The Chase: One Courageous Skipper Battling The Perilous Evil Out To Destroy Him. (Sea Action & Adventure) Read Free Page B

was sitting on the roof of the doghouse, facing the open sea while his son was at the helm. They were Greek from the island of Phrmako, East of Bargylia bay. The older man had been fishing near the Turkish coast for many years now, as did many other Greek fishermen. The catch was good and the Turks didn’t bother them much. He and his son had laid their fishing nets during the night before and now they came for a day shelter in the hidden inlet, as they had done many times each summer.
    The young son let out a short yelp of surprise as he saw the tower of the submarine in the middle of the cove. The fisherman turned his head toward the Slavianka, but, before he realized what it was, he saw the muzzle flashes. The sound of the shots reached his ears as he watched the bullets rip his son’s body to pieces. There wasn’t much left of the young body by the time it hit the water. “You don’t shoot people for fishing,” he shouted speechlessly as a barrage of bullets tore through him.
    The firing continued for another minute, until the boat was shredded to bits. The echoing gun blasts died a few seconds later and the bay was tranquil again.
    The rubber dinghy returned to the submarine after making sure that no evidence was left to tell of this violent encounter.
    By 1800 local time, the technicians finished all they could do for the antenna tower.
    The tower carried three independent systems. Up front, facing the plumb bow was a radar search antenna, which resembled a sail and was designed to search and lock on to aircrafts. It was used to track NATO flights and was dubbed boat sail by Western intelligence. On the Starboard side of the tower there was a rectangular box with three round ports protruding from each side. It was a multiband static direction finder known by NATO as stoplight , and was part of the sub’s ELINT system.
    The technicians replaced two damaged subassemblies in the stoplight unit. The boat-sail antenna had a broken connector. They replaced the R.F. rotary joint too, just to make sure. The barren mounting plate, which, just twenty-four hours ago supported the millimeter-wave unit, was disassembled completely and carried down for inspection.
    By midnight the Slavianka dived again, just deep enough to submerge her tower and return her to the safety of obscurity. The watch crew was still ashore, securing the hills above the cove.
    The engineering officer examined the mounting plate in the machine shop, which was located just abaft the battery compartment.
    “Well, we must have hit a fiberglass yacht”. A large section of white, thick fiberglass was snagged on the mounting plate. It was about a square foot in size.
    By six o’clock that morning, he had finished his examination and reported to the Captain. There were six more officers in the room.
    “The yacht that hit us is basically white, though her bottom is coated with red antifouling over a brown epoxy base. From these pieces I’ll say the hull is about one centimeter thick at the waterline. This would put her at around 12 meters long. She was hit just above the waterline because this is where our antenna is, or was”. He paused hesitantly, “so, while she may have taken on some water, the chances are she is still afloat. She is quite modern; there are traces of unidirectional glass lay-up used in her construction. That technique is not older than five or six years. This also means that she may have sufficient floatation built into her to keep her afloat even if full of water. You see,” he answered their looks of utter puzzlement, “empty internal volumes would be filled with plastic foam just for this purpose. It is sometimes used on modern yachts”.
    “Her builder used a black back-up layer to improve inspection of the fiberglass lay-up, essentially a British technique, and definitely a privately owned boat. This construction is too expensive for the charter fleets”.
    He straightened his weary back, glanced over the faces around the