The Iceman

by P. T. Deutermann

“Is that a good idea, Captain?” the exec asked. “They’ll come looking when that Kawanishi doesn’t return, which’ll mean lots of airplanes searching our patrol area.”

  “The key is that we kill everybody on board before anyone can make a radio call. I’ve explained what I want the twenty millimeter crew to do.”

  “Yes, sir, but maybe we should post the five-inch crew as well. That way if they see us before we get into twenty range, we can at least start shooting at them.”

  Malachi thought for a moment. Five-inch shells would punch right through the skin of an airplane, and might not even go off. On the other hand, if they started the dance with five-inchers, especially from close in, the shock and surprise would be doubled.

  “Okay, good idea. We’re going in on the battery. Reset GQ; get the boat closed up. Send up the five-inch gun captain, and break out point-detonating ammo. I’d like to get into five hundred yards before opening up, maybe even closer. It’s darker than a well-digger’s ass out here tonight, so we might be able to get in really close.”

  “Not too close, sir—the five-inch ammo won’t have time to arm.”

  “I think it’s the noise that’ll do what I want it to do. The twenty will take care of the real business.”

  A half hour later they were within 800 yards of the stationary contact. Everyone had been briefed, the guns were manned and ready, and the only problem now was that they couldn’t actually see the aircraft. Malachi made a call down to the conning tower on a sound-powered phone and told the exec to get on the high-powered periscope and start looking down the bearing. “Your eyes are younger than mine,” he said. “As soon as you see it, take a radar ping to get the range, and then tell me its aspect. In a perfect world, I’d like to pull up to it so we’re broadside to each other.”

  If anything it was even darker than before. Malachi found himself straining his eyes to see anything out there, but all he got was the beginnings of a headache. He kept the phone in his hand. There was still a faint breeze coming from ahead. A seaplane sitting on the surface should end up with its nose pointed into the breeze, so this course ought to do the trick. He could still smell the charcoal. The phone barely squeaked.

  “I see it,” the exec said. “Target angle is one three five. Kawanishi. Plot says the CPA on this course will be about four hundred yards in three minutes.”

  Malachi relayed the information to McReedie, who was standing halfway between the gun mount and the bridge. He told him to train the twenty out to the port beam. “The five-inch’ll go first. You should be able to see the bastards from the gun flash. Start at the nose and work your way aft, and then go back and forth. Into the hull first and then along the waterline. Tear it up—I don’t want them to be able to get a message out.”

  The exec was controlling the five-inch gun from the conning tower, coaching them as to where to point the gun in the gloom, and to depress the barrel about three degrees. That way, the shell might hit the water near the flying boat, and maybe even explode.

  “One minute to CPA.”

  CPA—the closest point of approach. After that the range would start to open. “All stop,” Malachi ordered. The boat would coast into position. “Fire the five-inch at CPA.”

  “Thirty seconds to CPA.”

  Malachi relayed this to the boatswain’s mate, who disappeared up into the gloom back to his gun mount.

  The blast from the five-inch startled him badly and also blinded him with its flash, but not before he saw the Kawanishi, beam on, with Japs sitting in the open hatches around their hibachis, the source of that charcoal smell. There was no explosion from the five-inch round, but it didn’t matter anymore, as McReedie’s crew opened up, stitching the hapless sea plane from end to end in a continuous blast of 20mm shells, every fifth one an incendiary-tracer, starting a fire under the starboard wing. The five-inch crew, with something to shoot at now, opened fire again, and this time the shells did explode, just underneath the plane and then the fourth one in a fuel-filled wing that lit up the entire area in a bright gasoline fire. In the space of 120 seconds, the plane disintegrated before their eyes, leaving only a pool of flaming aviation gas.

  “Cease firing,” Malachi ordered. “All back one third.”

  The boat had begun to drive past the wreckage of the seaplane. Malachi picked up his binoculars and scanned the surface of the water illuminated by the burning gasoline. He saw faces.

  “Boatswain’s mate,” he called.

  “Leave ’em to me, Cap’n,” the boatswain said. His brother had been killed on the Arizona at Pearl Harbor. He didn’t need any further instructions. A thirty-second barrage from the 20mm solved the problem of talkative survivors.

  “Come to course two seven zero and light off the diesels for twenty knots,” Malachi ordered. “Two running, two charging. Secure from GQ. Good job.”

  They put twenty miles between them and the scene before slowing down to resume their normal night patrol. Malachi drafted an operational report about the tanker convoy entering Brunei Bay and that they had attacked a Kawanishi on the surface, and then sent it to Radio for encoding and transmission.

  The cooks took advantage of fresh air to make a batch of cheeseburgers, a crew favorite but always a smoky business. A cook’s favorite, too, because once submerged, cold cheeseburgers could be warmed up in the ovens. After dinner, the exec came to see Malachi in his cabin.

  “XO,” Malachi greeted him, “a good piece of work tonight.”

  The exec pulled a long face. “I’m uneasy about the last part,” he said. “Shooting at survivors in the water.”

  “If that had been their version of a Catalina, a life-saving aircraft, I wouldn’t have done that. And I won’t do that to a troopship’s survivors, either. But the Japs’ll be out there tomorrow looking for that plane. I couldn’t allow any survivors to be there talking about being attacked by a submarine.”

  The exec seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “That was part of my original reservation about doing this, Captain. What you’re saying is completely logical, but I’m not sure I want to be a part of killing survivors in the water.”

  “Well, you were a part of it,” Malachi said coldly. “We all were. Didn’t have to convince McReedie, did I. This is total war, XO. Ask the Aussies, who just lost hundreds of doctors, nurses, and patients in the deliberate sinking of a well-marked and lighted hospital ship, the Centaur. Four hundred dead. I’ve seen intel reports that the Japs have been executing allied POWs on Wake Island. If you don’t have the stomach for it, then the next time we see Perth, feel free to get off.”

  The exec stared down at the deck. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ve got the attack plans for both routes once those tankers come out.”

  “Very well. Brief me in the morning, and then we’ll get the department heads in for a strategy session. That is all.”

  They submerged at dawn, but not before a single sweep of the air search radar revealed multiple contacts behind them that appeared to be searching the waters west of Brunei Bay. Malachi elected to stay out offshore for one more day, but then he knew he’d have to close the coast to get into position once that convoy came back out. He could only hope that he’d been correct in his estimate of how long it would take to load the oil.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  For the next three nights they crept into the Brunei Bay approaches and took a radar look. All the tankers seemed to still be there. Most of the pips were fuzzy, indicating that there were barges alongside. Strangely, there didn’t seem to be any patrols along the coast or in the approaches, so Malachi felt he could assume there’d been no survivors from the Kawanishi. Otherwise all those destroyers would have been out there looking for him.

  Relations with his exec had settled into a chilly formality. Malachi realized that Marty knew his time aboard Firefish was growing short. Once they got back to Perth, if they got back to Perth, this would have to be settled, one way or the other. They’d held the briefing for the attack plan the morning following the exec
’s declaration. Even by then, the department heads were aware that something had gone wrong between CO and XO. Marty gave the brief, and Malachi approved the plan with one major change.

  “If they come out at night I’m going to do this on the surface, with both guns and torpedoes. If they come out during the day, then we need to move the ambush point out to the seaward end of that river delta area, where the water will be so turbid that the Kawanishis can’t see us at periscope depth.”

  “You’re talking eighty feet,” the exec reminded him.

  Malachi knew what he meant. Periscope depth was 60 feet of water beneath the keel. There was no depth evasion possible in only 80 feet of water. “I’m talking lurking in eighty feet at the point where it begins to drop off to six hundred feet,” he replied. “We get into trouble, we run for the deep water. Our soundings indicate that happens pretty fast.”

  A weather front rolled in about midnight of the third night, and by dawn the seas were being whipped up into a medium chop, with frequent rain squalls blowing through. They took a final radar sweep and went back down to the safety of the depths. The radar sweep had revealed no contacts, so Malachi ordered the boat to take up position near the tip of the submerged delta to await developments. The waiting was getting on everyone’s nerves and it was showing in sporadic arguments out in the passageway or testy exchanges over minor problems. Sound couldn’t hear much above the drumming of rain on the surface, especially when they closed into shallower waters to take a periscope look. The northeast monsoon was coming on, and with it, typhoon season.

  At noon, however, Sound reported hearing sonar pinging to the east of them. Pinging meant destroyers. Destroyers hopefully meant the convoy was preparing to sail. Malachi moved the boat to the west and went down to 250 feet. Over the next three hours at least three destroyers or frigates wandered around the approaches to Brunei Bay, sanitizing the obvious submarine ambush points. He wondered if they knew he was out here—they’d used a lot of radar over the past week. Or perhaps the Japanese long-range HFDF stations had picked up his initial report about the convoy. Or, conversely, they were just being careful, especially since they had nothing else to do while waiting for slow, fully laden oil tankers to get under way and organized into some kind of formation.

  By nightfall the pinging had stopped and the destroyers seemed to have gone back into the anchorage area of Brunei Bay. Malachi surfaced the boat and went to battle stations, guns and torpedoes. The weather had, if anything, deteriorated. A steady northeast 30-knot wind had raised a decent sea by now, even in the lee of Brunei. Sheets of spray and occasional green water were bursting over the sub’s low, sloping bow, to the point where Malachi, dressed out in oilskins and a sou’wester hat on the bridge, had ordered the five-inch crew to get back down below deck but to leave the gun ready to work. The 20mm crew were somewhat protected by the periscope array and the bridge itself. It was almost like being back off Scotland, Malachi thought, except both the air and the water were at eight-five degrees. Visibility was perhaps 500 yards in the noisy darkness. He’d posted four lookouts, who became quickly soaked, so he sent them back down.

  Malachi had given one last briefing in the conning tower before going topside. “I want to do this on the surface if at all possible, where we can use our speed to raise hell from inside the convoy. I want extra ammo handlers available at the forward hatch to feed the five-inch. I’ve told the gun captain to shoot at anything he thinks he can hit once the first torpedo goes off and to keep shooting until we have to dive.

  “XO, use the surface search to take us right into the convoy. I want to run in the opposite direction they’re going, and I will do the conning from the bridge on the bitchbox. I need you to keep constant track of where the nearest deep water is for when I finally need it.”

  “Yes, sir, got it. Will we shoot from the TDC?”

  “Only as regards settings,” Malachi said. “These are fully loaded tankers. They’ll be drawing twenty feet of water if not more, so set the fish for six feet and contact exploders. They’ll run at sixteen feet. I’ll basically point the bow at the nearest target and yell fire. You shoot one torpedo at a time—if we can hit six ships, we can come back later and finish them off. If they’re full of gasoline, we won’t have to.”

  “And the twenties?”

  “I want to save them for the destroyers. In this weather they’re gonna have a hard time seeing us, and I’m going to be doing some twenty-knot broken field running once we get into the convoy. If a tin can gets close that twenty-millimeter cannon can tear up his bridge works and his gun crews. We’ll save the stern tubes for destroyers in pursuit.”

  There were nods all around in the red light of the conning tower.

  “This will be a melee, boys,” Malachi said. “And remember what the Army teaches about combat planning: no plan survives first contact with the enemy.”

  “Do you plan to make more than one pass through the convoy?” the exec asked.

  “No,” Malachi replied. “We’ll make one pass through the convoy and then head for the nearest deep water, which is why I want you to keep track of where that is at all times. Right now, open all outer doors. When you shoot the first fish, order the five-inch crew topside.”

  Malachi went back to the rain-swept bridge. The wind had come up a bit, and he had to tie his oilslicks to stay dry. The exec called up on the bitchbox and gave him an entry course into the convoy just behind the first ship on the left. There were eight ships running in two columns, separated by about a thousand yards, or half a mile. The radar showed that the destroyers were all out in front of the convoy. Sound could hear intermittent pinging, but the rainfall was masking most useful sounds. He reported that all outer doors, fore and aft, were open and recommended 20 knots now.

  “I’m aiming the boat to pass two hundred yards behind the first ship in the left-hand column,” the exec said. “I’ll call CPA, and then you need to turn right to one six five and slow to twelve knots to drive down between the columns.”

  “It’s raining hard and dark as all hell up here. If I can’t see the targets, we’ll turn around and come back up from behind.”

  The boat charged ahead through the four-foot-high waves, blasting spray everywhere. Fortunately, there was no swell to make her pitch, courtesy of the island of Borneo.

  “CPA,” the XO called. “Recommend come right to one six five.”

  “Make it so,” Malachi responded, and stared hard into the stormy darkness. His binocs were useless in the monsoon rain. He’d just passed right behind a fully loaded oil tanker and hadn’t seen a thing. Now he was barreling down between two columns of invisible big ships, and still couldn’t see a thing.

  This wasn’t going to work. Not at all. The same weather that made him invisible to the destroyers made the tankers invisible to him. Change of plan. Go Army.

  He yelled at the 20mm gun crew to secure their gun and lay below. He ordered the boat to slow down to five knots, and then ordered the five-inch crew to go up, secure their gun, and lay below. He waited until the gun crews had done what was necessary and then dropped down into the conning tower, the last man closing the forward hatch behind him. The boatswain’s mate remained on the bridge as an extra lookout.

  “Still can’t see a goddamned thing,” Malachi called down. “So now we’re gonna do a radar attack. Keep me on a course to clear the formation, and once we’re clear we’ll turn around.”

  That took another five minutes, at which point Malachi ordered the boat to reverse course. “Get me behind the tail-end Charlie in the right-hand column,” he ordered. “Eight hundred yards.”

  As the boat reversed course she began to run with the wind and the chop, which cut the amount of spray inundating the bridge. The exec took over the conn and drove the boat to a position 800 yards or so behind the last tanker in the right-hand column. Malachi fully understood that if he wanted the tactical picture, the conning tower was the place to go. The exec could execute the attack because he had that tact
ical picture—the radar, the plotting table, the TDC, and access to sonar. All of this was fine with Malachi—his job right now was to drive what the boat did, not how.

  “The convoy is making ten knots; recommend we change speed to ten knots.”

  “XO, you do what you have to do: get us stable behind him, shoot when you have a good solution. If we hit him, then drive us over to the other column and do the same thing to the last guy in that column. When the tin cans show up we’ll bag ass.”

  “You still want the five-inch crew to come up when we shoot?”

  “Negative; we may have to crash dive. You have permission to fire when ready.”

  “XO, aye.”

  The boatswain moved closer to where Malachi was standing. A puff of diesel smoke blew back over them as they ran downwind. The boatswain reached into his raingear’s left sleeve and produced a lit cigarette, which he passed to Malachi. Then he bent down behind the windscreen and lit another, hiding the flare of the lighter in a sound-powered phone box.

  “There’s three hundred rounds still in that twenty back there, Skipper,” the boatswain said. “In case someone needs his windows shot out.”

  “Good,” Malachi said. “We may need that, especially if one of these guys goes high order.”

  They both felt the thump of a torpedo bolting out forward. There was no sign of a wake, even though the rain and wind had diminished a tiny bit. They waited. Nothing happened.

  “Check your solution and fire again,” Malachi called down.

  Three minutes later came another thump forward. Eighteen seconds later there was a red flare ahead of them, followed by a loud booming noise. Immediately the boat began turning left to head for the back of the other column. There’d been no explosion of the tanker’s cargo, but she’d definitely been hit. There’d be some noise on the Japs’ radio circuits about now, Malachi thought. The escorts would be turning around.

  The rain suddenly increased as a squall overtook them. They headed for the back end of the left-hand column. The heavy rain posed a new problem: the surface search radar was always degraded by rain, which resulted in a splotch of fuzzy interference on the scope in the conning tower. Without the radar he could no longer go around flying blind inside the convoy.