Dragon Fire (The Battle for the Falklands Book 2) (9 page)

“ASM
inside outer fence,” Williams noted.
 
“Phalanx online.
 
Then the
lieutenant commander reiterated: “All weapons free.”

Fryatt’s
only response was a clenching of his teeth that made his cheeks poke out.
 
He looked to the clouds of chaff that floated
down toward the sea.

The
anti-ship missile screamed over the water and flew at the shape its nose radar
said was an enemy target.
 
However,
Dragon
’s chaff made this shape larger
than her true mass represented, and the missile’s computerized brain continued
to adjust its path at what it believed to be the enemy’s center of mass.
 
This center, however, was now off to the
starboard of the British guided-missile destroyer.

Mounted
to its sponson was
Dragon
’s close-in
weapons system.
 
With its distinctive
radome—nicknamed ‘Dalek’ after the aliens in Doctor Who—the Phalanx scanned the
sea with its search subsystem.
 
When it
had found a target and provided altitude, bearing, heading, range, and velocity
information to its computer, the computer analyzed the target’s range, speed
and direction.
 
A millisecond later, the
Phalanx swiveled on its mount and raised its Vulcan six-barreled Gatling
cannon.
 
Its track antenna and subsystem
scrutinized the target, observing it until it determined the probability of a
hit was worth firing.
 
On automatic, the
computer pressed the trigger, and with a ripping sound the Phalanx spat 75
tungsten bullets per second, walking them into the radar return it had deemed
threatening.

Too
close for comfort, the remaining
Klub
anti-ship
missile blew up in a flash of orange, black, and red.
 
Its turbojet engine, the most robust part of
its structure, splashed in and cartwheeled for a moment before it stopped with
a slam and then abruptly sank.

Fryatt
sighed and exhaled a breath he had held for minutes.
 
His blued air-deprived face turned pink
again, and he turned his attention to the report of underwater contacts.
 
The enemy had reached up to assault them from
the air, and now stabbed from beneath the waves.
 
His enemy would try to stick the knife in,
twist it, and look into his very eyes as he spilled Fryatt’s guts.
 
Fryatt, in that moment and without knowing
him by name, respected Argentine Navy Captain Matias.
 
He was, after all, just a patriot doing
everything within his power to win.
 
Fryatt nodded.
 
As he acknowledged
the existence and purpose of his foe, Fryatt decided he would win, and that he
would damn his enemy’s shadow to a deep, cold, black grave.
 
But he would do so with a salute and a memory he
would hold as long as he lived.

If my life is to be a long one
,
Fryatt pondered as he looked around at the young people manning his ship’s
bridge.
 
He loved every one of them.
 
He would never tell them this directly, but had
anyone been looking, his usually cold blue eyes would have betrayed the
feeling.
 
Fryatt refocused.

“Williams.
 
Squall.”

“Sir,”
Williams turned and as though in a trance, robotically rattled off all he knew
about the Russian fish: “VA-111.
 
High-speed.
 
Straight runner.
 
GOLIS navigation system.
 
Preset target information.”
 
This last bit was enough for Captain Fryatt
to relax.

“Come
to heading one-eight-zero.
 
Increase
speed: 20 knots,” he ordered.

Though
the Squall was a fearsomely fast weapon, it ran in a line and was therefore a
mere distraction to a highly maneuverable vessel like
Dragon
.

Distraction from what?

“Torpedo,
torpedo, torpedo,” was the Op Room’s answer to his query.

Fryatt
raised his binoculars to watch the lines of surface bubbles as the Squalls sped
along.
 
When certain they would come
nowhere near, he shifted his attention.

“What
have you got, Charlie?” Fryatt asked over the bridge phone.

The
Op Room sonar technician had localized the other slower torpedoes, and matched their
acoustic signature to Type 53-65 heavies.
 
More Goddamn Russian fish
.
 
He reported to the director, who in turn answered the captain.

Williams’
big eyes asked the question as Fryatt hung up.

“Wake
homers,” the captain said.
 
Everyone on
the bridge turned and peered astern as if they could look through steel
bulkheads.

Part
of
Dragon
’s Surface Ship Torpedo
Defense System, a stern-mounted reel, paid out a float and line.
 
The float created a second wake behind the
destroyer and began to emit sounds like those generated by an 8,000-ton ship
powered by loud engines.

San Luis II
’s
heavy torpedoes had already turned into the
vee
of
Dragon
’s foamed wake, and had begun to
snake back and forth within it.
 
Dragon
increased speed and started a
turn.
 
As she did so, the towed float
slowed.
 
This allowed one of the
torpedoes to catch up.
 
The weapon armed
its 700-pound warhead.
 
Just a few more
feet of travel and the torpedo exploded.
 
A geyser of white water rose from the ocean, and the explosion’s pressure
wave smacked the ship on the ass.
 
The
second torpedo continued its advance.

The
weapon nibbled at the edge of
Dragon
’s
wake, and no longer swimming side-to-side, accelerated.
 
In the Op Room, the technician heard the
insect-like buzz of its high-speed propellers drawing nearer.
 
He informed the director leaning over his
station.
 
The director rang the bridge.

“Increase
to flank.
 
Hard right rudder,” Fryatt
ordered.

Dragon
’s
bow rose as she hastened and leaned hard in the turn.
 
Fryatt watched as the bow swung around and
pointed back at the ship’s wake.

“Meet
her,” the captain ordered.

“Very
well,” answered the conning officer as he used opposite rudder angle to stop
the turn.

“And,
rudder amidships.”

The
ship cut across the wake’s consecutive waves and frothy center, slicing through
without so much as a bounce.
 
As soon as
Dragon
had cut through the calm lather,
Fryatt yapped another command: “Hard left rudder.”

The
bow swung again, and the hull leaned hard.
 
Sailors grabbed hold of bulkheads and consoles to steady their
stance.
 
With a smacking, the ship
crossed the wake again and finished the last loop of a large figure-eight she
had drawn upon the sea.
 
The torpedo had
done its best to turn with the wake.
 
It
pierced the outer wave created during the ship’s last turn and its nose sensor
scanned the area ahead, finding nothing but open, featureless ocean.
 
It would run until its kerosene and hydrogen
peroxide were expended.
 
As
Dragon
became a fleeting black shape on
the star-lit horizon, the torpedo sank into the abyss.

Fryatt
leaned toward Williams.

“How’s
the Merlin’s fuel state?”

“At
least another hour.”

“Load
out?”

“One
Stingray and two Mark-11s.”

“Excellent.
 
Get me a sonar fix on this bastard.”

“With
pleasure, sir,” Williams responded and powered up
Dragon
’s active sonar.

8: CALOR

“
Death makes men precious and pathetic
.
 
They are moving because of their phantom
condition; every act they execute may be their last; there is not a face that
is not on the verge of dissolving like a face in a dream
.”—Jorge Luis
Borges

W
H
OMP.

The
lash of sonar meant one thing: the British destroyer was alive and well.

“Here
we go,” Ledesma muttered.

WHOMP.

San Luis II
shivered.
 
Matias felt her tremor as he
leaned against a pipe.
 
He wondered if it
was he or the boat that was full of fear.
 
He let go of the pipe, felt the vibration again through his rubber-soled
shoes, and looked at his trembling hand.
 
It’s both of us
.

WHOMP.

“Splash,”
the sonarman stated.
 
“High-pitched
screws.
 
Torpedo in the water.
 
It just went active.”

“
Mierda
,” Matias muttered to himself.
 
One submariner made the sign of the cross as
high-pitched pings reverberated through the water.
 
The sonarman squeezed his headphones tight
against his ears, and added: “High rpm turbine.”

“Hotel
1.
 
The British helicopter,” Ledesma breathed
contemptuously.

Matias
grunted acknowledgment, and rattled off: “Planes up five degrees.
 
Make your depth 250 meters, increase speed to
five knots.
 
Ready noisemaker.”
 
The captain’s voice had become gravelly, betraying
his fatigue.
 
Ledesma wondered about the
last time the captain had slept, or for that matter, eaten.
 
Ledesma rubbed his own growling belly.
 
He thought about a steak or a nice piece of
fish.
 
When he remembered the canned and
frozen slop that came out of
Numero
Dos
’
galley, Ledesma refocused.

“Five
knots.
 
Coming up on two-five-zero,” he
announced to the Control Center.

Matias
nodded.
 
“Planes to zero.”
  
San
Luis II
leveled again.
 
The
submarine’s casing creaked with the change in pressure.
 
“Power?”

Seeking
an answer for his captain, Ledesma went to the electricians mate.
 
The electricians mate read his station’s
gauges.
 
He then looked at Ledesma,
shrugged, and frowned.
 
Ledesma checked
the battery read-out for himself, sighed, and returned to the captain.

“Sir,
batteries are down to nine percent.”
 
Ledesma
paused and exhaled with worry.
 
“We are
going to have to--”

Raton
heard the protests from the hull.
 
He
thought he even saw the secondary inner hull flex for a moment.
 
He, too, lacked sleep and food, and began to
doubt his own senses.
 
Raton had nursed
the batteries as best he could; shifting leads from terminals, whiffing ozone
as they sparked, and topping-off cells with distilled water.
 
Despite such efforts, the available charge
was finite and fleeting.
 
Like life
.
 
The boat answered his thoughts with a
sickening groan.

San Luis II
had been pushed to her limits.
 
The
submarine’s steel had been compacted, flexed and stretched.
 
Her energy was nearly expended.
 
Her oxygen generators and carbon dioxide
scrubbers were near empty.
 
Raton’s
thoughts became clouded and his vision, wavy.

Raton
knew the poisons emitted by machinery and the crew’s breaths were generally
heavier than most gases, and tended to settle within his part of the boat.
 
Raton was, in effect,
San Luis II
’s canary in a coal mine, and the troubles he began to
experience confirmed that they had all been underwater for too long.
 
Raton’s sled had a growler that could plug in
at multiple points along the battery compartment’s track.
 
He considered using it.

Raton
would beg whomever answered to come to their senses and get to the surface for
air, for the opportunity to run the diesels and feed his batteries.
 
His hand trembled as he felt the growler’s
box.
 
He tugged at its coiled umbilical,
fondled its plug, and considered the words he would have for the idiots
‘upstairs.’
 
Then he remembered his
training and his reverence for
Capitán
Matias
and
Teniente
de
Fragata
Ledesma
; his superiors.
 
Are they superior
? Raton wondered, and
then shook his head to clear it.
 
He
realized his heart was racing.
 
His
studies and training flashed into his mind:

Hypercapnia,
from the Greek
hyper
, for ‘above,’ and
kapnos
,
meaning ‘smoke.’
 
The condition is one of
abnormally elevated carbon dioxide—a gaseous product of the body's metabolism
normally expelled via the blood and through the lungs.
 
Raton giggled, and said: “It’s true.
 
It’s true.”
 
A floating head appeared before him.
 
If Raton could have recognized its features, he would know the face
belonged to a boy who had died during
San
Luis II
’s shakedown cruise.
 
The face
smiled and said: “Yes, it is true.”
 
Then
its smile faded and the face became grim and drained of color.
 
Its dark eyes became sad.
 
Raton’s smile faded, too.
 
Then he yelled in horror.

Raton
shimmied along to a locker door.
 
He
fumbled at its latch and got the locker open.
 
Inside was a diving lung; a bag and mouthpiece the
Rusos
had designed to filter bad
air.
 
Raton bit down on the foul tasting
bit, slipped the piece on his nose to pinch his nostrils shut, and sucked a
lungful of rubber-tasting air.
 
A few
filtered breaths later, his head began to clear.
 
He moved along to the growler.

Raton
lifted the oversized telephone’s connection wire, found the plug at its end,
aimed for the receptacle labeled ‘Control Center,’ plugged it in, and cranked
the growler’s ringer.

“¿
Si
?”
came over the receiver.
 
Raton sobered himself, as though he were
dismissing the effects of a night of drinking
Fernet
and Coca-Colas.

“
Señor
,” Raton said, unsure of with whom he
spoke.
 
“
Dióxido
de
carbono
…”

Ledesma
slammed the Control Room growler down.
 
He
felt his own balance momentarily waver as he moved to check the environment
control panel.
 
The panel’s gauges
confirmed Raton’s report.

“Captain,
scrubber efficiency reduced.
 
Carbon
dioxide levels are on the rise,” Ledesma stated to the captain, who displayed a
blank and distant look.
 
Ledesma looked
around and saw everyone was breathing harder.
 
He turned back to the captain, gasped, and insisted: “Sir…”

Matias
shook his head and blinked hard and fast.

“Yes,
Santiago…”

“Captain,
we have to get to periscope depth.
 
We
have to vent the boat.”

Everyone
within earshot turned away from their Control Center station panels and looked
at Ledesma.
 
They all knew that the
surface was too dangerous with a destroyer and a helicopter around.
 
Coming shallow to extend the snorkel would be
tantamount to suicide.
 
Captain Matias
clenched his fist and struck it against steel.
 
To have a nuclear boat
, he
wished silently.
 
To run silent and run deep
;
to be free of the surface and air
.
 
In that moment, Captain Matias understood why his son had died, why
Buenos Aires had pushed the boundaries of its industrial and scientific
capabilities to acquire such a capability.
 
As certain as he was about his tactics and boat, the inherent limitation
of the diesel-electric submarine were fatal if a tin can like this British
guided-missile destroyer persisted in its pursuit.
 
Captain Matias collected himself, cleared his
throat, and spoke out:

“
Es un día de
lealtad
.”

“¡
Sí
,
mi
capitán
!” came back from the men in yelled
unison.
 
For it was a day of loyalty, and
they would follow their captain, fight their boat, and honor their country, no
matter the cost.

“Very
well…” Captain Matias strolled the Control Center.
 
He looked at each submariner at their
station, patted the shoulder of some, and then ordered: “Diving lungs for
all.
 
Those off duty to their bunks.

“Aye,
sir,” came back, and the men reached into station lockers to pull out and don
their masks.
 
Though Matias stretched his
over his head, he left it dangling from his neck.

“Launch
noisemaker.
 
Planes up 20 degrees.
 
Make your depth 100 meters.
 
Ready tubes one through six for firing,”
Matias continued.

With
a devious child-like grin, Ledesma repeated his captain’s orders.
 
With a subtle swish, a noisemaker was
released to the water.
 
Most would have
paid the sound little mind, though some aboard discerned and recognized the small
cylinder’s din.
 
Regardless, they all
hoped the enemy torpedo would be lured away.
 
San Luis II
rose in the water
column and accelerated, leaving the noisemaker between her last position and
the British helicopter-launched weapon.

Matias’
eyes rolled in his head.
 
He was on the
verge of passing out, he realized.
 
He
pawed at his mask, placed it over his nose and mouth, and sucked a few breaths
through its round filter element.
 
Lowering the mask again, he exhaled and asked: “Sonar, position on Delta
1?”

“
Señor
, I have Delta 1 at three-three-one; bearing:
one-three-two.
 
Speed…” the sonarman
paused to confirm his count of blade and shaft turns, “is 11 knots.”

“Weapons:
firing point procedures, Delta 1.
 
Snapshot, tubes one through four.
 
Reload with ASMs.”

Men
scurried to make the captain’s orders happen.
 
They locked the enemy’s position into fire control, programmed the heavy
wake-homing torpedoes with those numbers, and prepared four
Klub
anti-ship missiles for loading.
 
San Luis II
angled up, making these
tasks an urgent uphill coordinated dance.
 
The submarine shuddered, and with a continuous whoosh, four torpedoes
were loosed to the water.

“Santiago,
bring us in as close as you can.
 
Slam
Klubs
and ‘53s down that
mal
parido
’s
throat,” Matias cursed.
 
“Then, surface
the boat.”

Ledesma
hesitated.
 
His usual reiteration of
orders—a seeming echo of the captain’s voice—was not immediately
forthcoming.
 
Then, he finally repeated
what had been said.
 
When he did, the
captain added:

“Prepare
conning tower team for SAM deployment.”

Ledesma
stood erect and acknowledged right away: “Aye, sir.”

Despite
the lack of need to salute aboard ship, Ledesma snapped one anyway.
 
The gesture was interrupted by a
high-frequency pinging.

“Dipping
sonar at zero-nine-eight.”

WHOMP,
came the low frequency slap of
Dragon
’s
bow sonar.

“Active
sonar,”
San Luis II
’s sonarman reported the obvious.
 
Then he scrutinized the other sounds in the
water and reported: “Enemy torpedo approaching the noisemaker.”
 
The sonarman fell silent and listened hard,
closing his eyes to do so.
 
A moment
later he added: “Torpedo has reached noisemaker.”
 
The sonarman rocked back and forth, as though
the motion would improve his hearing and concentration.
 
He amended his report by saying: “Torpedo has
passed noisemaker.
 
No detonation.
 
Torpedo continues to search at two-four-two;
depth: 285 meters.”