“You secure back there, Chief?” Jarvis asked Hoffman as he stepped into the cutter’s bridge.
“Aye, sir.”
“Bosun, what’s the depth under the keel here?” Jarvis asked.
The man looked and replied that it was 112 feet. Deep enough.
“Very well, mark our current position on the chart as
sunken ferry
.” Jarvis said as he reached for the 1MC and opened up the intercom to all compartments of the ship. “Prepare for
Surface Action, Guns
. Gunners take aim amidships of the ferry just under the waterline and fire until your belt runs out. Batteries Released!”
With that, the two .50-caliber Browning heavy machine guns opened up on the ferry. The guns fired three rounds per second and were loud enough to be heard inside the waterproof bridge. Their vibrations ran the length of the vessel and the recoil of each round that left the barrels felt as hammer blows through the feet of the cutter’s crew.
The two gunners leaned into their mounts and engaged their target. No one on the ship had ever fired the machineguns at anything other than empty ocean or floating ‘killer tomato’ targets during qualifications. A few bursts came from each weapon as the gunners saw the white impact of their rounds geyser seawater on the waves, corrected their aim, and then opened fire for effect on the exposed hull of the ferry.
Angry red balls of tracer ammunition, loaded every fifth round, bounced off the wave tops and onto the ferry’s deck, sending small tendrils of smoke skyward. The five-inch long cartridges, firing 700-grain ball ammunition, penetrated the water and could be heard impacting the steel hull just below the waves with dull
thwacks
. Empty brass cases and steel machinegun links littered the nonskid deck of the cutter as the gunners put in work. With both ships motionless on the light sea, firing at point-blank range, it was easier than any simulator.
After a solid minute of firing, the belts ran out in each machine gun and the gunners stepped back to examine their work. For seamen used to firing ten rounds during drills and then getting a tap on the head to turn the weapon over to the next Coastie in line, it was almost hypnotic to watch.
The ferry was starting to list to the side as its shallow bottom filled quickly with water from the nearly two hundred, half-inch wide holes punched neatly in its hull. The cutter’s crew sat in silence for ten minutes as the ship across from them filled with water and its deck became awash. Cars and trucks floated around, temporarily buoyant on the submerging deck, as the ferry sank underneath it. Bodies and the twitching infected disappeared in the Gulf’s water as they too began to go down with the ship. The ferry slipped underwater as calm and quiet as if it were a submarine submerging.
In one final rush of escaping air, the ferry gave its death rattle and slipped below the waves. Two life rafts, a few coolers, a soccer ball, plastic cups, and lifejackets puddled out on the surface with the bubbles from the craft sinking. All was quiet except for the sound of the
Fish Hawk
’s generators, the water against her hull, and the snapping of her flags in the breeze.
Jarvis picked up the 1MC once again, “Good shooting, good job everyone. Load one more belt on the starboard mount and stitch that debris field good. The last thing I want is one of those things hitching a ride to shore on floatation.”
The bridge party all murmured agreement and congratulated each other.
“Chief, make sure you guys break those 50-cals down and get them cleaned,” Jarvis said as he retired below to his cabin. “Also, record the incident and our location in the deck log and note the new hazard to navigation. You have the boat.”
The sound of the starboard machinegun had started again in controlled five-round bursts as the gunner worked over the debris field in front of the cutter.
««—»»
Jarvis was sitting on the small bunk in his cabin writing a narrative for his own sake. Active US Navy and Coast Guard ships do not keep a “Captains Log,” which was wholly Gene Roddenberry’s invention in
Star Trek
. What they do keep is a deck log that belongs to the ship and records very dry simple things such as ship movement, absences, and so forth. However, being the first time that he had ever ordered live rounds fired, he thought it prudent to make a few notes just in case he ever had to stand in front of a review board and explain himself. The Chief appeared at the cabin door and knocked.
“Hey, Skipper, we have something else on the scope. Something big,” Hoffman said with a concerned look on his face.
“The
Gulf Mariner
?” Jarvis asked.
“Can’t tell sir, it’s dead in the water, according to radar bigger than 10,000-tons and won’t answer the radios on any band.”
Jarvis put the cheap Skillcraft pen to his lips and thought for a second. They did not have enough fuel to run all over everywhere chasing ghosts. However, if this damned ship full of hundreds or possibly thousands of infected was tracking to shore, it would be helpful to know.
“How far out is the contact, Chief?”
“Radar has it about ten miles south. We are currently about twenty offshore from the marina. The engineer says we have 150-gallons usable, so if you want to make it, we can do it slow, and still have enough to get home,” Hoffman advised.
The crew had been chomping at the bit to take a swing at the lost cruise ship
Gulf Mariner
ever since it had come across the radio yesterday. They had to know. Some of the younger crewmembers were convinced the cruise ship was loaded with fat tourists and their gullible teenage daughters to whom they could play knight in shining armor. Others feared, like Jarvis, that the ship was loaded with disease and was a floating threat just like the ferry was, only on a much more massive scale.
“Set a course for an intercept at 15-knots and note it in the deck log. Get the machine guns reloaded and brief the bridge crew. I want to finish this narrative while it is still fresh. I will see you in the bridge in twenty minutes,” Jarvis said and went back to his writing.
The Chief acknowledged and turned.
“Chief?” Jarvis said.
As Hoffman stopped and turned around, Jarvis kept writing but started talking through the clipboard at him.
“When I came down to my cabin, I noticed that the small arms locker intrusion alarm box was set to
off
and the key was hanging out of it. You know that as the Weapons Petty Officer on the boat as required by the Ordnance pub, security of small arms keys and inventory is part of your billet.”
Hoffman nodded and began to speak.
“Don’t explain; just make sure it doesn’t happen again, Chief. Attention to detail is everything. The men look to us to set the example.”
“Aye, sir. Permission to be excused?”
“Granted.”
««—»»
Jarvis stepped into the bridge and joined the search for the surface contact. He did not like getting further away from the only port he knew when the
Fish Hawk
was on fumes. He once had to sail a 26-foot Colgate five miles to shore with a busted hull and split rudder during the summer sailing program at the Coast Guard Academy. An oyster dredge had struck the Colgate and kept going, but instead of sinking, Jarvis held the shattered tiller together with his t-shirt and willpower long enough to get back home. That had taught him that sometimes you did what you had to in order to complete the mission.
“Any contact by radio with the vessel, Chief?” he asked as he slid into his chair on the side of the bridge.
“No, sir, the only thing on the radio is us. We caught a bunch of Vietnamese chatter on the VHF, but nothing else. The target is still DIW,” Hoffman said.
“Very well, Chief. Get down on deck and ready the small boat crew. Same drill as before,” Jarvis said.
“But captain, if it
is
that cruise ship, we aren’t going to be able to tow her or sink her with what we have.”
“Understood. Ready the small boat for a closer look and we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
Hoffman nodded and disappeared out the back door of the bridge to go to the small boat. Jarvis kept watch out of the slanted rectangular glass windows of the cutter’s bridge for the
Gulf Mariner
. If it were out there, a 70,000-ton ship would be visible for miles.
“What’s the scope look like, Bosun?” Jarvis asked.
“Contact bearing on beam three miles out. Nothing else in front of us, nothing new behind us,” the Bosun advised.
The Bosun was twenty-five and had been in the Coast Guard for half a dozen years, all of it on patrol boats. He was quiet, efficient, and looking to make Chief on a boat of his own in a few years. Jarvis wondered if there were any other boats out there for him, or if they would all grow old together on the
Fish Hawk
. Jarvis toyed with daydreams of himself with grey hair, saluting the rag of the ship’s ensign when it was pulled down for the last time far into the future.
“Mister Jarvis, I have a visual on a contact, but it’s no cruise liner,” the Bosun said through binoculars a minute later.
Jarvis picked up his own pair from the box next to his chair and glassed the bump in the distance. A long brown and grey ship was slowly coming into view. While it was big, the Bosun was right in that it was far from being a cruise ship. It was some sort of freighter, and by the looks of it about 15,000-tons overall and poorly maintained.
“Get us around to their stern and let’s see if we can get a ship’s name and port. Also keep an eye out for a flag.”
“Aye.”
As they drew closer to the mystery ship, Jarvis saw that the freighter’s anchor was down and she was moored and quiet. No smoke came from her stack and no activity was on her decks. A blue and yellow flag fluttered from her yardarm, and what looked like a bed sheet or piece of canvas was nailed across a wide part of her superstructure. Something was written on the bed sheet with international orange paint but they were still too far away to make it out.
“Get us around her bow, Boats,” Jarvis said, eyes glued to the binoculars.
The Bosun complied and they moved around to the moored freighter’s side obliquely. On the back of her black stern was
Pamyat Ilicha, Odessa
in white paint.
Yellow and blue flag, Odessa,
Pamyat Ilicha
: Russian but not quite, Jarvis thought as he put down the binoculars and reached into the chart locker for the ship’s copy of
Jane’s Merchant Ships
. Normally all they had to do was call Sector and they could get the low-down on any ship at sea in five minutes or less, but these were not ordinary times. Jarvis flipped through the huge volume and found her under the listing for the Ukraine. Built 1982 in East Germany, she was a refrigerated cargo ship of 12,527-tons. Right at 500-feet long, she could make 17 knots when new on her diesel power plant. She was optimized for frozen poultry shipments.
“Looks like a Ukrainian chicken boat. Probably was coming out of Gulfport headed to the motherland with a load of leg quarters,” Jarvis announced.
“Sir, you can read what that sheet on her foc’sle says now,” the Bosun said as he looked through his glasses at the rust-streaked vessel.
Jarvis picked up his own binoculars again and focused on the freighter. It had three words written on the bed sheet in orange paint.
“That’s a good sign,” Jarvis said to himself.
Part of him said to order the
Fish Hawk
back to Gulf Shores and mark this as a derelict vessel. After all, it was moored miles from shore and, barring a hurricane bringing it ashore, nothing on it should pose a threat. However, what if someone on that ship needed help? The cutter, her crew, and her commander were the United States Coast Guard. They could very well be the last of the service after this pandemic, but Coast Guard they remained nonetheless.
Core values are what you hold inside you to reflect how you operate individually and collectively as a team. At the academy for four years, he had the Coast Guard’s simple five-word core value beat into him. He lived it on a Vietnam era cutter in the Bering Sea. He lived it then off Gulf Shores.
He reached for the 1MC, “Boarding party, issue long arms. Chief, come to the bridge,” Jarvis said. He could not turn the cutter around without making sure.
“Right here, Skipper,” Hoffman said as he entered the bridge. On an 87-foot long patrol boat, you never were very far away.
“Chief, make sure you guys take M16s and Mossbergs with you on this boarding. Take the Cook, leave one guy on the small boat, do a four-man old school MARDET vessel boarding, and search. The Russian word for bridge looks like M-O-C-T-N-K. If you see anything sketchy or think there is infection aboard, then cut out. We will cover you from here with the 50’s.”
“It’s a mother big boat, sir.”
“A little over 12,000-tons according to the info sheet, but it’s a merchant so there shouldn’t be much crew to worry with. Just stay contact close and be safe. In and out, Chief.”