“Get the rear boat’s pilothouse,” I whispered. Matsuma studied the sights. With the rear torpedo boat out of control, neither could turn or back out of the narrow channel. Then, if I could load and Matsuma could resight fast enough with 25-millimeter and .51-caliber fire raining down on us, we might have a chance.
“Ready?” Matsuma said without turning his head.
“Fire in the hole,” I yelled, and tapped him on the shoulder.
Bawhummp.
I looked up to see the pilothouse on the second torpedo boat had flattened over to one side like a folded top hat.
Fifty-one-caliber fire began to rake the ice floes around us. The 25-millimeter mounts fixed without aiming. They weren’t sure where we were. The lead boat fired a torpedo blind and it boiled under all three boats, exploding a hundred yards behind us into ice.
The wet cold made my fingers clumsy as I loaded the second round. We had to keep the lead torpedo boat from transmitting a call for assistance.
“Fire in the hole.”
Bawhummp.
The pilothouse of the lead boat burst open at its seams. The helmsman on the O.O.D. were tossed high into the air.
The deck gunner on the rear boat had the right direction but the wrong elevation now. Rounds whined overhead. The twin 25-millimeter mounts were making wild slashes at the ice fields. All their guns winked fire without stop. My ears were ringing again. I jammed another round in. The lead boat was beginning to turn, using only its engines for steering.
Bawhummp.
The lead boat exploded into a burning hulk, its fuel tanks ablaze. It lit the area and melted away the fog. The deck gunner on the remaining boat could now see us clearly, though the crews of the 25-millimeter mounts were still firing blind from their shielded positions. I loaded. The deck gunner had us now and stitched a burst into Wickersham and Gurung’s kayak. He placed rounds below their waterline.
Bawhummp.
Matsuma had rushed the shot. It blew away a section of deck and the deck gunner fell away from his machine gun. I loaded. Another figure darted out of the hull for it and swiveled the muzzle toward us once again.
Bawhummp.
The second torpedo boat broke into two flaming halves and burned intensely. All that remained of the first boat was a smoking hole in the latticework of free ice. The stench of burning diesel fuel was overpowering.
We had no way of knowing if either boat had transmitted. Gurung had lost a chunk of upper thigh to a .51-caliber bullet. It was all he could do to muster the strength to stuff bits of his torn jacket into the bullet holes below the waterline. I could tell he was close to spiraling into shock. He couldn’t paddle. Wickersham taped over the other holes and tied together the splintered thwart braces, then bailed the kayak dry.
The men were at the end of their ropes. We felt weak and rickety from the unrelenting strain. Each kayak crew had to watch the other to make sure no one fell asleep or collapsed unnoticed.
Our second pickup point was near a stone reef. We paddled to where I figured it ought to be. It wasn’t. I wondered if it mattered, we were already two hours late for the rendezvous.
We paddled in an ever-growing circle until we found the reef. Everything seemed vague and hazy. It took me ten minutes to make thirty-second decisions. Was it exhaustion or hypothermia, and did it really matter anymore? The submarine was nowhere in sight. We were overdue. By rights we would never see the submarine again. I decided not to decide what to do next. We secured a grappling hook between two icy bits of rock on the reef, rafted together, and slept beneath the blanket of fog. If we were going to be discovered we were too exposed and weary now to resist.
It had turned cold again by the time I awoke.
We bobbed in the low chop off the reef in the predawn light. We had missed our primary and secondary rendezvous. Earlier, during the briefing aboard the sub, I had noticed Commander Cho had only half-heartedly acknowledged my mention of a secondary rendezvous. People who missed their primary did so for a reason and seldom made their secondary. I wouldn’t be surprised if the submarine was cruising the Sea of Japan now.
“There! There! It’s over there. I am seeing it very clear, there.” Gurung pointed north. There was nothing there.
The effect of strain and fatigue on the minds of men adrift in small boats was well known. Sometimes only one man was affected, often there were group delusions. That would be the final humiliation, to go out in a series of phantom ship chases across the Sea of Okhotsk.
“Take it easy, you sure you saw something over there?”
“Yes, being right over at the edge of the fog bank. Right….” He pointed again and began to feel foolish. He looked down at his wound. “Well, I guess…”
“No, he was wrong. It was over that way!”
Now Wickersham. Was this how it was going to end? I tried to follow his outstretched arm. I had trouble concentrating.
Then, like some plumber’s sea monster, the dull black periscope cut the sea, leaving a feather of white foam. It headed straight for us, then surfaced. It lay dead in the water not more than a few hundred yards away. Though it remained stationary, it seemed to move in and out of the fog, sometimes disappearing altogether.
In the distance I could hear a high-pitched hum. At first I thought it came from the submarine. It grew louder. Then as it drew nearer I gasped in recognition and dug deeply with my paddle.
“We have to make it to the sub—now! Fast as we can make it. Dig in. Chamonix, you’re first aboard with Vyshinsky. Just get him aboard, forget the gear….”
The hum changed pitch as two fox-bat jets broke through the fog bank forty feet above us. One had to veer radically to avoid the conning tower of the sub. I could make out people on its deck moving agitatedly. Its deck gun began to pivot.
She’s not going to dive—she’s going to slug it out on the surface with jets! It was a brave but foolhardy stance.
Matsuma and I were paddling as fast as we could—the bayonet wound in my left arm made it nearly useless. Chamonix’s kayak had almost reached the sub.
I could imagine the radio exchanges between the pilots. They had a Chinese submarine in their sights. Our deception was complete, if that mattered anymore.
The jets cracked overhead on a reverse bearing. The sub’s gun popped away ineffectually. They bracketed the sub with bombs. No use wasting rockets on a surfaced, dead-in-the-water, putative Chinese sub. Geysers of water spouted all around us.
I could make out Dravit with his leg still in a cast on deck. Incredibly, Keiko was standing right next to him and they were tearing a pipe out of a crate. Except it wasn’t a pipe, it was a U.S.-made Stinger ground-to-air missile. Two Korean crewman handled another pipe.
The jets made another pass. A rocket split off from the vapor trail of one jet. The other released a stick of bombs. The single rocket thrust up a geyser just beyond the sub. The fog had somehow upset its tracking system. The bombs detonated near the bow of the sub and tore away a portion of decking. They knocked everyone on the sub’s deck flat. Dravit, just aft of the conning tower, righted himself. He kneeled with his missile and a Korean sailor sighted the other. I couldn’t see Keiko. Where was she? Why wasn’t she standing?
The jets started another pass, again coming from behind the sub. The Englishman and the Korean pivoted—and fired. Matsuma and I were twenty yards from the sub, all the rest were scrambling aboard. One side of the lead jet burst into flame and its engine began stopping and starting like a hiccuping Waring blender. The other jet made a hard turn and evaded the second missile. The lead jet still hung in the air, headed toward the sub—and in the last seconds I realized it was going to hit us.