“Left full rudder!” Morris told the quartermaster. “Combat, what about the contact?” The frigate was now doing twenty-five knots.
“Not sure, sir. The sonobuoys have our torp but nothing else.”
“We’re gonna take a hit,” the XO said. He pointed to a white trail on the water, less than two hundred yards away. It must have missed the frigate on its first try, then turned for another. Homing torpedoes kept looking until they ran out of fuel.
There was nothing Morris could do. The torpedo was approaching on his port bow. If he turned right, it would only give the fish a larger target. Below him the ASROC launcher swung left toward the probable location of the submarine, but without an order to fire, all the operator could do was train it out. The white wake kept getting closer. Morris leaned over the rail, staring at it with mute rage as it extended like a finger toward his bow. It couldn’t possibly miss now.
“That’s not real smart, Cap’n.” Bosun Clarke’s hand grabbed Morris’s shoulder and yanked him down to the deck. He was just grabbing for the executive officer when it hit.
The impact lifted Morris a foot off the steel deck. He didn’t hear the explosion, but an instant after he had bounced off the steel a second time, he was deluged with a sheet of white water that washed him against a stanchion. His first thought was that he’d been thrown overboard. He rose to see his executive officer-headless, slumped against the pilothouse door. The bridge wing was torn apart, the stout metal shielding ripped by fragments. The pilothouse windows were gone. What he saw next was worse.
The torpedo had struck the frigate just aft of the bow-mounted sonar. Already the bow had collapsed, the keel sundered by the explosion. The foc’s’l was awash, and the horrible groaning of metal told him that the bow was being ripped off his ship. Morris staggered into the bridge and yanked the annunciator handle to All Stop, failing to notice that the engineers had already stopped engines. The ship’s momentum pushed her forward. As Morris watched, the bow twisted to starboard, ten degrees off true, and the forward gunmount became awash, its crew trying to head aft. Below the mount were other men. Morris knew that they were dead, hoped that they had died instantly, and were not drowning, trapped in a sinking steel cage. His men. How many had their battle stations forward of the ASROC launcher?
Then the bow tore away. A hundred feet of the ship left the remainder to the accompaniment of screeching metal. It turned as he watched, colliding with the afterpart of the ship as it rotated in the water like a small berg. There was movement at an exposed watertight door. He saw a man try to get free, and succeed, the figure jumping into the water and swimming away from the wallowing bow.
The bridge crew was alive, all cut by flying glass but at their posts. Chief Clarke took a quick look at the pilothouse, then ran below to assist with damage control. The damage-control parties were already racing forward with fire hoses and welding gear, and at damage-control central the men examined the trouble board to see how severe the flooding was. Morris lifted a sound-powered phone and twisted the dial to this compartment.
“Damage-control report!”
“Flooding aft to frame thirty-six, but I think she’ll float-for a little while anyway. No fires. Waiting for reports now.”
Morris switched settings on the phone. “Combat, radio the screen commander that we’ve taken a hit and need assistance.”
“Done, sir. Gallery’s heading out this way. Looks like the sub got away. They’re still searching for her. We have some shock damage here. All the radars are down. Bow sonar is out. ASROC is out. The tail is still working, though, and the Mark-32 mounts still work. Wait-screen commander’s sending us a tug, sir.”
“Okay, you have the conn. I’m going below to look at the damage.” You have the conn, Morris thought. How do you conn a ship that ain’t moving? A minute later he was at a bulkhead, watching men trying to shore it up with lumber.
“This one’s fairly solid, sir, the next one forward’s leaking like a damn sieve, no way we’ll patch it all. When the bow let go, it must have twisted everything loose.” The officer grabbed a seaman by the shoulder. “Go to the after D/C locker and get more four-by-fours!”
“Will this one hold?”
“I don’t know. Clarke is checking the bottom out now. We’ll have to weld in some patches and stiffeners. Give me about ten minutes and I’ll tell you if she’ll float or not.”
Clarke appeared. He was breathing heavily. “The bulkhead’s sprung at the tank tops, and there’s a small crack, too. Leaking pretty good. The pumps are on, and just about keeping even. I think we can shore it up, but we have to hustle.”
The damage-control officer led the welders below at once. Two men appeared with a portable pump. Morris ordered them below.
“How many men missing?” Morris asked Chief Clarke. He was holding his arm strangely.
“All the guys made it out of the five-inch mount, but I haven’t seen anybody from belowdecks. Shit, I think I broke something myself.” Clarke looked at his right arm and shook his head angrily. “I don’t think many guys made it outa the bow, sir. The watertight doors are twisted some, they gotta be jammed tight.”
“Get that arm looked at,” Morris ordered.
“Oh, fuck the arm, skipper! You need me.” The man was right. Morris went back topside with Clarke behind him.
On reaching the bridge, Morris dialed up engineering. The noise on the phone answered his first question.
The engineer spoke over the hiss of escaping steam. “Shock damage, Captain. We got some ruptured steam pipes on the number one boiler. I think number two will still work, but I’ve popped the safeties on both just in case. The diesel generators are on line. I got some hurt men here. I’m sending them out. I-okay, okay. We just did a check of number two boiler. A few minor leaks, but we can fix ’em quick. Otherwise everything looks pretty tight. I can have it back on line in fifteen minutes.”
“We need it.” Morris hung up.
Pharris lay dead in the water. With the safety valves opened, steam vented onto the massive stack structure, giving off a dreadful rasping sound that seemed like the ship’s own cry of pain. The frigate’s sleek clipper bow had been replaced by a flat face of torn metal and hanging wires. The water around the ship was foul with oil from ruptured fuel tanks. For the first time Morris noticed that the ship was down by the stern; when he stood straight, the ship was misaligned. He knew he had to wait for another damage-control report. As with an accident victim, the prognosis depended on the work of surgeons, and they could not be rushed or disturbed. He lifted the phone to CIC.
“Combat, Bridge. What’s the status of that submarine contact?”
“Gallery’s helo dropped on it, but the torp ran dry without hitting anything. Looks like he ran northeast, but we haven’t had anything for about five minutes. There’s an Orion in the area now.”
“Tell them to check inside of us. This character isn’t going to run away unless he has to. He might be running in, not out. Tell the screen commander.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
He hadn’t hung the phone up when it buzzed.
“Captain speaking.”
“She’ll float, sir,” the damage-control officer said at once. “We’re patching the bulkhead now. It won’t be tight, but the pumps can handle the leakage. Unless something else goes bad on us, we’ll get her home. They sending the tug out to us?”
“Yes.”
“If we get a tow, sir, it better be sternfirst. I don’t want to think about trying to run this one into a seaway.”
“Right.” Morris looked at Clarke. “Get a gang of men aft. We’ll be taking the tow at the stem, rig it up. Have them launch the whaleboat to look for survivors. I saw at least one man in the water. And get a sling on that arm.”
“You got it, Cap’n.” Clarke moved aft.
Morris went to CIC and found a working radio.
“X-Ray Alfa, this is Pharris,” Morris called to the screen commander.
“State your condition.”
“We took one hit forward, the bow is gone all the way to the ASROC launcher. We cannot maneuver. I can keep her afloat unless we hit some bad weather. Both boilers currently down, but we should have power back in less than ten minutes. We have casualties, but I don’t know how many or how bad yet.
“Commodore, we got hit by a nuke boat, probably a Victor. Unless I miss my guess, he’s headed your way.”
“We lost him, but he was heading out,” the Commodore said.