The Deep End of Your Dreams Ch. 10

"No, sir,"

"Get Mr. Levy back up here, on the double!"

+++++

"Was that the Iowa?" Cox screamed.

"Yup. Weps, ready on one."

"One ready."

"Fox one."

"Firing one."

The first Harpoon, the missile hanging outboard of the Viking's left engine, leapt off the rail in a searing white roar...

+++++

Rear Admiral Eric Bey saw the launch from the Scharnhorst's bridge, but he had no idea what it was beyond a brilliant white light. Alarms starting sounding when lookouts spotted an aircraft on the horizon dead ahead, yet Bey couldn't believe his ears. No aircraft could possibly be up in this weather, let alone engage in combat operations...

Then he saw the missile streak by, perhaps two hundred meters off his port beam and just above the wave-tops, and he ran out on the bridge-deck and watched it home-in on the Prinz Eugen. His hands on the ice covered rail, he saw the impact...indeed, he could feel the heat moments later...and despite the snow and the wind it took minutes for the his first view of the burning wreckage to emerge from the flames and billowing smoke.

"Radar! Where is that aircraft!" Bey called out, frantic now.

He saw the two battleships still ahead and shook his head...

"Hard right rudder, make your course zero two zero, make smoke and all ahead full!"

+++++

"Skipper?" the Viking's weapons control officer said calmly. "Aspect change on the remaining target. He's breaking off, sir."

"Okay, I see him now," Stephens said as he flew over the flaming hulk of the Prinz Eugen. "See the flag?" he asked Cox as 7-0-4 flew past the sinking battle-wagon.

"German?"

"NAZI German, as a matter of fact. Weps, safe your weapon."

"Roger. Harpoon two to safe."

"Make sure the camera is getting all this," Stephens said to Cox.

"It's recording, getting a good image."

He cut power and trimmed his nose up a little, let more speed bleed off until he knew he needed to drop some flaps. Using the joystick, Cox centered the camera on the Scharnhorst's stern, the vessel's name and hailing port clear in the display.

"Scharnhorst?" Cox asked.

"Uh-huh. She went down in '44, I think."

"What? You mean, in 1944? That we just engaged – and sunk – a German battlewagon that hasn't existed in fifty years?"

"Yup, that's what it looks like," Stephens said, grinning. Let's get some Mark I eyeballs on those two Navy ships..."

As Stephens reefed the little jet into a tight turn, and now on a reciprocal heading to the US ships, he barely felt the presence of the sphere again – then seconds later Mauler 7-0-4 burst out into radiantly clear skies. He checked the condition of his aircraft, knowing instinctively that the Iowa was gone now, then he checked-in with Brunswick as he changed course back to the base, not quite knowing what waited for him in the days ahead, and not at all sure what they had just experienced. Whatever had happened, he thought, it was more exciting than chasing phantom Russian trawlers...

(C) 2017 | Adrian Leverkühn | abw | fiction, all of it...