At last Morton reached his destination — the deck hatchway leading down into the after hold. The cover was off and a thin, hard mist of water was spraying up through the opening. He used his flash to check the opening. Vandenberg and Schiff had been right: Water was entering the after hold at a considerable rate. He could see the black and oily surface roiling below, surrounding the stacks of crates and drums. He guessed there was three or four feet of water in the hold already. Either the Kuei Mei's hull was old and brittle, her plates snapped open by the shock of the impact, or the Kilo had caught the freighter a slashing blow with her forward diving planes, ripping open her side like the iceberg gutting the Titanic. Either way, the freighter was doomed.
What he was about to do might or might not hasten her end, but what he hoped it would do was convince those of her crew remaining on board to give up the fight and abandon ship. Carefully, he removed two contact detonators from his vest, pushed them into the claylike mass of the plastique, and wired them to a pair of pull-ring igniters, leaving about ten seconds' worth of primacord between them. This done, he yanked both pins, took the explosives package in both hands, and tossed it into the hold.
"Young! Hanson!" he shouted. "Heads down! Fire in the hole! Run for it when you get the opening!"
"Roger that!"
"I copy!"
The explosion hit the deck beneath his belly like the impact of a monster sledgehammer and sent a flash of bright flame geysering up through the open hatch like an erupting volcano. The freighter trembled and pitched at the detonation within her belly; his ears were ringing furiously, though he wasn't even sure he'd heard the actual blast.
He heard the second explosion, though, when it came a moment later. The jolt was less savage, but he could hear the pop-pop-pop of ammunition cooking off below the deck. That was a bonus; he'd hoped his little surprise package might set off sympathetic detonations in the cargo of ammo and explosives the Kuei Mei was carrying in her hold but hadn't been able to count on it. The ongoing blasts would only emphasize the point he'd made with the first explosion.
And it looked as though the remaining Chinese crewmen had gotten the message. Forward, half glimpsed in the glare from the Kilo's spotlight, three men in striped shirts raced across the deck to the starboard bow and leaped off into the darkness.
"Okay!" he shouted over the tactical channel. "Let's get the hell out of Dodge!"
He saw Hanson rise from cover behind some crates twenty feet away, between the deck house and the hatch cover. Morton rose to follow.
More shapes crowded onto the freighter's forward deck, spilling forward from the starboard side next to the deckhouse. These men were in uniforms and appeared less ragged than the freighter's crew. Morton knew at a glance that they were a boarding party off the Kilo. Several opened up with automatic weapons, and Hanson staggered and dropped.
From his half crouch behind the open hatchway, Morton shouldered his H&K and opened fire, triggering three-round bursts, one after another after another, firing into the dense-packed knot of submariners charging onto the Kuei Mei's forward deck. Two went down…then a third. The others returned fire… and then Young was kneeling next to Morton, adding his autofire to the barrage, driving the Chinese boarding party back to the shadows beneath the deckhouse.
Morton tossed a flash-crash after them, then raced forward to Hanson. The SEAL was still alive, still conscious, his arms wrapped around a badly bloodied left thigh.
"Gotcha covered, Skipper!" Young shouted. "Go!
Go!"
Morton scooped the wounded SEAL up in a rough fireman's carry and sprinted up the sloping deck to the port side. Young, his H&K spitting and hissing, followed, covering the retreat.
They reached the spot where Morton had left Conyers and the others minutes before. Two men, Schiff and Ciotti, were still there, helping to cover the retreat. They waved the three SEALs on. "Time to get wet!" Schiff yelled into the wind.
"Roger that!" Morton called back. He lowered Hanson to the deck. "How about it, Ted?" he asked. "Ready for a swim?"
"Hey," the wounded SEAL said through bloodless lips, "the water is our friend."
The water is our friend. It was a kind of mantra learned by all SEALs since the glory days of Vietnam, when it was discovered that the enemy rarely cared to pursue Navy SEALs into the water. Constant training and conditioning, endurance swims, drown-proofing exercises, all contributed to the mystique of a very special relationship between sea and SEALs. It was their element, as much as was the night. They would find relative safety there, at least for the time being.
And if they were lucky, they might even find the Pittsburgh out there in all of that rainswept, night-clad ocean.
Maybe…
"What's our heading?"
"Coming around now onto two-seven-five, Captain. Still at hard right rudder."
"Very well. Maintain."
They were crossing astern of the Kilo and the damaged freighter now, three-quarters of the way through their long, clockwise turn. Kilo-class boats mounted six forward torpedo tubes but no stern tubes; they weren't at risk from a Parthian shot, at least, but a wire-guided torp could describe a full circle and hit them no matter which way the other boat was pointed. They would be safer once the freighter was between the Pittsburgh and the Kilo.
"Sonar, Conn. Anything new?"
"Nothing since those explosions a few minutes ago, sir. Can't tell for sure, but we think they came from the freighter. There's also been more gunfire."
"Let me know as soon as both sierras come up full abeam."
"Aye aye, sir. You got it."
"And keep a real sharp ear out for anything unusual from the Kilo. Tubes flooding, outer doors opening, anything like that."
The Kilo must know the Pittsburgh was here… but perhaps they had their hands full just now, dealing with damage from the second collision when the freighter had sideswiped them.
"Conn, Damage Control."
"Conn. Go ahead."
"Minor damage to the Type 18, sir. The sail's watertight integrity has been compromised, and there's minor damage to the port sail hydroplane. We've sealed watertight hatches in the sail and jury-rigged repairs on the plane. We're in no immediate difficulty, but we will need to put into port stateside ASAP for repairs."
"Very good. Keep me informed."
"Aye aye, sir."
Good. The damage wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. Of the three points, the worst was the hit to the 'Burgh's Type 18 periscope. The boat had two scopes, riding side by side, the Type 18 to starboard, the Type 2 attack scope to port. The Type 18 was the workhorse periscope for an American submarine, with a low-light operating mode and closed-circuit TV capability, while the Type 2 was a basic periscope with no advanced optics. It might make seeing at night or in heavy weather a problem.
They would deal with that when the time came. "Diving Officer, bring us to periscope depth."
"Make depth periscope depth, aye aye, sir."
They began their ascent.
Morton finished strapping the barrel of Hanson's H&K to his thigh with plastic ties, a rough-and-ready splint that didn't look pretty but would help them get him into the ocean. "You ready, Ted?"