Barracuda- Final Bearing

by Michael Dimercurio

Take us out and take the Curtain of Flames alongside.”

  “Yes sir.” Kami, a short husky officer originally from Kobe, took up the headset and boom microphone from the control panel that ran along the forward lip of the surface control space, there some ten meters above the top of the hull.

  “Control room, surface navigation space, report motor status.” The control panel indicator light lit up, the yellow lamp showing the control room’s voice circuit energized. “Surface nav, control, AC motor breaker shut, motor energized.”

  “Very good, control. Shift motor control to the surface control space.”

  “Aye, surface nav, motor control is released to surface nav.”

  “Very good, control.” Kami hit a selector toggle on the control panel, tying his headset with the deck crew. “On deck forward, cast off all forward lines.” Kami watched as the deck crew hurried to let go of the lines holding the bow to the pier. The current drove the bow outward from the concrete pier, the brackish slip water opening up. “On deck aft, cast off all stern lines.” The deck crew scurried to toss off the lines to the men on the pier until the last line was off and the ship was free. “Lookout, the flag, please.” Behind the surface control space, the lookout hoisted the banner of the rising sun high atop a steel flagpole, the flag flapping loudly in the wind.

  Finally, Tanaka thought, the ship was underway. A rare sense’of contentment invaded his habitual bitterness. If there was one happiness left to him, it was this— taking his ship away from the landbound, petty and officious men of the base to the freedom of the sea, where there was only the crew, the ship, the sea and the enemy. He must write that into haiku, he thought. It would make a fine poem. “Control, surface nav,” Kami announced, “I have remote control of the motor, ordering dead slow ahead.” Kami grabbed the throttle lever and gently moved it forward until the motor tachometer read ten revolutions per minute. He looked aft to make sure the wake was making froth astern of the pumpjet propulsor, that the motor was rotating the turbine in the correct direction. The ship began to inch ahead, the pier beginning to slide slowly away. “Control, surface nav, I have remote control of the X-tail and am maneuvering into the channel.” Kami took the throttle lever back to stop, the ship continuing to glide into the channel, then as the fin became even with the end of the pier he rotated the X-tail rudder-control wheel clockwise to right fifteen effective degrees of rudder. Slowly the ship turned into the channel.

  Kami added power again, driving the pumpjet back up to 30 rpm to push the ship into the channel, then pulled the throttle back to stop and zeroed the rudder.

  The ship glided to a halt in the channel. Far ahead Tanaka could see the twin shapes of the fins of the Two and Three-class ships steaming to sea lashed together.

  The water of the channel foamed peacefully against the hull, the Winged Serpent motionless in the seaway.

  Tanaka looked toward the west, where the sun was setting over the ridge and felt himself move into a new era in his life, realizing that his hours of contemplation on the ridge were over. The feeling was a deep certainty.

  It was perhaps only the side-effect of the knowledge that he was embarking on a wartime mission—assuming the orders from the high command to attack the threatening surface group ever came in. Politicians always seemed to have a way of lying and cheating their way out of trouble, avoiding whenever possible the simple course of using the guns they had spent so many yen on. This navy would easily prevail if only it were given the chance, he was convinced.

  Soon it would be nightfall. With a sense of urgency, Tanaka pulled his radio from his belt, making sure it was tuned to the tactical frequency.

  “Portmaster, this is Unit Sunshine. What is the status?”

  “Sunshine, Portmaster, hold your position. Your passenger is on the way.”

  “Tel! him he has ten minutes. Then I’m leaving without him. Your tugs can take him to sea then.”

  “He’ll be there in five, sir.”

  Tanaka clicked twice on the transmit key. A tug horn sounded a mournful blast across the water of the harbor, the last light of the sun winking out on the ridgeline.

  The operation to tie up the Curtain of Flames alongside the Winged Serpent had to be accomplished before the dark came—it would be too dangerous and there weren’t sufficient lights on the tugs to perform the operation in darkness. Finally the tugs pulled Curtain of Flames away from its pier and steadily towed it to the deep channel.

  Both tugs were made up to the helpless Three-class’ port side so that it could approach Winged Serpent on its starboard side. As the light dimmed, the Three class came up alongside, the ratings from the tugboats standing on its deck ready to toss over the lines. It was such a waste of resources to have unmanned robotic ships, Tanaka thought, although it was useless and frustrating to go down that path of thought. Still, it irritated him that once at sea his crew would have to risk their lives, in moonless pitch blackness, to disconnect the lines linking the two ships.

  Curtain of Flames was now within twenty meters, the tugs pushing her slowly closer.

  Tanaka sighed, looked at his watch. If not for the Three class he had to haul to sea, he would be well on the way to the dive point by now. To the point where life became worth living.

  new london, connecticut Bruce Phillips opened the door of the motel room’s suite, knowing that to call it a suite would be stretching the truth. The motel was called the Dolph-Inn, a play on the submariner’s dolphins displayed in a crumbling concrete statue in front of the motel office. The room was dark, the two small windows covered with heavy floral print curtains, the walls done up in trailer-park dark paneling, two double beds on one wall, a kitchenette with a Formica table in the other corner, a couch with a coffee table and television, the old-fashioned square-screen type. Phillips hadn’t used the kitchen or the television since he had checked in the week before.

  He had spent sixteen hours a day at the manufacturing facility trying to push the working crews to get the Piranha’s Vortex missiles done sooner. Sometimes progress seemed lightning fast, but most of the time the work got done at a glacially slow pace. He could go nuts in the building yards, he thought. It was a good thing the detailers had never sent him to new construction—his ships had always been well used, not old but worn in, like a pair of favorite deck shoes. So familiar and comfortable that they were preferable to new ones.

  It was now dark, in the late afternoon. Usually he got away from the ship from dinnertime until about eight in the evening, when he would go in to catch the tail end of the swing shift. He’d take that until two or three in the morning, then yield to Capt. Emmitt Stephens, who liked to come in at three a.m. to keep the graveyard shift motivated. Phillips would spend the next hours at the motel sleeping, then go back in at noon to meet with his new crew. While he was with the crews putting the missiles on the hull of the sub, his executive officer Roger Whatney was butting heads with the crew, then spending an hour or two briefing Phillips on what the men were like. Phillips was starting to get the picture, but it was coming slower than he wanted, names not yet connected to faces. Not a good situation, given the fact that he would need to take the vessel into hostile waters and soon.

  He sat on the bed and took off his soiled coveralls, slowly peeling them off his aching body. He forced himself to stand, wondering if he should take a shower or just collapse in the bed. He opted for the shower, turned on the spray red hot, stepped into the steamy water, the tension leaving him slowly. He was in so long he was turning red, when he thought he heard pounding. It would be typical of the day to have some moron trying to get into the wrong room, he thought, turning off the water as he grabbed a towel and trailed water all the way to the door, the pounding loud and insistent now.

  He wrapped himself in the towel, opened the door.

  “What?” he said as he threw open the door.

  “You always greet a lady like that?” Abby O’Neal said.

  Phillips’s mouth literally hung open. He stared at her, amazed
not only at her presence but at what she was wearing. She had come in and dropped her heavy overcoat on the floor. Beneath it she wore a miniskirt with a skimpy tank top.

  “Ab, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Okay, where is she? In the shower? You were doing her in the shower?” She came up to him, stole his towel and hugged him, and covered his mouth with hers.

  Phillips wasn’t complaining, but he could hardly take it all in. Self-possessed Abby O’Neal was not one to show up unannounced in a seedy motel room, least of all wearing call-girl clothes. She majored in business suits and workout clothes. A miniskirt and tank top… ?

  “This is Abby O’Neal’s evil twin, right? Where’s Abby?” “Right here,” she said, hitting the light. She maneuvered him to the bed, her mouth on his, her hands on him, pulling him closer. Her clothes dropped to the floor, more by her hands than his. She had him on his back as she climbed on top and drove him into her. He shut his eyes, then opened them to see her face, her eyes half-shut. Her lips were parted, her breathing coming in gasps.

  It seemed like forever, it seemed like a heartbeat. He lost himself, lost the Navy, the Piranha, the Japanese, the Dolph-Inn, and for an achingly sweet moment there was only Abby and him, and the boundary line where he ended and Abby began had become blurred in his union with her.

  “I have to go to sea,” he was saying to her.

  “I know, that’s why I’m here, idiot.”

  Phillips pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. Abby wrapped herself in the bed’s comforter. He went to her rental car and got her overnight bag, from which she pulled out her sweatshirt and torn sweatpants that she’d cut off into shorts, her comfort clothes. Once they were settled on the couch, he pressed her for what was going on, stealing a glance at his watch, knowing that with her there it would be a miracle if he went back into the manufacturing facility. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t let him, it was that when she was with him he didn’t want to do anything but be near her, talk to her, touch her hair. He told her she would be responsible for Piranha being late to sea, and she said “good.”

  “So, what’s going on, really?” he asked. “I heard from some people in Norfolk. They say this Japanese thing is heading for a confrontation at sea. Maybe war. And that it was going to be a submarine battle, because the Japanese navy is all submarines, and I knew you were getting ready to go to sea, and I knew you were working around the clock, and, not being stupid, it hit me. This ship is the newest in the fleet. You’re going out there to fight—”

  “Well, no one knows if—”

  “Bruce, don’t patronize me.”

  “All right. Yes, we’re going to sea, we’ll probably do nothing but go in circles around Japan, and if you want to know the truth, by the time we get there this will all be over. The Pacific fleet boats will probably be force enough, and I seriously doubt that anything will come of this whole thing. It’s a tempest in a teapot.” He pulled her toward him and stroked her hair. She looked up at him, eyes looking into his. Of course, she didn’t believe him. She sank into the couch and into him. It was ten hours later that he was able to pull himself away from her and go back to the ship.

  northwest pacific The F-14 tossed in the violence of the storm. The clouds around them were black, the rain pounding against the canopy. When the intercom came on Pacino could barely hear it, even though Shearson was screaming.

  “Admiral! We’re not going to make it!” “I thought you said we didn’t have enough fuel to divert. I thought we’d had to commit to the carrier.”

  Pacino could barely get it out.

  “Sir, we don’t. But if we’re going into the drink we’d better do it outside of the radius of the storm, and goddamn well upwind where it’s already been. If we ditch in this sea we’ll last minutes, maybe less. We’d better decide now, because we’ve been dodging the bigger storm cells and it’s been burning our fuel. We only have enough gas to make one approach. That’s not enough for the book. We need to have at least a half-hour reserve or we’re supposed to abort.”

  “No, Shearson. Take it in. As long as you have navigation capability, you get this plane in to the carrier.”

  Pacino waited, the plane beginning to bounce so hard it slammed his helmet against the port sill, then the starboard.

  Directly above them a flash of lightning exploded.

  The plane jumped, Shearson struggling for control. The plane dived, then took a starboard roll, then a sharp port spin. The lights of the instruments were dark, Pacino realized. The lightning must have hit them. Shearson managed to pull the jet out of the spin but the cockpit was blacked out.

  “Have you lost power?” Pacino asked, wondering if the panic he felt was in his voice.

  “I’m bringing it back, Admiral. Lightning tripped the instrument bus off the line.”

  The glow of the dim cabin lights came back on. It felt as if the plane were flying sideways instead of forward.

  The sensation got worse, as if the jet were upside down.

  “Brad, are we flying okay? If feels like we’re slipping sideways. Now it seems like we’re upside down.”

  “It happens, sir. After a while being tossed around like this, your inner ears get confused. Down becomes up, left feels like right. If it’ll help I’ll bring up an artificial horizon on your display aft.”

  The display came up, the ball in the center of the screen representing the horizon, the superimposed wings of their own plane showing the craft diving slightly. A gust of turbulence hit the plane, tossing Pacino into the side of the cockpit. The horizon dipped to the left, the right wing turning toward the earth. Shearson brought the wings level again. Seeing the instrument seemed to help a little.

  “How far to the carrier?”

  “About fifteen minutes, sir. We’re descending now.

  But I’m telling you, I can’t do this on instruments. If we have no visibility lower than a thousand feet, we’re scrubbing the landing.”

  “No we’re not. I mean it, Shearson. I don’t care if you smash this thing on the deck, you get me to the Reagan.”

  tokyo wan thirty kilometers west OF point nojimazaki SS-810 Winged Serpent Comdr. Toshumi Tanaka watched as the linehandlers cast off the lines from the Curtain of Flames and let the heavy manila ropes sink into the sea. The cleats on the deck of the Curtain of Flames had automatically released the lines now that they were at the mouth of Tokyo Bay and into the deeper waters of the Pacific. The Curtain of Flames barely had enough sense to put its rudder over to port to pull slowly away from Winged Serpent without smashing its stern into Tanaka’s ship. Tanaka watched as the Curtain of Flames steamed off to the southwest, on its way to intercept the closest American aircraft carrier battle group. Once again, the Three-class computer ship got the choicest mission, while Winged Serpent was to take station in the Sea of Japan to make sure the Russian shipping to supply the Home Islands was not interrupted.

  Tanaka boiled with frustration. The Sea of Japan was the last place he would put the Winged Serpent. Such a capable, well-trained crew aboard a magnificent submarine of the Maritime SDF should not be wasted on such a ridiculous mission. But he could let none of this attitude show on his face or in his manner.

  Besides, he would be too busy to think about it in a matter of minutes. They were at the dive point, time to get the ship submerged.

  northwest pacific The F-14 bounced all the way down into its descent.

  Pacino looked back at the wings, both of them snapping so hard that he was sure they would break off at any minute.

  The altitude on the display board kept unwinding, now at 10,000 feet. The artificial horizon swirled and jogged as the wind tossed the aircraft. Pacino kept his eyes outside, trying to find the lights of the carrier.

  Shearson was on the radio to the Reagan, trying to put the plane down on the deck of the ship, which would be tossing on the high seas.

  The rain seemed to get worse as they passed below 5000 feet, the blasting noise of it louder than the jets.

&nbs
p; The altimeter continued to unwind, the artificial horizon still swirling. They were running on vapors, with fuel enough for one, maybe two passes.

  Pacino strained his eyes for lights and found nothing but the driving rain reflected in Shearson’s landing lights.

  The plane took a dramatic bump upward, Pacino’s stomach left in the footwells, then an equally impressive dive.

  Shearson’s nose pulled right, then left, then right again, then another bump up and a slam down. The jets outside were whining, then screaming as Shearson powered up, then whispering again as he throttled back. It occurred to Pacino then that he was going to die, and he had absolutely no control over the situation. This was entirely different from being shot at by a torpedo. At least then he had a submarine under his command, a horse beneath him, but now all he could do was ride, crash and drown.

  He glanced at the altimeter and saw that they were at 900 feet, lower than the requisite 1000 to see the carrier, and there was nothing ahead of them but rain shimmering in the landing lights. He looked ahead, straining to see the lights of the carrier. He tried to ignore the onset of vertigo as the plane took another thrashing, bouncing sideways and then up and down and up again.

  The odd feeling of flying with one wing down came, then became worse as it felt like he was hanging from his harness upside down in the plane. He kept trying to ignore the feeling, pounding on his helmet to see if that would help his inner ears, but it did nothing.

  They were too low and there was no sign of the carrier—he saw lights. “Brad! There! The carrier!”

  “I don’t—”

  “Fifteen degrees right!” “Roger,” Shearson said, turning the plane.

  The maneuver swirled Pacino’s inner ears. The rain continued to blast at them, the thickness of it in the landing lights making the tossing deck of the Reagan hard to see.

  Shearson continued to row the throttles, the engines throttling up and down, the wings dipping and twisting as the plane rolled to fight the storm. As the deck got closer, the plane lurched violently. “Port engine flameout!” Shearson called. “We’re on one engine. I’m going around!”