Dragon Fire (The Battle for the Falklands Book 2) (11 page)

“Help
me up, Angus.”

With
a yelp of pain, Fryatt was lifted and dropped into his chair.
 
Angus grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed
it at several small electrical and material fires.
 
He opened the bridge’s outer door, which
sucked most of the smoke from the space.

“Firefighting?”
Fryatt asked with a cough.

Angus
went to a console and checked that the ship’s firefighting systems had been
activated.
 
They were on, which meant
that aqueous foam was being sprayed into burning compartments.

Captain
Fryatt lifted himself.
 
The pain in his
leg made his head swim.
 
However, he was
determined to make it to Williams.
 
He
moved along the console until he got to the senior officer’s chair and the bloody,
burnt mess before it.

“Nigel…”
he whispered to his friend, and then asked the navigator for the doctor: “Get
the Quack up here.”

“Sir,
Lieutenant Commander Williams is dead.
 
The doctor cannot help him.”
 
He
had already checked the first officer, and then moved to each casualty and felt
for pulses or respiration.
 
At each mound
of scorched flesh and clothing, he only shook his head in dismay.
 
Then he came to the quartermaster, who
groaned when prodded.
 
Angus laid him out
flat.

“Ventilation…”
the quartermaster gurgled, his head still filled with duty.
 
The navigator took the cue and went to the
right console.
 
It was still energized
and working, so he pushed a button that isolated ventilation.
 
He did not know that damage control teams had
already manually done the same thing by spinning baffle and louvre controls,
all while they fought fires and worked to rescue the injured.
 
The navigator returned to the quartermaster
and propped him against the bridge console array.

Fight the ship
,
Fryatt’s subconscious spoke through the confusion of the situation.

“Aye,
fight the ship,” Fryatt mumbled.

“Sir?”
the navigator and quartermaster asked in unison.

◊◊◊◊

The
second explosion had been heard by those nestled inside
San Luis II
.
 
A brief cheer
had gone up.

“Raise
periscope and snorkel.
 
All start on
diesels,” Captain Matias bellowed with renewed energy and confidence.

The
periscope climbed from its hull well, poked from the submarine’s sail, and
pierced the surface.
 
Captain Matias
unfolded the periscope’s handholds and leaned into its viewfinder.
 
He shuffled around as he spun the periscope.

It
was early morning, and the sky was painted purple and orange.
 
The ball of the sun had just peeked onto this
side of the world.
 
They had been fighting
all night.
 
Another few steps and he
spotted the profile of that which he sought.

“There
she is,” the captain hissed with both contempt and begrudging respect.
 
He settled his view, putting the crosshairs
of the periscope’s reticle right on the target’s center of mass.
 
“There she is.”

10: EL
PARTIDO

“
We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of
time
.”—Vince Lombardi

D
ragon
filled the periscope viewfinder, though it intermittently disappeared behind
white-topped hills of water, reappearing again as a trough passed.
 
Matias saw thick, billowing smoke that
trailed behind the British destroyer.
 
He
clicked the periscope’s optics to 10 times magnification and studied
Dragon
’s form.

At
this angle,
Dragon
showed as an
abstract sculpture of angles and towers.
 
When her hull rose over a wave, Matias saw the bright red anti-fouling
paint of her bottom and the crisp, stark black of her waterline.
 
The sharp point of her bow climbed until
Matias discerned the bulbous sonar dome.
 
The bow fell and dug in again, sending a fan of white foam before the
British destroyer.

“His
Majesty’s Ship,” the Captain hissed.
 
It was the first time he
had seen his enemy.

“
¿
Señor
?
” Ledesma had heard his captain say something, but no
clarification was forthcoming.

Instead,
Matias centered
Dragon
in the
targeting reticle and, with his hand shaking, pushed a switch that locked the
enemy’s bearing and distance into the fire control computer.
 
San
Luis II
leaned and then rolled back level.
 
Matias spread his legs apart to form a more stable triangle.
 
He felt the deck vibrate as the boat’s diesels
spun up.
 
A breeze touched Matias’ face
as a Control Room vent blew in fresh air.
 
He took a deep breath that tasted of salt and seaweed, and then turned
to his panting men.
 
They, too, reveled
in the surface air, filling lungs and cooling sticky faces.
 
As the boat’s stale air was displaced, the
crew’s breaths slowed and deepened.
 
Captain Matias smiled.

“Weapons?”
he asked.

“
Señor
, ‘53’s in
tubes one and six.
 
Tube five’s still
jammed,” Ledesma reported after peaking at the weapons load-out panel.

“Very
well.
 
Surface the boat.
 
Prepare for a surface shot.
 
And get the conning tower team up with
Iglas
.
 
I want that
chupa
pija
helicopter,” Matias snarled.
 
“It is time
to finish this…on our terms.”

Raton
had heard and felt the diesels start up.
 
They shook the boat hard and reminded him of the tractor he used to ride
in the fields at Salta.
 
The tractor had
stunk of diesel fumes and it was hard to steer, making his arms ache and
soaking his shirt with sweat from the effort.
 
Nonetheless, despite these complaints, he had loved that ‘
viejo
burro
’—‘old donkey’—dearly.
 
Raton let out a chortle that was as much
nostalgic pain as amusement with the memory.
 
He watched the battery charge gauge climb slowly and realized he had
done it: He had given his boat, captain, and crewmates the life they needed to
stay in the fight.
 
Fresh air reached
down into the battery deck.
 
As it
reached into his little world, it tickled his cheeks, dried his sweat, and
filled his blood with needed oxygen.
 
Raton’s weary head cleared.

◊◊◊◊

A
squirt of water blown by the morning breeze into a fine mist reflected the
sunrise’s colors.
 
About it, the sea
turned from dark to a light blue laced with white bubbles.
 
Then, a black shape pierced the waves and
poked at the air.
 
It was a rectangular
monolith.
 
As it grew from the surface, a
dark and massive shape came from below, washed by falling water.
 
The long, unnatural island broke the chop
upon it.
 
Captain Fryatt imagined he was
dreaming, but he soon realized what he was looking at:

“Submarine
at the surface,” the navigator pointed and yelled.

Fryatt
went to the shattered windscreen and looked at the whale-like shape.
 
The ‘white
whale’ to my ‘Captain Ahab
,’ he thought, though the shape was in fact deep black.
 
Like a void, a black hole, an alternate
universe, it had intruded upon his world.
 
Fryatt quickly scanned the
Dragon’s
consoles.

The
114-millimeter deck gun flashed ‘inoperative’ red and, according to the
Platform Management System, most other systems were offline as well.
 
However, thanks to damage control teams,
propulsion—specifically the starboard alternator, diesel, gas turbine, and
switchboard—showed green, as did steering and stabilizers, chilled water,
lubricating oil, and several other subsystems.

“Navigator,”
Fryatt bellowed as he went to rudder control, “Whatever you can muster, mister,
all ahead full.”

“But,
sir…”

“Make
it so,” Fryatt harshly restated as he wobbled on his shattered leg.

“Aye,
captain.”
 
The navigator leaned on the
starboard throttle.
 
Despite her
injuries,
Dragon
surged, raised her
bow, and plowed ahead.
 
Fryatt adjusted
the stabilizers and rudders, and did his best to keep the surfaced submarine
centered in the bow’s breakwater.
 
The ship
pulled left.
 
Fryatt countered with full
right rudder.
 
Dragon
ran straight and true again, slamming through the waves and
breaking grey water over her forward quarter.

To the last
,
I grapple with thee…
Captain Fryatt quoted to himself.

“Sir,
starboard turbine temperature rising fast,” the navigator reported.

From Hell's heart
,
I stab at thee…

“Sir,
I have to back off.”

Fryatt
turned and scowled with a burning fire in his eyes.

Captain
Fryatt expertly adjusted
Dragon
’s
controls.
 
Her bow, like a harpoon, flew
toward the shadow that floated upon the dark green waters.

“For
hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee…” Fryatt muttered.
 
He steered his ship at the smooth blackness
of the surfaced Argentine submarine, and in the moment, felt as obsessed as
Ahab.
 
A squeak of a chuckle escaped
Fryatt’s clenched teeth.

The
navigator looked to his captain and wondered.
 
He re-checked the redlined turbine temperature indicator.

“Sir…”
he insisted.
 
Fryatt did not respond.

◊◊◊◊

“What
the hell are they doing?” John asked over the intercom as he watched
Dragon
turn and speed up.

“Damned
if I know,” Seamus responded as he dipped the Merlin in the direction of the
enemy.
 
Despite being unarmed and
practically flying on fumes, he succumbed to the same instincts as his
captain.
 
Bracing themselves against the
movements of the aircraft, everyone on board Kingfisher 21 peered through the
windows at the spear of
Dragon
as she
now raced directly at the fat, floating cylinder of
San Luis II
.

John
raised binoculars and scanned
San Luis II
.
 
He watched as water sloshed, broke, foamed,
and ran down the submarine’s steel casing.
 
He saw free-flood holes suck in and spit out water.
 
He discerned the outline of hatch openings,
and as John panned forward, saw the submarine’s massive dive planes slap the
surface and sink in a storm of bubbles before they rose again and shed a
torrent of white water.
 
John shifted his
view back again and settled on the submarine’s sail.
 
Among the stowed antennae and periscopes that
jutted from it, there was another discernible shape; a decidedly human one.

◊◊◊◊

The
Russian Kilo-class submarine had been designed to operate in the frozen wastes
of the Arctic north, so the sail’s conning station was enclosed and wrapped in Plexiglas
windows.
 
Since the station flooded when
the boat was submerged, it had become cold and wet and slimy.
 
Men of
San
Luis II
’s conning station’s detail were up there scanning every quadrant
with binoculars.
 
John also saw a small
platform where two men could stand abreast and proud of the station
enclosure.
 
This is where Raton stood for
the moment,
a reward from the captain for his diligence and as an
escape from the extreme confines of the battery deck.

Though
smacked in the face by a thick cloud of fumes that emanated from
San Luis II
’s running diesels, Raton reveled
in standing outside.
 
He adjusted his
personal floatation device for comfort, scanned his quadrant of the sea with
binoculars, and sighed with exhaustion.
 
They
had all fought through the long dark night.
 
Now it was dawn.
 
The sky loomed as
big as ever, and the rising sun painted it with a vast palette of color.
 
Among the crew on the conning station was a
two man air defense team.

Both
men wore protective goggles, though one, the ‘spotter’s,’ was in fact the
thermal imaging type.
 
The team’s
‘shooter’ removed a 9K338
Igla
-S from the sail’s
waterproof locker.
 
The
Igla
—Russian for ‘Needle’—was an infrared-homing
man-portable surface-to-air missile.
 
The
shooter hurried to assemble the weapon and test and engage the weapon’s
battery.
 
Raton felt a tug on his pant
leg.
 
His brief time in the cold wind was
over.
 
He took one more deep breath and
then climbed down from his perch.

The
shooter ascended in his stead, and was handed the
Igla’s
tube-shaped launcher, which he rested upon a shoulder.
 
Then the spotter joined the shooter on the
sail’s perch.
 
The shooter threw a switch
on the tube’s fore grip, and the weapon came alive with an ominous growl, all
while the spotter did a quick sweep of the surrounding airspace.
 
His thermal imaging goggles found a source of
heat.

The
white glowing blob he saw was in fact the Merlin, its hot turbines and exhaust
streams standing out, in the infrared viewer, against the black coldness of the
atmosphere.
 
The spotter pointed with a
small hand-held flag and, taking his cue, the shooter swung the missile tube in
the specified direction.
 
The
Igla
shrilled when its own sensor found the heat
source.
 
The shooter centered the
launcher sight’s illuminated red dot on the inbound British aircraft.

◊◊◊◊

Rodi
saw that one of the men perched atop the submarine had a pole rested on his
shoulder.

“MANPAD;
MANPAD,” Rodi exclaimed.
 
Immediately,
the aircraft rolled right and yawed hard.
 
Thumps announced the ejection of flares from the helicopter’s
fuselage.
 
Straining to brace himself, John
looked out the window.
 
A corkscrew of
white smoke reached for the Merlin.

◊◊◊◊

Despite
the length of the tunnel that led up to the sail’s conning station, light, sea-spray
and the
Igla’s
propellant smoke still made their way
down into
San Luis II
’s Control
Center.
 
Though one submariner was green
from the rise, fall, and roll of the surfaced submarine, the rest seemed
content to be breathing the cold morning air.
 
Captain Matias unfolded the periscope’s handholds and leaned into its
viewfinder.
 
He spun the periscope until
he found the British destroyer again, and then settled his view.

Dragon
filled his viewfinder.
 
Captain Matias clicked
over to 10 times magnification.
 
The
British destroyer’s hull reared as she climbed a mountain of water.
 
When
Dragon
settled again, Matias saw the menacing wyrm painted on the sharp point of her
bow.
 
Despite thick black smoke that
belched from the jagged wreckage of the destroyer’s superstructure, the ship
was moving.
 
Not as crippled as I believed…