The roaring went on, but maybe not quite as loud. Then it began to lessen. Yes, the sound was diminishing. The shuddering was easing off.
“Get ’em in now, sir?” The petty officer, head lifted.
He nodded. “Send ’em in.”
More minutes dragged by. The plume continued to shrink, but hot gas still jetted up, now and again blasting out bursts of spray and steam.
“Fire team leader reports: Reached the fire. Commencing cooling surrounding canisters.”
They weren’t out of the woods. Dan couldn’t help pacing, glancing at the screens and gauges each time he turned. The name of the game now was to surround the fire, isolate it, cool it down. Wall it off until it ran out of fuel, or the continuing firemain flood dropped the temperature enough that it doused itself. He suspected, though, that rocket fuel, carrying its own oxidizer locked into the grain, would burn until it was all gone.
Meanwhile the team inside were running a terrible risk. Trying to cool the surrounding canisters and keep their boosters from cooking off too. Trying to keep accident from escalating into disaster. A glimpse now and then through the smoke by the passageway camera showed them struggling with cumbersome, turgid pythons of firehoses. Maybe that had been the right thing to do, sacrifice the contiguous cells. Dan prayed that, please, it could be so. He tore his gaze away to key his Hydra. “CIC, CO: How’s it going up there?”
“Sir, Cheryl here. Lahav’s closing in. Distance four thousand yards. Captain Youngblood wants to know if they should surface and stand by us.”
“Not yet. Not yet. It’s too rough. Unless he hears an explosion … How far away are they?”
“A mile. On the other side of us from Lahav.”
“Good. That’s good. Fahad up there?”
A short pause. “No sir. XO’s not here. Isn’t he down there with you?”
What the hell? He let up on the key, then forgot about it as a figure stumbled out of the smoke and lurched across the camera’s field, clutching its mask. “Is he all right?” Dan asked the petty officer who had the direct line to the team leader.
“One man fallen out with smoke inhalation, sir. But they say they’re getting water in all around that one missile. It’s … says it’s boiling off, but not as hard now.”
Dan crossed again to the temperature readout. The affected cell read zero. He frowned. McMottie explained it had probably melted or shorted. “But the temps in the cells around it are starting to fall.”
“How high did they go?”
“Around five hundred. Hit that, then steadied out.” He touched the display. “Right now: only three fifty, and falling.”
“Keep that firemain flood going,” Danenhower growled.
Dan said, “How about the cells across the catwalk? What’s the temperature on those?”
“High, but within normal limits.”
“Good. Okay, who’s in charge of the Mark 41? The VLS?”
A mustached chief pushed forward. His name tag read Quincoches. Dan gripped his shoulder. “Chief, the firefighters might have it under control. Once we’re sure, you can go in. We’ve got to get as many missiles back to operational status as we can, just as soon as possible. What’s first? Dewater?”
Danenhower said, “Already dewatering, Captain. Or we’d have flooded the module.”
“Good. Chief, I need you in there just as soon as the fire’s under control.”
Quincoches drew a deep breath. “There’s a mandatory thirty-minute wait time.”
“We don’t have half an hour to sit around with our thumbs up our ass, Chief. Maybe in peacetime. Not now.”
Quincoches paled. “Uh, right, sir. In that case I’ll go in first. Alone. With a screamer on my belt. I’ll manually safe the missiles we flooded. Isolate that cell, then restore module power. Then we can get the guys in and desmoke. First thing, we’re going to have to pull and dry out all the cables. The cells are supposed to be waterproof, but not the connections. Got to see if the heat warped any of the connectors, the hatches … then run a DSOT and see who answers up.”
“Good,” Dan said. “Do it.”
The chief started to leave, then seemed to recollect something. Dan said, “Yeah?”
“I’ll go in there, check it out, Captain.”
“Yeah?”
“Because that’s what we do. That strike officer, she ain’t down here. Us chiefs, we are. Us middle management. I don’t want to make a big deal out of this, but—”
He nodded. Grinned tightly. “Point taken, Chief. And I’ll be sure and pass it along.”
Bit by bit, as the temperature dropped, everyone in CCS began to murmur, then talk aloud. Dan blew out, and massaged his eyeballs, then stopped; it would make him look tired. The camera focused down the centerline passageway of the module gradually showed a clearer picture. On the exterior camera, the pillar of flame had waned to a jet of brownish smoke, which was lessening as the flooding went on. He breathed deep. Then again, flushing out the tension. “That might’ve been bad,” he said to Danenhower.
“Damn close.” The engineer nodded soberly. “How many birds you figure we lost?”
For a horrible second Dan wondered if they’d just toasted all the modified SM-2s. If so, their mission was over before it had really begun. Then remembered: two were up forward; only two were aft. The aft module held mostly land-attack Tomahawks, standard Standards, and most of their vertical launch Asroc. But that was why they were mixed loads, so a casualty to one magazine would still leave both offensive and defensive capabilities. “What was in those cells we flooded? Anybody know?”
He looked around for Quincoches, but the chief was already gone. “I’ll find out,” said Danenhower, and went after him.
Dan found an empty chair and sagged into it. Should he go out and observe as the gunner’s mates, missile, went in? No. He’d just be in the way. Where was Almarshadi, though? He called CIC again, then the bridge, but the exec was at neither, and didn’t answer on his Hydra. “What the hell,” Dan muttered.
He got up, and raised his voice so everyone in CCS could hear. “Good job, everybody — plus we got lucky. Bart, I want you and Matt to head up an investigation team. Find out how that fire started and what we can recommend as a class change, so it doesn’t happen again.” He paused, wondering if there was anything he should add. If so, it wasn’t occurring to him. His head felt like cast lead. “Okay, well, I’m headed back up to the bridge.” He slapped McMottie’s shoulder, gave a thumbs-up to everyone else, and stepped through a door someone jerked open for him.
By the time he got back to Combat the reaction, whatever it was, was slowing him down. His throat seemed to be closing up. It was harder than usual to catch his breath after climbing four sets of ladders. He leaned on the back of his chair and took slow deep breaths, contemplating the large-screen displays. Lahav had closed; their two pips were nearly merged. The group out of As-Suways, the Iranians, were tracking northeast at twelve knots. Aside from that, the east Med was empty. He started to tell Mills what was going on, but the combat systems officer said quietly he’d already put the word about the fire out over chat. Task Force staff wanted a status as soon as he could get it but were glad it was under control. And the leading chief aft, Quincoches, was in the module now inspecting damage. He’d make a report as soon as possible on how the fire had initiated.