The Gulf (64 page)

“Gun action port, target small boats, batteries released,” shouted Shaker. “Torpedo action port, fire when you bear. All hands commence fire!”

Dan was looking aft, standing by for it, but still the first gun flash caught him with his eyes unshielded. The sphere of white-orange fire was big as a house and the blast, with the gun trained forward, blew him back into the bulkhead. He pulled himself back inside the bridge, blinking. But salvo flash destroyed only the central portion of vision. He looked to the side as the 76 fired again.

Adams
was firing, too, had been whanging away steadily, the old five-inchers crashing out a broadside every three seconds. Her shells threw up huge spouts of white water. One hit a moored Boghammer, seventy pounds of steel and explosive traveling at three thousand feet a second, and the graceful hull ballooned weirdly for an instant before it disintegrated in a blast of orange flame.

Dan was staring at the pier when he realized suddenly he could see men running along it. They were that close. According to the chart, there was twenty feet of water at the end of that pier.
Van Zandt
drew twenty-six. He jumped to the radar. “Four hundred yards to turn!” he shouted. Ahead,
Adams
was already swinging her stern left, sheering off from the shore.

“Hold your course, Steve,” said Shaker, his voice iron. “How far to the pier, XO?”

“Five hundred yards!”

“Torpedoes away. I said that to you, phone talker, pass it and quit gawking around! XO, keep feeding me ranges. Officer of the deck, slow to five!”

“Ahead one third, indicate five knots.”

“Four hundred yards.”

“Fifties, commence fire.”

A hollow whump came from aft: high-pressure air kicking the torpedoes out of the tubes. At the same instant, the machine guns cut in above their heads. The noise was incredible. Yet it still increased, the clatter building to a roar. They had six of them firing, four .50s from above, two M60s from aft on the flight deck.

Dan lifted his face from the scope hood, called “Three hundred yards,” and looked to port for the torpedo wakes. He couldn't see them, but he'd heard them go out. The port tubes were now empty.

“Gunboat to port, incoming, firing!”

He saw the red wink from the boat's bow. The sound was lost in the clamor
Van Zandt
was putting out. Then suddenly bullets were whacking through thin metal around him. Someone screamed above him, on the flying bridge.

“Get some guns on that boat! Designate to Phalanx,” said Shaker.

Lewis must have had his finger on the button. A deep note like a bass viol, and Dan saw the shadow pause as spray splashes leapt up around it. The splashes tracked it for a second, then stopped. Their attacker looked undamaged for a moment. Then it disappeared. Sunk, he realized. And no wonder, with fifty or sixty inch-wide holes through it from one side to the other.

“Two hundred yards to the pier! Captain, we've got to turn or we'll ground!”

“Hold your course, Steve,” said Shaker.

Dan lifted his head from the scope hood to a scene that no one in the U.S. Navy had seen since World War II: a shore installation taking the concentrated bombardment of two warships at close range. White, red, orange bursts flickered fast as the finale of a fireworks display.
Adams
had shifted fire from the boats and her shells were landing ashore now, a little long, but even as he thought this, the next salvo laddered down a hundred yards into the middle of the compound. Buildings blew apart in mushroom columns of flame. A truck cartwheeled through the sky. The crash and thud of the heavy shells echoed back from the mountain like the sky falling in.

It was a destroyerman's dream, the enemy illuminated, distracted, and confused. They still think they're being bombed, he thought. Then the fact that they were close enough to spit on the beach registered with utter horror. “Captain!
One hundred
yards to pier!”

“Very well.”

“Bridge, Main control.”

“You can't tie up here, Captain. Not enough water!”

Shaker chuckled calmly. It sounded mad in the clamor. “Don't worry so much, XO. Okay, Stever, come right and parallel the shore. Kick her up to fifteen.”

“Bridge, Main control.”

“What, damn it, Rick?”

“Cap'n, something just whanged into us on the port side.”

“Damage?”

“No damage, just a hell of a big clang.”

Meanwhile Charaler rapped out orders. They swept past the pier and it dropped behind. Their tracers reached toward it and dropped into the shadows alongside. The 76 clanged steadily from aft, its shells going home in crashing white blasts amid the buildings and boats. Several of them were sinking, listing over. A bow poked upward; there were men on it, scrambling about like ants on a sinking leaf. Tracers arched into them. The Iranians were firing on their own boats.

Dan bent his face again into the radar hood. To his horror, he saw that one of the Intruders had found their frequency. An angry seethe of jamming covered the screen. He jerked his head up and shifted to the alidade. “Mark! Jabal Halwa, south ridge, bearing two-nine-nine. What's the bearing when we're out of the anchorage, Chief?”

“Wait one … two-nine-oh, say again two-nine-oh.”

“Depth,” said Shaker calmly.

“Five feet under the keel, shoaling fast.”

“Steady, Stever,
Adams
draws more than we do. Stand by … okay. Right hard rudder,
now.
”

The helmsman spun the wheel and the deck leaned under their feet. Dan grabbed for the chart table. Empty brass from the .50s rolled above their heads.

She came around fast, faster than
Adams,
and Charaler steadied her up on the reciprocal. The piers and buildings grew ahead of them again.

They know we're here now, Dan thought. Now it's our turn to play target.

As if to confirm it, a shell splash leapt up directly ahead. The spray rained down on the forecastle as
Van Zandt
tore into it. Tracers sailed out from the shore, fell short, then lifted. They stitched along the water and began clanging into the hull. “Shore battery, counterfire, to the right of the small pier,” someone screamed. He ignored it and took another bearing on the mountain. “Range to the piers, keep 'em coming,” Shaker shouted.

“No radar, estimate four hundred yards and closing.”

“Starboard tubes, fire when you bear!”

Thuds aft.

“Torpedoes away. All torpedoes expended.”

“Mount thirty-one out of ammo, sir!”

The ready magazine held seventy rounds. The loaders below would be sweating now, but for the moment their main gun was out of commission. The .50s resumed their clatter as the range closed.

The ship jerked under his feet, and he heard a crunch like two Cadillacs colliding. “Hit aft,” shouted one of the talkers.

“Increase to twenty knots,” said Shaker. “Damage control, Bridge: Get me data on the hits! Dan, did you plot those Q markers when we came in?”

“Yessir. Plotting a course out now.”

There was a sudden jolt, not loud, but hard. It came through the water. Dan saw a plume of spray leap up from the short pier. Then another jolt, and the pier disintegrated, the little house disappeared, the boats disappeared, geysering upward on three huge underwater explosions.

“Okay, let's get the fuck out of here! Give me a course.”

“One-seven-zero looks good.”

“Left hard rudder, come to one-seven-zero,” said Charaler.

“Mr. Charaler, did I direct you to come to that course?”

“You said to get the fuck out of here, Captain.”

“Okay, just checking.”

“Bridge, DC central: Loamer here.”

“Talk to us, Percy.”

“Sir, we took three hits a couple minutes ago. Shell hit in Auxiliary Machinery Room number three. Fragment damage. Number-four diesel generator and number-five fire pump off the line. Hit in starboard helo hangar, class bravo fire. Fire boundaries set. Initiating foam flooding. Hit in chiefs' berthing, class alfa fire, Repair Two's providing.”

“Percy, we're gonna need the AMR back, give that priority unless the fires spread.”

“Aye, sir. Uh, how's it look up there, sir?”

“Hell, I forgot all about the guys below,” said Shaker. “We're doin' good, kicking ass, on our way out now, I'll talk on the 1MC after—”

The flash and crack came simultaneously. Fragments clanged against the starboard wing. Before they could react, another shell exploded a few feet aft, on the signal bridge, another back by the 76. Dan caught muzzle flashes and grabbed the radio handset. “Lariat, this is Apache. Taking fire from shore. Gun battery on flat-topped hummock to the right of the pier.”

“Apache, Lariat, roger, out.”

“Ahead full,” shouted Shaker, his voice distant. Dan reached up to rub his ears. No, not distant, he'd been deafened. Good thing those hadn't been armor-piercing. From the rate of fire, it must have been an AA gun, depressed to a horizontal trajectory.

He checked the radar—it was still flickering like heat lightning, hopelessly jammed—and then the chart. McQueen's track showed them headed fair for the lane out.

He was taking a deep breath, ready to accept a strategic retreat, when he saw a piece of the burning pier, the one their torpedoes hadn't hit, slide away from the rest. He stared at it in disbelief, then remembered his binoculars. He stepped out onto the wing, lifting them, and sensed something soft underfoot. “Who the hell's lying down out here?”

“He's wounded, sir.”

Dan caught the shape then in the twin circle of the night glasses. For an endless second, his mind refused to accept it. Then it did.

“Submarine to starboard!” he screamed.

Every man on the bridge spun around. Shaker swore. “What? Where?”

“The long pier, alongside! Getting under way now!”

Shaker's binoculars came up for the first time during the action. After a long moment, he muttered “It's him, all right. Camouflaged. He's been sitting right here in Abu Musa. Good eye, Dan. Okay, call Lewis. Get the Phalanx on him.”

“CIWS out of ammo!”

“Shit! Get the 76—”

“Still reloading, sir.”

“Let
Adams
take her, sir,” said Dan. “Five-inch'll crack the pressure hull—”

“Jakkal's headed out! He doesn't see it—or doesn't want to!” The massive head steadied on the shape that now accelerated, driving silently out from shore. Orange flames, parts of the pier, still flickered on its decks.

“Let's stand by outside the anchorage—” But even as he said it, Dan stopped. As soon as the sub cleared the island, it would submerge. And with sonar conditions as bad as they were, they'd never see it again. Till its fish slammed into another tanker.

“Hard right rudder!” shouted Shaker. The helmsman responded instantly, repeating the command as he twisted the wheel.

“There's a shoal over there, sir!”

“I think we can turn inside it—Lewis! Get that motherfucking gun reloaded!
Now!
”

Van Zandt
came around fast and tight at full speed, almost in her own length.

They were halfway around when there was an ungodly noise from the wing. Dan stared out for a three-second-long year as
Adams
screamed by not fifty feet away, her blowers and turbines whining like a battalion of banshees. The steady flashes from her guns lit the smoke and spray of her passage. They lit startled faces on her bridge. They showed the old destroyer's bow twisted and mangled as if she'd hit a wall. There were answering flashes, redder, from ashore.

Shaker shouted, “Is the gun ready?”

“Not yet, sir!”

“Okay, fuck it! Ahead flank emergency. Let's ruin this bastard's paint job!”

“Engines ahead flank emergency, steady as she goes!”

A low black shape ahead, perhaps a hundred meters off the burning pier, its deadly bow swinging toward them … no other choice now, unless they wanted a torpedo up the ass …
Van Zandt
gathered speed fast as she steadied.

He saw then what Shaker was going to do. There was nothing to say. No time to do anything but jump for the collision alarm, yank it over. Then grab a cable and brace himself.

They hit with a long, grinding crash that threw every man on the bridge to his knees.

0212 HOURS: U.S.S.
CHARLES ADAMS

Phelan was looking at the clock when the steel he was leaning against whip-cracked into his back. The fluorescents flickered, went out, flickered again, blue, then came on again full force. He half-scrambled up, but he was one of ten men sprawled and squatting on the deck, and gear covered the rest of it; he found no room to stand. With a hopeless moan, he sank back, feeling his bladder loosen suddenly, a warmth crawl down one leg.

The repair-team leader yanked open the watertight door and stood in it, looking out. Bernard saw men running in the passageway outside. Like him, they wore dungarees, leather gloves, miner-style hard hats with lights on top. His bell-bottoms were tucked into his socks and his feet felt heavy and strange in the cracked old steel-toes they'd issued him for GQ.

“Repair Two! Repair-team leader!” came a hoarse, scared voice somewhere forward.

“Repair Two leader aye!”

“Hit forward, suspected mine, vicinity frame ten, investigate and report.”

The team leader yelled it back, grabbed his clipboard, and disappeared. The rest of the team waited, not talking, their faces varnished with sweat. The ventilation had been secured for GQ and the air was as close as if they were waiting in a stalled elevator.

More boots thudded by outside and there were clangs and thuds from above. The lights flickered again. Phelan sat without looking, his brain empty of thought. His face was screwed closed like a jar, and he hugged his knees, rocking slightly in the cocoon of web belts, cables, fire axes, hoses, and line.