Crash Dive

by Martin H. Greenberg

  Across the water came the whine of an aircraft engine’s inertial starter.

  On the main deck the six-incher tubes were starting to swing outboard, training around to bear on target. The slender stingers of the twin-mount twenties were casting loose and coming to bear as well. Ammunition drums clicked into place and shells slid into breaches with an oily whisper.

  Just a little longer.

  Cullen Perry heard it happen. The rattle of the alarm bells echoed across the lagoon’s glassy surface and the tender’s topside lights snapped off with a sudden fearful abruptness.

  “Open fire! Take him!”

  Massive orange balls of flame materialized beyond the deck gun tubes, and Niobe lurched sideways through the water under the recoil, the muzzle blast whiplashing all hands topside. The 20-millimeter twin mounts and the Browning .30 calibers followed through, stuttering out their writhing tracer streams. Along the main deck and from odd comers of the bridge structure, the Thompson submachine guns and BARs interjected their lighter venom, shell casings raining onto the decks in glinting streams.

  Across the waters the Japanese tender reeled under the unexpected blow, an assault launched with the swift and silent lethality of a cobra strike. One of the six-inch rounds, aimed and fired in haste, screamed harmlessly across the tender’s foredeck, the second gouged into her superstructure at the base of the funnel, spraying flaming shrapnel into the night.

  The automatic weapons had been given other targets, the massive Emily flying boats cradled on the tender’s aft deck and tied up along her flank. Bullets and autocannon shells punched through the lighter structure of the patrol bombers, probing for vulnerability and finding it.

  In the days prior to Pearl Harbor, Japan’s otherwise superlative aviation designers had made one catastrophic error. Focusing on lightness, range, and performance, they had neglected aircraft armor and self-sealing fuel tanks.

  Flame raced across the broad wing of the moored Emily, the individual fuel cells exploding in sequence from port to starboard. Niobe’s tracer streams then elevated and bunched on the second aircraft resting in the shipboard servicing cradle. Thunder rolled across the lagoon, and a mushroom of fire sprouted on the tender’s well deck and climbed into the sky.

  There was no longer a night. January atoll was illuminated by the glare of hell, and damned souls ran ablaze on the decks of the Akitsushima or hurled themselves smoldering into the mercy of the sea.

  And yet, the tender recovered. She fought back, for as any Pacific Fleet man-of-warsman could testify, coward was a word unknown to the Imperial Japanese Navy.

  A line of bullet splashes stitched back across the sea toward Niobe and machine gun slugs tore up the teak of her main deck. The tailgunner in the moored and blazing Emily had brought his weapon into play even as he burned to death.

  Forward on the tender the barrels of her gun turrets shortened as they swiveled to bear on her attacker. The first replying salvo screamed over the heads of the submarine’s laboring gunners.

  On the bridge Cullen Perry flinched at the feathery brush of the shell’s transiting shock waves. His gunners were making good practice, the big deck mounts hammering the Japanese surface ship, kicking in her sides and superstructure like they were cardboard. However it was plain she was going to take a good deal of killing. On the other hand, one solid heavy-caliber hit on Niobe’& pressure hull could be fatal.

  He hadn’t maneuvered yet, giving his gunners the easiest possible lay for their first few critical rounds. Now though they had to start dodging.

  Perry tore down the watertight cover on the bridge intercom. “Control.room! All engines back two thirds! Steer zero eight zero!”

  “Engines backing two thirds!” Mercurio’s voice snapped back. “Steering, zero eight zero.”

  With the instant, silent response of an electric propulsion system, the sea hunched up under the screws and she gained way astern, her course angling around the burning tender. Perry had initiated battle broadside to broadside, relying on surprise and firepower for his initial edge. Now he intended to use a quirk of the Akitsushima’s design to maintain the advantage. All of the tender’s heavy guns were mounted forward.

  If Niobe could back away, moving aft of the tender, she could escape from the arcs of her foe’s most potent armament while still delivering what the old timers called raking fire. Beyond that, if Perry could maneuver her into the lagoon’s entry channel, he could reach a valid torpedo arming range and finish this fight in short order.

  The deliberate two-rounds-per-minute firing rate of the number-one deck gun broke. In the flickering intermittent light of burning aviation gasoline, Perry could see the spare form of Swede Jorgenson crouching beside the gunner’s mate in the trainer’s saddle and catch fragments of yelled commands.

  The muzzle of the big cannon elevated minutely, edged to port, and crashed out its next round.

  Forward of the Japanese tender’s bridge, blue-white cordite flame blossomed, and the tender’s B-mount turret buckled and distorted, its twin barrels angling uselessly toward the sky. Perry lifted and clinched both hands in a fierce boxer’s salute to Jorgenson.

  But the Japanese still refused to yield. Amid the blazes spreading amidships on the tender, a twenty-five millimeter antiaircraft gun engaged, the venomous little shell-bursts of the tribarreled pom-pom sweeping out of the night and dancing down the length of Niobe’s hull.

  Men threw themselves flat on the decks or behind the dubious protection of the bridge spray shields. Slow or unfortunate ones screamed and died. The submarine’s fire faltered.

  Amid the sudden topside chaos a faint voice filtered through the squawk box. “Bridge, this is the radio room. Captain, we have word on our plane.”

  Perry pulled himself to his feet and slammed a palm down on the press-to-talk. “Belay that crap! Danny, give me all back emergency! Steer zero eight five and watch your Fathometers! Yell if we get less than twenty feet under the keel! Radio room, tell that damn PBY we’re busy down here!”

  Niobe was pulling back toward the entry channel, putting the tender’s flaming stem and the rapidly spreading pools of burning aviation fuel between herself and the hostile gunnery. The tender’s A mount barked out another brace of shells, but their water plumes lifted well beyond the submarine’s bow. Likewise the fire of the antiaircraft gun futilely lashed at the lagoon’s surface, its barrels grating against their traverse stops. A pause came to the battle, precious free seconds to strike the wounded below and lift fresh ammunition topside.

  Perry shot a look astern, gauging distances to the luminous surf breaks on either side of the entry channel. “Control room, all engines back slow. Five degrees starboard. Forward Torpedo Room, stand by all tubes. Set torpedoes for zero angle off the bow.”

  Aligning now bow-on toward the Akitsushima, the sub’s forward guns reengaged pumping shells into the pyre burning on their enemy’s stem. Crouching down behind the binocularlike Target Bearing Transmitter mounted on the lip of the spray shield, Perry tried for a range on the enemy vessel. But even as he adjusted the crosshairs, he caught movement in the flickering shadows beyond the ship. With a sudden chill that belied his sweat-soaked shirt, he realized that in the turmoil of the battle they had forgotten a critical factor.

  Three Emily flying boats had landed in the lagoon.

  The third had indeed been moored on the far side of the tender and its aircrew had been given enough time to cast off from the ship. Engines idling, they had been sheltering behind the ship. But now, as the Niobe entered his line of sight, the patrol bomber’s pilot firewalled his throttles, either in a wild attempt to take to the sky or in a suicidal ramming attack against the submarine.

  Quadruple propellers shimmering in the firelight, the big seaplane lifted onto step, accelerating across the wave crests with what seemed to be a supernatural speed. Its nose turret sparkled and bullets whined and shrieked off the steel of Niobe’s bridge.

  There was no time, no sea room, and no speed to man
euver. Cullen Perry learned then that there is no more hideous feeling than to be a shipmaster with no way to save his ship.

  “Begging your pardon, Captain.” A respectful arm edged Perry aside. One of Niobe’s Negro messmates braced a Thompson against the spray shield and began squeezing off a series of careful, deliberate bursts at the onrushing aircraft. The forward twenties were firing as well, their tracers drifting into the shadowy bulk of the Emily. And Swede Jorgenson again crouched beside the number-one six-incher.

  Bawhom! The cannon’s breech slammed back against the braking of its recoil pistons. The shell punched squarely into the bow of the seaplane, the glass of its flight-deck greenhouse spraying and glinting. Fused to be fired at the heavy structure of a surface ship, the projectile didn’t detonate but rather drilled cleanly through the full length of the patrol bomber’s fuselage, blowing out at the tail and ricocheting off the wave tops beyond.

  Dead men flew the Emily now. Fire flickering in its interior, the massive seaplane lifted off the surface of the lagoon, its four screaming engines carrying it aloft. All hands on Niobe’s decks ducked instinctively as the moon shadow of the aircraft flashed past overhead, its belly clearing the periscope shears by the matter of a man’s height.

  The nose of the Emily continued to lift into an impossible climb. For a few seconds it seemed to hang suspended from its racing propellers, then it fell off on one wing and over onto its back. Plummeting into one of the atoll islets, it sent yet another thunderous explosion and plume of fire into the night.

  The seaplane tender now seemed to be ablaze from bow to stem, but somehow, her indomitable captain had gotten his engines started and had cut free from his bow anchor. The silhouette of the Akitsushima was lengthening as he pivoted his ship around its stem mooring, seeking to bring his guns to bear on his attacker once more.

  Perry could admire such a man, but he also recognized the necessity of killing him and the need to do it now. There was no time to set up a classic torpedo attack, using the TDC fire-control computer. At this range Perry would risk shooting by Kentucky windage and his captain’s eye.

  “Hard left rudder! We’ll be firing a full spread forward on my order!”

  Niobe’s stem kicked around, her sharp-tipped bow traversing like an aimed spear. As the alignments came true, Peny bellowed into the intercom. “Shooting now! Fire one! . . . Fire two! . . . Fire three! . . . Fire four!”

  A narrow fan of destruction radiated away from the submarine, four hissing bubble streams that each drew an individual smear of smoke low across the lagoon’s surface. One ray of the fan missed forward, one missed aft, and the paroxysms of the two center shots ripped the belly and guts out of the tender.

  Peny realized that his thumb was aching on the press to talk button of the intercom, and he lifted and shook the pain from his hand. Not a bad spread. As good as the TDC could have done.

  In the center of the lagoon the vanquished warship capsized, rolling slowly over like a dying water buffalo bathing its wounds in a mud hole, the final hissing groan of its death cry reverberating across the waters.

  Perry keyed the intercom once more. “All engines ahead dead slow. Initiate diesel start and battery recharge. Danny, you can tell the PBY we’re ready to receive them.”

  “That’s just the thing, Skipper,” Mercurio replied in the flesh, speaking from near Perry’s feet. Climbing slowly through the deck hatch, Niobe’s exec looked tired, very tired, likely as all other hands including the captain did. He dug a message flimsy out of his shirt pocket. “This was what the radio shack was trying to tell you about, Skipper. When we got the mast up, this was being broadcast in clear over the SPYRON operations frequency. It’s addressed with our call sign and it’s being repeated.”

  Perry unfolded the flimsy and held it up to the moonlight and the flicker of the dying gasoline fires. The communication was both brief and succinct.

  FROM: CINCSPYRON/COMSUBPAC

  TO: CMDR USS NIOBE

  OPERATION CANCELED X RETURN TO

  BASE X

  . . . and so we are en route home from “objective” having never accomplished what we set out to do. We have wounded aboard and more than one of my good young crew has been sent to his God through a torpedo tube. I have letters to write and the captain’s wife will have calls to make.

  But I’m pleased to say our losses were not totally in vain. We bear home prisoners, a new rising sun flag on the side of the conning tower, and the disruption of a Japanese naval operation.

  I wonder, Amy girl. In the greater scheme of this war, which was the more critical? The mission which we failed to accomplish, or the mission which we prevented the enemy from accomplishing. Will we ever know?

  To continue . . .

  The Ambiguity of the

  Wine-Dark Sea

  JIM DEFELICE

  Jim DeFelice is the author of several technothrillers. His latest, Brother’s Keeper, is now available in paperback from Leisure Books. He can be contacted at jdchester@aol.com.

  Off the Korean Coast, During the Cold War . . .

  HE SLAMMED THE hatch lock home harder and faster than he’d intended, prelockout adrenaline rushing through his body. That and maybe a little bit of postleave hangover, given that he’d been rousted away from liberty for this gig less than twelve hours ago.

  Ray Winslow nodded to himself as he straightened and leaned back against the ladder in the escape trunk, willing himself into the zone, wrestling every inch of his body into the tight noose of control he needed. Winslow had boarded the nuclear attack submarine USN Swordtail six hours before, dropped ignobly into the January sea by a Marine Corps CH-46 at the direction of the mission commander, Seth Caruth, who insisted to the pilot that there wasn’t time to bother with a proper exchange. The two men had to swim a good fifty yards in the fading twilight and ten-foot swells to reach the Swordtail’s raft.

  Not that Winslow hadn’t done much worse, even in his SEAL qualification trials.

  Caruth wasn’t a SEAL. He probably wasn’t even Navy. He belonged to the general category of spook, some sort of action officer with the CIA or DLA or NSA or NIA. Like the rest of the alphabet ghouls, he took mission security to ridiculous extremes. He’d only grudgingly showed Winslow the layout of their target, a small American ship that had been hijacked by the North Koreans less than twenty-four hours ago. As for what they were going to do when they reached it, Winslow could only guess.

  Caruth tapped his shoulder, then started to check his gear. The guy knew his shit at least, or gave a reasonable facsimile. Maybe he had been a SEAL. Undoubtedly he’d been over in Nam, a hellhole Winslow had just recently returned from and would undoubtedly soon be going back to.

  Their checks finished, Winslow flexed his shoulders back and rolled his neck. Caruth put his hand up; Winslow hesitated before realizing the spook wanted him to grip it in a good luck gesture. He reached out; Caruth caught him a half second before he was ready and just about broke his thumb off.

  Scumbag.

  And then water started slipping in and Winslow felt the metallic taps around him, felt the cold that shuddered its way up the back of his legs to his eyes, always his eyes—they were out, they were in the black wine of the sea, they were in their small rubber boat on the surface inside the port, nine hundred yards from the shadows that included their target.

  Clampton Ward settled his hand on the planesman’s shoulder, tapping gently to reassure him. He moved silently to the helmsman, then continued around the Swordtails control room. As he returned to the center, he nodded to his executive officer, who gave the order to begin reversing out of the narrow and shallow channel they had entered. The large submarine sat exactly ten feet above the silty harbor floor in relatively shallow water less than three hundred feet deep; there was a small patrol craft some hundred yards behind them on the surface. Under other circumstances Ward might not have worried about the North Korean vessel. Of Soviet design, its weapons and detection gear were primitive enough that he could eas
ily sink it or escape into deeper water if it made any aggressive move. But the two men he’d just released to the water were depending on his return in six hours to get home; more importantly, their mission undoubtedly depended on their not being detected.

  Whatever that mission was. Ward’s orders had been precise and to the point—pick up the men, deliver them to the port, recover them. He knew nothing of what they were to do, though the fact that he had been called off a Holy Stone mission to take on the men indicated an extreme level of priority.

  There were, of course, certain guesses the veteran commander could make. The easiest was that it had to do with the spy ship the North Koreans had taken the previous morning. He’d monitored some of the radio traffic about it and knew that the ship would almost certainly have been taken to this port a few hours before.

  He could also make some guesses about his two passengers, though he’d met them only briefly. The one in charge was either CIA or more likely NSA, a black-suit boy from the “action desk.” The other was a Navy SEAL, probably shanghaied specifically for the mission, a can-do kid who was expected not to ask any questions or pull any punches if trouble developed.

  Not a kid, really—probably pushing twenty-five or even thirty, undoubtedly a veteran of at least one spin around Vietnam. But Ward had long ago reached the point where they were all kids, even some of the men above him.

  The commander of the Swordtail could also make certain guesses about the ship the Koreans had taken. For one thing, it must have been unarmed—otherwise it would never have been taken. It must also have been comparatively slow, and in a position where it could be taken. All of those things meant it must be a spy ship.

  From all of those guesses, Ward might make more guesses concerning the men’s mission. Possibly, he might guess, they were being sent to blow the ship up. But that guess would lead to many questions, not the least of which would be why only two men would be sent on such a mission. And precisely because of those questions Ward did not bother to guess or speculate at all, not even in his own private thoughts. For he had long ago become accustomed to the shadows and vagaries of the war he fought, the ambiguity of the dark seas he sailed. He had accepted the fact that he could not know all and could not even try to do so. A man who hunted the cold layers of the ocean to hide from his pursuers must, by rights, accept ambiguity.