Warshot (The Hunter Killer Series Book 6) Don Keith (red seas under red skies TXT) 📖

transport planes revved up, got airborne, and headed west. Toward Fua’amotu International Airport on Tonga, there to await whatever orders they might receive next.

Ψ

Chet Allison leaned against the BPS-15 radar set in the after part of control on the submarine Boise. It seemed like he and his second-in-command, Henrietta Foster, had been standing back here for most of the day, trying to get a handle on what might happen next after the shoot-’em-up and close call they had just been through. That included formulating answers to the seemingly endless “Immediate Attention, or the world as we know it will cease to exist” inquiries they were being peppered with, emanating from every possible layer of the chain of command. And many sources well outside that chain. Some of which Allison and Foster had never even heard of before.

Carefully and diplomatically, they were now telling each and every functionary that they had already provided any morsel of information they had, every minor detail of the events they had just endured. That constant pressure and endless questioning as well as the gallons of coffee he had consumed had long since left Allison with a raging headache and a shaky stomach. Of course, some of that could also be attributed to the really hard bump on his admittedly hard head.

Boise was at periscope depth at the moment, slowly circling a few miles south of Dongsha Island. “Slowly” being the operative word. They were now using the submarine’s secondary propulsion motor. The SPM was a little outboard motor that could be lowered out of an after-ballast tank and used like a slightly more powerful version of a trolling motor on a bass boat. More powerful but still barely able to move the big, heavy vessel at a speed of little more than about two knots. But it was their only propulsion until the engineers repaired the shaft seal leakage caused by the close-aboard explosion of the Chinese torpedo.

Lieutenant Commander Tim Anson, Boise’s engineer, opened the after door and barged into the compartment, almost knocking Foster over as he did so. Everything that Anson did was full steam ahead. It was the engineer’s philosophy that any obstacle in his path was easier to go through than around.

“Oops! Sorry, XO. Didn’t see you there,” the big bear of a man told Foster. “Skipper, I have an update for you.”

“What’s the status, Eng?”

“Well, the shaft seals are kaput,” Anson shot out in his usual rapid-fire manner. “My guess is that the carbon got cracked from the pressure surge when that torpedo hit the reef so close to us. The guys have been working hard and managed to snug up the emergency flax packing. So far, it seems to be working fine. I don’t recommend any speeds above ten knots or diving below two hundred feet or we could be on the inflatable boot. You know what that means.”

Before Allison could respond, Foster chimed in.

“Eng, I hear what you’re saying, but I believe the NAVSEA Tech Manual specifies a depth limit of three hundred feet and speed of twelve knots if you establish a leak-off rate of at least ten drops a second with the flax packing. And you would also need to station a watch to adjust it.”

Anson pondered the XO’s words for a long moment. He had seen it before. Henrietta Foster had the uncanny ability to memorize even the most arcane facts. If she saw it, she had it stored somewhere in her brain and could find and recite it in a second. And often did so if it served her purpose.

“Well, yes, ma’am,” Anson finally answered. “I did refer to the Tech Manual. I was just applying a safety factor to the tolerances. Believe me, I don’t want to go all the way home at two knots on the SPM.”

“Skipper,” the leading radioman interrupted, passing Allison the red, top-secret message board. “You’re going to want to read the top message.”

Allison flipped open the board and read the short message. Then he read it again.

“XO, get the Nav up here to plot this out. Eng, get propulsion shifted back to the mains. We’ll use your safety-factor limits right now. But be ready to go to the NAVSEA limits if we have to. The ones in the Tech Manual.”

Foster shot Allison a questioning glance.

“We are to stay here on an ‘Indications and Warning’ mission until we get relieved by an Aussie diesel boat,” Allison told her. “Then, we are to make best speed back to Pearl Harbor.”

“Indications and Warning” meant they were to continue observing all they could see and provide near real-time actionable information. Allison had worked long enough with Henrietta Foster to know exactly what that look on her face meant.

Any actionable information they might deliver to the powers that be could possibly be the impetus for full-blown war.

Ψ

Jim Ward was at his wits’ end. Stir-crazy. Cooped up in a private room at Changi General Hospital in Singapore. Lying around simply was not the young SEAL-team commander’s style. One more soccer game or cooking show on the TV set in the far corner of the room, one more scorched glob of some kind of meat with a tasteless gray sauce, and he would be forced to extricate himself from this place by any means necessary. He needed to be up and moving around, but every time he tried to get out of bed, the pain would come rushing back at the wound site in his side and he would collapse back into his state of utter uselessness. Then, inevitably, within seconds of him disobeying his bed-rest command, an officious nurse/prison guard, quite properly dressed in a white uniform and pronounced scowl, would rush in, attempt to make him reasonably comfortable, and scold him roundly.

Ward had vowed to locate and disarm the “patient confined to bed” alarm.

He assumed his next dosage of not-so-gentle scolding and over-cooked scrambled eggs was arriving when the door swung open and interrupted his internal griping. Instead, though, a stunningly gorgeous