Terror At Dawn

TWENTY-FOUR

“Evasive maneuvers! Countermeasures!” Coyote banged on the plotting table with his fist, glaring at Bethlehem. “Damn it, woman, don’t you know what you’re supposed to do?”

A shocked, horrified silence filled the bridge for just a moment, and then the watch team resumed the terse patter that always characterizes dire emergencies. Captain Bethlehem, for her part, stared at Coyote, her face impassive. Time seemed to stop, although in reality it could have been no more than a few seconds. Finally, she spoke. “Officer of the deck — hard right rudder. Starboard engines back, port engines ahead full.”

She listened as the officer of the deck repeated back her orders, her gaze never leaving Coyote’s face. He stared back in stone silence, then howled, “No! You’re taking her right back toward the torpedo!”

“On the bridge wing, Admiral. Now.” Without waiting to see if he followed, Captain Bethlehem stepped away from the table and walked the long distance to the port bridge wing, her footsteps soft but steady on the linoleum. “Officer of the deck — you have your orders.” She swung the catch open and stepped out, finally turning to see if Coyote was following.

Swearing softly, Coyote ran across the bridge and stepped out. “Do you realize what you’re doing? How in God’s name you ever managed to get command of the ship I’ll never know, but you’re the one who’s going to have to live with what you’ve done.”

“I’ll say this once, Admiral. Right now, I don’t have time to pamper your ego.” Bethlehem’s face was molten steel. “This is my ship — it has been since the moment I read my orders to these people. It’s not yours anymore. I will explain myself this once — no questions, no explanations. The turning radius of the ship is such that if I followed your suggestion, the torpedo would hit the ship in the port quarter. It would no doubt do serious damage to engineering. We would lose at least the port shafts, maybe one of the starboard. There is no way — no way — that we would avoid the torpedo. None. And you know it. What I have done is to turn the ship so that the torpedo will hit in the fourth section. If you were paying attention, I ordered that section of the ship evacuated. There may be casualties — yes. But the ship will be able to continue fighting and to launch aircraft. Now, by your leave, I’m a little busy right now.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned abruptly and went back into the ship.

Coyote was enraged. He started after her, intending to throttle her with his bare hands. Then, as he looked at the pale, horrified faces of the men and women on the bridge, he stopped. Captain Bethlehem stood among them, and it was clear from the way they closed ranks around her that they were prepared to protect her. That they were her crew, not his.

She’s right. You know she is. You just don’t want to admit that there’s no way out of this.

“All hands brace for shock,” Bethlehem said, her voice calm and collected. The boatswains echoed her orders over the 1MC.

Coyote grabbed the left side of the plotting table and braced himself against it, leaning toward the port side.

Rabies put the S-3 into a hard dive, then pulled her up abruptly into level flight. “Where is she?”

“Headed for the oil rig,” his TECO said.

“Viking 701, you are weapons-free on hostile submarine contact,” a voice said over tactical.

“Too late,” Rabies shouted, frustrated beyond reason. “Damn it, Jefferson, we could have had her!”

“701, be advised that you are weapons-free on this contact regardless of location,” the voice said firmly. “We see where she is — the admiral says go ahead anyway.”

“Our probability of kill isn’t good,” his TECO said.

“It’s zero if we don’t take a shot,” Rabies answered. “If nothing else, maybe that damned oil rig will fall on her and crush her. Fire one.”

There was a click as the torpedo was released from the wing, and a slight jolt as the S-3 was suddenly light on that side. Rabies corrected automatically for the shift in the center of gravity.

“Splash,” his enlisted technician said. “Torpedo is hot and sweet — gaining contact — he has her.” The crew compartment echoed with the sounds of the torpedo seeker head, the sonar pings coming closer together, the torpedo hungry for its contact. “Ten seconds,” his technician said. “Nine, eight, seven…”

If it hits the oil rig, there’s going to be hell to pay. It will rupture fuel lines and spew all that crap into the sea. Worst of all, the submarine may get away anyway.

“Six, five, four…”

She won’t, though. She thinks she’s safe under there. She’ll sneak in behind one of the supports, thinking we won’t dare take a shot at her there. There were times when we wouldn’t. But that was then and this is now.

“Three, two, one…”

The survivors. How big is the crew on the oil rig? We didn’t even have a chance to warn them. There will have to be a search-and-rescue mission and, oh, God, there better not be any kids involved.

“Got her! Sir, I hear underwater explosions — secondaries now,” the technician added, as the explosions from cold seawater hitting hot metal and machinery aboard the submarine followed the initial explosions.

“That’s it, then!” his TACCO crowed. “We did it!”

“Not exactly,” Rabies said. “There’s still a torpedo in the water. And it’s still headed straight for Jefferson.”

The carrier was turning, but slowly, oh, so slowly. As he watched the overhead radar repeater, it seemed to Coyote that there was no way they would ever get the stern out of the way of the torpedo. And just how maneuverable was this one, anyway? Was it a wake-homer?

As Jefferson’s massive rudders bit hard into the water, she started to increase her rate of turn. He could feel the vibrations under his feet changing as the two steam turbines that supplied the starboard shafts picked up speed, adding their counter-rotation force to the action of the rudders and steepening the turn. The deck took on a slight angle. Pencils rolled across the plotting table, and more than one face turned pale at the unexpectedly severe motion of the carrier.

“Four seconds,” a voice announced over the 1MC. “Three, two, one.”

The impact, when it came, was felt more than heard. There was a sharp change in the vibrations under his feet, echoing up through the steel plates and strakes. A microsecond later, Jefferson lurched hard to the left, then equally violently back to the right. The smoothly increasing angle on her deck changed abruptly, and the vibrations through the deck felt horribly, horribly wrong. It was the same massive jolt and sound you heard from immediately below the flight deck when recovering a heavy aircraft such as a Tomcat, but coming from an entirely wrong direction.

The chaos started immediately. Controlled chaos, but chaos nonetheless, as damage-control teams raced forward to assess the extent of the damage, to check watertight doors and compartments, and guide corpsmen to anyone injured in the impact. Damage-control actions were coordinated by Damage Control Central, or DCC, but Bethlehem was monitoring every step. She slipped on a set of sound-powered bones and put the jack into the damage-control circuit. For the moment, Coyote was tempted to tell her not to micro-manage it, to let the men and women below do their jobs.

It wasn’t necessary — Bethlehem was simply listening, nodding her head in approval or frowning and snapping out a short order, her expression clearing as the DCC team revised its plans.

The angle on the deck grew steeper as seawater poured into shattered compartments. They were nowhere near a dangerous angle, but it was still distinctly ominous to feel the carrier that barely ever moved heel to the right.

An hour later, the verdict was in. The torpedo had smashed into the hull two decks below the waterline, destroying an auxiliary machinery compartment and flooding part of the anchor deck. The watertight doors had held, preventing the flooding from spreading, and the electrical connections and waterlines affected had already been rerouted. One sailor had been killed, smashed by a watertight door that had not been properly secured, and fourteen others were injured in the impact. After a final refueling, the strike aircraft were quickly recovered.

“Captain,” Coyote said when Bethlehem finally had a lull in the constant stream of reports and assessments flooding in. “A moment.”

Bethlehem put down her clipboard and followed him out onto the bridge wing, casting a glance back at the bridge as though seeing it for the last time. “Yes, Admiral?”

“Good job,” he said abruptly. “I won’t apologize — admirals never do. You’ll need to know that soon enough, I suspect.”

The faintest trace of relief spread across her face, and it wasn’t until that moment that Coyote realized just how much of her ass she’d put on the line standing up to him. His admiration for her grew. “Thank you, sir.”

“But if I were going to apologize, I’d probably start by telling you that when I was Jeff’s CO, the admiral I worked for had also been her skipper. I swore then I would not repeat his mistakes, that I’d let my captains run their ships their way. And, still without admitting that I was out of line, I’d ask you to remember that when you get back here as battle group commander. You’ll make enough of your own mistakes — trust me on that — but see if you can avoid repeating mine.”

“Captain, Fifth Fleet wants you,” the officer of the deck said as he stuck his head out and interrupted them with an apologetic look.

“I’ll be right there,” Bethlehem said without looking at him.

“Go,” Coyote ordered.

“Yes, Admiral.” She turned and walked back to the hatch. She paused for a moment, then turned back to him. “Next time we’re in port, have dinner with me.” It wasn’t exactly a request.

Coyote pulled back, startled. He started to voice a number of objections, then said, “Okay. I’d like that.”

“Good.” Bethlehem gazed at him for a moment longer, then said, “You’re a good man, Coyote. And a good officer. Never forget that.” She pulled the hatch open and stepped out of view.

Now what in the holy hells brought that on? he wondered. And more importantly — just what am I going to do about it?