Straits of Power

by Joe Buff

  The Snow Tiger’s captain knows that. He’s gone deep, too deep to launch his Polyphems because the little missiles have shallow crush depth. But the latest mod of Mark Fifty-fours implode before three thousand feet themselves. That’s why he didn’t try to shoot down the ASW helos. He’s picked sure self-protection over risky antiaircraft attack.

  And he’s trying to go to flank speed. He’s heading south of Shakir Island, which for now is sheltering me from him on sonar. He’ll block the Shadwan Channel outlet, and fire at me again.

  Though Jeffrey knew nothing whatsoever about the enemy submarine’s captain, and didn’t even know his vessel’s real name, to Jeffrey the contest had already become very personal.

  His available information showed the water under the Bunga Azul was 110 feet deep. Still too shallow for Challenger to escape.

  Challenger’s host ship was laboring. The deck vibrations were heavy, and the highest speed she could manage was eighteen knots instead of twenty-four.

  Jeffrey gave another order. The helmsman turned his wheel. The Bunga Azul turned left and steadied on a course southeast. The eight-mile-long Shakir Island sat close on the ship’s port side; other islands, and gas-drilling platforms, lay astern or off the starboard bow. Shakir Island was an arid reddish-brown hill sticking out of green water. The chart said its peak rose eight hundred feet high. Jeffrey still couldn’t see the friendly aircraft, but their data continued coming in. With the naked eye, out the bridge windows, the edge of the island’s coral reef could be seen looming to port. The Bunga Azul was riding visibly deeper in the water. Her subdivided ballast control tanks had helped absorb and contain the blasts, but her wounds were mortal. Thick black smoke was boiling out of the after holds and trailing behind the ship. The smell of burning was stronger in the air, and Jeffrey smelled leaking diesel fuel too. The diesel fuel would catch fire at any moment.

  In 2 miles the water would drop suddenly to 650 feet. In 20 miles it would reach past 3,000 feet; the Snow Tiger was still rushing south at that depth, to outflank the island. He’s faster than me but has farther to go. . . . Will I remain afloat for another two miles? The Bunga Azul had slowed to fifteen knots. Two miles at this speed would take eight minutes.

  The water was still too shallow for Challenger to leave the hold through the bottom doors. Jeffrey’s best place right now was here on the freighter’s bridge, doing everything he could to make sure the Bunga Azul reached deeper water.

  Bell called on the intercom. “Sir, seawater in the hold is rising faster now. We’re floating off the support blocks. I’m afraid we’ll drift and damage the stern parts or the bow dome. What do you want me to do?”

  Jeffrey thought hard. He could have his crew tie the ship to cleats in the sides of the covert hold, but then she’d be trapped inside the Bunga Azul as the host ship sank.

  “Work the propulsor and auxiliary maneuvering units if you have to.”

  Again Jeffrey looked at the chart. He watched the inertial-navigation position plot, advancing at a pace that was much too slow. Minute after minute dragged on. The Bunga Azul shook harder and settled deeper and handled sluggishly. Jeffrey was afraid her shafts or engines would completely fail, stranding Challenger inside so that the cargo ship became her coffin in a horrifying burial at sea. Then more torpedoes would tear in and pound the Bunga Azul’s hulk and Challenger to pieces.

  All at once they were off the shallow shelf, with Shakir Island still to port and a huge coral reef to starboard.

  “Master, stand by to open the bottom doors. If you don’t hear from me or my crew in five minutes, open the doors regardless.” With Siregar’s ship in bad shape, once those doors were open, Jeffrey might never make it to Challenger. But he needed a fail-safe arrangement now, so Challenger could get away even without him.

  “Understood,” Siregar said.

  “Good-bye. Good luck. Thank you. And remember, keep the satellite feed in operation as long as you possibly can.”

  “I’ll do it myself. Go now. Go with God.”

  “Go with God,” Jeffrey responded, knowing how literal this was—Siregar might go down with his ship. He noticed that the master wore a wedding ring, and wondered if he had children.

  Jeffrey tore himself away. He hurried through the tunnels down to Challenger. In some places lightbulbs had shattered from the torpedo concussions, and he needed to swipe the bigger pieces of glass aside with his forearm so he could keep crawling on hands and knees. In other places AFFF—aqueous fire-fighting foam—dripped from above and made puddles. The slippery white foam was hot. Something up there was busy burning. Using foam suggested a flammable liquid. Jeffrey caught whiffs of gasoline. For deck-mounted winches? He waited for the gas tank somewhere above him to explode. The deeper in the ship he went, the heavier the vibrations from her engines.

  When he came out onto the catwalk in the hold, Challenger sat there before him, long and sleek and black. Water jetted loudly into the hold through inward-bulging jagged cracks, and the hold was filled with the tangy mist of saltwater spray. Jeffrey tasted it on his lips, he smelled it, and it got in his eyes. He also smelled the acrid, toxic fumes of spent torpedo warheads, and tried not to breathe in too much.

  The seawater surrounding Challenger’s free-floating hull was choppy, and kept sloshing back and forth and from side to side. This was called free surface during damage control. It made the Bunga Azul much less stable. She could capsize at any moment.

  Jeffrey started running down the brow. But the weapons-loading hatch was shut. He saw why: The in-rushing water was washing right over the hull.

  Bell shouted from atop the sail. “Up here, sir! We shifted the fiber-optic connect to stay in touch as long as we can as the hold fills!”

  Jeffrey noticed that the photonics mast was lowered. There was little headroom now between the overhead of the hold and the top of the sail. He heard throbbing and roaring amid the other sounds, as the master kept trying to pump the water back out of the hold—a losing battle. Jeffrey hit the switch to retract the brow; the remote-control system still worked. The brow’s near end raised up, but this robbed him of any handholds.

  Warm seawater lapped at Jeffrey’s shoes, then a wave of it drenched him up to his knees and almost swept him away. He lunged and grabbed a safety harness and lifeline that crewmen were lowering. He strapped them on, and the crewmen, with Jeffrey helping as much as he could, pulled him up the twenty feet to the top of the sail—there were no ladder rungs outside the sail because they would cause bad flow noise.

  Jeffrey ordered the two crewmen to stay in the tiny bridge cockpit, as lookouts of a sort for now. He and Bell slid down the vertical ladders leading below, being careful not to snag the dangling fiber-optic cable. They rushed to the control room and took their seats at the command console; the lighting was red, for battle stations. Meltzer was very busy at the ship controls, trying to keep Challenger from damaging herself by hitting the bulkheads in the hold.

  At least floating free in the hold helps cushion us from the shaking by our host.

  “Fire Control,” Jeffrey ordered, “load high-explosive Mark Eighty-eights in torpedo tubes one through seven. Load an off-board probe in tube eight.” He wanted this all done immediately, while they were more or less on an even trim.

  Bell acknowledged and relayed commands to Lieutenant Torelli, standing in the aisle nearby. He acknowledged, issued more orders, and Torelli’s men went to work.

  Jeffrey called up data from the helos, masked from the line of sight of the Bunga Azul by Shakir Island. The data remained available over the net, through satellites.

  “Firing-point procedures, Mark Eighty-eights in tubes one through seven. Target is the Snow Tiger. Load firing solution using target depth and course and speed from the data link.”

  Bell and then Torelli acknowledged.

  This was network-centric warfare at its most extreme. Jeffrey was programming his torpedoes against a target he couldn’t detect, while inside a sinking surface ship’s hold
, using information from helicopters coming to his host’s antennas via outer space.

  “Make tubes one through seven ready in all respects, including opening outer doors.”

  Again Jeffrey’s crew went to work.

  Speaking of doors.

  Jeffrey tried to call Siregar, not sure if the intercom inside the master’s ship had failed. Siregar answered.

  “What’s the depth beneath your keel?”

  “Six hundred feet now. The seafloor drop-off is steep.”

  “What’s your status?”

  “The fuel fires are out of control. We are very low in the water and very difficult to handle. I will not be able to counterflood against the port list without losing too much buoyancy. The main deck will soon be awash regardless.”

  “Evacuate the covert radio room. In one minute from my mark, open your bottom doors. Then abandon ship. You’ll be picked up soon when those helos see you.”

  “One minute, understood.”

  “Mark.”

  “Understood.”

  Jeffrey grabbed an internal intercom, for Challenger’s bridge. “Bridge, Captain, cut the fiber-optic cable. Clear the bridge, smartly. Shut and dog both sail-trunk hatches.”

  The men on the bridge acknowledged.

  The data link was broken.

  “Green board, sir,” COB reported. Challenger was ready to dive.

  Jeffrey watched the chronometer on his console. Each remaining second of that minute felt like a lifetime.

  Everyone in the control room cringed when they heard the groaning of protesting steel. Some crewmen feared the Bunga Azul was breaking up or sinking already. But that groaning had a different cause.

  “Bottom doors have not opened!” Bell reported. “Bottom doors appear to be warped and jammed by torpedo hits!”

  We’re trapped. The Snow Tiger will get in position and shoot at us repeatedly after the Bunga Azul goes down. . . . We’re defenseless. The German will keep firing until Challenger is smashed to pieces.

  Jeffrey grabbed the 1MC. It was noisy, but that was the least of his problems. It was the best way to reach anyone, anywhere in the ship, even if they were asleep. “Lieutenant Estabo to the control room smartly.”

  There was another groaning noise: Siregar trying again to open the doors.

  “Doors have not opened!” Bell yelled.

  Challenger jolted. There was a different sound, a metallic scraping.

  “Sail roof is hitting hold overhead.”

  Jeffrey had only one choice. “Chief of the Watch, flood all main ballast-tank groups.”

  “Flood main ballast, aye!”

  COB flipped switches. A new noise started, the roaring of air forced out of the vents in the tops of the ballast tanks, as seawater displaced the air and flooded into the tanks from below.

  “Chief of the Watch, flood the negative tank.”

  “Flood negative, aye.”

  This would make Challenger heavier, giving her negative buoyancy. Jeffrey hoped her weight pressing down on the bottom doors might make them spring open.

  Challenger bounced down onto the hold’s supporting rubber blocks, landing slightly cockeyed. The control-room deck was tilted a few degrees down and to the right.

  It didn’t work. The bottom doors stayed shut.

  Felix Estabo arrived.

  “I’ll make this short,” Jeffrey told him. “The bottom doors are jammed and we need to break them open with explosive charges planted on each hinge. Take your men and enough equipment, suit up with compressed-air tanks, lock out of Challenger, and get it done.”

  “Are we sinking?”

  “We will be very soon.”

  Felix nodded grimly and ran below.

  Jeffrey knew he’d probably just given Felix and Chief Costa and their men death sentences. Once the Bunga Azul left the surface, her depth would increase quickly. Men working in scuba would be exposed to ever-greater pressure. At some point, their compressed-air supply would start to become poisonous.

  But we don’t have mixed-gas rigs that could let them cope at deeper depth. Nobody thought we’d need them.

  Then there was decompression sickness, when the men came back into the ship—the bends, agonizing, and fatal if severe enough.

  Jeffrey had no choice. All he could do was wait.

  COB reported when the SEALs were locking out of Challenger. Jeffrey ordered the on-hull photonic sensors activated, in laser line-scan mode for illumination. Control-room monitors let him and his crew observe as the SEALs went to work with practiced skill. From his own SEAL training years before, Jeffrey assumed they’d use as a time delay—to let them get back into his ship—a proper length of fuse cord that would burn slowly even deep underwater, lit by a tiny explosive charge set off manually by a trigger and percussion cap. But the details were up to Felix.

  Jeffrey watched in anguish as the men moved in slow motion through the water outside the hull, using small portable floodlights to see in the dark around Jeffrey’s blue-green lasers. If they didn’t finish fast enough and succeed in blowing open the doors, the Bunga Azul would hit the bottom. Then Challenger would never escape.

  “Hold is fully flooded,” Bell reported.

  “Very well, Fire Control. . . . Helm, call out your depth as indicated by sea pressure in the hold.”

  “Fifty-five feet, sir.”

  Allowing for her deep draft and her freeboard, the Bunga Azul would go under any moment.

  An explosion from somewhere rocked the ship. Jeffrey thought it was another torpedo hit. He realized it was too soon for that, given the distance and speed of the Snow Tiger and her weapons. He suspected that a hot auxiliary boiler on the host ship, already weakened by mechanical stress, had burst from thermal shock when suddenly covered by much colder water.

  The vibrations stopped; the Bunga Azul’s engines had gone dead. The sensation was replaced by heavy shuddering, with more metallic groans and eerie crying sounds as the Bunga Azul left the surface.

  “Depth eighty feet,” Meltzer called out.

  “Very well, Helm.” The deck began to tilt backward. The host ship was sinking by the stern.

  Too much angle that way and we’ll never get out of this alive.

  “One hundred feet amidships,” Meltzer said. “One hundred twenty at our stern.” Challenger’s stern was deeper than her bow because of the way the Bunga Azul was going down; the water pressure aft would be higher. The monitors showed that Felix and his men were still working as best they could.

  “One hundred fifty amidships.”

  Here’s where breathing compressed air starts getting toxic.

  “Depth two hundred feet amidships, two-thirty at our stern.”

  The ship kept sinking, her rate of descent slowed only by pockets of air in compartments that wouldn’t stay unflooded for long. She was also tilting more steeply backward—and so was Challenger. Jeffrey watched as Felix and his SEALs frantically laid a main and a backup detcord line, to connect all the charges at the hinges to one central detonator. They moved out of sight of any of the hull’s photonic sensors.

  “Three hundred feet amidships!” From the nautical charts and Jeffrey’s mental estimates, with the forward progress the host ship had made since he’d last spoken to Master Siregar, the bottom at their position should be nearly one thousand feet deep. The carcass of the Bunga Azul continued in its death throes. Steel plates tore with screaming noises, bulkheads collapsed with sudden loud booms, air pockets hissed and bubbled away, and major welds failed with thunderclaps. Challenger slipped on the blocks and rolled, and was thrown about like a toy weighing thousands of tons.

  Jeffrey saw a SEAL float past one photonics sensor, his chest and abdomen squashed, surrounded by a spreading dark cloud that Jeffrey knew had to be blood. A lanyard tangled in what was once his waist trailed off camera. His dive buddy’s corpse drifted into view, with a mangled pancake where the man’s head should be. They’d been crushed between Challenger’s hull and the side of the hold. In th
e control room, crewmen gasped.

  “Depth four hundred feet! . . . Four hundred fifty!”

  “SEALs are in escape trunk with upper hatch shut,” COB finally said. “Green board, draining escape trunk’s water now.”

  Felix’s voice came over the intercom circuit from the lock-out trunk. “Fire in the hole in one minute.”

  “Fire in the hole, one minute, aye,” Jeffrey said with immense relief; Felix had at least survived the ordeal so far.

  The charges would detonate soon. If they failed, Challenger was doomed.

  Felix’s words had been slurred, more than just from grief at losing two more men. Slurred speech was one of the first signs of decompression sickness.

  Jeffrey grabbed the 1MC mike. “Corpsman and all assistants to forward escape trunk. Prepare to receive three decompression-sickness casualties plus two dead. Bring casualties into minisub and use as a recompression chamber.”

  “Captain,” the phone talker said, “corpsman acknowledges, is headed for escape trunk.”

  The best immediate treatment for the bends was to return the men to a pressurized environment. Then, standard tables told how to decompress in gradual stages so their bodies could adjust with minimum lasting ill effects.

  On the monitors Jeffrey saw bright flashes, and through the hull he heard dull thuds and felt new shocks. The SEALs’ explosive charges had detonated.

  “Bottom doors falling away!” Bell reported.

  “Chief of the Watch, shift all variable ballast to forward tanks smartly.” COB acknowledged. Challenger began to right herself, still half inside the sinking host ship’s hold.

  “Helm, make your down-angle thirty degrees by the stern planes. Maximum down angle on the fore planes. Ahead one third.”

  From tilting backward, Challenger quickly went to nosing down by the bow. Her pump-jet propulsor kicked in, and drove her out from under the Bunga Azul. Jeffrey gave orders and Meltzer made Challenger level off. COB’s fingers danced on his console, restoring neutral buoyancy and trim. Challenger was free, a working warship again—and a powerful enemy was rushing to deliver more killing blows. Jeffrey had to engage his opponent as soon as possible, but Shakir Island still sat between them.