Seawolf Class

3

Garrett grabbed hold of the safety railing next to the periscope platform as the Pittsburgh heeled over to starboard. The main lights flickered out a second time, replaced by the eerie glow of the emergency lights, before coming back on full. With the deck tilted to a forty-five-degree angle, all he, all any of the men in the control room, could do was hang on, waiting, as a shrill, metallic ripping sound grated through the hull from somewhere overhead.

"Caught her with our conning tower," Stewart said, looking up at the overhead. Then the scraping, ripping sound stopped and the Pittsburgh began to right herself, the deck slipping back toward a more reasonable level plane.

They were continuing to descend, however, in obedience to Garrett's last command. "Level off at one hundred feet!" he snapped.

"Make depth one hundred feet," the diving officer replied. There was remarkably little stress evident in his voice, considering what had just happened. "Aye aye!"

Everyone in the control room continued carrying out his assigned tasks, calmly and professionally. There was a terrifying number of things that could go wrong on board a submarine, any of which could kill her and her crew: fire, explosion, exceeding crush depth, collision. Every man aboard knew how close they'd just come to disaster and knew, too, that the threat wasn't past yet.

Collision was a constant danger for a submerged boat, especially for one submerged just beneath the surface. With her awareness of the outside world limited to the less than ideal sense of sound — a sense that could passively give direction but was notoriously vague on distance — she was awkwardly blind in tight quarters.

"Leveling off at one-zero-zero feet, Captain," the diving officer announced.

"Damage control, this is the captain," Garrett called. "What's our status?"

"Still checking, sir," a harried-sounding voice came back. "We have minor flooding in the sail. No other damage that we can track yet."

"Keep on it."

"Captain," the diving officer said. "We're having some problems with the sail planes. I think we took some damage on the port plane."

"How bad?"

"We can work with it… but we're going to need to get her back to the World to fix her permanent."

That was inevitable anyway. After a collision of this magnitude, they would need to have the hull damage boys go over her from sail to keel with a toothbrush, looking for dings and dents. And there would be the inquiry as well…

Time to think about that, and the future of his Navy career, later. Right now he had a boat and crew to save… and if he managed that, there was still the mission to think about.

"Conn, Sonar!"

Now the hell what? "Sonar, Conn. Go ahead."

"Change of aspect on Sierra One-one! He's turning to starboard! I think he's—"

A second grinding, scraping noise of metal on metal sounded through the control room.

For a moment it looked as though the Kilo was going to easily slip inside of the Kuei Mei's turn to starboard, avoiding the freighter's clumsy sally. Suddenly, though, the surfaced submarine had shuddered, as though she'd run hard aground, and then her blunt prow came swing back to port, straight across the line of the Kuei Mei's charge.

"Hang on!" Morton yelled, and then the freighter's bow slammed against the hull of the Chinese submarine midway between her sail and her rounded prow, shuddering, then rising sharply as the sub's nose was pressed inexorably down into the sea. The Kuei Mei heeled over to port by ten degrees, continuing to grind slowly ahead with a shriek of tearing metal. The crane mast jerked forward, halted, then toppled to the deck in a tangle of guy wires and spars. A moment later there was a telltale crack and a thump as the deck dropped a foot or so. It felt as though the freighter may have just broken her back.

"Hey, Skipper?" Schiff called to Morton across the bridge.

"What?"

"Anyone ever tell you you're an awful driver?"

"Hey, it's my first time at the wheel. Cut me some slack."

"He's gonna lose his license for sure," Vandenberg observed.

Morton moved across the sloping deck to the starboard bridge windows and looked down at the Kilo. It didn't look as though the submarine was damaged much at all, but the forward part of the freighter's hull appeared to be buckling. Another long, drawn-out shudder confirmed it. The freighter was old, her hull rusting. The stress of the collision had done her mortal damage.

Which worked. Morton had hoped to pull off a diversion at best, perhaps buy some time. If the Kuei Mei was sinking, the question of what to do about her deadly cargo was no longer in the hands of Washington bureaucrats.

But just to make sure…

"You two get back down to the aft hold," he told them. "Plant charges on the contraband we found… especially the ammo, understand me?"

"Roger that."

"Set it for…make it ten minutes. If you can manage to punch a hole in the hull while you're at it, so much the better. It won't look completely like an accident, but it'll confuse the hell out of things. Move it!"

"Aye aye, sir!"

The gun battle seemed to be in abeyance for the moment. Several Chinese sailors were running about on the forward deck, green and yellow shapes against the shadows in the starlight optics. To the freighter's port side, the Chinese submarine was riding at a sharp list, almost beneath the bridge. Morton could look down into the cockpit, only a few feet below the weather bridge, and see several officers and crewmen scrambling out of the sail and down ladder rungs to the sloping deck.

A flare burst into starlike radiance above the entangled vessels, illuminating them both in an uneasily shifting pattern of light and dark. The Chinese submarine would be sending a distress signal by now; he wondered what the closest vessel was… Chinese?

Well, the closest vessel would be the Pittsburgh, somewhere out there, cloaked in night and ocean. Interesting question in international ethics, this: A moment ago, one of his options had been to sink the Kuei Mei,an act of deliberate aggression; now she was going down, but accidentally…or nearly so. The Pittsburgh was out there, supporting the op, yet all vessels were required to respond to a mayday. Commander Garrett was an idiot if he decided to surface and render aid, and yet if he didn't, it was possible he'd be roasted alive by a Board of Inquiry.

Morton was damned glad that he didn't have Garrett's job right now.

And now that he thought about it, the Chinese sub had jolted as if she'd hit something just before swinging back to port to collide with the freighter. Had she hit something unseen beneath the surface?

God above, had she hit the Pittsburgh?

He searched the surface, lit in black and silver by the light of the slowly descending flare, but couldn't see anything that was obviously a sign of another sub.

There were men in the water now…crewmen from the sinking freighter. Crewmen on the sub were throwing them lines, helping them scramble aboard.

"Hammerhead One-one, this is One-five." That was TM2 Ciotti.

"One-five, One-one. Go ahead."

"Bad news, Skipper. Our CRRC is gone. I think it got torn free in the collision."

"Roger that. Muster on the port side. We'll go out with Hammerhead Two."

"Aye, sir. Moving!"

"Hammerhead One, this is Hammerhead Two."

"Go ahead, Two."

"Can't make it to the engine room, Jack," Conyers said. "Too many hostiles, and it sounds like the engines are dead anyway."

Conyers's team had been tasked by Op Plan Bravo with taking the freighter's engine room and securing it, with the optional possibility of planting explosives to wreck the propeller shaft.

"Change of plan, Brad," Morton said. "She's done for. Fall back to your rubber duck and wait for the rest of us. The other duck is out of action. We'll go out with you."

"Aye aye, sir!"

"Hammerhead One-one, this is One-two!"

"Go ahead, Schiff."

"Can't get to the goodies, Skipper. The aft hold is flooding, and pretty fast. It's suicide to go down there now!"

"Okay. Pull out and fall back to the port side access. We're going out with Hammerhead Two."

"Roger that, Skipper. See you there."

"I'm on my way." There was nothing more to be done here.

But before he left the bridge, Morton took a last look at the Chinese sub, crowded up against the freighter's hull. A lone man stood in the sub's cockpit, less than twenty yards away and a few feet below Morton's position on the bridge. He wore a dark greatcoat and was close enough that, by the light of the dying flare, Morton could see his face, see his expression. The man was staring directly at him, a scowl on his flat features.

Morton was still wearing his starlight goggles, but he wasn't worried about being seen. It was too late to hide the presence of invaders on board the Kuei Mei; there would be enough survivors from the freighter to tell of the battle with mysterious boarders.

Casually, almost nonchalantly, Morton raised his hand to his brow, saluting the other officer. The salute was not returned, but Morton could have sworn the man was muttering something, whether to himself or to someone unseen on the sub's sail, it was impossible to tell.

Morton turned away and left by way of the port-side bridge entryway.

They would have to move fast for all of the SEALs to get safely off the stricken ship.

"The freighter has definitely collided with Sierra One-two, Captain," Chief Schuster said. "We're getting hull-breaking noises and sporadic gunfire. Sounds like our boys are raising hell over there, sir."

Which, of course, was what SEALs were paid to do.

Still, to use the precise military terminology for this sort of affair, this whole operation had devolved into a class-A cluster fuck. The best special ops were those where not a shot was fired. The white hats went in, did their thing silent and unobserved, and slipped out again without anyone knowing they'd been there.

Judging from the sounds they were picking up in the sonar shack, Morton and his people were raising one hell of a ruckus topside, too much of a ruckus for a classically stealthy in-and-out. The question now was how to help them extricate themselves… and to preserve both Pittsburgh's safety and anonymity.

"Helm! What's our bearing?"

"Bearing now zero-four-two, Captain."

"Very well. Hard right rudder, and hold her there all the way around to zero-zero-zero."

"Come right to zero-zero-zero, aye aye, sir."

"Sonar, Conn. We're doing an almost-three-sixty. Clear our baffles."

"Conn, Sonar. Clear our baffles, aye."

First and foremost, he wanted to turn the boat clear of the pile-up to port. It wouldn't help anyone if he managed to foul the Pittsburgh on the Kilo or the freighter.

Next, the Chinese Kilo had provided one unexpected and unpleasant surprise so far. He wanted to be sure there were no other surprises lurking out there, masked by the sounds of Pittsburgh's own screw.

And finally, by turning around in an almost complete circle, he would bring the 'Burgh onto a northerly course, but about a couple of thousand yards farther to the west, with the freighter between the American sub and the Kilo.

As for the SEALs, they'd have to take care of their own extraction.

Garrett knew their rep. If any men on the planet could pull it off, it was the Navy SEALs.

Morton bounded down the port-side companion-way ladder and dropped to the main deck. Conyers and his men were already there, holding a perimeter around the spot where the remaining CRRC was tied to the ship's side. The rain was coming down harder now, and the steel deck was slippery. Gunfire crackled from the forward deck, where several Chinese with automatic weapons were trying to get close enough to hit the crouching SEALs. Bullets sang and chirped off metal or snapped through the air overhead.

He did a quick count of goggle-faced SEALs. Twelve… two missing.

"All Hammerheads!" he snapped into his mike. "Who's missing muster?"

"One-one, this is One-six." That was Hanson. "I'm pinned down, port side forward! They've got me pretty well zeroed in!"

"One-one, this is One-three!" That was Young. "I'm port side, midships, on the main deck. Pinned down by bad guys forward!"

"Okay, boys, I copy. Watch for your chance and get the hell over here."

"Whattaya gonna do, Skipper?" Conyers asked. He was crouched behind a fifty-five gallon drum, loosing three-round bursts into the fire-streaked darkness.

"I'm leaving you in charge, Two-IC, that's what.

Whatever happens, get everyone you can over the side and out to sea."

"But—"

"Just do it, damn it! I'll be along in a minute!" Slinging his weapon, Morton reached into his combat vest and pulled out both of the blocks of plastic explosive he was carrying. "C'mon," he added, holding the explosives out in his hands. "Let's have 'em!"

The other SEALs contributed their explosives loads, enough to pile into a bundle the size of four loaves of bread.

"Now cover me!"

The SEALs opened up in full-auto mayhem then, spraying the forward deck. Flash-bang grenades detonated, their flashes strobing brilliantly against the night and casting wildly moving shadows across the deck house. Under that fusillade of lead and pyrotechnics, Morton crawled rapidly across the water-slick deck, his progress aided by the fact that the Kuei Mei was listing forward and to port now, which meant he was slide-crawling downhill.

He was baffled momentarily by the tangle of the fallen crane, which blocked his way, but was able to wiggle between two fallen yards, pushing his deadly package ahead of him.

The barrage from the SEAL position continued, keeping the oppositions' heads down, but the SEALs had come with only a normal VBSS load of ammo, not enough to carry on a sustained battle. They would have to start conserving their ammunition, and picking their shots, very soon now.

At last Morton reached his destination — the deck hatchway leading down into the after hold. The cover was off and a thin, hard mist of water was spraying up through the opening. He used his flash to check the opening. Vandenberg and Schiff had been right: Water was entering the after hold at a considerable rate. He could see the black and oily surface roiling below, surrounding the stacks of crates and drums. He guessed there was three or four feet of water in the hold already. Either the Kuei Mei's hull was old and brittle, her plates snapped open by the shock of the impact, or the Kilo had caught the freighter a slashing blow with her forward diving planes, ripping open her side like the iceberg gutting the Titanic. Either way, the freighter was doomed.

What he was about to do might or might not hasten her end, but what he hoped it would do was convince those of her crew remaining on board to give up the fight and abandon ship. Carefully, he removed two contact detonators from his vest, pushed them into the claylike mass of the plastique, and wired them to a pair of pull-ring igniters, leaving about ten seconds' worth of primacord between them. This done, he yanked both pins, took the explosives package in both hands, and tossed it into the hold.

"Young! Hanson!" he shouted. "Heads down! Fire in the hole! Run for it when you get the opening!"

"Roger that!"

"I copy!"

The explosion hit the deck beneath his belly like the impact of a monster sledgehammer and sent a flash of bright flame geysering up through the open hatch like an erupting volcano. The freighter trembled and pitched at the detonation within her belly; his ears were ringing furiously, though he wasn't even sure he'd heard the actual blast.

He heard the second explosion, though, when it came a moment later. The jolt was less savage, but he could hear the pop-pop-pop of ammunition cooking off below the deck. That was a bonus; he'd hoped his little surprise package might set off sympathetic detonations in the cargo of ammo and explosives the Kuei Mei was carrying in her hold but hadn't been able to count on it. The ongoing blasts would only emphasize the point he'd made with the first explosion.

And it looked as though the remaining Chinese crewmen had gotten the message. Forward, half glimpsed in the glare from the Kilo's spotlight, three men in striped shirts raced across the deck to the starboard bow and leaped off into the darkness.

"Okay!" he shouted over the tactical channel. "Let's get the hell out of Dodge!"

He saw Hanson rise from cover behind some crates twenty feet away, between the deck house and the hatch cover. Morton rose to follow.

More shapes crowded onto the freighter's forward deck, spilling forward from the starboard side next to the deckhouse. These men were in uniforms and appeared less ragged than the freighter's crew. Morton knew at a glance that they were a boarding party off the Kilo. Several opened up with automatic weapons, and Hanson staggered and dropped.

From his half crouch behind the open hatchway, Morton shouldered his H&K and opened fire, triggering three-round bursts, one after another after another, firing into the dense-packed knot of submariners charging onto the Kuei Mei's forward deck. Two went down…then a third. The others returned fire… and then Young was kneeling next to Morton, adding his autofire to the barrage, driving the Chinese boarding party back to the shadows beneath the deckhouse.

Morton tossed a flash-crash after them, then raced forward to Hanson. The SEAL was still alive, still conscious, his arms wrapped around a badly bloodied left thigh.

"Gotcha covered, Skipper!" Young shouted. "Go!

Go!"

Morton scooped the wounded SEAL up in a rough fireman's carry and sprinted up the sloping deck to the port side. Young, his H&K spitting and hissing, followed, covering the retreat.

They reached the spot where Morton had left Conyers and the others minutes before. Two men, Schiff and Ciotti, were still there, helping to cover the retreat. They waved the three SEALs on. "Time to get wet!" Schiff yelled into the wind.

"Roger that!" Morton called back. He lowered Hanson to the deck. "How about it, Ted?" he asked. "Ready for a swim?"

"Hey," the wounded SEAL said through bloodless lips, "the water is our friend."

The water is our friend. It was a kind of mantra learned by all SEALs since the glory days of Vietnam, when it was discovered that the enemy rarely cared to pursue Navy SEALs into the water. Constant training and conditioning, endurance swims, drown-proofing exercises, all contributed to the mystique of a very special relationship between sea and SEALs. It was their element, as much as was the night. They would find relative safety there, at least for the time being.

And if they were lucky, they might even find the Pittsburgh out there in all of that rainswept, night-clad ocean.

Maybe…

"What's our heading?"

"Coming around now onto two-seven-five, Captain. Still at hard right rudder."

"Very well. Maintain."

They were crossing astern of the Kilo and the damaged freighter now, three-quarters of the way through their long, clockwise turn. Kilo-class boats mounted six forward torpedo tubes but no stern tubes; they weren't at risk from a Parthian shot, at least, but a wire-guided torp could describe a full circle and hit them no matter which way the other boat was pointed. They would be safer once the freighter was between the Pittsburgh and the Kilo.

"Sonar, Conn. Anything new?"

"Nothing since those explosions a few minutes ago, sir. Can't tell for sure, but we think they came from the freighter. There's also been more gunfire."

"Let me know as soon as both sierras come up full abeam."

"Aye aye, sir. You got it."

"And keep a real sharp ear out for anything unusual from the Kilo. Tubes flooding, outer doors opening, anything like that."

The Kilo must know the Pittsburgh was here… but perhaps they had their hands full just now, dealing with damage from the second collision when the freighter had sideswiped them.

"Conn, Damage Control."

"Conn. Go ahead."

"Minor damage to the Type 18, sir. The sail's watertight integrity has been compromised, and there's minor damage to the port sail hydroplane. We've sealed watertight hatches in the sail and jury-rigged repairs on the plane. We're in no immediate difficulty, but we will need to put into port stateside ASAP for repairs."

"Very good. Keep me informed."

"Aye aye, sir."

Good. The damage wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. Of the three points, the worst was the hit to the 'Burgh's Type 18 periscope. The boat had two scopes, riding side by side, the Type 18 to starboard, the Type 2 attack scope to port. The Type 18 was the workhorse periscope for an American submarine, with a low-light operating mode and closed-circuit TV capability, while the Type 2 was a basic periscope with no advanced optics. It might make seeing at night or in heavy weather a problem.

They would deal with that when the time came. "Diving Officer, bring us to periscope depth."

"Make depth periscope depth, aye aye, sir."

They began their ascent.

Morton finished strapping the barrel of Hanson's H&K to his thigh with plastic ties, a rough-and-ready splint that didn't look pretty but would help them get him into the ocean. "You ready, Ted?"

"As I'll ever be, Skipper," Hanson said through hard-clenched teeth. "Let's do it!"

"Over we go!"

Holding tight to Hanson's body from behind, and with Young and Ciotti's help, Morton manhandled the wounded SEAL upright next to the railing, got his legs over the side, and jumped.

It was a short fall. The Kuei Mei's freeboard was normally less than three meters, and the freighter had settled a lot in the last few minutes. They hit the icy water with a splash, plunged beneath the surface, then rose again, Morton struggling and kicking to get Hanson's head above the surface. He yanked on the pull ring on the man's swim vest, triggering the CO₂ cartridge, then inflated his own vest and hooked them together with a canvas strap. Above them, Ciotti, Young, and Schiff tossed their now useless weapons overboard, then leaped in after them.

Morton concentrated on swimming, using a one-handed sidestroke to drag himself along, with Hanson in tow. He thought the SEAL was unconscious; the pain of the impact to his leg when they hit the water must have been horrific. He kept pulling, cresting wave after wave, trying to put as much distance as he could between them and the freighter.

Conyers and the rest of the team ought to be out there somewhere, but they would be next to impossible to spot in the dark and rain. Then Schiff, swimming next to him, pulled out a chemical light stick, snapped it, and waved it into a green, phosphorescent glow, holding it above his head.

A moment later, as a wave carried him up to its crest, he spotted a dim, answering glow that way. "I see them!" he gasped, spitting out saltwater. "There!"

Moments later several more SEAL swimmers appeared, gathering in the rear guard and escorting them back to the remaining CRRC. The rubber duck was far too small to carry all fourteen SEALs, but they managed to get Hanson up and out of the water and lying in the bottom of the boat, where HM1 Saunders could start administering first aid. Four others stayed in the boat, keeping a lookout for any sign of the Pittsburgh, while the other eight clung to the safety lines slung along the rubber duck's side.

"Now we find out if the 'Burgh stuck around!" Conyers shouted as he dropped a transponder lead over the CRRC's side. Morton could only nod. Exhaustion was weighing him down like a freezing, leaden blanket, and the cold was finally penetrating his wet suit, leaving him weak, his teeth chattering.

Just like BUD/S, he told himself. Just like training. SEAL recruits, officers and enlisted men alike, went through some of the most grueling training on Earth to wear the gaudy SEAL Budweiser emblem with its eagle, trident, anchor, and flintlock pistol. Men were pushed to their absolute limits of endurance and beyond. Right now, he felt like he had toward the end of Hell Week, sitting in freezing mud up to his waist, teeth rattling in his skull, too tired to go on.

But he'd lasted it out. He would last this out. Just a little longer…

The transponder sent out a pulsed sonar signal that the Pittsburgh would hear. If she was still in the area… if she hadn't been badly damaged by her brush with the Kilo, she would pick up the signal and home on it. If… if…

And if they found her… what then? The 'Burgh wasn't supposed to surface, but the team had lost half of their diving gear when the other CRRC had been lost. That would hamper recovery. They would have to buddy-pair it going down, sharing re-breathers.

Shit! He wasn't thinking! What about Hanson? The SEAL was unconscious. They would have to request that the sub surface to take him aboard. SEALs did not leave their own behind.

"Sir!" Hernandez called from inside the raft, pointing. "Sir! There!"

Morton had to haul himself higher up the side of the CRRC to see, but it was worth the effort. There, just visible through night and rain and spray, a white periscope wake was expanding, boiling wider, giving way to the upthrusting slate-gray cliff of a submarine conning tower. He made himself look hard to make sure it wasn't wishful thinking, that he wasn't seeing the Kilo suddenly surfacing forty yards away, but that submarine — with sail-mounted planes and smoothly rounded hull — was definitely and undeniably a Los Angeles-class boat.

She wasn't supposed to surface… and her skipper was taking a hell of a risk doing so. Morton turned to look back and found he could just barely make out the outline of the freighter against the night, backlit by the Kilo's searchlight. Garrett had deliberately maneuvered the Pittsburgh around to place the freighter between him and the Chinese sub. The SEALs, seeking only to stay clear of the sub, had hit on the same strategy and found themselves quite close to their ride indeed.

The hatch to the forward escape trunk, located just behind the sail, opened, and work-jacketed sailors started spilling out, putting a light on the swimmers and waving them on. Someone threw a line.

They were going to make it after all.

Just like BUD/S, Morton thought. All except for the part where the op turns into a damned cluster fuck…