Dragon Fire (The Battle for the Falklands Book 2) (14 page)

“Good hover,” John conveyed to the cockpit.

“Roger,” Seamus acknowledged, and then told John:
“We’re at bingo fuel, so make it fast.”

“Understood,” John responded.
 
The Merlin again slid in over the sailor’s position.

Rodi used a hand signal and John threw a
switch on a panel.
 
The hoist cable began
to pay out from the winch.
 
Rodi guided
the cable down through a cylinder he formed with his gloved hand.
 
Dangling beneath the hovering Merlin, the
harness and the cable’s weighted end swung in a pendulum effect, lowering
steadily toward Raton.

A few seconds after Rodi had signaled to stop
the winch, and steadied the cable, he spun his hand in the air.
 
John reversed the winch, hauling in the
cable.
 
A moment later, Rodi signaled
that the survivor was clear of the water.

“Clear to be banking left,” John told the cockpit.
 
Rodi slowly spun one hand in the air as he
guided the cable with the other.
 
“Uploading to aircraft at this time.”
 
Wide-eyed, soaked and hanging by the harness, Raton appeared in the
Merlin’s cabin door.
 
“Survivor outside
cabin door at this time.”
 
Rodi pumped a
fist.
 
John stopped the winch and locked
it.
 
“Survivor coming into cabin at this
time.”
 
Rodi hauled Raton inboard and,
when he was firmly on the cabin floor, unhooked the lift cable from his
harness.

“
Gracias
,”
Raton sputtered and nodded to both his rescuers.
 
Rodi helped Raton into a fold-down jump seat,
secured the safety belt about his waist, and then wrapped him in a blanket,
being careful to not further damage his swollen and obviously broken hand.

“Survivor aboard,” John told the
cockpit.
 
As Rodi stowed the lift
equipment and slid the cabin door shut, John unhooked his belt, got up from his
seat, and went to the man.
 
Raton coughed
up water and John thumped his back.

“
Gracias
,”
Raton repeated to John and the man in the helicopter’s door who did his best to
balance against the wind and stow the winch.
 
John spotted the flag on the man’s shoulders.

“Argentine?
 
You’re Argentine?”

“
Sí
,
soy argentino; un submarino argentino
.
 
Mi
nombre
es
Raton
,
” Raton explained he was in fact Argentine;
an Argentine submariner.

“Raton?” John asked with a puzzled look on
his face, for he recognized the Spanish word for rat.
 
Raton thought for a moment and then offered
his real name; the name his mother had given him, not the nickname he had been
given aboard
San Luis II
.

“
No
,
no
,
yo soy
Gaston
…
Cabo Segundo
Gaston
Bersa
.
”

“Hello, Gaston, I am Juan,” John shoved his
hand out.
 
“Leading Seaman John Mcelaney,
Royal Navy.”
 
Raton took the offered hand
with his unbroken hand and weakly shook it.

Gaston coughed one more time, expelling the
last of the salt water in his lungs, and spat into a small puddle on the
Merlin’s cabin floor.
 
Rodi, done stowing
the rescue winch, knelt down and patted Gaston on the back.

“
Gracias
…
Thank you,” Gaston offered.
 
Rodi smiled,
his mouth a wide arc beneath the helmet’s shade.
 
Gaston collapsed against his seatbelt as the
helicopter—flying on mere vapors from its tanks—banked hard and raced back to
Dragon
.

◊◊◊◊

Black smoke billowed from vents and openings
on
Dragon
’s superstructure as the
stopped destroyer corkscrewed in the chop.
 
She was low in the water, especially at the bow, and leaned heavily to
starboard.
 
As Seamus began his final
approach, he noticed that one of
Dragon
’s
transom closures was ajar, venting a plume of thick grey smoke.

“
Draig
, Kingfisher
21, requesting clearance to land,” Seamus transmitted and waited for a response.

With only static on
Dragon
’s air traffic control channel, Seamus repeated his
call.
 
He looked to his fuel and
confirmed that both tank indicators had bottomed in the red.

“Sod it,” he said, and then changed channels,
stating: “
Draig
, Kingfisher 21, we are landing.
 
FDO, prepare flight deck for landing.”
 
Drago
n’s
flight deck officer did not answer, either.
 
Seamus looked to the ship’s helicopter visual approach system.
 
Its signal lights were dark.
 
The advanced stabilized glide slope indicator
was also off.
 
However, the deck’s line-up
lights were still illuminated, which meant the seemingly wrecked destroyer had
some power available.
 
Seamus used the
lights to guide his machine over
Dragon
’s
stern.
 
Though he had done this hundreds
of times before, Seamus suddenly realized that to land a moving thing on
another moving thing was wholeheartedly unnatural.
 
Despite such qualms, he skillfully
manipulated the pedals and sticks and began his descent.

Caught by a big wave that travelled down her
stricken length,
Dragon
kicked her
stern into the air.
 
Seamus got
spooked.
 
He increased collective and
power, suddenly and fully, causing the aircraft to rise quickly, wobbling.
 
He fought the controls, struggling to come level
again.
 
Dragon
’s stern slammed back down in a whoosh of white foam and
spray.
 
The Merlin had avoided being
swatted from the sky by 8,500 tons of steel.

BWUP; BWUP, an alarm sounded in the Merlin’s
cockpit.
 
It was followed by the computer’s
monotone synthetic voice that warned: “Fuel.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he shouted
above the thump of the rotors.
 
He
manipulated the cyclic between his legs, jockeying the stick left and right and
forward and back.
 
His other hand lifted
and lowered the collective, while his feet pushed and released pedals that
swung the tail left and right.
 
The
Merlin drifted over the lines painted on
Dragon
’s
flight deck.
 
When he felt the aircraft
was centered, he twisted the throttle on the collective, and feathered the
blades.
 
The Merlin dropped and slammed
into the deck.
 
Its landing gear absorbed
most of the shock, but there was still plenty left for those aboard to feel it
in their bones.
 
Once certain his
aircraft was safely aboard, Seamus began shut-down procedures.
 
He ordered Rodi to secure the tie-down chains
and John to check on the ship’s bridge.

“Aye sir,” John responded and then ripped off
his headset, unbuckled from his seat, and slid the cabin door open.
 
He patted Gaston’s shoulder.

“Sorry, mate, but we will have to put you
somewhere,” he told Gaston, who looked confused until Rodi pointed to his
holstered sidearm.
 
Gaston nodded and
offered a crooked smile of understanding.
 
John jumped out onto the flight deck.
 
It took a moment to find his sea legs.
 
He braced against the pitch and yaw of the ship and then, looking toward
the bow, took several wobbly steps in that direction.

There was no way to get forward without going
inside
Dragon
’s faceted hull.
 
John opened a gastight/watertight doorway
that allowed access to the hangar.
 
He
found no personnel there.
 
Moving through
another 1-Deck doorway, he entered an air lock that if memory served, after two
ladders and hatchways, would allow him access to the ship’s main passageway,
known informally as the ‘Main Drag.’
 
Just as John felt confident he was making progress, he opened a 2-Deck hatchway
and a blast of heat and smoke smacked him in the face.
 
Adding to his despair, he saw a dead sailor
on the opposite side.

The man had apparently tried to open the door
and had run out of air and possibly the will to live.
 
He had slid down the cold, hard steel and
formed a lump that seemed to warn: ‘Go No Farther.’
 
John gently closed the man’s eyes and
continued on.

The passageway, smaller than the Main Drag,
was dark and smoke-filled.
 
In places,
ventilation ducts and water pipes had cracked and fallen when the hull had
flexed beyond their limits.
 
John
shimmied past them.
 
He felt his way and the
heat from the wall.
 
Beyond the steel
wall lay the funnel, which meant the space where the engines exhausted was
afire or was drawing heat from deeper within the ship.

Dragon
, John thought,
my poor
,
poor old girl
.
 
The ship was now listing hard, and feeling he
was moving downhill, it was obvious the bow was heavy.
 
He focused.
 
I must find the captain
.
 
John
persisted toward the bridge.

He found the bridge wrecked, as was the
captain, “Sir,” John shook him gently.
 
The responsive cough was blood-spewing, but it signaled life.
 
“Sir,” he repeated.
 
John cradled his captain and lifted his
weight, propping it against the central console.
 
Captain Fryatt groaned and struggled to open
an eye.
 
“Easy, now, captain.
 
Easy does it.
 
Do not speak.”
 
John went to the
communication panel, donned a headset, and tried to contact every
compartment.
 
“Damn.”

An expended fire extinguisher crashed to the
floor from where it had been left on the central console.
 
John watched the cylinder roll forward.
 
He stood and peered through a cracked
windscreen and out over the foredeck.
 
It
was almost awash.
 
A wave reached up and
smashed into the breakwater, dousing the deck gun.
 
He watched white foam cascade off the sides
as the bow tried to come back up.
 
It was
obvious that the A compartment was flooded, perhaps as high 2-Deck.

“Damn.”

In fact, a watertight door separating A and B
compartments had been comprised, twisted in its frame, and water was now
streaming into the area beneath the missile silos.
 
Despite valiant efforts at both firefighting
and damage control by the lads,
Dragon
was going down.
 
As if to accentuate the direness of the
situation, the stressed hull let out a groan.

“We yield but to Saint George,” Fryatt
muttered.

“Yes, sir.
 
‘We yield but to Saint George.”
 
John
smiled for a moment, then the expression fell into a frown.
 
“I’ll get you help, sir.”
 
John went to the outer hatch, shoved it open,
and screamed for assistance.
 
When he
re-entered, Fryatt had slumped back to the floor.
 
John gently lifted the captain’s head and
felt his jugular.
 
The thump of blood flow
was there, though weak.
 
“Damn.
 
Sir?
 
Sir?”
 
Dragon
shook, interrupting John’s
doubts.
 
Air rushed from outside as it
was sucked down the passageway to the source of the explosion.
 
Then, barely a second later, the ship’s
interior exhaled through the bridge, and brought its breath of heat and fire
and smoke.
 
John was thrown to the floor
and Captain Fryatt’s body folded and his head smashed against the cold steel
deck.
 
John’s face hurt and he smelled
singed hair.

“Abandon ship, abandon ship,” a far-off voice
screamed.
 
John crawled to the captain,
reached out to feel his neck again, and then saw the severity of Fryatt’s head
wound.
 
He concluded that the strawberry
jam upon Fryatt’s cracked head was brain matter.
 
The captain’s glazed open eyes reinforced
what John already knew.
 
As if to affirm
the situation,
Dragon
lurched hard.
 
Abandon ship
…