The squad leader growled, “Well now, Mister, that might be pretty hard to do, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?” Gordon was extremely perplexed over this turn of events. It should have been a routine matter to retrieve his tape recorder, and the guard at the outer checkpoint hadn’t said anything about a security problem on the lower base.
“Take a look, Petty Officer,” as the squad leader pointed down the wharf.
Gordon looked down the wharf in the direction of the marine’s gesture. “What the—?” he gasped. As he looked down the wharf to where he should have seen the stern of the Louisiana, moored starboard side to the wharf, there was nothing but blackness. It was gone! “Oh no!” he shouted. “I missed my deployment!”
The marines sneered. The squad leader scoured at him and said, “No, you moron. The Louisiana has been hijacked!”
Chapter 20
The Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base went into immediate lockdown. Base Commander Captain James Worley gave the order: Assume terrorists have somehow managed to hijack the Louisiana. A contingent of four hundred marines guarded the base at all times, and all were put into service to search for missing crewmembers and the two marine guards from the wharf who may have been injured or killed in the hijacking. The Naval Communication Station issued emergency calls to ships in the area to alert them of the events.
The entire scene could only be described as organized chaos. The marines were particularly frantic in their search for their two missing comrades.
“No marine is ever left behind in combat!” yelled the marine commander to his lieutenants. “This was an unbreakable rule, and if our marines from the wharf are in trouble, we’re going to find them!”
“Yes, sir! We’re searching all the buildings and alleyways in the vicinity of the wharf. Nothing’s been found yet,” answered one of the lieutenants.
“Well keep looking! And I want patrols to inspect the entire perimeter security fence — all of it — from one end of this base to the other. If bad guys got onto this base, they surely didn’t do it through one of our armed gates. Find out where they did!”
“Yes, sir!” they answered in unison.
Just then, the commander’s phone rang. He picked it up and listened intently. “Yes, sir. I understand. We’ll get right on it, sir!” He hung up the phone and quickly assessed the group of lieutenants standing before him. “Lieutenant Gill!”
“Yes, sir!”
“That was the base commander pointing out that the exit channel is lengthy and difficult to navigate. It should take the Louisiana at least two hours to reach open ocean, if they’re able to do it at all. Form a squad of marines and get down to the northern tip of Amelia Island on the double. With any luck, you should be able to intercept the Louisiana before she enters the Atlantic. Load up with whatever armament you need to stop her!”
“Yes, sir!” Lieutenant Gill responded as he ran out the door shouting orders to the assembled marines outside.
The marines grabbed a variety of weapons from their armory as they hurriedly jumped into Humvees and rushed to Amelia Island. This was about a forty-minute drive at high speed, but there was no closer point along the channel that was accessible by road. They arrived at Fort Clinch State Park, at the northern tip of the island, at 2345 hours and stormed the beach in reverse. Marines were used to coming ashore in amphibious landings, but now they were running toward the water! The squad had a mixture of anti-tank weapons, M-16 assault rifles, grenade launchers, an M249 light machine gun referred to as a SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon), and one M224 60mm lightweight mortar with twenty mortar rounds.
Lieutenant Gill visually searched the pitch-black waters of the channel with a pair of telescopic night-vision goggles. There was no sign of the Louisiana abeam their position or up river. Continuing his search down river, past the island, and out to sea, he spotted a dark object, which was possibly a submarine sail approximately a mile and a half to two miles into the Atlantic.
“There they go… we missed them! They must have passed here no more than ten minutes ago. The M-16s, antitank weapons, and grenade launchers are useless at this range. Get that mortar set up for max range, bearing… zero-eight-five degrees.”
Three Marines jumped to it and began setting up the M224 lightweight mortar.
“Corporal Gutierrez!”
“Yes, sir!”
“You got night-vision goggles?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then get over here with that SAW and see if you can hit that sub with some harassing fire. They’re just about at max range for the SAW, but maybe we can make them turn and stay within mortar range for a little longer.”
Corporal Gutierrez opened fire with the SAW. The SAW was a handheld combat machine gun with a maximum effective range of about a mile. However, the bullets would actually fly about two and a quarter miles, but at that range, there was only a slight chance of actually hitting what you were aiming at. Still, with a cyclic rate of fire of 725 rounds per minute, it was sure to get the attention of anyone on the bridge of the Louisiana!
After passing the last spit of land on Amelia Island, the Louisiana maintained a course of due east and increased speed to all ahead full. The channel was dredged in a straight line for another twenty miles out to sea. The channel was deep enough for the Louisiana to run safely on the surface, but if they left the channel, she would run aground. The Atlantic waters would not be deep enough to submerge for almost two more hours.
The first two and a half miles of the Atlantic channel were protected on the north side by a stone jetty extending eastward from the southern tip of Cumberland Island and on the south side by a stone jetty extending eastward from the northern tip of Amelia Island.
“Captain, I can see the ends of the jetties!” reported Seaman Hayes, peering ahead into the pitch-blackness of the Atlantic with his night-vision goggles.
Captain Adams breathed a sigh of relief. “Very well!”
The two lookouts remained alert for any other ships or small boats in the area, but none were in sight.
Captain Adams decided it was time for a little celebration and pulled a cigar from the breast pocket of his uniform. He informed the two lookouts, “The smoking lamp is lit on the bridge!”
Removing a cigarette lighter from another pocket, Captain Adams ducked down below the top edge of the bridge to escape the wind and light his cigar. “White light…. Watch your eyes,” he announced to the lookouts so they would avert their eyes from the white flash of the lighter flame. One flash of a white light at night could cause their eyes to readjust to daylight conditions, and it would then take twenty minutes to fully regain their night vision.
Just then, Captain Adams heard a series of rapid pssssts overhead, and Seaman Hayes suddenly cried out in pain and crumpled to the deck of the bridge clutching his right arm. Blood flowed between his fingers and onto the deck.
“Olson, get down!” the captain shouted. “Those are bullets!”
Seaman Olson ducked below the top edge of the bridge and crouched next to the captain. Seeing the blood running from Hayes’s arm, Olson tore a strip of material off the bottom of his T-shirt and tied it around Hayes’s wounded arm as a makeshift tourniquet.
“Dang, Captain. If you had been standing up, that bullet might have hit you instead of Hayes’s arm!”
They could hear bullets splatting in the water around them. Then several of them impacted on the side of the Louisiana’s steel sail with a series of loud donks that could be heard throughout the submarine.