Dragon Fire (The Battle for the Falklands Book 2) (3 page)

Williams smiled back.
 
As they had discussed previously,
Dragon
would use the intruders to
conduct an exercise.
 
Williams picked up
the VUU—the ship’s Voice User Unit—and told the AIC to run an Aster missile
drill.
 
The ship’s phased-array radar
fired a targeting beam into the face of the two Backfires.
 
A Klaxon sounded aboard
Dragon
.
 
It warned the ship’s
company to stay away from the
Sylver
A-50 vertical
launch system, an array of 48 missile cells sunk into the ship’s forward
deck.
 
Inside each cell hid a dart-shaped
Aster surface-to-air missile.

The Aster series could engage and take
down aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
 
Right
now
,
the Russian’s cockpit warning
panels must be lit up like a Christmas tree
, Fryatt thought.
 
They
know that the tables have been turned
,
that they had been detected
,
were
being targeted
,
and should I so
desire
,
supersonic missiles would
soon be on the way to rip into their fuselage and wings
.
 
Fryatt stood, went to the windscreen, and
peered out at
Dragon
’s forward deck.

Had the captain authorized release of
weapons, two Asters would have blasted open their frangible cell covers,
erupted from the deck in a fountain of fire, and raced off to meet the
Backfires.
 
Op Room announced the radar
contacts had climbed, slowed, and turned around.

“Well, that was fun,” Fryatt said to the
bridge crew.
 
They all chuckled and
nodded.
 
“Bring us back to patrol course
and reduce speed to 18 knots.
 
Stand down
from air warning red and revert to yellow.”

Several minutes later Captain Fryatt was
in his cabin reading and eating a sandwich.
 
He heard a knock at the door.

“Come,” Fryatt said.
 
The wood-paneled door slid open.
 
It was Lieutenant-Commander Williams, carrying
a print-out.
 
He asked forgiveness for
the disturbance, handed his Captain the paper, and retreated again to the
passageway.
 
Fryatt rubbed his eyes,
unfolded the decrypted message, and began to read:

PROTECTIVELY
MARKED INFORMATION

ENCRYPTION
KEY: ATD3GW

FR:
NAVY COMMAND HEADQUARTERS

TO:
HMS DRAGON

REPUBLIC
OF ARGENTINA (ROA) HAS INVADED/HOLDS SOUTH ATLANTIC OVERSEAS TERRITORY OF
FALKLAND ISLANDS.
 
STATE OF WAR EXISTS
WITH ROA.

ORDERS:

RENDEVOUS
WITH HMS IRON DUKE AT 8S 14W

PROCEED
IN UNISON AT BEST SPEED TO 51S 54W AND RENDEVOUS WITH HMS AMBUSH

RULES
OF ENGAGEMENT ULTRA—ENGAGE AND DESTROY ALL ENEMY CONTACTS.
 
PROVIDE THEATRE–WIDE ANTI-AIR WARFARE
UMBRELLA FOR FRIENDLY FORCES

END
TRANSMISSION

Fryatt remembered having read that the
Crown Prince had been headed to the Falklands for a tour.
 
He thought of his old ship,
Sheffield
, and remembered the agonized
groans of the badly burned man that had lain beside him in
Hermes
’ sick ward.
 
He
thought about the AM39
Exocet
.

During the 1982 Falklands War, other than sinking
Sheffield
,
Exocet
had damaged the merchant ship
Atlantic
Conveyor
, and set the destroyer
Glamorgan
ablaze.
 
Fryatt knew that Argentina now had over 200
Exocets
in inventory, including the latest MM40 Block 3 version.
 
While he knew that
Dragon
was far better equipped to handle this menace than
Sheffield
had been, he also knew that
these weapons would be their greatest nightmare.
 
What had not crossed his mind, however, was the
fact of Argentina’s new submarines.

2:
ABISMO

“
They say the sea is cold
,
but the sea contains the hottest blood of all
…”—D.H. Lawrence

T
here
were strange snaps, clicks, and haunting songs.
 
The trio of sound was layered over a bass section of low-frequency
groans.
 
This orchestra of life belonged
to the Atlantic Ocean, and, from the murk beneath the waves, another sound grew
louder, rhythmic and unnatural.
 
A shadow
approached.
 
It was blacker than the
blackness.

Argentine submarine ARA
San Luis II
was a Project 877EKM
Paltus
diesel-electric attack submarine, better known by
the NATO designation of Kilo.
 
Paltus
meant Halibut, and, like the large bottom-dwelling flatfish,
San Luis II
could blend in, conceal
herself, and lay in wait to snap up unwary prey.
 
Built in Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia, like most
things made there, the submarine had been sold like a drug in a dark
alley.
 
Cold cash had sealed the
deal.
 
Yes, to some on Argentina’s
Cabinet of Ministers, a submarine was just a steel hole in the water that
did
not feed people, plow fields, sow seeds, nor provide shelter to the poor.
 
But to others,
San Luis II
represented a means to an end, and existed, therefore, as
a beautiful thing.

San
Luis II
—called, simply,
Numero
Dos
(Number Two) by her crew—featured a hemispheric bow that housed sonar
and six big weapon tubes for mines, missiles, and torpedoes.
 
She bore dive planes just forward of a large
sail emblazoned with the big white pennant number ‘S-44.’
 
Antennae, two periscopes and a snorkel
through which the diesels breathed, jutted from the sail’s top.
 
The submarine’s fat and stubby, stretched
teardrop-shaped, hull ended with a lower stabilizer fin/rudder and a single big
six-bladed propeller.
 
As to a blind man,
sound was
San Luis II
’s eyes.

She towed behind her a microphone-covered wire
and, mounted hull-side, was the
Rubikon
passive sonar
array.
 
These ‘eyes’ collected sounds
from the water, and allowed
San Luis II
to see in the dark.
 
Her speed increased,
and then she reeled in her towed array.
 
Within
the pressure hull, beyond the reach of the great crush of ocean, is where
San Luis II
’s human operators existed.
 
They dwelt in a tangled thicket of pipes and
valves that lined a claustrophobes’ nightmare of artificial caves, grottoes,
hatches, and tubular tunnels.
 
The sonar
station occupied a small space just off the main Control Room.

This is where sounds were filtered and
analyzed by computers and their sophisticated software.
 
The computers then presented the sounds to
technicians.
 
A glowing screen, one of
many, displayed graphical bars that cascaded like a waterfall.
 
Each bar represented bearing, frequency, and the
range of sonar contacts.
 
The sonar
technician pointed to one such bar and asked what he was listening to: “¿
Que
es
eso
?”

“Whales screwing,” the senior sonar
technician answered.
 
The accent revealed
a youth spent in the mountainous north-western Argentinian province of
Catamarca.

“And that background noise?” the
subordinate added.

“That, my friend, is from tectonic plates;
the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
 
The crackle you
hear, just like your breakfast cereal?”

“Yes.”

“That is lava flash-cooling in seawater.”

The tech nodded understanding, but his
slackened jaw revealed lingering confusion coupled with fascination.

The senior sonar technician pressed his
headphones tighter to his ears and stated: “We are never going to hear anything
at this speed.”
 
San Luis II
’s diesel generators continued throbbing away, masking
the subtle sounds that could represent another submarine.

San
Luis II
was on a north-easterly speed course, her depth now
ten meters beneath the surface of the ocean, that undulating membrane between
air and water.
 
The sub’s diesels
breathed through a snorkel that ripped the water like a shark’s fin, sucking
vital oxygen that all Earth-bound creatures need, even those made of
metal.
 
The invasion of the Falklands—
Operación
Maza
—was
underway, and
San Luis II
would do
her part.
 
She arrived on station just 40
minutes behind schedule.

Captain Jaime Matias,
San Luis II
’s commander, sat at the small fold-down desk shoehorned
into a corner of his quarters.
 
Unlike
the rest of the boat’s lime-green painted metal walls, this tiny room was
wood-paneled and offered a private bed.
 
San Luis II
’s other crewmen had to share
bunks, with one man waking to go on duty, and the other jumping in as he came
off it.
 
Captain Matias’ bed was not
quite as long as he was tall, its mattress was cracker-thin, and it was tucked
against the slope of the hull.
 
Although
it felt like crawling into a coffin, it was nevertheless cool and clean.
 
Even better, it was all his.

Matias looked to the three small, framed
portraits hanging on the cabin wall.
 
They
had been affixed there in the yard, forcing the commander to bear the
unblinking gazes of President Alonso, Admiral Correa, and Minister of Defense
Gomez.
 
Matias sighed, stood, and hung a
towel over the portraits.
 
He sat again and
pulled a cozy off a small pot that had been delivered by the cook and poured
himself a mug of
yerba
maté
—a bitter, earthy green tea.
 
Then he picked up the small picture of his
wife and son from his desk.

Matias sipped the tea and looked closely
at his boy.
 
He, too, wore the uniform of
the Argentine Navy, and had he lived, he would be an officer by now.
 
There was a knock at the door.

“Come.”

It was First Lieutenant Santiago Ledesma,
San Luis II
’s executive officer.

“Pardon the interruption, sir,” Ledesma
said as he peeked in.

“Enter, Santiago,” the captain
invited.
 
“Sit.”
 
Ledesma squeezed in, sat on the bed, and
accepted a mug which Matias filled with tea.

“Thank you, sir.”
 
Ledesma blew at the steaming brew and took a
sip.
 
“Sir, we are at 13 south 17 west,
the edge of our patrol sector.”

“Very well,” Matias said.
 
San
Luis II
’
s endurance had
been pushed as she steamed some 3,000 miles from base at Mar del Plata, and now
it was time for Matias to take the conn.
 
With limited fresh water aboard and the extended duration of
San Luis II
’s mission, the boat’s shower
had been padlocked shut, and the combined odor of sweat and diesel oil
recirculated through the ventilators.
 
Feeling ripe, Matias changed his disposable shirt and splashed water on
his face from the soup bowl-sized cabin basin.
 
He pulled the towel down to dry himself, and then replaced it over the
faces of his leaders.
 
Ledesma chuckled.

“That is all they are good for, Santiago:
A towel hook,” Matias declared, and studied his executive’s face.
 
“Does this bother you?”

“This is your cabin.
 
And we are friends.”

“Then you can tell me how you really
feel.”

“Very well.
 
Sometimes I am afraid of you.
 
Sometimes I do not understand you.
 
And sometimes, I am unsure if we really are
friends.”

“Oh, is that all?” Matias chuckled, but he
appreciated the easy forthrightness of Ledesma.
 
This was one of the reasons he had recommended the man as
second-in-command.
 
Ledesma sipped at his
tea and peered at the captain through the wisps of steam rising from the mug.

“We
are
friends, Santiago.
 
And, because of this,
I will tell you something: This war is a mistake.”

Though Ledesma harbored such forbidden
thoughts as well, he was not prepared to discuss them, so he changed the
subject.

“That is your son?” he asked.

“Once, I went to sea with a fresh
heart.
 
That was long ago,” Matias added,
studying Ledesma.
 
Then Matias took the
new path of conversation Ledesma had initiated: “Yes, that is my son.
 
I taught him to be a good warrior: country,
duty, ask no questions.
 
Now he’s at the
bottom of the sea.”

Ledesma had heard the story.
 
When Argentina had hastily announced a
nuclear submarine program and cobbled together a prototype based on a German
TR-1700 hull, young submariners had paid the price.
 
The program was abandoned when the
contaminated boat and the radiation-burned bodies trapped within had been
committed to the deep.

“Young and with faith...
 
That is the way for a warrior to die,
Santiago.
 
I have lived too long.”
 
Matias could see he had said too much.
 
“Don’t worry, my friend.
 
I am too well trained for such thoughts to
interfere with my duty to you, our crew, and this wonderful boat.”
 
Matias touched a cold steel pipe over his
head.”

Ledesma nodded, forced a smile, and
stood.
 
“Thank you for the tea,” he
said.
 
“I shall return to my post now.”

“I am right behind you,” Matias said with
a smile.
 
He watched Ledesma leave the
confines of the cabin, and as the door shut, his forced smile quickly faded.

◊◊◊◊

Captain Matias ducked into the submarine’s
cramped Control Room.
 
Like the rest of
the sub, the Control Room was a tangle of analog dials, computers, electrical
panels, levers, pipes, valves, and wire conduit covered by too many layers of
paint.
 
Red light illuminated the room,
because except for clocks, interior lighting was the only indication of the
time of day.
 
Red lighting meant it was
nighttime topside.
 
Despite the dimness,
Matias knew the location of every head-knocking low pipe and maneuvered
accordingly.
 
He passed dive control with
its bank of valves and glowing control panels.

“Good evening, men,” Matias said to the
shadows hunched all along the compartment’s wall.
 
He quickly surveyed various analog and
digital instruments arrayed around the Control Room.
 
“Batteries?”

“Are at 100 percent, sir,” Ledesma
reported.
 
They had been on diesel power
for some time, charging the submarine’s two banks of 120-cell lead-acid
batteries.

“Excellent,” Matias said.
 
“Shut down the generators, stow the snorkel,
and engage the electric motor.”

“Make your depth 125 meters,” Matias
announced.
 
Ledesma, and then the
chief-of-the-boat, repeated the order.
 
Valves were opened, panel indicators changed colors, and there was the
sound of rushing water.
 
The Control Room
deck pitched forward as the submarine angled nose down, piercing the deep, dark
depths.

The hull groaned and popped as its
high-tensile steel adjusted to increased pressure.
 
The greener submariners looked about
nervously as this happened, while Matias and the Control Room’s other
experienced crew paid the sounds no mind.
 
A drawn out creak made one man wriggle.
 
Matias smiled at Ledesma who turned away to check a display.
 
A loud bang announced the hull’s adjustment
to the squeeze of the Atlantic.