Kinsmen of the Dragons
Copyright© 2013 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 2: The Clear Light of Day
Captain Jack Reubens took a sip from his tea mug and then signed off on the report he’d been reading. Ah, yes! The glamour of a command at sea! The in-box on his desk had a dozen more reports he had yet to plow through and it wasn’t even 0800!
It had been a successful deployment, if longer than the men and women of his crew would have liked. Two months away from home was longer than what most Coast Guard sailors were accustomed to, but they had all been told what to expect when they were assigned into McAdoo. McAdoo had seen deployments that lasted a year! Two months? A piece of cake! Still, he knew his crew was looking forward to San Francisco and a week of liberty. They would drop anchor at the dock on Coast Guard Island right around dawn tomorrow and then he and his crew would spend a few hours getting things ship-shape and after that liberty would commence.
The McAdoo was an interesting ship, with an interesting history. It had started off as a Navy missile frigate, an old one, dating from the Korean War. The Department of the Navy had been planning on scrapping it when the Coast Guard put in a request for a ship about the size of the McAdoo. That was back in ‘91, in the run up to the first Gulf War.
So, the Coast Guard got a “new” cutter, even if it was nearing forty years old, one that was three feet longer than any of her sisters, and which had two twin five inch mounts forward, instead of one single five inch gun.
Missiles! Why would the Coast Guard need missiles? They had pulled the launchers and magazines and the magazines became additional crew quarters, the launchers became two twin fifty caliber mounts on each side. More than one Coast Guard cutter had druggies decide that twin fifties, or even one machine gun, on some of the smaller boats, weren’t serious guns and had started shooting.
None of them did that with the McAdoo!
The speaker on his desk popped. “Captain, CIC. We’ve just picked up a mayday from motor yacht Steffie, about forty miles ahead and a little to the west of our base course. They report that a whale collided with them and they are taking on water,” his Tactical Officer, the “Tacco” reported.
Two hours away, at flank, Captain Reubens thought. He had the fuel — San Francisco was just over four hundred miles away; he could make that easily. It wouldn’t be much of a diversion.
He smiled for a second considering his Tacco. Lieutenant Stacy Stoddard was tall for a woman, but she was a fine officer, one of the best he’d served with. He’d recommended her for a promotion and her own cutter. She had a very pleasant surprise waiting for her in San Francisco.
“Tell the bridge, turns for twenty knots. Get a bearing on the yacht and come to that course.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
He contemplated heading for the bridge, but then grunted. Hard as it was to admit, aboard a modern warship the place to be when there was action was in CIC. Not many Coast Guard cutters had a Combat Information Center, but McAdoo had one. He might as well use it.
He went down a deck, hurrying. A couple of ratings saw who was hustling down the companionway, flattened themselves against the bulkheads as he went past. The ship was steadily accelerating, the engine sound steadily increasing.
He entered the CIC and headed for Chief Acoma’s radios. “Chief, what have we got?” he asked quietly.
The chief was looking into space, his eyes half closed. He was holding the earphones that were his personal trademark pressed against his head.
The chief flipped the switch on the tape recorder and ran it back and he listened again, as if he hadn’t heard Jack.
Jack Reubens was a veteran captain. One way you get the best out of your crew was to let them do their jobs and not try to butt in.
The chief’s eyes focused on his captain. “I think she went down, sir. Here.”
He lifted his hand up and flipped a few switches and Jack heard the chief’s voice on the tape, “How many people aboard, Steffie? How fast are you taking on water?”
“There are fifteen of us,” a female voice replied, “including Senator Braden and his wife Stephanie, their daughter Kelly and her fiancé; I don’t know his name. There is Bruce Chatsworth, the Senator’s chief of staff, his wife, Ellie Chatsworth, their son William and daughter Linda. Denver Bronco quarterback Miles Forward, his date and the Bronco fullback Damon Brown and his date. I don’t know all the names. Captain Jack Mullins, my father, and our engineer, Ted Roper, myself, Karen Roper.
“My father says that he’s slowed the water coming in, but he reports there’s no way to stop it. He says we have an hour or two at most. We have a Zodiac we’ll launch here shortly.”
There was an exclamation from further away, then a third voice saying clearly, “Jesus!” and then a woman’s scream, cut off abruptly and the hum of the carrier was gone.
“This part here,” Chief Acoma said, backing up the recording a few seconds. There were faint words in the background. The chief cranked up the volume and played it again. “That’s someone saying ‘Oh my God! Look at that!’”
Captain Reubens nodded. It sure could have been that, but he had trouble understanding what had been said.
He turned to his Tactical Officer. “Lieutenant Stoddard, what do we have on the yacht?”
“Sir, Steffie is a hundred and sixty-three footer, twin diesels, last inspected a year and a half ago. They passed with flying colors, Captain. She’s owned by Senator Wayne Braden, Republican of Wyoming, and named after his wife Stephanie.”
The captain of the McAdoo held Lieutenant Stoddard’s eyes for a moment.
Yeah, like that. Search and rescue was what they all liked to do. There was nothing like the hugs and kisses of gratitude; the hard handshakes of men and women who knew how close it had been. Sadness, too, when you couldn’t make it in time; that happened often enough, particularly to some of the idiots who thought that there was nothing to getting into a boat and putting out onto the water.
US Senators, though, were an altogether different class of problem. Screw up the least thing, even as simple a thing as whose hand was shaken first and your career ended abruptly. Worse, the bastard could be really vindictive and take out his spite on the Coast Guard. There was an unwritten, unspoken rule among senior Coast Guard officers: go quietly if you stepped in it. Yeah, maybe it was unfair, but if someone got the wind up, the Coast Guard could end up assigned to the Navy and then what would happen? Retirement was a much better option!
There was a reason why the Marines didn’t tolerate much interference from the Navy and shied away from the US Army altogether. The Coast Guard felt it, too. Each of the uniformed services had their jobs to do and had developed structures and policies to carry out their missions. Close doesn’t count when it meant failing in your basic mission.
“Pass the word, quietly,” Jack told her. “We’ll go to Search and Rescue stations in sixty minutes. The crew is to do whatever they need to between now and then. I want us to look sharp on this!”
Beyond doubt, the worst thing about being a sea captain was the gap between event one and event two. The Steffie had been forty nautical miles away at the outset, and McAdoo was now zipping through the ocean at her best: twenty knots. It was going to take two hours, no matter how urgent the need to go faster was.
There was only a south-bound container ship closer and her master told Jack that to come about to Steffie’s aid would cost him half a day ... and McAdoo would be first on the scene anyway, because while McAdoo started further away, the container ship could only make five knots more than McAdoo -- and it took a lot of ocean for a ship of that size to turn one hundred and sixty degrees. Jack agreed and logged the other skipper’s release.
Then there was the Eleventh Coast Guard district, back on Coast Guard Island near Alameda, across the bay from San Francisco. It was a little after 0800 in the morning on a Monday. The Vice Admiral commanding the district was in, but wasn’t going to be in his office much longer. Oh no, he was going to be in the operations center, expecting to hear real time reports about the rescue of a US Senator!
Chief Acoma was calling the Steffie every ninety seconds, but there hadn’t been a peep since they’d lost the carrier wave.
San Francisco had reported very dense fog overnight, but it was abating. McAdoo had perfect visibility under a clear and cloudless sky. San Francisco was about four hundred miles to their north at the moment.
An hour had passed when Chief Gray Cloud, the sonar operator, got up from his position and came to his captain. “Sir, I have a situation.”
“What is it, Chief?”
Jack had long since learned not to giggle when he said Chief to Chief Gray Cloud — Gray Cloud was indeed a Coast Guard chief, but he as also the eldest son of a Sioux chief as well. Who would have thought a Sioux from South Dakota would turn into the best sonar man in the Coast Guard?
“About ten minutes ago, I heard this,” the chief held up an iPod, and the sound it emitted was a rapid series of barking clicks.
“Sounds like a dolphin,” Jack told him.
“A little, sir. The clicks are higher pitched and closer together and run about twice as long as a dolphin series. Still, like you, my first thought was that it was a biological. I checked the range and bearing. It was about twenty miles out, off to the northwest. Submerged, running at about two hundred feet. About a minute later there was another series.”
He played another set and Jack nodded. “That sounds just like the first,” he told the chief.
Chief Gray Cloud grinned and poked a little fun with his skipper. “You picked up on that faster than I did, sir! After the fourth repetition, I realized I couldn’t hear any difference between them, so I ran the four sets of data through the spectrum analyzer. Sir, those four data sets are identical, as close as makes no never-mind. They vary by less than a hundredth of a percent.
“I think it’s a sub, sir. They’re spoofing a biological so they can have an active sonar scan. It’s been ten minutes sir, and I haven’t seen it above two hundred feet.”
The chief walked over to the local activity board and sketched a position. “I picked it up here, sir. The next positions were here, here, and here.”
Jack blinked as he stared at the plot. “What’s the target’s speed, chief?”
“Sir, about twenty knots. It’s not a biological.”
“And the contact is now about seventeen miles away, bearing 320 degrees?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it doesn’t seem to be trying to close?”
“No, sir. Once it reached seventeen miles, it has stayed there, but still headed south on a reciprocal bearing. That means not only is it maneuvering, but it’s maneuvering to avoid us.” Chief Gray Cloud looked his captain in the eye. “Captain, this vessel could have, I repeat, could have been in the vicinity of the Steffie at the time of the reported collision.”
A giant can of worms! No one would ever forget the accident back in early 1991 when a surfacing Navy sub had accidentally collided with a fishing boat chartered by a Japanese high school to go whale watching off Honolulu. Nearly a dozen people — mostly kids, and all civilians --had died in the accident. Rumors in the Navy and Coast Guard had swirled for years but the simple fact was that there was no way, given procedures properly followed, that the collision should have occurred. It had been made worse because the Navy sub was nuclear, and a civilian guest aboard the sub had initiated the emergency surface exercise.
Captain Reubens walked to Chief Acoma’s station. “Get me the District.”
“Chief Walker has the duty there this morning, sir.”
Jack picked up the mike. “This is McAdoo, is the admiral present?”
“Sir, he’s having coffee in the mess.”
“Send someone to fetch him. While we’re waiting coordinate with Chief Acoma to switch to encrypted voice.”
The voice on the other end went flat. “Aye, aye, sir!”
Jack handed the handset back to Chief Acoma. “Go to encrypted voice.”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
The problem with a ship like McAdoo, in spite of the fact it was the largest cutter in the Coast Guard’s inventory, it was actually a small town where everyone knew everything. For that matter, the Coast Guard itself was like that.
A few moments later Chief Acoma handed him the headset. “Admiral Garner, Captain.”
Jack swallowed and picked up. “Sir, this is Jack Reubens.”
“We’re encrypted, yes?”
“Yes, sir. Sir, my sonar chief is preparing a package for you. We have detected what we believe is an unknown submerged contact that is skirting McAdoo at a range of about seventeen nautical miles. At first we thought it was a biological, but the target is advancing at a steady twenty knots and has stayed at 200 feet for the last twenty minutes. It is my considered opinion, sir, that the unknown submerged contact may have been in the vicinity of the yacht Steffie when she was struck. It is maneuvering to avoid us.”
There was nothing stupid about the vice admiral in charge of the Eleventh Coast Guard District. “You will gather all of the data and send it forthwith to this headquarters. It shall be encrypted.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Jack parroted.
“How long until you are in the vicinity of the distressed vessel?”
“Another forty minutes, sir.”
“Keep me posted. Get that package off yesterday.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, I’d like to keep the encrypted link open.”
“Agreed. All communications in this regard shall henceforth be encrypted.”
Jack turned and spoke to the Tacco. “I’ll be on the bridge.”
He went up quickly, but not hurrying this time. He ordered the officer of the deck to call the ship to interdiction action stations. The officer of the deck raised an eyebrow, but did as he was told.
The difference wasn’t much. Gun crews went to the gun mounts, as well as an armed party to the ship’s boat, a Patrol Interceptor.
A Patrol Interceptor wasn’t your grandmother’s rubber boat. On most cutters their Interceptor could be launched at speed, but not the McAdoo. A ramp on the fantail of McAdoo wouldn’t have done their top speed much good; so they used davits, and had to slow to a stop. Still, they could be going at twenty knots, reverse the engines, lower the boat and be moving forward again in little more than two minutes. Recovery took longer, but typically they weren’t as rushed during recovery operations.
The downside was down — everything not securely lashed down aboard McAdoo ended up on the deck. There was nothing gentle about a ship McAdoo’s size stopping in two minutes.
CIC’s squawk came. “Captain, Chief Gray Cloud. Sir, submerged target Sierra X-Ray One is falling in behind us, range holding at a fraction less than seventeen nautical miles. Captain, I’ve detected a second source with a similar active sonar pattern. It is about twenty-five nautical miles to our north-northeast, repeat north-northeast, and is roughly abeam of where we think the Steffie went down. The contact does not appear to be underway, sir.”
“Get off a contact report to San Francisco. Ask them if the Navy has any subs out here. See if they have any ASW platforms we could use.”
“We’re too far from shore for a helo to operate over us, sir.”
“We have a landing platform and av gas. Tell them if they send us an ASW helo, we’ll find something for him to do.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Ten minutes later it was Chief Acoma. “Sir, the Navy says they have no vessels, surface or submerged, operating in this area. I took it upon myself to ask about transiting vessels and the reply was also negative.”
“Roger, Chief. Keep me posted.”
“Sir, they have a Navy ASW platform at the NAS in San Francisco. It was transiting to Hawaii. Admiral Garner said we could probably get it to do a fly over, if we ask.”
“Tell them we’d be obliged. Mention the second contact report.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Captain,” Chief Gray Cloud reported, “Sierra X-Ray One is definitely trailing us, its speed is twenty knots, same as ours, and has the same base course.”
“Get that off to the District at once. Tell them I think we need some more eyes and hands out here.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Jack turned to Lieutenant Stirling, the officer of the deck. “Pass the word, Lieutenant Stirling. Arm all weapons. Weapons are not free, repeat, not free until I say so!”
“Aye, aye, skipper!”
The OOD spoke into his phone and everyone aboard McAdoo firmed up. Loading live rounds didn’t happen every day ... but it had happened before and the crew was trained for it, but as captain he couldn’t help being nervous. Hopefully, the crew would treat this as a drill.
“Captain, CIC. Radar reports there’s something in the water dead ahead, range six miles.”
His first thought was extreme embarrassment. If that was the motor yacht Steffie, his career was likely over. “Sir, the target is not underway; the target appears to be debris, sir.”
Jack didn’t let his mental sigh of relief sound in his voice. “Roger that. Keep the bridge posted.”
Later, one of the forward lookouts shouted, “Captain! Debris in the water, just off the port bow! Four miles!”
Jack lifted his binoculars and looked.
“Flare going up, sir!” the lookout called.
Everyone could see the red line being traced into the sky ahead of them. They continued to close the distance towards what was clearly wreckage in the water.
“Sir,” the lookout continued, “I see two people, one male, one female, waving, sir!”
“You’re sure about the genders?” Jack asked, trying to keep it light.
There were sniggers on the bridge. Half a dozen pairs of binoculars were focused on the wreckage. Two people were waving frantically, one obviously male, one obviously female and both obviously nude. Depending on your persuasion, both of them were splendidly endowed.
“Prepare to launch the Interceptor when we’re at a mile. Continue to close very slowly, thereafter.” You gained no kudos by swamping those you wished to rescue.
He put his glasses on the wreckage again, ignoring the spectacular woman jumping up and down. He was seeing the forward twenty feet of so of the yacht’s hull, he thought, turned turtle. Six years before the Coast Guard had instigated a rule requiring an access to the main deck from any forward compartment for larger yachts. If those people had been forward when Steffie rolled over, that rule might have made the difference in their survival.
Jack spoke to those on the bridge. “How does someone that big get to play quarterback?”
There were nervous laughs on the bridge. Yeah, that face was recognizable all right. Jack picked up a microphone. “Chief Gray Cloud, our sonar contacts?”
“X-Ray One has slowed to five knots and is now slowly closing the range. X-Ray Two is now coming on at twelve knots, also closing the range. Both are on intercept courses.”
“Make sure the District is in the loop!”
“Aye, aye, sir! I’m talking to them, pretty much at the same time.”
The Interceptor reached the wreckage and a crewman helped the two survivors to board. Jack lifted his radio. “Talk to me, Chief Vargas!”
“Captain, they say they are the only survivors. They report that the ship was attacked by two sea serpents. The larger one that Mr. Forward says he saw was about two hundred feet in length. It came out of the water, he says, and smashed across the yacht’s after section, shattering it. When he saw it come out of the water, Captain, he says he hustled forward, where his girlfriend was still in bed.”
“Return aboard with the survivors — all possible speed!”
What had started out as a bad day was steadily getting worse. How was he supposed to message Eleventh District about sea serpents? A sub was bad, two subs were really bad — but sea serpents?
Jack picked up the microphone. “Chief Gray Cloud. The survivors report being attacked by a two hundred foot sea serpent that came out of the water and smashed the after portion of the yacht. Are you sure those aren’t biologicals out there?”
“Captain, are the survivors sure?”
“I believe so, Chief.” Who would shine on their rescuers after something like this? If the first report on the number of people aboard Steffie was right, more than a dozen people were missing.
“You people,” Jack called to the bridge crew. “Remember that there might be other survivors. Let’s give the eye candy a breather!”
Chief Grey Cloud didn’t hear that, but had gone on to say, “Sir, singers can reproduce the same note, with the same pitch and the same duration, over and over. That’s learned behavior, sir. If it was hard-wired? Anything is possible. Captain, something else to think about. Both X-Ray One and X-Ray Two are now on converging, steady bearings. If we were to sit here for an hour and ten minutes, they will both arrive here at exactly the same time.”
“Report that to District. They said they were sending out an ASW aircraft ... when is that due? I could sure use a helo with some war loads and a dipping sonar.”
Chief Gray Cloud snorted.
They weren’t going to get any armed help, just an ASW aircraft with sonobuoys. “I’ll check with the Navy, sir.”
Jack watched as the Interceptor was winched aboard. He spoke on the 1MC. “Secure the ship’s boat; survivors to CIC. Action stations! Actions stations! This is no drill! Weapons free!”
He turned to the Officer of the Deck. “Mr. Stirling, I want to make a circle of the area a quarter mile from the wreckage. I want every available eye looking for survivors. At the end of that circuit, if we spot no other survivors, set a course for San Francisco at flank. I’ll be in CIC.”
The McAdoo moved forward, turning slightly to circle the wreckage.
Jack walked directly to Chief Gray Cloud’s position. “How are we doing?”
“Sir, Sierra X-Ray One remains on a steady bearing, range is now twelve point five nautical miles, the rate of advance went to twenty-five knots, sir, when we started to move again. They will close with our position in thirty minutes.
“Target Sierra X-Ray Two is also on a converging, steady bearing. It is making nearly thirty knots, sir, and also will close with us in thirty minutes.”
“The survivors say the targets are biological. Specifically, sea serpents.”
“I heard that,” the chief said. “Sir, I could repeat the ranges, bearings and speeds, but what’s the point? Sir, from the side aspects I’ve gotten on X-Ray Two I believe that it is between sixty and eighty meters long, probably shorter rather than the longer end of the range. X-Ray One is ten to fifteen meters, probably towards the longer end of the range. Momma and Little Me, Captain.”
“You said they weren’t biologicals,” Jack said bitterly.
“Yes, sir, I did say that. Sir, my current best guess is that they are biologicals. I would, sir, however, not want to give odds on any of my guesses today.”
“How can two biologicals fix on steady, closing bearings with the same arrival time? Much less coming from different directions?”
“Sir, all you’d have to know about bearings is that if the bearing is steady and you’re closing, you’ll get there in the end. The second target could simply be closing on Sierra X-Ray One the same way. If One is on a steady bearing with us and if Sierra Two is on a steady bearing with One, then it would also have a steady bearing with us and would arrive at the same time. Sir, that appears to be the case.”
“The Navy was supposed to have an ASW plane up.”
“Captain, there’s a P3C coming in. They have a load of sonobuoys, and a boss that’s curious about any kind of submerged track. Two submerged tracks, he says, will be great fun,” Chief Acoma interjected. “ETA is about twenty minutes.”
“But he has nothing up the spout?”
“Sir, he was en route to Hawaii with a replacement aircraft. No, sir.”
“Tell him to be careful, but to eyeball X-Ray Two first. Make sure he has the position, the track and where we estimate X-Ray Two will be when he gets here.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“I am to be alerted if anything changes. When Navy gets close to Sierra X-Ray Two, let me know. I want to talk to the pilot.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
They brought in the man and woman from the Steffie. Someone had been thoughtful enough to get them both pants and shirts.
Jack waved them to Chief Acoma’s position and asked the Chief to put them on the speaker. “Mr. Forward, I’m Captain Jack Reubens, commanding the Coast Guard Cutter McAdoo. We are currently in contact with our headquarters, the Eleventh Coast Guard District in San Francisco. We’re putting you on the speaker.”
“I understand. Thank you, Captain, for getting us out of there.”
He was a big man, no doubt about it. He sported huge muscles on his legs and arms, plus he was burned brown by the sun, without a hint of a tan line. He had short brown hair that was thick and wavy. His arms and legs would have made credible tree trunks.
The woman wasn’t a dainty waif herself, with long blonde hair and startlingly blue eyes. Both of the survivors were looking around the CIC, curious.
“On the other end is Vice Admiral Vance Garner, and probably a cast of dozens.”
“Howdy,” the football player said. “I’m Miles Forward.”
The admiral spoke. “Mr. Forward are there any other survivors?”
“No, sir. None. I’m positive of that. I’m not sure how or why we survived.”
“What happened? I was initially told that the yacht was struck by a whale.”
“That’s what Captain Mullins first said, sir. But it wasn’t a whale. It was the biggest goddamn sea serpent you can imagine. I’m real good at judging the length of a football field, sir. It was maybe two thirds that long. That was the big one. The smaller one was maybe fifteen yards long. It was the hungry one, Admiral. Anyone in the water, it ate.”
There was a pause. “A sea serpent?” the admiral’s voice had become frosty, not to mention a little curt.
“Yes, sir. Two of them. They looked sorta like elephants that could swim. They had long necks and a long tail.
“My friend Daphne, that’s Miss Daphne Sweet, had slept in. The two of us were woken up by the first impact. I got up, put on a lava-lava I got a couple of years ago in Hawaii, and went aft to see what was going on. We were headed to Pebble Beach, sir — there’s a Pro-Am golf tournament there this coming weekend. The Senator, Damon and myself were to play as amateurs. I heard Karen Roper making the radio distress call and I stopped to listen. The radio was in the main cabin sir, towards the bow.
“I heard the senator’s wife gasp, then I saw this huge thing come flying out of the water. I said something like, ‘Jesus! Look at that!’ and then it landed across the ship, like right into the ass end of the main cabin. As soon as I saw it was coming down, I turned and ran like a jackrabbit. I was nearly at our cabin when it hit.
“It seemed like it knew exactly what it was doing. It used its weight and momentum to roll us over. Next thing I knew, I was upside down and down was up, just like in that movie, The Poseidon Adventure. When I got to our cabin the water was already pouring in.
“The Senator had bitched that the Coast Guard had made him put in a hatch that led from our stateroom to the main deck. It took me a few seconds to convince Daphne that that that hatch was our only way out, even if it was underwater. I kept expecting to die, I tell you.
“When we got out, we climbed up on the hull. It was stable and there was maybe twenty feet of it left. There’s a lot of flotation stuff in the hull; the senator was proud of that. He said Steffie was unsinkable.”
“And you’re sure about the others?” Jack asked.
The woman broke down crying, and a second later fainted dead away, eased down by the female rating who’d been escorting her.
Miles Forward looked at her and sighed. “Daphne was a real trooper, don’t let her fool you. She stayed steady, even when it was bad — real, real bad. We’re going to have nightmares about this for the rest of our lives.
“The little one was playing with them. The only guy left when we got topside was Damon. All the women were still alive. They were in a cluster; Damon was trying to protect them. He shouted at me to hide. The stupid dumb fuck! Hide where? In the middle of the fucking ocean? With those things in the water?”
Miles was silent for a moment, watching the ship’s corpsman check Daphne. The woman was quickly loaded onto a stretcher and hustled down to the sickbay.
He turned back to them, spending a second to steady himself before going on.
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