Barracuda- Final Bearing

by Michael Dimercurio

  “Those are the orders.”

  “Admiral, my subs need release to sink the Destiny subs in the Oparea. You’ve given that order, I assume, sir.” Pacino braced for the worst.

  “Those aren’t the rules of engagement. Patch, and you know it. The blockade setup is that, first, Tokyo and the world is notified that as of nineteen hundred hours today, no merchant shipping is to cross the boundary of the Oparea, or as Warner’s calling it in public, the Exclusion Zone. Then, as of seven o’clock tonight local time, we sink anything crossing the boundary, going in or out. There’s nothing authorizing us to attack the military of Japan.”

  “Let’s ask, Admiral. We’ve got to get that request on the wire now. If my boats are out there, they could be targeted by Destiny subs. And since you sent them in at maximum speed, they made a hell of a racket getting there. The whole Japanese Fleet knows exactly where they are. They won’t last after the first torpedo.”

  “What do you want this to say?”

  “That we want to be released to strike at any Destiny submarine the minute we detect it, and that Tokyo should be told to withdraw their submarines or we’ll attack.”

  Donner scribbled on the Writepad, and Pacino read.

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll send it as a joint message from Pacforcecom and USUBCOM/Pacforce. How’s that?”

  “Great.” Pacino was still angry but he tried to keep it from showing. northwest pacific USS Barracuda The phone buzzed by the side of the rack. Capt. David Kane lifted a mucous-encrusted eyelid, found the phone, pulled it out of its cradle and dragged it to his ear.

  “Captain,” he croaked. He felt older than his forty-five years, the forty-fifth birthday hitting him much harder than he had anticipated. He had been having another nightmare about it, the room filled with black balloons labeled “over the hill” while he looked in a mirror and saw deep wrinkles, bald head, gray mustache, himself bent over a cane. He was glad that the phone had interrupted the dream. He glanced at his watch, the face reading 3:15, trying to remember if it was set for Hawaii time, local time, Greenwich Mean or Tokyo time. He managed to recall ordering the ship’s clocks set to Tokyo time so that when they got to the Japan Oparea their bodies would be adjusted to the light cycles outside.

  There was nothing worse than coming to periscope depth in a dark submarine with your body thinking it was two in the morning only to find that when the scope cleared the sun was shining from high in the sky.

  “Captain,” he said again, wondering if he’d dreamt the phone had buzzed.

  “Yes sir, Captain, Officer of the Deck. It’s zero three fifteen, sir. I’m calling to request to come up to periscope depth.”

  Kane had trained his junior officers, on night wakeup calls like this, to make him dig for information. If the officer of the deck did a data dump on him, he’d be back asleep by the end of the O.O.D’s report.

  “Okay. Any contacts?”

  “No contacts, sir.”

  “Present status?”

  “Depth one five zero feet, speed six knots, course west, sir.”

  “Reason for PD?”

  “Broadcast, Captain. Also we need to check the inertial nav against the GPS signal.”

  “Last broadcast was when?”

  The ship was required to come up to periscope depth at least once every eight hours to get radio messages from the Comstar satellite that orbited in a geostationary orbit over the Pacific. The satellite would transmit messages in a ten-second burst every fifteen minutes, whether anyone was there to hear them or not. Usually while they were up, the periscope antenna would pull down the signal from the navigation satellite, the globalpositioning system.

  “We were up at twenty-thirty last night, sir. It’s time.” “Very well, Offsa’deck,” Kane said, slurring the title,

  “take her up to PD and get the broadcast and a nav fix.

  Then get us back down and speed back up to flank.

  We’re late.”

  “Aye, sir, periscope depth, broadcast, nav fix, deep and flank.”

  Kane recradled the phone and shut his eyes again, sleep washing comfortably up over him, the dreams coming slowly, but then he was in his backyard dressed in a clown suit at his daughter’s birthday party, his wife Becky handing him a beer, the kids squealing in delight.

  The party melted into a beach where he and Becky were alone in the moonlight and she was reaching for him, a devilish look in her blue eyes. He could feel her long fingernails as she drew them across his flat stomach to his waistband, her playful laughter mixing in with the sounds of the waves on the sand. He felt her fingers plunge into his bathing suit and gently stroke him, then pull him out. She began to kiss him. His eyes rolled back in his head, Becky’s mouth working until sweat poured down from his temples and— BOOM BOOM BOOM.

  “Radioman, sir, messages for you.”

  “Goddamnit.” Kane sat up in the rumpled bed. The radioman came in with the metal clipboard with the official Writepad. Kane glanced at the messages, the ones classified with codeword Enlightened Curtain first in the queue. It looked like the blockade would proceed ahead of schedule. Kane initialed the messages, drawing his finger over the surface of the Writepad as if using it for a pencil, the computer drawing lines as his finger sketched his initials over the pad.

  The radioman left and Kane sank back into the rack, feeling the deck take on a down angle as the officer of the deck drove the ship deep again and increased speed to get back on their planned track to the Japan Oparea.

  He shut his eyes and felt sleep overtake him again, but this time lovely Becky was gone, the dreams dominated by the ocean, its depth and darkness, storms at sea, dark rain. He tossed and turned all the way to the next phone call from the control room.

  sea OF japan SS-810 Winged Serpent Comdr. Toshumi Tanaka was still awake in his stateroom, reading the message traffic about the coming of the American Navy’s carrier battle groups. One of the messages was from his father, addressed to the entire Destiny force at sea in the waters near the Home Islands.

  The message read that the approaching battle groups might attempt to set up a blockade, but no matter what happened, no submarine was to attack or molest any incoming American unit—even if there were American submarines approaching in close. Admiral Tanaka allowed the Destiny force to shadow the Americans, but even at that he was being cautious, ordering the Japanese submarines to remain outside a half-kilometer distance from any American ship.

  It was ridiculous, the younger Tanaka thought. He was in the middle of thinking about how he would change those orders when a knock came from the door to the head Tanaka shared with his first officer, Lt. Comdr.

  Hiro Mazdai.

  “Come,” Tanaka said.

  “Evening, Captain. Is everything satisfactory?”

  “Fine, Mr. First, why?”

  “I was in the head and saw your light on, sir.”

  “Anything on your mind. First?”

  “The crew is uneasy, sir.”

  “About the American battle groups?”

  “No, Captain. I think it’s just the situation.”

  “Explain.”

  “Sir, our Two-class manned ships are in the waters of the Home Islands. Our Three-class ships have set sail for the deep Pacific—and for the near Pacific, where the closest incoming aircraft carrier group is approaching.

  Only two things can happen. Either our fleets engage or they don’t. Either the Americans shoot at us and we shoot at them, or we return to our separate ports with all of our weapons still aboard.”

  “First, is there a point to this?”

  “Just that, one could say if we go down the path of shooting, both sides may lose. At first we should prevail.

  The Americans will be sunk. But they will send more ships. We will return to port to get more torpedoes. One can only hope the Americans run out of ships before we run out of torpedoes. Our own ships will take losses, some of us will die. The American fleets will be hurt worse, but America has
an air force too. Will they not fight back, bomb our country, maybe shoot their missiles at us, drop paratroopers onto our soil? How long can we fight? How long will we watch our children and women dying? Some, sir, say we were wrong to attack Greater Manchuria, that we should say so now. They say it is a new century, that it seems wrong to fight the same fight we did in the last.”

  “Are you speaking for yourself or others?”

  “Sir, I am an officer of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. I will do my duty to the day I die. I will follow my orders. I will shoot torpedoes at hospital ships if ordered. I will blow up this submarine before allowing it to be captured, if ordered. I am an officer, but I am also a man. The time for Samurai warriors is over. Our leaders have not realized that.”

  “That’s quite a speech. First. I had no idea you felt this way. I order you to keep these opinions to yourself.

  Failing that, I will shoot you myself. Now get out.”

  Mazdai returned to his own stateroom. Tanaka stared at the door, amazed and angry. Did others in Japan really think this way? Mazdai’s argument had no attraction for him. Mazdai had not lost his mother, the one person who loved him on this earth, to the uncaring, incompetent and hurtful Americans. Mazdai had not spent his young years being spit at and taunted by Americans.

  Mazdai had not been forced to live with them, with their disgusting food and arrogance about being the best country in the world, the one and only world power.

  Mazdai had not had to suffer their vicious racist attitudes toward Japan, toward all people of color.

  Toshumi Tanaka had, and even if his torpedoes didn’t make the world a more peaceful place for flower-loving Mazdai, they would at least even the balance sheet. The torpedoes were named Nagasakis for a reason. The cruise missiles were named Hiroshimas for a reason.

  To hell with the Americans.

  block island sound USS Piranha Comdr. Bruce Phillips scanned the horizon with his binoculars, searching for the lights of merchant ships, fishing boats or pleasure craft, although there was no way a yacht would be out tonight. The blizzard was the worst Phillips could remember since he was a child, back in the storms of ‘93. The snowflakes were the size of nickels and quarters, fogging his binoculars, getting inside the collar of his parka. He dropped the binoculars and stared out at the fog, cursing the slowness of their journey. Somehow, though, it seemed fitting that a trip under the polar icecap would begin with a blizzard. The fog obscured vision, the horizon coming in, then receding again. The fog and the snow and the late hour made the Sound dead quiet. The only sounds were the dull rumble of the tugboat’s diesel engines, the thudding roar of Piranha’s own emergency diesel generator and the wash of the wake against the hull. The Piranha was moving at little more than five knots, her diesel running to provide power to start the reactor. As soon as the Sound was deep enough, he would order the ship to cast off the line to the tug and he’d submerge the ship. It would be a hairy operation taking it down on battery power alone. “Control, Captain,” Phillips said into his boom microphone, “mark distance and time to the fifty-fathom curve.”

  “Captain, Navigator,” Court’s voice replied in his single earpiece headset, “forty minutes to fifty-fathom curve, distance three point three nautical miles.”

  “Present sounding?”

  “Forty-one fathoms.”

  “Very well.” Phillips looked at the officer of the deck, Lt. Peter Meritson.

  “Well, Pete, what’s Deanna think of all this?”

  “I told her it was no big deal.” Phillips looked over the lip of the sail to the port side, the Vortex missile canisters ruining the flow of water around the ship, the missiles half the length of the submarine. They were certainly ugly, he thought, wondering if the missiles would work. He looked back over at his sonar officer and officer of the deck. “Yeah, but what does she think?”

  “She thinks I’ll be wearing a flag at the bottom of the Sea of Japan.” “She said that?” “No, Deanna actually said, ‘Be careful, honey, I’ll worry about you,’ but her tone of voice said ‘You’re not coming back.’ It’s a bit much for her to take.”

  “What’s Deanna do again?”

  “She’s a nurse. Takes her show on the road, makes rounds of older folks’ homes.”

  “Tough job. Hope she’s not going out in this weather.”

  “No, she’s at her mothers’.” Phillips sighed. “Let’s get this bucket of bolts ready to submerge, Pete. I’m laying below. Rig the bridge for dive and shift control to the control room.”

  “Aye, sir. I’ll see you in fifteen.”

  Phillips took off the headset and handed it to Meritson, then took a long look around at the sea, shrouded in fog, the snow drifting heavily, densely down and vanishing as it hit the water. He consciously took a deep breath, tasting it, knowing that his air for the next days or weeks or months would be canned, flavored with ozone, sweat, sewage, oil and garbage, as well as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, amines and other chemicals used inside the ship. The breath exhaled, Phillips raised the deck grating and lowered himself into the rigged for-black tunnel, the vertical tunnel’s lights extinguished so they would not ruin the officer of the deck’s night vision. Blindly Phillips came down the long ladder, passed by feel through a smooth lip of a hatch and further down into darkness. Inside the ship now, there was still blackness surrounding him. He felt for the blackout curtain entrance, pushed through it into the dim red wash from the upper deck passageway red lights. The red light that made the ship look ghostly. He went down through the center of the ship past the opening to the crew’s mess, past the chiefs quarters— the “goat locker” it was called, in reference to the age of the ship’s senior enlisted men—down a steep set of stairs to the middle level. There in the stairwell was a large hatch leading aft. The lights in the tunnel were bright white, the red no longer applying, the difference between the ship’s operating habits starkly different for the forward tactical sailors and the aft nuclear-trained men. Phillips stepped through the hatch and into the bright reactor compartment tunnel, a narrow corridor through the shielded reactor compartment. This was the only access through the space, since the nuclear reactor was so radioactive and gave off such powerful neutron radiation. The tunnel had a central hatch that went into the reactor compartment. The hatch dogs were locked and chained with a second lock, since anyone making their way into the compartment would not survive more than ten minutes when the reactor was critical. At the end of the tunnel Phillips stepped through a hatch into the middle level of the engine room then up a ladder to what was properly known as the aft compartment upper level or ACUL for short. The upper level held the steam piping on its way to the electrical turbines and the main engines, as well as the upper few feet of the electrical generators and the main engine turbine casing. Further aft, the top of the reduction gear’s casing poked through the deckplates, requiring Phillips to walk around it until he came to the door to maneuvering, a large and soundproofed, heavily air-conditioned space, the maneuvering room, where the reactor and steam plants were controlled. He pressed the intercom button and announced himself, then opened the heavy door and walked in. The room was freezing. Walt Hornick stood in the center of the space, staring at the reactor plant control panel over the shoulder of the reactor operator. Next to Hornick was his main propulsion assistant, the MPA, a senior lieutenant named Katoris, a bone-thin blond officer who looked like he should be walking the hallways of a high school rather than the passageways of a nuclear submarine. Phillips walked next to Hornick and scanned the reactor-control panel. Phillips looked at the position of the control rods; they weren’t moving. On the surface of the console a Plexiglas cover was lifted off a black rotary switch marked manual scram. The reactor operator’s hand was on the switch while his eyes were on the panel. Nothing seemed to be happening. “Well, Eng, pretty slow day here?” Phillips said. Hornick didn’t budge, not even to look at Phillips. When he spoke it was in a quiet mutter. “It’s an emergency approach to core criticall
y, and the startup rate meter might jump at any second. We’re standing by to try to scram the plant manually if that happens, but more than likely a failure of the protection circuitry would find us blown to pieces back here before Bronson there could hit the scram switch.”

  “How did you do this?”

  “We calculated the estimated critical position of the control rods for the core based on the core life—it’s new and highly reactive—and the fission product poisons from the last operation—minimal since we’ve been at low power on our two previous startups—and the length of time we’ve been shut down. All those factors have tolerances and errors, so we backed off about 5 percent on the reactivity of the core. Once that was done it was checked and triple-checked. I did my own calculation and confirmed the reactor chiefs calcs. The book is not all that specific about this, but I took the liberty of taking the reactor-protection circuits to maximum sensitivity—the voting circuits are out, so any one channel of the protection can scram us out—but that’s all I can do.”

  “Eng, can we talk privately?” Hornick looked half-panicked at the idea of leaving the reactor plant control panel, but Phillips waved him to the door. Hornick glanced nervously at Katoris, then followed Phillips to the door and out of the space into the wider expanse of the engine room. “Sir, I think I should be back in—” Phillips interrupted with a finger over his lips.

  He put his arm around Hornick’s shoulders and started walking him slowly forward. “Walt, I could give you a long lecture about cost versus risk, about the risk thresholds of wartime operation, about the prerogatives of command, but I’m not gonna do any of that bullshit. We don’t have time for that crap.” Phillips took two Cuban cigars from inside his wet parka, unwrapped both and clipped the ends off them, handing one to Hornick. “No, no, sir, I—”