Read Dragon Fire (The Battle for the Falklands Book 2) Online
Authors: Peter von Bleichert
Several
meters down, within the underworld of
San
Luis II
’s hull, the primary hatch clanged shut.
Its locking mechanism articulated and
finalized the situation.
Raton felt the
submarine tip forward.
He was alone.
He was outside.
San
Luis II
began to dive.
Raton’s
brain raced:
Had they forgotten him?
Was he
being sacrificed?
Raton looked
up.
Dragon
was just a wall of grey steel.
The ram
of her prow crossed the patch of foam that
San
Luis II
’s hull had just occupied, and Raton looked to the submarine’s outer
hatch.
It was still open, a portal to
either salvation or damnation.
Whatever
the reason for his being left topside, Raton would do one last thing.
It would not be for Argentina or his captain,
but instead for his boat and fellow submariners.
Raton slammed the outer hatch shut.
The sound reverberated through his soul and imparted
final verification.
He had been left
topside.
The
men he had struggled to give power to, to keep alive, had left him there.
Grateful for the air and sea spray, he felt
he belonged below where the air was dirty and stale and tasted of battery acid,
farts, and sweat.
He accepted his place
and forced the hatch’s locking lever, confirming his position and fate with the
metallic ring of steel.
The
hatch’s lever—half rust, half over-painted metal—broke the finger bones of his
right hand as it snapped into position.
Raton was unsure whether the scream that came from his mouth was one of
pain or resignation to his fate.
A spray
of cold water refreshed and stung his cheeks, and the sensation both quieted
and confirmed the reason for his shriek.
It also confirmed that he was still alive.
Raton looked up and saw the sharp, grey shape
of
Dragon
looming ever larger.
He
saw the red wyrm that adorned
Dragon
’s
bow.
The mythical creature hissed and
spat and threatened with razor-sharp claws.
The shape rose and fell down almost upon him.
There was a deafening crunch and a
bone-jarring tremor as Raton was knocked hard to the conning station’s deck
where he hit his head.
The world went
black.
Raton
tasted salt water and the coppery tinge of blood and realized he was
underwater.
Light and dark alternated as
he tumbled.
Bubbles hissed all about
him.
He tried to struggle toward the
light, but the strobe effect continued the eddy created by
San Luis II
’s sinking mass tossed his body like rag doll.
Despite his predicament, Raton thought of
those trapped inside the submarine.
The
Control Center lights had flashed off and on, then off again, and stayed that
way.
Ledesma reached through the
darkness for where the captain had been standing.
He felt only cold, wet metal.
Unsure of where the floor ended and the
rounded walls began, Ledesma probed the dark.
He heard groans and coughs and he heard shouted orders.
Ledesma added his own cry to the cacophony:
“¡
Capitán
!”
“Santiago…”
Matias responded weakly.
Ledesma
made for the voice and called out: “Someone…give me a flashlight.”
His hand was smacked by a flashlight, as a
surgeon receiving an instrument from an operating room nurse.
He grasped the small rubber-covered cylinder
and offered to the shadowy figure: “
Gracias
”
He clicked on the flashlight.
Its cone
of light cut the blackness like a knife, and its yellow eye travelled over the
dripping control panels, pipes, wires, and valves of
San Luis II
’s
Control Center, and over the fear-filled faces of her crewmen.
As
though attempting to pass through, one man held the curved wall of the inner
pressure hull.
Another submariner was at
his station, hunched before the depth gauge, dutifully watching as its needle
indicated increasing depth.
He turned
valves and clicked switches.
Despite
these efforts, however, the submarine continued to roll farther onto her side,
and she pitched steeper and steeper as she slid backward toward the bottom.
As
Ledesma’s light moved over the submariner’s face, the man raised a hand—not as a
salute, but a shield from the blinding beam—and with his face expressing
resignation, shook his head in the negative.
He tried to speak, but instead coughed and spat out the water that had flowed
off an overhead pipe and drenched his face, filling his mouth.
Then he tried again: “Sir, she won’t
answer.
She--”
San
Luis II
interrupted her crewman by protesting the abuse she had endured
with a bone-chilling metallic whine.
The
crewman’s eyes widened as he finished his thought.
“Sir,
Numero
Dos
…she is
going down.”
Ledesma exhaled, for he had
already known this truth.
“Emergency
surface: Blow mains; blow auxiliaries; blow safeties.
Planes all down; engines ahead full.”
With these orders, which were dutifully repeated,
but likely with no real hope, Ledesma shifted attention to finding his captain.
The
circle of light continued its scan, and it finally found Matias.
His face was so bloodied that Ledesma would
not have recognized the slumped man as his superior had the flashlight not
caught sight of the uniform shoulder board’s four gold-braid stripes and looped
top stripe.
“
Capitán
Matias
,” Ledesma stuttered, “¿
Estás bien
?”—‘
Are you okay?’—Ledesma asked, his voice betraying the deep concern of a man who held his duty to be protective, respectful, and responsible.
Against the lean of the deck plates, Ledesma scampered to the captain.
Despite a jarring roll from the submarine, he stayed low and made it to Captain Matias.
He supported his superior’s slumped weight and cradled his bowed head.
“
Señor
…”
“Santiago…” Captain Matias coughed, hocking bloody sputum.
“My son…he calls to me.
He wants me to come home.”
“
Capitán
...”
“
Lo siento mucho
.”—‘I am sorry’—Captain Matias forced from his clogged windpipe.
“Sir… You fought well.
You have honored us all.
You have honored our boat, our crewmates, all of us.
I am proud to serve with you, to have served under you.
You
are
my captain…always,” Ledesma ranted, on the verge of tears.
“The British…” Matias forced.
“These Englishmen…”
“¿
Si
,
señor
?”
“Do not--”
Captain Matias succumbed to his head wound, and died in the arms of his comrade.
Santiago Ledesma was certain that his captain had tried to say: ‘Do not hate them.
Instead, respect them.
For they are just like you: Of Country, of honor, and, of Determination.’
Ledesma then remembered a quote from Jorge Luis Borges.
The Argentinian Poet and Essayist had chimed in regarding the first conflict between Argentina and the United Kingdom—two great, proud nations—over barren rocks.
Borges had written: “The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.”
With the blood-covered body of his dead captain nestled in his arms, Ledesma laughed like a
man under stress, a man who questioned his grasp on the world, and who wondered about the bounds of his reality.
“Eighty meters.
Keel: 30 degrees off level.
Stern down 22 degrees,” someone shouted from the darkness.
“Main tanks have blown.” And then, “Machine room reports heavy flooding.
Damage control team is in place.”
Red emergency lights came on just as the growler rang.
The electrician’s mate stood before Ledesma, looked to his dead captain, and reported: “Sir, emergency lighting activated.”
The growler called for attention again.
Ledesma gestured, the electrician’s mate answered it, and listened intently.
His face fell, an expression of desperation replaced by one of hopelessness.
He dropped the growler, which bounced up and down on its coiled lead.
“Forward compartment reports,” he stuttered, “the torpedo in tube 5…its motor has started.”
Ledesma bowed his head and closed his eyes, for he knew the
inevitable.
Less than two minutes later,
the jammed torpedo’s HTP motor, with its propeller over-speeding, and unable to
vent the high-pressure oxygen generated by its chemical reaction,
exploded.
This triggered the weapon’s
high-explosive warhead, fatally bursting
San Luis II
’s pressure hull.
◊◊◊◊
Dragon
slowed and stopped.
She went low at the bow, dipping her head beneath the oncoming waves.
The sonar dome and a portion of the stem had been ripped away, and the ship’s forward compartments now lay open to the sea and were flooding fast.
On the bridge, both Captain Fryatt and his navigator had gone unconscious.
Fryatt had been thrown into a panel and a gash lay torn across his forehead.
Angus had slammed into the wheel, fracturing his rib cage and folding him over until his temple impacted a monitor.
He was thrown to the floor as
Dragon
yawed hard at the impact.
He lay where he landed.
One of the snapped ribs stabbed into his left lung, digging deeper with each shallow breath.
As life slipped from the navigator, a smashed circuit box sparked and sizzled, kindling a fire.
◊◊◊◊
The Merlin swept in when the bright red of a
personal floatation device was spotted cresting a wave.
Flying the Merlin into the wind, Seamus
approached and slowed the aircraft to a hover.
“Man floating in the water,” Rodi announced,
judging him to be unconscious or dead.
The Merlin’s rotor thrust air down in a 70-knot blast that formed a
circle of sea foam.
Soon the floating
shape floated at the center of this circle.
“Good position,” Rodi confirmed, and slid the helicopter’s cargo door
open.
John was shoved by salty wind, and the roar
of the Merlin’s three turbines flooded the rear cabin.
In his search-and-rescue capacity, John sent
power to the cargo door-mounted rescue hoist just as Seamus activated the
Merlin’s hover trim controller.
He gave
thumbs up to Rodi.
Rodi nodded and clipped his safety harness
and halyard onto a cabin floor eyelet and then leaned out to grab the hoist
arm, slewing it out into a locked position.
When it was deployed, the winch paid out several yards of slack cable.
Rodi clipped a lift harness to the swivel hook,
and then peeked out and down.
He saw the
man in the water.
◊◊◊◊
Raton came to and looked up at the hovering
helicopter.
His face was blasted by
wind-whipped sea spray that stung his flesh, keeping him conscious.
I am
at the surface
, Raton
thought.
He tried to yell out, but his
mouth filled with cold salt water that choked him and made him cough and
spasm.
He recovered a breath and spat
the liquid out as the rotor-generated wind continued to smack him in the
face.
Raton again tumbled under, took in
a mouthful of Atlantic Ocean and re-surfaced.
He waved his hands and, despite his burning throat, screamed: “¡
Ayuda
!” Most of
the cry became an indiscernible gurgle, not that those in the hovering Merlin could
have heard Raton anyhow.
◊◊◊◊
“Survivor in distress,” Rodi said when he saw
the irregular motion of Raton’s waving arms within the surging rhythm of dark
blue waves and whitecaps.
Rodi shouted
the announcement to John who in turn used his headset microphone to transmit
the information to the helicopter’s cockpit.
Seamus looked again to the sea’s surface, locked his eyes on the bright
red personal floatation device that now stood out from the darker background,
and dropped his hover another several meters while adjusting it to bring the
relative position of the cabin hoist directly above the survivor.
Rodi
turned to John and gave a thumb’s up.