Tomahawk (47 page)

He didn't want to think about that again. Not the flames, the stink of oil, the screams of drowning men.

At dinner that evening,
Merrill's
skipper sat with his chin propped in his hand. The missile officer was flicking a fork. Finally, as the steward cleared dessert, he said, “Sir, I got a problem to surface.”

“Batteries released, Jim.”

“This is supposed to be an operational test. Meaning my guys do the hands-on stuff, from test to launch. Well, we're not.”

Cannady studied his coffee cup. “XO, loan me your stateroom?”

“All yours, sir.”

Dan followed them into the exec's cabin. He, the missile officer, and the test rep perched on the settee as Cannady took the desk chair. The skipper said, “Okay, if I read what you're telling me: you're being micromanaged to the point you think it may be affecting the results.”

Dan shifted on slick leather. “We're giving technical advice, Captain. That's all.”

“Too much assistance can be as bad as too little.”

“You've got a brand-new software set there, sir. Not to put your guys down, but Mr. Sakai's a lot more qualified than they are to troubleshoot it.”

“Are they too deep in your shorts, Jim?”

The missile officer hesitated, then nodded, eyes hard.

“I don't go along with that, Captain. That somehow because of our helping out, something went wrong that wouldn't have otherwise.”

“It's not a critique,” Cannady said. “I know it's hard to let go of the baby. But at some point, the developmental community's got to turn Tomahawk over to the fleet. And if a crew as sharp as this can't handle it, we need to get that message up the chain.”

Dan held his silence, too angry to trust himself to speak. These guys didn't have the big picture. But on his own deck,-the captain was God.

“Okay, that's settled. Jim, these guys are here to help
you. If you got a question, ask ‘em. But unless they do—” He looked at Dan.

“We stand around holding our doughnuts,” he said. “I got it, sir.”

Cannady's eyes went flat for a moment. “We're all on the same side,” he said, and got up. “Remember that.”

The next morning he woke early, but couldn't go back to sleep. So he got up and threw his khakis on. It was still a couple of minutes to reveille when he got to the bridge. The captain was there already, talking the day's events over with the navigator. Dan stood with his back against the surface plot board and watched.

He'd dreamed of sitting in that leather chair. Of command. Another illusion given up. Like the dream of living with Susan and Nan. Of marrying Kerry… To hell with it…. That was life, kicking holes in dream after dream till you realized they were nothing more than that. Fantasies.

The JA talker nudged him, and he stepped up beside the skipper. “This one's gonna fly,” Cannady told him.

“I sure hope so, sir.” He looked down and out through the huge, square, freshly cleaned Plexiglas windows.

Merrill
rolled gently on an azure sea. Sea swallows wove and dipped along the wave lines. Far to the east, low clouds glowed tentatively scarlet in the direction of land. He examined a Xeroxed chart of the test range. They were in area W-61, 120 miles west of San demente Island. The pulsating red numerals of the fathometer read 1,500 fathoms.

Gradually, the sun ballooned up. It ruddied the haze gray sides of the ABLs. It set fire to the water, glittering and rolling in the morning light. He made out beneath the surface waves the slow but enormous heave of some far-off storm. Far to the west, a containership moved bulldozer-slow across the horizon, loaded with compact cars and consumer electronics from Taiwan or Hong Kong or Mainland China.

His hands tightened in his pockets. The serenity of early morning dissolved as he wondered if it was Li himself who had targeted the gang on Kerry. The Second
Department officer was the best candidate around.

But still his eyes lingered on the sea. And looking out over its ever-changing, ever-constant face, he suddenly knew he wasn't going to be able to leave it. He didn't know what it was he loved about it. He couldn't even call it love, because he hated it, too, had cursed it and feared its power. It was all the more fearsome because it didn't care. It didn't
care.

The sun blazed across its face, throwing a level beam of heat like some futuristic directed-energy weapon across the bridge. The officer of the deck was a young lieutenant (jg) who stood slumped against the gyro stand, one leg wound around it. Dan envied him suddenly with all his heart.

But then it all went to shit. They were finishing the engagement checks, and he was standing on the starboard wing, when, inside the pilothouse, someone yelled, “High temp alarm in number one ABL.” Cannady looked up sharply from his seat, where he'd been going over the morning traffic.

Leaning over the splinter shield, looking down thirty feet, Dan saw something his mind failed to accept at first. The whole starboard launcher was coated with a sheath of yellowish white smoke. It seemed to come from the deck itself, flowing up the sides of the armored coffin, clinging to it, then curving in at the top before rising off and wafting back toward him. He stared, then pulled his head back and yelled into the pilothouse, “White smoke, starboard ABL.”

An instant later, echoing from the IMC: “Fire, fire, fire—class charlie fire in the starboard box launcher, on the fo'c'sle. Repair three provide.”

He realized he was in the open, exposed. He got inside and dogged the door. Then he ducked out again and grabbed the lookout, who was staring obliviously out at the Pacific through his binoculars. Thank God, the live warhead was in the other ABL, on the port side, but there was a booster in there, three hundred pounds of solid pro-pellant and oxidizer, and a full load of fuel; if it blew,
there' d be fire all over the forecastle, fire and highly toxic combustion products.

Cannady was out of his seat, staring down. The smoke was thicker now, coming up around the access doors at the rear of the box. Dan joined him as he told the officer of the deck to put the wind astern; then he hit the 21MC. “CIC, DC Central: This is the captain speaking. We have smoke from ABL number one. Secure power to both ABLs. Seth, radio that to Point Mugu, and make sure they have our posit.” When he clicked off, his eyes met Dan's. “The internal fire protection's automatic, right?”

“Yes, sir. There's a Halon system in there, and a saltwater deluge. Internal temp goes over a hundred and eighty, the Halon triggers. Over two forty, the saltwater system lets go. You might want to pull your topside personnel in.”

“Eric, get everybody inside the skin of the ship. Set up to shift the watch to secondary conn. Boatswain! Temperature reading?”

‘Two hundred degrees, sir.”

“Pass to DC Central: Activate saltwater deluge system in ABL number one. The Halon's either not triggering or it's not putting the fire out.”

“Get back,” the OOD yelled. “Stay back from those windows. Clear the bridge! Everybody not on watch, off the bridge!”

Cannady stood with his hands in his back pockets. Dan stood beside him; this was his system, after all. In a low voice, the skipper asked him, “Exactly how thick is that outer casing?”

“Not that thick, sir. Maybe two inches. And it's aluminum. It's not going to contain any major explosions.”

“We've got a live warhead there to port. Practically spitting distance from it. What should I do about it? Douse it, too?”

Dan thought fast about the live shot in ABL number two. The warhead was 450 pounds of H6, a mix of RDX and trinitrotoluene that came out about twice as powerful as straight TNT. It would do a thorough job on a thin-skinned ship like
Merrill.
He was conscious of Cannady waiting for an answer. The trouble was, if they sprayed it
with salt water, there went the OPEVAL, too.

He said finally, “I don't have any real firm guidelines to offer on that, sir.”

Cannady nodded. He stayed at the window, looking down.

It seemed like a long time later, but it couldn't have been more than a minute or two before water started spraying out of the launcher. Smoke yellow and thick as snot vomited out, too.

The smoke stopped. The boatswain reported that the temperature was dropping. Cannady told DC Central to give it another minute, then secure water pressure. He clicked to the damage-control circuit to talk to the team leader.

The number-one man came out in breathing apparatus and battle helmet, accompanied by someone in civvies. Together, they got the access door open. They stood peering inside. Finally, they looked up toward the pilothouse. The one in blue jeans made a thumbs-up sign, and Dan saw it was Sakai. Cannady sighed. “Well, that wasn't as bad as it could have been. With a full load-out of five-inch in the magazines…. Okay, secure from GQ.”

Dan felt weak. He'd forgotten about the forward magazines, twenty or thirty tons of high-explosive shells and powder charges. Enough to turn the whole front half of the ship into smoke and razor blades. The captain still looked relaxed, but now Dan noticed dark arcs under his armpits.

Cannady mused on, “I'm going to ask you to recommend whether we proceed with the operational launch this afternoon. After we figure out what went wrong here. I'm figuring a short of some kind in the missile interface.”

“There's not that much juice in there, sir. Not more than fifteen volts. I'll go down and take a look, but I figure it's the elevation hydraulics.”

Cannady said that would make sense, since it had happened as they were starting to elevate. He looked around the bridge, then added, “I'll be back in my cabin, changing my shorts.”

After crawling into the blackened, stinking, still-dripping launcher interior, the missile hanging above him, he and Sakai agreed it was probably the elevation circuitry. The interesting thing was that the hold-downs were still set. It looked to him as if the latches had jammed and the motors had burned out trying to elevate while they were still holding it shut. There was an interlock, to keep the clamshell from elevating until the hold-downs released, but obviously it hadn't worked. He wasn't surprised to note that this was a Vimy product, the contractor who'd tried to bribe him.

He couldn't think of any good reason not to fire the QPEVAL as scheduled, and reported that to Cannady. “We've got the range cleared and everybody in place. If you don't, we'll just have to go out and do it again after they fix the fire damage. And it's gonna delay the program.” The CO said he was inclined to agree. He went down to talk to Range Control on the radio. Dan looked at his sooty, water-stained khakis, only now realizing how totally wiped out they were.

The noon meal was tense and silent. Afterward, Dan went to CIC; Burdette was in the equipment room; Sakai stood by in the breaker, in case they had a repetition of the latch problem.

The cave was filled with the hum of voices and the whine of cooling fans, the obbligato hiss and chatter of the radio circuits. The black bulkheads receded as if only space lay beyond the amber glow of the plot boards. He moved through it with anxiety and nostalgia. So familiar … but he'd never see this again, would return to it only in dream and memory. The watch team supervisor laid a finger on a flickering symbol twelve miles southwest of the ghost shape of San Clemente. A conversation at the air-intercept control station: The chase planes were checking in. The controller assigned them to orbit at angels five—five thousand feet—twenty miles west of the ship.

The general quarters bell went. He felt the familiar shiver as the electronic tones cut off and the 1MC stated: “This is a drill. This is a drill. General quarters. General quarters. All hands man your battle stations.” There
wasn't the usual scrambling and running. The men simply buckled their helmets on and sat back down at their consoles, pushing their gas-mask packs back so they wouldn't sit on them.

The control officer came over the net, advising them the range was clear.

At the Tomahawk consoles, he found the petty officer struggling to program in the search pattern. He chose the wrong mode, and Dan started to say something; then didn't. He made himself stand back, like Cannady had during the fire, while they went through the documentation and argued about it and then eventually deselected it and entered the right command.

The last minutes ticked down, then the last seconds.

Thunder rattled the deck plates. A fine gray dust sifted down from the overhead, and the fluorescents flickered. The reports came in from the chase planes as once again they screwed themselves to the missile's tail.

They followed it all the way to the hulk. A silence, and then the pilot's voice came from the speaker: “Fireball. Just aft of the stack … a little off the centroid. Fragment spray on the water…. Black smoke coming up…. Solid hit. Definitely a mission kill.”

The hulk had been an old destroyer, ex-USS
Higbee.
The pilot kept talking, giving them a blow-by-blow as the old tin can burned vigorously, heeled over, and at last slipped beneath the waves. Dan could visualize it, all too well.