The Gulf (65 page)

They'd pushed him around when he reported to the locker. Laughed at him, thrown his gear at him. They didn't care how he felt. Along with hurting like a rattler-bit dog, he was lonely and scared. Here in the repair locker, no one knew what was happening topside. Like coal miners buried by a cave-in, they knew of the world above only through sounds. There'd been a lot of noise, guns firing just above their heads. Noise over the 1MC, a voice shouting something about Iranians.

But he didn't care if they got hit. He didn't care if they stayed afloat. He'd be better off dead. At least he wouldn't need anything then.

The team leader was back at the door, shouting. Vaguely he thought, Everyone's shouting tonight. “Flooding forward. Mine hit. No fire, leave the OBAs here. Shoring and tools. Let's go!”

Before he could puzzle it, someone was shouting “Move, goddamn it,” in his ear, and yanking him to his feet. He grasped feebly at a heavy long chunk of wood someone thrust into his arms. A line clacked onto his belt. Like the last man in a chain gang, he was dragged out the door after the others.

The passageway went dim a few yards forward. Somewhere ahead battle lanterns flickered like heat lightning over the mesas. He was dragged toward them, the tail end of a snake of men. He blinked, suddenly understanding that the waviness under his feet was steel, rippled upward, deformed by some incredible force.

All light ended. Blind now, the snake blundered through doors, into bulkheads, then crawled down a ladderway. His timber caught on the hatch cover and he almost fell.

At the bottom his boots splashed into a foot of water. Helmet lamps and hand lamps flashed and dimmed ahead. He was lost. He didn't know this ship or where he was. He didn't have a light and only the line on his belt told him where to go. He tripped over things, sprawled, got up, reshouldering the heavy splintered beam like a driven Christ.

The rapid clatter of hammers ahead, the whine of saws. Word came back for shoring and he pawed for the line, unsnapped it, shoved forward.

The lights showed him men working frantically, some measuring, others cutting beams to fit, hammering in wedges, laying wires, patching broken pipes. The dark smelled of explosives, seawater, sawdust, shit, and fear. A door gaped open, a well of blackness, and from the far side came cries and screams.

He pushed forward with his load. Somebody grabbed it, measured, and started sawing. In thirty seconds, it was part of a brace. He staggered back and leaned into a locker, gasping with fear, withdrawal, and exertion. What was he doing here? He didn't know what was going on.

His ear caught, then, one of the screams. “Corpsman! For the love of God, get a corpsman up here!”

There was a battle lantern by his feet. On, but it didn't seem to belong to anybody. There was also an olive-drab pack with a red cross on it. He hesitated, glancing around with his head down. Nobody was watching him. They were all busy, sawing, cursing, stringing lines.

He grabbed the light and the kit and hobbled through the door.

The space was, or had been, some kind of sonar room. The gear was wrecked. Glass all over, water up to his knees. The air was thick with a burnt heavy smell that made him think of firing ranges. He saw a hand sticking up out of the water. It didn't move. The voice was farther ahead.

Bernard saw him then, lying on top of a workbench.

His eyes were closed but his face was warm. No shock yet, then. Blood all over him. Black man. Phelan tore open the med kit and began ripping off clothes.

He found leg wounds and glass cuts. He was tourniqueting the legs when the man's eyes opened and he screamed, right in his ear. Bernard said angrily, “Knock it off,
way
too loud. How you doing, buddy?”

“Fuck. Fuck, ah,
Jesus!
”

“Just hold on, now, you got the best medicine man in the Zuni Nation in charge, you gonna be all right now, hear?”

He finished the bandaging, then searched through the kit. There they were. He tore open the little box, broke off the tip, and had the needle in the guy's thigh before he thought, No, man, you just tourniqueted his legs. He shifted to an arm and squeezed the syrette empty like a toothpaste tube. “You gonna be all right, man,” he whispered over the clatter of hammers, the distant shouts.

“Thanks, pal. Hey—” the eyes opened for a moment before the drug congealed them—“there oughta be another sonar tech up forward. See if you can find him, huh?”

“I'll get him. You take it easy.” Phelan patted him, then took out a ball-point and wrote across his forehead
M 0220.
He didn't have a watch, but that was close enough for a dose time.

So far, he hadn't seen any litters. But the guy'd been moving his legs; probably his back was all right. He swung him up in a fireman's carry, staggered through the water to the hatch, and screamed for help. Two seaman ran to grab him. He told them to get him some litters, he was going back in. As he turned, they shouted something at him, something about a door, but he didn't wait for a repeat.

The water was deeper now. Through the compartment, past the dead hand, into the next. He almost walked through the hole before he realized there was no more ship in front of him. Just a black gap where there'd been shell plating, and a waterfall roar outside.

The moans he'd heard while he was taking care of the black guy had stopped. He flashed the lantern around the compartment, then around the hole, fascinated by it. Half-inch steel had been bent inward and upward. The sea bulged in every time the ship dipped her bow. It sucked in the light, gleaming blackly. He shuddered, and returned to the search.

He found the second guy by stepping on him. Bernard hauled him up out of the water. He turned him over and pumped his arms. He'd done it a million times on the dummy. He got a weak cough and some retching. He turned him over and started work.

When he was breathing again, Bernard realized this one probably wasn't going to make it. He didn't have much left of his guts. He gave him the shot anyway. Then stood up, trying to remember what it was he'd been about to do.

Then he remembered.

There were five more syrettes in the kit. And no more wounded up here. He picked one up and started to open it. Then he realized he didn't seem to need it as badly as he had a half hour before.

He felt weird and light-headed, he was shaking, but he didn't seem to need a fix. He also realized then that the black man had been much bigger than he was, but he'd carried him out alone.

Tuh,
he thought. Maybe this was that natural high you were supposed to get in danger. It was a primo rush, all right.

The bow dipped, the sea gurgled at his waist, and he started, suddenly realizing he had to get the guy out of here. He might die on the way, but for sure he'd drown here. They both would.

He got him up on his shoulders and began wading aft. Through the sonar compartment, the water deeper here, too. Dark ahead, he couldn't see the team's lights. He came to the door. It was closed and dogged, solid as a safe.

“Holy shit,” he muttered. He slammed at it with the lantern. The bulb broke with sparks and a fizzing pop. Now he was in the dark. He could hear them hammering faintly on the far side, and realized the last pieces of shoring were going into place. “Holy shit,” he said again, to the darkness, and the man on his back.

The light on his helmet. He fumbled around the weight pressing him down and got it on. It was dim but he could see enough to navigate by.

Phelan slogged his way forward again, through water to his chest, looking up at the overhead. Hoping for a scuttle, a ladder, any way to get out. There wasn't any.

“We got problems, man,” he muttered to his burden.

When he reached the bow again, the gurgle was louder. Water streamed in, frothy-glowing, pulsing with weird green light. He shifted the body, hoping he wouldn't have to do what he was thinking about doing. But the sea was still rising. He had no way of knowing when it would stop.

He thought again of the morphine and knew that was impossible. He couldn't use now. Or he could, but it would be the last hit he ever took. He stuffed it into his pockets instead and threw the rest of the kit away.

The guy on his back had his Mae West on, like you were supposed to for GQ, but it wasn't inflated. Phelan rolled him off into the water and slapped his face. He moaned.

So he was still breathing. He unsnapped the life vest, pulled the collar over the guy's head, and popped the inflator.

Unfortunately, he didn't have one for himself. He was in excess, and there hadn't been any spares in the repair locker.

The ship seemed to be picking up speed now that the shoring was completed. The water coming in was swift and strong. Phelan bent into it. It ripped at his chest and tried to tear the life jacket from his hand. He held on grimly, fighting his way, till he lost his footing. The current punched him backward and he felt jagged steel slice his flesh.

He got up again and bulled forward once more, maddened now, screaming into the roar of the sea, and suddenly he was out, tumbling, sucked down helpless into a roaring void. His right hand struck out; his left cramped closed on his companion's heel. He wasn't going to let go. If they got separated, the poor bastard didn't have a prayer.

Too late, just before they were sucked into them, Phelan remembered the screws.

0225 HOURS: U.S.S.
TURNER VAN ZANDT

Eight hundred yards away,
Van Zandt
staggered slowly away from her collision with the submarine.

At thirty knots her bow had bitten deep, but the damage went both ways. The impact sent her upward, over the pressure hull, crushing it down into the mud and sand. And then, backed by the incredible momentum of four thousand tons of steel, had kept going. The whole ship had groaned and shuddered, then pounded as the propeller chewed itself into junk against the sub's conning tower.

Now, as she drifted free, Dan felt her agony, her mortality, in the sluggish way she responded to Shaker's shouted orders.

The machine guns were still clattering from shore. And
Van Zandt
's were still answering. There was no more heavy fire, though. Orange pyres soared upward from buildings and fuel dumps. They could see it all very clearly, see the tiny figures running about. Between bursts, they could hear shouts and screaming from the shore.

“Cease fire!” Shaker shouted, and voices repeated it. The .50s hammered a last burst and fell silent.

Shaker crossed to the intercom. He hesitated, then pressed the switch. “Main control, Bridge. Rick, are you there?”

“Main aye. What the hell's going on, Captain? Are we aground?”

“No. We rammed a submarine. I didn't mean to ride over it, but it was smaller than I thought. What's the status?”

“Well, I don't think we have a prop anymore, Captain. The shaft ran away and I just shut it down.”

“You don't think we have power back there?”

The intercom hissed, but the chief engineer said nothing. In the background Dan heard the crazy seesaw whine of electronic alarms.

Shaker tried again. “Rick, we got to get out of here. See if you can deploy the bow thrusters.”

“Stand by.” Guerra was back in a moment: “Starboard unit's deploying. Port doesn't respond.”

“Steve, take control of starboard APU. Give it all the power she'll take. Train it to zero-nine-zero and try to get us turned around,” the captain snapped to Charaler.

Dan, meanwhile, had been punching buttons to get Loamer. The damage control assistant had bad news. The fire in chiefs' quarters was out of control. The AMR was still taking water. And his petty officers were reporting heavy damage and flooding from forward to midships.

Van Zandt
drifted helplessly a mile offshore. They still had electrical power. They still had weapons, nearly a full magazine of sophisticated missiles. But they couldn't move. Dan faded back toward McQueen. The last fix showed them two hundred yards away from the mine field, and moving closer, set by the making tide and the slight wind that still came over the island.

“APU responds,” said Charaler. “I'm coming right.”

“Use the rudder, too,” said Dan. “We're getting close to the mine field.”

“Rudder's fucked, XO. Think it went the same place our prop did.”

Pushed around by the bow thruster, an electrically driven auxiliary motor usually employed only for docking, the bow drifted right with agonizing slowness. They all stood silent, watching it. From back aft came a continuous low sound. It hardly seemed human. Dan remembered the shell that had hit the signal bridge. But there wasn't anything he could do. Other than try to get them all out of here.

He noticed then how the deck was gradually sloping under their feet.

What could they do? The alternatives were terrifyingly simple. With maybe two knots available from the APU, they might be able to beach her. If they could make way against the wind and tide. That would save the crew … but for captivity in Iran, if not execution in the heat of revenge. And the ship and all her weapons and electronics, codes and operating procedures, would fall into their hands, too.

The silence from shore could not continue. Disoriented by the attack, and probably still being jammed, they obviously thought both American ships had left. For a moment, he wondered whether Jakkal, missing them, might come back. Rig a tow. Then he remembered the smashed-in bow.
Adams
was damaged, too. She'd have her hands full getting out of range before daylight revealed her to Iranian aircraft.

He glanced at the silent silhouette of the captain, and knew he was pondering the same dilemma. “We got to get out of here, Ben,” he muttered.

“No shit, XO, but how? This tide's picking up by the minute. It's all I can do to hold her where she is.”

Dan took a deep breath and glanced again at the chart. Making sure it was the only choice left. It was.