A short bit I wrote for a writing exercise for the G+ Community “Writer’s Discussion Group.” If you’re on Google + you can go check out the other stories as well and +1 the ones you like. The prompt was an animated gif of a heart monitor that is pinging and then flatlines. So I associated the pinging actions with sonar.
Eternal Patrol
Ping. PING! Ping. PING! I listen to the Japanese destroyer’s sonar smacking into our hull. It’s gentle on the first touch, ping. Maddeningly loud on the second, PING! Those loud ones arrow straight back to him announcing our presence, our course, our speed. He doesn’t know who we are, only what we are and what we’ve done. But it’s enough for him to want us dead.
It’s dark and unbelievably hot in the belly of this beast we volunteered to man, to care for, to wield as an instrument of freedom. She’s the USS Wahoo, an American submarine. I close my eyes and place my hand against the sweating steel bulkhead that separates the 80 sailors on board from the bone crushing sea. I hear the labored breathing of the men in the conning tower. Their sweat mixes on the deck with her sweat, the Wahoo’s sweat. We’re all waiting and listening.
Thrum, thrum, thrum comes from the destroyer’s propellers as he makes another pass above us. We’re barely making steerage-way on one shaft, one motor. The air grows thicker as oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide with each wheezing breath. Always the ping. PING! Can’t escape it this time.
If we had any torpedoes left I’d take her up and fight with every last weapon on board. They’re gone. Twenty-four fish found targets in the Sea of Japan. Four are no longer in the service of Nippon. Instead we limp along near the bottom trying to silently get out from under him. Ping. PING!
Click. A new sound now. WHAM! Swish. Depth charges. Some of us are praying now. Some of us are cursing now. Click. The initial pressure wave. WHAM! The explosion. Swish! The water from the explosion pushing through our outside superstructure. Ping. PING!
Click. The time between the click and the WHAM! The shorter–the closer. When they are nearly simultaneous it is over. We won’t hear the swish. Ping. PING! Ping. PING!
Thrum, thrum, thrum, click, WHAM! Swish. Click, WHAM! Swish. Click. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! Crump!
Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping…