China Sea (40 page)

Without warning the console went dead again. The white seas outside the window vanished.
Gaddis
rolled long and hard, steel groaning and wailing in utter blackness broken only by the yellow beams of the emergency lanterns. When she went over the wind seemed to lessen. When she straightened it shrieked around the pilothouse. Dan bent a leg around the radar repeater and picked up the sound-powered handset again, but couldn't get Armey back. Well, if anyone could get power back, his CHENG could. If only they had more electricians.…

In the howl of the wind and the creaking and clanging as the hull twisted and rose and slammed down, the drum of spray and rain on the windows, he never heard the engines stop. There was just too much sea noise, too much wind. This high and this far forward you couldn't hear the screw turning even in utter calm. The only indication was a yell from the helmsman. Dan put his flashlight spot on the gyrocompass repeater, saw it clicking over to the right as the ship's head swung, slowly at first, then faster as the wind seized it. He bent to peer out but saw nothing, tuned his senses instead to the wind direction.

No question, they were falling off rapidly.

As she gave way, a huge sea bore down on her.
Gaddis
poised herself at the top of a leap, then began toppling and didn't stop till they were all hanging from gear and handholds, feet dangling and kicking. She came back a few degrees; then Dan felt her stagger anew as another thousand tons of typhoon-driven water slammed into the side.

Was there anything more he could do? Not up here. He let go of the rail and skidded toward the ladder down, fetching up against the scuttlebutt. Then clung, uncertain what to do as another huge wave smashed into the darkened ship broadside. Clanging echoed up from belowdecks, and the stuttering groan of heavy gear getting ready to shear its bolts. The steel rails holding pubs in their shelves in the nav shack gave way, avalanching hundreds of pounds of paper out onto the deck. He wanted to go below, help Armey get the engines lit off again. But he didn't like the way Compline and Colosimo clung silently to handholds.

At last Dan clawed back toward his chair, hauling himself like a rock climber over the helm console. In the flickering flashlights and battle lanterns the enlisted looked like a gathering of the damned. They clung chalk-faced to the wheel and lee helm, staring at him as if their fates were in his hands alone. He held their eyes for a moment, trying his very best to look confident. Maybe it worked; one or two gave back a weak quirk of the lips that might have been intended as a smile.

“Sir, anything I ought to be doing?” Dom yelled over the deafening clamor of the sea hammering at the windows. The port door groaned and flexed, and suddenly thin streams of water jetted straight out around its oval outline.

Dan jerked his eyes away from it, suppressing a desire to ask the reservist if he really wouldn't rather be back comparing growth funds in Cincinnati. “What's Main Control say?”

“No word yet.”

“We should have had the emergency diesel generators cut in as soon as we had serious fluctuations from the SSTGs.”

Compline: “I'll call Aux Two, find out why the diesel generator set hasn't kicked in.”

“No, let them fucking work; don't keep calling them.”

The phone talker, in a hoarse voice: “Sir, as soon as they lost draft they had to cut the burners. They can purge and try to relight, but without electrical power it's going to be real rough.”

The pilothouse rolled back and forward, cracking the whip as the hull beneath twisted, and one of the men clinging to the helm console lost his grip. Robidoux fell twenty feet, kicking and grabbing for grip on the smooth tile, and succeeded only in cracking his head against the ladder stanchion. He slid limply into the corner of the bulkhead. Compline caught the body on the second pass and hauled him under the chart table, lashing him in place with a gas mask strap under the arms.

Colosimo cracked out orders. He was holding up, Dan thought; he didn't sound frightened or overwhelmed. Once again, Dan was torn between going down to Aux Two and getting the gen set started and staying here and trying to hold the center together. But the question answered itself. He was the only CO
Gaddis
had. Armey and Sansone could handle the generators better than he could.

His job was to save the ship.

A tremendous wall of water crashed suddenly into the side, far more violently than any before it. The windows flexed inward and the warping door pissed water in powerful streams and he had a flicker glimpse of one of the gratings flashing past—waterborne, airborne, he didn't know. The worst of it was how little he could see. Just hear the chaotic howl of shouts, the shrieking wind, the agonized groan and scream of the ship as she staggered back upright, a Niagara torrent roaring off her canted forecastle. The rumble and crash of something carrying away on the flag bridge or off the damaged mack.

She couldn't take much more. The question was, What could he do?

“Sir.” Colosimo's strained voice. “I don't think she'll take too much of this.”

“Just what I was thinking, Dom. Jim's got to get those generators going.”

“How far will she roll before she goes over?”

His flashlight found the clinometer on the bulkhead. It stood at forty degrees just then, but that last roll had been much more violent. If she went far enough to gulp water down her uptakes, the boilers would flood out. Beyond that, and she'd never come up again.

He forced his mind to close down, to think it through coldly as a classroom problem in seamanship and damage control.

Faced with heavy weather, topside icing, and a light ship in an Arctic storm, Jimmy Packer, his CO on his first ship, had flooded deep tanks and chain lockers and blown off the air search antenna with a demo charge to reduce weight high in the ship. Thank God they weren't carrying ice now, but Dan had no confidence in the ability of this crew to carry out controlled flooding. If it wasn't done perfectly, the combination of off-center weight and free surface would make
Gaddis
even less stable. He didn't want to go that route.

The textbook answer to lost power in a storm was to stream a sea anchor and run downwind, but he didn't think the reduced, half-trained crew he had could do that, either. Wrestle heavy timbers into position on a wave-washed, rolling deck, he'd lose guys over the side. Pity it wasn't shallower; they could anchor and ride it out. But his last look at the chart had showed over fourteen hundred fathoms. No way to anchor, no way to put drag on the bow.

An image teased for a moment but shrank back when he reached for it. He groped for a second, then let it go and went on.

Some authorities advised putting your stern to the seas in a terminal situation. As Robidoux had recommended. But damn it, not only would that head him into the storm center; he couldn't do that without power, either. It might have worked when they first lost steerageway. Slamming the rudder to leeward, using her momentum to carry her through the trough. But now they were trapped.

Without electrical power and engine power, they were helpless. He cursed the designers who'd made this a single-screw class. In most destroyer types you had two separate engine rooms, two separate plants. The Knoxes not only had just one, but it also depended on electrical power to keep the boilers lit off. When you lost power, you were up a tree for real.

The squeal of the sound-powered phone, like a squirrel being crushed. He beat Colosimo to it. “Lenson.”

“Armey here. We're taking water down here.”

More good news. “Water? From where?”

“Main deck, I think. I'm not sure exactly where yet, but the guys think the aluminum-to-steel interface on the main deck's starting to separate. You know, where Khashar rammed us into that liner, in Fayal? The sea leans on the deckhouse while the hull's trying to roll up. That's a hell of a stress, and that's a weak seam anyway with the dissimilar-metal riveting. I sent the hull techs up to check it out, but I don't know what they can do in the middle of this.”

This was serious. Loose water, rolling back and forth without swash plates, was terrifically dangerous in heavy seas. It dropped stability even worse than simple flooding, and if it reached the switchboards they could forget about ever getting power back. Dan felt ice touch his spine. “What about the bus transfer?”

“I can't get it to take. We're gonna have to do a thorough troubleshoot on that panel. Right now I'm rigging casualty power cables up from the de-gen set.”

“Are the diesels running?”

“Tried to start 'em twice. We got enough compressed air for one more try.”

Dan felt sweat break under his arms despite the cold. “If you run those air banks down and the diesels don't start—”

“Right, then we're really fucked. Believe me, I know. What's the situation up there?”

“Beam to and rolling like hell. I can hear gear coming off topside.”

“Yeah, we're getting flung around down here. I cracked my fucking arm against the panel and damn near broke it. Can't you do a sea anchor or something?”

“I'd have to put guys out on deck.” Dan swallowed, looking out at the black howling waste outside. “Without lights, too. We'll lose some of 'em.”

“We'll lose everybody if this bitch goes over.”

He sucked air, scared suddenly to the depths of his guts. But the engineer was right. Some, rather than all.

“OK, you convinced me. I'll get Chick and Topmark to pull a party together. Give me a call when you're ready to use that last slug of air.” He slammed the phone down and swung on Colosimo. Dan was opening his mouth when black jaws closed suddenly over the pilothouse and the deck jerked out from under his feet, leaving him floating, one hand locked desperately to the windshield wiper motor box.

The ship shuddered all over, whipsawing from one end to the other. He could actually feel the hull flexing as the immense sea Rolfed it from stem to stern. Water covered the windows, black as oil, sucking in the few random photons shed by the dimming battle lanterns. He had no idea how deep they were buried. When she staggered back up, the roar of water sluicing off the flying bridge, just above their heads, was so loud his voice was lost under it. He tried again. “Dom. Dom!” Colosimo turned a startlingly pale face. Dan yelled, “We need to get some men out there, rig a sea anchor. Get the word to Doolan and Topmark.”

“They'll never make it.”

“Some of them, probably not. But we've got to do it. No time to rig one out of dunnage and awnings. I figured, one of the RHIBs, on a long line, drag it sideways, that'll keep our bow to the wind—”

“How are they going to get it over the side, rolling like this?”

The ship leaned desperately and men clung to each other. Robidoux moaned suddenly from under the chart table, coming to. Aside from his groans, several minutes went by with no one speaking. More seas battered into them, though none as bad as that last big one. She was down, and the sea was taking its chance, kicking and smothering her at the same time. If another monster came in, they could go over. The total blackness, without even masthead and range lights to show what was bearing down on them, made it ten times as terrifying. If only he could fucking
see—

Wheep-wheep-wheep
, then the rattling bang as Compline grabbed the handset. A moment later it clacked as he slammed it back into the holder.

“What is it, Chief?”

“Mr. Armey,” said Compline. “He used the last of the air. The generators didn't start.”

Dan stared at him. Exclamations, curses, and quickly choked-back cries came from elsewhere about the darkened bridge. They were finished, then. There was no way to start the boilers without power. Nor did they have bilge pumps without electricity. They'd roll till they took enough water, then capsize.

The J-phone
wheeped
again, interrupting his thoughts before he had a chance to follow them through. He cursed as Compline held it out to him again. “Jim? That you?”

It wasn't Armey. It was Neilsen, calling from sick bay. His voice was unsteady. He said, “Captain, we need you down here.”

“Christ, Neilsen, I've kind of got my hands full; you're gonna have to wait.”

“You better get down here, sir. It's Mrs. Wedlake. We had a visitor.”

Oh, no
, he said to himself, feeling hopelessness and horror. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, then jerked them open. “I'll be right down,” he said, thrust the phone into the chief's hands, and turned to the ladder.

“What is it, sir?” Colosimo, blocking his path. “Where are you going?”

“Dom, you're gonna have to hold the status quo here for a couple of minutes. You can reach me in sick bay if it really goes to shit. Chick should be up any second. Tell him what's going on and what he needs to do, on the sea anchor, and he's got to do it most rikki-tik now.”

“We need you up here, Skipper.”

“I know that, goddamnit.” He blinked and tightened his jaw against an uninvited image: the girl on Dahakit Atoll, the shallow network of knife cuts around the bloodied socket … Bobbie Wedlake's elvish face … “Get the hell out of my way.”

“Sir, you can't leave the bridge.”

“I've got to, Dom. Just do one thing for me, OK? Just keep her afloat till I get back.”

*   *   *

THE midships passageway was empty, leading aft through Officers' Country. It was dark except for the saffron gleams of the emergency lighting. The deck took another tremendous lean as he worked his way aft along it, creaking and screaming, and for the first time he heard metal popping, breaking, like a human spine twisted sideways and then slowly being buckled by some enormous weight. He staggered into the bulkhead opposite Juskoviac's door, then dropped to his hands and knees and crept along, more on the bulkhead than on the deck, sucking the slanting, jolting air in dry sobs. He didn't want to see this. Didn't want to.