The crosshairs of the periscope were centered on the bridge of the frigate, and when Pacino switched to high power he could see the face of a man staring at him with binoculars in the red lit windows of the bridge. He switched back to low power, the hull of the frigate almost filling the periscope view.
The bow of the ship vanished for a moment, obscured by a column of water and an orange cloud of fire, black chunks of shrapnel flying away from the bright flash. Almost as quickly as it came, the fireball and water-column receded as the ship plowed into the water, taking a down angle. The sea swallowed the gun mount forward of the bridge, then the bridge went under, the central mast following. The funnel vanished in the foamy water, then the helicopter hangar and finally the helo deck until there was nothing left but the Dauphin helicopter, which for a moment bobbed in the waves caused by the frigate’s sinking, then gave up and sank itself, either from being flooded or being sucked down by the vortex from the frigate.
The bay was empty except for the Tampa, which still leaned helplessly against the sandbar.
CHAPTER 24
As Jack Morris climbed the ladder in the dark bridge access trunk he felt the explosions from outside the submarine. He had no idea what was going on topside but figured it wasn’t good.
At the top of the tilted bridge trunk he stopped before the closed hatch, pushed up on it with all the strength he had, thinking that since it was almost two inch-thick steel it would be heavy. He hadn’t counted on its spring-loaded hatch, the spring designed to balance the weight of the steel pancake so that a child could open the hatch from below. With Morris’ mighty heave on the hatch, the spring coiled and pulled the hatch upward, launching Morris out of the trunk and smashing the hatch against Kurt Lennox’s thigh. Morris lost his balance and fell to the deck grating of the bridge cockpit, then stood abruptly and hit his head against the closed canopy of the steel clamshell.
“Son of a bitch.” He found the square of light coming from the one opening on the starboard side and crawled toward it. Lennox’s large frame was standing in the opening, his head exposed above.
Morris shouldered him aside and pushed his own head up above the lip of the sail, craned his neck to see around Lennox and observed the flames on the water from what looked like crashed aircraft or perhaps the remains of patrol boats. Ahead a Chinese frigate was sinking, vanishing into the water of the bay, a smoky column of fire rising from its dying hulk.
Within moments the frigate vanished into the foam of the bay water, leaving only a small airframe of a helicopter behind, and then it too sank. The bay was quiet, the moon lighting the bay water with a bright white glow.
“What the hell happened?” Morris barked.
“Where’s Baron?”
Lennox said nothing. Morris saw von Brandt’s corpse on the deck. He looked up at Lennox, his face dark with anger.
“You ran us aground, didn’t you?”
Lennox nodded.
“Well, get us out of here. Use the engines, do something.”
Lennox stared into the distance, still saying nothing.
Morris reached inside his vest to his radio and switched frequencies so that he was on the channel that Stinky was using back in the aft escape trunk.
“Stinky, it’s Boss. Get the Engineer up there and put him on the VHF.”
“HE’S RIGHT HERE.” There was a brief silence on the line.
“BRIDGE, ENGINEER HERE.”
“Eng, we’re hard aground on a sandbar or obstruction.
You got power?”
“REACTOR’S CRITICAL. IT’LL BE ANOTHER MINUTE TILL WE’RE IN THE POWER RANGE, A FEW MORE TO SPIN THE TURBINES UP.”
“Leave someone with brains in charge and get your ass up to the bridge — you’re driving this bucket of bolts out of here.”
“ON THE WAY, ENG OUT.”
Morris pulled Lennox around so the man was facing him, then slapped his face a few times, enough to focus his eyes.
“Get below, Lennie,” Morris said quietly.
“Find some men who can take over the control room below and get them ready to dive the ship. In the meantime the Engineer’ll drive us out, if he can get us off the sandbar.”
Lennox handed Morris a chart and a red flashlight and his headset, and as if sleepwalking, left the bridge and lowered himself down the access trunk ladder. As the hatch shut after him, a tall man with a dirty face and disheveled hair appeared from the port side of the sail. He had just climbed the ladder rungs set on the outside.
“Permission to come up,” he said.
“Get the hell up here,” Morris told him.
The man climbed over the panels of the clamshells, reached under and retracted them, expanding the bridge to its former size.
“I’m Vaughn,” he said.
“Ship’s engineer. Who’ve you?”
“Morris, Jack Morris, SEAL Team Seven CO.
Here’s the radio headset. Here’s Lennox’s chart and here’s a flashlight. Now do us all a big goddamned favor and get us the hell out of here.”
Vaughn looked over the port and starboard lips of the sail, took the headset, chart and flashlight. As he studied the chart in the glow of the light he gave Morris orders as though the SEAL were a green ensign just reporting aboard.
“Get below and go to the ballast control panel. It’s on the forward port corner of the control room.
Above the console you’ll see two big stainless-steel levers. When I give you the word pull the plungers on the levers down and rotate the levers to the up position.
The levers will initiate an emergency ballast-tank blow. Got all that?”
“I just killed thirty, forty Chinese guards to save your butt. I think I can flip a couple of levers.”
“Good man. Get going.”
Morris scrambled down the ladder, annoyed but glad to have someone on the bridge who seemed ready to take charge. As he entered the control room he saw Lennox sitting at the ship control panel.
“Lennie,” Morris said, “where are the emergency blow levers?”
Lennox pointed to the BCP. Morris went to the levers and waited for Vaughn’s orders.
On the bridge above, Vaughn’s radio crackled.
“BRIDGE, WE HAVE PROPULSION!”
“Bridge aye,” Vaughn replied.
“Shift the coolant re circ pumps to fast speed and prepare for a flank bell.”
Vaughn looked up from the chart and checked the water below one final time. He was gambling that the ballast tanks had leaked air out over the last five days in captivity, letting in water from the vents below.
Usually that happened in port, and when at the pier the daily routine called for the duty officer to blow the ballast tanks full of air. Otherwise, after a week or two, the ship would lose a foot of draft. Left unattended and with no ballast tank blow a submarine would probably sink after a month at pier side
The way the vents had jammed in the struggle with the Chinese, and with the port list, there was a good chance the tanks had a considerable amount of water in them, which meant they were low in the water. If he could blow the tanks and refill them with air it might give him some added buoyancy to get off the sandbar. But he couldn’t use the blower — that would take a half hour to fill the tanks and time was what they did not have. He would have to use the emergency blow system — the EMBT blow system would force the water out so violently on the surface that the air flowing out of the tank gratings at the ship’s keel might blow the sand away from them. The blow would empty the highpressure air bottles, making it impossible for them to emergency-surface once they were submerged, but that was a problem that might never come.