Piranha: Firing Point

His crew — he had to find anyone alive and get them out the hatch. He pulled the helmsman out of his seat, but the lad slumped to the deck, unconscious. Patton could have reached into the overhead to get him an air mask, but he knew that would take precious seconds that he didn’t have. Frantically he tried to find anyone moving. The officer of the deck lay sprawled on the conn, his forehead cracked open, blood spurting out of a neck wound. Patton moved to the attack center, where he found young Karl Horburg’s head smashed into the glass of the display, his forehead buried in the television tube. By now the flames were roaring in the overhead above them, and Patton had to retreat. He tried to shout through the mask, but there was no one to hear him.

The heat of the space was growing unbearable. Flames were blazing overhead, scorching his hair. Patton disconnected his air hose, ran forward to the sonar space, found another air manifold, and plugged in. Thank God, Demeers was still alive, lying on the deck.

There was no time to rig an air mask. Patton needed to get up into the bridge trunk, where twenty feet above the upper hatch led to fresh air, where there was no fire, no smoke, no chemicals. Patton was reaching for Demeers, struggling against the constraining hose, when the next explosion came. Patton was hurled into the sonar consoles, and the deck listed, a tilt barely perceptible at first, then more and more noticeable. They were tilting aft, and there could be only one possible reason.

The stern was sinking.

The ship must be flooding from the engine room. In a burst of anger and frustration, with every ounce of strength he had left, he threw off the mask, grabbed Demeers’ shoulders, and hauled him up. Groggily the sonar chief lurched to his feet.

“Go!” Patton screamed, shoving Demeers toward the black opening of the bridge tunnel, illuminated only by the flames from the burning hell of the control room.

The next explosion blew glass and plastic at the two of them. Flames bloomed from control into the sonar room.

Patton could feel his uniform coveralls catch fire, but he kept going, shoving Demeers — now awake, panicking— up the tunnel. The flames whooshed up the hatchway, then up Patton’s legs. Frantically he unlatched the hatch and pushed hard to close it. As it clicked, the ring of flames was choked off.

“Go on, up!” he yelled at Demeers, who slowly started ascending the ladder. Patton stopped to pat out the names on his coveralls, which were flame-retardant but had finally given into the heat and the fire. It took some time before the flames went out, leaving Patton’s hands red and stinging. He looked up, the tilting tunnel black. He reached for the battle lantern and hit the switch. The light of it shone through the smoke, not as thick here. He put the handle of it in his teeth, and with his good arm he hauled himself up the ladder as fast as he could. Demeers had reached the upper hatch.

“Open it! Can you open it?”

Demeers had managed to get the hatch open, but it wasn’t enough. The heavy clamshells above the bridge cockpit that faired in the sail, making it hydrodynamic, would need to be pulled down. While Demeers fought to open the clamshells, Patton pulled a package out of a cubbyhole, a sort of backpack. Suddenly the bright light of day shone down into the slanting tunnel, just for a second, before water started rushing in.

“We’re sinking!” Demeers shouted.

“Get out!” Patton ordered.

“Come on!” Demeers’ voice was faint in the roar of water hitting Patton in the face, washing over his ears.

Its coldness was shocking after the broiling temperatures in the dying submarine.

“Get out — take the survival pack,” Patton yelled. “Go on!” The flowing water was blasting into his nostrils and mouth and ears, like having a fire hose full force in the face. He felt himself start to lose his grip. This was it.

He had watched his ship smashed with a torpedo or depth charge, and within seconds she was flooding and burning. He had tried to get her to the surface, where he could save his men, but it was not to be. Now his best friend was about to die in a futile effort to save him, and he couldn’t allow that.

“Get out!” he screamed one last time.

What happened next was nothing short of a miracle.

Byron Demeers grabbed Patton’s coveralls with one hand, the sail handhold with the other, and in one heaving motion rocketed Patton out of the sinking submarine free of the hatch, completely flooded with water. The light of day came back — waves were washing over his head, and he was spitting and retching, the deep convultions gripping into his stomach, the water he’d swallowed spurting out of him. Finally Byron’s bald head popped out of the water, and Patton could breathe again. Demeers shook his head, blinked, and said! “Look.” In his hand was the survival pack.