Terminal Run

by Michael Dimercurio

  “Yes, Admiral,” Vickerson barked, as if responding to a dictator.

  “Call me Captain,” Pacino said dryly. “Let’s go.”

  “But, sir, the tugboats?”

  Pacino looked down on her in the cockpit from his crow’s nest view from the flying bridge. She hadn’t gotten the word, he thought. “OOD, two options for you here. Number one, you can conn this ship as if it’s rigged for a combat mission instead of treating it like this is sea trials. Number two, you can relinquish the conn and I’ll drive her out.”

  Vickerson swallowed, then said in a shaky voice, “Yes, sir. Aye aye, sir.” She glanced at Vermeers as if seeking help, then picked up the bridge box microphone and spoke softly into it, “Helm, Bridge, all ahead one-third.”

  “Flank,” Pacino said, putting the binoculars to his eyes.

  “But, sir—”

  “One last chance, OOD,” he said. Vickerson gulped again.

  “Helm, Bridge, all ahead flank, steer course one six zero. Captain, speed limit in the river is fifteen knots.”

  “Noted, OOD,” Pacino said, biting his lip to keep from smiling, his stern war face terrifying to this green young crowd of submariners. The bow wave rose up at the bullet nose of the SSNX, the roar of it immediate. Pacino’s gold-leaf

  SSNX baseball cap blew off in the hurricane wind of the surface passage. He ignored it and leaned toward Commander Vermeers.

  “XO, what’s the status of ship systems?”

  “Sir, we have forty forward systems danger-tagged out, including the torpedo tube interlocks and firing mechanisms. We completed pier side steaming aft, so the reactor and steam plants are standing tall, but that’s it. We’re barely watertight, sir. We’ll be depth-limited to a hundred and fifty feet—most of the welds in the seawater system weren’t even x-rayed. The worst is the Cyclops system.”

  “Do we have sonar?”

  “Yes, we have broadband, narrowband, towed array, onion, conformal arrays, and acoustic daylight arrays, and the system can report it all. But the firecontrol modules are down hard. We can’t use the computer to track a contact, the 3-D virtual displays don’t work, and we can’t send firecontrol information to the torpedo tubes. Not that we’ll be needing the tubes, because we’re supposed to coordinate with the Air Force bombers so they can drop the ordnance, but then the UHF secure voice modules are down hard.”

  Pacino looked out at the horizon with the binoculars. They were entering Thimble Shoal Channel, the long runway of buoys on either side of them.

  “You got people working on the torpedo tubes?”

  “No, Captain,” Vermeers said, the first time he’d addressed Pacino as the ship’s captain.

  “Forget about the firecontrol displays. To hell with the UHF, and to hell with the Air Force. You just make sure we can shoot torpedoes out of all four tubes.”

  “How we gonna do that with no firecontrol?”

  Pacino didn’t answer until after the turning point as the channel emptied out into the Atlantic.

  “Tigersharks,” he finally said. “Tigersharks have carbon processors. They don’t need a refined firecontrol solution, just a general idea of what we want them to do.”

  “Right,” Vermeers said, overly enthusiastic. “That fuzzy logic thing.”

  Pacino glared at him but said nothing. He was beginning to despair that his executive officer would ever understand. Vermeers finally seemed to sense Pacino’s ill mood, and his expression darkened a notch. “Sir, isn’t that a violation of our orders? Not using the Air Force?”

  “Listen, XO, let me give you a piece of advice. We’ll speak of this only once. When you’re put in command, you do what you know is right. Not what the Reactor Plant Manual says. Not what the Submarine Standard Operating Procedures say. Not what the Approach and Attack Manual says. Not what U.S. Navy Regulations say. Not Mao’s red book, not the Bible. You follow what’s in your mind and what’s in your heart. You do what you’re here to do, to command the ship and the crew and fulfill the mission, even if it means violating orders. Even if it means the god damned ship sinks. Even if you die, or worse, if you sacrifice your reputation and your sacred honor, you do what you have to do. Remember, at sea, you’reit. There’s no court of appeals, there’s no admiral, there’s no Secretary of the Navy, there’s no President, it’s just you, the captain. Today, it’s me. I’m not talking to a bunch of bombers who couldn’t spell submarine, much less find one in the million cubic miles of seawater it’s hiding in. Today we do what 7 say, and what say is, we make all tubes ready to launch Mark 98 Tigersharks, and we let the Tigersharks do the heavy lifting. When the dust clears, we’ll sail home and take our medicine. For violating our orders.”p>

  Vermeers stared at him. “All that’s easy to say. sir, when you’re a former four-star admiral, when you’re at sea for one mission before you go back to your regularly scheduled life. When you’re a thirty-eight-year-old three-striper, with the world looking down on you, waiting for you to make a mistake, it’s a lot different.” Vermeers paused long enough to see Pacino shake his head. “Did you operate like this as a captain, when you first were in command?”

  Pacino nodded solemnly. “Jeff, I made a career out of it.

  The trick is to find out what your superiors want, what their intentions are, and then doing what they need you to do, not what they say they need you to do, and that’s the difference. That’s one of the secrets of command at sea. If you pay attention on this run, you may learn the others.”

  Vermeers nodded, frowning out at the horizon sternly, as if imitating Pacino, but eventually the old Vermeers returned. “But, sir … I know you’re the program director and all, but… the Tigersharks don’t work. They home in on and destroy the firing ship.”

  “They will work, as soon as I get done tweaking them.”

  “Captain,” Vickerson said, turning, “ship has cleared the traffic separation scheme. ETA to the dive point is six hours.”

  “Very well,” Pacino said, climbing down from the flying bridge and opening the deck grating to the bridge access tunnel. “XO, I want to see you and the navigator and the engineer in my stateroom.”

  He lowered himself into the hull. The smells of the ship and the sea intoxicated him with all the things that were back, things he’d lost. He refused to let his emotions swell with the feelings, because deep in the Atlantic, his only son could be gasping his last breaths.

  22.

  Captain Lien Hua walked into the command post and found Zhou at the command console doodling on a paper tablet.

  “Dou’s starting the reactor,” he said. “The battery is back on-line.” The lights in the overhead flickered and held, the uneven wavering light of the casualty lanterns banished by the brightness. “And we need to submerge. Station underway watch section two and prepare to vertical dive.”

  Zhou Ping grinned. “Yes, Captain, section two and prepare to vertical dive.”

  Fifteen minutes later the Nung Yahtsu was steaming submerged on her own power, on course north to intercept Battlegroup Two, but no longer in a hurry. Captain Lien ordered a transit speed of eight knots, the optimal for covering ground while engaging a maximum-scan sonar search. This time the Americans would not have the advantage of searching slow and quiet while Nung Yahtsu was forced to burn through the seas at full speed. This time, Nung Yahtsu would sneak up on the Americans.

  By the end of the morning watch the ship had arrived at the sinking location of the American submarine. Captain Lien ordered an excursion to periscope depth, and while they examined the surface for flotsam—evidence of a kill they could report to the Admiralty—they transmitted their after-action report to Admiral Chu and received their messages. Lien was scanning the message traffic, which was minimal since the Admiralty assumed they’d been lost. Lien decided to linger at periscope depth to see if the Admiralty would give them emergency orders once their after-action report was digested, and it became clear that Nung Yahtsu had returned from the dead. It was then the American he
licopter was sighted. Lien ordered the periscope dipped, only allowing it to be exposed for ten seconds every minute.

  In the second minute of observing the U.S. Navy chopper, his face pressed close to the warm optics module of the periscope, Lien noticed that the chopper was not searching for them with a dipping sonar, but had focused its attention on the sea. Two divers jumped out, and a man-basket was being lowered to the sea.

  “Dead slow ahead course zero four zero,” Lien ordered from the periscope. “Raising scope.” When he saw what was going on, he became furious.

  “Arm the antiair missile battery,” he commanded. “Target number one, U.S. helicopter rescuing survivors of our submarine attack.”

  “AAM battery armed,” Zhou Ping reported. “Periscope station has control.”

  “Target bearing and altitude, mark!” Lien observed, the periscope still up after the time he should have lowered it. “Missile one—re!”

  There was no sound as the Victory II antiair missile lifted off from the sail in a bubble of steam from the gas generator and broke the surface. The missile’s solid rocket fuel ignited and it flew straight upward to a thousand-meter height and made a graceful Mach 1.1 loop downward, its infrared heat seeker seeing the helicopter’s twin jet exhausts. The missile sailed into the port engine and exploded. The hundred pounds of high explosive was not sufficient on its own to blow up the chopper, only to damage it severely, the fireball blowing off a rotor and sending the chopper spinning out of control. The explosion in the tailpipe of the number two turbine sent turbine blades scattering through the airframe, severing two fuel lines, and the still-burning fireball set off the fuel and then the fuel

  tanks, and the Sea Serpent IV helicopter detonated with the power of a ton of TNT, blowing rotor blades, aluminum structural pieces, control panels, and human flesh over the surface of the sea. The shock wave from it slammed the eardrums of Lieutenant Commander Donna Phillips in life raft number one. A five-foot piece of helicopter rotor whooshed over her head, the debris flying fast enough to have cut her in half, another piece of shrapnel puncturing the flank of the life raft.

  Phillips’s expression fell. Life had just become much more complicated.

  “Vertical surface,” Lien commanded Zhou. Zhou gave the order to the ship-control officer, and the ship came to a stop in the waters of the East China Sea, her hovering system controlling her depth. The ship-control officer dialed in a negative depth rate, and the ship rose vertically from fifty meters to the surface. Once on the surface, the ship-control officer raised the snorkel and started the main compressor, blowing air into the ballast tanks. Within two minutes, it was safe to man the fin cockpit.

  “Ship is vertical surfaced, sir,” Zhou Ping reported.

  “Man the fin watch,” Lien ordered.

  When Lien climbed the vertical access tunnel to the fin cockpit, Zhou was stationed as surfaced deck officer. He handed Lien a set of binoculars.

  “Look, sir. They must be survivors of the submarine that fired on us and the battle group

  Lien’s face grew hard as he looked into the binoculars. “Bring us closer, Leader Zhou, at dead slow.”

  Zhou raised the cockpit communicator microphone to his mouth and ordered, “Dead slow ahead, steer course three four zero.”

  The ship moved slowly toward the life rafts until they were a half ship length away. Lien glared angrily down on the survivors.

  “All stop,” Zhou commanded into the microphone, then glancing at Captain Lien. “What now, sir?”

  Lien didn’t answer. He stood there, frozen, as if unable to make a decision.

  Zhou’s face was a mask of anger. “Sir, we must hurry to Battlegroup Two, as she may come under attack without our help.”

  Lien still stood there, frozen in indecision.

  Zhou picked up a microphone and called the command post watch. “Get the key to the small arms locker from the captain’s stateroom. It is in the safe. The combination is the commissioning day of this ship.” It was a date everyone on board was required to memorize. “Bring up five AK-80s and fifteen clips of ammunition.”

  “Zhou,” Lien said uncertainly, “what are you doing?”

  Zhou glared at his captain. “We can’t take them prisoner, sir. I won’t have Americans on our ship, not these devils who sank the battle group we were ordered to protect. They could revolt and try to take us over. I will finish the job that the Tsunami torpedo began.”

  Lien narrowed his eyes at his first officer. His intention was a violation of international law and of the unwritten code of the sea. Lien had read about Nazi Germany’s U-boats doing this, and had condemned the action. He never thought the man he regarded as his protege would do such a thing, even to hateful Americans.

  “Sir, you must act,” Zhou said. “If you do not give the order to shoot them, I will relieve you of command under the Regulations of the PLA Navy for Commanders Afloat, Section Twenty-three.”

  Lien sighed, but said nothing, just stood there, staring at the Americans. Two enlisted men climbed into the fin, bringing the rifles. Zhou turned to one of them. “Fighter Ling, place the captain under arrest. I have been forced to assume command of the Nung Yahtsu.”

  The enlisted sailor stared at Zhou, but seeing the captain standing like a statue, he nodded and gently pulled Lien’s wrists behind his back and tied them with plastic cable ties. He began to nudge Lien toward the tunnel opening, but realized

  he would have to ask the first officer to move out of the way. He hesitated, then motioned to the senior officer. “Keep him here until we dive,” Zhou said, his attention fixed on the sea below.

  Zhou picked up one of the rifles and glared at the American survivors.

  Captain George Dixon blinked as he sat up, leaning heavily against Commander Donna Phillips.

  “What is it? Are we rescued?”

  “Sir, I’m afraid it’s the Julang-class. Either he didn’t sink or the Chinese have more than one.”

  “Oh, shit,” Dixon said, groaning. “We have a pistol from the survival kit?”

  “A couple of twenty-twos, sir. Good for fending off a small shark, but not much use holding off a Chinese submarine.”

  “Oh, God,” Dixon said. “My mother didn’t raise me to be a prisoner of war. Not under those guys.”

  “We’ll get through this, Skipper. My grandfather was a POW in Vietnam, and he said it was not as bad as everyone thought,” Phillips said, lying to Dixon. Her grandfather had been shot down over Hanoi and imprisoned, but the truth of his imprisonment was far worse than any of the stories. Phillips tried to breathe deeply, fighting off her feelings of desperate fear, and knowing that if she could give Captain Dixon courage, seeing his war face would give her the strength to go on.

  “Okay, XO. We’ll get through this.” He reached into his breast pocket below his dolphin emblem and pulled out the gold coin his wife had given him. He blinked rapidly, then put the coin back in his pocket. Phillips waited for him to show a sign of encouragement, but his eyes closed, at first as if he were stressed, but then Phillips realized that he had lost consciousness.

  Lieutenant Brett Oliver, the NSA-assigned officer who’d joined the ship in mid operation began trembling in fear. “XO,” he said, his voice shaking, “I can’t be a prisoner of war.

  Not with what I know. I’man NSA agent. If they interrogate me, they’ll break me. They’ll know about the battle network, and the entire war could be compromised.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Phillips said in a hard voice, but seeing his point. She tried to think, but there seemed to be no solution.

  “Give me a twenty-two,” he said.

  “What do you intend to do, Mr. Oliver?”

  “Give me the gun, XO.” His look stopped being frightened for a moment, a hard resolve in his eyes. Reluctantly she handed it to him.

  “Don’t use it unless you have to.” she said.

  “Goodbye, Donna.” he said. “Good luck.” He slipped backward off the raft and stroked away fr
om the Julang submarine’s approach. Phillips watched him swim, his head barely visible over the crests of the waves. When she could no longer see him, the sound of a single gunshot echoed over the water.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said, putting her head in her hands.

  When she looked up, the Julang had heaved to, close aboard. Phillips looked at it in wonder. Until now it had been an impersonal diamond shape on a firecontrol display, or a dimly remembered grainy intelligence photograph, and now here it was. It seemed so big in reality, the sail towering over them, the hull wider than their Leopard’s. On the bridge she could make out a half-dozen men, and something else. Either they all had broomsticks, or weapons.

  She watched the men on the bridge as they pointed the automatic rifles at the life rafts from a distance of thirty yards. She realized that they were not threatening with the rifles to take the Leopard survivors hostage, but intending to shoot to kill. The scream was torn from her lips without conscious thought.

  “Crew! All hands! In the water, now!” She bodily tossed Captain Dixon off the raft and into the sea, grabbed the man next to her, and threw herself backward into the water as the first shots rang out over the waves.

  Zhou Ping raised the AK-80, the rifle heavy in his grip, the precise long-range scope installed before the weapon was brought to the fin. In the scope he could see the closest life raft, with a woman sitting next to a man slumped against the yellow inflated wall of the raft. The man had gold insignia on his chest, perhaps a high-ranking senior officer. Zhou clicked off the safety, ready to fire, when a gunshot rang in his ears.