The Piranha surfaced almost right next to them, thrusting up against their hull, lines coming over, men with safety harnesses crawling over the hull. Pacino ordered the hatches opened, and the Piranha boarding party came aboard. He felt himself getting dizzy as they carried out the men. He sat at the pos-two control seat and put his head on the console, the dizziness overwhelming him. Finally he felt strong hands drag him up by the arms, and he was lifted up the ladder, feeling himself go more limp.
In a blur he found himself carried aboard the Piranha and lowered down the ladder into the hull, conveyed to a pile of blankets in the crew’s mess. He saw a face hovering over his, a voice saying Good Lord, he looks white, must be internal bleeding, and he sank in the cold and the dark and knew no more.
“Diving Officer, submerge the ship to eight zero feet.”
Phillips was on the periscope, watching the empty Barracuda. He knew what he had to do now, with the incoming Destiny II submarine. There was little choice.
It seemed to take forever for the ship to get down. Once it did, he was ready. The torpedoes in tubes one, two, three and four were flooded, open to sea and warmed up, all of them programmed with the location to the Barracuda. There was no way he’d let the Japanese have such a prize, a technological wonder. He would sink it before he’d allow that to happen.
“Conn, Sonar, Target Seven, Destiny II-class submarine, continues inbound, signal-to-noise level increasing.”
“Sonar, Captain, does he know we’re here?”
“Don’t think so, sir.”
“Let me know.” Phillips took his face from the periscope.
“Attention in the firecontrol team. I intend to put four torpedoes into the Barracuda to keep it out of Japanese hands, then hightail it out of the Oparea and head to the deep Pacific. With luck we can be gone before Target Seven, the next Destiny, knows we’re here. We’ll be doing a periscope approach on the Barracuda. Firing-point procedures, tubes one through four, Target Eight, surfaced US submarine.”
“Ship ready, sir.”
“Weapons ready, sir.”
“Solution pending, sir.”
“Final bearing and shoot, USS Barracuda.”
“Ready, Captain.”
Phillips pressed a red button on the periscope grip.
“Bearing mark.”
“Two seven six.”
“Range mark, three divisions in high power.”
“Range fifteen hundred yards.”
“Set,”
“Standby.”
“Shoot one,” Phillips commanded.
“Fire one.”
“Tube one fired electrically.”
The other three torpedoes were launched then, Phillips’s eye on the periscope lens. The torpedoes hit one after the other, the black rising clouds of spray and smoke from the explosions spectacular. There was not much of the ship to see on the surface to start with, only her sail and the top of her hull normally exposed, 90 percent of her below the water, but after four torpedo hits, the ship settled and sank quickly.
Nothing was left of the Barracuda except a white foam on the surface.
“Dive, make your depth six hundred feet. Helm, right five degrees rudder, steady course east, all ahead emergency flank. Lowering number-two scope.”
Phillips stood and leaned on the conn rail. He stayed and watched the chart and listened to Gambini’s reports on the Destiny II class. Target Seven, but the Japanese submarine had apparently never detected them. He seemed to be heading for the sound of the explosions coming from what used to be the Barracuda, but by the time he got there, the Piranha was long gone.
Phillips watched as the ship crossed over the boundary of the Oparea and headed east, the vibrations gone now that the Vortex tubes were no longer there, all of them jettisoned after the firing of the individual weapons.
A few hours later, Phillips slowed to flank, and six hours after that, turned off the reactor circulation pumps and coasted down to full speed. He came to periscope depth, transmitted a situation report and a request to the Mount Whitney, and went back deep.
He took one trip up to the crew’s mess, a makeshift sickbay for the men pulled off the Barracuda, and found the unconscious form of Admiral Pacino.
“Well, Admiral, you don’t know it, but you saved our lives with your little control-room simulation-trainer. If not for you I’d have run from those Nagasakis. If not for you I wouldn’t have had any Vortex missiles. You kicked their asses out here. I just wanted you to know that.”
Phillips stared at Pacino for a long time, the man’s skin white and unhealthy-looking, the eyepatch still strung across his bad eye, his lips swollen and chapped.
Finally he walked away. As he did, a slight smile seemed to come to the admiral’s lips, although no one was watching to be able to say either way.
EPILOGUE
Twelve hours later the ship surfaced a second time and discharged the patients, Pacino among them, into the Sea King helicopters for medevac to the Mount Whitney. Pacino didn’t wake up as he was loaded, and was still unconscious as he was unloaded from the chopper and hauled into sickbay. It would be two days before he opened his good eye.
Pacino slowly became aware of his surroundings. The sound of the air rushing around him, the feel of the bed, the slicing, throbbing pain in his side, the bandages there, the sheets covering him. His lips were dry. But strangely, the sensation of the bandage over his left eye was now gone. He had gotten used to that sensation but now it was absent.
He tried to open his eyes, the lids coming open, but the world appeared as if seen through Vaseline. He blinked but still couldn’t see clearly. Finally a white shape appeared over him.
“Admiral.” A woman’s voice.
Eileen Constance.
“I got your note when I was at sea,” Pacino said, his voice a hoarse croak. “Thanks… thank you.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“Are my eyes okay?”
“They’ll be back to normal in a few days. You have some drops in them.”
“My side…?”
“We did surgery, you were bleeding internally.”
“Were you there?”
“I assisted. And I can tell you that even flag officers are made of snakes, snails and puppy dog tails. Don’t laugh, it’ll hurt your incision.”
“So… what happened?”
“We operated and—”
“No. Japan.”
“You don’t know. Of course. You and the Piranha sank all but two of their operational submarines. Some of the others had to return to port because of failures but of the ones that worked, only two survived. President Warner received Prime Minister Kurita in the White House yesterday. He offered a full apology for attacking Greater Manchuria and invited the UN and US forces into Japan. The Destiny subs are now under UN guard, the Firestar fighters have been flown to the Philippines and all the radioactive weapons are in the custody of the US Army.”
“I missed a lot,” Pacino’s lips tried to smile.
“I was watching the news. I put some of it on a disk, in case you want to look at it later.”
“Your word’s good enough.”
“President Warner wanted to know when you came to. She sent this note. Want me to read it?”
“Sure.”
” ‘To Vice Admiral Michael Pacino’—”
“She got my rank wrong.”
“You’re always the last to know. Admiral. Your third star came in with the note. You’re confirmed by Congress. Warner struck while the iron was hot. Should I be jealous of you two?”
“Just read the damned note,” Pacino croaked, but his chapped lips were smiling.
“‘To Vice Admiral Michael Pacino — thanks to your courage, tactical foresight and strategic brilliance, the United States has prevailed in this struggle with Japan. A grateful nation could never fully thank you enough, but as a measure of our esteem I have nominated you and Congress has confirmed you as Vice Admiral United States Navy. In addition, your name has been submitted by me personally for the Navy Cross, third award. With fondest wishes and hopes for your full recovery, I remain your grateful commander in chief, Jaisal Warner, President.’ Personally I think the Medal of Honor would be more appropriate,” she added.