by David Poyer
But as he put the headset back on, he realized with hollow apprehension that Packer wouldn’t. He’d refused to before, when Ryan was close to sinking. Now, with part of the experimental IVDS wrapped around the sub below, after being fired at, he’d never leave, threats or no.
He listened to Orris’s exhausted voice dragging out ranges and bearings. His heart felt sluggish and underpowered, like a four-cylinder Fury. His hands shook. Looking across the plot, he saw how ashen Pedersen’s face was, how exhausted Lipson and Matt looked. Packer was older than any of them. How much more could he take? They’d been lucky so far. Torpedoes that hadn’t exploded. A ship that hadn’t capsized. How long could that kind of luck hold?
He suddenly noticed that there was bread in his hand and that he was hungry. He was tearing at it with his teeth, surprised his stomach accepted it, when Pedersen said, “Check this out on the surface scope, sir. A small contact. Intermittent. Dead ahead.”
“Dead ahead? That’s where B forty-one is.”
“Right, sir. I think he’s surfacing.”
Only after he’d swallowed it did he notice that his torn fingers had left blood prints on the bread.
18
THE working lights were on and Bloch and Isaacs were busy when Dan got back to the boat deck. The starter was grinding gravel. More First Division men were coming out of the hangar. They were olive-drab snowmen in a bulky assortment of rain gear, foul-weather jackets, hoods, caps, masks, and gloves. He noted Rocky, Speedy, Brute Boy, Ali X., Shorty. And Lassard, standing in the hangar lee with his hands in his pockets, smiling dreamily past it all at the sea. “Where’s Popeye?” Dan shouted over the baying of the wind. Nobody answered. Then he made out Rambaugh in the boat, bent over at the coxswain’s station.
“How many you want in her, sir?”
“I’m not sure, Chief. How many we usually take?”
“Is it a boarding party, a rescue party, what?”
“I don’t know. The skipper just told me—he just said to get our guys back here and get ready to put the boat in the water.”
“Well, we might not be able to. Not in seas like this. Hell, it’s hard to board a sub in good weather. And plus, this fucking diesel’s frozen or something. You people been starting it regular?”
“Every day, Chief man, you know we treat it right.”
“Ikey. Where’s Ikey? He’s good with—here, get up there, see what you can do with it.”
Dan looked at the sea. If he had to do this, he would. But he didn’t want to think about putting out into that madness in a twenty-six-foot Mark Two motor whaleboat. The waves looked higher than the boat was long. Dark as hell’s basement, too. Christ, he thought, what if we get lost? What if we get swamped, or capsize?
The engine puked blue smoke and began clattering. The black first-class, padded like a pugil-stick fighter with foul-weather gear, life jacket, watch cap, straightened proudly, wiping his hands on a rag. Lassard howled, dancing like an Indian, fingers extended in peace signs. “Cut it off, goddamn it!” Bloch shouted. “We’ll start it again when she lowers. Ikey, help Baw inventory her outfit.”
“Anchor.”
“Check.”
“Batteries, dry.”
“Check.”
“Bell ‘n’ bracket.”
“Gotcha, Ikey.”
“Thass Petty Officer Isaacs to you. Chain assembly.”
Dan studied the davits, the hoisting gear that would sway the boat up out of her chocks, swing her outboard, and lower her. Cranks and screws and lines and turnbuckles and gripes. He had no idea how they operated. He stood back, letting Bloch and Isaacs chivvy and push the hands into position on steadying lines and twofold tackles.
Finally, the chief called, “Okay, crew.” Connolly, Coffey, and Vogelpohl pushed up to the metal ladder that led up to the still-chocked boat. Dan looked at the round-faced department yeoman. “Pohl, what’re you doing out here?”
“I’m boat crew, Ensign.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Grapnel line … bailin’ pail … fenders … stern lines. Got it all, Chief.”
“Mr. Lenson, you boat officer?”
“Guess so, Chief.”
“Better board, sir. Bridge is sayin’ we’re starting our approach.”
“Have you got Mr. Norden on there?”
The phone talker nodded. Dan bawled, “Ask him how many men we want in the boat, and what we’re supposed to do.”
Out of nowhere, it began to rain. An icy, diagonal, freezing mix of rain and soft sleet that pelted down out of invisible clouds and soaked his foul-weather jacket in seconds. The men cursed and shoved around him, climbing up into the boat and settling on thwarts slick and sweet-smelling with glycol antifreeze. Loose ice slid around under the floorboards. The sleet stung his eyes and trickled down his back. He wondered what they were supposed to be doing. If this was a boarding party, it seemed like they ought to be armed.
As if thought called them into being, there were two gunner’s mates by the rail, handing over short shapes wrapped in tarp. The men started to unwrap them. “Put them under the thwarts,” he shouted, standing up. “Listen up! You, Heering—are these loaded?”
“Full magazines, empty chambers. Just work the operating rod to load the first round. This forty-five’s yours, sir. Got fire axes here for you, too. Watch ’em, they’re sharp.”
The pistol felt heavy and familiar. Plebe Summer, hot, dusty hours on the range at Greenbury Point. He checked it and stuffed it into his belt, under all the other gear.
“Mr. Lenson! Wanted on the circuit.”
He fought his way out of the boat and onto the ship again, stepping carefully across space to the boat deck. The headset was wet and cold on his ears. “Lenson. That you, Rich?”
“This is the captain. You ready to lower away back there?”
He thought of the storm, the dark. The pistol was blue ice, sucking the warmth of his privates. He took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”
“Radar holds what we think’s forty-one about a thousand yards ahead, on the surface. No lights, so she’s running darkened. If she’s running at all.”
“Yes, sir. What do you want us to—”
“I don’t know what you’ll hit over there. You’re going to have to use your judgment. If there’s nobody topside, or only a couple guys, board her and check out the sail and planes. Do it fast. Make sure there’s nothing of ours fouled on her. If you see the cable, chop it free and either tow it back or let it sink. Got that?”
“Uh, yes, sir, but what about the sub itself? Do you want me to, uh—to capture it?”
A grim chuckle came over the circuit. “With this guy to starboard looking on? That’s how wars start, Dan. No dramatics. Just get aboard, check it out, and get back here. Fast.
“From what Sonar’s telling me, they’re in trouble. They’re fighting major flooding. They’re probably not going to have a hell of a lot of attention to spare for you. If it goes down while you’re alongside, make sure all our guys get back aboard.”
“What about them, sir? What if they want off?”
“Good question, but you’ll have to play that by ear. If he’s sinking, and there’s room in the boat, you can pick some of them up. I don’t think I want them on the ship, though. Shuttle them over to the AGI. I’ll be covering you with the guns in case anything goes wrong. Got it?”
He repeated it back. The captain snapped, “Okay, go to it,” and left the line.
“What’s the word, sir?”
“It’s a boarding party, Chief.”
“Mind if I come? I don’t think we’ve done one of those since—what—since the war—”
“No. I need you on the falls. Somebody’s got to see we lower right, or we’ll all end up in the water.”
Dan waddled up the ladder and pushed his way back toward the boat’s helm. That answered one question, at least. He grabbed the monkey lines as Ryan rolled. Okay, he’d better make sure … “Coxswain! Who’s my coxswain?”<
br />
“Here, sir.” Rambaugh.
“We ready to lower, Popeye? Are the uh, are the plugs in?” The second-class nodded. “Engineer?”
A voice, a face he didn’t know. A snipe. Dan made sure he’d checked the fuel and oil.
“Bow hook?”
“Vogel’s bow hook, Ensign.”
“Vogelpohl, you big enough for that?”
“Been doing it for two years, sir.”
“Okay, just checking. We got a light? Chief, I need a couple more battle lanterns.… Hey! You!” he shouted. “Yeah, I’m talking to you! Put that under the seat, sailor!
“Now the rest of you listen up; here’s the word on what we gotta do.”
When he was done, nobody seemed to have any questions. They stood and sat and shivered, muttering with the blaspheming patience of sailors in the rain and spray, clinging grimly to the knotted hand lines.
“Boat to the rail,” bawled the phone talker.
Dan couldn’t follow everything that happened in the next minutes. Bloch shouted commands. The sleet fell harder than ever, driving down out of the night. The whips and steadying lines came taut.
The boat trembled under him, then lifted, swaying, from the cradle. The chief bawled, “Release guys! Release gripes! Hoist away!” Dan grabbed for the gunwale, then remembered and shifted his clutch to the knotted hemp of the monkey line.
“Hold fast,” he shouted. The bent down-curving davits, like the hooks of two upright canes, pivoted outboard and aft. The boat swung aft, then out, then forward, weaving its way around them.
Then they were hanging out over the sea, the blocks and lines creaking taut above them, the ship’s side a sea-stained wall in the rain-haloed work lights. The crew stood upright, swaying from the line. If the falls broke, dropping the boat, the men with good grips would be left dangling like a line of cured hams, to be swung back inboard. The others would plunge straight down. On the ship, Jones and Isaacs flipped fenders over opposite them. The steadying lines came taut fore and aft, and the men on them set their heels as Ryan rolled. Bloch was shouting something about a safety runner.
Lenson leaned over the gunwales and looked down at a sea like used motor oil. It rose dizzyingly swift, fell away, then surged back, its surface black and dull and somehow viscid, gruel-like, under the speckling impact of the rain, as if it were kept from solidity only by unending motion. And out beyond it, a swell and another swell and after that utter dark and dark and a thousand miles of dark till the coast of Norway.
Looking forward, he saw faces staring down from the bridge wing. Any minute, he thought. Away the motor whaleboat, away. Ten or eleven things had to happen at once when the keel slammed down. Cast off aft, cast off forward, trip the slings clear of the prop; take a strain on the sea painter; start the engine, put it in gear, meanwhile keeping clear of the side with the rudder, but not too far out, or the painter would haul the bow around and they’d crash into the gray wall of hull. And all the time soaring up and dropping, one moment opposite the helo deck, the next eye-to-eye with the copper red of bottom paint. They’d have to sheer away gradually, and watch every wave. Any of them could dump him and all these men out into the lightless, freezing sea.
Thinking this, he struggled to his feet, bracing himself on the shoulders of those beside him. Hands reached up, steadying him. He barely felt them. He was counting heads: twelve, including himself. “When we going, sir?” somebody called. He didn’t answer, counting them all again: twelve. Okay, he was as ready as he’d ever be. He shaded his eyes against a lashing of spray and looked to the bridge again.
But minute after minute went by, and still they swayed there, halfway between sea and sky, between ship and sea.
“Somebody closing, off to port,” said Rambaugh, touching his shoulder. He pointed between Ryan’s stacks. “See him, sir?”
He screened his eyes again to see two small lights close together off to port. He watched incuriously for a few seconds. The lights grew brighter, farther apart, and sharper, but stayed in the same relative position between the stacks. The pistol was digging into his gut. Having the muzzle pointing at his balls made him nervous. He mined around under his jacket, trying to shift it, then glanced up again.
Then he was struggling back to his feet, shouting at the talker. Ryan loomed above the alien lights. In the rainy mist their halos lighted sea-swept decks, a shadowy array of masts and aerials, the hammer and sickle and star, painted on her stack.
Ryan’s horn burst into a nasal drone. One, two, three, four, five short, rapid blasts.
The Soviet trawler swayed, and the distance between her lights shortened. All at once, he understood. Ryan, longer and heavier, was shouldering the smaller ship away, forcing her to sheer off to port.
His attention was jerked away by the talker’s frantic gestures. He cupped his hand to his ear. “… up forward,” was all he caught.
Dan leaned across empty space and shouted, “Chief, what’s he trying to tell me?”
Bloch grabbed the earphones. His bull-like bawl cut the rattle of rain and the blast of wind. “Everybody out of the boat, to the fo’c’sle, on the double! Going to board over the lifesaving nets.”
“Shit fire,” Dan muttered. “Goddamn it.… On your feet! Everybody out of the boat, to the fo’c’sle, on the double!”
The men slipped and stumbled, chilled through by sleet and wind. Heat loss tripled when you were wet. One seaman tripped on the rub rail, would have taken the long dive if Rambaugh hadn’t caught his collar.
He tossed one backward glance. Abandoned, empty, the boat swung like a huge slow pendulum at the end of its whips, and the dangling monkey lines capered dripping in the wind.
Forward, forward. He ran in staggering, shambling exhaustion. Men caromed off him in fatigued slow motion, like padded ninepins. They fell and fought down the port-side ladder, then splashed clumsily forward through sliding pools on the main deck. Saltwater jetted out of Coffey’s boots, ahead of him, with each of the seaman’s steps.
Pettus was on the forecastle when they got there, sawing frantically at the lashings of the life nets, broad mats of woven rope rigged along the sides. As Dan reached him, the starboard one fell away, unrolling down into the foaming sea like a venetian blind. He leaned out over the lifeline, blinking against the salt sting. His face felt like a cast in acrylic resin.
To port the lights of the AGI heaved up and down, reeled right and left. She was making heavy weather. He ignored her, running his eyes above his guess at horizon. Was there something there? Something blacker than blackness, out ahead? Or was it only his tired, obedient sight telling him what he expected to see? “Got anything, sir?” Rambaugh shouted, at his shoulder. “Not yet,” he shouted back. “Should be just ahead, though, a few hundred yards now—”
“Flare!”
He snapped his eyes front. A green comet climbed for the black bellies of the clouds, a shooting star that slowed and faded even as he watched. Then spray wiped it out.
A sea smashed into the stern, and Ryan reeled so violently he staggered into the lifeline. The breaker cascaded the length of the forecastle, spraying the men like a crowd of protesters being fire-hosed. They bent their heads under it, clinging to the lifelines with one hand, the other clutching their axes.
Another flare soared, and all at once he made out the submarine. It was blacker than he’d expected—a hole in the night sea. Then the squall parted, the sleet and rain swept on, and suddenly it was close, a great low shadow length. So dark, he couldn’t tell whether it was bow-on, or stern to Ryan. He suddenly missed the battle lanterns. He cursed himself; he’d left them in the boat.
Suddenly the sun rose. No, three of them, behind and above him. Dazzled, he threw his arm up. Over their heads, Reynolds Ryan’s searchlights burned like white-hot swords thrust through a black curtain. Rain and spray blew through them, making them solid, like hot shafts of just-cast glass. He blinked away wind tears and squinted.
The submarine was enormous, much lo
nger than Ryan. The seas broke over her like a black iceberg. Her conning tower—it was called a “sail” now—was lower and longer than that of U.S. subs. Behind it was a squat squared-off fairing, part of the deck, but raised ten or twelve feet above the pressure hull. It sloped downward as it ran aft, till it merged with the tapered spindle of the tail. Along its upper surface were the outlines of huge hatches. A double raised line ran along it. It looked like a railroad track.
The submarine canted far over to starboard, then whiplashed back. It was rolling violently, beam to the seas. Ryan wasn’t rolling, but she was pitching hard. Each time she drove downward, she smashed the sea to cream under her forefoot. Not only were the two ships out of synchronization; they responded differently to the sea. The great swells swept over the submarine like a tide-scoured rock, but they lifted and tossed Ryan like a rubber duck in a child’s tub.
He stared down the dangling breadth of the net, its bottom buoyed up by yellow kapok floats that bobbed in the churn. His mouth was metallic dry. They weren’t going to make it down that. They’d be shaken like ants off a picnic blanket, dropped into the boiling sea, and crushed to pulp between the hammer of Ryan’s fore keel and the black anvil of the pressure hull.
“On the fo’c’sle,” an immense voice spoke through the blinding dark. He squinted up at the wing, a reluctant actor on a brightly lighted stage, and lifted his arm.
“On the fo’c’sle … Mr. Lenson. Down the nets, to port, make your preparations to board.”
* * *
AT Annapolis, he remembered, the drill they sweated most was pier approaches in the YPs, hundred-foot diesel craft, like miniature destroyers. No one could teach you how to maneuver a ship. You had to discover it yourself. Had to anticipate the inertia of hundreds of tons of steel, the freakish and conflicting thrusts of wind, tide, current, rudder, engines, even the direction the screw turned. You couldn’t do close-quarters maneuvering by rote. You had to integrate it all faster than any computer could do vector analysis, then apply power and direction to bring the ship alongside and stop, dead in the water, ten feet off the pier.
