Also noticing the manmade sounds of salvation, Siobhan grabbed my forearm and - without a word - started pulling me toward the last tentacle-stricken place on the ship: the stern. Both of us were pushing ourselves full tilt into the rising deck of the ship, hoping to catch a perpendicularly angled surface to surge off of. The searchlights of the Coast Guard were coming closer, but I expected we would be within range of the giant squids’ arms and tentacles in a few minutes. The moment our boots transitioned from the slippery main deck to the nonskid helideck, our strides gained traction enough to make it to the stern.
“What the actual fuck,” Siobhan managed to utter under labored breath.
Siobhan made it to the stern first, swinging her leg up and around the Oasis’s aft railing to counterbalance the ship’s foundering angle. I joined her, balancing myself with one hand on the rail. I put my arm around her waist for leverage – and comfort. We were facing the prospect of a slow, grisly death.
I wish I had gotten to know more about Siobhan, but this was just about it. She lay her head in the crook of my shoulder and laughed saying, “if you expect me to tell you I love you, I’ll batter ya.” I felt her shudder; her shoulders started shaking. She was scared.
“Batter away,” I said, leaning into her ear. Despite the squealing of metal and cephalopod sucker teeth, at least I was next to a woman who I wouldn’t mind taking on a few dates. Looking at me, Siobhan took out her handset.
“Coast Guard, Coast Guard, this is Captain Siobhan O’Rourke of the Oasis, I am here with one other crew member on top of the stern, over.”
The squids’ song of destruction sounded like a symphony of unmaintained subway cars in transit. As we descended into the ocean, I could see the extent of the enemy fleet: From where we were perched, I counted 6 pairs of enormous glowing green eyes surrounding us – I counted nine contacts on radar when the ambush began, so we weren’t seeing all of them.
The Coast Guard had split the distance they were at when they first appeared on the horizon, but if they were to arrive too late, there would be no way they could rescue us from squid-infested water with the ship completely underwater – we would be gone like goldfish in a tank of piranhas. Suddenly, Siobhan’s handset came alive.
“Oasis, this is Coast Guard Rescue 3, we can see two of you on the stern. Can you get to cover away from our lights? We are ready to open fire on targets near your position. Please acknowledge.” I could hear the rotors draw nearer and nearer…we might make it out of this alive. I looked again at Siobhan with meaning. When her eyes met mine, her frazzled expression softened and a slight smile danced on the ends of her lips.
“Wilco,” she said into the handset.
I quickly swung back around the railing to use the stern as cover while resting my feet on the stairway, not bothering to look down at the oncoming water or squids. Siobhan was a step ahead of me and already had her feet on the stairway.
“We’re in position, over,” I radioed.
“Affirmative – weapons free.”
I imagined the Coast Guard had used a thermal scope to find our heat signatures and distinguish us from our enormous, cold-blooded guests. I first heard twin sniper rifle shots from beyond the stern whizz by and subtly pock something below me – I looked down and saw one of the squids at the bow sporting a gaping hole in one of its radioactive green eyes – dark, bluish liquid began hemorrhaging from the wound and the large cephalopod relented its grip from the ship. As if it was shitting its pants, the squid also expelled a few hundred gallons of midnight black ink into the ocean. Then a searchlight skimmed the water, landing directly on the same squid.
Underneath the ship’s lights, I could see it was mortally wounded; its digestive tract had been punctured and its arms began flailing violently. Immediately, I heard more gunfire – the base of the squid’s arms between its eyes contorted and spasmed as it was swiftly perforated by a hail of bullets. Another rifle shot pierced the next closest squid’s left eye and exited through the other; their green glow went out like a pair of busted light bulbs. I heard more torrents of gunfire and assumed the squids I couldn’t see were also facing sweet justice at the hands of the Coast Guard. Semper Paratus, alright.
“Captain, get ready for extraction – I need you to climb back onto the stern, please acknowledge.” Siobhan’s radio crackled. From behind the stern, I finally saw the orange and white MH-60 Sikorsky helos that were saving our asses as they hovered in on either side of the Oasis.
“Wilco.” Siobhan radioed back, smiling.
For a moment, I watched the door gunner in the bird on the ship’s starboard side open up on the antagonists awaiting us at the base of the Oasis’s descent into the ocean. Each muzzle flash meant another round into those goddamn squid. That bullet was for Devin. For Eun. For Jennifer.
Siobhan had already climbed back to our original spot on top of the stern – she tapped me on the shoulder, grabbed my bicep, and hoisted me up. She looked at me and pointed above us. A searchlight from a helicopter circling overhead greeted me. We might have had two minutes left as I looked around. The ship was probably no more than 120 feet from going under, and completely vertical.
A shadow obscured the helo’s searchlight – a rescue diver was already on their way to us. 10 seconds…5 seconds…suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I saw a whip tentacle come our way with speed – I shoved Siobhan down to the surface of the stern and covered her, shut my eyes, and waited to die – again. Gunfire erupted just above me. I looked up and saw that the diver who was about to hoist us up had also brought a handy-dandy submachine gun. The leafy tentacle wilted away, leaking blood from several bullet holes.
The diver landed next to us on the stern. They were wearing dark gear as opposed to the usual reddish-orange colors of the Coast Guard – they must have been with the Navy.
“Sir? Ma’am? One person in the hoist at the time, but you’re both coming back with us. Let’s go,” he yelled urgently over the helo’s rotors. It was going to be a race against a sinking ship and malevolent animals.
“Lady first, no exceptions,” I said, pointing at Siobhan. She complied and let the diver hook her into a harness, but not before she grabbed my jaw and gave me a brief, but fervent kiss.
“See you soon.” Siobhan said. Around us I could hear steady streams of gunfire from different directions – I had a much closer vantage point to the water and began seeing green pairs of eyes extinguish. Three Coast Guard helos were firing upon the kraken incarnates, marking them with searchlights, then riddling them with holes.
Siobhan was still being hoisted into our rescue helicopter - a SH-3 Sikorsky Sea King with room for 22 survivors – and I only had 40 feet of ship left before I could be swept or picked off by an errant tentacle. It was my sincere hope that the rubbery assholes were more concerned about becoming bullet sponges.
Out of the darkness, one Coast Guard medium endurance cutter and a much larger Navy Arleigh-Class destroyer came into my view and glided in on our beleaguered ship, flanking it on two sides – they took to the organics around the Oasis by opening fire with their own high-caliber side-mounted machine guns.
Hawaii Coast Guard District 14 - which included Honolulu and Pearl Harbor - may have been short on seaborne firepower and manpower in situations involving mythical sea monsters in a near-melee capacity; but there was a historical naval presence not too far away from their base they could always rely on. I had to admit to myself that if I was to survive the night, I’d be a little prouder to have served.
The helos’ door gunners continued spending round after round on the squids’ bodies, bordering on overkill. But these were a new class of tangos. They could reanimate for all we knew – cephalopod tentacles had the ability to grow back. And despite their power and destructive might, both ships’ large turret-mounted guns were useless against the squids; the cephalopods were too close to the Oasis for the ships to not accidentally spray it with massive holes and shorten its trip to the ocean floor. The creatures were also treading water at too downward of an angle from the warships for their barrels to aim over the sides from their turrets. If there were even larger squids in the ocean, the armed forces would have to draw up a new set of tactics to handle them.
What our rescue ships were missing in big league firepower, though, they made up for with spirit; crew members on both ships were lining their respective decks, marking squids’ vitals with red laser beads then mercilessly discharging their automatic rifles into the vile creatures.
The Oasis then lost her electricity and lights - an inevitable occurrence; but the overhead Sea King helicopter still had its searchlight trained on me. The orange and white Sikorsky Seahawks were already sweeping their searchlights around the stricken ship for any survivors, human or squid. I gazed upon the illuminated ocean’s surface and saw no more menacing green eyes – just ravaged, pale white invertebrate corpses saturated in ink and blue blood. The battle seemed to be over and the diver returned.
Without a word, I waited for him to link me up to the hoist harness. I remember going through Navy drills and exercises in my younger years that were physically and mentally exhausting – not to mention the horror I experienced during the Ehime Maru disaster; but the last hour was easily the most stressful I had spent at sea.
“Hold on, sir,” the diver yelled.
As we were pulled higher and higher, I watched the Oasis finally plunge into the abyss…she would be taking over the watch of these coordinates in the Ehime Maru’s stead, more than 2,000 feet underwater. The winch operator pulled me into the helicopter’s cabin and unhooked me from the diver.
Looking at us then turning to the two pilots sitting in the cockpit, the winch operator said, “I’ll definitely have some stories for my grandkids after tonight.” He turned back to us and asked, “do either of you require medical treatment?”
Ignoring his question, I looked at Siobhan and hugged her. After a few moments, I finally replied to the diver’s question.
“No, I should be fine.” I looked over at Siobhan – she shook her head.
“I’m sorry to hear about your crew, ma’am” the diver said.
“Thank you…for saving us,” Siobhan said.
“Comes with the job description, ma’am,” the diver replied.
“Out of curiosity, I didn’t expect the Navy to come out here,” I pried.
“To be fair, sir, neither did we,” the diver replied.