Terminal Run

19

Patch Pacino shivered in the cold of the command module of the Piranha’s deep submergence vehicle. The space heaters had been consuming too much power, and Captain Catardi had switched them off a few hours ago. He would only use them to keep the space’s equipment running, and the machinery functioned perfectly at freezing temperatures. The four survivors would try to fight off hypothermia by using warm blankets and warm liquids.

Alameda and Schultz had not yet awakened. Pacino had bundled them tightly together, keeping only one thin blanket for himself and one for Catardi. The women’s faces were covered except for their noses and mouths. He could see the vapor plumes of their breathing. He checked them every hour, and their temperatures seemed normal. They were slumbering through a cold winter night.

The issue was whether they would be found and rescued. There were no procedures for this, according to the captain. The DSV was a temporary addition to the spec-op compartment, which had been hastily reconfigured for it in a shipyard availability, and it had been scheduled to be removed, a new mission and a configuration change awaiting the ship in the next dry dock availability. The fact that they could not use the sub-sunk buoy would doom them, and the pitiful pounding of the emergency percussion device — the automatic hull-hammerer-was not enough to attract serious attention unless someone hovered directly over them, and even then, with the strong layer depth overhead, the sounds from it might just bounce back deep. So they were all trapped in an HY-100 steel tomb, surrounded by eighty-three dead crew members.

“Patch.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“What happened to Keating?”

“He was smashed up inside the escape trunk. I was in the water hanging from the operating wheel of the hatch, so I should have had it worse, with explosions in water being deadly. But I guess the chief was tossed into the bulkhead.”

Catardi stared at him. “Wait a minute. You were outside the ship?”

“Yes, sir. I heard the incoming sonars. I saw the torpedo hit the engine room. It blew my mask off and the regulator out of my mouth.”

“So how did you — what did you — you came back in? What the hell did you do that for?”

“I don’t know, Skipper. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Oh, God, your dad is going to kill me. Why the hell didn’t you go topside? You realize what a boneheaded move that was?”

“I know, sir. I should have lit off the emergency beacon.”

“Hell with that. You should have saved your skin. Dammit, now I feel worse — at least you could have lived. Now you’re going down with us.”

“You don’t think there will be a rescue?”

“I don’t think so, Patch,” Catardi said gently. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. All the other submerged units were either in the Indian Ocean or the East China Sea or on the way there. We’re off the great circle route to the IO from the U.S. East Coast. We can hope for merchant shipping traffic to hear the hammering device, but odds are, even if someone were to hear it, they wouldn’t know what it was.”

Pacino nodded. “How long till the atmosphere runs out?”

“We’ve probably got five days, if the cold doesn’t get us first. I’m sorry, Patch. It’s a bad death, but can you think of a good one?”

“Well, at least we’re dying with our boots on.”

“Hell, we didn’t even get a counterfire in the water. We’re dying after getting bushwhacked by that damned robot sub. Hell of a useless way to go.”

There was nothing else to say, so Pacino just stared at the deck until he felt too sleepy to keep his eyes open.

“Admiral, flash traffic for you, coded personal for commanding admiral,” the radioman said as he woke McKee and handed him the pad computer.

McKee clicked into it, the message a transmission from the Leopard, which had been setting up to attack Battlegroup One at the Formosa Strait when he and Petri had called it a night and retired early. McKee expected an after-action situation report. McKee’s orders to Leopard gave her captain, Commander Dixon, wide latitude to either watch and report on the Chinese battle group and wait for reinforcing submarines, or fire on the task force and take out as many high-value units as his weapons load and tactics would allow. Knowing Dixon, the Southerner would consider it a matter of honor to launch the entire torpedo room at the surface force.

But the message was not the expected pre formatted after-action report. McKee’s face dropped into lines of sadness as he read the body of the Email:

McKee handed the pad computer to Petri. “Goddamned communications work-around,” the admiral muttered. “This supposed flash message is two damned hours old.”

Petri read the message, her expression falling. When she was done, McKee pushed the machine over to Judison, and while he read it McKee glared at his chief of staff. “Captain Petri, go to the stateroom and work on a recommendation to vector in the nearest submerged units for a rescue, and draft a forwarding message to Admiral Ericcson with this. I want aircraft overhead that position to see to the status of the survivors, and make sure we keep any Red surface units away from them. I want them out of the water in twenty hours. As a lower priority, draft a sitrep for Admiral Patton.”

“Yes, sir,” Petri said, hurrying back to the stateroom. McKee’s face took on the harsh lines of fury.

“Conn, Sonar, loud broadband transient detected, bearing north,” the overhead speaker crackled.

“Sonar, Conn, aye,” Lieutenant Commander Ash Oswald said in a deadpan voice to the bombshell the sonar supervisor just dropped. Oswald was the navigator and Section I officer of the deck of the USS Hammerhead, standing the watch during an uneventful afternoon spent in a flank-speed transit to the intercept point on the anticipated track of the Snare. Oswald glanced at the junior officer of the deck, Lieutenant Junior Grade Melissa White — a talented nonqual air breather who worked for the chief engineer and was a month from earning her gold dolphins — then glanced at the sonar screen on the command console, selecting the waterfall display. There at the bearing marked 000 was a blooming light trace on the dark background. “So how long will that god damned hillbilly sonar supe take to share some information with us?” Oswald said sarcastically to White. “Sonar, Conn, sonar supervisor to control.”

“Yes sir,” a voice immediately said behind him. The sonar chief had been standing there all along. Sonarman Chief Petty Officer Stokes, a strapping and aggressive young technician from western Kentucky, stood leaning with his massive forearm on the stainless-steel rails that surrounded the conn.

“Dammit, Chief,” Oswald snarled, “don’t do that to me. And get your paws off my conn handrails or you’ll be polishing them on the mid watch.

“You done ranting, sir?” Stokes asked, his face pleasant.

“Yeah.”

“Good. The transient sounded like an entire arsenal exploding. We’ve also got bulkheads collapsing. Someone sank. I’m analyzing the tape now to see if we can pick anything up just prior to the detonation.”

“Prior to it? Like what?”

“Torpedo sonars, depth charges splashing, that kind of thing.”

“You’re talking like it was a sub that went down.”

“Could have been a skimmer, sir. But with the Snare to the north of us coming south, and the Piranha doing a squeeze play from further north of the Snare, doesn’t it just seem logical that when we hear a booming noise from the north, we correlate it to fisticuffs between those two?”

“Fisticuffs? You mean they exchanged weapons and the Snare is on the bottom. Regrettable that Piranha got to that robotic piece of dung first, but at least now we can run to the south and get to the IO, where the action is.”

“Unless it was Snare that did the shooting,” White interrupted.

Oswald stood on the conn with his mouth open for several seconds. It had never occurred to him that the robot sub could have beaten a Seawolf-class. Especially the Piranha, which had given the Hammerhead a bitch of a battle in an exercise six months ago. The Seawolfs had an overall acoustic advantage against the Virginia-class unless the Seawolf sped at flank speed by an idling Virginia; at slower speeds the Seawolf would detect a Virginia four thousand yards before the Virginia knew they were being targeted. Which meant that if a Seawolf-class had just been beaten by the Snare, the Snare had a large acoustic advantage over a Virginia-class like the Hammerhead. Especially if the Virginia-class were going fast. Like they were now. At flank speed.

“Diving Officer! All stop!” Oswald yelled. The order was as good as a 1MC announcement of “Captain to control,” since the minute the deck stopped shaking, the commanding officer would bulldoze his way to control to find out why. “Maneuvering, Conn,” Oswald shouted into a 1ME mike, “downshift reactor re circ pumps and rig for natural circulation!”

“All stop, Dive aye, throttles retarding to idle, answering all stop, sir.”

“Conn, Maneuvering,” the 1Me box blared, “downshift main coolant pumps and rig for nat circ, Conn, Maneuvering, aye. Conn, Maneuvering, main coolant pumps off. Reactor is in natural circulation.”

“Maneuvering, Conn, aye,” Oswald said. He turned from the 1MC panel to see Captain Judison, Admiral McKee, and Chief of Staff Petri all standing there, looking at him expectantly.

“Captain’s in control,” Oswald announced to the control room. He leaned toward the senior officers. “There’s a problem, Captain, Admiral, ma’am,” Oswald said. “Tell us all again, Chief Stokes.”

The three listened. Judison pulled the admiral and his staffer aside, the three of them talking in their huddle for some time. Finally the admiral and his chief of staff left, and Judison approached the conn.

“Approach the transient site cautiously at standard speed, turns for fifteen knots, at six five eight feet depth. I want you to perform a baffle-clear counter detection maneuver at random times at intervals not to exceed forty minutes and a depth excursion to one five zero feet, also at random times, at intervals no more than fifty minutes. Until we know otherwise, assume this is a trap, that the Snare is orbiting at the sinking site waiting for us. You’ll be coming to periscope depth in about fifteen minutes after the admiral drafts a situation report. Now repeat all that back.”

Oswald repeated back his orders while Captain Judison glared at him. When the captain was satisfied, he left the control room.

“Helm, all ahead standard, make turns for fifteen knots, steer course north,” Oswald ordered.

Hammerhead crept northward, her sonar suite straining to detect the Snare.

“Conn, Sonar, transients close aboard, high negative DE.”

Lieutenant Commander Ash Oswald scratched his belly, a nervous habit.

“Sonar, Conn, aye, negative deflection elevation aye. Sonar supervisor to control.”

“Yes sir,” a voice said from behind him.

“Goddamnit, Stokes! Cut that out!”

Stokes looked up at the conn, his expression serious. “I don’t know what the sound is. It’s almost like someone hammering on a hull.” He stepped up to the conn and flipped through the screens of the sonar display, dancing with the software for a moment, then stood up. Piped into the overhead speakers a rhythmic echoing thumping sounded. Oswald stared at the display, listening to the haunted sound, a sweat breaking out on his scalp.

“Low DE, you said,” Oswald muttered.

“Right below us,” Stokes said.

“Dive, all stop.”

Oswald kept staring at the sonar display as he pulled the phone out of its cradle by feel, his finger stabbing the buzzer circuit.

“Captain, Officer of the Deck, sir. Request you come to the conn.”

Hammerhead’s BRA-44 BIGMOUTH antenna protruded from the blue waves like a telephone pole in the middle of the sea. Instead of the unit interfacing with the battle network through the Comm Star satellite, or to the Internet orbital server network, the antenna transmitted a time-varying frequency to the commercial InterTel cell phone satellite. The antenna was connected on the upper level of the operations compartment to a remote unit wired into the V.I.P stateroom, receiving the transmission from the satellite phone belonging to Admiral Kelly McKee.

It took several minutes for the conference call to go through to the Office of Naval Research, the Directorate of Deep Sea Submergence, and the Naval Underwater Science Center, and to McKee’s and Patton’s staff members. When the officers were all present, and the tape recording was uploaded to their connections, McKee ordered them to get him an answer in twenty minutes to the question: what the hell is the hammering sound? The ship remained at periscope depth, waiting for the return call, and when it came, Rear Admiral Huber, Director of Deep Sea Submergence, spoke on the other end.

“It’s our unit, Admiral,” he said. “An emergency percussion beacon installed in the Mark XVII Deep Submergence Vehicle, such as the one in the special operations compartment of the Piranha.”

“We need a rescue plan.”

“Admiral, we don’t have a deep submergence rescue vehicle capable of rescuing them. They’re trapped inside an HY-100 steel hull, and even if we could cut through it, we don’t have a hatch to mate to on the Mark XVII, and we don’t have the ability to execute a heavy lift to pull the DSV out. But we have a source with the capability, and they have a unit close by, two days’ transit from your position, three at most.”

“What source? A civilian salvage operation?”

“Um, no, sir. The Royal Navy.”

“Go ahead, Admiral Huber.”

“We’ve got to do this in two phases. Phase one is to locate the wreck precisely and communicate with the hull. There may be no survivors down there at all. Our DSV Narragansett is being scrambled there now on a transport plane. She’ll be at the wreck site in a few hours. We’ve lined up a commercial vessel to take her there and support her initial dive. We should know by sunset the status of the Piranha. Assuming the news is good, we’ll need to ask the British team at the sinking site of the City of Cairo to re task and come to the Piranha gravesite. The City of Cairo was their ship, and they wanted to salvage it using the Explorer II and the deep diving submersible, the Berkshire, which was built in case of a British submarine wreck. The submersible can cut through thick steel with a pressurized torch and a diamond-particle injection. It has heavy-lift capability to remove heavy objects from a debris field. It has a separate diving chamber with a variable adaptable docking collar in case they need to rescue submariners from a hull where there is no escape trunk.”

“Why would they do a merchant salvage mission with a Royal Navy sub rescue craft?”

“It’s practice for a sub rescue mission.”

“So this dry of Cairo salvage is purely a practice drill?”

“Not quite, Admiral. The City of Cairo was a small British ocean liner, eight thousand tons, four hundred fifty feet long, a two-piper, at sea in 1942 going from Bombay to England with three hundred souls on board, half of them crew and half passengers. She was torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat, U-68.”

“But why would the Brits want to salvage an old rust bucket tramp steamer cut in half by Nazi torpedoes?” McKee asked.

“Because before it sank it was loaded with three million ounces of silver in two thousand boxes of silver coin.”

“Ah.” The admiral nodded. “Okay. So how do I get the Explorer 77 here?”

“You’ll have to call the mission commander, Peter Coilings worth, personally, Admiral. He’ll be giving up a silver hunt on your say-so with no details, with his own government lining up against ours.”

Ten minutes later, the stateroom door opened just as McKee was re dialing the Pentagon.

“Sir, we may have a detect on the Snare, east of here at periscope depth,” Karen Petri said, her expression finishing her sentence — hang up the phone so we can go deep and pursue. But McKee needed to get to the Explorer II and get her on the way to the sinking site.

“Get Judison in here,” he snapped to Petri, still looking at the phone so he could dial.

Judison ran into the room a moment later, while the Pentagon operator attempted to complete a UHF connection to the HMS Explorer II.

“Sir, we’ve got a narrowband detect at two-fifty-four hertz, bearing two nine five. We’ve got to give chase.” The large captain was winded from his dash up the ladder from the middle level.

“Send out a UUV or several to the bearing,” McKee ordered. “And launch a Mark 8 Sharkeye downrange, but keep this ship at periscope depth, right here.”

Judison nodded and vanished. He would be launching unmanned underwater vehicles toward the bearing of the Snare detect, and some Mark 8s, a torpedo body with an acoustic daylight sonar reception pod, which would drive away from the ship to a planned point in the sea and shut down. The Sharkeye sonar sensors would deploy in the sea both above the layer and below, extending the ship’s onboard sensors by hundreds of miles. The UUVs, Unmanned Underwater Vehicles, unlike the stationary deployed Sharkeyes, would drive silently in the sea, mobile listening platforms. With two UUVs and two Sharkeyes, the ship could both remain here at PD and scan the sea for hundreds of thousands of yards to the northeast, to the bearing of the Snare.

“Hello?” Admiral McKee barked into the phone.

Commander Peter Collingsworth, Royal Navy, looked out of the commander’s porthole of the submersible Berkshire at the hold bulkhead of the steamship City of Cairo. He wore welder’s goggles as he watched the arm arc downward with the torch, melting through the rusting steel of the ship’s hold. As he sliced the lower horizontal section of the hold cut, the intercom beeped.

“Commander Collingsworth?” It was the voice of the Explorer II‘s captain.

“Collingsworth, here, over,” he said in annoyance, trying to concentrate on the cut.

“Commander, I’ve got a rather unusual item to report to you. We’ve just received a satellite phone call. From the Americans, of all people.”

Collingsworth kept cutting, finally saying, “Hard to believe the Americans are calling us.”

“The transmission is apparently coming from the Atlantic, sir, from the American submarine Hammerhead, a Virginia class. The phone call is from an admiral named McKee, the commander of the U.S. Submarine Force.”

“Go ahead, Knowles.” The cut was a fourth of the way through the horizontal marked line. In a few minutes Collingsworth could stop the cutting torch and prepare to lift out the plate and expose the silver.

“He wants to talk to you. Commander.”

“Well received, Knowles, but what is going on? Have we any guidance from London on this matter?”

“Captain Baines is on holiday until day after tomorrow, sir.”

Collingsworth decided to talk to the Yank and see what the bastard wanted. “Hold on, Knowles. Stand by to patch him in. I have the plate, Jenson. Disconnect the temp derrick. Damn, there’s too much dust. I can’t see anything but sediment, and we don’t have the battery amp-hours to wait for it to settle. We’ll have to come back.”

“You want to make a quick grab and see if you can get a silver box?”

“No, we could break the box and have coins all over hell. Tomorrow’s another day. We’ll be right back, and with Explorer II hovering topside, no one’s going to be down here to grab our take. Knowles, I’m commencing ascent now. Patch in the admiral.”

“Here he is in three, two, one. Admiral McKee, can you hear me?”

“I can hear you. Commander Collingsworth, do I have the pleasure of speaking to you directly now, sir? This is Admiral Kyle McKee, but you can call me Kelly, It’s good to meet you over the radio, Commander. How is your salvage going? Over.”

Collingsworth made a face of irritation. “Admiral, this is Commander Peter Collingsworth. You may call me Commander. What is the nature of your request, sir? Please state your business, over.”

“Of course, Commander. I can tell you’re a busy man. Fact is, we have a little emergency out here a bit north of you and we need your help. And we need it immediately, over.”

“I receive you, Admiral, but please state the nature of your emergency.”

“Commander,” the voice said on the radio, “we have it on good authority that you have a deep diving submersible and an autonomous diving bell on the Explorer II. I’m afraid we’re going to need them both at north latitude twelve degrees and longitude twenty-three west, a bit over nineteen hundred miles from your salvage site. If you get going now, you can be here in two days. We’ll have a U.S. contingent to meet with you here, over.”

“Admiral, I still don’t know what you are talking about. I shall ask you again — please state the nature of your emergency, over.”

“Commander, that rig you’re in right now was built to rescue survivors of a sunken submarine, is that fair to say?”

“Yes, Admiral, that’s the fundamental duty of the Explorer II, but unless there’s a sub to salvage we use the system for other purposes.”

“So, can I tell my superiors you’re on your way?”

Collingsworth’s face grew beet-red in the dim interior light of the submersible. “Admiral, you still haven’t stated your emergency. I’m going to have to terminate this conversation, sir, over.”

“Commander, I think I just did state my emergency.”

Collingsworth hesitated. “Sir, am I to understand that you have a sunken submarine emergency?”

“Peter, let me put it to you this way. If you were at the coordinates I just described, at a depth of eleven thousand feet, you’d see a large metal object and a scattered debris field and you’d hear hammering from inside the object. Do you get what I’m saying?”

Collingsworth rubbed his beard. Good God, he thought, the Yanks had lost a sub in the Atlantic and were asking him to come to the rescue, with survivors waiting for him. There was no time to waste. He glanced at his panel and called to Jenson.

“Jenson, rig for an emergency ascent. Taking her up to ten feet per second rise. We should be on the surface in eighteen minutes. Knowles, this is Collingsworth on freq two, over.”

“Go ahead, Commander, we’re alone on frequency two.”

“Knowles, immediate execute, prepare to depart station at maximum speed. Start all turbines and be ready to answer all bells in twenty minutes. Station the underway watch section and plot a course for north latitude twelve, west longitude twenty-three at full ahead speed. And get the Admiralty officer of the day on the tactical freq immediately. I’m making an emergency ascent, and I’ll be on the deck and brief you further then. Do you copy?”

“Yes, sir, prepare to get underway, understood.”

“Admiral McKee, this is Collingsworth. I hope you understand we can’t just go running off to help you with your crisis without orders from the Admiralty. From what I read in the news files the Prime Minister is not entirely happy with you chaps about now. In fact, I could find myself in a spot of bother simply for talking to you this wonderful afternoon.”

“Commander Collingsworth, the President is prepared to speak directly to the Prime Minister about this.”

“Admiral, I’ll talk to my superiors, but I can offer you no guarantees.”

“Pete, can you at least get the Explorer II on her way? You can always turn her around if your bosses say different.” There was a pleading tone in the admiral’s voice.

Collingsworth nodded. “Yes, Admiral, I can get on the way. You understand, of course, that the Admiralty could turn me back around at any time. We’ll contact you in an hour, Admiral. Collingsworth out.”

Collingsworth sat back against the submersible bulkhead and shook his head. Good Lord, he thought. One minute all he could think about was cases of silver on the bottom, and now there might be sunken survivors who could die if he hesitated even one minute. Hold on, Yanks, he thought.

“Commander, the Admiralty officer of the day is waiting for you.”

“Patch him in.”