It might take hours to recover the plant and resubmerge the ship. He wondered how long it would take the Japanese to realize he was there for the taking.
USS Piranha
“Where are we now?” Phillips asked.
“Normal full power lineup,” Walt Hornick’s voice said on the phone circuit. “We should have full propulsion in about one minute.”
“Very well. Nice recovery, Eng. You’ll get a medal for this.” If they survived, Phillips thought.
Five minutes later full propulsion was back online and Piranha was back.
“Master Chief. What do you hear?”
“Sir, the news is mixed. The Destiny is gone, but the Barracuda did an emergency blow to the surface.”
“Damn. How far, XO?”
“Geo plot shows them about six miles from here, Skipper. Bearing one one five.”
“Helm, all ahead flank, right full rudder, steady one one five.” The deck rolled as the large rudder order was followed, the ship’s speed accelerating to forty-three knots. “What are you thinking. Captain?”
“If the Barracuda is on the surface they could be in trouble, especially if the Japanese come to call. Helm, all ahead emergency flank.” It took six minutes to reach the Barracuda’s position. Phillips came shallow and slow, cleared his baffles and ascended to periscope depth at the walking pace of five knots. When the periscope cleared, he could see the Barracuda rolling in the waves, no men on her deck. “Conn, Sonar, new contact, submerged Destiny II class, bearing one nine zero, contact is distant, designate Target Seven.”
“And we’re fresh out of Vortex missiles.”
“What now, Skipper?” from Whatney. “We surface and get the Barracuda crew out of there,” Phillips said. “But sir—”
“But nothing.
Admiral Pacino’s aboard. You ever consider what would happen to us if he got taken prisoner? Mr. Court, take us up and bring us alongside.”
The next hour was like a drunken memory to Pacino.
The Piranha surfaced almost right next to them, thrusting up against their hull, lines coming over, men with safety harnesses crawling over the hull. Pacino ordered the hatches opened, and the Piranha boarding party came aboard. He felt himself getting dizzy as they carried out the men. He sat at the pos-two control seat and put his head on the console, the dizziness overwhelming him. Finally he felt strong hands drag him up by the arms, and he was lifted up the ladder, feeling himself go more limp.
In a blur he found himself carried aboard the Piranha and lowered down the ladder into the hull, conveyed to a pile of blankets in the crew’s mess. He saw a face hovering over his, a voice saying Good Lord, he looks white, must be internal bleeding, and he sank in the cold and the dark and knew no more.
USS Piranha
“Diving Officer, submerge the ship to eight zero feet.”
Phillips was on the periscope, watching the empty Barracuda.
He knew what he had to do now, with the incoming Destiny II submarine. There was little choice.
It seemed to take forever for the ship to get down.
Once it did, he was ready. The torpedoes in tubes one, two, three and four were flooded, open to sea and warmed up, all of them programmed with the location to the Barracuda. There was no way he’d let the Japanese have such a prize, a technological wonder. He would sink it before he’d allow that to happen.
“Conn, Sonar, Target Seven, Destiny II-class submarine, continues inbound, signal-to-noise level increasing.”
“Sonar, Captain, does he know we’re here?”
“Don’t think so, sir.”
“Let me know.” Phillips took his face from the periscope.
“Attention in the firecontrol team. I intend to put four torpedoes into the Barracuda to keep it out of Japanese hands, then hightail it out of the Oparea and head to the deep Pacific. With luck we can be gone before Target Seven, the next Destiny, knows we’re here. We’ll be doing a periscope approach on the Barracuda.
Firing-point procedures, tubes one through four, Target Eight, surfaced US submarine.”
“Ship ready, sir.”
“Weapons ready, sir.”
“Solution pending, sir.”
“Final bearing and shoot, USS Barracuda.”
“Ready, Captain.”
Phillips pressed a red button on the periscope grip.
“Bearing mark.”
“Two seven six.”
“Range mark, three divisions in high power.”
“Range fifteen hundred yards.”
“Set,”
“Standby.”
“Shoot one,” Phillips commanded.
“Fire one.”
“Tube one fired electrically.”
The other three torpedoes were launched then, Phillips’s eye on the periscope lens. The torpedoes hit one after the other, the black rising clouds of spray and smoke from the explosions spectacular. There was not much of the ship to see on the surface to start with, only her sail and the top of her hull normally exposed, 90 percent of her below the water, but after four torpedo hits, the ship settled and sank quickly.
Nothing was left of the Barracuda except a white foam on the surface.
“Dive, make your depth six hundred feet. Helm, right five degrees rudder, steady course east, all ahead emergency flank. Lowering number-two scope.”
Phillips stood and leaned on the conn rail. He stayed and watched the chart and listened to Gambini’s reports on the Destiny II class. Target Seven, but the Japanese submarine had apparently never detected them. He seemed to be heading for the sound of the explosions coming from what used to be the Barracuda, but by the time he got there, the Piranha was long gone.
Phillips watched as the ship crossed over the boundary of the Oparea and headed east, the vibrations gone now that the Vortex tubes were no longer there, all of them jettisoned after the firing of the individual weapons.
A few hours later, Phillips slowed to flank, and six hours after that, turned off the reactor circulation pumps and coasted down to full speed. He came to periscope depth, transmitted a situation report and a request to the Mount Whitney, and went back deep.
He took one trip up to the crew’s mess, a makeshift sickbay for the men pulled off the Barracuda, and found the unconscious form of Admiral Pacino.
“Well, Admiral, you don’t know it, but you saved our lives with your little control-room simulation-trainer. If not for you I’d have run from those Nagasakis. If not for you I wouldn’t have had any Vortex missiles. You kicked their asses out here. I just wanted you to know that.”
Phillips stared at Pacino for a long time, the man’s skin white and unhealthy-looking, the eyepatch still strung across his bad eye, his lips swollen and chapped.
Finally he walked away. As he did, a slight smile seemed to come to the admiral’s lips, although no one was watching to be able to say either way.
Twelve hours later the ship surfaced a second time and discharged the patients, Pacino among them, into the Sea King helicopters for medevac to the Mount Whitney. Pacino didn’t wake up as he was loaded, and was still unconscious as he was unloaded from the chopper and hauled into sickbay. It would be two days before he opened his good eye.
Pacino slowly became aware of his surroundings. The sound of the air rushing around him, the feel of the bed, the slicing, throbbing pain in his side, the bandages there, the sheets covering him. His lips were dry. But strangely, the sensation of the bandage over his left eye was now gone. He had gotten used to that sensation but now it was absent.
He tried to open his eyes, the lids coming open, but the world appeared as if seen through Vaseline. He blinked but still couldn’t see clearly. Finally a white shape appeared over him.
“Admiral.” A woman’s voice.
Eileen Constance.
“I got your note when I was at sea,” Pacino said, his voice a hoarse croak. “Thanks… thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“Are my eyes okay?”
“They’ll be back to normal in a few days. You have some drops in them.”
“My side… ?”
“We did surgery, you were bleeding internally.”
“Were you there?”
“I assisted. And I can tell you that even flag officers are made of snakes, snails and puppy dog tails. Don’t laugh, it’ll hurt your incision.”
“So… what happened?”
“We operated and—”
“No. Japan.”
“You don’t know. Of course. You and the Piranha sank all but two of their operational submarines. Some of the others had to return to port because of failures but of the ones that worked, only two survived. President Warner received Prime Minister Kurita in the White House yesterday. He offered a full apology for attacking Greater Manchuria and invited the UN and US forces into Japan. The Destiny subs are now under UN guard, the Firestar fighters have been flown to the Philippines and all the radioactive weapons are in the custody of the US Army.”
“I missed a lot,” Pacino’s lips tried to smile.
“I was watching the news. I put some of it on a disk, in case you want to look at it later.”
“Your word’s good enough.”
“President Warner wanted to know when you came to. She sent this note. Want me to read it?”
“Sure.”
” ‘To Vice Admiral Michael Pacino’—”
“She got my rank wrong.”
“You’re always the last to know. Admiral. Your third star came in with the note. You’re confirmed by Congress.
Warner struck while the iron was hot. Should I be jealous of you two?”
“Just read the damned note,” Pacino croaked, but his chapped lips were smiling.
” ‘To Vice Admiral Michael Pacino—thanks to your courage, tactical foresight and strategic brilliance, the United States has prevailed in this struggle with Japan.
A grateful nation could never fully thank you enough, but as a measure of our esteem I have nominated you and Congress has confirmed you as Vice Admiral United States Navy. In addition, your name has been submitted by me personally for the Navy Cross, third award. With fondest wishes and hopes for your full recovery, I remain your grateful commander in chief, Jaisal Warner, President.’ Personally I think the Medal of Honor would be more appropriate,” she added.
“Why?” Pacino frowned, the expression adding to his headache.
“Ask Paully White. By the way, he’s okay. So is Captain Kane, although he had a nasty collision with a bulkhead.”
“How many men did we lose?”
“There were forty-two survivors from the Barracuda.”
Pacino bit his aching lip. That meant some eighty men had lost their lives aboard the sub, in addition to the other eight 688class subs lost in the Oparea. He couldn’t help wondering if it had been worth it, but then realized there was no telling what Japan would have become or would have done if not for Operation Enlightened Curtain.
“What now. Admiral?”
“Maybe I’ll retire to Florida. Where did you say you were going to med school?”
Her kiss felt good, but he was already sinking into a deep sleep even before she pulled her lips away.
The USS Mount Whitney steamed on. Pearl Harbor bound, the sun setting in the Pacific astern of her, the flash of green its last salute as it vanished below the horizon.
Barracuda- Final Bearing Page 39