Chapter 25
Greg was seated on a campstool. He was drinking coffee, and waiting for the UH-1H (Huey) to show up. He and his men had arrived at this location the night before. He had decided it was perfect for a perimeter defense if one was needed, and had a good clear space for a helicopter to land.
According to the last radio contact with the freighter he was supposed to meet and their GPS position locator, they were close enough now for the helicopter to fly in and return to the ship, with fuel to spare.
Still, it would take a lot of flight time to make a round trip, so Greg said he was camped, and the ship could make up the difference. A transmission from Cheyenne had instructed Greg to board the ship, and explore the new Island.
It had been stable for almost a year now, and according to satellite and overflight information, the volcano was dormant. Greg thought it an interesting mission. To be one of the first people to explore a new island! This was the stuff books were made of! He grinned to himself. This would make a great novel.
Finally, late in the afternoon, he heard the sound of a chopper approaching. He stood, with coffee in his hand, and watched as it approached. Sgt. Langford went out to guide it in.
The Sgt. positioned himself so that he was facing into the wind, and left a large enough area for the chopper to land. He held his arms straight up in the air. This was a signal to the pilot, which basically meant, "Guide On Me."
Shortly, the helicopter was down, and two men got out. The pilot and copilot were doing shut down procedures. Greg waited as a captain and a civilian came up to him. The captain saluted.
"General Baron. I'm Captain James Ortman. I will be taking care of your group while you are on the ship. This is Mr. John Pullet. He is an expert on volcanoes," the Captain said.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, General. I must say I enjoyed your last book, The Color Blind Killer. A very clever book, indeed. I have a copy of it on the ship with me. I would be honored if you would sign it for me," John said to Greg.
So it was, that after eating their evening meal, Greg found himself strapped into the Huey, and was on his way to the ship that was now his floating headquarters. Thirty-five minutes later saw them touching down on the cargo freighter's newly made helipad.
The ship was commanded and run by Navy and ex-Navy personnel. The Captain was an active duty Navy man, who had survived by living in the Appalachian Mountains. When things settled down, he had gone to the nearest military base, and had run across a military sweep that accepted him as one of their own.
His rank was as a Captain in the Navy. His last post had been as a destroyer's Captain. While this was a let down from being on a surface warship, it was still a command at sea!
He had no idea who General Baron was, just that he was now his immediate commander. Well, he would do everything he could to make the general comfortable. He just hoped that the man did not try to run his command. After all, the man was a ground pounder, not a Navy man, and he might not know when he was over stepping propriety.
Greg called a meeting of department heads, and asked that the Captain be present, also.
"Thank you for coming. This is going to be a very exciting time! We are going to explore a newly formed island. This is something that has not happened, in a long time. I want to make it clear from the start, that Captain Ron Clark, this ship's captain, has my full cooperation.
"I have no clue as to how to run a Naval operation. I will be relying heavily upon his expertise. What he says, goes. If he says we stay 10 miles off the island, then we have a long commute. I have full confidence in the Captain. He is my adviser in everything that pertains to the Naval portion of this mission," Greg told the assembled personnel.
The Captain of the ship listened, and was pleased that the general had basically admitted his ignorance to seaborn conditions. The Captain was impressed. Not many people of the General's rank would be willing to admit to not knowing that his ideas were better than a Captain's knowledge.
They discussed how best to land, and who to send to the island. The General wanted to go, but was willing to go in, on a secondary or tertiary lift. He was not adamant on being the first to set foot on the new island.
And so it was, that the Captain said they could be at island, in just three day's sailing time. He did say that he only had food stores on board for another 30 days. Greg told the captain that a tender would be made available, if resupply was required. The tender could be detached from the aircraft carrier Ronald Regan's task force.
With that, the ship turned eastward, and proceeded towards the new isalnd, which still needed to be named. It took almost three days of sailing before the ship slowed, and started its long coast, until it was dead in the water on the western side of the island.
A helicopter was dispatched. It did a recon of the perimeter of the island. Reports came back about things growing on the island. Also, a water source seemed to be running off the island. It was not yet known if it was fresh water or salt water, but still, a water source was an exciting find!
With the exception of the center of the island, most of the island was made up of what had once been the sea floor. The island was over 40 miles in diameter, but was more ovoid, than circular. Its longer axis (just over 50 miles) was mostly north-to-south The ship was doing sonar soundings to try to get an idea of the floor of the ocean in the immediate vicinity.
The helicopter over flew the island, and took videos of everything. When the tapes were reviewed there were several surprises. One was the wreck of a ship. It looked like an old 1930's freighter. The other was more difficult to pin down, except there was an obvious old style cannon sticking out of the sides of a ship. Most of it was buried a short distance from the ocean. It was very exciting really.
Everyone wanted to explore the two wrecks right away. The captain of the ship wanted to hear reports first. Was there anyone else here? Was there evidence of previous visitations? The captain was cautious, and Greg backed him to the hilt.
Admiral Allen Page was worried. From the intelligence that had come from South Korea, it appeared that the North Koreans had a modern submarine, and it was on its way to America to launch some sort of biological weapon.
While it sounded far fetched to him, they had already received faint sonar echo's of, "Something" out there. They were unable to get a lock on it. As soon as it was detected, it took advantage of the newly changed seabed, and what ever it was escaped.
For hours, the task force concentrated on running down the ghostly returns on the sonar screens. Finally they lost it completely. They had not had any returns, ghostly or otherwise for over two hours, when the admiral ordered that the force start quartering a new section of ocean.
Aboard the Akula class Soviet built submarine, the crew was relaxing. It had been a near thing, but they had finally gotten away from the damned Americans. Their Russian trainers had been well worth the millions they had paid them for the training they had received.
The captain ordered a slight increase in speed and turned in a northerly direction. Sonar reported the enemy was actively searching south, and all three surface vessels were headed in a westerly direction.
The captain of the submarine was not going to take a chance with the people's only advanced submarine. He kept the speed reasonably slow, but he pulled away steadily from the search pattern the Americans were conducting.
His executive officer reported that firing solutions had been entered into the computer, and they could have torpedoes or missiles going after the surface ships at the Captain's discretion.
Despite the firepower that the three surface ships represented, he was more worried about the probable submarine, that always accompanied American Aircraft Carriers. While they had good solutions on the American surface ships, there was no hint of a submarine, yet. The Captain had a feeling that there was one, they just had not found it yet. He refused to advertise his location to that submarine, by firing at the surface ships.
His orders were mission specific, and he was not going to fail in his mission.
The captain of the freighter had been asked, via radio, to keep an eye out for enemy submarines. While his freighter was not a US Naval vessel, his helicopter contingent was well equiped with sonar-buoys. He studied the charts he had of this part of the ocean.
Admittedly, he was charting a new sea floor, but he was confident of his readings. He decided that a good use of the sonar-buoys would be about 15 miles to the south and a little west of the island. There seemed to be a natural undersea mount which would cause submarines to have to pass at a very shallow depth, indeed, less than 300 feet, in fact. The undersea topography seemed to conspire that all submarines proceed at that very shallow depth in that area.
Therefore, he ordered the Huey to take a crew and some buoys, to the GPS locations he indicated. Once there, they were to set the buoys in place, and use 'sea anchors' to keep them in place, as long as possible. It took a little over an hour to accomplish that mission. The buoys would not go off unless the magnometers inside the buoys picked up an object within their range of detection, or a specific time went by. After that time lapse they activated, and sent out active sonar pulses through the ocean, looking for objects.
The next morning dawned clear, and had a slight wind. So far no contacts had been reported by the buoys. If anything was out there, it was not in the range of the buoys.
Greg was looking forward to going to the island. The civilian was also eager to get started.
Greg looked one more time at the island, just three miles away, and got into the Huey. He belted himself in. One load of scientists had already been set on the shores of the new island. This would be the third trip for the helicopter. The first trip had taken a squad of Special Forces, and they had already set up a camp of sorts.
Everyone was eager to explore the two wrecked ships that had been brought to the surface by the island forming. Such an event was an unheard of. It was also too good a thing to pass up. Everyone who could swing a trip to the island, was trying to get their name on a flight.
Twenty minutes later, Greg found himself looking over the partial remains of an old style sailing ship. Someone had tentatively identified the cannons as being circa 1600 to 1685. They could not be more specific. There was an improvement in cannon technology during that time. They had been able to do away with the fat style and had slimmed them down a bit. Both style cannons were present on this wreck.
It was exciting for the people present. This was history before them. Time had stopped, at the moment of the sinking of this ship. As they dug down, they uncovered a ship that for it's age and having been underwater for so long, was in remarkably good condition.
"Why is this ship in such good condition?" Greg mused aloud.
"I think I can answer that. I was on a deep dive once, and came across the hulk of an old sailing ship. Spanish ship. The depth and cold of the sea around the ship acted to preserve it. While it was admittedly in pretty bad shape, it was in much better shape than a ship of the same period that had been found in shallower water," a scientist told Greg.
So, the degree of deterioration could be slowed by the water temperature and depth of the ship. Greg wondered how far down this ship had been since it had sunk. That thought was interrupted as someone said they had run across a solid section of decking.
Excitement broke out again, and people started to clear the area of the accumulated mud/sediment. Shortly, they had a fairly intact section of deck cleared. Everyone was careful to stay off of it.
Greg went off to the side and thought. This was an exciting thing to have happened. He was still wondering what to do with this ship, when one of the Special Forces Sgt's came up to him.
"Sir? The captain of the freighter just radioed. The sonar-buoys just reacted. They have detected a submarine. The captain has ordered that the Blackhawk be refitted with hellfire missiles, and go on patrol," the Sgt. said.
Admiral Page had all ships sent orders to head towards the northerly sub contact that the freighter Captain, Captain Clark, had reported. He read the global positioning stats. The contact was almost 65 miles north of their present position.
Damn! He had guessed wrong. No matter. Thanks to a Captain who was currently in charge of a freighter, the Navy now had the sub under observation. Satellites were already repositioning.
Edited by TeNderLoin