Dragon Fire (The Battle for the Falklands Book 2) (5 page)

4:
SHIPWRECK

“
Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance
.”—Sun
Tzu

O
minous
black thundercaps blanketed the horizon, a wall of flashing, billowing moisture
marking the edge of the massive storm.
 
The
weather radar display on HMS
Dragon
’s
bridge showed a swirling mass of greens, yellows and reds, with patches of blue
indicating hailstones.
 
Lightning crackled,
fizzled, and ripped across the flashing sky.
 
Rain pattered the ship’s windows, and thunder arrived, a rolling boom
that trembled the ship.
 
Though gusts
still howled outside and the sleek grey hull rose and fell with the churning
sea, the tempest moved off.
 
Dragon
followed a course to skirt the
fury’s periphery and deliver the warship to her rendezvous with
Iron Duke
.

“Hold onto something,” Lieutenant
Commander Williams shouted.
 
His voice
betrayed the fun of it all.
 
The bridge
crew leaned on walls and clutched fixtures as the ship rode up a surge, tipped
down again and dove into a deep trough.
 
The ship’s prow dug in and heeled before popping up to point skyward
again.
 
Someone laughed with glee.

“
Dragon
…”
Fryatt whispered her name.
 
He was a
proud man.

Dragon
,
too, was happy.
 
She was in her element
and doing that for which she was built.
 
The sharp triangle of her bow buried itself again in the green wash of
cold Atlantic water.
 
The ship’s bones
vibrated.
 
Then the bow came up again, a clawed,
snarling, winged, whip-tailed red wyrm painted upon her grey skin.
 
An allusion to figureheads-of-old, the ship’s
sigil charged through the sea’s icy green foaming fingers, warded off evil
spirits and sea creatures, and trembled enemies by its ferocity.
 
White spray washed over the wyrm and
hissed.
 
Heavy with fuel provisions from her
stopover at Ascension Island,
Dragon
steamed south by west toward her rendezvous point.

The revolving spiked ball atop the ship’s faceted
main tower scanned the airspace for hostiles.
 
Aft of this array and the ship’s stack, just forward of the large, flat
early warning radar, the communication mast received a flash transmission from
Navy Command Headquarters.

◊◊◊◊

“What a mess,” Fryatt said to Williams as
he read the report.
 
Iron Duke
had been severely damaged by what was reported as an
accidental detonation of her magazine.
 
While she awaited tugs to tow her back to Ascension,
Dragon
was tasked to provide the
stricken frigate cover before continuing on to the warzone.

“Detonation?” Williams asked.

“The storm…
 
A missile must have broken loose of its rack
and its propellant ignited.
 
You know how
unstable ammonium perchlorate is.
 
It
probably set off a chain reaction in the magazine,” Fryatt posited.

“We are to continue on without a frigate?”
Williams added glumly.

“
Argyll
will join us in five days.
 
How long
until we get to
Iron Duke
’s position
?”

Williams checked their own coordinates,
and said: “Within the hour.”

◊◊◊◊

By the time
Dragon
came up on
Iron Duke
,
the sea-state was down, the water swelling gently into rounded hills.
 
Iron
Duke
rode low by the stern and wallowed in the gentle undulation lapping at
her freeboard.
 
A slick surrounded
her.
 
Fumes gathered and burned the
throats of those on
Dragon
’s decks
who leaned against the rails to gawk and offer salutes to any of the frigate’s hard-working
crew that stole a gaze at the passing destroyer.
 
On the bridge, Captain Fryatt raised his
binoculars.

He scanned
Iron Duke
’s hull.
 
He saw
some charring, and the pumps busy sending water overboard through multiple openings.
 
Fryatt looked to
Iron Duke
’s mast.
 
The colors
flew at half height.
 
His magnified view
blurred as it shifted toward the frigate’s flight deck where an honor guard
went about its solemn duty.

Heads were bowed as a prayer was
recited.
 
The heads then raised and
salutes were thrown.
 
A body slid from a
flag-draped board into the sea.
 
The flag
was closed up and encased, and the guard broke up and returned to duties to
keep the ship afloat, and to prepare her for a tow.

Accidental
detonation
.
 
These words
stuck uneasily in Fryatt’s mind, and the little hairs at the back of his neck
stood on end.
 
He surveyed the vast open
ocean.

“Power-up the sonar,” he ordered.
 
“And get the Merlin up.
 
Cold pattern.”

Dragon
’s
MFS-7000 sonar array broadcast a powerful active pulse.
 
Steam bubbles formed around the bow’s bulbous
protuberance, and a deafening WHOMP emerged.
 
The medium frequency waves propagated through the water for several
miles.

In
Dragon
’s
Op Room a midshipman studied his sonar screens.
 
He awaited the return of reflected sound waves, awaited the computer’s
analysis, and looked for a blip that would allow him to yell out:
‘Contact.’
 
He was certain that, if
anything was submerged within five miles, he would find it.
 
He clicked away at his keyboard and scrutinized
the results.
 
Nothing
, he thought, disappointed.

“Thermocline at 400 feet deep,”
Dragon
’s sonarman unenthusiastically told
the Operations Director.
 
This meant that
warmer water sat atop the colder depths, and thus created an inversion layer
where the two varying water masses converged.
 
This layer was impermeable to sound waves, and acted like a false bottom
that bounced
Dragon
’s sonar right
back at her, providing protection to anything that lurked beneath it.
 
“Otherwise, sir, the scope is clear,” the
sonarman added.

“
Helo’s
launching,” the director responded.
 
The
ship’s helicopter would use its dipping sonar and sonobuoys to penetrate this
layer and expand
Dragon
’s view of the
subsurface world.

◊◊◊◊

San
Luis II
steamed along, doing four knots at 500 feet, some 100
feet beneath the thermocline.
 
The
Argentine submariners kept their distance from where they had prosecuted
Iron Duke
, and listened as a new target
entered the area.
 
After twenty minutes
of analyzing the screw and powerplant noise that the passive sonar had
collected,
San Luis II
’s sonar
technicians determined they were hearing a
Daring
-class
guided-missile destroyer.
 
They
designated the surface contact as ‘Delta 1.’

“Report,” Captain Matias ordered.

“We heard a medium-frequency active
sonar.
 
Its transmitter was about eight
miles off at one-nine-seven.”
 
The
sonarman’s
face shriveled as he listened close.
 
“
Señor
,
Delta 1 is slowing.”

Matias looked to Ledesma.

“If I was their captain,” Ledesma offered,
“I would be launching my helicopter.”

“Yes, Santiago,” Matias confirmed, proud
of his protégé.

“Sir, the
D
-class has the Merlin,” Ledesma added with a worried look.

Both men had a healthy respect for this
particular type of anti-submarine warfare helicopter.

“Take us deeper, Santiago.
 
Two hundred fifty meters.”

“
Sí
,
señor
.”

◊◊◊◊

The Merlin HM2 helicopter emerged from its
hangar and traversed onto
Dragon
’s
stern flight deck.
 
A haze-grey machine,
the Merlin wore a radome on its chin and was configured for anti-submarine
warfare with two Stingray lightweight torpedoes and two Mark 11 depth charges
slung beneath its parallelogram-shaped fuselage.
 
Emblazoned on the helicopter’s side was
‘ROYAL NAVY’ and a red, white and blue roundel.

The Flight Deck Officer saluted to the
helicopter’s pilot, indicating the flight deck chief had the wheel chocks in
place and there was no sign of foreign objects that the Merlin’s engines or
rotors could suck in.
 
The Merlin’s pilot—Lieutenant
Seamus McLaughlin from
Enniskillen
, Northern
Ireland—loved to fly.
 
Beneath his flight
helmet, Seamus the pilot had fire red hair and a ‘full set’—Royal Navy-speak
for a beard and mustache.
 
Seamus moved a
control panel lever, and the helicopter’s five main rotor blades unfolded from
their ship-stowed position and locked in place.
 
With a nod from the Merlin’s secondary pilot, Seamus started the helicopter’s
three turboshaft engines.
 
The engines
coughed black smoke as they ignited and then whined as they spun up.
 
Seamus performed his pre-departure radio
checks.

“
Draig
,
Kingfisher 21, radio check, over,” Seamus said
into his headset.
 
Due to his thick Irish accent, he had learned
to speak slowly and clearly when using the radio.

“Kingfisher two-one,
Draig
,
loud and clear, over,”
Dragon
’s air
traffic controller responded.

The helicopter pilots went through
pre-flight checklists in the front of the machine, and in its rear cabin, the
Merlin’s observer and aircrewman went about their own tasks.
 
The observer was Ordinary Seaman Rodi Dando
whom hailed from Dockyard on the Spanish Point of Bermuda and was the
descendant of an African privateer.
 
Also
operating in the rear cabin was Merlin’s aircrewman, Leading Seaman John
Mcelaney.

Aircrewman John Mcelaney was a wide-shouldered
lad from Liverpool.
 
He had grown up in
New Brighton on the
Wirral
Peninsula where sandy
beaches overlooked the River Mersey and the Irish Sea.
 
Working these waterways, John had hauled in
crab traps and fishing nets for his father and uncle, a job that built his
upper-body strength and log-like arms.
 
When the waters had become overfished and the ill-maintained family
boats leaked more than floated, John sought to see more of the world.
 
With college funds scant, it was a Royal
Marine recruiter who had bought him a pint in the pub and seduced him with
tales of adventure and travel.
 
John
signed on the dotted line.
 
He awoke to a
headache, sour stomach and a lecture from his mum and dad, but he soon embarked
to Commando Training Centre Royal Marines in
Lympstone
,
Devon.
 
Thirty-two weeks of hell followed.

At
Lympstone
, John
learned combat skills—to march and look after his kit and weapons—and he earned
the vaunted
green beret
.
 
Fit and as sharp as a sword, John volunteered
for transfer, and after grading at an air force base, he was sent on to
anti-submarine
training.
 
Ten weeks at 824 Naval Air
Squadron’s Basic Acoustic Course followed.

John seemed to have an innate talent for
the fine art of sonar and sensor operation, and this was recognized and nurtured
by instructors.
 
High marks and
performance reports drove advancement to an operational conversion unit.

At the OCU, John met the love of his life—the
Merlin HM2—and worked alongside a pair of pilots and an observer.
 
He had learned the art of active and passive anti-submarine
warfare, as well as search and prosecution techniques.
 
It was not long afterward that he was honored
with assignment to HMS
Dragon
.

John powered-up and then checked the
helicopter’s various defensive and offensive systems, including chaff, flares,
and the FLASH dipping sonar.
 
The FLASH—Folding
Light Acoustic System for Helicopters—could lower by cable a tube-shaped low-frequency
sonar transducer down to 700 meters
beneath the sea.

The Merlin’s cockpit screens flashed and became
populated with brightly-colored data as the computer examined the helicopter
thousands of times per second and delivered the diagnoses to its human
operators.
 
With all indicators in the
green, Seamus engaged the rotors and started them spinning.