Ted Bell - Phantom

“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 in position at the jammed door. He glanced at his dive watch and the red sweep second hand was rotating at warp speed. Less than five minutes.

Shit!

He tried to stick the sharp end of the iron bar into the side of the door opposite the hinge. Nothing there. The door was flush with the hull. He could see the thin outline of the edges but he couldn’t feel them with his fingertips… the fit was too tight. This is what you get when you give a builder a blank check: perfection. All he had was brute force.

He’d just have to jam the damn bar into the hairline crack using every ounce of his considerable strength. He figured he could get the thing open but he was worried about one thing: getting the hell out of the way of that damn JDAM when that door finally popped open… he slammed the crowbar’s thin edge right into the seam. Nothing. Once more. Twice more. On the third try, the bar went right through the hull.

Oh, yeah.

He torqued that bar hard toward the hinge and the little mother popped right open. He heard the whine of the engine and saw the thing coming barreling straight at him. The round red dome of the torpedo’s warhead was right in his face He was seconds away from instant death, either decapitation or vaporization if the warhead blew emerging from the tube. Instinctively, he ripped the cups off the hull, ducked, and the messenger of doom screamed out of the tube, missing the top of his head by maybe an inch.

Stoke clawed his way to the surface. He’d be damned if he’d miss this action. This was some serious Class-A wartime shit he was into now. This was living, baby, living large.

“Torpedo is away,” the FCO said, exultation and relief evident in his voice. “It is on track and I calculate thirty seconds to impact.”

All eyes on the bridge strained to see the dim grey outline of the Alvand through the thinning smoke.

“It’s going to be a hit,” Laddie said, grinning ear to ear. “A bloody, ruddy, beautiful damn hit!”

There was a loud WHAM when the warhead went off, almost instantaneously followed by a much louder and more prolonged WHRROOOOM, so close it sounded like one explosion.

“Must have hit the ammunition magazines,” Laddie said. “Looks like she was carrying an extraheavy load, probably intended for Taliban forces in Afghanistan. That’s why she’s riding so low in the water.”

“I’d like to see her riding a whole lot lower,” Hawke said. “Let’s go in and give those bastards a fast ride to the bottom. All ahead flank, maintain course.”

“Aye-aye, skipper,” Laddie said grinning. “All ahead flank, maintain bloody course.”

Blackhawke, now on a collision course with the Iranian destroyer, went storming in, under the enemy’s lee. She must have been a sight to the Iranian skipper as she advanced, her gun ports flung open, rolling her starboard cannon out as she came. The enemy vessel had been grievously wounded by the torpedo, but she was not out of the fight. Her big guns had not been damaged by the fire from the bow, and Hawke’s yacht was sustaining damage despite the high-tech Kevlar and ceramic armor. What the enemy skipper had not experienced was the unsettling scenario of ten Bushmaster 44s, each firing high-explosive shells at the rate of two hundred rounds per minute.

That was two thousand high-explosive projectiles being hurled at the enemy every minute. Withering fire was an understatement.

Alvand was now just over a thousand yards distant. You could feel the tension grow around the helm as the silhouette of the big destroyer hove into plain view out of the fog. The drumbeat of heavy rain from above. Below deck, scores of gunners, anxious sailors waiting for the signal to open fire.

“Closing fast,” someone muttered.

“Steady, lads, steady,” Hawke said quietly, as they drew near. There was no indecision in that voice now, only steely determination. He was taking the fight right to them, right down their bloody throats, his bow pointed dead amidships of the enemy. Laddie glanced over at him. Surely he wasn’t thinking of ramming?

He held his breath and waited for Hawke to signal a tack to port, bringing their starboard guns to bear once more on the enemy. The seconds turned into hours. Enemy rounds were shooting great columns of water into the air all around them. Some of them were striking home and the beautiful ship was sustaining significant damage. All they had to fight back with were the two bow cannons, doing what they could, but it was not enough. This was insane! But he knew Hawke’s reputation. The man had absolutely no qualms about ordering a tactic with even the slimmest margin of success if he felt it would ultimately serve the cause of victory.

“Sir, would you like the conn?” the skipper asked Hawke, seeing the closing distance dangerously diminishing and mopping perspiration from his brow. The silence at the helm was roaring inside his head.