Arabian Storm (The Hunter Killer Series Book 5) by George Wallace (different ereaders .txt) 📕

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“Conn, Sonar. New passive broadband contact on the towed array,” STS2 Joe Drussel reported over the 21MC of the submarine USS Toledo. “Designate Sierra Three-Three, best bearing three-zero-five, and Sierra Three-Four, best bearing three-five-five. No classification yet.”

Pat Durand punched up the towed array passive broadband display on the BQQ-10 remote console on the conn. Sure enough, the barest hint of a trace was just starting to appear. But was it the Chinese battlegroup or just another tramp steamer making its way across this stretch of the Indian Ocean? Only one way to find out.

Durand ordered the chief of the watch to station the section tracking party as he reached for the JA phone to call the captain. He had just hit the buzzer as he heard the 1MC announcement, “Station the Section Tracking Party.”

Joe Glass answered on the first buzz. “What do you have, Mr. Durand? Same guy as yesterday?”

“Don’t know yet, Skipper,” Durand answered. “Still getting a curve and classifying a new contact, passive broadband on the towed array. Best bearings three-zero-five and three-five-five. Same general direction as yesterday, so...”

“Let’s see if we can hold him this time. At least through one maneuver. Okay?”

But then the 4MC Emergency Announcing system blasted out a message. One that immediately stopped the conversation. And everything else aboard the submarine.

“Fire! Fire in Machinery One! Fire in number one burner!”

Pat Durand was just starting to tell the chief of the watch, Chief Johannson, to announce the fire, but the portly A-gang chief had already initiated the General Alarm. Just as the clanging alarm stopped, he announced over the 1MC, “Fire! Fire in Machinery One. Rig ship for fire! Fire in number one burner! All hands don EABs!”

Easily one of the worst fears of any submariner, fire and smoke while submerged could be deadly. And on a submarine, there was no escape.

Joe Glass ran into the control room, pulling on his emergency air breathing mask as he crossed the few feet to the periscope stand.

Chief Johannson flicked up switches on the ballast control panel to line up the pressurized depth control tank to the trim system discharge header. That would put pressurized seawater at all the fire hose connections. Then the chief announced over the 1MC, “The fire main is pressurized.”

All this had been practiced over and over again. For Toledo and her crew, this was the first time it was for real.

As if to confirm it, wisps of gray smoke were already snaking up into the control room, quickly filling the confined space with a dense, dark cloud. Watch-standers grabbed EABs, cinching them tightly before drawing deeply on the clean air. Ventilation fans spun down and dampers clanged shut as the boat was rigged to prevent the fire and smoke from spreading. Or at least as much as possible. Emergency lighting blinked on, providing only a little help in penetrating the growing gloom.

The 4MC blared, “This is the XO. I am in charge at the scene.”

Billy Ray Jones’s voice was heavily muffled by his mask. He had to pause after every few words to breathe. “Fire hose team from torpedo room proceed to Machinery One.”

“Mr. Durand,” Glass ordered, “Come to one-five-zero feet, clear baffles and make preparations to come to periscope depth.”

If they could not quickly control the fire and smoke, they would have no choice but to surface. In any case, they would need to ventilate to clear the smoke overboard once the fire was out.

Billy Ray Jones pulled the flame-resistant hood down over his EAB as he pushed back into the tiny laundry space to make room for the four-man fire hose team to get past him and into Machinery One. Thick black smoke made it impossible for him to even see his own hands. He struggled to blindly pull on his firefighting gloves.

“Fire has spread from the burner to hull insulation,” the fire hose team leader yelled. The smoke was far too thick for Jones to see who the man was.

Someone else brushed against Jones and said, “XO, I’ve manned the phones with control and told them that the fire is spreading to hull insulation.”

The heat and black smoke were stifling. This was the worst part of submarining. There was no safe place to go anywhere on the boat. They had to put the fire out and clear the smoke. There was no other option.

Jones grabbed his phone talker to pull him close.

“To the damage control team, send a fire hose team from the mess decks to Machinery One through the aft hatch. To Maneuvering, isolate electrical power to Machinery One.”

Seconds later, he heard over the 1MC, “Fire hose team is entering Machinery One from aft. Machinery One is electrically isolated.”

Well, at least any electrical fire had lost power and it was reasonably safe now to spray water. But a hull insulation fire was particularly horrid. The heavy plastic-like material—sometimes soaked with oil from nearby machinery—gave off a very nasty and potentially toxic black smoke. Once the immediate flames were extinguished, the insulation had to be pulled and scraped free from the hull, then dunked in buckets of water to keep it from bursting into flames again.

Jesus, Jones thought. This will damn sure be a long, hard, hot morning!

The two fire hose teams moved against the fire, spraying a mist of cooling, smothering water on the flames. The cramped space made movement particularly difficult. The rock-hard, pressurized fire hose was all but impossible to wrestle around to get better access to the fire. It was tough, demanding work in a very hot environment. Five or ten minutes was about all anyone could do before he became exhausted and had to be relieved.

One by one, Jones sent in new people to spell the exhausted firefighters. At the same time, the XO counted the relieved men as they groped their way back out to collapse in the relative safety of the torpedo room. Keeping careful track of everyone entering and