Davic climbed to his feet, rubbing his wrist, not quite sure what had happened except that his wrist was beginning to swell and that it hurt like hell.
The sailors in the compartment were leaning out of their bunks, heads going from Davic to Fogarty and back again.
"Did you see that?"
"No, man, it was too fast."
"Right on, Fogarty."
"Try it again, Davic."
At which point Sorensen stepped through the hatch and froze. From his angle he couldn't see Fogarty, but he could see Davic.
Willie Joe spoke up. "Hey, Sorensen. We got us a karate expert here."
"And who might that be?"
"Me," Fogarty said.
Sorensen looked from Fogarty to Davic. Fogarty turned his head.
"A fight?" Sorensen asked.
Willie Joe replied quickly, "No, nothing like that. A little demonstration."
"Karate?" Sorensen said to Fogarty. "You?"
Fogarty nodded. "It's not karate. It's tae kwan do. It's Korean."
The sailors stared at Fogarty with new respect. "I don't smash bricks, if that's what you're wondering," he said to Sorensen.
Sorensen looked at Davic's swollen wrist. "You'd better go see Dr. Luther, tough guy. Looks to me like you slipped and fell into a bulkhead during the collision."
With a drop-dead look at Fogarty, Davic went out.
"What was that all about?" Sorensen asked.
"You got me." Fogarty shrugged. "Davic is nuts."
Willie Joe put his arm around Sorensen's shoulders. "You're a hero of the people, boy. Ain't that so, Fogarty?"
Fogarty looked at the sailors hanging out of their bunks. "You said it, Willie Joe. Sorensen saved our ass."
Willie Joe made a show of digging around in his locker until he came up with a Coca-Cola bottle that he presented to Sorensen.
"Looky here," he said. "I been savin' this for a long time. Ace. It's for you."
It was dark rum. Sorensen held it up. Looking at Fogarty, he said, "Here's to all the dead comrades. Cheers." He chugged two swallows and passed the bottle to Willie Joe. The rum went around the compartment and came back to Sorensen, who finished it and rinsed out the bottle. Willie Joe passed out Sen Sens to everyone who had had a drink.
Sorensen then put on a tape of Jerry Lee Lewis, and a moment later the compartment was full of sailors singing along, "You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain…"
"Attention all hands, this is the captain. We have been ordered to put into the naval station at Rota for repairs. Transit time will be forty-eight hours. Our depth will be restricted to two hundred feet. Prepare for maneuvering. That is all."
In the torpedo room Chief Lopez discovered that Zapata was missing. He cleaned up the broken glass from the cage and searched the compartment thoroughly, but the scorpion was nowhere to be found. Lopez felt queasy. A sub had thousands of nooks and crannies where a bug could hide. It was only a matter of time before someone got stung. Lopez was sure it would be him.
Several hours after they were underway, Lopez reported Zapata to the XO as "missing in action."
Pisaro blinked, not sure whether to laugh or show concern. The scorpion was not all that dangerous. Its sting was hardly worse than a bee's.
"How long can that thing live with nothing to eat, Chief?"
"Months, Commander. Maybe a year."
"You're shitting me."
"No, sir."
"All right. Organize a search. Give the crew something to take their minds off the collision."
Lopez drew a crude picture of a scorpion adorned with a Mexican sombrero and crossed cartridge belts and printed a wanted poster on the ship's mimeograph machine. He offered a reward of twenty-five dollars for the return of Zapata, dead or alive, and organized search-and-destroy patrols. For twenty-four hours sailors armed with flashlights and hastily constructed nets systematically ripped out every panel, emptied every locker, tossed every bunk. By the time they reached Gibraltar every cubic inch of the ship had been searched twice, but Zapata remained AWOL.
Lopez now reported Zapata's continued absence to Pisaro, who shrugged it off. "Leave him to the guys on the drydock at Rota," he said. "It'll keep them on their toes."
"I think he's still in the torpedo room, sir. I don't see how he could get out. The hatch has been closed since the collision except when someone goes in or out."
"Don't worry about it. Chief. Zapata is a survivor, I'd bet on it."
The ship locked onto a NATO submarine beacon and passed submerged through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic. As Barracuda turned north toward the Bay of Cádiz and the huge Spanish naval base at Rota, the word was passed that most of the crew would get three days' liberty.
At dawn the sub reduced speed and began to rise from cruising depth.
Springfield went aloft to pilot the ship into the harbor. As they followed a radar beacon into the inner harbor a cool mist rose off the bay, shrouding the giant navy base. Just outside Cadiz the crew of a Russian trawler, Deflektor, on permanent station in the bay, trained glasses and electronics on the passing sub. Inside the breakwater at Rota, opposite Cadiz, the Spanish aircraft carrier Dédalo, her deck covered with antisubmarine helicopters, loomed over the smaller ships and tugs that lined the piers.
A tug pushed Barracuda against a massive floating drydock, and lines were secured fore and aft. Two days had passed since the collision, and the Russians had not uttered a word about their missing sub.
15
The collision had sent men and machinery flying about like poltergeists inside Potemkin. Kurnachov had cracked his head against a periscope housing and fallen unconscious to the deck.
Potemkin had revolved 360 degrees around her keel, turning completely upside down. The reactor had scrammed, plunging the ship into total darkness for several seconds before the emergency electrical power kicked in. The prop no longer was turning, but the stern planes were angled down and the ship was in a state of negative buoyancy. Potemkin was sinking. Dazed men struggled for footing. Much of the instrumentation had gone blank, and acrid smoke from an electrical fire billowed through the after-hatch into the control room.
Federov had groped his way out of his cabin through the darkened passageway and into the control room. There, after stumbling over the prostrate Kurnachov, he discovered the lights on the diving panel were still green — the pressure hull was intact.
"Stern planes up to zero degrees," Federov ordered. "Seal the hatches. Get those fires out. I want damage reports."
Federov's return to the control room inspired the crew to shake off their daze and follow orders.
The intercom still operated. "This is the steering machinery room. Portside stern plane fails to respond. Attempting to operate manually."
"This is electrical engineering. All systems functioning on emergency power."
"This is reactor control. We have steam. Injection pressure normal, but we have a scram."
"Blow after ballast tank. Not too fast. Don't make any noise. We've got time."
The instruments popped back to life. With a glance, Federov realized that the most serious danger came from the atmosphere machinery. The carbon dioxide scrubber and carbon monoxide burners were not functioning.
"All hands put on gas masks and oxygen tanks."
Slowly air was bled into the ballast tank, and the bubble in the buoyancy gauge rose to the center. The rate of descent slackened.
At three thousand feet the engineers were able to crank the stern plane up to zero degrees. The fires were out and the carbon monoxide burners were reignited. Only the carbon dioxide scrubber remained out of action.