?” Morris asked.
Vaughn reached into a toolbox built into a bench box against the starboard curvature of the hull, back behind the attack consoles. Inside was a sledgehammer.
He handed it to Morris, who looked at him in disbelief.
“What now? Why, we hammer them, of course. XO, grab all the lanyards from the first lieutenant’s locker and a harness.”
Lennox walked forward and came back with a pile of tangled canvas straps. Vaughn had undogged the lower hatch to the bridge-access trunk, opened it and latched it in the up position. He looked over at Morris.
“I need a volunteer, someone with some balls who’s not scared of a little water.”
Morris looked at Vaughn.
“Let’s go.”
“I figured.” Vaughn walked to the pile of straps and untangled a harness.
“Put that on. The XO will show you how.”
“I know how to put on a harness.”
“XO, link the lanyards together. We’ll need about twenty of them.”
Vaughn took the periscope, searching the water around them. There were no other ships visible, and no aircraft in the impenetrable clouds above. He looked for another periscope but saw nothing but the faint line of demarcation between bay and sky.
“Ready, OOD,” Lennox called, handing Morris a coil of canvas, the twenty lanyards linked end to end.
Morris, suspecting what was coming, latched one end of the long tether to his harness and tossed the coiled lanyard over a shoulder, stuffing the sledgehammer into one of the straps of the harness.
“Good,” Vaughn said.
“XO, take the radio and make sure my speed and bow plane orders are followed.”
Lennox nodded. Vaughn and Morris walked to the hatch of the bridge.
At the top of the sail Vaughn opened the clamshells and looked out again into the blackness of the sky.
Only two hours till dawn, he thought. He looked at the sky, hoping there were no airborne patrol craft on the way. All he could hear was the noise of the bow wave below. Vaughn spoke into his lip mike.
“All ahead one third!”
The radio crackled its acknowledgement and the bow wave died down, its roar quieting to a whisper as it lapped against the sonar dome forward. Vaughn took one end of Morris’s lanyard and tied it to one of the steel rungs set into the side of the sail and looked at Morris.
“Okay, Commander, here’s the drill. You climb down the ladder and go aft to the ballast-tank vents, the shiny metal plates in pairs along the centerline.
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…
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