Counter Poised (34 page)

Chapter 46

USS
Louisiana

The captain and MacKenzie continued to struggle with the latch holding SF-1 securely to the deck. Meanwhile, the
Louisiana
began to nose over into an unrecoverable dive into the depths of the Kermandec Trench. Her speed built quickly.

“Captain, we’re at ten knots and the latch is still
STUCK
!” MacKenzie screamed.

“I know, Mac. We
have
to get it loose or we’re dead!” In the cramped cockpit of the sub- fighter, George reached across MacKenzie’s lap and grabbed the lever. “On the count of three, pull with everything you’ve got! One…two…three…PULL!”

Together, the two men pulled with all their might…Nothing! The lever didn’t budge. They were still latched firmly to the deck.

“Captain, we’re at two hundred and fifty feet, ten degrees down-bubble. Speed accelerating through twenty knots!”

At this accelerating speed and rate of descent, the captain and MacKenzie had only a few seconds remaining to get the sub-fighter off the deck of the
Louisiana
.

“All right, Mac. Cinch your harness belts tight. I’m going all ahead full on the impeller. Stand by to engage the SQID drive!”

“While we are still
latched
, Captain?” MacKenzie asked incredulously.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures. It’s now or never. The SQID drive will put a hundred times more pressure on that latch than we can ourselves.”

George put the impeller throttle full forward, and SF-1 began to strain against the latch, trying in vain to move the sub-fighter at fifty knots while the
Louisiana
accelerated through twenty-five. But George knew this would not be enough—this was the same setup they had used to silently propel the powerless
Louisiana
around Cape Horn, right under the noses of the world’s premier attack boats. If the sub-fighter hadn’t broken free then, there was not much reason to think it would now.

“SQID drive charged…Engaged!”

The squid drive roared to life, and almost immediately there was the sound of wrenching metal as SF-1 lurched forward, stopped momentarily, and then finally broke free of the
Louisiana
with a violent jerk.

“Hooray! Thank God!” MacKenzie shouted. “We did it—we’re free!”

The sub-fighter soared away from the
Louisiana
as the lumbering giant disappeared into the murky depths below. They celebrated as George turned west toward Kermandec Number Nine and started to climb back toward the surface.

Their elation, however, was short-lived.

“We have a problem here, Captain.”

“What’s that?”

“Flooding! We’ve got water rising through the deck plates!”

“Holy cow! We must have ruptured the hull when we broke loose. We have to get to the surface NOW! That water will short out the batteries, and without
juice
we have no propulsion. And in a sub-fighter, you know what that means…”

“Yes, sir. No propulsion means ‘Hello Davy Jones’!”

As the cockpit continued to fill with water, George pulled up the nose of SF-1 and hit the SQID drive again, rapidly propelling SF-1 toward the surface. Just then, the rising water inside the fighter shorted out the batteries. Luckily for the two occupants, the fighter’s momentum carried them to the surface, and George was able to hold it there because of their forward velocity…at least momentarily.

“Get that topside hatch open, Mac. We’ve got to bail out!”

“I’ve got it, sir. She’s swinging open!”

Water began splashing in the open hatch as waves broke over the top of SF-1. They had to hurry. When SF-1 slowed to less than five knots, George would no longer be able to hold her on the surface.

“Get your ass out, Mac. I’m right behind you!”

“Sir, you should go first. I’m just a lowly petty officer…”

“There’s no time for arguing—Go! That’s an order!”

MacKenzie unlatched his harness, reached up, and placed both hands on the lip of the open hatch. He pulled himself up so that both feet were in his seat. In one swift movement, he jumped through the opening while guiding himself out with his hands. He rolled off of the top of the sub-fighter into the sea.

Just then, SF-1 slid below the waterline and a torrent of water plunged though the hatch into the cockpit. There was no way George could fight his way out through that torrent. As the cockpit rapidly filled with water, George took a deep breath and waited, knowing that the torrent would stop once the cockpit was full. When he felt the current subside, he repeated MacKenzie’s actions and propelled himself through the hatch, approximately twenty feet under the surface of the water. George swam to the surface, arriving only ten feet away from where MacKenzie treaded water, dazed and shocked.

“Captain!” MacKenzie shouted as George surfaced, facing the opposite direction. “Over here! Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” George coughed. “I just need to catch my breath and get my bearings.” It was late afternoon, so the sun was starting to set in the western sky.

They were alone in the shark-infested waters of the South Pacific, dressed only in their submariner’s blue
poopie suit
uniforms and sneakers. They had no floatation gear and were treading water twenty miles from the nearest land. Even worse, an international armada was about to descend on their location and start an exhaustive search for survivors of the
Louisiana
. George and MacKenzie knew very well the dire consequences that awaited them if they were captured. Public humiliation…a sham trial for treason…a media circus…and probable execution. And they floated at the mercy of the South Pacific current.

“I figure we’re about twenty miles east of Kermandec Number Nine, sir. That’s the closest land. How are we going to get there?”

“We’ll get there slowly but surely. The current is in our favor. It’s pretty strong, and it flows east to west in this area. So it should help carry us back toward the island. Even if we just float, we should get there in eighteen hours or so.”

“Eighteen hours! I don’t think I can swim that long, Captain.”

“We need to conserve our strength.”

“In water survival school, they taught us a drown-proofing technique where you take a breath and just relax face down in the water until you need another breath. Then with just a gentle kick, you raise your head and take another breath. It’s supposed to minimize your energy usage. Do you remember that class, Captain?”

“Yes I do, but that technique is really designed for a situation in which you’re shipwrecked and waiting for rescue forces to pick you up. We’re not in that situation. We don’t want to be found, so we need to put as much distance between this location and ourselves as quickly as we can. Which means we need to do some swimming.”

“Well, we’ll get tired pretty quickly if we try to do the crawl, Captain.”

“Yes I know. I recommend doing the backstroke with a frog kick. Take your sneakers off and put them inside your poopie suit. That will make it easier to swim, and we’ll need those shoes when we get to the island.”

“Yeah,
if
we get there.”

“Positive thinking, Mac—it works wonders.”

“Yes, sir—I meant
when
we get there.”

“We want to move toward that setting sun as quickly as possible, but without a lot of splashing around.”

MacKenzie chuckled. “Captain, I don’t think those subs out there are going to hear a couple guys splashing on the surface.”

“It’s not the subs I’m concerned about—it’s the sharks.”

“
Sharks
! Holy crap!”

“Now don’t get too excited. We shouldn’t have a problem if we don’t attract their attention. People have this false image that sharks are always swimming around on the surface with their dorsal fins sticking out of the water. But in reality, sharks in the open ocean rarely come to the surface. They’re usually swimming around a couple of hundred feet down. That’s where their normal food supply is. They only come to the surface when one of their prey is wounded and is bleeding or splashing around up here.”

“Okay, Captain. You won’t hear a single splash from me!”

George and MacKenzie swam and rested and swam some more throughout the evening, using the setting sun to guide them westward. Once darkness came, it was more difficult to tell from the southern hemisphere sky which direction was west. So they floated with the current throughout the long night, which seemed like it would never end. Off and on through the night, MacKenzie used the drown-proofing technique they had learned in water survival school, but George had never been comfortable with his face in the water. So he floated on his back where he could breathe freely. At first light the next morning, they began to swim away from the rising sun. By midmorning, Kermandec Number Nine was in sight, and they wearily let the surf wash them ashore.

Chapter 47

The
Nuku’alofa
had stayed at the rendezvous point for an hour beyond the appointed time, but could not stay in the area any longer due to the expected arrival of forces searching for the
Louisiana
. By the time George and MacKenzie washed ashore, the
Nuku
had long ago moved to its normal cargo route west of the island and proceeded back to Auckland.

“We have to hide on this island,” said George. “This whole area will be swarming with search crews and salvage ships from all over the world. For the first couple of days, they will probably fly some reconnaissance flights over these islands, too. We can’t let them find us.”

“But how long can we stay here? How are we going to get off this island? And how are we going to get back to our two-man teams?”

“All good questions, Mac. We need to scout around and see if we can find a source of fresh water. Water will be the critical factor for survival. If we can’t find any, our time on this island may be very short.”

“Well, I see lots of palm trees, so we can get plenty of coconut milk. And there may be pools of rainwater collected in the rocks further up on the island. Hey, if Tom Hanks can survive as a castaway for four or five
years
, we ought to be able to survive four or five
days
, don’t you think?”

George laughed. “That’s true, but that was Hollywood, and this is real life. Still, if we find water, I don’t think we’ll have any problem. And if the XO did his job, SF-2 is hidden in a little cove on the west side of the island. We should be able to use it to get out of here when the time is right. I’d like to make it to Auckland within a week.”

“But what then, Captain? I know where my teammate was supposed to go, but he can’t do it alone, so he’s probably changed his plan now and joined with another team. I have no idea where they would be going. All of the locations are secret, and even you don’t know where anyone else is going. And what about Leona? Isn’t she your teammate?”

George shook his head. He and Leona had thought they were being so clever in hiding their relationship. He still couldn’t believe everyone on the Louisiana knew their secret!

“I truly hope I can find her, Mac,” George said with a lonely sadness in his voice. “It would be a tremendous loss if I never see her again. And it would be even worse for her, because she has no way of knowing whether we’re dead or alive. We’ll just have to see what we find when we get to Auckland. Right now, we need to find some shelter and get a little sleep. We will both be thinking more clearly when we’ve had some rest.”

George and MacKenzie hid out over the next couple of days surviving on coconuts and papayas. Several times, aircraft from a U.S. aircraft carrier flew search missions over the island. The second day, a U.S. Navy helicopter slowly circled the entire island. George and McKenzie hid behind a rock outcropping to avoid detection.

“Keep solid rock between your body and that helicopter at all times,” George had warned MacKenzie. “The infrared sensors they have these days can detect body heat right through foliage. But solid rock will shield us.”

On the third day, they located SF-2 in a small cove on the west side of the island. The XO had done his job well. The fighter was hidden under some low-hanging tree branches in water shallow enough to allow George and MacKenzie to enter the fighter through the top hatch. They checked out the fighter’s systems and, to their dismay, found the batteries almost totally depleted.

“What now, Captain? We can’t get far on this charge. And we surely don’t want to get out into the ocean and run out of power.”

“You’re right. On this charge we can run for maybe half an hour. That means we have a maximum range of about twenty miles.”

“Twenty miles? There’s
nothing
within a twenty-mile range!” said MacKenzie despondently.

George sat thoughtfully looking through his porthole at the beautiful little South Pacific cove. On a different day, under different circumstances, it would be an ideal spot for a romantic getaway with Leona. Now it seemed it might be the last place he ever saw in his life.

George turned to MacKenzie. “Okay…Plan B, Mac.”

“Only B, sir?”

“Okay, okay, you’re right—with the way this mission has gone, let’s call it Plan Z.”

MacKenzie laughed, starting to perk up a little. “All right, Plan Zebra. What did you have in mind?”

“There’s a daily freighter that runs between Auckland and Tonga. They use several old freighters similar to the
Nuku
since the trip takes several days. The trade route runs just west of the Kermandec Island chain. I’m not sure how far out from the islands they run, but if we climb up that hill next to the cove, we may be able to spot one of the freighters as it passes by.”

“And then what?”

“From the height of that hill, we should be able to see about twenty or twenty-five miles—pretty much our max range.”

“Ah…so if we can
see
a freighter, we should be able to
reach
it.”

“Exactly. Let’s get up that hill today so we can see if anything passes within range. If so, we can estimate how far out they are and how fast they’re moving. Then we can plan our rendezvous for tomorrow.”

“We’re going to have to plan it carefully, Captain. We’ll have to see the freighter early enough to run down the hill, launch the fighter, and get out to their track before they pass us by. If we fall behind, we may run out of power before we can catch up.”

“That’s true. The problem is like a quarterback throwing a pass to a wide receiver running a crossing route. The quarterback has to make sure he leads the receiver enough so that the ball and the receiver arrive at the same point at the same time.”

“That’s right, Captain.”

“The only thing is we only have one shot at it. If we miss and have to bail out again, we’ll be
west
of the islands and the current will carry us away. We’ll never make it back.”

“Understood, Captain. We’ll just have to throw a touchdown!”

George and MacKenzie climbed to the top of the small hill overlooking the cove. Around three o’clock that afternoon, they spotted a freighter moving south toward Auckland. By their estimates, it was about ten miles out.

“They probably keep in sight of the islands as they make their way back and forth,” said George. “It makes their navigation a lot easier.”

“Get a good fix on where they are right now, Captain, and I’ll run down to the fighter. When I get there, get another fix so that we can see how far they move in that time period. That will help us determine how much we have to lead them in order to effect the rendezvous.”

“Good thinking, Mac. Let me get a time hack, too, so we know how long it takes to run from here to the fighter.”

After MacKenzie made his run, George came down to the cove and with sticks picked up from the beach, they drew out the situation in the sand. Using an estimate of the angle that the freighter traversed during MacKenzie’s run, and the estimated distance from the island to the freighter, they were able to use basic trigonometry to calculate how far the freighter traveled. Knowing the elapsed time, they were able to calculate the freighter’s speed. Finally, knowing the speed at which they intended to fly the fighter, they were able to calculate a lead angle by which they would have to lead the freighter in order to keep from falling behind. Armed with this information, they were ready to go and settled into their shelter for the night.

“Enjoy this hearty meal of coconut and papaya, Mac. Hopefully, it will be our last.”

“And the condemned man ate a hearty meal…”

“There you go again.”

“Sorry, Captain. I know—
positive
thinking. Our next meal will be a hamburger, fries, and a shake. I’m getting tired of this low-carb, low-fat diet!”

“Let’s get some sleep. We’re going to need to be thinking clearly tomorrow.”

The next morning, George instructed MacKenzie to remove his name tag and all other insignia from his poopie suit uniform. “We don’t want anyone to be able to identify us or trace us to the
Louisiana
,” he said. “We’ll tell these guys on the freighter we’re…uh…oceanographers, and our research vessel had a ballast tank failure.”

“Roger that, sir. I guess that’s as good a story as any as to why two guys are all alone in a minisub in the middle of the Pacific!”

With that, George positioned himself next to SF-2 in the cove while MacKenzie climbed the hill to their lookout position. By midmorning, MacKenzie spotted a ship coming into view. He signaled to George and started down the hill. George got into SF-2 and brought its systems online, and by the time MacKenzie arrived, SF-2 was ready to go.

“Lock the hatch and strap yourself in,” said George, as MacKenzie lowered himself into the cockpit.

“Aye-aye, sir. I’m ready to go!”

George advanced the throttle, and SF-2 smoothly glided out of the cove and into the open ocean.

“Just head due west, sir. As soon as we get a little distance from the island I should be able to get a good sonar bearing on the freighter. Then we can adjust the heading to hold the lead angle we calculated yesterday.”

“Roger that. We’re headed two-seven-zero degrees, speed twenty-five knots to conserve battery power.”

Once they picked up the sonar bearing, George drove SF-2 to a position approximately two hundred yards ahead of the freighter. Battery power was
extremely
low, so he drove the fighter to the surface at minimum speed and held it there.

“Open the hatch and stand up through it and start yelling for help,” he ordered. “Let me know when they see you, and we’ll bail out.”

MacKenzie opened the hatch and stood up, with his head and shoulders extending out of the fighter. He began waving and yelling for help. Suddenly, MacKenzie ducked his head inside and exclaimed, “Captain! It’s not the freighter!”

“
What
? What is it?” Surely they hadn’t been suckered out of hiding to surrender to a naval patrol boat!
Had they
?

MacKenzie stood up to look again. “It looks like a deepsea fishing charter boat of some sort. It has a big banner on the side. They’re turning…I think it says…
Greenpeace
! They’re slowing down and turning toward us. They’ve seen me, Captain. One of the crewmembers is waving, and he has a life ring in his hand.”

“Okay, bail out, Mac! I’m right behind you—I’m getting out this time
before
the flooding starts!”

The two of them bailed out, and as George jumped from the deck of SF-2, the momentum was just enough to push the open hatch under the surface of the water. The water rushed in, and with a burst of bubbles, the fighter immediately sank from view.

The Greenpeace boat pulled up next to the two men, and three or four of their crew members hauled them safely aboard.

George flopped on the deck, exhausted from the exertion. Turning to the nearest crew member, he said, “Thank God you guys were here! We barely made it to the surface. We’d be goners without you!”

“Who are you guys?” asked the Greenpeace captain. “And what are you doing way out here? What was that vessel you were in?”

“We’re oceanographers. We were trying to document the damage being done to the environment by this submarine wreckage and the armada of navy ships east of the island. Unfortunately, our small research submarine cracked a seal, and we started to take on water. We had to bail out—I couldn’t hold it on the surface any longer!”

“Well, you two are real lucky,” said one of the crew members. “The current around here is real strong to the west. Even if you’re strong swimmers, you never would have made it to that island to the east.”

“Yeah, probably not,” said George. “We’ve been fighting against that current for a couple of days. I just wish we hadn’t lost all the evidence we had gathered about how those navy guys are polluting the sea. We had a couple hundred water samples that would have made them look real bad.”

“Oh yeah?” responded the Greenpeace captain. “I like the sounds of this—maybe we can use your testimony when we get back to Auckland.”

George and MacKenzie exchanged a quick glance before George coolly responded, “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Without the water samples, the testimony would be useless. It’ll just make Greenpeace look like idiots. Besides, my colleague and I are going to be in enough trouble as it is for losing our research sub. I don’t want repercussions from the authorities on top of that! Can we please keep this whole thing confidential?”

George found a very sympathetic audience in the Greenpeace crew members. They fully understood the kinds of pressures the military-industrial complex could put on people trying to save the planet. George and MacKenzie had nothing to worry about—the Greenpeace crew members would never tell anyone about this rescue.

Two days later, the Greenpeace boat arrived in Auckland. Their Greenpeace friends gave George and MacKenzie some fresh clothes and a few dollars to tide them over since they had lost everything when their research sub went down. After a fond farewell and vows to continue the fight to save Earth, George and MacKenzie left the boat and walked down the seaside pier into the bustle of the city.