Dangerous Grounds
Page 41
There were several seconds of silence on the circuit. Jim Ward had almost concluded that they had lost contact when he again heard his father’s strong, sure voice.
“Just stay where you are, Midshipman Ward. We can’t have you moving around out there until we get someone onboard to verify those nukes you have down in the torpedo room are safe.” There was a pause, then his dad was speaking again. “And Mr. Ward, you don’t know how good it is to hear your voice.”
Joe Petranko heard the command pilot report back to Higgins. The man’s voice was strong and sure but his words were loaded.
“Bingo for fuel to White Beach. With the help of this tail wind, expect to have less than two minutes fuel reserve White Beach.”
The Tactical Action Officer on Higgins replied immediately.
“Roger bingo White Beach. Vector two-two zero. Shift flight control Kadena, three-two point four megahertz. Higgins sends Bravo-Zulu.”
The MH-60R was already pointed to the southwest and climbing when Petranko heard, “Copy vector two-two-zero. Copy Bravo Zulu. Shifting to three-two point four. Tango sierra flight out.”
The chopper was headed toward ground solid enough to land on. With a bit of help from the raging storm, it might just make it.
The massive typhoon bore down with a vengeance on the Philippines. The satellite images showed the eye of the mammoth storm heading straight for the northern head of the island of Luzon. The cyclonic pattern was so large that storm warnings stretched from Kyushu in the north to Papua, New Guinea, in the south. Merchant shipping all around the western Pacific had long since been directed on storm avoidance routes. Ashore, shops and houses were being boarded up and people were evacuating the low-lying coastal areas, migrating to higher ground. No one was taking any chances with a category-five typhoon of this size.
None of the information about the deadly storm made it to Sabul u Nurizam. Not that it would have mattered. He was convinced that Allah protected him from such hazards.
The lights of Jolo, the major city on Jolo Island, were passing astern. Nurizam felt the uneasy pitch and heave from the boat as it strained to plough through the building sea. The towering waves and whistling winds slowed their progress. Traveling down the Sulu Archipelago and then following the Borneo coast to Sarawak would just take too long at this rate.
The pilot sat hunched over the controls in sullen silence. Nurizam had flown into a rage when the pilot had suggested that they wait out the rough weather in Jolo. The man had no faith in the power of Allah, Nurizam had told him.
Sabul stood and made his unsteady way back to the pilot’s open cockpit. A blast of wind-whipped spray broke over the bow and soaked him just as he emerged from the cabin. Nurizam shuddered. For a tropical sea, the water seemed icy cold.
Nurizam yelled into the pilot’s ear to change course and head straight across the open waters of the Sulu Sea. That route would take almost two hundred kilometers off their trip. They would be in Sarawak twelve hours earlier. He pointed to a new course forty-five degrees to the starboard of their current heading.
The pilot shook his head violently and pointed straight ahead. The open water was far too dangerous in this little boat.
Nurizam shoved the pilot out of his seat and kicked the man as he fell to the deck. Such weaklings had no business doing Allah’s work. He kicked the man again. Without hesitation, he grabbed the poor man’s collar and heaved him over the side. Nurizam ignored the screams for mercy as the boat sped away from where he bobbed in the heavy seas. Within seconds he was too far astern for his pleading to be heard over the roaring of the wind.
Nurizam swung the wheel around until the compass lined up on the new course and then locked the wheel in position.
He was almost half way across the open sea when the real force of the typhoon caught up with him. The wind and waves made short work of demolishing the little boat, smashing it into an unrecognizable jumble of wreckage as if it were made of Styrofoam.
Nurizam was tossed from the boat into the cold, dark sea. Blind terror enveloped him. He struggled frantically to fight the surging waves, to keep his head above water, but the spray was too thick to breathe.
Surely this couldn’t be the end. He was Allah’s messenger. Certainly he would be protected.
Then, miraculously, his flailing hand struck something solid. He grasped the piece of flotsam. It was a cushion from the boat. So Allah was merely testing his faith, protecting him after all.
He was pulling the cushion under his chest, trying to keep his face from the water, when the first shark struck. The predator tore off most of his left leg with one swipe of its razor teeth. A moment later, the second shark ripped away most all of Nurizam’s body from the pelvis down.
Allah did ultimately show some measure of mercy to the misguided servant.
He made certain that the feeding frenzy was quick and complete.
Epilogue
The typhoon thundered across the Philippines and whipped the South China Sea into a foamy froth before blowing itself out over the southern provinces of China. By the time it zigzagged into the highlands of Thailand, it was little more than a gusty rainsquall, but one that had left a wide swath of death and destruction in its path.
No one paid any attention to the tangled wreckage that had once been a very fast and very expensive motor launch. It was merely one more pile of storm-flung flotsam that washed up on Sarawak’s shore in the typhoon’s wake.
No one ever knew that Sabul u Nurizam had been right in his final pronouncement. Allah had called him to Sarawak. He just never understood why.
Lee Dawn Shun quietly stepped through the curtain of vegetation at the jungle’s edge. After a week of dodging her father’s henchmen, skulking along over little used trails in the dead of the night, she had finally arrived at this safe place. Only Sun Rey, the wiry, surprising little Montengard, had survived the harrowing trek with her.
Lee Dawn relied on the last of her strength to scurry across the open field and up the short ramp into the luxurious interior of the Gulfstream. The jet was already rolling down the rough taxiway as she sank into one of the overstuffed leather seats. The pilot spooled up the twin Rolls Royce jet engines and began his takeoff roll as he turned onto the centerline of the runway.
Less than two minutes had elapsed from the time Lee Dawn Shun left the steaming jungle nightmare. Now she sat in luxury as the jet’s air system gave blew gentle coolness across her dirty, sweaty body. Sun Rey handed her a crystal tumbler filled with ice and cognac.
“Here, drink this,” he said. “You look as if you need it.”
She took the tumbler and swallowed a healthy belt.
“Thank you, but I still get first privileges on the shower.” She stood and slowly walked toward the private compartment at the rear of the cabin, already undoing the buttons on her sweat-stained shirt. Just before she disappeared through the doorway, she turned back. “Then we need to discuss the next plan we will follow to defeat my father.”
The wind, a final gasp from the dying typhoon, riffled the blue surface of Agana Harbor before raising swirls of dust on the cement pier. Jon Ward stood there, one hand shielding his eyes from the disappearing sun. His other arm was firmly wrapped around his wife’s waist, holding her close to him, making certain she was still there, still alive..
Out in the harbor, one of the blue and white tugs nudged up against the round, black side of the submarine, gently persuading its bulk toward the pier. The toot of the tug’s whistle disturbed the quiet dusk as it edged away from the sub.
“Jon, he looks so much like you twenty years ago,” Ellen Ward whispered in her husband’s ear. “Standing up there on the sail, king of the world, and proud of it.”
Jim Ward stood atop The City of Corpus Christi’s tall black sail alongside Brian Hilliker, the sub’s XO, and the harbor pilot. Young Ward was barking out orders with only occasional suggestions from his two mentors. The silver dolphins on his chest flashed in the waning sunlight.
&
nbsp; Ward chuckled as he watched his son guide The City of Corpus Christi back to her home.
“Not bad. Not bad at all for a beginner,” he said quietly, but the pride was evident in his voice, in the tilt of his chin.
Ellen pulled his arm even tighter around her waist and pressed her face against his chest.
“Must be in his blood,” she said.
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About the Authors
Commander George Wallace
Commander George Wallace retired to the civilian business world in 1995, after twenty-two years of service on nuclear submarines. He served on two of Admiral Rickover's famous "Forty One for Freedom", the USS John Adams SSBN 620 and the USS Woodrow Wilson SSBN 624, during which time he made nine one-hundred-day deterrent patrols through the height of the Cold War.
Commander Wallace served as Executive Officer on the Sturgeon class nuclear attack submarine USS Spadefish, SSN 668. Spadefish and all her sisters were decommissioned during the downsizings that occurred in the 1990's. The passing of that great ship served as the inspiration for "Final Bearing."
Commander Wallace commanded the Los Angeles class nuclear attack submarine USS Houston, SSN 713 from February 1990 to August 1992. During this tour of duty that he worked extensively with the SEAL community developing SEAL/submarine tactics. Under Commander Wallace, the Houston was awarded the CIA Meritorious Unit Citation.
Commander Wallace lives with his wife, Penny, in Alexandria, Virginia.
Don Keith
Don Keith is a native Alabamian and attended the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa where he received his degree in broadcast and film with a double major in literature. He has won numerous awards from the Associated Press and United Press International for news writing and reporting. He is also the only person to be named Billboard Magazine "Radio Personality of the Year" in two formats, country and contemporary. Keith was a broadcast personality for over twenty years and also owned his own consultancy, co-owned a Mobile, Alabama, radio station, and hosted and produced several nationally syndicated radio shows.
His first novel, "The Forever Season." was published in fall 1995 to commercial and critical success. It won the Alabama Library Association's "Fiction of the Year" award in 1997. His second novel, "Wizard of the Wind," was based on Keith's years in radio. Keith next released a series of young adult/men’s adventure novels co-written with Kent Wright set in stock car racing, titled "The Rolling Thunder Stock Car Racing Series." Keith has most recently published several non-fiction historical works about World War II submarine history and co-authored “The Ice Diaries” with Captain William Anderson, the second skipper of USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine. Captain Anderson took the submarine on her historic trip across the top of the world and through the North Pole in August 1958.
Mr. Keith lives in Indian Springs Village, Alabama.
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Also by Wallace and Keith
Final Bearing
Hunter Killer
Cuban Deep (Coming Soon)
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Operation Golden Dawn
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In the Course of Duty
Final Patrol
War Beneath the Waves
Undersea Warrior
The Ship that Wouldn't Die