emergency blow!”
The officer of the deck hit the valve that would immediately blast compressed air into every ballast tank. The captain felt the momentum change immediately, as the deck seemed to rise up under him. They lost the depth they’d just gained in seconds and rocketed up toward the surface of the water.
He could hear them now, the hard, grinding whine of the small torpedo propellers as they bore in on his boat. At least if they were hit now, perhaps they would have enough momentum to reach the surface and give the crew a chance to survive. And at that moment, that was all the captain cared about — not politics, not Taiwan, not the court-martial or certain disgrace and instant execution that would await him if he returned home. All he cared about was that his crew would have a chance to live.
The first torpedo encountered the noise makers and the mass of air bubbles simultaneously, and its tiny electronic brain froze in a moment of indecision. It ran nose-first into one of the noise makers, fatally jarring a critical component. It continued on, executing a wide turn to the right, until it ran out of fuel.
The second torpedo was luckier. It entered the water well to the north of the noise makers and cavitation and began its search circle. Almost immediately, it acquired the enticing sounds of the submarine heading away from it. It changed course, locked on, and bore in steadily.
Another round of noise makers failed to distract it. It simply brushed passed them, driving unwaveringly toward the delectable sounds of the submarine’s machinery.
As the submarine heard it approaching, bearing constant and range decreasing, her captain tried one last series of desperate measures. He threw the submarine into another tight turn — tight at least by submarine standards — hoping desperately to generate another knuckle in the water. But as he did so, the torpedo adjusted its course, and impacted the submarine just aft of the control room.
The immediate force of the explosion buckled the old hull and frigid seawater came pouring in. The submarine was at two hundred feet, still rising, and it took several moments for the incoming rush of water to overcome her negative buoyancy.
The water blasted through the compartment with the force of a sledgehammer, pulverizing three crewman against the bullhead. The watertight door between the passageway and a control room buckled almost immediately. The first few streams of water were ice pick-hard as they hammered into the control room, finding their targets in the electronics panel and immediately shorting out electrical power. The submarine plunged into blackness for a moment, and then battery-operated emergency red lights came on. In a way, it would have been better if they had not.
The captain shouted out orders, urging the crew toward the emergency egress hatch, but panic and confusion ruled. Most knew what to do for emergency escape, and they grabbed emergency escape breathing devices and tried to wade through the increasingly deep water to the escape trunk. Three made it up the ladder into the tower safely, but the rising flow of water caught the rest of them.
Ten seconds after the hatch buckled, it gave way completely. Seawater flooded through, a solid tidal wave immediately capturing those few who were still struggling for the ladder. The three men inside the escape hatch had time to pull it shut, gazing down on the stricken faces below them as they were swept away, and dog it shut. They donned their breathing devices, listening to the awful screaming beneath them. They could feel the submarine already starting to settle lower in the water, heading back down for the depths. They opened the valves full, to flood the compartment as quickly as possible.
The minutes ticked over, and each one knew despair. Finally, the trunk was flooded sufficiently to equalize the pressure and allow them to leave the dying submarine. By that time, the bottom of the hull was approaching four hundred feet in depth.
The three left, and the buoyancy of their breathing devices pulled them toward the surface. As they ascended, they exhaled continuously, trying desperately to keep the change in pressure from rupturing their lungs. The other denizens of the sea happening by stared at them in mild astonishment, then turned to follow them up.
Below them, the remaining crew members’ deaths were just as terrible, if far less graphic. The middle section of the submarine was immediately flooded and then the forward one-third. But the aft section retained, through some miracle of engineering, its watertight integrity. The submarine was bow down so hard that the forward bulkheads became the deck, and crippled and wounded men piled up there like rag dolls. Several were still able to move, and tried desperately to reach the aft egress trunk against the force of gravity, with no success. That did not keep them from trying, even as the submarine sank deeper into the water.
In the meantime, the bank of batteries broke free and ruptured. One smashed into a sailor, crushing him instantly. The others came in contact with water, generating chlorine gas, killing the men before they could drown.
The submarine headed for the bottom quickly now, and reached it three minutes later. Along the way, the remainder of the compartments flooded, forcing the deadly gas out into the sea.
Above the crushed hull that held their shipmates, the three men in the water waited in silent horror as they stared at the circling fins.
“They… they shot them out of the air!” the pilot shouted, his voice stark with horror. “I had two chutes, then the MiG — damn them all, kill them all!”
Coyote stared at the screen, horror on his face. Every aviator in the room could feel his blood turn to ice as well. To punch out, to take that risk, watch the aircraft that had been so much a part of you destroyed, looking frantically for your wingman, and praying he would survive the ejection and eventually be picked up… well, that was hard enough without facing the possibility of being strafed.
In quiet moments, they had all had discussions, had made those quiet decisions about what they would do. Most, when they would speak at all about it, agreed that the preferred course of action would be to strip off one’s oxygen mask and pass out from hypoxia on the way down. But there was always the chance that at lower altitude the oxygen might revive you, and what would that be like, to wake to the sensation of falling?
No, this action was completely indefensible. Coyote would make sure the Chinese paid for it, and paid dearly.
“I want them destroyed,” he said evenly, his voice a deadly threat. “Destroyed completely.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Just as they were approaching their fourth tanker rendezvous, a voice came over tactical. “Triple nickels, this is Big Eyes. Be advised that the tribal council meets tonight on CBS in minutes three. Do not acknowledge this transmission.” The jamming resumed as soon as the AWACS finished transmission.
“Break it,” Tombstone ordered. Every trace of weariness was instantly swept out of his body.
“Tribal council — air activity, on the ground. CBS is the airfield, and it started three minutes ago.”
“No launches then, yet.”
“No. That would be ‘You’re voted off the island.’ ”
“Well, then, no time like the present.” Tombstone boosted the aircraft into afterburner and felt the G-forces push him back against the seat. “The tanker should be waiting for us. We’ll just make the rendezvous a bit earlier. If we need more gas, we’ll just ask for it.” The rendezvous point had been preplanned using a given speed of advance, but there was some leeway in the schedule to allow for headwinds, tailwinds, and other vagaries of flight.
“Tombstone, that right engine — are you watching it?”
“Yes. Still well within normal parameters.” Even as he spoke, Tombstone knew what Jason’s point was. The outlet temperature on the right engine had been increasing steadily over the last two hours. Not alarmingly, and not
