Kinsmen of the Dragons
Copyright© 2013 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 5: Heavy Contact
To Ramon’s surprise, Admiral Stewart was actually in front of the headquarters building to greet them. Heather smiled and shook his hand, while her mother stood stiffly rigid, uncertain what to think. “Admiral...”
Without warning Heather screamed terribly and passed out where she stood. Both her mother and the admiral helped stop her from falling and a moment later someone produced smelling salts. For a second Heather couldn’t focus and then she did. Her face fell and she started crying softly.
Ramon tossed his sticks to someone and sat down on the ground next to her. “What, Heather?”
“It’s attacking a ship. I can see the ship. It’s a cruise ship. There are ... more people than I can count. It’s upset; I can see it’s upset! It knows the ship isn’t food, but knows there are lots of people in it. It’s going to...”
Her breath caught and she sobbed. “Oh, God, God, God.”
“Heather,” Ramon said gently, “it’s like the sea. Things happen; things happen that we can’t control and no matter how much we’d rather things didn’t happen, they do. Heather, this is important. I don’t exactly understand how important, but I’m sure you’re going to be able to help save a lot of people ... but first you have to focus. You don’t want to ignore what’s happening, but you have to focus on helping those you can help.”
She turned pale, tear-streaked eyes on him, and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her arms felt like two steel bands.
“I forgive you,” she whispered softly. He knew she was talking about earlier.
“And I’m sorry, Heather. But now we have our duty, and that’s more important than what happened before.”
She stood up with alacrity and then offered him a hand up. Two of the seamen moved to help him instead, but he made a point of letting Heather do it.
“I’m ready, Commander.”
“Commander?” Admiral Stewart asked, “What was that?”
“How far and what bearing, Heather?” Ramon asked.
“Southeast, thirty-two point seven miles from where we stand. I don’t know the ship’s name, but it is a cruise ship with more than two thousand aboard.”
“Princess Cruise Lines, Hawaiian Princess, out of Vancouver, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, bound to Honolulu, Admiral,” one of the staff officers reported. “The master told us we was going to make for land at his best speed.” The naval lieutenant spread his hands. “We told him to sheer off because of the local threats...”
“They’re dying now,” Heather told them. “It knows that the ship floats. It has cut a lot of holes in the hull, and it is watching the people scurry into the lifeboats.
“In a few minutes, when most of them are off, it’s going to eat them.”
Admiral Stewart cursed. “Are you with Minerva?”
“Who?” Heather asked, unsure what he meant.
“Minerva. She’s not from around here.”
“My daughter was born and raised here in Honolulu,” Lynn Zimmerman told him.
Admiral Stewart chuckled. “That’s not quite what I meant.”
“Admiral, this is retired Navy Commander Lynn Zimmerman, Heather’s mother. She’s a nurse on the staff at Tripler.”
“Ah! I thought I recognized you, Commander Zimmerman! You were there for my hernia operation a year ago!”
“I’m retired, admiral. This is my daughter, Heather Zimmerman. She’s fourteen, a high school student.”
Admiral Stewart looked around. “The command center, everyone!”
A few minutes later, they were in a small room that overlooked the operations center. Once again Ramon explained what had happened at Waimea. This time he was aware it was primarily for Heather’s mother’s benefit, not the half dozen naval officers who hadn’t heard it before.
“Admiral...” Heather’s mother started to say.
“Commander, if you will, a moment,” Admiral Stewart spoke to Heather’s mother.
“I said before that I’m retired.”
The admiral laughed. “That was yesterday — this is today. I’m sorry, Commander, but you’ve been recalled to active duty. Now please, have the good grace to listen.”
Admiral Stewart repeated an abbreviated form of the briefing Ramon had heard before. Then he digressed — sort of.
“McAdoo’s radar operator had been aware of an intermittent radar contact during the action near where the yacht Steffie had foundered. After the McAdoo destroyed the smaller target, the larger target headed towards McAdoo, but it broke off after a few moments. McAdoo detected what their sonar operator thought was a torpedo. A very unusual torpedo, in that it was running at about 120 knots, and they couldn’t detect a blade count.
“The beast veered away from McAdoo and headed due south. The radar return firmed and McAdoo’s captain, one hell of a sailor, Coastie or not, headed for the strange contact.”
He explained what happened next. Even Ramon was stunned. “There’s someone else like me?” Heather asked abruptly.
“Evidently; although I think we have to be fair and say that you’re like her, rather than the other way around,” the admiral told Heather.
“You can see the sea creature?” the admiral asked.
“Yes, sir. But ... I’ve tried to explain this to Commander Vega. I think he understands now. My mother thinks I’m insane and even now thinks you’re all crazy as well. She thought the helicopter thing was computer graphics; a publicity stunt for the TV station.
“Admiral, I can ‘see’ it in my mind. Like what you were talking about how this Minerva person sees things, but not exactly. The more I look at something the better I can ‘see’ it. This thing is southeast of the city, and is now heading into shore, thinking that there is a lot of food in Honolulu.
“But, I’ve been looking at the ocean all day now. I can see other things too, not just that big thing. There are hundreds, thousands of animals that don’t belong here! Some are half the size of the big one! Some are the size of whales, and I imagine a bunch like sharks. They’re very hungry!
“Mostly right now, they’re eating each other. They are used to many and larger animals in the ocean.”
Admiral Stewart nodded. “Minerva said that to them, our oceans are like a desert.”
Someone handed the admiral another dispatch. He read it and looked at Heather.
“Go ahead, Admiral, she’s known for more than an hour,” Ramon told his boss.
“The Hawaiian Princess reported that it had hit a whale and was taking on water. Now, we’ve lost contact with them. They manifested two thousand two hundred and fourteen passengers and crew.”
“We’ve got SAR choppers nearly on station, Admiral,” the officer who’d brought message said.
Heather looked at him. “What?”
“We have three SAR birds nearly there.” The commander looked a little confused by the imperative from a teenager.
“Here,” Heather said, “Oh my God! Here!” Her finger touched the map where she’d earlier marked where she thought the ship had gone down. “There’s a ten year boy, in a life jacket, holding onto his six year old sister! I didn’t think we could do anything for them!”
“And the critter?” the admiral asked.
“He’s about twenty miles away, Admiral. He doesn’t care for helicopters any more. Two kids? Like us eating a gnat.”
“Get those birds on this, now!” the admiral commanded.
“On the say-so of...”
“Did you hear me give you an order, Commander?” the admiral asked, his voice very frosty.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Someone else added, “We can do that from here, Admiral. Piece of cake.”
A moment later they had the lead Search And Rescue pilot on the radio and vectored him in.
There was about ten minutes, and then the pilot was back, jubilant. “We’ve got them, they’re safe and we’re headed back to the barn. Ten-year-old boy and six-year-old girl. That’s one damn brave kid! Two of them! I’m going to find out who the ELT vendor is and throw them the mother of all parties!”
“It was national technical means,” Ramon said before anyone else could react.
“Whatever! God bless ‘em! I have rug rats too! Words can’t express my gratitude!”
Admiral Stewart looked at Ramon for a moment, and then shook his head. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had to worry about treason like this. But we must. I was going to blurt out that it was girl not much older than the boy. On an open channel. That would have been — a major mistake.”
“Aye, sir,” Ramon said levelly.
Admiral Stewart looked around the room. “Commander Vega, please remain. The Zimmermans, please remain as well. The rest of you, I don’t want to know about the source, but I find myself in the need of an adult beverage of the spirituous nature forbidden from naval warships and offices. Find something, preferably a good Scotch, and deliver it unto Captain Saunders’ hands. If she didn’t already know you had it, I’d be surprised.”
Everyone else filed out and the admiral turned to Lynn Zimmerman. “Two thousand, two hundred and twelve deaths, Commander, not fourteen.”
“Yes, sir. I’m still ... trying to adjust.”
“Sit down, Commander.”
“I’m fine, Admiral.”
“And I’m an admiral and you’re a commander. If I say sit, you sit.”
Captain Saunders came in the room with a bottle of scotch and four whiskey glasses, and then pulled a cold coke from her jacket pocket as well. Without a word she poured two fingers of Scotch into three of the four glasses she’d fetched, a tiny splash into the fourth and kept the coke can for herself.
Admiral Stewart held up his glass and toasted Captain Saunders. “My Scotch and my glasses,” he said and laughed. “At least the soda was yours.”
“The others have work to do, Admiral.”
“Aye, that they do.”
Admiral Stewart turned to Lynn Zimmerman. “Commander, in a short while the Eisenhower battle group is going to sortie. Our immediate mission is to secure, insofar as possible, the local waters around Hawaii. In that effort, ten thousand one hundred and twenty men and women will sail into harm’s way. Give or take a few.
“Commander Zimmerman, I’m sorry about this, I truly am — but there will be one fourteen-year-old young woman sailing with the fleet.”
“No!”
“Mom!” Heather said, speaking for the first in a while. “Figure it out! You’re always telling me I have to stop and think — you know I do that every day and yet, every day, you remind me again. Stop and think!”
Heather looked up at Commander Vega. He was still shaky even though he was using one crutch now, instead of two, with his cast cut away. She knew he was muscling up the ladders they’d had to climb to reach the bridge of the aircraft carrier and through there to the combat information center.
Admiral Stewart stood in front of a huge plexiglass chart that currently had a map of the Hawaiian Islands and surrounding waters on it. He glanced at Heather and she drew herself up. “You want a list, big to small,” she told him.
“If you would, Heather,” the admiral asked politely.
Heather sensed her mother’s anger once again. She turned to the woman who had birthed her and spoke things she’d wanted to say for years.
“Mom, I love you, okay? But you are so full of shit! Men are no more evil than women! People are what they are! Who they are! I’m sorry if you can’t trust any man, but that’s simply not true!” She gestured at Commander Vega. “Commander Vega would take a bullet for me. Admiral Stewart would send his ships to take bullets for me. They aren’t evil, Mom!
“They’ve already told you that you have to behave. I’m your daughter, and I’m telling you now that I’ll know what you intend before they do, and I’ll tell them! Do you understand? They’ll put you in a cell! Shut your mouth unless you’re really sure!”
Heather took a deep breath and stepped close to the chart screen and took a gizmo from one of the enlisted men at the map and drew a squiggle, then an arrow off of it, heading towards Honolulu. “This is the big one, I’m not sure how to determine how fast it’s going.”
She marked a dozen X’s on the map and arrows. Two of them she drew circles around. “These are smaller things, maybe half the size of the big one. The circled ones — I get the impression they are heavily armored. I drew long arrows on some of the others because my impression is that they are very fast. They can’t go far, very fast, but they can go faster than a car for a couple of hours.
“There are a bunch more further away, but...”
Admiral Stewart laughed bitterly. “Yeah. Lets not worry about those just yet. We’re going to have a tough time with the first dozen targets. Captain Felsen, we’re clear of the harbor?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Plot an intercept with this one here, the whole formation. Everyone go to flank. Operating this close to Pearl, fuck the fuel budget.”
Heather felt her mother start to react to the obscenity, but she ostentatiously kicked her mother in the leg. Everyone saw her do it, but everyone looked away. Her mother stared at Heather, a hurt look on her face.
Heather stuck her tongue out. “Mother, I hear that word a hundred times a day at school. That cow is out of the barn.”
She felt Commander Vega smile and that made her feel better. Heather turned to Admiral Stewart and smiled. “I thought I’d feel sea sick.”
“Eisenhower is pretty stable until the seas get up. Then even a ship this large can get — frisky.”
Heather concentrated on the marks that were appearing, as the ships headed further out to sea. “Admiral, there are now fourteen targets larger than six hundred feet.”
“Minerva said that more would be coming. She should be at Pearl tomorrow evening.”
Heather finished the thought. “She’s in danger?”
“Yes. We think we’ve got it under control; Lord, I hope we do.”
Heather drew three O’s on the board, north of the islands. “These, these are bad,” she told Admiral Stewart. “They are maybe four hundred feet, and they are like turtles. They have a thick shell and pull their head and legs back under their shell when attacked.”
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