Operation Malacca (13 page)

'Hey, Pete, ever consider leaving the Navy?' Keilty shouted over the wind and noise of the gas-turbine engine. 'Got a good spot on the team open for you.'

Rawingson grinned and pushed him forward. Keilty clambered up the ladder, assisted by two crewmen, who slung his pack aboard. Keilty edged around Charlie's tank and stowed his pack in a locker behind the copilot's seat, then checked Charlie over.

The dolphin's tank had been drained and he was resting on oil-filled cushions, looking completely unhappy and alien in the plastic suit and fitted packs. The metal pack containing thèlung' was strapped just behind his dorsal fin with the two jointed hoses leading to the hypodermic connector which Weston would insert before they left the copter. The two humans would hook each other up in the water.

Weston, snugging down the last safety belt, gave Keilty a thumbs-up signal and strapped himself down.

Keilty climbed forward into the copilot's seat.

'You chaps all set?' Atkins asked. Through the windshield and the wipers, Keilty could see most of the off-watch crew clustered around the helicopter pad on the rain- and spray-slick deck. The looming mass of the superstructure was straight ahead. They were angled off to the starboard side of the cruiser to give the pilot clear visibility past the bow so he could judge the height of the waves.

'We'll wait until the ruddy boat tops a crest. We have to be well on our way before she rises again,' Atkins informed Keilty.

Keilty nodded. Ahead, he could see one of the MTBs on station several hundred yards in front of the larger ship. She would attempt to pick them up if they went in, but there certainly would not be much chance of getting out of the chopper's cramped cabin.

The MTB disappeared as she dropped into a trough. Atkins ran the turbine up to full-rated power and rested his hand on the black pitch control. At the moment the blades carried no pitch, and consequently, very little lift. He signaled for the winches that held her down to free, and the cables fell away and snaked across the deck. The cruiser cleared a wave, hung poised for the barest of instants, then dropped.

Atkins twisted the pitch knob and yanked the column back. Keilty felt the helicopter lurch and heard the landing gear squeal as they touched down hard. Then they were in the air. Atkins face was grim as he hauled back, one hand tending the throttle. A gust of wind caught them and he slipped power, then full on again to miss an arm of the radar antenna.

The deck became a glistening trough in the wild waves, and then they were in the overcast fighting for altitude. The winds caught at the fragile copter, slamming it from side to side, shaking it like a terrier. Sweat stood out on Atkins' face and gleamed dully in the gray twilight as he fought for control with the elements. At two thousand feet, he leveled off and cut the power and pitch back. As the copter came around with the wind, the buffeting slackened off.

'Pretty rough, I'd say,' Atkins muttered tightly. Keilty missed the words but not the meaning.

They checked to see that Weston and Charlie were still with them. Both were slightly airsick and bruised from the shaking, but otherwise okay.

Atkins warmed up the inertial compass and fed co-ordinates to it.

'Okay, back there, hold on. The next half an hour is going to be rough,' and he swung the helicopter back into the cross wind.

The next half hour was rough. The copter bored on across the wind. Streamers of rain slashed briefly against the windshield as the wind veered suddenly. They flew on for what seemed like forever to Keilty. The gray fog pressed in against the windshield, and with the noise of the engine and the shaking and vibration of the wind, only the flight programmer gave any indication that they were moving. Keilty was sweating heavily inside the suit, and the pure oxygen had given him a raging headache. Atkins'

face was tense with strain as he stared at the instruments, his hands and feet never still as he rode the rudder and altitude controls.

To Charlie, it was a nightmare of shaking on the unfamiliar oil cushions. The skin beneath his plastic suit drew tighter as it dried, until he felt ready to crawl out of the tank and cursed himself for his part in this suicidal undertaking.

After thirty-five minutes, Atkins began losing altitude until they broke from beneath the cloud cover. The seas looked the same to Keilty, except for the absence of the cruiser and MTBs. Ahead was a barely discernible smudge on the horizon that marked Atuk Island. As they dropped lower towards the waves, the wind lessened until Keilty estimated that it was blowing less than twenty knots.

The pilot swung the copter into a shallow circle, dropping lower all the time, until he was barely ten feet above the waves.

'This should be it,' he shouted to Keilty. 'You'll have to jump for it from here.'

'What about you?' Keilty shouted back. 'You can't hold in this wind.

'I know. I'll have to go back. If we don't hear from you, I'll give you thirty minutes from the time you go in, and then radio the Vigilant to move in.'

Keilty nodded, gripped the man's shoulder in thanks, and pulled himself back to the tank.

Weston was already unstrapped and wrestling the tank to the door. Between them, they got it centered and ready to go. Keilty worked the straps loose and climbed into the tank with the dolphin. Weston pushed him aside and unfastened the small case that contained the connector hypodermic. He checked to see that the tank contained enough local anaesthetic to last for an hour. Then he swabbed the marked area on Charlie's broad back with alcohol. Charlie rolled his eyes up towards Keilty, who grinned and patted his head.

'Take it easy, old friend.'

Jack hesitated a moment, then inserted the needle just as Charlie gave his characteristic cough that indicated he was breathing in. Keilty grabbed the coaming as Jack upended the tank and Charlie slid out in a steep dive, free of the copter.

The tank settled again and Keilty climbed to the edge and peered out. The blades of the helicopter beating against the

fine rain sprayed his face with mist. He knuckled his eyes free of water and saw Charlie reappear below, his curiously humped back breaking the surface momentarily; then he submerged again.

Keilty glanced around. Weston was at his arm.

`Next,' he yelled cheerfully over the noise. Keilty nodded and checked to make sure his back pack was secure and that his face mask was safely tucked inside the blouse of his wet suit and jumped. Rain spattered his face briefly; then he hit the water headfirst, hands pointed over his head. The bone-chilling cold of the supposedly warm water shocked him and he surfaced gasping.

The copter was no longer directly above him, but Atkins was beating back against the wind. As the copter drifted back over him, Weston dove out, lower than Keilty, and hit the water fifty yards from him. In a moment, his head reappeared and he waved at the copter. Charlie surfaced alongside of Keilty and emitted a muffled squeak. Keilty waved to Atkins to indicate that everything was all right, and the helicopter gained altitude until it was lost in the low-hanging clouds again.

The rain was falling lightly now and shortly Jack reached them.

'All present and accounted for, I see,' he shouted cheerfully, over the wind.

The two men went over the drill again and checked Charlie's equipment when he surfaced. They stripped out of the plastic coveralls and clamped their masks on quickly.

'Turn around. You first.' Keilty still had to yell to make himself heard. The noise of the copter hovering overhead drowned out everything else.

'You sure you'll be okay?'

Weston nodded and lifted his back out of the water until he was resting on an inflated air pillow.

'When I hook you up, go under for a few minutes to make sure it's working properly, then come up and fix mine.'

Weston nodded. Keilty moved over to him and opened the connector flap. They had hooked themselves up earlier in the morning to check out the systems. Keilty pulled the hose out of its container and wiped the bayonet end with his hand, then inserted it and gave it a half turn, locking the connection securely. He gave Jack a tap on the 'lung'

cover and watched him submerge.

The copter still hung above them, creating a flattened and rippled area where its downdraught blew the waves flat. He could imagine the strain as Atkins fought to hang over them °in the strong wind.

Weston surfaced again alongside him and he was ready, lying on the air pillow. He felt Jack's strong hands as he worked quickly to open the plastic cap and make the con, nection. When he felt Jack's tap, he slipped beneath the waves. Charlie and Jack appeared simultaneously alongside him, and Jack pressed the life line into his hand.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Keilty was first on the twenty-foot line attached to Charlie's harness. He clipped his ear-plug lead onto the life line.

. . is about half a mile ahead. Pretty fancy flying,' Charlie was saying.

Keilty felt a tug on the line and began swimming forward. He glanced over his shoulder to see the dim figure of Weston gliding silently behind.

Half a mile. He hoped that silly clicker on Charlie's pack was working. It was going to take them a while to reach that sub. Charlie started swimming down quickly. After five minutes, he found himself tiring from the heavy burden of the pack he was carrying.

Then he cursed himself for an ass. He had forgotten to fill the water sacs.

The dim light filtering down from the violently rippling surface was quickly left behind.

Even at the start, Keilty could hardly see more than the powerful tail flukes ahead of him moving up and down tirelessly, and soon he found himself surrounded by complete blackness. Already, his leg muscles were beginning to tire and he realized how much out of shape he was. The bulky projections of the equipment and mines attached to his belt and back made swimming that much harder. He thought of checking with both Jack and Charlie to see how they were doing, then decided not to. No sense in admitting so early that Jack may have had a point.

He pushed doggedly on for another five minutes before calling a halt. Charlie looped back as Weston moved up. Keilty unslung the pistol and an oversized cartridge.

'Everyone okay?' he asked. Both Charlie's and Weston's acknowledgment came back quickly. Charlie's voice, coming both through the transphonemator and the underwater voice membrane, assumed almost its normal squeal-like pitch, while Jack's was low and distorted.

'How far to go, Charlie?' he asked.

`We're getting closer now. From here, we go straight down. We have little more than a quarter of a mile left. I am sure it is a submarine. Nothing else seems to be moving and it looks like it's in the same place that it was when I saw it last.'

'Okay, group. Soon as I send off this report, we go and get It.' He clipped the cartridge to the neckband microphone and dictated the information tersely. Then he opened the breech of the pistol and inserted the cartridge. With the muzzle above his head and pointed to the surface, he pulled the trigger. There was a soft whoosh, and the pistol jerked very gently in his hand. Looking up, all he could see was a rising stream of CO2 bubbles. He spread his hands in resignation and they took up the trek again.

They dove deeper and deeper until the only light was the dim luminous twin dial of the depth gauge and chronometer on his wrist. The figures of both Charlie and Jack had long since been lost in the black murk and the only sensations left to him were the occasional sounds of breathing in his ear plug and the steady tug on the line.

Suddenly he became aware of the absence of a second sound that should have blanked everything else out. Charlie's clicker was working away steadily, but there were no answering sounds from the ocean floor, now less than thirty feet beneath them. The research boys had told him that he should be able to hear the mollusks as soon as they reached the ninehundred-foot level. At the same time, the tug on the line slackened and he felt Charlie's tail flukes graze his cheek.

`What's the matter?' Jack asked.

`Listen,' Keilty commanded. 'There's no noise from those damn mollusks.'

There was a short silence, punctuated only with the sound of breathing.

`So there isn't,' Jack replied slowly.

Keilty felt Charlie's rough hide scrape against his arm.

`That isn't all – the submarine is moving,' Charlie said.

Keilty muttered a four-letter expletive to himself. 'What about the cruiser?'

There was a short silence from Charlie; then, 'I can't tell, it's out of my range probably.'

Keilty pulled the pistol from his belt and clipped the cartridge to the neckband microphone again and for several seconds recorded a message. Then he inserted the cartridge into the Very pistol and fired it towards the surface.

`Let's hope it's not too late,' muttered Keilty. 'I warned them to stay away.'

`You didn't tell them the sub was moving, did you?' said Weston.

'Not on your life. They find that out and all hell's gonna break loose. Before they could find and destroy it, she will have fired all her missiles.'

Keilty was surprised at how sluggish he felt. The cold water had thoroughly numbed him and every time he moved, he felt as if he were trying to swim in heavy molasses. A series of pains had begun across his chest and succeeding breaths were causing him to gasp.

They were almost nine hundred feet down now, and they were blind, except for Charlie's sonar vision. The miniature instrument readouts lining his mask rim were all into the green except for the pulse and respiration rate which were edging towards the red.

`Wait a minute,' Charlie said suddenly. 'The sub has slowed. I'm not sure, but it seems to be moving back more into the shelter of the island's base.

'That would make sense,' Jack interjected. 'If they can get close enough, they could take a chance on any sonar waves being scrambled enough by the bottom to hide them. How far away now?'

Charlie considered. 'I'd say close to five hundred yards. Wait ... I'm pretty sure they've stopped ... they seem to be about seventy feet higher, but not resting on the bottom.'

Òkay,' Keilty said tiredly, 'let's go before they decide this place is too unhealthy. It should take about five minutes.'

The three swam on again, pushing bodies that were close to exhaustion. Even for Charlie, the depth and the cold were beginning to make their effects felt. It was still impossible for the men to make out shapes, but Charlie kept up a running countdown for their benefit. When they were within fifty yards, he stopped them.

'It's just ahead,' he announced.

Keilty dragged his mind away from the torture of swimming and back to the sub.

`Can you see any indications of movement?'

No, it's just sitting there. Those things at the back ... propellers ... aren't moving either. I can see it clearly, but nothing is happening.'

`Mort, you sound pretty beat ...'

`Shut up,' Keilty growled savagely. 'What the hell do you expect?'

Weston ignored the outburst and fumbled for his arm. 'What the devil are 'you doing?'

Keilty tried to pull his arm away.

`Relax, you idiot. Take these . . He pressed two capsules sealed in plastic into Keilty's hand.

`What

?'

`Don't argue. I've just taken two. They're a fancy pep pill. You too, Charlie, they won't hurt you.' He pressed two capules out of the plastic wrapper into the dolphin's mouth.

Keilty slipped up his mouthpiece and downed his. 'Okay, happy? Now, get out those limpet bombs. You guys know the drill, so let's go.'

Charlie started forward again. He would place each man at his station, and then take the stern himself. He was surprised at how much better he was beginning to feel. The cold had stopped bothering him, and all but a trace of sluggishness was gone. His sonar was now indicating a long object directly ahead and he backed carefully with his flukes to keep from swatting Keilty, then let their momentum carry him forward.

Keilty brushed the slick and cold surface of metal below him and felt around for a handhold. It must be the sub, he thought. If it had been sunk in the war, the hull would be crusted with marine growth. The blackness surrounding him was complete and utterly intense. The pains in his chest had stopped and he no longer felt as if he were freezing to death.

`Where are we?' he asked, keeping his voice down.

Àlmost even with the forward hatch, about thirty feet from the bow'

Keilty patted Charlie's flanks. 'Right on target, ol' buddy'

Charlie moved ahead until he was directly over the hatch and paused. Jack unclipped the line and reached around to find the hatch. His fingers encountered the raised hinge and he pulled himself down.

`Here's where I get off. Good luck and see you later.'

Keilty felt the line go slack and Charlie again moved off.

As they made their way slowly aft towards the conning tower, Charlie broke the silence that had settled over them as Jack had dropped off.

`They won't have a chance, will they?'

Keilty hesitated. He could now feel the bulge of the conning tower against his hands and knew that precious seconds were wasting away.

`No,' he answered shortly. 'And besides, the answer to that is rather obvious. All those people on the receiving end of the bombs wouldn't have a chance either.'

Ànother case of the greatest good for the greatest number?'

Keilty was taken aback by Charlie's reply. 'You know, kid, sometimes you surprise me.'

Ànd equally sometimes I surprise myself. Don't forget, swim straight up after you set the mines.'

Before Keilty unclipped his mike lead, the dolphin was gone. He fumbled at his belt and unclipped the first mine. He punctured the air sac with the point of his knife and turned the timer knob all the way to the right. He considered where to put it, then shrugged and pressed it against the conning tower wall near the base and activated the electromagnet.

Hanging on with his finger tips, he felt his way down to the side of the sub, around the curve of the ballast tank, and stopped. He decided that right at the juncture would be a good spot, and set the timer. He placed the mine on the hull and flicked on the electromagnet.

A bright beam of dazzling light suddenly stabbed ahead through the darkness and he lost his grip, flailing wildly. He caught himself and shot down the side of the tank into the purient darkness. He waited a moment until his pulse rate started to slack off and then he inched back up, letting his eyes adjust to the unaccustomed brightness.

The light came from an underwater searchlight mounted high on the conning tower and drove a narrow, sharply defined cone straight ahead.- He made his way slowly to deck level, where he was hidden in the shadows, and cautiously poked his head over. He caught the hollow rasp of a hatch being lifted and saw an oversized entryway about ten feet ahead of the conning tower being thrown back.

As he watched, a large metal canister poked over the coaming, rotated slowly, then rose until it was about ten feet above the deck. A second searchlight, mounted under the canister, also came to life and threw a powerful beam that reached out to bathe a portion of the deck and then swung quickly around to where he crouched. He ducked his head back just as the beam stabbed across the edge of the deck.

The darkness outside of the beam's narrow cone was barely relieved. He glanced at the luminous dial on his watch. Thirty-five seconds since he had set his first mine. Both Jack and Charlie should be well on their way to the surface by now. Keilty hesitated. Jack's mines should have less than a minute to go. He assumed that some type of TV system was enclosed in the canister, but why had it appeared? Had they heard him? And if so, what could they do about it? He could clearly make

out the red casing of the bomb mounted on the conning tower. Even if they did see it, they could not do anything about disarming it.

His mind was working furiously as he reviewed the various. possibilities. Even if they found the bomb he set, would they suspect that there were others? How fast could they fire those missiles? Even if they got one away. . . . He cursed the cruiser. They had probably been warned.... Even as he inched his head over the decking again, he heard a dull rasping sound. The metal canister turned to point back along the bow, the second searchlight following it until it shone full on an opening hatch.

A short – very short-lived – feeling of relief washed through him as he realized that they had not heard the mines being planted. They were only checking the hatch that covered the missiles. They had to make sure it was operating properly.

Keilty looked again at his watch. Fifty seconds before the first mine would go off. How long did it take to fire one of those deadly babies whose palely gleaming nose cones he could now see fully exposed? A cloud of gas bubbles burst out of the hatch and shot upwards. That answered his question. They were all set.

About forty seconds, his watch mocked him. And he'd better get the devil out of there or he'd blow up with the sub.

He had just started to push away, when a second sustained cloud of bubbles rose out of the hatch from around the missile nearest to him.

Within his body a combination of the high oxygen, deep pressure, and most important, the total frustration of his situation, snapped. He felt it like the kick of a glass of akvavit knocking him from sober to drunk. Berserk is a little-understood term in human psychology, but there exists such a mental state. Ask most Medal of Honor winners. The old Viking and Teutonic warriors cultivated and trained the trait. It is better than any of the so-called pep pills going, because it is instantaneous. With Keilty, as he saw the cloud of pressurized gas that would blow the first of the missiles clear, the total frustration of effort, more than any other item, was all that was needed. He forgot the pressure, the cold, his tired and aching body – all that was left was the will, somehow, to destroy that missile.

He snatched the limpet mine away from the juncture of hull and ballast tank, with the electromagnet full on. With a powerful push from his left hand, he vaulted over the edge of the decking and shot for the hatch.

The enemy crew must have seen him as he came in range of the camera, but there was nothing they could have done. He caught the edge of the hatch, disappearing in the cloud of bubbles, and somersaulted into the yawning hatch to slap the limpet mine against the casing of the missile.

Keilty paused only long enough to wedge his knife into the hatch coaming; then he was swimming furiously for the surface. Seconds later, the first and second mines went off, simultaneously with the launching of the missile.

The submarine, lifted by the bow with the first explosion, heeled sharply to the right with the second. But the first missile was away. Seconds later, the two midship mines exploded one after another and the submarine rippled along its length, tearing itself to pieces. Water pressure finished her off as surely as a nuclear bomb would have done.