Rage of Battle wi-2

by Ian Slater

  “Vents shut, aye.”

  A seaman was reading off the depth. “Fifty… fifty-two…fifty-four…”

  One of the chiefs watching the angle of dive, trim, and speed reported, “Officer of the deck, conditions normal on the dive.”

  “Very well, diving officer,” confirmed Zeldman, turning to Brentwood. “Captain, at one-thirty feet, trim satisfactory.”

  “Very well,” answered Brentwood. “Steer four hundred feet ahead standard.”

  Zeldman turned to the helmsman. “Helm all ahead standard. Diving officer, make the depth four hundred feet.”

  They were just flattening out at 390 when Brentwood heard, “Sonar contact! Possible hostile surface warship, bearing two seven eight! Range, fifty-three miles.”

  Brentwood turned calmly to the attack island. “Very well. Man battle stations.”

  “Man battle stations, aye, sir,” repeated a seaman, pressing the yellow button, a pulsing F sharp slurring to G sounding throughout the ship.

  Brentwood turned to the diving officer. “Diving officer, periscope depth.”

  “Periscope depth, aye, sir.”

  Brentwood’s hand reached up, taking the mike from its cradle without even looking. “This is the captain. I have the con. Commander Zeldman retains the deck.”

  Beneath the purplish blue light over the sonar consoles, the operator advised, “Range fifty-two point six miles. Classified surface hostile by nature of sound.”

  “Up scope,” ordered Brentwood. “Ahead two-thirds.”

  “Scope’s breaking,” said one of the watchmen. “Scope’s clear.”

  Brentwood’s hands flicked down the scope’s arms and, eyes to the cups, he moved around with the scope. On the Compac screen Zeldman could see the dot, moving so fast at forty knots, it had to be a hydrofoil.

  Brentwood stopped moving the scope. “Bearing. Mark! Range. Mark! Down scope.” Above the soft whine of the retracting periscope Brentwood reported, “I hold one visual contact. Range?”

  “Forty-four point five miles,” came the reply, placing the hostile forty-four miles northwest of Roosevelt, the convoy ten miles to the southeast. The sub was between them.

  But Brentwood had a problem. To fire a cruise missile with its nuclear warhead was out of the question unless he wanted to start a nuclear war, and yet the sub’s state-of-the-art Mark-48 torpedoes had a maximum range of twenty-eight miles. With the hostile still over forty miles away, he would have to wait. To make matters worse, it was unlikely that the convoy had seen the hostile — their sonar not as good as the sub’s, their radar not picking up the hostile, which, because of its small size, would be lost in sea clutter.

  “Range every thousand yards,” ordered Brentwood.

  “Range every thousand yards, aye, sir. Range ninety-one thousand yards.”

  “Ninety-one-thousand yards,” confirmed Brentwood. The hostile would have to close to at least forty-five thousand before he could fire. At its present speed, this would be in 14.7 minutes. However, it was now that Robert Brentwood showed why he had been chosen as the skipper of the USS Roosevelt. “Officer of the deck, confirm MOSS tube number.”

  “MOSS in tube number two, sir.”

  “Very well. Angle on the bow,” said Brentwood. “Port four point five.”

  “Check,” came the confirmation.

  “Range?” asked Brentwood.

  “Ninety thousand yards.”

  “Ninety thousand yards,” repeated Brentwood. “Firing point procedures. Master four five. Tube one.”

  “Firing point procedures, aye, sir. Master four five. Tube one, aye… solution ready… weapons ready… ship ready.”

  “Final bearing and shoot — master four five.”

  The sonar operator announced the Roosevelt was now bearing three four nine. “Speed four.”

  “Up scope!” ordered Brentwood. “Bearing, mark! Down scope.”

  The firing control officer responded, “Stand by — shoot.”

  “Fire,” said the shooter, pushing the lever forward.

  The firing control officer watched the screen, the torpedo running, monitored. The tension in Control was palpable. No one spoke except for the sonar operator reading off the range, watching intently to see if the hostile would go for the bait of the MOSS — mobile submarine simulator — its sound disk having been altered, according to Brentwood’s orders, to duplicate the new sound signature of the Roosevelt following the Yumashev’s depth charge attack that had bent its prop.

  The hostile vector was unchanged, the sonar operator now confirming its signature as that of a Sarancha hydrofoil-armament one thirty-millimeter multibarrel close-in gun, four surface-to-surface Siren antiship missiles, two surface-to-air N-4 missiles. Then suddenly its radar dot seemed to blur, as it changed course, heading to intercept the MOSS. It went to a small dot, then shuddered on the screen, the sonar operator announcing, “Hostile has fired surface-to-surface. Trajectory two seven four.”

  The Siren was streaking toward the convoy.

  * * *

  Several hundred miles to the north, James G. Wilkins, having been arrested and brought to London for trial, now found himself standing in the dock in London’s Old Bailey, looking ashen-faced before a jury as he heard the verdict of “guilty.” He was convicted of fraud — the money he was stashing at home being “kickbacks” from several shipping companies whose “marine loss” claims, as the magistrate pointed out, “were assessed by Mr. Wilkins as being substantially higher than in fact they were.” The difference between the claim paid by the government to the shipping companies and the actual value of the goods lost had been split by what his lordship described as a “mutually convenient agreement between the defendant and various members of the mercantile establishment.”

  Rosemary Spence was there out of some vague sense of responsibility toward young Graham Wilkins, who, although he had clearly charged his stepfather out of malice, and had been wrong about any spying, had nevertheless enabled the government to arrest and convict a war profiteer and to make an example of him.

  The magistrate sent him “down” for three years and three on probation and commended Inspector Logan of the Oxshott, Surrey, Constabulary. Mrs. Wilkins looked relieved.

  “More fun with the milkman now,” Melrose told Logan as they walked out of the central courts.

  “I suppose so,” said Logan. “Can’t say I envy him. She seems a hard woman.”

  “The son’s the hard one,” put in Perkins. “Didn’t even blink when the beak sentenced his old man.”

  “Stepfather, though,” Logan corrected him. “Not his real pater.”

  “Still,” put in Melrose, “you’d think he’d show some emotion. The schoolteacher — the Spence woman — she was more upset than anyone.”

  “Well,” said Logan, “she’s the type. Worrywart. See it a mile away. Cool outside, but underneath — quite churned up, I expect.”

  “Probably worried about her boyfriend,” commented Perkins. “Engaged to some Yank, I believe. Navy type.”

  “Ah!” said Logan, as if that made everything clear. “Well then, that explains it. Separation and all. Bad days for the navy. Dicey business on the water. How about you, Melrose — you a sailor?”

  “No, sir.” Actually, Melrose had done some sailing in his youth, but he was so shocked from Logan getting his name right at last, he didn’t really think about the question.

  “You and I won’t be needed then,” said Logan knowingly.

  Perkins glanced across at Melrose and shrugged.

  “Ostend,” continued Logan. “That’s where we’ll be pulling them off this time. Nearest port to the pocket.”

  “You think it’s that bad?” inquired Melrose.

  “Yes I do, I’m afraid. That’s one thing I’ll say about old Professor Knowlton. He faces facts.”

  “Professor Knowlton!” laughed Melrose. “Isn’t he the old bloke who keeps on about hair dryers? Conserving electricity on the home front, et cetera?”


  “That ‘old bloke,’ as you so impudently call him, Constable, knows what he’s about. Mark my words.” Logan dropped his voice, looked around, and continued, “Just between you, me, and the gatepost, I can tell you all about that hair dryer business.”

  “Oh—?” said Melrose, winking at Perkins.

  “Yes,” said Logan. “Harriers!” He said it as if the word alone would explain all.

  “Harriers?” said Perkins, willing to go along as he eyed two young beauties emerging from Barclay’s Bank.

  “Yes. Going to be the RAF’s last defense, the way the Russians are knocking out our airstrips. You know how they put the wings on Harriers?”

  “Stitch ‘em on, I should think,” answered Perkins.

  “Don’t be bloody clever,” said Logan. “They’re made of carbon wafer, special epoxies, among other things. Stuck together. Found the same thing with the new models as with the original Harriers. The drying, I mean. Has to be done by hand, you see. It’s a craft — just can’t stamp them out like ruddy milk bottles.”

  ‘‘ You ‘re joking,” said Perkins.

  “I most certainly am not. Without enough hair dryers, we don’t have enough Harriers. They’re more important to us than the Spitfire was in the last show.”

  “Crikey,” said Melrose, “so the old blighter isn’t so potty after all?”

  Logan eyed him irritably. “Just because you get to retiring age, Melroad, your brain doesn’t stop working.”

  “Of course not — sorry, Inspector.”

  Logan slowed as he neared the entrance to the tube station. “At the risk of sounding immodest, Melroad, you’ll note that this old ‘bloke’—” he pointed to himself “—wasn’t so dim that he couldn’t crack this Wilkins case.”

  “No,” conceded Melrose. “You’re right there, sir.”

  “Tooraloo,” said Logan heartily, heading down into the Temple underground station.

  Melrose touched his cap in farewell, smiling and muttering to Perkins, “No, you silly old twit — you just nick villains instead of spies. Minor detail. I think I’ll get my name tattooed on my forehead. Think he’ll remember then?”

  Perkins shook his head. “Doubt it, Melroad.”

  The air raid sirens were starting up again, and people were running for the shelters. At the beginning of the war, they’d affected a traditional British calm and disdain for any panic, but this time it was very different — the rockets so fast, you had absolutely no idea where they would hit. “A bit like the old V-2s,” Logan had told him. “Only much worse.”

  “Hang on!” Melrose called out to a couple of callow youths, almost running an elderly woman down in their eagerness to get below. Suddenly the underground sign vibrated, the railing below it shaking; people were falling, and in the distance, above the Mall, there was a high spume of brick and sandstone, now falling in a deafening hail.

  “Bit close to the palace,” commented Perkins as they hurried, without trying to appear as such, into the shelter outside Blackfriars Station. “What do you think?”

  “I think it was the palace.”

  “Bloody ‘ell! They should have left London — like they were told.”

  “What — and leave everyone else to take the shit while they’re nice and comfy up in Windsor? Not bloody likely. I’m no monarchist, mate, but that’s one thing I’ll say about old Charles. He’s no coward.”

  Heading for Oxshott, the train Rosemary was on stopped near Wimbledon during the rocket attack. The engineers had found that the Soviet pilots always favored a moving train, assuming that because it was moving, it was carrying vitally needed supplies to try to stem the impending catastrophe in northern Germany. But Rosemary believed that the feet that the enemy pilots went after moving passenger or goods trains had less to do with strategic considerations than the fact that a moving target was more exciting to kill. The mere thought that Robert was at the center of such hazard at sea overwhelmed her, and when the conductor asked for her ticket and she discovered she’d lost it, she burst into tears. What made it even more terrible was that in that moment, she was sure she felt their baby move, which she knew was impossible so early in her pregnancy.

  * * *

  “Up scope,” ordered Brentwood. “Ahead one-third.”

  “Scope’s breaking. Scope’s clear.”

  In the scope’s circle Brentwood could see an orange speckle, one of the convoy’s screen destroyers afire, its crew abandoning ship. He swung the scope about and saw the Sarancha. At its full speed of sixty knots, its hull clear out of the water, foil-borne, the boat was obscured by a cocoon of spray, in weaving pattern, closing on the convoy. Behind it were three more.

  Well, thought Brentwood, Mark-48s can weave, too. “Angle on the bow,” he said, “port, point four zero.”

  “Check,” came the confirmation.

  “Range?” asked Brentwood.

  “Forty thousand yards.”

  “Very well,” replied Brentwood. “Firing point procedures. Master four zero. Tube three.”

  “Firing point procedures. Master four zero. Tube three, aye… solution ready… weapons ready… ship ready.”

  “Final bearing and shoot — master four zero.”

  A seaman announced, “Bearing three four one. Speed six.”

  “Up scope,” ordered Brentwood. “Bearing, mark! Down scope.”

  The firing control officer responded, “Stand by — shoot.”

  “Fire,” came the confirmation as the shooter pushed the lever forward.

  The firing control officer watched the screen, and confirmed the torpedo was running and being monitored. Roosevelt repeated the procedure three more times. One after another, the dots of the Saranchas on the screen swelled, then vanished. Because of Roosevelt’s interception, only five transports in forty were lost, the remainder safely reaching Brest.

  * * *

  As the gray dawn fog swirled about the Aleutians, scurrying over the spindrift like the cape of some primeval beast about to devour the islands, the fighting on Adak was confused and bloody.

  Because of the natural amphitheater on the northern part of Adak Island formed by Mount Moffett and Mount Adagdak, only four hundred of the two thousand civilians and military personnel escaped injury. Those not killed outright by the blockbuster bombs used to destroy the runway, which filled the air with everything from auto- to fist-sized concrete fragments traveling at hundreds of miles an hour, fell victim to the cluster “Bee” bombs, which opened up midfall, releasing hundreds of smaller bombs, each in turn filled with thousands of razor-sharp steel darts. Filling the air with their distinctive buzzing sound like a swarm of bees, the darts sometimes would kill outright but more often than not inflicted terrible wounds. Kiril Marchenko, and others in the STAVKA responsible for efficient defense spending, favored the Bee bombs for such missions, for casualties in the field required many more support troops to transport and care for them than did corpses. And the Americans were notoriously obsessive about getting their wounded out to the nearest MASH field hospitals — all of which meant fewer troops who could actually man the front.

  At first, the rugged terrain surrounding the base favored the survivors, for it was taking time for the Russian paratroopers to descend from the hillsides through the deep snow. But soon the terrain would work against the shell-shocked survivors of the Adak raid because their only means of escape was either eastward, through the six-mile valley between the mountains to Shagak Bay, or Kulak Bay immediately behind them to the west.

  Only 63 of the 115-man marine company assigned to airstrip guard duty were still alive at dawn, and these moved out to intercept the paratroopers, but though the marines were superbly equipped, they had had no cause to be issued white battle coveralls. These weren’t the drill for guarding the runway at night, when the only danger had seemed to be sabotage from the sea — white coveralls on the darkened runway being perfect targets — and those they had in stock had gone up in flames in the bombing anyway.

  As the sixt
y-three marines moved out east from Kulak’s C-shaped bay, the fighting was not yet at close hand. Indeed, most of the small-arms fire that the Adak CO had heard shortly after the bombing attack had fallen off during the night as the paratroops were presumably trying to form into a coherent force before attacking what was left of the base. Nevertheless, sniping had continued from the foggy mountainsides, and more than a dozen marines and civilians fell to this sporadic but deadly fire. In an attempt to use the thick, gray fog that was rolling down the sides of the mountains to their advantage, the sixty-three marines moved out a quarter mile west of the base to form a semicircular perimeter.

  Meanwhile the CO of Adak was trying to assemble the civilian survivors as best he could down by the shore of Kulak Bay and to find enough boats that were still seaworthy enough to take them out beyond Sitkin Sound, through Asuksak Pass, and on to Atka Station a hundred miles to the east. Many of the women who had rushed out from the burning huts clad in no more than night attire were in the early throes of hypothermia, which only added to the commanding officer’s problems. As if this weren’t enough, Atka could not be raised on the radio by the communications officer, as the microwave repeaters on the island had been destroyed in the raid, along with the sea-to-shore SOSUS connections.

  One of the mothers, whose children, oddly enough, were contentedly playing amid the ruins of the base, approached the commanding officer, asking him what she could do. The CO paused, not knowing what to tell her and, for want of anything helpful to say, directed her toward the MASH tent down by the bay’s edge, where dozens of casualties still lay awaiting attention from the overworked staff, many of whom were also injured.

  “It’ll be a hell of a squash,” the communications officer reported to the CO after the woman had left. “I’ve done a quick check on the waterfront. Most of the fishing boats are holed.”

  “We’ll just have to do the best we can. By now the boys on the Salt Lake City will sure as hell know we’ve been hit. Their combat patrols should keep those bastards busy. If we can hold out till they come, we should be all right.”