The Weapon (51 page)

“Okay, we pop the hatches and start the blowers. But not the diesels.”

“Don't have the hands to run them. Even if we got 'em started.” Carpenter micrometered a dial, attention back on the trickle of sound that was their only link to a larger world.

“Certain we're clear? Up top?”

“Haven't heard anything the last couple hours . . . but that layer inhibits transmission both ways. We're down in this hole, we can't hear them, either.”

Dan panted but it didn't help; his eyelids kept drifting closed; it was hard to inflate his lungs, as if invisible belts constricted them. “Well, we'll try it, once they've got everything lined up and tested. Keep a three-sixty watch. If you hear anything, let me know.”

Absorbed, remote, the sonarman nodded.

 

Two hours later Dan nodded to a stoned-looking Im at the ballast controls. He didn't need to say anything, just nod. They all knew what he meant.

Carpenter had done one last search, all round the compass, and said they were clear.

There was still work to do. The water was still rising in
the bilge. But the air was even more fouled, even more unbreathable. They couldn't stay down any longer.

They were going up. Or trying to.

Through the black pickle that soured his brain he worried whether they had enough high-pressure air to blow, and whether the suction of the silt they lay on would let them go. The only plan he had in that case was for the team to free-ascend from the aft escape trunk, marginally closer to the surface than the forward one, since they lay nose-down. Sixty-three meters. Over two hundred feet. Sumo and Oberg might make it, but he didn't think the rest of the team would.

He just wanted to get everybody home. To hell with the mission. Maybe it had been too big a bite from the start.

A rushing hiss walked away, making the hull crackle and tremble. Dan pressed the lever on the bitch box. Murmured, “Stand by motors.” A double click answered.

Im stood by the ballast control panel, staring into space. Vaught sat rigid at the helm, a bucket beside him; he'd vomited twice. The air howled in its bonds, streaming out of the banks into the ballast tanks. Dan watched the needle drop with absolute concentration. If they didn't have enough air to blow . . . but the Russians built their subs with a lot of reserve buoyancy . . . he pushed the fear away. In a few seconds, they'd know.

A popping bang from forward. They all three looked instantly to the depth meter, but it didn't stir. “Planes full up,” Dan muttered, just to be saying something. Like a robot, Vaught pushed the control levers forward. Wenck was at the forward hatch, Oberg would take the after one. As soon as the water rolled off the deck they'd undog and throw them open, and Sumo would punch the blower switches.

Im hit the last button and air richocheted away. “Full rise,” Vaught muttered.

The bow stirred. Sooner than he'd expected, and he grinned. On their way up! Carpenter leaned out, smiling, too. Suddenly they were all smiling, especially when the needle jumped suddenly, all at once, to sixty, and the hull
rolled around them and went slowly and not much but definitely nose up.

“Lifting,” Dan said out loud. He hit the button. “Ahead one-third,” and snapped off and said to Vaught, “Two seven zero, let's get outside this Iranian Advisory Zone on the chart.”

The helmsman repeated it in a stronger voice than Dan had heard from him in some time. He looked up, yearning for the night air that would soon be blowing through the ship. Never had he realized how much he loved air, how gratefully his lungs would draw in that first cool fresh breath. Even the powdered dust that misted it; he looked forward eagerly to crunching it in his teeth.

The needle ticked past fifty meters. Dan glanced at Im, but the Korean was already adjusting, playing the valves like an organist to counteract the increased buoyancy as they rose. On the surface there'd be a froth, a white eruption of bubbles, but at night there would be no eye to see beneath the fuzzy stars. He'd checked the almanac in the chart room and moonrise wasn't till 0330.

Still rising . . . forty meters. No one budged. Motors hummed softly aft. Dan studied the chart again, walked his fingers across it for the hundredth time. They'd covered a hundred miles out of Bandar Abbas. It couldn't be more than two hundred more to the Task Force. An F-18 could cover that in twenty minutes. Oberg had the SatCom ready below the after hatch. As soon as it was open, he'd climb on deck and squirt the message off.

So it was over . . . all but offloading the weapon, the documents, the tapes, and let Chone and Pirrell unravel whatever secret it held. He stretched, telling his pattering heart and laboring lungs it would only be a few more minutes.

“Thirty meters,” Im muttered. He cast Dan a questioning glance, then looked at the periscope. Dan hit the button and it rose silently, the remaining bulbs of the emergency lighting gleaming off the stainless barrel like distant suns through a dusty nebula.

“Steady at 'scope depth?” Vaught muttered, hands on the plane control.

Dan was about to say no, go right on up, but a last reservation made him hesitate. “Uh, right. Ten meters, periscope depth, I'll check around. Then we'll surface and blow.”

He bent to the eyepiece, cupping his palms around it. Nothing but black. Black.

Then a different texture of black. “Ten meters,” Vaught murmured.

He had visual. A far-off light, a low star, maybe, or a working light on an oil platform. He checked the bearing, confirmed Vaught was headed west by northwest, and set his feet and began clicking around. To the north, nothing. The objective was too low to pick up the mountains of the Hormozgan, and no dhows or tankers seemed to be out tonight. He panned right, past more darkness, then picked up a distant white beacon that flashed three times about every fifteen seconds.

The chart showed Jazireh-ye Farur, Farur Island, with a triple flash every seventeen seconds. He took a careful bearing and memorized it, then continued right. Another dim, low light. More stars. Then a scattering of peach-tinted sodium vapors bled radiance high into the nighttime sky. The SiC or SiD oil fields, he guessed.

“Check out around one five zero,” Carpenter muttered from the sonar.

“What's that?”

“Don't know. Pump of some kind.”

“That's what I was looking at a second ago. An oil and gas field. Probably compressor equipment.” Dan swung to the bearing nonetheless. A wave chopped over the top of the objective. When it subsided he frowned.

“What you see?” said Im.

“A shadow . . . an island? An abandoned platform?”

Just as he realized it was a ship, hove to with lights out, a dull red flicker lit its deck. He screamed, “Right hard rudder. Ahead flank! Down planes, go deep, go deep!”

The explosion seemed to Obie much louder than any of the previous ones, a terrific crack that slammed him into the panel and whipsawed the hull up and down. Even Kaulukukui barked in surprise where he lay on the deckplates, a Draeger under his head and the mouthpiece between his lips.

“You hangin' in there, buddy?”

“Fuck you,” the Hawaiian mumbled around rubber.

Metal clanged off and struck again as it tumbled aft. Seconds later two more detonations clanged, but muffled, distant, below them.

Teddy jogged all the way aft, then back, searching the overhead; that first one had sounded like a hit. There was crap all over the deck, mugs, clipboards thrown out of lockers, more glass from more busted light domes, but he didn't see any water. Yet. He came back to the brown box near the compressors and keyed it feeling as if his lungs had turned to concrete and someone had sucked all the brains out of his skull through his nose. Everything went black, red, then black again. He coughed and tried to get enough air to not keel over. “Control, Electrical. Something hit us a hard lick back here.”

Carpenter: “That fucking frigate's back. Or I should say, never left. Clobbered us as we came up through the layer. Couldn't hear it before, same reason it couldn't hear us.”

Lenson cut in. “Damage report? Any leaks back there?”

“No, but I heard something tear away to port. Piece of the superstructure?”

“Probably the port plane. We're getting a hangup when we cycle, and pulling to that side. Can you check the rams?”

He said yeah, and clicked off, crawling on all fours aft, pointing his flashlight over all the ram gear. Found another brown box. “Don't see anything wrong back here. The hydraulics are still go.”

“Then the plane's shot. One of the Limbos must have hit it.”

“Better than the hull, drown us all.”

“Still giving me flank power, Teddy?”

“Sure am, Dan. But those needles are just about at zero.”

Dead silence, then the click of the intercom going off. Then back on again. “He's coming in for a reattack. Give me all the juice you can, Teddy. Find a rebreather and put it on. Then go aft and load up those countermeasures.”

 

Dan hung on the 'scope, incoherently cursing whoever commanded that dark frigate. That commander had lost his quarry, but he hadn't given up. Instead he'd lingered, placing himself exactly where any sound from his own pumps and rotating machinery would be masked by the racket the oilfield pumps and compressors made. Crap! Why did he have to get one of the smart Iranians? Cursing himself, too, at the same time, for not just surfacing. Taking the hits, maybe losing the boat, but at least, getting his guys out and overboard. They'd have air to breathe at least. Not this murky miasma that was killing them.

Someone was calling him. A loud voice, urgent tones. He panted, trying to bellows embering neurons back into flame, to pierce the spinning blackness with a steadily dulling understanding.

“Commander! Planes down, passing thirty meters. Rudder still hard right.”

“Full ahead.”

“We're at full ahead, both motors.”

Im said urgently, grabbing his sleeve, “Countermeasure!”

Dan shook off his fingers. “I've got it. Just watch our fucking bubble.” He staggered to the box that held the candles, bent over it, sucking the smoky hot air coming up. Coughed, and rasped hoarsely, “Steady on one-seven-zero.”

Vaught repeated it, but his voice was going high again. Dan wondered when they'd all start screaming. He couldn't imagine going through this for days at a time, the way U-boat crews had, or Pacific Fleet submariners in World War Two. On the other hand, if they could just get some decent air . . . he swung his yawing attention back to keeping them from being blown out of the water. Any second now those fucking mortars would be reloaded, ready to fire another salvo.

“Keep her steady. Steady . . . full back emergency!”

“Full back emergency!”

“Electrical, Control: spit two countermeasures, close together as you can!”

As soon as Oberg rogered Dan told Im, half by pantomime, that he wanted sixty meters, wanted their belly on the bottom. The valves thudded hollowly as they slammed shut. Air wheezed in the pipes, sounding nearly exhausted. He counted seconds, then snapped, “Left hard rudder. Port back one third, starboard all ahead flank. Come to zero three zero.”

A ping rang through the water, shivering the hairs up on the back of his neck. It sounded different when you were the one being pinged on, when that tentacle of high-frequency sound searched out through the dark for you. He'd never think about the men he hunted quite the same way again.

 

Seventy feet aft, Teddy slogged along as if in a swamp up to his waist. His vision was strobing on and off. It was like the last day at BUD/S, after being hosed over and stressed for five days. When the only thing that kept you going was blind hate, the stupidity of the determined, and an absolute need not to let your buddies down. Each breath burned like flame. Each respiration made him feel like puking. But still he got one hand on the clips that held the canisters, then the other.

He threw the heavy toggled lever on the ejector and laid the cylinder in the port. Or tried to, but it wouldn't fit. He stared at it for several seconds. Then turned it upside down and dumped the sheet-metal can inside out, holding it together with both hands. He forced it into the breech and wrenched it closed.

Or thought he did. Because just then he must have blacked out. He didn't know for how long, just that he came to lying under the ejector. He crawled up onto it again, teeth fastened in his lip, and grabbed the wire. Started to pull. Then stopped. Looked again.

“Is this fucking thing closed?”

Nobody answered, but he thought it definitely didn't look
closed. Did it matter? Maybe. If he didn't want to flood the whole fucking compartment. He started to black out again, but bent his head and concentrated on not going.

Then he lifted his head and with every bit of strength he had left, slammed the breech shut with the heel of his hand. He spun the wheel that opened the outer door. Water began to trickle, then spray. It felt good on his sweating face. He grabbed the dangling wire and yanked.