Piranha: Firing Point

A bow wave washed up the bulbous shape of the cigar of the hull, splashing spray up into the bridge. Phillips grabbed binoculars and hoisted them to his eyes. There, dead ahead by five hundred yards, the massive Red Chinese seaplane was hauling floating survivors into the hatch. The men seemed in no hurry. Phillips aimed the M-20 at the men in the hatchway, the rifle set to full automatic.

“Hey, assholes!” he shouted, then let loose with a burst of automatic-rifle fire. The bullets slammed into the tail of the seaplane, into the water, the racket loud and furious. Whatney, joining him on the bridge, aimed his M-20 and let loose with a burst of automatic rounds.

Under the hail of bullets, the raft exploded and sank.

Bullets stitched curving lines in the aluminum airframe of the plane. The night was split by the roaring of a turbojet engine spinning its propeller. The plane was attempting to get away. Phillips shouted down the tunnel! “Ahead flank.” The second prop roared to life. Closer now, he aimed his rifle and hit the trigger, but the clip was empty.

“Clip,” he shouted in frustration. Then Whatney’s rifle clicked impotently. Phillips pulled his 9mm handgun out and fired it out over the water, but he was still too far away to guarantee a hit. “Dammit,” he cursed as the 9mm clicked in his hand, out of ammo. The two props came to full revolutions. The seaplane rolled on the sea, the wake behind it white and phosphorescent as the plane sailed off to the west.

“Let’s shoot it down,” Phillips said to Whatney. “Get down there and tell them to shoot a Mark 80 at that son of a bitch. He’s getting away.”

“Sir, it won’t fire from the surface. It’s a gas generator — come on, we’ve got to submerge so we can launch a missile.”

Phillips slid down the ladder, pausing only to shut the hatch. “Go on, get this tub submerged, quick!”

But as he emerged into the control room, the OOD shook his head from the periscope.

“We can’t get her down. Sir, even with max bow planes at flank, the buoyancy’s too high. All main ballast tank vents are open, and the SLAAM 80s will just explode in their tubes if we try to launch them dry. He’s gone, sir. I can’t even see him anymore.”

“Dammit,” Phillips cursed. “After all that mess those idiots caused, and now they get away scot free.”

Then he looked at Whatney — both men said the word at the same time: “Air strike.”

Phillips stepped to the radio panel, yelling into the overhead open microphone to the radiomen to bring up the convoy aircraft carrier. A couple F-22s could put the seaplane into the ground, Phillips thought.

Three minuteslater, four F-22s lifted off the deck of the USS Douglas MacArthur at full throttle, full afterburners, shrieking skyward and soaring over the East China Sea.

USS DEVILFISH, SSNX-1

The hands that grabbed him and pulled him out of the hatch were strong and many. Pacino had the impression that a single person with six arms had pulled him from the gaping maw of the submerged torpedo room.

He coughed, spitting up the water in his stomach, coughing up more that had reached his lungs, then vomiting, his body convulsing and heaving. His frame was folded up in a fetal position, his eyes shut, tears squeezing out. When the convulsions ended, his breath wheezed in and out of him frantically. Finally that too slowed. The dizziness ended, the room’s spinning coming to a slow stop, his eyes able to focus.

He took a deep breath, and it seemed to clear his mind. He was lying in a puddle on the deck of the middle level. His coveralls were soaked — what was left of them, the fire having eaten gaping holes. He opened his eyes, blinking against the glare from the overheads. His retinae had been burned by the flames in the torpedo room. A face floated above his own, the bone structure narrow, with pronounced cheekbones, deep eye sockets, heavy black eyebrows beneath the diesel-oil black hair.

Captain John Patton was staring down at him, frowning.

Now why, Pacino thought, would he be frowning?

“Colleen,” Pacino said, his voice a croak. “Where is… Colleen?”

“I’m right here, Michael,” her voice came, low and sweet. “Captain Patton sent one of his officers in here.

I was on the floor coughing my face off, but they got a mask on me and got me out of here.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” His arm rose to reach up to her, but her hands put his arm back. At her touch pains shot up his arm. Pacino looked over at Patton, then back at Colleen, both of them staring at him.

“What is it, John? Am I okay? Did I get burned?”

An image of himself — horribly burned and disfigured, his skin mottled and stretched too tightly across his skull, his hair gone. Did he look like that? Why were they staring?

“You look like the day I first met you. Admiral,” Colleen said, smiling.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You saved the ship, sir. We’d have gone down if not for you.” Patton was talking dazedly, as if in a trance.