Dragon Fire (The Battle for the Falklands Book 2) (6 page)

“Sir,” John’s voice crackled on the
intercom, “All systems are go.”

With a “Ready,” from his secondary, Seamus
clicked the transmitter:

“Kingfisher 21, ready for departure.”

Clearance was received and blade
revolutions came up to take-off power.
 
The Flight Deck Chief indicated chocks were out and that no tie-downs
were in use.
 
Then the Flight Deck
Officer saluted and, slowly flapping his arms, marshaled the Merlin off the
deck.
 
Seamus raised the collective.
 
The main rotor tilted and bit into the air,
where vortices formed at its shovel blade-shaped tips.
 
The Merlin rose over
Dragon
’s stern.

The helicopter hovered over the flight
deck and swiveled into the relative wind.
 
It then flew sideways to a hover position alongside the ship.
 
Clear of deck hazards—the hangar, the masts,
and radar arrays—the Merlin began a straight climb and fell back as
Dragon
continued onward at seven
knots.
 
Holding a hover at 300 feet, Seamus
surveyed the instruments, switched to the high-frequency radio, and confirmed
their machine was healthy and under positive control.
 
He requested permission to depart the
pattern.

“Kingfisher two-one,
Draig
,
roger, commence your turn on course,” the ship’s air traffic control responded.

Seamus pushed his boot against a pedal and
pointed the Merlin’s nose in the desired direction, nudging the cyclic.
 
The big helicopter leaned forward and headed
away from the churned, light-blue wake of the destroyer.
 
In the distance, where the last of the rain
darkened the horizon line, a cloud discharged and sent a forked bolt snaking
from the sea
to
high in the sky.
 
Seamus started down the first leg of his
pattern.
 
In the rear cabin, John
prepared to lower the dipping sonar while the observer, Rodi, peered out the
window.

Dragon
circled
Iron Duke
in a mile-wide
circle.
 
Far on the horizon, the smoke
trail of the Royal Navy tugboat became visible.

The tug was
Capable
, an
Adept
-class
large harbor tug based in Gibraltar.
 
Dragon
had her on radar, and
Lieutenant-Commander Williams was talking to her by radio.
 
As a harbor tug not ideal for the mission of
getting
Iron Duke
to safe
waters—especially all by her lonesome—
Capable
had adequate power.
 
If only the weather
held, she also had the seaworthiness to depart the near-shore environment for
the open sea.
 
If all went well,
Capable
would pull
Iron Duke
back to Ascension for temporary repairs, freeing
Dragon
to race to the Falklands.
 
It would be hours until
Capable
could arrive on-scene, however.
 
Several long, dangerous hours.
 
Captain Fryatt paced the bridge.

Fryatt felt the gentle roll of the ship in
his ears and made a picture of the battlespace in his mind’s eye:
Iron Duke
was at the center as
Dragon
swept around her; the Merlin was
off doing its task, dropping sonobuoys and listening to the ocean, making sure
no submarines could sneak in to threaten either vessel.
 
Then Fryatt’s mind’s eye dove beneath the
waves.
 
He pictured the thermocline that
shrouded the deeps, and he saw what he knew of the bottom at this part of the
Atlantic: mud flats and rocky foothills that climbed to become the craggy peaks
of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Earth’s longest mountain range, the ‘spine of the
world.’

5: CAT
AND MOUSE

“
When the mouse laughs at the cat
,
there’s a hole nearby
.”—Nigerian proverb

T
hey
called him ‘
Raton
.
’
 
Not, mind you, because of any inherent trait, nor for any physical
resemblance to the little furry, whisker-twitching mammal.
 
For Raton’s face was flat, almost indented,
and lacked the rat’s snout-like structure.
 
Though his first name was Gaston—a convenient and almost lyrical rhyme
with his nickname—Corporal Second Class
Bersa
earned
his moniker by the style of life he lived aboard
San Luis II
.

Gaston
Bersa
came from Salta, a small farming town in the Lerma valley of Argentina's northwest.
 
His family farm would be desert dry if not
for the water delivered by canal and pipe from the snow-capped mountains that
towered above it.
 
With this precious
moisture, lemons and oranges grew where only dust devils and brown brush should
flourish.
 
Days of hard work were broken
by reading in the shade, moments where he would take out his tattered
Cuban-translated copy of Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea,’ digesting it
for the hundredth time and reciting each word as if by memory.
 
And dreaming of the blue open sea and the
freedom it imparted.

A sustained drought had come, causing the
government to divert water to the thirsty cities.
 
Soon the groves browned and died and Gaston’s
father had taken to doing odd construction and repair jobs in town, leaving him
to watch his small sister and his broken-down mother.
 
One day the pages of his novel had finally fallen
out and been taken by the wind.
 
They
scattered over the bones of the citrus trees.
 
That day, Gaston had dropped his shovel and walked the six miles to
town.
 
He did not even know why he made
the trek, and he could not argue with the sensation of being drawn that
way.
 
Once among the town’s squat
buildings and dust-choked streets, he trudged past out-of-work farm hands and
right into a government office.

Gaston had meant to yell and curse at
whoever was there.
 
He would lecture the
bureaucrats on water and farms and how crops were more important than keeping
the fountains going in Buenos Aires.
 
Before he began his tirade, however, he became transfixed by a picture
of a navy ship that rode up a sea-swell.
 
The local recruiter saw the look in Gaston’s eye and smiled.

“¿
Hermosa
,
no
?” he asked the
entranced youth.

“Yes.
 
Very
beautiful.”

“There is nothing like being aboard ship,
sailing the seas and doing so for your country.” The recruiter set the hook,
knowing full well it was submariners the navy was currently in need of.

“Yes,” Gaston repeated.

His signature and acceptance of a small
cash bonus meant that Gaston
Bersa
now belonged to
Comando
de la
Fuerza
de
Submarinos
—the submarine branch of the Argentine Navy.

That night was the last time Gaston had seen
his mother and father, or the stars that hung above the Lerma valley.
 
Almost two years since had passed in rigorous
basic and submarine training, and then
San
Luis II
became Gaston’s new home.

Like everyone aboard
Numero
Dos
, Raton was condemned to near-darkness and hot, stuffy
breaths.
 
However, unlike the others,
Raton’s duties were especially rodential, the nature of which imparted his new
nickname.

Chosen for his diminutive stature, wiry
frame, and seeming immunity to claustrophobia, Raton spent most of his time at
the bottom of
San Luis II
’s pressure
hull where he lay upon his belly and slid a rail-borne sled over the
submarine’s two battery banks.

San
Luis II
’s battery deck entailed a thicket of power cables, leads,
and ventilation tubes that grew from row-after-row of foot locker-sized two-ton
battery cells.
 
It stank of battery acid,
diesel, and salt.
 
It was an underworld
where the footfalls of fellow crewmates reverberated through the low ceiling.
 
This was Raton’s nest.
 
Despite the drawbacks, it was a place of
privacy in a big
unprivate
, a place where technical
knowledge made him ruler.
 
He scurried
along on his sled maintaining his batteries.

Raton checked each for corrosion, repaired
ventilation nipples, and topped the cells off with distilled water.
 
In this dim loneliness hid Raton’s thoughts,
his hummed folksongs, and largely unnoticed by the boat’s officers,
intermittent naps.
 
With a flashlight
headband to see his work, and with a hearty yawn, Raton checked the
compartment’s hydrogen meter.

The meter indicated that the odorless,
tasteless, and highly flammable gas—produced when the water portion of the
battery was converted during charging—remained within safe limits.
 
Raton checked a small flow meter on a cell’s
ventilation duct header.
 
The number
indicated that the ventilators were doing their job of shunting the hydrogen to
holding tanks, to be blown overboard.
 
Before Raton wiggled and tightened an inter-cell connector wire, he
checked the voltmeter and muttered a prayer.

He did this whenever he touched anything
down here.
 
Even though he knew his job
inside out, everything around him was built by what he called ‘Vodka-infused
Russian dockworkers,’ and was really just updated Cold War technology.
 
It did not help his nerves or superstitions
that a man was killed on the battery deck during the boat’s shakedown cruise.

San
Luis II
had been built for the Indian Navy.
 
Named
Varuna
for the Hindu God of the Ocean, a contract spat
between Moscow and New
Dehli
meant the submarine was instead
counter-traded with Buenos Aires for copper.
 
She was then renamed and, like all Argentine submarines, received the
name of an Argentine province that began with an ‘S,’ and thus became the
second Argentine submarine named
 
San Luis
.
 
The first
San Luis
had performed a central role
in commando actions during the 1982 conflict over
Las Islas Malvinas
.
 
When
Numero
Dos
had sailed on its shakedown cruise, a cell’s vent valve failed and
burst.
 
Covered with acid and burned by
heat, Raton’s predecessor had died down here on the battery deck.

Raton had seen him once, he would
swear.
 
It was a ghostly head that stared
back at him and smiled.
 
So, Raton was
always thankful when his job did not kill him.
 
As he pulled his hand away from the battery, he knew that God, for now,
had decided to keep him alive.

“
Amén
,”
Raton mumbled.
 
He grabbed at handholds
and slid the sled a few more feet to check a cable junction.
 
Like his fellow submariners, Raton had heard
the reverberation of the active sonar ping, and felt it vibrate through his
prone body.
 
He ignored such things,
however, and trusted in his captain and crewmates to keep him alive, just as
they all relied on him to keep
San Luis
II
’s air blowing, motor running, and keep the lights on.
 
Whenever Raton’s mind turned to darker
doubts, he would slide along on his sled and find something else to check or
repair.
 
When the next sonar ping—higher
in frequency this time—echoed through
San
Luis II
’s bilges, Raton paused and suddenly felt the tight confines and
helpless vulnerability of his situation.
 
As much as he loved the sea, down here beneath it, the sea had become
his enemy.
 
He knew its embrace would not
be warm and gentle, but cold and hard.

In
San
Luis II
’s Control Room, Ledesma reported to Matias: “Dipping sonar at
two-three-six.
 
Range: five miles.”
 
Another ping and everyone cringed.
 
“It’s the helicopter, sir…The Merlin.”

◊◊◊◊

The Merlin’s rotor chopped at the
air.
 
The 30,000-pound machine hovered
and performed a delicate balancing act of physics and thrust.
 
The rotor wash sent white-capped waves off in
a wide circle, while a steel cable unwound from beneath the Merlin’s fuselage.
 
The FLASH dipping sonar splashed through the
surface and continued downward into the depths.
 
In the Merlin’s computer-filled cabin, John turned his dial to stop its
descent.
 
He hit a red button.

At 100 feet beneath the surface, the FLASH
sent out a high-frequency pulse.
 
Then it
listened for a return.
 
John announced
what everyone already knew: “Significant layer at 410 feet.”
 
He adjusted a dial to unreel more cable,
dipping the FLASH beneath the thermocline.

“Cable now at 500 feet.
 
Hammer.”

Another ping.
 
The sound wave traveled in all directions,
reaching for the bottom of the Atlantic.
 
As the computer analyzed returns, an image began filling the display in
the helicopter’s rear cabin.
 
It showed
the undulating sea bottom, the false ‘ceiling’ of the thermocline, a clustered
school of fish and…an ovoid shadow.
 
A
red light flashed above the screen.

“Submerged contact,” John announced.
 
“Depth: 600 feet. Bearing: zero-six-zero.
 
Range: five miles.
 
Designate ‘
Possub
.’”
 
A possible submarine.
 
The FLASH was reeled in so the Merlin could
move again.

As contact data was relayed to
Dragon
’s Action Information Center, Seamus
tipped the helicopter’s nose down and began a sprint toward the contact’s
coordinates.
 
Captain Fryatt would place
Dragon
between the contact and
Iron Duke
, but the Merlin’s mission was
to localize and attack any target.
 
The
Merlin continued its charge, sprinting at just over 180 miles-per-hour.
 
It covered several miles in just minutes.
 
Rodi leaned his head into the cabin window
and raised his binoculars.

“A lot of water,” Rodi said with his
Bermudian lilt.

The grey shapes of
Dragon
and
Iron Duke
were
now far on the horizon.
 
A high-pressure
front had pushed the storm away, drying and heating the air and creating a
shimmering haze where sea met sky.
 
It
made the grey outline of the warships hard to see.
 
Furthermore,
Dragon
’s rather significant but white superstructure blended it
into the bright sky.
 
In the Merlin, John
alerted Seamus of their proximity to their first drop.

The first sonar buoy shot free of the
aircraft’s fuselage.
 
Pushed from its
tube by high-pressure air, the cylindrical sensor splashed in and then bobbed
at the surface.
 
It deployed its whip
antenna and unfolded its transducers.
 
The
buoy found a global positioning satellite and logged its location, and then made
contact with the Merlin’s computer.
 
The
first of many to be deployed in a diamond-shaped pattern, this sonobuoy was of
the bathythermograph type, designed to ascertain local density, salinity and
temperature conditions.
 
The next
sonobuoys the Merlin deployed would be DIFAR and HIDAR types.
 
The DIFARs would provide direction to any
particular producer of sound, and the HIFARs would instantaneously provide the
target’s range.
 
The Merlin sprinted and
dropped, sprinted and dropped, repeating this process, surrounding the original
contact with listening devices.
 
When the
pattern was complete, Seamus shoved his stick over.

The Merlin screamed toward the center of
the pattern, where the FLASH had first discovered the anomalous contact among the
sonar returns from the rocky bottom, the swimming fish, and haunting whale songs.
 
The Merlin raised its nose to rapidly shed
airspeed until it virtually stood still, Seamus leveling his aircraft and
nursing the hover.
 
He balanced the
collective and cyclic sticks and engine power as well, until he became in tune
with every breeze and pull of gravity, keeping his machine steady and floating in
place above the sparkling ocean.
 
When he
felt ready, he gave clearance to the cabin crew.
 
From the helicopters belly, the dipping sonar
descended.