Dragon Fire (The Battle for the Falklands Book 2) (12 page)

The
submarine leaned and then rolled back level.
 
Matias stumbled, and steadying himself, re-centered
Dragon
in the periscope’s reticule.
 
The captain pushed the switch that locked the target’s position into
San Luis II
’s fire control
computer.
 
Without taking his eye from
the viewfinder, the captain ordered: “Report tube load-out.”

“
Señor
, tube one
loaded with a VA-111; tube two: Type 53 heavy torpedo; tube three:
Klub
ASM, tube four is empty; and, tube five: inoperative
though still loaded with a ’53,” Ledesma recited.

“Very
well,” Matias said with a hoarse voice.
 
He turned to his executive officer and shouted: “Surface shot: tubes
one, two, and three.
 
Do it now.
 
Finish her.”

“Fire
control, target is Delta 1.
 
Range: 1,000
meters.
 
Bearing: two-zero-zero,” Ledesma
called out.
 
He looked at the battery
charge read-out.
 
Though the indicators
climbed, so did Ledesma’s anxiety.
 
The surface is no place for a submarine
.
 
He pushed the thought and doubts aside.
 
Dials were turned and buttons pushed as the
attack unfolded.
 
Matias continued to
study his adversary through the periscope.

He
saw
Dragon
surge forward.
 
“What is she doing?” the captain asked to
nobody in particular.
 
Dragon
sent up a fan of white foam
before her charge.
 
Matias’ confidence
was reinvigorated by the shake of weapons being spat from
San Luis II
’s hull.

“
Señor
, tubes one,
two, and three: weapons are away,” Ledesma reported.
 
The lilt of his voice betrayed apprehension
and spoke volumes, telling the captain to ‘
Pl
ease
dive immediately.’

“Thank
you, Santiago,” the captain said calmly as he peeled his eye from the
periscope’s monocle.
 
Then, leaning back
in and cupping the viewfinder again in the arc of his brow, Matias peered out
at the sloshing waves and his grey foe.

◊◊◊◊

As
Seamus put the helicopter on its side and into a tight turn, John was thrown
against the aircraft’s rear cabin wall.
 
He crawled to the cabin door and kneeled to peer out through the window.

Leaving
a smoky trail, and tracking the heat emitted from the helicopter’s engine
cowlings, the missile snaked its way for the Merlin.

“Christ,”
John said as he got himself back in the seat and secured his harness.
 
Then he felt his chest, and was reassured
that his flotation vest was in fact on.
 
He knew that, if they survived a missile hit, the helicopter would drop
like a rock, and once in the water, sink like one as well.
 
He thought back on his escape training.

They
had been put in a mock helicopter cabin suspended over a cold pool.
 
It fell and flipped upside down and filled
rapidly with the pool water.
 
‘Check your
bubbles,’ they had told the trainees.
 
‘Bubbles always rise.
 
Just follow
them up and out.’
 
John’s harness had
opened—apparently, purposefully—and he rolled from his seat and hit his
head.
 
The cloud of blood that gushed
from the wound made it hard to see bubbles, let alone anything else.
 
The other trainees were blinded by it too, as
one man swam right into John’s face, adding to the throbbing pain.
 
Panic threatened to overtake John’s rational
brain.

The
air in his lungs rapidly ran out, and the organs begged to be refilled.
 
He exhaled the last of the breath anyway, and
watched the wobbling bubbles rise.
 
Despite his greying vision, John decided the direction the bubbles travelled
had to be the true up.
 
He made for the
cabin window opening in the upside-down mock cabin.
 
The opening was already devoid of Plexiglas,
a convenience that a real-world Merlin cabin would not have offered.
 

An
explosion tore the remembrance of John’s experience at 824 NAS away, and
brought him back to Kingfisher 21 and its precarious place in the air over the
South Atlantic Ocean.

Shoved
by the proximate explosion, the Merlin dipped violently.
 
Although the
Igla
had been lured by a flare, the enemy missile had exploded close by, the force
of which slammed into the helicopter’s side.
 
John steadied himself and saw that the window had been pitted by
fragments.
 
Luckily, they had not had the
energy to shatter the thick Plexiglas and penetrate the cabin.
 
Shaken by the danger-close blast, Seamus had
to assume that more missiles were on the way and turned and dipped his Merlin
hard.

◊◊◊◊

Raton
watched the three trails of bubbles that raced from
San Luis II
’s bow.
 
One
trail, the one that belonged to the Squall, formed fast and straight, and left
the other two behind it.
 
The second
trail stopped short, boiled to the surface, and spat a
Klub
anti-ship missile into the air.
 
It
jumped from the sea and, with a puff of black smoke and an unfolding of
winglets, leveled and screamed off.
 
The
third trail—that which belonged to the heavy wake-homing torpedo—made a
relatively slow and steady advance toward their adversary.

◊◊◊◊

From
Dragon
’s bridge, Fryatt saw the
Klub
broach,
ignite, and configure for flight.
 
He
said: “Not this time.
 
You are just too
close.”
 
He knew naval weapons like the
back of his hand, and recognized that
Dragon
was already inside the effective engagement envelope of this particular type of
Russian anti-ship missile.
 
Fryatt
shifted his concentration to the line of bubbles generated by the underwater
rocket reaching out for his vessel.
 
“Squall,” he annunciated with derision, and reduced the ship’s rudders’
angle.
 
Dragon
swung over
obediently, and became oblique to the threat vector.
 
Fryatt dismissed the Squall with a snort, and
then neither saw nor worried about the torpedo that still made its devious way
beneath the waves.
 
Out of sight
,
out of mind
, Fryatt chuckled at the thought.
 
Though deadly, torpedoes were slower than
underwater rockets and anti-ship missiles, and Fryatt decided he would deal
with it only if he was forced to.
 
He
refocused attention on the black bobbing mass of the Argentine submarine.

“Sir,
starboard turbine now at redline,” cried the navigator.

“Steady
on,” was all Fryatt said as his enemy loomed ever larger in the bridge’s
windows.
 
“Steady…”

The
navigator took a deep breath to fortify his own confidence, and then took it
upon himself to announce to those below decks: “Collision warning.
 
Brace, brace, brace.”

◊◊◊◊

Madre de
dios
,
Raton thought.
 
He had never considered
he would see such things: His submarine was at the surface and firing on a
British destroyer that already trailed black smoke from fatal wounds.
 
Our captain
has done well
.
 
Raton patted the
steel of
San Luis II
’s sail.
 
And you
have also done well
,
too
,
my dear
.
 
The air defense crew went about reloading
their
Igla
launcher.
 
Raton looked to
Dragon
again.
 
The British destroyer was in
motion, and had turned straight at
San
Luis II
.

“
Carajo
,” Raton
muttered.
 
He lowered the binoculars, and
picked up the growler.
 
He pushed the
button to sound a bell in the Control Room, and then wiggled the wire plug to
make sure it was properly seated in the conning station’s terminal.
 
Fucking Russian piece of shit
, he complained,
and spoke aloud: “Come on, come on.”
 
Raton looked up to see
Dragon
ride up a wave and then slam back down again.
 
“Come on.”
 
Growing anxious, he
looked up again.
 
The ship was clearly on
a collision course.
 
Judging by the bow
wave shoved up before her, she had increased speed, too.
 
“
Answer
,
damn it
,
answer
.”

A
voice finally came through.
 
It belonged
to the first officer.

“
¿Sí
,
cuál es su informe
?”
Ledesma
asked for Raton’s report.

Raton
yelled in response: “
Señor
, the ship…she has
turned to.
 
She is charging.”

The
other men on the sail heard Raton’s statement, too.
 
First, they looked at Raton, then, turned with
swiveling heads to the only shape on the lonely plain of ocean:
Dragon
.
 
They had all been distracted by the engagement with the helicopter—now
just a black shape buzzing low on the horizon—and had failed to recognize the
threat that drawing ever closer.
 
The air
defense team shooter swore, slid the reload missile and launcher back into the
sail locker, and anticipating a dive, clamped the locker door shut.

Within
San Luis II
’s Control Center, Ledesma informed the captain of the
lookout’s warning.
 
Matias took a quick
peek through the periscope, and conceded that
Dragon
’s course and speed were alarmingly uncharacteristic of a
fatally crippled vessel.
 
There was a
brief debate regarding British capabilities and intentions, and then Matias reluctantly
barked the order: “Emergency dive.”
 
Ledesma sounded the alarm and ordered the sail team to get below.

Raton
hesitated for a moment.
 
All had seemed
well.
 
Victory had been at hand, and the
very reason for his service and suffering had been vindicated.
 
And now, he was told to scurry back down a
hole.
 
I am to be a rat that runs
for cover
.
 
Raton scowled, unplugged
the growler, and told the men of the watch to get below.
 
As the point of
Dragon
’s bow stabbed closer, and the tower of her superstructure
made shadows where none had existed before, Raton’s crewmates scurried to the sail’s
hatch and circled it like confused birds.
 
The opening was so small, and the pressure hull’s access tube was so
tight, that precious moments were spent squeezing inside and shimmying down.
 
The ladder inside the confines of the access
tube was coated with water and salt.
 
It
was slippery like the slope of the sail’s hull.

Raton
huffed. “¡
Señores
!
¡
Rápidamente
!
” Raton urged his crewmates to
hurry.
 
If the moment had not been
urgent, Raton would have laughed as he watched the men try to shove themselves
inside
S
an Luis II
’s hull.
 
We
are all just
‘
rats
.
’

The
last of the sail team—a robust and rotund type—tried to squeeze into the hole, but
got stuck as the ring of fat about his midsection caught on the portal’s circle
of steel.
 
Raton directed him to blow out
his breath and squeeze in, and the submariner managed to shimmy inside,
disappearing like a deep-water tube worm entering his enclosure.
 
Out of breath from pushing on the man’s
shoulders, Raton saw that
San Luis II
’s
cylindrical hull had angled down, and the forward deck was awash with creamy
bright-green water.
 
Raton looked to
Dragon
.

A
sharp knife at the submarine’s throat, the British destroyer was nearly upon
San Luis II
.
 
Raton wondered,
Could such determination be defeated
?
 
Was
such loyalty paralleled
?

“Close
the hatch,” was the answer to such questions.
 
The order had travelled up the access tunnel and been amplified by its
confines.
 
It was Ledesma’s voice, a man
Raton had admired.
 
However, now, the
voice brought abandonment and condemnation.