Piranha: Firing Point mp-5

by Michael Dimercurio

  “Increase the angle. Dive,” Patton commanded.

  “Twenty-degree down angle on the ship, Stern-planesman,” the diving officer said.

  “More!”

  “Down thirty-five degrees!”

  The deck became a steep ramp, the ship hanging by its tail, the forward part of the control room almost fifteen feet lower than the aft part. The depth indicator kept spinning — 200 feet, 250, 300, the numbers rolling faster as the ship picked up speed. The speed indicator climbed through 15 knots, on to 20, then 25. Soon the depth read 750 feet, and the deck began to level off as the diving officer pulled them out of the plummeting dive.

  “Sir, steering course one two zero,” the helmsman barked. “Answering all ahead full.”

  “All ahead flank,” Patton commanded. Stepping up to the conn, he found the coiled cord to the microphone that announced in the nuclear control room, called maneuvering.

  “Maneuvering, Captain, all ahead emergency flank!”

  Emergency flank meant they would be burning out their brand-new reactor, taking a ten-million-dollar plant to two hundred percent power and frying the aft spaces with high radiation. The crew would be ordered out of the reactor compartment tunnel and aft compartment unless absolutely necessary for ship safety. At emergency flank he’d be able to make speed in the high forties, maybe even fifty knots. He watched the speed indicator as it climbed to forty-one knots, normal for a flank bell at 100 percent reactor-rated power.

  “Captain, Maneuvering, all ahead emergency flank, aye, resetting battle-short switch and resetting reactor-protection limits.”

  “Conn, aye,” he replied. Now that things were calming down in control, the crisis was switched to the nuclear-control room. For the next five minutes eight men would be sweating, trying to bring the reactor to a state as close to meltdown as it could achieve. Throughout the ship high-radiation alarms would start to go off, since the nuclear shielding was not designed to handle such a level. The deck began to tremble with the power of the emergency flank bell. Every ounce of shaft horsepower went to the screw. The speed indicator climbed slowly from 41 knots to 43, 45, 46, finally settling at 49.5 knots.

  He’d doubled horsepower, and had added only nine lousy knots. That was because the drag of the water outside the skin of the ship had quadrupled. And in fact, the power to the main turbines hadn’t really doubled, since some of the power intake was lost to heat leaks and thermal inefficiencies. Still, to trash a ten-million-dollar power unit to make nine extra knots seemed extreme.

  Absolute urgent you clear datum op area asap asap asap.

  The term “clear datum” was submarine-speak for “get the hell out of there as fast as you can.” It was the equivalent to “retreat” for the Marine Corps, rarely used, and if it was, it meant there was ship-threatening trouble out there. Pacino was damned serious.

  Patton leaned over the chart, watching the ship’s position dot as his vessel ran for the Ryukyu Island chain, the entrance to the Pacific. It had been a hell of a day.

  The violent explosion caught him completely by surprise.

  * * *

  The sonarmen of the submarine Annapolis never heard the Mod 11 Nagasaki torpedo trying to catch up to them.

  The Nagasaki had been approaching the Annapolis when the ship was at periscope depth, and when the ship went deep and sped up, the Nagasaki had found itself in a tail chase. The onboard computer automatically up-shifted the propulsor speed to fast, accelerating the unit to maximum attack velocity of eighty-five clicks, all of five clicks slower than the Annapolis. The weapon had closed to within a half kilometer, but as the target sped up, the distance began to open. The torpedo fell behind six hundred meters, then seven hundred, growing to a kilometer.

  Minute after minute clicked off. At two kilometers’ distance the weapon’s onboard computer’s calculations showed that the unit would run out of fuel within thirty seconds, and when it did, the target would escape.

  A software interlock clicked in at the low-low fuel tank level. The gas turbine’s combustion chambers flickered off as the fuel went dry. Before the slowing turbine could drain the coil, changing from a generator to a motor, the software interlock took the turbine out of the circuit, and the torpedo plowed on with only the superconducting coil spinning the AC motor-driven shaft. But the coil had already been running low, which had brought on the gas turbine, and now with the electricity voltage dropping, the torpedo knew it was seconds from shutting down.

  In tactical attacks, the weapon programming instructed it to self-destruct rather than just sink. The odds were that a close torpedo detonating could inflict as much damage as a direct hit, especially when the torpedo was a plasma weapon.

  With only ten seconds of onboard power left, the low explosives forward and aft of the warhead detonated, starting the complex chain leading to plasma ignition, and within milliseconds the torpedo ceased to exist, a high-energy plasma taking its place.

  There was no target ship in the vicinity to vaporize, just endless depths of ocean water. The target was distant at that point, some 2.2 kilometers away, but close enough that the explosion force would likely still sink it.

  The shock wave traveled through the sea at sonic velocity, taking only a second and a fraction to reach the hull of what was, for a brief moment, still a submarine.

  When the violence of the Nagasaki plasma detonation was over, the ship no longer met the definition of a ship, a vessel that kept water out and people in for a sea voyage, for the water had come in to join the people.

  * * *

  Dante didn’t know dick about the inferno, thought Captain Jonathon George S. Patton IV.

  While he had been contemplating the universe at the plot table not ten seconds ago, things had comparatively been fine. But in the next second the fabric of his entire world had been ripped apart.

  One moment he was surrounded by his nuclear submarine, steaming at emergency flank, deep, almost at test depth, following orders to clear datum, to get the hell out of the East China Sea and rendezvous at the Point Bravo Hold Position.

  Except that now the Annapolis would never make it to Point Bravo.

  From what Patton could understand, an explosion had happened aft in the engine room. He still couldn’t tell if the problem had been caused by the nuclear reactor or came from outside, from a torpedo or depth charge.

  Both reactor-plant troubles were equally nasty — the reactor going supercritical and exploding in a blast of steam and radioactivity was not a pretty sight, nor was a double-ended shear of a twenty-four-inch steam header, blasting high-energy steam into the compartment so fast that the crew would be roasted lobsters in less than thirty seconds. And if a torpedo or depth charge had hit them, who knew if the ship could survive?

  It was as if he had been suddenly awakened, like the time when a senior in high school when he had been struck broadside by a driver speeding through a red light. One moment he’d been behind the wheel, not a care in the world. The next, after the loud, resounding bang, passed in a whirlwind of impressions: being tossed across the seat, fighting a spinning steering wheel, tires shrieking, engine racing, until he had hit a tree, the horn sounding, engine dead, the silence until the siren sounded far in the distance. This was an identical feeling, down to the banging noise, the tremendous energy of the explosion deafening him, throwing him into a bulkhead aft of the starboard periscope, the deck careening sideways.

  He felt his feet swept out from under him. On pure instinct he screamed, “Emergency blow both groups! Blow!” He smashed into the deck on his chest, his arm folded under him, breaking his fall but bruising his forearm.

  The world spun around him, black at the very edges, the blackness growing until Patton saw the world through a tunnel of light that grew dimmer every second.

  He blinked, struggling to hold on to consciousness. He vaguely heard a clunking noise and a grunt, then a tremendous roar surrounding him, a white fog enveloping him. For a split second he thought he was floating in clouds
, but then realized with gratefulness that the fog was the condensation boiling off the ice-cold high-pressure air piping behind the ballast-control panel. The ultrahigh-pressure air banks would pressurize the ballast tanks — if they still existed — to try to drive out the water and give them buoyancy to get to the surface.

  “We going up?” he asked to no one in particular.

  When there was no answer, just the tremendous roar continuing, he shouted it. “Hey! Chief! OOD! Anybody — we going up?” He struggled to get to his feet, but the room was crazy, fog everywhere, the surface beneath him hard and solid, but was it a deck, a bulkhead?

  A second explosion followed, an eruption from a deck below. The ship lurched from the force, and then the roar increased. Just then Patton smelled smoke, and the lights nickered out, every one of them. In the darkness a hot, rolling, heavy cloud of a horrible chemical smell swarmed over him, the first taste of it souring Patton’s mouth, crawling down his throat and grabbing his lungs.

  He felt himself begin to convulse, vomit spurting from his mouth.

  It was as if a rocket had ignited under him. He fairly sailed to his feet, his hands instinctively reaching into the overhead. He missed the first time, missed the second time, the third time grasping a box nestled in with the other equipment. The latch of the metal box snapped open, and his hand scattered a dozen breathing masks down to the deck.

  The hot black chemical smell was overwhelming him.

  With his arm he tried to lift a mask, but a shooting pain exploded in the forearm. Dimly he remembered hitting the deck with the arm cushioning him. The thought was instantly discarded as his other arm reached for the mask and put it on his forehead, down to his chin, then cinched up the straps. Yet there was no air. His eyes bulged and his lungs were bursting. Chemicals! Fire! No air! Dying!

  Desperately he struggled for control against the surge of panic. With his right hand he found the hose from the mask’s regulator, touched along to its end, the hose connection a cone of metal. By feel he reached up to the manifold, a series of pipe stations six rows across, each row a place to plug in a mask. He’d done this a thousand times in drills, blindfolded, feeling his way, but in those drills there had been one element missing — raw animal fear. Finally the hose connection clicked into the manifold, and he sucked in a huge, whooshing breath of air. His rib cage expanded to three times normal size, like some kind of cartoon character, and he breathed out his lungful of chemical smoke, the smell of it rank in the mask. He sucked in a second breath. With the air came mental clarity, his faculties returning.

  He realized that he was standing in a dark room, full of noxious smoke, with a dying crew, a sinking submarine, and he had no idea what was going on. With his good arm he reached into the overhead and found a battle lantern. It was supposed to click on automatically but hadn’t. With a flick of a switch a beam of light came on, yet the smoke in the room was so thick, the beam penetrated only halfway to the deck. He then located a portable flashlight in its cradle and shined it until he found the ship-control panel. There two unconscious men lay half out of their seats. He was peering through the smoke when the deck seemed to throw him forward, into the panel this time. He shook his head feeling dizzy.

  That sense of being thrown hadn’t been his equilibrium, but the deck suddenly coming level, he realized.

  The depth gauge on the ship-control panel read 33, and Patton could feel the deck moving beneath his feet, rocking gently. The ship was on the surface. The chief must have heard his order and hit the “chicken switches” that had activated the emergency ballast-tank-blow system.

  For a second Patton searched for the chief who’d followed his orders, thinking that the ship had emergency-blown from damned near test depth, and now they were safe on the surface.

  The third explosion in sixty seconds disrupted his fleeting sense of safety. His thoughts shifted to the smoke and what could be causing it. An oxygen fire?

  Burning torpedo self-oxydizing fuel? A battery fire, hydrogen lighting off in the compartment? Or was it chlorine gas generated by seawater flooding into the battery well? Or even the cyanide gas that would come from burning rocket fuel from the Vortex Mod Charlie missiles?

  Or was it all of them? Did he and his ship have mere seconds left?

  A fourth explosion went off, the roar of it not dying down but continuing. The darkened room was lit by glaring flames climbing up the aft door to the room. Its light diffused by the heavy smoke, the flames spread onto the overhead, making their way toward him, eating the insulation of the hull, creating more black smoke. Patton shook himself. He’d been staring transfixed into the flames, not moving.

  Only seventy seconds had passed since the first explosion, but already he knew his ship and his crew were doomed. The flames kept growing, until the aft half of the room was engulfed in the roaring violence. No longer thinking, Patton took five steps forward to the lower bridge tunnel hatch. The tunnel led to the sail high above. Furiously he spun the hatch wheel, undogging the hatchway. With just one arm the hatch took forever to open. He pushed hard, and the hatch lifted into the darkness of the tunnel and latched open.

  His crew — he had to find anyone alive and get them out the hatch. He pulled the helmsman out of his seat, but the lad slumped to the deck, unconscious. Patton could have reached into the overhead to get him an air mask, but he knew that would take precious seconds that he didn’t have. Frantically he tried to find anyone moving. The officer of the deck lay sprawled on the conn, his forehead cracked open, blood spurting out of a neck wound. Patton moved to the attack center, where he found young Karl Horburg’s head smashed into the glass of the display, his forehead buried in the television tube. By now the flames were roaring in the overhead above them, and Patton had to retreat. He tried to shout through the mask, but there was no one to hear him.

  The heat of the space was growing unbearable. Flames were blazing overhead, scorching his hair. Patton disconnected his air hose, ran forward to the sonar space, found another air manifold, and plugged in. Thank God, Demeers was still alive, lying on the deck.

  There was no time to rig an air mask. Patton needed to get up into the bridge trunk, where twenty feet above the upper hatch led to fresh air, where there was no fire, no smoke, no chemicals. Patton was reaching for Demeers, struggling against the constraining hose, when the next explosion came. Patton was hurled into the sonar consoles, and the deck listed, a tilt barely perceptible at first, then more and more noticeable. They were tilting aft, and there could be only one possible reason.

  The stern was sinking.

  The ship must be flooding from the engine room. In a burst of anger and frustration, with every ounce of strength he had left, he threw off the mask, grabbed Demeers’ shoulders, and hauled him up. Groggily the sonar chief lurched to his feet.

  “Go!” Patton screamed, shoving Demeers toward the black opening of the bridge tunnel, illuminated only by the flames from the burning hell of the control room.

  The next explosion blew glass and plastic at the two of them. Flames bloomed from control into the sonar room.

  Patton could feel his uniform coveralls catch fire, but he kept going, shoving Demeers — now awake, panicking— up the tunnel. The flames whooshed up the hatchway, then up Patton’s legs. Frantically he unlatched the hatch and pushed hard to close it. As it clicked, the ring of flames was choked off.

  “Go on, up!” he yelled at Demeers, who slowly started ascending the ladder. Patton stopped to pat out the names on his coveralls, which were flame-retardant but had finally given into the heat and the fire. It took some time before the flames went out, leaving Patton’s hands red and stinging. He looked up, the tilting tunnel black. He reached for the battle lantern and hit the switch. The light of it shone through the smoke, not as thick here. He put the handle of it in his teeth, and with his good arm he hauled himself up the ladder as fast as he could. Demeers had reached the upper hatch.

  “Open it! Can you open it?”

  Demeers
had managed to get the hatch open, but it wasn’t enough. The heavy clamshells above the bridge cockpit that faired in the sail, making it hydrodynamic, would need to be pulled down. While Demeers fought to open the clamshells, Patton pulled a package out of a cubbyhole, a sort of backpack. Suddenly the bright light of day shone down into the slanting tunnel, just for a second, before water started rushing in.

  “We’re sinking!” Demeers shouted.

  “Get out!” Patton ordered.

  “Come on!” Demeers’ voice was faint in the roar of water hitting Patton in the face, washing over his ears.

  Its coldness was shocking after the broiling temperatures in the dying submarine.

  “Get out — take the survival pack,” Patton yelled. “Go on!” The flowing water was blasting into his nostrils and mouth and ears, like having a fire hose full force in the face. He felt himself start to lose his grip. This was it.

  He had watched his ship smashed with a torpedo or depth charge, and within seconds she was flooding and burning. He had tried to get her to the surface, where he could save his men, but it was not to be. Now his best friend was about to die in a futile effort to save him, and he couldn’t allow that.

  “Get out!” he screamed one last time.

  What happened next was nothing short of a miracle.

  Byron Demeers grabbed Patton’s coveralls with one hand, the sail handhold with the other, and in one heaving motion rocketed Patton out of the sinking submarine free of the hatch, completely flooded with water. The light of day came back — waves were washing over his head, and he was spitting and retching, the deep convultions gripping into his stomach, the water he’d swallowed spurting out of him. Finally Byron’s bald head popped out of the water, and Patton could breathe again. Demeers shook his head, blinked, and said! “Look.” In his hand was the survival pack.