Attack of the Seawolf

“Set.” Feyley.

Pacino was about to call shoot when sonar called over his headset:

“Conn, Sonar, we’ve got steam turbine transients and screw noises from bearing three four five, correlates to Friendly One. The Tampa’s underway!”

“Check fire!” Pacino half-shouted, realizing that the two torpedoes,

if they missed the frigate on the first attempt, would surely detect the hull of the Tampa and put her on the bottom. The screws of the frigate got louder, the sound of the violent pumping noise now blaring through the space, forcing Pacino to shout to be heard.

“Diving Officer, flood depth control at full-open and keep flooding till we bottom out,” Pacino ordered. If the frigate didn’t turn it would run right on top of them, easily shear off the sail or rip open the pressure hull. The deck sank under Pacino’s feet, his stomach rising as if he were on an elevator in a skyscraper, the ship plunging to the bottom of the deep channel.

The screw of the frigate passed overhead, its loud floosh rising to a crescendo from directly overhead, then fading away again astern. The deck below thumped as the ship’s keel hit the bottom of the channel.

“Ship’s on the bottom. Captain,” the diving officer reported.

“That bitch ran right on top of us. Skipper,” Keebes said, looking down at the Pos Two display.

“Let’s hope he’s not going to drop depth charges this way.”

“Conn, Sonar, Target Four is turning around and heading back for the P.L.A piers at max speed.”

“Probably heading back for the Tampa,” Keebes said.

The screw of the frigate passed overhead again, just as loud and insistent as the first time.

“Dive, blow depth control and get us back up, fast, depth seven nine,” Pacino commanded.

“Observation number-two scope, target four.”

The scope was up before the Diving Officer was able to get the ship back to periscope depth. Pacino waited, his lens trained upward, watching the lights from the pier fires reflecting off the gentle waves above, cursing the ship’s inertia. But now, though he felt the same impatience, he felt the steely sensation of control. He was back in command, once again able to influence the outcome of this fight. And the Tampa was underway.

His exhilaration plunged when chief sonarman Jeb reported over the headset the sound of helicopters hovering at the bearing to the Tampa.

USS TAMPA

Buffalo Sauer crouched outside the door to the wardroom in the forward compartment middle level, straining to hear the radio report from Buckethead Williams, who had slipped through a passageway to the second door to the wardroom. As Sauer set up with Williams, he was nearly thrown to the deck by the lurch of the ship as it accelerated backward. Buffalo glanced at his watch — Baron and the ship’s XO had gotten the vessel underway right on time, he thought.

When Buckethead reported that he was ready, Buffalo called out the order to storm the room and then kicked in the locked door. Actually the door did not open fully but stopped halfway. And even as Buffalo saw the reason for the door stopping he realized that he was in for another scene like he’d just survived from the crew’s mess. The body of a man on the floor had kept the door from opening all the way. The man leaned against a sideboard, legs thrown out in front of him, eyes sunk deep in his sockets, face terribly pale.

Buffalo launched himself into the room, trying to avoid stepping on the man’s legs. Once he was inside the stench hit him, as bad as it had been in the crew’s mess. He had a brief impression of the room around him, the central feature being a large table used for the officers’ meals and meetings. On top of the table were two bodies, the skin of their faces green with decay, the foreheads open and raw from bullet wounds. Both men looked vaguely young, although the bloating of the corpses hid their ages, as did the facial wounds. They were both wearing the silver dual bar insignia of lieutenants. The thought occurred to Buffalo that the men in the room were meant to see the butchered, decaying corpses of their fellow officers, perhaps as a reminder not to do what they had done. Perhaps the dead lieutenants had tried to escape or defy the guards.

Seated around the table were the ship’s officers, eight of them. The scene was eerily grotesque, as if the Chinese captors had insisted that the officers sit about the table with the dead bodies lying out on it like some sort of nightmare meal. Each man’s chair was drawn up to the table, and the men on the far side of the room all had their heads on the table. The others, the ones with their backs to the doors, were sitting straight up, as if at attention. Whether that was by order of the guards or because of revulsion at the dead bodies, Buffalo had no clue. For a moment Buffalo was reminded of plebe year at the Academy, the harassed plebes sitting around their tables at attention, forbidden to look at their plates, their eyes locked into the distance by order of the first-class midshipmen.