Dangerous Grounds

by Don Keith

  Maybe he was dead and already in hell.

  Then he saw that there was someone lying next to him. The naked lump had to be Benito Luna, his cellmate. The man was slowly showing signs of life as well.

  “Benny, you okay?” Kincaid croaked. His throat felt as if he had been gargling razor blades. He swallowed hard and asked again. “You okay, partner?”

  Luna slowly rolled over and sat up, shaking his head slowly side to side.

  “What happened?” he groaned. “How’d we get here? Madre de Dios, my head may well explode!”

  Kincaid slowly swiveled around and surveyed his surroundings. The tall vegetation prevented him from seeing any details of their whereabouts other than the road stretching out in either direction.

  “I’d say that we’ve been dumped on a cane road, Benny. I can’t see anything but sugarcane.” He glanced over at his former stakeout partner. “And your bare ass. Frankly, I prefer the sugarcane.”

  “The view ain’t no better from where I sit. What the hell do you think happened? One minute we are sitting in Colonel Oretga’s little private Hilton, watching the roaches mate. The next thing I know, we wake up buck naked on a cane road.”

  Kincaid shrugged and worked to haul himself upright.

  “I’m guessing we were drugged, taken out of our cells, and dumped out here. Wherever in hell ‘here’ is. Maybe it’s the new NBI work-release program. Seems like it would’ve been simpler just to boot us out the front door.”

  Luna stood next to him, flicked the clinging gravel and twigs from his bare back and buttocks, and started walking slowly down the road.

  “Hey, where you going?” Kincaid called.

  “I’m thinking we better find some clothes before that lily white ass of yours burns to a nice cherry red. Fifty-fifty chance the closest house is this way.” He turned and kept walking.

  Kincaid shrugged, groaned one more time, and fell into step behind him.

  “Nav, why do they call this area the Dangerous Grounds? Is it really all that dangerous?” Jim Ward asked.

  He had hesitated asking the question, but he truly wanted to know. He was bent over the navigation plot table in the after starboard corner of the control room onboard the City of Corpus Christi. The Navigator, Lieutenant Commander Brad Hudson, plotted the submarine’s track through and around the jumble of rocks and coral heads that littered this part of the South China Sea. All the while, he read the GPS position from the receiver above his head and then used a pair of standard Navy-issue dividers to prick a point on the chart, precisely where the GPS said they sat.

  “Just a minute. I’m a little bit busy at the moment,” he grumbled.

  The assistant navigator, a Quartermaster First Class, studied Hudson’s work and confirmed it with, “Position checks.”

  Like a well-rehearsed chorus, the fathometer watch, stationed just outboard of where Ward stood, glanced at the LED readout on his machine and yelled out, “Depth two-zero fathoms.”

  Hudson read the depth markings on the chart. Twenty fathoms, plus Corpus Christi’s keel depth, agreed with the number he saw.

  “Depth checks.”

  He then scaled off the distance from where they were to where they had thought they were. The difference was their set and drift, the cumulative correction in the dead reckoning track. Even though the nuclear sub used the latest GPS receivers, super accurate inertial navigation, and digital tracking, they still maintained paper charts and manual plots as well. Submariners are, by nature, conservative. They always have a backup to the backup. Young Ward wouldn’t have been one bit surprised if the Nav pulled some antique brass sextant from under the chart table to shoot a noon sun line.

  Hudson finally glanced up from his plot.

  “See the names on these rocks, Mister Ward?” He pointed to a scattering of dozens of tiny dots with curiously English or Dutch names. “Anything you notice different about them?”

  Ward read a few of them. Cornwallis Shoal. Fiery Cross Reef. Prince of Wales Bank.

  “I don’t know. They seem like sort of funny names for this part of the world. More like what you’d expect in the English Channel. Or maybe like names of ships.”

  “Damn good guess there, Ward. They’re named after ships that ran aground there. Mostly clippers during the opium and tea days out of China. You can still see the bones of a few of them.” Hudson tapped the point of his metal dividers on the representation of a rock to the south and east of their position. “Right here is where the Darter ran aground during World War II chasing after a Jap cruiser. She ran herself up on the rocks so far that Dace spent most of a night trying to pull her off and couldn’t. They finally had to take the crew off and destroy her with their deck gun so the Imperial Navy couldn’t salvage anything. It pays to be real careful around here.”

  Ward nodded. So that was why the skipper insisted on surfacing the night before. And why he spent most of the night up on the bridge. The guy might be a jerk, but he was still a damn good sailor.

  Hudson reached under the plot table then and dragged out a large wooden box. He hefted it up onto the table and flipped open the heavy brass hasp that held it closed. Inside, resting securely on the green felt lining, was a sextant, Navy issue, Model 20.

  “We’re finally clear of the rocks for a bit. This would be a good time to teach you some of the art and science of marine navigation. Go find your running mate, Midshipman Campbell. We’ve got just enough time to do the calculations before we shoot a noon sun line.”

  Ward grinned at the accuracy of his sextant premonition and ran off to find Campbell. He was in the sonar shack, still trying to decipher the intricacies of a passive narrowband analyzer. Campbell seemed fascinated with tickling the secrets out of the sounds that floated around in the ocean. He had been spending hours and hours under Petty Officer Stumpf’s tutelage. Ward was afraid Campbell would start talking dolphin soon.

  “Come on,” he said as he tugged on Campbell’s sleeve. “You ain’t gonna believe this. Did anybody at Ohio State ever volunteer to teach you how to use a sextant?”

  “You gotta be kidding. Where are we going to use a sextant in Columbus? On the Olentangy? Why?”

  “Cause Nav wants us up on the bridge to shoot a noon sun line. Something about always having a backup and ‘What would you do if all the satellites were down?’ Anyway, hurry up.”

  Ward rushed back to the nav table to grab the sextant and shove it into the leather and canvas bridge bag. He then stepped across the periscope stand to get to the base of the long vertical ladder that led up to the bridge.

  The forward part of the submarine’s control room contrasted markedly with the tension and bustle going on around the navigation plot. It seemed much quieter and emptier with the boat on the surface. The Officer of the Deck was up on the bridge. The Diving Officer and stern planesman watches were both secured. Only the Chief of the Watch (COW) and the helmsman, along with the Fire Controlman of the Watch (FTOW) inhabited the forward part of the control room. The FTOW had his eye to the eyepiece on number two scope, slowly walking a never-ending circle as he lugged the scope around, using the periscope’s height and magnification to search for anything that might come over the horizon.

  The XO sat on one of the green Naugahyde-covered bench lockers that served as seats for anyone using the fire control computer consoles. He was reading from the endless stack of files that seemed to follow the XO around; while he kept an eye on what was happening in control. Ward had heard his father call it “providing adult supervision.”

  Young Ward stopped at the base of the bridge trunk and yelled across to the COW, “Request permission to lay to the bridge to shoot a sun line.”

  “You ain’t going nowhere until you put on a safety harness,” the COW barked back.

  He tossed a jumble of bright orange webbing and metal buckles to Ward. The harness would keep him firmly attached to the boat while he was on the bridge and clipped in. It wouldn’t do to have anyone fall over the side of the submarine.
If the drop from the bridge into the water didn’t kill him, the chances of the boat stopping, turning around, coming back, and finding him floating alone in the vast, open ocean weren’t good. Ward stepped into the harness, jerked the straps up around his crotch; and then pulled it snug over his shoulders and around the waist.

  The COW then grabbed a 21MC microphone and said, “Officer of the Deck, request permission for the Nav and two midshipman to lay to the bridge to shoot a sun line.”

  A speaker above the ballast control panel squawked back, “Send them up.”

  Ward slung the rope handle for the canvas bucket over his shoulder and lugged it up the long climb to the bridge. He felt the gentle breeze flowing up from inside the submarine as he climbed. That told him that the boat was surface ventilating, using the main induction fan to draw fresh air in through the snorkel mast and distribute it around the boat. The air was then exhausted up and out the bridge trunk.

  Ward couldn’t help it. He mentally reviewed the lineup for the various fans and dampers that made the surface ventilation procedure possible. The COB’s schooling had become deeply ingrained in the young midshipman by now. Outside air was sucked in through the snorkel mast and dumped into the fan room. Then most of the air was pulled back aft to the engine room by fan 23. From there it was pushed around the boat before it went up and out the bridge trunk. The book maintained that the complete volume of air would be exchanged in a couple of hours by employing this method. They could do it much faster using either the low-pressure blower or the diesel to exhaust the air overboard, but there was no need for either of these big, noisy devices today. Those procedures were to be used in far more threatening times, when they needed to take in life-giving air and push out noxious gases or smoke.

  When he got to the top of the ladder and climbed through the upper bridge access hatch, Jim Ward realized that he was gazing at two pairs of feet. He was staring up into the cramped bridge cockpit at the top of the sail.

  “Request permission to come up,” he hollered.

  “Come on up,” LTJG Jeff Winslow answered.

  Ward wormed his way around the heavy steel stanchions and climbed the last couple of ladder rungs to finally pull himself up to the cockpit.

  It was beautiful up here. He was gazing out toward an impossibly blue sky that melted into a blue-green sea somewhere at the horizon. Dad said that this color of water meant it was shallow, not like the pure blue deep water. There appeared to be a couple of small rainsqualls far to the west, darkening small bits of sea on what was an otherwise perfect day. A warm breeze brought a tang of salt to his nose.

  Wow! So this was what it was like at sea. No wonder Dad loved it so!

  “Don’t stand there like a damn tourist,” Hudson growled from below. “Campbell and I would like to breathe some fresh air too, instead of staring at your ass.”

  Ward looked down to see the Nav poke his head up level with the cockpit deck. There wasn’t room up here for Winslow, the lookout, and the three of them. Now what?

  Jeff Winslow solved the problem. He jumped up out of the cockpit, onto the top of the sail.

  “Clip in and hop up here, Mister Ward. There isn’t room for all of us in there, I don’t care how friendly we are with each other.”

  Ward clipped his safety rope around a hinge on the bridge clamshell and tugged it to make sure it was firmly attached to the boat and to his harness. He then scooted his butt up onto the slightly rounded, black steel top of the sail.

  Winslow pulled a microphone up to where he stood and ordered, “Chief of the Watch, bump up number one BRA-34 one second.”

  A roughly elliptical eighteen-inch-long patch of black steel slowly rose a couple of feet out of the sail and then stopped. At the center of the ellipse was a three-inch diameter circle. The steel formed the top of a fairing that, when fully extended, protected the more delicate radio mast from being battered by the waves while the sub was at periscope depth. The smaller circular hole allowed the active part of the antennae to pass through, reaching high into the air to get a clear signal.

  Winslow sat down on the fairing and sighed contentedly.

  “Ah, perfect. Just made for sitting. Lookout, pass me some coffee and life will be complete.”

  The lookout reached outboard one of the clamshells and retrieved a metal thermos and a white china coffee cup. He passed the cup full of steaming liquid up to Winslow as Hudson and Campbell clipped in and climbed up.

  With the sky and sea melting into the distance, the mighty beast below him humming along contentedly, and the warm, damp sea air touching his face, Jim Ward knew once and for all that he was exactly where he was supposed to be. Not many men ever got such a chance or came to such a realization.

  Jim Ward had just done both.

  “A thousand pardons, mullah,” Manju Shehab said, quietly enough so the men working below them on the cave floor could not hear his words. “But aren’t we moving too fast with the next step? The men only completed the attack in Zamboanga last night. The NBI is searching everywhere for us. Shouldn’t we stay out of sight for a while?”

  Nurizam glowered silently at his lieutenant for a moment before answering.

  “Did you follow my orders precisely with those two infidel JDIA agents?”

  “Yes, Master,” Shehab answered, his head bowed. He had seen the irritated look in his leader’s eyes when his decision had been questioned. “We left them about a mile from the drug dump. They will discover the heroin cache and the evidence that Sui Kia Shun is the one behind the prison attack. I personally hid the Hezzbellah tracts and the Kuala Lumpur-to-Damascus plane tickets. They will find them with even the most cursory search. But I still don’t understand what we are doing.”

  The two of them stood together in the cave on Palawan watching their men loading two low, black cigarette boats with fuel and weapons.

  “Good. At least you did not challenge that order. That will send them on their way. They will deduce that Sui Kia Shun is fronting for Islamic terrorists. Selling their drugs to fund the fight. The American JDIA will use every resource in their arsenal to destroy Shun. How deliciously convoluted,” Nurizam chortled. “We use the American fear of our brothers to destroy our benefactor’s enemy.”

  “Now I understand,” Shehad said meekly.

  “Now to your impertinent questions,” Nurizam said. “Tonight it must be. The American submarine we seek is on the surface, steaming just east of the Spratlys at this very moment. Our lookouts reported them passing Nanshan Island at first light. We attack at midnight. That will give us just enough time to bring the submarine here and get under cover before the sun rises. Now, I suggest we get underway unless you have any other silly questions about the plan.” But then he raised his right hand in a sign of blessing and his eyes seemed to soften ever so slightly. “May Allah grant us a great success tonight.”

  Shehab accepted the blessing with a nod and a bow and quickly climbed down to hop into the first boat. The engines growled to life. Nurizam followed into the second one. The boats slowly idled out the cave entrance, their exhaust burbling in their wake. It was a short jaunt down the twisting channel through the mangrove swamp until they emerged into open water. By the time Shehab could feel the ocean swell under his feet, the boats were running at almost full throttle, their noses pointed toward the open ocean.

  More specifically, they were powering toward a part of the sea that had long since been ominously named on the charts “The Dangerous Grounds.”

  24

  The sun beat down without mercy. It was a white-hot orb that seemed to rain fire directly onto Tom Kincaid’s naked body. The JDIA agent could feel the blisters already starting to form across his broad back and shoulders. He hadn’t found the time to go to the beach in years. Had never been in a tanning bed in his life. Putting on a shirt…if he ever found one…was going to be painful.

  “Hey, old man,” Benito Luna yelled from about a hundred yards ahead of Kincaid. “There is some kind of camp up here. Looks
like a lot of truck tracks. And some junk thrown around. Maybe there’s something we can use, or at least some shade.”

  Kincaid hurried as best he could. The bottoms of his bare feet burned from walking a couple of miles on the baking hot red clay cane road. It was still better than the razor sharp cane fronds he could see and the snakes he couldn’t in the dense growth that crowded alongside the road.

  Luna, the liaison and former cellmate, didn’t seem bothered by their predicament. Kincaid assumed it had to be something to do with his Filipino genes, or skin toughened against this kind of abuse while growing up in this part of the world.

  Kincaid felt a blister on the bottom of his left foot finally pop. He grunted as the pain spread up his leg. Well, at least it now matched the throbbing of his right, evening out the limp a little.

  “They leave any beer on ice?” he yelled at Luna. “I want a cold San Mig. Better make that three. One to drink and two to rest my feet on.”

  “Sorry there, boss,” Luna answered. “Just a bunch of vehicle tracks and a lean-to hacked out of sugarcane. At least we can get in the shade in here.”

  Kincaid couldn’t see Bennie Luna, but he was close enough that he could hear him rustling about in the cane.

  “Hey! Guess what I found,” Luna yelped. “Must be ten…fifteen kilos of powder stashed back here. Looks like someone got chased off in a hurry. Ain’t nobody stupid enough to leave that much stuff lying around on purpose in a cane field.”

  As Kincaid stumbled off the road and into the campsite, he met Luna coming his way, lugging a couple of large plastic-covered bundles. Looked like a couple of bags of flour. Luna opened one of the bags and showed Kincaid the contents. It was filled with a suspicious-looking white powdery substance.

  The site wasn’t much of a camp, just a rough lean-to shed, likely for cane field workers to seek shelter from the blazing sun or sudden thunderstorms. It was barely off the road. There was hardly enough room to park a couple of trucks alongside the small, rough lean-to without their rear ends jutting out into traffic. Someone had hacked out just enough space so trucks could get off the cane road and sit for a while so they could be unloaded.