Terminal Run

Captain Lien Hua turned on his side and snuggled into his pillow, the sounds of the air handlers blowing cool air through the ship comforting, as always. He opened his eyes for a moment, but the room was dark. He heard muffled voices, outside in the passageway, perhaps. He would instruct Leader Zhou Ping to make sure the crew stayed away from his stateroom. He yawned and prepared to go back to sleep, but realized there was something wrong. He sat up in the bed with a panic rising in his throat, suddenly realizing that the whispering voices were not speaking Mandarin or Cantonese, but some other language. He put his hand out where his sea cabin’s foldout desk should be, but it was not there. Neither was the phone console, nor the ship-control display. He swiveled to put his feet on the deck, but his mattress was already on the floor, a cold tiling beneath his bare feet.

“What’s going on?” he shouted, running until he hit a heavy curtain, then pulling it aside. He was in a red-lit passageway outside an open curtained area. There were two men standing there, wearing dark coveralls, much like what he was wearing, except they had an enemy symbol on their sleeves — a patch with the image of the flag of the United States. Lien stood and stared, then looked up at the cables and ducts in the overhead. This could easily be the Nung Yahtsu, but things were backward, the bulkheads were too dark, and the deck plate covering was a tile, not rubber with antiskid bumps. He was on a ship, perhaps a submarine, but it was not Chinese. He looked slowly at the Americans, then raised his hands in surrender.

They motioned him to follow them down the passageway to a steep ship’s ladder. He walked behind one American and in front of the other, down the red lantern-lit companionway to a door marked with English words. One of the crewmen knocked, and he was led into a small stateroom, the three meter-square space resembling his sea cabin. A slight man stood up from his small table, a bigger man with him. They both spoke their odd-sounding language, but Lien shook his head, wondering why they didn’t just shoot him right then. The slight man motioned him to sit, and when he did, Lien began to shiver, perhaps from the cold of the room, or perhaps from his fear. The man wrapped a wool blanket around his shoulders and spoke into a telephone, and soon a cook arrived with a pot of tea. Lien refused to drink it. A foreign-smelling plate of food was placed in front of him, and despite his ferocious hunger, he ignored it.

The larger man pulled out a large flexible flat panel display, and after working with it, a map of China came up on it. He pointed to Beijing. Lien looked up — was he being interrogated? He shook his head, and the man sat down.

Not that it mattered. They would execute him soon anyway.

“Captain Pacino, ship is submerged at one five zero feet with a satisfactory one-third trim,” Lieutenant Vickerson reported. “Sounding is five six five fathoms.”

Pacino stood on the conn in the rigged-for-red control room of the Devilfish, thinking the last time he had been here, the ship was returning from the East China Sea after the last tussle with the Reds. He concentrated on the moment and looked at the female officer.

“Very well. Increase speed to standard and take her to four hundred feet, flat angle.”

Vickerson stared at him. “Depth limit is one five zero feet, Captain. The shipyard said the welds weren’t completed. We’ll flood before we get to two hundred.”

The XO walked to the conn from the navigation station aft, his face a fearful mask in the eerie red lights of the overheads. “Sir, Vickerson is right.”

Pacino nodded. “I know. Take her down, OOD. Flat angle.”

“Aye, sir,” she said, and made the orders.

Pacino picked up the 1MC microphone, his voice booming throughout the ship. “Attention, all hands,” he said. “This is the captain. As you all know, we have been sent on an urgent mission to sink the Snare, which has gone seriously out of control and has fired upon one of our own ships. The Piranha is on the bottom and the Snare has run out of weapons range of the Hammerhead. She is on her way east to fire weapons at American targets, but she will never make it to the range circle of her missiles, not if the Devilfish has anything to say about it. However, in order for us to fight the ship in this battle, we must have all combat capabilities. I am ordering the torpedo tubes prepared and I will be modifying the Tigershark torpedoes so that we may engage the Snare. I am also ordering the ship be taken to test depth so we can see if we’ll flood or stay intact, because when we take on the Snare we will be fighting her from the deep, not from periscope depth talking to an Air Force bomber. Therefore, because I am betting that the shipyard has done better work than they are willing to take credit for, Devilfish is now proceeding deep. All hands, rig ship for deep submergence. Carry on.”