“Stoke, listen. We’re out of options. We’re forced to make a dash inside the range of their big guns. It’s going to get hot in a hurry. Time to launch our last JDAM and pray. You and Harry put your trigger fingers in your pockets and wait for my signal. When you get it, give ’em hell. You saw the photos of the Alvand. Concentrate on her primary weapons fore and aft. Got it?”
“Got it. Good shooting with that last fish, boss.”
“Better be. Over.”
“Ain’t over till it’s over,” Brock piped up, earning a look from Stokely. He hoped for Harry’s sake that Hawke hadn’t heard that dumb-ass remark.
But Alex Hawke was in the zone. Total focus. Total determination to secure victory, whatever it took. These were the moments he lived for, what he’d been born to do.
“All ahead full! Right full rudder!” Hawke said. His voice had assumed a grim finality, the flat quality of emotionless decision. You fight or you don’t fight. You go in with the bow of your ship pointed directly at your enemy and you go well inside his range. Keeping your bow on him gives his radar and sonar a whole lot less to look at, but if something goes wrong and you have to get the hell out of there, you’ve got to change course. Then you give him your broadside, setting yourself up for a devastating counterattack on his part. That’s why starting in is the crucial decision.
“Rudder is right full, sir, coming to course zero-two-zero!”
“Maintain course and speed.”
The big yacht surged ahead, smashing through the oncoming waves as the twin gas turbines spooled up and delivered power to the four enormous bronze screws churning beneath the stern. She had steadied on a course calculated to take her right into the teeth of the Vosper MK5’s guns. It was weird traveling at this speed on something so enormous but it was a good weird, Stoke thought. The enemy wouldn’t have as much time to react to a sudden incursion into their space. They were closing the distance to the destroyer escort rapidly.
“Helm, Sonar. Target is on course bearing three-one-zero, speed twelve.”
“Range two thousand yards, for’ard gun platform, commence firing now,” Stoke heard Laddie say.
“Forward guns, commence firing, aye,” he replied.
“Shit,” Harry said, opening fire.
“What?”
“We’re it. Our two puny 30s against a goddam battlewagon like that? We’re dicked, pal.”
“Good attitude. I like that. Leadership in a crisis.”
“Honesty in a crisis.”
“Shut up and shoot.”
“I can talk and shoot at the same time.”
“Incoming!” Stoke said as a huge shell whistled high overhead and splashed harmlessly some five hundred yards aft of Blackhawke. And then a second sent a geyser of water a hundred feet in the air fifty meters from their starboard quarter. The Iranian gunners behind the long-range cannons were bracketing them, dialing them in. Geysers were erupting all around them now, and small-arms fire was pinging off their armored turrets and the superstructure behind them.
Launch the damn JDAM, Stoke thought to himself, and let’s get the hell out of here before we get — an enemy shell struck Blackhawke ’s foredeck barely twenty feet behind them. Boom, a big hole with fire coming out of it. The damage control guys were on it in an instant. It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it was the first real wound they’d suffered and he realized that, for all its high-tech armor, Blackhawke was not invulnerable. Stoke concentrated his fire on the winking muzzles of the enemy’s big guns, hoping to get lucky.
“What the hell are you doing now?” Stoke said, looking at Harry.
“Taking off this fucking plastic sport coat. I’m burning up in this thing.”
“You can’t take your body armor off up here, man. We’re almost totally exposed.”
“Who says I can’t take it off? I got along without it before they invented it and I can get along without it now.”
“On top of everything else, he’s suicidal. Great comrade in arms I’ve got.”
“Mind your own business, okay? How about that for a change?”
Five minutes later Harry Brock spun around like he’d been kicked by a horse. He went down and Stoke saw the blood pumping from his right thigh. Stoke whipped off the scarf around his neck and did a quick tourniquet above the gunshot wound. He thumbed his radio.
“Man down. I need a medical corpsman on the bow right this second.”
“Aye-aye, sir. On his way.”
“Great, Harry. Really, really good. You spend the rest of this fight lying in bed down in sick bay and leave me alone up here by myself.”
“Gimme a fuckin’ break,” Brock said through gritted teeth. “You think I did this on purpose? Goddamn round took half my leg off. You can see the damn bone! The femur. It hurts like a bitch.”
“Here comes the corpsman. Until then, take two aspirin and call me in the morning, asshole.”
H awke grabbed the radio.
“Fire Control, Helm. Target within JDAM range?”
“Close. Give me another thousand meters and I’d feel better. Good news is they’re a big target and they can’t turn their bow to us and keep up this fire. Okay, we’ve got him cold now, skipper. I’ve got a shot… now! ”
“Fire torpedo,” Hawke said.
“Fire two, aye!” the FCO said.
“Shit!” the FCO shouted, moments later.
“Talk to me,” Hawke said.
“Number two did not eject! We got a fish running hot in the tube! Damn thing is screaming like a banshee.”
Hawke looked at Laddie. This was bad. The torpedo should have been blasted out of the torpedo tube by the high-power ejection system. Instead, it was somehow stuck and the forward torpedomen could hear it running in the tube. A critical situation because the fish would be armed within a matter of seconds and then almost anything could set it off. In addition, the overspeeding motor could conceivably break up under the strain and vibration. That alone might be sufficient to cause an explosion that would blow the bow off.
“FCO, try again. Manual. Use full ejection pressure.”
Hawke felt the seconds pass.
“Helm, FCO, fish did not eject, repeat, did not eject. System check indicates an outer tube door malfunction.”
“Can you disarm?”
“Hell, no… I mean, no sir. We’re trying to get the door to… uh, okay… this is definitely not an electronic malfunction. It’s mechanical. Weapon’s hot and the damn door is jammed. Tube’s flooded. I can hear the screw whining from here. Pressure inside that tube now causing enormous strain. So, this is time critical, sir.”
“How much time?”
“I’ve never had one jam before so I don’t really know how long we’ve-”
“So how do we unjam it?”
“Not easily. We’ll need to stop the ship and put a diver down. Pry it open from the outside. That’s the only way.”
“We stop this damn boat here in the kill zone and we’re all bloody dead.”
“It’s the only way, sir… live torpedo… going critical …”
“Stoke,” Hawke said, interrupting, “you hearing all this?”
“Loud and clear. I’m ready to go down now. Tell the chief bosun to get his ass up here with a mask, fins, and a crowbar so I can pry the damn thing open.”
“I love you, Stoke. Hard aport, engines full stop. Starboard gun crews, fire as enemy hoves into range. Laddie, smoke the boat. Put me in fog so thick they’ll think we vanished.”
The skipper pressed a large heavy button mounted on the bulkhead beside him. With the push of that button, Blackhawke discharged and completely disappeared inside a massive fog of man-made smoke.
S toke, wearing goggles, fins, and a lead-weighted belt, hit the water feet first, crowbar in hand. He swam down to the starboard tube near the keel and used two suction cups to clamp himself onto the hull, tether his belt
