The Cruiser: A Dan Lenson Novel (28 page)

“No sir, that’s not what I said.”

“What exactly are you saying, Petty Officer?”

“Sir, we can’t open
that
hatch.”

Dan told him to keep trying, but the tech said there was no power any longer to the module, so it was no use. So actually, Dan thought, they really couldn’t open any of the hatches. Which meant that if a missile caught fire and ignited, he had no way to get rid of it.

Launchers in older cruisers had included provisions for ejecting duds or hot runs, physically booting the round overboard with a big hydraulic ram. But the VLS had no “launcher” as such and no provision for ejecting a contrary missile. He was stuck with it; they had to deal with the thing where it was. He hung up, whispering, “Shit. —Where exactly is the fire?” Danenhower, who was standing in front of the alarm panel, that silly engineer’s cap hanging off his temple, didn’t answer. Dan jabbed him in the ribs and asked again, louder.

The engineer flinched and pointed to a red indicator. “Module two. The GMMs are saying SCMM.”

“Power’s secured?”

“Yes sir. All power aft secured.”

“I guess that’s good, except it means we can’t open the hatch now.”

“Oh, no sir. We can open them from here,” a petty officer said. “That’s hydraulics. As long as we got hydraulic pressure—”

“What’s the temperature in there now?” Dan interrupted, getting more anxious by the second.

A console operator said, “Aft module, air temperature ninety-nine, cell two readout, six hundred. And going up.”

On the screen a damage controlman—was that Benyamin under the mask and hood?—pulled off a glove and laid his palm against the heavy steel door. He left it there for only a moment, then jerked it back. His mask turned back and forth; he was shaking his head.

Dan said, “There’s obviously a fire. What happens when your team opens that door? Especially if we can’t get the deck hatches open?”

“They go in and fight it.”

“Right, but I mean, what happens in the p-way? If that’s one of the boosters burning, we’re gonna have massive toxic release. All through the ship.”

Danenhower blinked. “The module’s sealed, sir.”

“Against blast? From a Standard warhead?”

The engineer grimaced. “We’ve got Zebra set, but that’s a good point—any penetration and we’d get contamination all through the aft end.” He snapped to McMottie, “Chief, tell the team leader to hold up opening that hatch. Have the backup team rig blowers and put positive atmospheric pressure in the firefighting area.”

Dan nodded. “That’s good, Bart. Now. We can flood—right?”

“I’d rather not.”

“Me neither. But how many missiles do we lose if we do?”

“Each canister has its own deluge system. We can flood the whole launcher, too.”

“We can’t flood by modules? It’s either one missile or everything?”

“Correct.”

“Flood that canister,” Dan told him. “Right now. I know, you’re not sure. And I know water alone’s not going to put it out if one of those boosters ignites. But I don’t want guys walking in there if—you know what I’m saying. And crank open all the hatches—both exit and exhaust. If one of those engines lights off, at least it’ll reduce the pressure.”

He wasn’t sure this was the best course, and every canister he flooded cost at least a million dollars. But right now, they had to get a handle on that short circuit, or whatever it was, before it cascaded. The module held more than enough explosive and high-energy propellant to tear the ship in two and kill everyone aft of the stacks. And in this cold water and heavy sea, even those left alive would probably die before
Lahav
and
Pittsburgh
could get there to help.

Danenhower seemed about to object, but instead rasped to a petty officer on one of the consoles, “Flood it.”

Dan got his Hydra out, gaze still locked on the red-and-white door, the damage-control team, fidgeting as they waited. “Bridge, CO.”

“Bridge, aye.”
Singhe’s silky voice.

“To both
Lahav
and
Pittsburgh
: high-temperature alarm, fire in my aft missile compartment. Stand by in case I require emergency assistance.”

“Bridge, aye. Do you want them to close?”

He gave that a half second’s consideration. “Yeah. But no closer than a mile.”

“Good luck, sir. Bridge out.”

McMottie said, “Flooding complete.”

“Temperature?”

“Six hundred and eighty. Six hundred and seventy … six hundred and seventy.”

They waited. It seemed to be getting hotter in CCS, but Dan wasn’t sure that wasn’t his imagination. He blotted his forehead surreptitiously with the back of one hand. “… six hundred and eighty. Six hundred and ninety. Seven hundred. Seven hundred and ten.”

“It’s not in the canister. Or it didn’t fully flood.”

“Fuck.
Fuck,
” Danenhower whispered.

“I put full firemain on it, sir,” the petty officer on the console said. “And I’m showing pressure drop, so we got flow in there.”

Dan nodded. They were running out of options. “Send them in,” he said, and some inner self marveled at how he could sound as if he weren’t sending men to their deaths. “—Wait. No! Wait.”

Heads turned. McMottie said, “Hold on—Captain says stand by. Yes sir?”

“The missiles around it,” Dan said. “Flood them, too. Before you send the team in.”

The chief said, “We’re not seeing much of a heat increase there, sir. And you’re gonna lose all that ordnance—”

“You heard me. Flood. All eight. Every canister that—that touches the one we’re seeing the heat in, that’s contiguous to it. Flood it.
Now
.”

The petty officer, looking scared, keyboarded seven million dollars more away. Dan couldn’t watch. He located the temperature readout—the simulacrum of a thermometer, on one of the screens—and walked over to monitor it. It seemed to vibrate, to tremble. For a few seconds no one spoke.

Into that silence penetrated a distant roar, like a waterfall miles away. Shoulders hunched. Hands reached out as if to brace against a roll. A few sailors left, drifting out unobtrusively. No doubt, to run forward, away from the unleashing hell back aft. The roar drew nearer, and began to shake the overhead. But no one at a console moved. “Ignition!” someone yelled over the rising din.

He lifted his chin, trying to look calm. As if they might not all be random atoms in the next moment. Battleships had disintegrated in World War I, in World War II, when their magazines had exploded. Torn apart from inside in a fraction of a second, consigning those not killed instantly by fire and blast to the sea.

The roar swelled, rose. The steel around them began to hum and shake. Something fell out of the overhead and bounced off a console. Everyone flinched away. The thing rolled this way and that on the deck, clinking. It came to his boots like an eager pet. He lifted his foot and stopped it. It was a butane can, the kind you refill cigarette lighters with.

McMottie had found an exterior camera. When the screen came up heads lifted. Someone whispered, “My God.”

A stream of mingled flame and steam was vomiting up out of
Savo
’s deck, like an erupting fumarole. The plume trembled and wavered, but jetted on, sun-white at its center, the edges shading to marigold yellow, then sunset orange. Ash … no,
snowflakes
drifted past the lens as the ship rolled. Past that the sea was a forged-iron gray as the camera compensated for the brightness of the flare. The very tip of the flame, fifty feet up, vanished into a complexly folding shroud of white steam and chalky smoke, billowing endlessly as hot gases rushed up.

He leaned forward, squinting. The cell in question was at the aft edge of the module, not far from the turn of the deck. The five-inch gun mount was just visible behind it. Past the mount huddled a small dark bundle: the aft lookout, pressed against the life rail, arms clamped over his head. The hatch of the defective cell was still closed. Jammed, probably. But those around it stood open like the popped lids of tumblebug burrows. It was from those hatches, and from the exhaust plenum between them, that the flame and steam and what looked like sprays of water were jetting, like superpowered geysers.

He hoped the water and steam were absorbing the heat load, because somewhere down in that burning hell, perched right above the burning booster, was a missile warhead. If it caught fire, it was supposed to burn rather than detonate. But a high explosive didn’t care how you hoped it would behave.

The chief tapped the keyboard, and the screen changed: to the module interior again, the central corridor, the upper deck. Unfortunately, each time white smoke blanked the screen. Only one distant flash of orange flickered through the murk, then disappeared. The camera switched back to the exterior view. It retreated, zoomed out; now the smoke plume was tending away, dropping lower over the waves, then seeming to sink into them. At least they weren’t sucking it back into their own ventilation.

The roaring went on, but maybe not quite as loud. Then it began to lessen. Yes, the sound was diminishing. The shuddering was easing off.

“Get ’em in now, sir?” The petty officer, head lifted.

He nodded. “Send ’em in.”

More minutes dragged by. The plume continued to shrink, but hot gas still jetted up, now and again blasting out bursts of spray and steam.

“Fire team leader reports: Reached the fire. Commencing cooling surrounding canisters.”

They weren’t out of the woods. Dan couldn’t help pacing, glancing at the screens and gauges each time he turned. The name of the game now was to surround the fire, isolate it, cool it down. Wall it off until it ran out of fuel, or the continuing firemain flood dropped the temperature enough that it doused itself. He suspected, though, that rocket fuel, carrying its own oxidizer locked into the grain, would burn until it was all gone.

Meanwhile the team inside were running a terrible risk. Trying to cool the surrounding canisters and keep their boosters from cooking off too. Trying to keep accident from escalating into disaster. A glimpse now and then through the smoke by the passageway camera showed them struggling with cumbersome, turgid pythons of firehoses. Maybe that had been the right thing to do, sacrifice the contiguous cells. Dan prayed that, please, it could be so. He tore his gaze away to key his Hydra. “CIC, CO: How’s it going up there?”

“Sir, Cheryl here. Lahav’s closing in. Distance four thousand yards. Captain Youngblood wants to know if they should surface and stand by us.”

“Not yet. Not yet. It’s too rough. Unless he hears an explosion … How far away are they?”

“A mile. On the other side of us from Lahav.”

“Good. That’s good. Fahad up there?”

A short pause.
“No sir. XO’s not here. Isn’t he down there with you?”

What the hell? He let up on the key, then forgot about it as a figure stumbled out of the smoke and lurched across the camera’s field, clutching its mask. “Is he all right?” Dan asked the petty officer who had the direct line to the team leader.

“One man fallen out with smoke inhalation, sir. But they say they’re getting water in all around that one missile. It’s … says it’s boiling off, but not as hard now.”

Dan crossed again to the temperature readout. The affected cell read zero. He frowned. McMottie explained it had probably melted or shorted. “But the temps in the cells around it are starting to fall.”

“How high did they go?”

“Around five hundred. Hit that, then steadied out.” He touched the display. “Right now: only three fifty, and falling.”

“Keep that firemain flood going,” Danenhower growled.

Dan said, “How about the cells across the catwalk? What’s the temperature on those?”

“High, but within normal limits.”

“Good. Okay, who’s in charge of the Mark 41? The VLS?”

A mustached chief pushed forward. His name tag read Quincoches. Dan gripped his shoulder. “Chief, the firefighters might have it under control. Once we’re sure, you can go in. We’ve got to get as many missiles back to operational status as we can, just as soon as possible. What’s first? Dewater?”

Danenhower said, “Already dewatering, Captain. Or we’d have flooded the module.”

“Good. Chief, I need you in there just as soon as the fire’s under control.”

Quincoches drew a deep breath. “There’s a mandatory thirty-minute wait time.”

“We don’t have half an hour to sit around with our thumbs up our ass, Chief. Maybe in peacetime. Not now.”

Quincoches paled. “Uh, right, sir. In that case I’ll go in first. Alone. With a screamer on my belt. I’ll manually safe the missiles we flooded. Isolate that cell, then restore module power. Then we can get the guys in and desmoke. First thing, we’re going to have to pull and dry out all the cables. The cells are supposed to be waterproof, but not the connections. Got to see if the heat warped any of the connectors, the hatches … then run a DSOT and see who answers up.”

“Good,” Dan said. “Do it.”

The chief started to leave, then seemed to recollect something. Dan said, “Yeah?”

“I’ll go in there, check it out, Captain.”

“Yeah?”

“Because that’s what we do. That strike officer, she ain’t down here. Us chiefs, we are. Us
middle management
. I don’t want to make a big deal out of this, but—”

He nodded. Grinned tightly. “Point taken, Chief. And I’ll be sure and pass it along.”

Bit by bit, as the temperature dropped, everyone in CCS began to murmur, then talk aloud. Dan blew out, and massaged his eyeballs, then stopped; it would make him look tired. The camera focused down the centerline passageway of the module gradually showed a clearer picture. On the exterior camera, the pillar of flame had waned to a jet of brownish smoke, which was lessening as the flooding went on. He breathed deep. Then again, flushing out the tension. “That might’ve been bad,” he said to Danenhower.

“Damn close.” The engineer nodded soberly. “How many birds you figure we lost?”

For a horrible second Dan wondered if they’d just toasted all the modified SM-2s. If so, their mission was over before it had really begun. Then remembered: two were up forward; only two were aft. The aft module held mostly land-attack Tomahawks, standard Standards, and most of their vertical launch Asroc. But that was why they were mixed loads, so a casualty to one magazine would still leave both offensive and defensive capabilities. “What was in those cells we flooded? Anybody know?”