Read Online Dragon Fire (The Battle for the Falklands Book 2) by Peter von Bleichert - Free Book Online

searched for the path of least resistance.   Thousands of pounds pressed on the
submarine.   Another bang, and everyone
looked to Captain Matias.   He looked up
the main ladder at the Control Room hatch.   BANG.   The thinner steel of the
submarine’s sail had flexed under extreme pressure and deformed, stretching
between its latticed framework .
    “Deeper,” the captain ordered.
    San
Luis II let out a prolonged noise like the song of a
melancholy whale.   One submariner began
to breathe heavily, and then he whimpered.
    “ Tomalo con soda ,” Ledesma calmed the neophyte submariner with an Argentine
expression.   Then he turned to
Matias.   “ Señor , estamos a 360 metros .”   Then came an unholy creak from San Luis II .   “I don’t think she can stand much more,”
Ledesma pleaded.
    “ Bien , Santiago,” Matias conceded,
“Hold us here.”
    “Neutral buoyancy,” Ledesma said, pointing
at the vent levers.   “Hold your depth at
380 meters.”
    The boat quieted as the depth gauge
steadied and stopped, just a few hash marks short of ‘400,’ the highest number
the dial showed.   Someone sighed with
relief, followed by a moment of silence, of calm.   Then suddenly, a water pipe running along the
top of the Control Center whined and burst.
    Water sprayed from a valve and ran along
the pipe, raining down.
    “Damage control,” Ledesma yelled.
    The valve shot off and bounced twice.   The deck plate it hit rang fantastically
loud.   The metal wheel wobbled for a
moment and then stopped.   Everyone in the
Control Room looked at it, hated it, and knew what it had done.
    One sailor immediately took a wrench to
the valve and instantly became soaked by the leak, yet he tightened the
connection.   The water slowed, but still it
cascaded down a panel.
    Sparks flashed and the panel’s display
lights extinguished.   However, back-up
analog displays confirmed the tank vents had in fact closed.   Valves were opened and closed along the pipe
in order to isolate the leak.   Everyone
looked to the curved ceiling.   They all
wondered if the enemy had heard the commotion.
    “ Señor ,
the leak has been isolated,” Ledesma whispered.
    “Very well,” Captain Matias acknowledged.
    PING.
    “Sir, active--”
    PING.
    “Yes, Santiago,” Matias put his hand on
his friend’s shoulder, “I hear it.”

 
    6:
ABRAZO

 
    “ Let me embrace thee , sour adversity , for wise men say it is the wisest course . ”—William Shakespeare

 
    K ingfisher
21 hovered.   The Merlin’s dipping sonar
dangled in the water, fishing for anything that happened to be biting.   Among the miles-wide sonobuoy field Dragon ’s
helicopter had sown, one passive type—buoy ‘Papa Three’—had registered an
anomalous sound.   It transmitted to the
helicopter the contact’s general depth, heading, and range.   Kingfisher 21, in turn, bounced the data back
to Dragon .
    In the Op Room’s cool darkness, Dragon ’s anti-submarine warfare officer adjusted
his flash hood and gloves and surveyed his screen.   It showed the GPS plot of each sonobuoy, and
represented by a green ‘H,’ the radar position of the helicopter.
    The Merlin had raced to sonobuoy Papa
Three’s position and hurriedly lowered its dipping sonar below the thermocline.   John fired off an active ping.   The sound waves moved through the liquid
medium, where they bounced off shoals of fish, off rock, and off sand, and off
anything else in the oceanic water column.   Then the sound waves boomeranged and returned to, and were collected by,
the FLASH’s cylindrical transmitter/receiver.   Tied into the buoys, the computers in the Merlin’s rear cabin analyzed
the data and presented it on a monochrome screen.
    An object differing from the contours of
the sea bottom immediately caught John’s highly trained eye.   John tapped the display’s glass in
recognition.
    “What have we here?” he mumbled to
himself, and then pushed the transmit button for