Chapter 4: Rescuing Heather

It took Ramon ten minutes to get a ride, then another twenty minutes to get to Pacific Fleet Headquarters, and an impatient wait of ten minutes to get into the meeting. The traffic at the base was heavy, and the headquarters was filled with hectic bustle of people rushing every which way to get things done.

He sighed in relief as a captain took his name. It took Ramon a few seconds to realize that the captain was the Commander, Pacific Fleet’s Chief of Staff’s aide.

Sure enough, ComPacFleet was standing near the head of the table, talking to a number of officers in low tones, while others stood behind chairs at the long conference table. A full lieutenant came up to Ramon. “Commander Vega, Admiral Stewart would like to have a word with you.”

Ramon hobbled towards the admiral hating the damn crutches. Worse, you don’t interrupt a four-star admiral when he was talking to other admirals, as well as a couple of captains and so Ramon waited patiently, with the lieutenant, equally patient, waiting at his side.

Someone rushed into the room and waved a message form. “Admiral Stewart, we have another possible ship loss reported. It was a yacht with Richard Yalow, the builder, aboard, along with his pregnant wife and their two teenage sons. They were en route from Kauai to Kaneohoe.”

Ramon couldn’t help making a sound. That was what the girl had said! “Sons eighteen and sixteen, his wife eight months pregnant,” he said beneath his breath.

Admiral Stewart looked at him. “Do you know the Yalows, Commander?”

“No, sir. I was with someone who knew about them. One minute the yacht was there; the next it was gone.”

“And you saw the attack on the helicopter?”

“Yes, sir. And part of the attack on the surfers. I saw the yacht one second and didn’t the next. I saw what happened to the helicopter, but all I saw was a swirl where the surfers vanished and nothing at all of the Yalows.”

“Busy little bee, aren’t you, Commander?” Admiral Stewart said, his voice like gravel. “You seem to be getting around well for a man with a bum leg.”

The admiral clearly made a snap decision. “We have to get on with this.” He pointed to a woman who was the assistant S2. “Captain Saunders, lead Commander Vega to your seat and make room for him.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral,” the captain said.

Ramon was sure that something passed between the admiral and the captain, but he had no idea what. “Please follow me, Commander,” she told him and turned away.

It was just a flash that lasted an instant as she turned away. This was some kind of test! He had no idea what it was.

Admiral Stewart walked to the chair at the head of the table and stood behind it for a moment. “Seats, everyone, we have to get going.”

Next to him, the S2 captain pointed to a chair. “Sit there, Commander.”

Like everyone else, Ramon sat down once the admiral’s backside was firmly in his chair.

“Captain Saunders will give the initial brief.”

The woman next to him rose and whispered as she stood, putting her hand on his shoulder and pressing down. “Stay put.”

Ramon blinked. It was an unnecessary order. It was, in fact, a downright stupid order, and the push to keep him seated verged on insulting. All he could do was mentally shake his head, oh and put his temper in check.

The captain went to a white board, drew a dot near the lower right hand corner and wrote a number next it: 1710 Z. “At 1710 Zulu, the Coast Guard Cutter McAdoo received a distress call from the Motor Yacht Steffie, which belonged to the senior senator from Wyoming, Wayne Braden. The yacht reported that they had been struck by a whale and they were taking on water. The McAdoo was roughly 400 miles due south of Frisco at the time.” The woman noted the latitude and longitude next to the original dot.

“McAdoo is not your garden-variety cutter, as it was once a guided missile frigate during in the sixties and seventies. The Navy transferred it to the Coast Guard before Storm I. Now it has twin five-inch gun mounts and two pairs of twin fifties down each side.

“McAdoo was south southwest of San Francisco at the time, about four hundred miles away. The Steffie was here,” she drew in another point, northwest. “The Steffie reported that it was about forty nautical miles away from McAdoo.

“Steffie reported that while they weren’t in immediate danger of sinking, they could not control the flooding and would have to take to a life rafts by 1800Z. While one of the crew was making this report there was what sounded like a scream and the carrier wave ceased.

“The McAdoo had already gone to flank and hurried to the scene. They found two survivors who reported that they’d been attacked by a sea serpent, not a whale.

“This was interesting, because at about 1815Z, while en route, McAdoo picked up a submerged contact, about seventeen miles away to the northwest, moving south at twenty knots, approximately 200 feet down. This submerged contact skirted the McAdoo at about seventeen miles range, and then fell in behind her, shadowing her. Shortly thereafter, a second submerged contact was detected, this time to the east of where the yacht vanished, about seventeen miles away from where it was thought the Steffie had foundered.” She made a dot where the first contact had been seen, a couple of other dots for observed positions, and a line connecting them. Then she added the a second dot east of the Steffie’s location.

“Not unreasonably, the Coast Guard full captain who commands McAdoo contacted Pacific Fleet to see if we had any submarines operating in the area. Which we did not. Because of the reported multiple submerged contacts we permitted a Navy P3C patrol craft, in transit from Alameda to Pearl, to be vectored to the McAdoo to see if anything more could be learned about the two submerged contacts.

“By the time the patrol aircraft arrived, the McAdoo had picked up the survivors and her captain had heard their reports. They had also by that time determined by sonar that the two targets were of different sizes. The larger was about two hundred or three hundred feet long, the smaller forty to sixty feet.

“As the patrol aircraft approached, the McAdoo vectored the aircraft towards the larger target. As what happened at the North Shore earlier today, something came out of the water and took a chunk out of the P3C’s wing. Debris from that entered the cockpit and killed the copilot of our aircraft. The pilot aborted his sonobuoy run and returned to Monterey, California and there made a successful emergency landing.

“McAdoo, concerned about the attack on the aircraft, observing their larger sonar contact to be maneuvering to reengage the aircraft, ordered an attack on the smaller target. They apparently destroyed the smaller target in the subsequent surface action.”

Captain Saunders had been making notes on the white board, showing ship and sonar tracks, plus a dotted line for the aircraft. It was, Ramon thought, a very competent performance.

“There were further events that are classified that aren’t pertinent to this briefing. As a result, National Command Authority has ordered Def Con 2 and has made a determination that an unknown number of hostile sea creatures have appeared in the North Pacific, northeast of Hawaii, between the Islands and California. That these creatures range in size from small to huge; huge being the size of aircraft carriers. Their numbers aren’t known, but they are reported to have large appetites.

“National Command Authority has determined that these animals represent all or part of an existential threat to this country and are to be engaged by the armed forces of the United States.”

National Command Authority was the military euphemism for the Commander-in-Chief — the President of the United States.

Admiral Stewart thanked Captain Saunders for her report and turned to Ramon. “Commander Vega was on the North Shore earlier today and was an eyewitness to several attacks that occurred there. Please, Commander, share your observations with us.”

Ramon debated if he should simply rise and give his report from where he was sitting or move to the front. Captain Saunders had returned, but was still standing next to him. She leaned down and whispered to him, “Stand at the white board, Commander!” Except as a whisper it was rather loud and it had to have been heard by half the officers at the briefing table.

He moved as quickly as he could and turned to face the room. There were about fifty people seated at the conference table, another forty or fifty were scattered around the periphery of the room.

“I am Commander Ramon Vega, XO of the O’Kane. Several weeks ago, I was injured when a winch cable snapped forward and broke my leg; I was put on medical leave for a month, until my leg healed. I have a twin sister who is a marine biologist with the University of Hawaii and my sister has a fourteen-year-old daughter. Today I was asked if I would escort my niece to the beach — it’s a teacher in-service day and she had no school. She wanted to go to Waimea Bay.”

“I found a spot about forty feet above the water and about a quarter mile back...”

“Commander, why don’t you draw us a little map? Flip the whiteboard over and draw on the other side,” Captain Saunders ordered him.

Ramon looked at Captain Saunders for a second and then simply did as he was told. Clearly, it was some sort of test, but what kind of a test he had no idea. It seemed like she was trying to goad him or piss him off. And, since Admiral Stewart hadn’t spoken, she had his approval. Ramon flipped the white board over and drew the stupid diagram. Probably 90% of the people in the room had been to Waimea — it was major tourist attraction — and knew the geography.

Just to be thorough, as he told his story, he drew little marks on the board that represented positions. He wasn’t nearly as good at it as the S2 captain had been.

“After the first freak wave, I saw a single person head out from the beach towards where the others were gathered waiting for waves. I gave her a cursory glance with my field glasses and saw that she was female, probably about fourteen. I would have ignored her, except she didn’t stop where the others were, instead she kept going, ending up another hundred yards further from shore, about three hundred yards total.