“Mr. Borger!” Krogstad raised his voice.
Clay suddenly turned to Borger. “Wait a minute, what problem were you talking about?”
He looked nervously between Clay and Krogstad. “The mountain is on fire.”
“What mountain?”
“THE mountain. The Chinese camp. The source of the plants! The whole area is on fire!”
“Since when?”
“Since this morning. And it’s big!”
Clay and Krogstad looked at each other then spun back to the window. The corvette was still moving. And the Bowditch was accelerating quickly towards it.
“My God,” Clay said, “they destroyed what they couldn’t take!”
“That’s not the worst part,” Borger said. He lowered his voice so no one else on the bridge could hear him.
“What’s the worst part?”
“The Forel is gone. The Russian sub… it’s gone!”
“What do you mean gone?”
“Gone, as in not there anymore. The dock outside of Belem… it’s empty.”
Krogstad looked at Borger with a trace of worry. “When?”
“According to the satellite feed, it left last night.”
“Do you have a bearing?”
Borger took a deep breath. “I can’t be sure. It left in the middle of the night, when the ARGUS couldn’t see it. But I think my servers picked up a glimmer of it this morning. I’m not positive though.”
“And where did it look like it was headed?” asked Clay slowly.
Borger was almost afraid to say it. “Towards us.”
“Jesus Christ!” Krogstad cursed under his breath. The Bowditch was now surging through the calm water at sixteen knots. The distant Chinese ship was growing larger.
“SIR!” called the sonar operator in front of them. He whipped around with his young eyes suddenly as big as saucers. “Sonar is picking up something in the water! I think it’s a torpedo!”
“WHAT?!”
Everyone on the bridge turned and stared at the operator, who looked back at his screen. “Five thousand yards, sir, and closing! It’s definitely a fish, Captain!”
“The Forel!” whispered Borger.
“That’s not possible,” said Clay. “The Forel was never combat capable!”
“Well, someone sure as hell forgot to tell them!” Krogstad barked. His gaze was trained on his sonar operator. “Speed?!”
“Eighty knots! Impact in approximately seven minutes!”
It was the worst possible thing Krogstad could face and he knew it. The Bowditch was not a combat boat, which meant they had no decoys. They had virtually nothing in the way of countermeasures.
Krogstad turned to his communications officer. “Try to jam it!” To the pilot, his next message could not have been clearer. “Now move this bucket of bolts!”
Their only chance lay in the ship’s massive diesel engines; more specifically, how much they could extend the amount of time before impact. They couldn’t outrun it, but every second they could add back to that clock was a second they could use. They might be able to jam the acoustical contact with the torpedo, but if it was “wire guided,” Krogstad knew it wouldn’t help.
Clay stared out the front window with a look of urgency. “Captain, the Oceanhawk!”
Krogstad looked below to the helicopter and the maintenance crew working on it. “Find the pilots!” he barked at Clay and then bolted through the outside door. From the catwalk, Krogstad leaned over the railing and yelled to the helicopter crew at the top of his lungs. “GET THAT CHOPPER IN THE AIR, RIGHT NOW!”
Richard Hines had served as Chief Engineer aboard the Bowditch for over nine years. Short, with a powerful chest and arms, he was no-nonsense. And he ran his crew with the same dogged efficiency as the oldest veterans.
Hines was standing below on the Quarterdeck when the phone blared behind him. A level below Hines, on the engine platform, the four enormous diesel engines were howling. They were now running at one hundred and five percent, a pace that could not be maintained for long. But what Hines heard when he pressed the receiver to his ear nearly straightened every strand of his short, dark curly hair.
Immediately, and without a word, he slammed the phone back down and grabbed the microphone for the engine room’s loudspeakers. “TORPEDO IN THE WATER!”
The startled crew of the Oceanhawk helicopter looked up at the bridge to see the Captain screaming at them. But it wasn’t until he repeated the command that they jumped into action.
If it weren’t for Clay, Krogstad would have overlooked the Oceanhawk until it was too late. It was a version of the Sikorsky S-70 family, and a multi-mission helicopter. Each variant was designated a special and unique military function. The UH-60 Blackhawk was designed for land based warfare. The “Rescue Hawk” was a naval search and rescue chopper. But the Oceanhawk was a SeaHawk variant, and SeaHawks were anti-submarine aircraft!
The problem was the new design. With a folding tail section, it allowed the helicopters to be stored in a much tighter space, but it also meant it took longer to ready the aircraft for flight.
They had less than seven minutes. How much less Krogstad didn’t know, especially with what he was about to do.
Even cutting out most of the pre-flight checklist, readying the tail section and firing up the twin engines would likely take more than seven minutes. But they had to try.
Clay had better find those pilots.
Clay was flying down the ladder to the main deck when the piercing siren sounded overhead. Loud enough to be heard throughout the entire ship, everyone instantly froze in their tracks when they heard it. The siren stopped almost as quickly as it started and was replaced by Krogstad’s voice.
“All hands, move immediately to the stern of the ship! I repeat, move to the stern of the ship!” The next three words instantly struck fear into the hearts of the ship’s officers and crew. “BRACE FOR IMPACT!”
The crew flew into action, ducking in and out of every room, pulling along their fellow sailors and anyone else they could find.
Clay pushed past the dozens of people who began filling the narrow catwalks, rushing toward the back of the ship. He spotted a senior officer and stopped him. “Where’s the flight crew?!”
In the science lab, Commander Lawton was urging everyone out quickly through the doors. She pushed her hands against both Alison and Kelly’s backs, following them out just behind Borger and two of her researchers. The catwalk outside was already filled with people, but Lawton kept pushing through the bottleneck.
Below deck, the ship’s engineering team was the only group who remained where they were. Chief Hines had one hand holding the phone to his ear, talking to the Control Room. With the other, he grasped the microphone tightly, shouting orders loud enough to be heard even over his crew’s double-layered ear protection.
This was no “buttercup” drill. This was the real thing. The giant SHT pumps were primed and ready, manned by two men on each side. Everyone else held their positions, with their infrared scopes dangling upon their chests.
“Four minutes, Captain!”
Krogstad’s communications officer kept shaking his head. “We can’t jam it, sir! It must be wire guided.”
Damn it! He knew the chances of jamming were low, given the age of the technology. It left Krogstad with only one option. He gazed through the bridge’s window again. He could clearly see the corvette now, much larger and beginning to turn out of Georgetown’s port. It was turning toward them. God damn it! Of all the ships to be on!