Terminal Run

“So much for that theory, XO,” Deahl said. Andrew Deahl, a thirty-eight-year-old underweight marathon runner, was new to command, having taken over the Essex a mere two months ago from a captain beloved by the crew, and so far command had been nothing like he’d imagined. The transition from being second-in-command to captain was a wide gulf to cross, and there were moments when he suffered severe self-doubts. The orders to the war in the East China Sea had complicated things, but at least Deahl had learned to lean on his executive officer, though it was hard for a New Yorker like Deahl to trust the smooth Southerner that XO Harlan Simoneaux was.

“Captain,” the XO said in a voice that seemed too loud, “the men in the sail have rifles. They’re shooting at something!”

“What the hell?” Deahl mumbled.

“Oh, shit, Captain. This is where Leopard went down! They’re survivors!”

“Snapshot tube one, Target One!” Deahl shouted. “Disable anti-self-homing, disable anti circular run, immediate enable,

surface impact mode, high-speed active search, direct contact mode!”

The outer door to tube one was already open. The Mark 58 Alert/Acute had been powered up for the last thirty minutes, and the solution to the target was locked in, the weapon only waiting for word to shoot. It took a second for the weapons officer to respond to the radical settings required to get a Mark 58 to detonate on such a close target, the safety interlocks required to be removed to allow the weapon to work.

“Set!” the XO finally said.

“Stand by,” the weapons officer called, his console ready to fire.

“Shoot on generated bearing!”

“Fire!” the weapons officer called, and the deck trembled and Deahl’s ears slammed from the torpedo launch.

“Sir, tube one fired electrically,” the weapons officer said.

“Conn, Sonar, own ship’s unit, normal launch.”

The words were barely out of the sonar supervisor’s mouth before the view out the Type 23 went white, then blinked out. Deahl blinked, but the interior of the helmet was dark. Something had happened to the Type 23 mast, he thought. It was then that the sound of the explosion came roaring into the hull, and the ship trembled violently as if struck by a huge sledgehammer.

“Conn, Sonar, explosion from bearing to Target One.”

“Well, obviously,” Simoneaux said sarcastically.

“Raising number one scope,” Captain Deahl said, selecting his thigh controller to the starboard periscope. The second Type 23 rose out of the sail and penetrated the waves, and when it did, all Deahl saw was a large orange and black mushroom cloud and debris falling from the heavens in large metal chunks, the flotsam field growing with each second.

“Target One is gone,” Deahl said with a flat voice. He just realized he may have made a grave error, because if there had been floating survivors within two hundred feet of the hull of the Julang, they were survivors no more.

“Officer of the Deck, vertical surface the ship!”

“Captain, bodies in the water, thirty degrees off the port bow!”

Commander Deahl guided the Essex to the position the OOD had pointed out and ordered all stop.

“Get the divers in the water,” Deahl commanded.

Over the next two hours they combed the waters of the Julang sinking site, harvesting thirty-five bodies, a dozen of them dead, the remainder unconscious. Among the living were five Chinese, two of them officers if Deahl had interpreted the insignia on their uniforms correctly. The dead were wrapped in trash bags and brought to the frozen stores room. The living were brought to the crew’s mess, Deahl ordering the tables unbolted from the deck to create more space for them, the crew’s mattresses spread out on the floor. The medic, a senior chief petty officer on his last sea tour, attended to the wounded. Captain Deahl watched from a corner of the room until the medic came up to him, the older man wiping sweat off his forehead.

“What’s the word. Chief?”

“They’re all lucky, sir. About a million cuts and lacerations and broken bones between them, and a few gunshot wounds. The Leopard XO, Phillips, is in good shape except for a bullet through the upper arm. Captain Dixon took two rounds in the shoulder and one in the chest, and he had internal bleeding, but he’s stable.”

“A round in the chest and he’s still alive?” Deahl asked.

“He had a souvenir in his chest pocket, something heavy and made of gold — a locket or a watch or something. It’s a dented lump curled around a mushroomed AK-80 round now, but it saved his life. That bullet would have gone straight through his heart.”

“Lucky guy,” Deahl muttered. “What about the Chinese?”

“They’ll fare the best, Skipper. They were on the Julang sail, so the explosion threw them clear. I think one of them is the captain.”

“Bring me to him.”