Scorpion in the Sea

by P. T. Deutermann

  He clicked off the microphone and put it down in his desk. He found his forehead damp with perspiration. The phone buzzed, and in the passageway he could hear the bosun piping secure from sea detail.

  “Yes,” he said to into the phone.

  “That was perfect, Cap’n. You should see their faces up here.”

  “I can just imagine, XO. You should see mine. Call me when you have everybody in the wardroom. You have the charts and stuff ready?”

  “Yes, Sir, all set. We’ve got all night to get CIC set up and the weapons ready. We ought to be ready to go by sunrise, barring any surprises tonight.”

  “Yeah. OK. What speed do we need to be in the middle of the box at around 1000 tomorrow?”

  “No more than about eight knots, which is good for our deception profile. We’ll slow to five now and start rigging the lights and reconfiguring the plant.”

  “How is the plant, anyway?”

  “Engineer says everything is right and tight; so far so good. The water chemistry in 2B is a little shaky, so he’d like to shut down aft when we lock a shaft until he chases down the problem, but otherwise, no steam leaks.”

  “Super. OK, call me when you’re ready to brief.”

  SIXTY

  The Al Akrab, surfaced, the St. Johns river approaches; Friday, 9 May; 0200

  The lights ashore fairly blazed in the night’s crisp, cool air; the channel buoys seemed to be beckoning the submarine as she moved silently between them under the cover of a new moon. This time the Captain could see the two lights of the river range without his binoculars. The sea dazzled with reflected light, its glossy black surface fragmenting into a million shards of undulating mirror with each passing wave. The darkened sector between the lights of the base on the left and the silver gray sand beaches to the right was the river itself, and there were no lights indicating downstream traffic. This time, in place of the confusion and uncertainty of the last approach, there was a calm stream of positional information coming up, with crisp course recommendations.

  The practice run had been well worth the time, he thought. He scanned the naval base, the clustered sodium vapor lights almost painful to his night adapted eyes. The yellow lights of a car driving along the carrier pier perimeter flashed into his glasses, and then away as it turned around to return to the main base. A security patrol, he thought; you are not secure, you Americans. One of the lookouts above called a number as a buoy went by to starboard.

  “Buoy four abeam to starboard,” he relayed into the intercom. Below, the Deputy acknowledged the report.

  “Navigator, aye, and request permission to open outer doors aft,” he replied.

  “Permission granted; open outer doors aft on tubes 5, 6, and 7. Do not open door 8.”

  The Deputy acknowledged. Tube 8 contained the defective mine, and had been locked out of the fire control system. The Captain wondered for a moment if he should fire tube eight anyway, but again dismissed the idea. It would not do to have the thing detonate under the first fishing boat to come along and alert the Americans that something dangerous was going on. Let the other three detonate under the first really big thing that came along, like the Coral Sea.

  “Range to turn point is 3500 meters,” reported the intercom. “Request conn control.”

  “You have conn control,” responded the Captain.

  He now had to become like one of the lookouts, content to scan the waters ahead, watching for any sign of movement or alarm on the shore, while the navigation team in the control room turned the boat, steadied her against the current, and then fired the three mines up into the channel junction. The Captain found himself holding his stomach in tightly as he waited for the maneuver, first to starboard, and then the swing to port, just inshore of the last two buoys. It was unnatural, not to be in control. But they had the precise navigation picture, and he did not. He waited.

  They were now no more than a third of a mile from the firing point. The lights seemed incredibly bright now; he could see individual sets of masts on the destroyers in the basin. How could they not be seen! Because no one is looking. But suddenly, one of the lookouts called to him urgently.

  “What,” he said, impatiently, turning to see where the lookout was pointing his binoculars. At the long, dark breakwater that ran down the left side of the river channel. There. He saw it, too. The flare of a match, a cigarette lighter. He scanned the rocks with his binoculars. Great God! There were people on the rocks. Fishing from the breakwater, their poles jammed into crevices between the great, black stones. He could just make out the white blobs of faces, the shine of metal ice coolers perched on the rocks. He had not realized that the breakwater jutted this far out into the sea channel, or that the authorities would ever permit people to be on the breakwater at night in a security zone. He numbly counted more than a dozen shapes along the rocks, and caught the sound of music as a gust of the night breeze swept over them.

  He thought frantically, unwilling to report what he was seeing to the team below: they needed their full concentration on making the swing maneuver. Would they see him? Would they understand what they were seeing? The submarine was ballasted down again, with only the shark’s fin of the conning tower jutting up above the water; the smaller dorsal fin of the rudder assembly would not be visible in the darkness. He had ordered no lights to be turned on unless another vessel was sighted, so there would be no lights to attract attention, and there was not much light on the opposite shore to backlight the fin. A man would have to have keen eyesight to see the big, black conning tower cutting across the river. And yet … He swallowed nervously as he swept his glasses ahead, feeling almost naked. He sensed the submarine begin the swing-right maneuver, and then scanned the breakwater again. The shapes along the rocks were not doing anything different, no alarms, no arms waving and pointing, no sudden stab of searchlights from the base. Thank God they had come in on the battery: the big diesels would have had everyone looking.

  The submarine checked her swing to starboard, and then came around to port, the screws rumbling and thumping the structure of the conning tower as opposing power was applied to bring her around. He kept his glasses steadied on the breakwater, watching for any signs that someone saw something out on the river. He felt the boat steady up as she pointed seaward again, the vibrations pause as the direction was changed on the screws, and then the strain of both screws backing now to steady her against the current, the sea breeze fresh in their faces.

  “Preparing to fire the after tubes,” reported the Deputy.

  “Yes,” said the Captain, his throat dry. “Fire the after tubes when the boat is on bearing. Wait until the turbulence from the screws has subsided.”

  “Navigator, aye.”

  He looked over the side as the wash from the beating propellers came swirling up the sides, casting great sheets of gray water over the submerged bulk of the afterdecks like waves over a reef. The stink of river bottom washed up to them from the foam. The submarine began to gather sternway as the Navigator backed her upriver to the precise firing point. The Captain scanned the upstream channel and the breakwater, but there were still no changes. He was beginning to fear that the boiling wash from the screws would be seen and heard ashore, but apparently no one was looking out into the mouth of the river.

  Finally, the screws stopped their urgent drumbeat, and the wash subsided aft. Then a thump and a roiling wash of air and water broached the surface astern; a second thump, and a third. There was no sign of the mines as they shot aft, arcing down through the black water to the mud and silt below. Then the screws again, this time kicking out a wash astern, and the boat gathering headway, her bows pointed out to sea and safety. The Captain scanned the breakwater again, but there was still no sign of anyone seeing them. He glanced around to see where they were, and noted the junction buoy watching just upstream. He conjured up the 900 foot long hull of the carrier as she nosed into the river, and swung her bows to make the left turn into the basin. He looked again at the junction buo
y, disappearing rapidly now as the A1 Akrab jumped ahead under full power. Yes. Very good. There was no way the carrier would avoid the mines. He keyed the intercom.

  “The placement looks perfect, Navigator. Well done!”

  Three hours later and many miles from the enemy’s shore, the A1 Akrab shut down her main engines, switched over to the electrics, and submerged, levelling off at a depth of two hundred feet. The Captain held a short meeting with his department heads, and then returned to the control room, the Musaid as ever at his side. The steward’s mate offered tea, but he had had enough and needed sleep. He checked with the sonar station.

  “One significant contact only,” reported the young sonarman. “A single screwed vessel, a steam ship, since there is no diesel engine noise. She is headed east on a bearing of 120. Barely down doppler. Distance probably beyond twenty thousand meters. Two fishermen on the trawl to the north, small diesels; winch machinery noises. Nothing else.”

  “Is the steam ship a warship?”

  “We cannot tell, Captain. There are no sonars or other military indications, and she proceeds east. More than likely a merchant.”

  “Very well,” replied the Captain, relieved that there were no warships. He dismissed the Musaid and headed forward to his cabin for some much needed sleep. Tomorrow was going to be another long day. With any luck, the last long day.

  SIXTY-ONE

  Mayport Naval Base, Friday, 9 May; 1230

  Diane sat in her kitchen, staring at a cooling cup of coffee as she had for most of the morning, squinting against the harsh sunlight streaming through the windows from the beach. Her eyes hurt from the glare and from the fact that she had spent most of the night awake, worrying about what Goldsborough might be facing, what might happen to Mike and his crew if this submarine thing were true after all. The contrast between the peaceful morning routine of the base, the sounds of car doors closing and officers going off to work, the occasional honk of a ship’s horn and the hooting of tugs as they went about their chores in the basin, weighed heavily on her mind every time she thought about Mike out at sea, the hours drawing near when he might have to fight for his life.

  Might. That was the rub. As Mike had said more than once, this whole thing might be a fairy tale. Or it might become bloody truth with the roar of torpedoes tearing apart the afternoon’s sunny silence. She could understand Admiral Walker’s reluctance to accept even the possibility, although J.W. had seemed reluctant to discard the notion completely, at least for a while. It was clearly a difficult proposition for the staff. But Commodore Aronson had acted. Eli Aronson was an ambitious, tough, and experienced surface warfare officer of the classic, eat-your-young-if-they-don’t-measure-up school, not an officer to be taken in by fairy tales. He obviously thought that if it were possible for the Libyans to do this thing, then the U.S. Navy ought to go take a look, take some precautions until they were proved wrong. How many times had she heard J.W. talk about the first rule of intelligence: concentrate on capabilities and not on intentions. That’s what they always did when they discussed the Soviet Navy. It’s the politicians’ job to figure out the enemy’s intentions, he would pontificate; it is our job to cast a clear, cold eye on their capabilities, and to be ready to deal with all of those capabilities if the politicians get it wrong. The conventional wisdom in 1941 had been that the Japanese would never attack Pearl Harbor, but every late 1930’s Navy study of their capabilities had shown that they could if they wanted to.

  She twisted in her chair, absently stirring the muddied coffee. Her instincts told her that there was more to this than met the eye, and her years of marriage to both J.W. and the Navy way of life had taught her to trust her instincts. Something was off the tracks here with this submarine thing. Something that smelled profoundly of Navy peacetime politics, a fear of being the first to take action in an ambiguous situation. No one on the staff wanted to be the first one to broach the possibility that a hostile submarine could be operating in the Navy’s own backyard, or that it might have been there for maybe a couple of weeks.

  She recognized that the senior officers at the Group staff, her husband chief among them, were reflexively observing the cardinal rule that one doesn’t make waves until one draws considerable water. The problem with that rule was that by the time they were big enough players in the system, many of them no longer knew how to make waves, having spent too many years pouring oil on the waters to ensure that waves disappeared.

  She knew in her heart of hearts that J.W. had a better than even chance of making Admiral. She also knew that he would fit the mold only too well. He was adept at pleasing his superiors, smoothing over problems, and keeping the bright image of his boss of the day intact. But she was also convinced that, if he were to become an Admiral, he would no longer know what to do about a situation like this mysterious submarine other than to take whatever precautions were necessary to keep any potential consequences from splattering on his own reputation. He took the same approach to his marriage, she thought with a sudden stab of bitterness.

  The revelation that he had been seeing another woman still hurt. She felt again the venomous surge of anger that had nearly overwhelmed her when she first found out about the Wave Commander in Norfolk. The real insult was that the son of a bitch took his wife sufficiently for granted that he could afford, emotionally, to be involved with another woman and think absolutely nothing of it. And it wasn’t as if she’d gone to fat or booze. Given the way other men reacted to her, it would never have occurred to her that he would even want to stray, and old J.W. had depended on that hubris to keep her from suspecting. He also depended on other senior officers to look the other way; the rest of the staff had to know about his Norfolk playmate, which made it doubly humiliating. How many times had she endured the endless Navy cocktail parties, putting on a pretty face and being so terribly interested in yet another story of some man’s career triumph, all the while surrounded by staff officers who knew her husband was seeing another woman on a routine basis.

  She picked up the coffee cup, and then put it down again. Her hands trembled with anger and apprehension. Now Mike was out there at sea, looking for a terrorist submarine, in an antique destroyer with no help and none likely other than the Commodore’s single radio watch in the harbor, while the routine of the Navy base getting ready for a weekend transpired gently towards 1630 and liberty call. Who was the Commodore going to call if Mike radioed in that he had made contact? The fabulous Group staff?

  She glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was nearly 1 p.m. The hot sun outside was directly overhead, casting the shapes of the tropical plants around the house into deep shadow. The house and the quarters area were silent except for the rush of the air conditioners working full time to defeat the sticky heat outside. She took a deep breath. She could no longer just sit there, and do nothing. Three times during the morning she had made her decision, and each time the doubts had pushed her back into her chair. This time, for the first time in her life as Mrs. J.W. Martinson, she was going to go light a fuse.

  She got up from her chair and went to J.W.’s study, and sat down at his large desk. She began to go through the neat piles of papers stacked up along the left side of the desk, looking for the Navy directory for the Norfolk area. She paused when she came across one file marked MFR. Memorandums for the Record, she remembered. The staff officer’s device for covering his backside, as J.W. had described it. If you disagree with a policy or a decision, but are unwilling to challenge or argue with the Boss, or you have been overruled, write an MFR. That way if the issue turns to worms, you can always produce the MFR as proof that you never did agree with the decision. She opened the file, and was surprised to find that the top MFR in the stack dealt with the submarine issue. She read it and felt her face go red with embarrassment as she realized what he was doing.

  J.W. had outlined the background of the submarine problem in three neat paragraphs, and then concluded that the proper course of action was to dispatch a three ship ASW force to
the area for a period of time longer than the submarine’s estimated capacity to stay submerged without snorkeling. He acknowledged the problem of limited budgetary assets, but concluded that the Navy ought to look into the possibility that there was something there. He further concluded that the decision not to forward what information they had on to Naval headquarters in Norfolk was an error, and that he had advised the Admiral in the strongest possible terms that they should tell headquarters.

  Diane snorted out loud. I’ll just bet! She could not visualize her dear husband “advising in the strongest possible terms” for or against anything, and especially not to an old hardcase like Admiral Walker. But the memo carried his signature block, was machine date-stamped, and his signature was scrawled through the date and signature block to prove that it had been written on the date in question. J.W. had covered himself neatly in case something happened to the Coral Sea. She suspected that a copy was in the files at Group, and the original here at home for safekeeping. Well done, J.W. She wondered if he knew what Eli Aronson was up to. She wouldn’t put it past him to let that game play out; either way, he was protected from any career consequences. Well, screw that. Finding the MFR had made up her mind.