Dangerous Grounds

by Don Keith

  “I…I’m sorry, sir. I failed on the mission and…”

  Donnegan held up his hand and glowered into the camera.

  “Ain’t anybody failed here but Dr. Kinnowitz and me. You did the job we sent you over there to do. You confirmed that the nukes had been in that shed and that’s a hell of a lot more than we knew for sure before you and your men went in there. Then you got your men back out of there without the DPRK bastards ever knowing you were there and raising a ruckus they’d be talking about on CNN long after we’re all in the graveyard.”

  “But, sir, I...”

  “Damn it, sailor! There are no ‘buts’ on this one. I don’t want to hear any more of this self-centered apologizing crap.” Donnegan was almost roaring by the time he finished. He leaned toward the camera. “This is a team and the team succeeds or fails together. Didn’t anyone teach you that at BUD-S?” He lowered the tone of his voice to a more conversational level. “Now, son, why don’t you tell us precisely what you saw out there in that damn shed?”

  Lee Dawn Shun paced the polished teak deck of her junk, strolling from stem to stern and back again. The ship’s large, square, red sails were taking advantage of the gentle tropical breeze to slowly move them down the Gulf of Thailand, her bow pointed in the general direction of Singapore. The dark, lush, green hills of Malaysia were just visible to starboard. The scene could have been taken from a Tung Dynasty watercolor had it not been for the half dozen tankers that were sharing the narrow waterway with them.

  Shun didn’t seem to be taking time to appreciate the calming beauty of the tableau though. She held a cell phone close to her ear. The faint crackle of the encrypted satellite link was making Sun Rey’s voice a little difficult to understand. She most certainly wanted to hear every word he was saying. Her chief financial officer was relaying the latest demand from the terrorist Sabul u Nurizam.

  “Nurizam says that he needs another ten million U. S. dollars in order to put his plan in play. Something about needing a crane barge and to pay for fentanyl. It’s apparently some Russian gas they use for crowd control. No idea what he needs that for.”

  Shun sneered as she made the turn at the bow of her ship and started back toward the stern again.

  “That little bastard has been chiseling every penny he can get from us. I believe he is taking advantage of our need for his services, Sun. I swear, we might as well give him the keys to all our Hong Kong accounts and kiss them goodbye. Still, it is a small price to pay if he can help us bring down my father.”

  Rey seemed to ignore her tirade.

  “He says he will be ready to move in a week. Then he promises that things will suddenly become very interesting. He suggests that you stay well clear of Singapore, starting in three weeks.”

  “Did he share with us, his trusted business partners, exactly what he has planned for Singapore?”

  “No, he won’t say a word. Not that we really should ask. It will most likely be another shooting of some kind or another of his martyrs will blow himself up at a McDonalds. Or maybe he’s going to blow up a school bus again.”

  Shun nodded as if Rey were standing beside her instead of sitting in his hotel room in Bangkok.

  “You just make very sure that none of this can ever be traced back to us,” she ordered. “I don’t mind paying for Nurizam’s little revolts, but I don’t want to be tied to any second rate terrorist or his silly plots.” She stopped pacing and leaned against the rail. Still she did not notice the distant shoreline or the other boats that steamed past them. “Any word on blasting those JDIA agents out of Colonel Ortega’s little jail? I ordered that a couple of weeks ago and I have heard nothing.”

  “Nurizam mumbled something about it taking time. He had to get his people in place without raising any suspicion in Zamboanga. I’m guessing that he really doesn’t want to do this.”

  Shun clenched the phone tightly. The veins on her neck stood out. Her eyes flashed lightning. She was not accustomed to being stonewalled.

  “I don’t care what that flea-bitten little dog wants to do! I’ve paid him over fifty million already. He’ll do what I say, when I say. I want those agents out and pointed at Sui Kia Shun’s castle. They are the gun I’m going to use to blast father from his mountain-top. Make it happen!”

  She snapped the phone shut and stomped down the ladder toward her stateroom. In her anger, she had not noticed the rusted hull of a nondescript freighter slowly passing the junk a few thousand yards to starboard. The ship flew a South Korean flag. The words Dawn Princess were barely visible through the rust stains across her stern.

  Jim Ward wiped the sweat from his forehead. There was nothing easy about any of this. Master Chief DiAnaggio ran a tough school. Ward chewed on the pencil eraser, spit out bits of rubber, then drew a few final lines on the sheet of paper before him.

  The COB had told each of them to draw a system lineup to use for hovering if the trim pump just happened to burn up one day. He expected it to be right. Ward watched a drop of perspiration fall on the paper as he labeled the last valve and then handed it over to DiAnaggio. Chief Suarez finished his own effort a few seconds later.

  The gnarled little Master Chief grabbed both papers and tossed them onto the table.

  “All right, you two,” he growled. “Grab another cup of coffee and sit down here while we go over what you screwed up this time. One of these days, one of you may accidentally get it right.”

  The Goat Locker, the Chiefs’ Quarters, on Corpus Christi was quiet, empty except for the three of them. Ward realized that he was spending more and more time here lately, learning seat-of-the-pants submarining from the COB and his chiefs. The close-knit little group seemed to sincerely want to help him, despite their grumbling and profane insults. Ward still had not gone back into the control room, not since the day that the captain had kicked him out. There had been plenty to do, learning the hows and whys of the complex systems on this nuclear submarine. He now knew where every piece of emergency equipment was stowed. He knew he could find every emergency air breathing connection in pitch dark. He was no stranger to the shaft alley and he could pump the sanitary tanks in his sleep.

  The COB looked up at Ward as the Midshipman hovered over his shoulder. He was scowling.

  “Not bad, Mister Ward. You almost got it right. Using the trim and drain system lined up for hovering with the drain pump will work. But you forgot to line up the priming system.” He shoved the drawing back at the young Midshipman. “Just how do you expect to use the system if you can’t even draw a prime on it?”

  “Well, I thought…,” Ward stammered, but he knew DiAnaggio was right . “Guess I forgot,” he said sheepishly.

  “Damn it Mister Ward,” DiAnaggio growled. “Use that head for something besides growing hair. Think for a minute. When you get a problem you ain’t sure what the procedure says, figure out what all you need to do. Then figure out how to do it.”

  Ward nodded that he understood.

  “Look, you’re trying to learn in a few months what it has taken us years to get down. You’re doing fine if you’d just quit worrying so much about messing up and use your noggin,” DiAnaggio said. “Now, suppose you tell Chief Suarez what a priming system does, seeing as how he didn’t put one in either.”

  Ward reached back into his memory banks and pulled out something he had read in a manual somewhere.

  “The priming system takes a suction at various places on the systems by means of a vacuum pump and a series of ball valves.”

  DiAnaggio interrupted him.

  “Mister Ward, you’re just reciting what the tech manual says. You need to think practical. All it does is suck on the suction header of the system so that air pressure pushes the water up to the pump’s suction. You don’t do that and the pump can’t pump. Real simple. Now suppose you two go back and put your hands on every inch of the trim priming system. I want you up close and personal with every valve. Now!”

  Ward slumped out of the Chiefs’ Quarters and headed down
the mid-ships passageway. Chief Suarez followed a step behind.

  “Damn Chief, I’m tired,” Ward grumbled. “I was planning on some rack time. I’m standing the mid-watch with the aux electrician forward. We’re going over battery charging ventilation lineups. The only time I’ll have to sleep is the next couple of hours.”

  Suarez clapped the young Midshipman on the shoulder.

  “Welcome to the world of a non-qual. Ain’t likely you’ll ever forget about the priming system again or any detail of how you make it work. Me either. You’ll wish someday all your professors at Annapolis were like Chief DiAnaggio.”

  Just then, the boat’s executive officer, Bryan Hilliker, came down the ladder from upper level and stopped them.

  “Mister Ward, where have you been hiding? I’ve been looking all over for you. Skipper wants you in control. Right now.”

  Ward looked hard at the XO. The Captain had been very definite when he told him that he was not to show his face in the boat’s control room until he was ready for anything that might be thrown at him. He couldn’t help but believe he was about to face another humiliation.

  Hilliker read Ward’s mind.

  “We’re going to run some drills and you, you lucky son of a bitch, are the Diving Officer Under Instruction.”

  Ward was really confused now. Being on watch for casualty drills was usually the final test before being ready to stand watch. There were hundreds of possible things that could go wrong. He corrected himself. There were thousands. The Diving Officer had to be ready for all of them.

  Before they started back up the ladder, Hilliker whispered so that Ward could barely hear him, but so no one else could.

  “It’s time for us to surface to run through the Dangerous Grounds. A flooding drill should get us on the roof.” Then he raised his voice back to normal. “Mister Ward, what are you doing still standing here? Get up to control.”

  “Aye, sir,” Ward snapped back and bounded up the ladder. He could handle flooding. The COB and his little impromptu submarine school had hammered that procedure into his head until he could do it in his sleep. Just remember, if it isn’t isolated, or threatens propulsion, or affects the boat’s trim, then emergency blow to the roof when the Officer of the Deck told him to. Otherwise ring up “Ahead Full” and come to one-five-zero feet.

  Easy.

  Ward walked into the control room as if he had just stepped into a fresh cup of black coffee. The room was pitch black. He could barely see a few tiny, red light bulbs glimmering in the darkness.

  “Mister Ward!” Commander Devlin’s voice came from somewhere ahead, from the general direction of the periscope stand. His words seemed friendly enough. “Glad you finally arrived. Me, the watch, most of the crew of this submarine…we’ve been waiting for you to grace us with your presence.”

  Ward wasn’t sure if the Skipper was really being friendly or if there was more sarcasm in his voice than he noticed. Maybe he felt bad about the way he had treated him before. Or maybe he was setting him up for another failure.

  Ward chose to ignore any hidden meaning in the captain’s words. It really didn’t matter. He would succeed or fail on his own tonight.

  Without hesitation, he climbed into the diving officer’s chair and quickly looked at the sub’s trim. Everything appeared to be okay. Maybe just a little heavy aft.

  “Chief of the Watch, pump two thousand from after trim to sea,” Ward said, proud of how authoritative his voice sounded in his own ears.

  The boat acted just as he expected her to. The stern planesman zeroed his planes and Corpus stayed rock steady. All those hours of work were paying off. This was already beginning to feel natural to him, as if he was born to be in a submarine’s control room.

  “Anytime you’re ready, Mister Ward,” Devlin said, the edge a little more evident in his voice this time. “We’ve got things to do, but I do want you to feel all snuggly up there.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ward answered crisply. “Trim sat, sir. Ready to go.”

  Suddenly the collision alarm screamed, drowning out everything else in control.

  Everyone instantly knew what that meant. There was flooding on the boat. Somewhere the cold, dark waters of the Pacific Ocean were rushing into the “people tank,” the inside of the submarine. Flooding had found someone. The old submariner saying, ‘you will find a leak, flooding finds you’ was being played out.

  Ward locked his eyes on the depth gauges and the angle indicators. There didn’t seem to be any change with any of them. She was still holding, rock steady.

  Then the 4MC emergency announcing speaker blared, “Flooding! Flooding! Flooding in engine room forward!”

  Instinctively Ward reached down and spun the engine order telegraph to “Ahead Full” and barked out a series of commands he had previously only uttered to Chief DiAnaggio. Or to his own reflection in the mirror.

  “Make your depth one-five-zero feet. Full rise on the fairwater planes. Ten degree up angle.”

  The sub sprang forward and started up. Ward could feel her responding to the actions of his commands. The depth gauge started to reel off the numbers.

  This was too easy, Ward thought. There was no way that Devlin was going to let this drill go by with him merely driving up shallow. There had to be a trick. It didn’t take long for him to see it coming.

  The Engine Order Telegraph spun to “All Stop.” The sub immediately slowed and slid to a stop in the depths. The up angle was getting worse. Something was driving the stern down, something very heavy.

  “Captain, loss of propulsion!” Ward yelled. “Fifteen degree up angle and getting worse. Recommend emergency blowing to the surface.”

  “Mister Ward, are you sure?” Devlin asked.

  “Captain, at this depth and angle, we have less than five seconds to decide. We need to blow.”

  Devlin turned to the Chief of the Watch and ordered, “Emergency blow to the surface. Sound three blasts on the diving alarm.”

  The Chief of the Watch stood and reached over his head to grab two brass knobs. When he shoved them both forward, the control room filled with a roar like a run-away 747 was blasting through. The boat rocked a little, but otherwise held still for a moment.

  Then the depth gauge started to slowly reel up. The upward speed increased and everyone on the sub could feel the motion as they bolted for the surface of the sea.

  “Conn, maneuvering.” Kevin Winslow’s voice quivered as it came over the 7MC announcer. “Loss of both main engines, both turbine generators. Low vacuum both main condensers.”

  That explained why the Corpus’s giant screw had stopped driving her to the surface. They had shut off seawater cooling to the condensers in an effort to isolate the flooding. The steam valves had tripped shut to prevent the big condensers from filling with high-pressure steam and exploding. Without the condensers, there was no way for the steam to drive the main engines. They were effectively dead in the water.

  With the ballast tanks blown free of seawater, the emergency ascension toward the surface was well underway. The bow started to come up higher still as Corpus raced upward.

  “Full dive on the stern planes,” Ward shouted over the roar. “Limit it to a twenty up.”

  He watched the boat respond for a second. Something didn’t feel right. It seemed as if something was holding them back, pushing down on the stern, threatening to keep them in the deep.

  A light went on in Jim Ward’s head. He turned and yelled the command to be heard over the noise.

  “Chief of the Watch, line up to pump from after trim overboard. Pump at max amps. Too much water aft.”

  The sub now rocketed toward the surface. The angle was getting worse, but maybe not quite as fast. They had to get to the surface before the increasing angle dumped all the life-saving air out of the bottom of the ballast tanks. There wasn’t time to calculate it, but somewhere in his head Jim Ward felt like they would make it.

  Corpus Christi leaped out of the Pacific into the warm tropical nig
ht and splashed back down with a roar. If anyone had been there to see it, it would have looked like a giant black whale leaping out of the sea and flopping down onto its belly in a towering fountain of pure white foam.

  Ward smiled. The COB’s seat-of-the-pants lessons had actually worked. They were safely up in the air again. Now it was time to find out what the problem was and fix it.

  “Conn, maneuvering,” the speaker blared. “Seven feet of water in the engine room bilge. Flooding has stopped. We can’t find the source until we pump the water overboard.”

  Ward turned to the Chief of the Watch and ordered, “Line up to pump the engine room bilges with the trim pump.”

  “Mister Ward, what are you doing?” Captain Devlin asked.

  “Sir, I am pumping the engine room bilges with the trim pump,” he answered, without hesitation. “With seven feet of water in the bilges, chances are we got the drain pump flooded during the blow and it’s not going to be of much use to us. If we try to start it, the short circuit could hurt someone. This is the fastest way to de-water.”

  Ward could almost feel Devlin nod grudgingly. The skipper’s voice was much softer when he said, “Very well, Mister Ward. Not bad.”

  Ward was still smiling as he turned back to the Chief of the Watch and said, “And don’t forget to cross-connect the priming systems.”

  22

  Sabul u Nurizam sat and intently stared across the street at the high stonewall. A casual passerby would mistake him for an ancient peasant, broken before his time by decades of field labor. Nurizam had spent hours perfecting his disguise. His hair and beard were white. Thick make-up added deep furrows to his brow and heavy, dark bags under his eyes. A loose and frayed tunic and badly faded pantaloons completed the costume.

  It was vital that he watch this evening’s activities, but his profile was too well known to Colonel Ortega’s men for him to sit here so freely. He would be surrounded by armed police in seconds and then hustled inside the granite walls.