Sea Strike

3

Commander Amanda Lee Garrett peered over the shoulder of her chief engineer, watching the blocks of red and yellow play across the schematics on the computer flatscreens. Each told a tale of catastrophic damage and systems failure. The enemy missile strike had hurt the USS Cunningham — badly.

“Mr. Mckelsie? Stealth systems status?”

“Everything’s off line except for the chaff launchers. The hit’s taken out both the transformers and the envelope processor stack.”

The Duke’s lean and acerbic stealth systems officer had his khaki shirt unbuttoned in the heat. They’d lost air conditioning early on in the engagement and the ventilators had been dogged down to seal out the smoke that was rapidly saturating the ship’s internal spaces. The temperature in the Combat Information Center was skyrocketing as a result.

Uniform protocols had been abandoned. He ran a hand back through his damp, thinning red hair and continued the litany of disaster.

“We’ve also taken skin damage, and these fires are going to start cooking the RAM off the hull in pretty short order. As of right now, we are bare-ass naked.”

“Damn, damn, damn! Dix, tac situation?”

Lieutenant Dixon Lovejoy Beltrain, the Duke’s tactical action officer, leaned in over his console, stripped to the waist, his quarterback’s torso slick with sweat.

“Hostile strike flight has disengaged,” he reported. “All other incoming rounds have been foxed or intercepted. Board is clearing.”

Miraculously, the great SPY-2 A arrays of the destroyer’s Aegis radar system were still functional and feeding their images onto the Large Screen Display that dominated the forward bulkhead of the Combat Information Center.

“That’s something, anyway,” Amanda muttered. They were being granted a little time. Maybe enough to make repairs and escape.

“Raven’s Roost, do we have a weapons ID yet?”

“Raven’s Roost” was the Duke’s Electronic Intelligence gathering section, one of the four subsystem bays that angled off from the octagonal CIC compartment. A boyishly slender figure appeared at the bay mouth a moment later.

“An Otomat Mark Three, Boss Ma’am,” Lieutenant Christine Rendino replied. “One round. Air launched.”

Again, a little plus. The Italian-built Otomat used a jet propulsion system. Honest flame from burning kerosene and no chunks of unconsumed rocket fuel sprayed around to complicate fire and damage control.

Christine took another step or two into the central compartment.

“How bad are we?”

The little Intel officer’s reaction to the temperature had been to knot the shirt of her work khakis up under her breasts and to bind a sweatband around her short ash-blond hair.

“Real bad. We took the hit right in Power Room Three. Main Engine Control was taken out as well, and we’ve got fires all over the place back there.”

Perspiration stung Amanda’s eyes, and impatiently she swiped it away with the back of her hand. She was feeling the heat as intensely as her subordinates were, but captain’s dignity had limited her to rolling up her sleeves and pony tailing her own thick sorrel-colored mane with a rubber band stolen from a chart table.

“Captain!” It was the rating stationed at the CIC’s helm station. “All rudder and engine control has just gone down. The ship is losing way and is no longer responding to the helm.”

“Damn, damn, damn!” Amanda spun back to the damage control panels.

Chief Thomson was dialing down through the hull schematics to the lower deck levels. By another small miracle, the craggy lieutenant commander had been off station, outside of Main Engine Control, when the missile had hit.

“We’ve lost both primary cable trunks. The portside was cut by the initial explosion, and we just had a burn through into the starboard. The Halon flood didn’t hold it. We’ve lost too much compartment integrity.”

The Cunningham’s spinal cord had just been severed.

“What about the hangar bay?”

“No direct involvement yet, but they have a major fire right under their deck plates. The big problem is going to be the aviation-fuel bunker and the helo-armaments magazine. They’re right down there in the affected frames.”

“Do we still have deluge control in those spaces?”

“So far.”

“Arm the systems and stand by to flood on my command.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

The aft compartment hatch swung open, giving entrance to both a gas-masked sailor and a billowing cloud of white smoke. Amanda slammed the door back against its gaskets and twisted the dogging handle as the seaman tore off his breathing gear.

“Report from DC Alpha Delta,” he reported breathlessly. “All engineering watch officers are dead or missing, ma’am. They were all either in Power Three or Main Engine Control when we took the hit. Chief Nelson reports that we’re holding the fire at frame nineteen, but we’re not getting it pushed back.”

“How bad’s the hull damage?” Amanda demanded.

“One hole on the port side at frame twenty, ma’am. Six by four. Just above the waterline.”

“How are they doing on the farside of the fire?”

“No contact with Delta Fox. We can tell they’re workin’ it, but no commo.”

Amanda internalized another savage curse. With the intercom and sound-powered nets down, she knew more about what was happening two hundred miles away than she did inside the bulkheads of her own ship.

“Captain!” Thomson yelled from the DC panels. “We got a high-temperature warning in the helo-ordnance magazine!”

“Execute the flood.”

“That extra weight aft could put the impact hole under the waterline, Captain. With our internal integrity shot, we could lose the entire block to uncontrolled flooding.”

“I’m counting on it. A little water won’t kill us, Chief, but this fire just might.”

“Captain,” the seaman runner spoke up. “Chief Nelson still has rescue parties aft of the bulkheads looking for survivors.”

“Hold the flood!” Amanda stabbed a finger at the runner. “Get back down to Chief Nelson and tell him that he has … ” Think, Amanda, how long can that weaponry take exposure to direct flame before destabilizing? Three minutes? “… two minutes to pull his teams back behind the bulkheads and get things buttoned up. Then get topside and go aft over the weather decks. Inform the Delta Fox leader of the same thing. Got it? Go!”

“Aye, aye!” He pulled on his gas mask again and plunged back out into the almost solid wall of smoke beyond the hatchway.

The atmosphere inside the CIC was also rapidly becoming contaminated. Soon the duty watch would be needing their smoke masks as well. Amanda ignored the thickening air and returned her attention to the damage-control screens.

She had to get her ship moving again. Thankfully, that task might not be too insurmountable. The Cunningham-class destroyer utilized an integrated electric drive. Her main motors were carried outside of the hull in twin pylon-mounted propulsor pods similar to the engines of a dirigible airship. There were no shaft alleys to flood. No boiler to explode. No reduction gears to strip. One just had to get the power from point A to point B.

She drew a fingertip across the primary display. “We’ve got to run a set of jumpers from the transformer bay of Generator Room Two, here, to the primary propulsor junction box back at frame twenty-two. Then a second set of power cables and a new control linkage back to the steering engine room.”

“Shouldn’t be any problem except for the junction box,” Thomson replied. “It butts right up against that transverse bulkhead there. We got fire just on the other side of it now, and there’s going to be water in a minute. God knows what kind of shape it’s in. I’d better get back there and have a look at it.”

“I’ll take care of that, Chief,” Amanda said. “Notify Commander Hiro on the bridge that he has the con.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

“Chief, you’re the last of the senior engineering staff we have left. I need you here, so that leaves me. I helped work on the design of the Duke’s drives; I should be able to figure out what’s busted, and what’s not. Anyway, I need to take a look around and see what kind of shape we’re in.”

“As you say, ma’am.”

“I’ll send a runner back with word of what’s going on in the stern. Initiate that magazine flood now. And get the internal communications hack on line! Carry on.”

She removed a smoke mask from its locker beside the hatch. Popping the plastic caps off its filters, she strapped it on. Taking a battle lantern from its rack, she opened the watertight door and plunged out into the vapor-filled passageway.

Throughout the entire explosion of activity within the CIC, two of the naval officers present had taken no active part in the operations. A full captain and a lieutenant commander, they had stood by, silently observing as the men and women of the duty watch had dealt with the developing disaster.

Now, still unspeaking, the senior of the pair donned his own breathing mask and followed Amanda.

The battle lantern had been an act of futility. The smoke killed the beam in only a couple of feet. This wasn’t as critical as it might have been, however. Amanda Garrett knew the Duke’s interior spaces like the back of her hand.

Surrounding her in the murk, handy-billy motors roared, wood slammed into metal as shoring timbers were hammered into place, and the men and women of the DC teams blasphemed their way through their procedures.

She hesitated for a second in the passageway, then turned to the ladder that led one level up.

The Cunningham’s wardroom had been converted into a casualty receiving station. Its limited deck space was jammed now with loaded stretchers and cluttered with discarded medical-stores packaging. The Cunningham’s chief hospital corpsman, Bonnie Robinson, was working her way around the compartment running triage on the moaning injured for Doc Golden.

Lieutenant Commander Daniel “Doc” Golden was the latest addition to the Duke’s company. It wasn’t a common thing for a Navy doctor to be assigned aboard a destroyer. Normally, small surface combatants had to make do with only a corpsman and the hope for a fast medivac out to a carrier or tender. However, the Cunningham had been designed for independent operations, and Amanda had recently made herself insufferable in certain quarters until she had acquired Golden. She had lost a crewman on her last cruise because she hadn’t had a physician aboard ship. She would not let that happen again.

“How are we doing on the wounded, Doc?” Amanda asked, lifting her smoke mask.

“We don’t have nearly enough of them,” Golden replied, working over an IV set. “We’ve got a whole lot of Missing in Actions down in the engineering spaces.” Golden moved with a youthful swiftness that seemed incompatible with a head balding toward middle age. His usual air of studied casualness had been transformed into a focused professionalism.

“What’s the status of the ones we have been able to get to?”

“What you’d expect. Flash burns and concussion injuries. We’re getting a lot of smoke inhalation now.”

As if in response to his words the passageway hatch swung open, admitting another billow of smoke and a pair of DC hands carrying a third limp form between them.

“Smoke?”

“Yes, sir. Mask failure.”

“Set her down in the corner and get some O₂ into her. Robinson, we’ve got another customer!”

“Aye, sir.”

Golden glanced back at his CO. “And while we’re on the subject, Captain, this place is beginning to remind me of a Ramada Inn I stayed at in Miami Beach once. The air conditioning doesn’t work, and you can’t open the windows. Request permission to start evacuating the wounded out onto the weather decks. These people need uncontaminated air.”

Amanda considered for a few moments. “Negative. We’re still in a combat situation here. We may have to start launching missiles again at any time. I don’t want unprotected personnel topside if it can be avoided.”

“Captain … “

“Hold out here for as long as you can. If evacuation becomes absolutely imperative, notify me. That’s all, Doc.”

“As you say, Captain.”

Amanda Garrett resealed her mask and left the wardroom. The four-striper who had been shadowing her, and who had been observing silently throughout her dialog with Doc Golden, followed suit.

Amanda dropped back down one deck and headed aft, moving through the smoke-saturated passageways with an ease and a swiftness that was almost supernatural. She stepped over unseen hoses and cables and around gaping access panels simply because she projected that they would be there in this given situation.

Passing through another watertight door, she sensed she was entering into a comparatively large open space, the Cunningham’s belowdecks helicopter hangar. Turning to her left, she stepped ten paces off to starboard, station-keeping by brushing her fingertips along the bulkhead. The form that she knew should be there loomed before her.

“Arkady?”

“Right here, Captain.”

Amanda could make him out only as a hazy outline in the smoke, but she knew he would be clad in his inevitable gray Nomex flight suit. She also knew that he was only a few inches taller then her own five feet seven, and that the eyes behind the faceplate of his smoke mask were an exceptionally clear and penetrating blue. In short, she knew Lieutenant Vince Arkady as well as she did the decks of her own ship.

“What’s the bay status?”

“We’ve got a hot deck situation, Captain. No breakthroughs reported, but we’re keeping things hosed down.”

“Okay, we’re going to be rigging a bypass to get power through to the motors and steering gear. Get set for it and have your people stand by to assist the cable teams.”

“Will do.”

“And we’ve got to ventilate these spaces. Drop the helipad elevator and get some of this smoke out of here.”

“Tried it, Captain. No power. We’re trying to get the circuits reenergized now.”

“That’s no good. We’ve got to ventilate now. Pop the safety latches with a crowbar and bleed the pressure out of the hydraulics reservoirs. That should bring it down. If it doesn’t, get a couple of jacks from the DC locker and force it.”

“Aye, aye.”

He gripped her shoulder for a second, then he was gone, yelling commands to his unseen hangar crew.

Amanda continued to follow the bulkhead around, squeezing past the parked bulk of Retainer Zero One, one of the pair of SAH-66 Sea Comanche helos assigned to the Cunningham’s aviation section. Ahead, a man-sized oval of dull yellowish light became visible, and a moment later, she emerged through the open hatchway into the clean air of the small well deck right aft.

Peeling off the mask, she granted herself the luxury of a single unforced breath. The sea breeze blowing across her perspiration-dampened clothing produced a delicious chill, but she couldn’t enjoy it for long. Ignoring the somber featured man who had followed her out of the hangar bay, she circled the aft Oto Melara turret and descended through another deck hatch.

The atmosphere was considerably cleaner in the stern spaces, leaving only the belowdecks darkness to contend with. It took Amanda a matter of moments to locate the aft DC site leader and her team three levels down.

“We’re tight, ma’am,” the Chief Petty Officer reported in the glow of the battle lanterns. “The bulkheads at frame twenty-three are holding with no burnthroughs. The steering engine is okay and I’ve had hands down to check both access tunnels into the propulsor pods. No damage to the main motors. We just need the juice to bring everything back up.”

“You’ll get it. The jumper teams are coming in right behind me.”

“Okay! Hey, Wheeler! Get the access hatches open on the main junction box. Reichsbower, you do the same for the steering engine space. The rest of you guys fan out and start checking breaker panels. We got power coming in. Let’s go!”

“Hey, Chief!” The voice of the man the site leader had sent to the junction box echoed in the passageway. “Come here, quick!”

Amanda followed the CPO as she hurried toward the call.

Seaman Wheeler was kneeling beside an open knee-level access panel in the side of the passageway. He had his flashlight aimed at a double X of blue tape stuck to the inside of the hatch.

“Ah, shit!” the Chief exploded. “Water damage!”

Amanda nodded grimly. “Cracked bulkhead or seal failure, they’ll call it. I should have figured they wouldn’t make it this easy. Okay, new game plan. We’ll have to run a second jump back from Power Room One. We’ll feed the starboard propulsor from One, the port from Two, jacking directly into the feeder cables at the head of the access tunnels. We’ll control the motor RPMs directly with the generator outputs.”

She started back for the decks ladder. “I’m going forward to get moving on the new setup. Have your people get the access tunnels open again and stand by to splice into the main power busses—”

“Hold it, Captain Garrett. No sense in wasting any more of your time, or ours.” The officer who had been trailing behind her stepped into the beam of her battle lantern. “I think we can terminate this thing now.”

Amanda took a deep, deliberate breath. “Aye, aye, sir,” she replied, reaching for one of the “dead” interphones on the bulkhead.

“Bridge.”

“Bridge, aye.” The voice of her exec, Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Hiro, came back crisply over the circuit.

“This is the Captain, Ken. It’s all over. Secure the conflagration drill. Well done to all hands.”

The 1-MC speakers took up the call a few moments later.

“Secure the conflagration drill. I repeat, all decks, secure the conflagration drill. Main Engine Control, energize all circuits. Damage-control teams, shut down all smoke generators and commence stand-down. Set condition X-Ray in all spaces and ventilate the ship. All hands, the Lady says well done.”

The overhead lighting blazed on with a glare that momentarily made the eyes ache. The ventilator blowers came on stream as well, producing the soft roar of moving air that was the underdeck sound signature of a healthy man-of-war.

The smoke haze began to flow toward the intake grilles.

“I hope I wasn’t being premature in issuing that ‘done’ comment, Captain Johannson,” Amanda continued, recradling the phone.

“Not in the least,” the Fleet readiness officer replied. “Of course, I’ll have to run a formal evaluation with the rest of my inspection team, but since your crew performed today the way they’ve been doing all week, I don’t foresee any problems.”

He extended his hand to Amanda. “Captain.You’ve got yourself a four-oh ship. I’d say that you’re cleared for deployment.”

From down the corridor, some covert listener produced a muffled whoop. In seconds, the word that the Duke had made it would be spreading along the scuttlebutt line from bow to stern.

Amanda made her way topside again, past the damage control hands, who were starting to clean and rerack their gear. This time when she emerged onto the well deck, she could take the time to savor the clean Pacific trade winds.

The USS Cunningham lay at anchor in Pearl Harbor’s East Loch. There, for the past week, she had been deeply involved in the process of winning back her spurs.

The big guided-missile destroyer was just out of the repair yards following a long and difficult combat deployment in the South Atlantic, having been the sole American naval vessel to see action during the recent military confrontation with Argentina.

Despite this, and despite the fact that the Cunningham had emerged from the Antarctic campaign with numerous battle honors, including the Presidential Unit Citation, the Duke had to re-prove her readiness to return to sea.

For the past month, she and her crew had been involved in a grinding ritual of tests and drills: gunnery requalification, engineering requalification, aviation and ASW requalification.

The climax had been the weeklong mass-conflagration and damage-control exercise. With this last hurdle cleared, the ship and crew were rated as ready to depart on their scheduled duty deployment to the western Pacific.

Looking forward, Amanda could see that the helipad elevator was down as per her orders and that a few last wisps of the odorless, nontoxic smoke from the exercise generators were issuing from the open well, like steam from the crater of an inactive volcano.

Just forward of that, fared into the trailing end of the streamlined superstructure, the towering fin of the Cunningham’s freestanding mast array stabbed upward. It was shaped like the raked back blade of some gigantic tanto fighting dagger, and the slight roll of the ship made its tip carve a delicate invisible pattern in the vivid blue of the Hawaiian sky.

Here and there, small clusters of sweat-soaked but jubilant crew personnel were emerging topside through the destroyer’s weather-deck hatches, including some of Doc Golden’s erstwhile “patients.” They still had a good job’s worth of cleanup and reordering to deal with, but for the moment the men and women of the Duke could take a breather and feel proud.

Up on the rim of the helipad, Vince Arkady appeared. She caught the flash of his grin as he spotted her on the well deck. Moving deliberately, he lifted his arms and clasped his hands overhead in a boxer’s declaration of victory.

Amanda smiled as well, and replied in kind. Reaching back, she snapped the rubber band that confined her ponytail. Shaking her hair down around her shoulders, she leaned against the deck railing and took a deep breath.