“All right, Collins. I give in! When we get back to Newport, I’m going to recommend you be sent to Pharmacist School. That may help you get into college and pre-med after your hitch is over. The rest is up to you.” He turned away from the genuinely grateful “Thank you, Captain!” and redirected his full attention to the tactical situation at hand. He called the bridge and asked Commander Allison for another estimate of the ship’s position. Five miles from the Hood — closing at the rate of a mile every eight minutes. His eyes swept along the rows of empty PPI scopes, then fixed themselves upon Merlin Queffle’s dancing knee. “Queffle! Get in there and see if you can pick up anything!”
The Breton Kid shot to his feet and yanked his relief away from the console. In a moment he was hunched at the set, his hands pressing the earphones over his head, his eyes bulging toward the scope. The knee no longer danced.
Ensign Ralston’s nervousness was also abated when, a few minutes later, he relieved Lieutenant Aherne at Fire Control. But there was nothing for him to do there except wait, as everybody else was doing, and as the hands of the clock crept on, his tension began building up again.
Spitzer and Krindlemeyer exchanged positions, the latter vanishing down the hatch to check on things in the CSP room below. The ready light of No. 1 ASROC flashed to amber and the telephone talker reported it was being cleared of slush, but the trouble could not have been serious as the light went back to red within two minutes.
Eight more minutes of empty, inactive, gut-sucking silence. Another mile slipped by. Then one of those freak swells, much bigger than the others, caught up with the Bedford and began skidding her sideways down its slope. A tremor vibrated the deck and bulkheads of the CIC as the starboard engine reversed to brake the impending broach, but she heeled over steeper and steeper, and the tremor became a shuddering with a muffled rumble which jarred and shook everybody to the marrow. The ship did not broach completely, but perilously hung on the brink while burying herself in a thundering rush of white water. The sonar speakers and scopes crackled and sparkled with the hash of her own turbulence. Merlin Queffle cringed in his seat, pried up the cups of his earphones as if they were blasting a physical pain into his head and shot a horrified look at his captain. Finlander’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the arms of his chair and his eyes bored through the network of conduits and steel plating overhead, penetrating to the struggling helmsman up there. Slowly the Bedford recovered herself and stopped laboring, but Lieutenant Krindlemeyer spoke up with an ominous tone.
“That could have been picked up on enemy’s passive system.”
“For how far?” the captain demanded.
“The needle hit twenty-six. Two miles at least, sir.”
Commander Allison’s voice came down through the bridge intercom, speaking with a controlled chagrin. “Sorry, gentlemen! She got away from us for a moment there. A very big sea.”
Finlander looked as if he were about to shout a furious criticism into the microphone, but instead he calmly said: “All right, Buck! Keep on your toes. They usually come in three’s.” He was right. Two more big waves caught the Bedford, but smaller than the first, and with the helm thoroughly alerted. The splash was not as bad, yet enough to agitate the scopes and needles.
Had they been heard? Was there no reaction only because there was nothing down there? The questions tore at Finlander’s brain, but he did not yield to impulse as Ensign Ralston did.
“Mightn’t we as well shoot the works and start echo-ranging, sir?” the young officer exclaimed in anguish.
“No!” Finlander retorted. “But maybe Moby Dick will be that foolish if he thought he heard us. Queffle! Turn those earbones of yours on to maximum. Krindlemeyer! Patch him into the QBH hydrophone and stream it out. Bridge! Reduce revs and hold her for a QBH sweep.”
Lieutenant Krindlemeyer’s fingers flew over the switches. Queffle hunched down, knotting himself into an agonized ball of concentration. For two . . . three . . . four minutes everybody in the CIC breathed only enough to keep himself from exploding. The tense silence was broken only when the door opened and Commodore Schrepke stepped inside, allowing it to slam shut with a raucous metallic clang which made everybody jump.
Captain Finlander twisted around and glared at the German. Schrepke glanced about him with a cold glint in his eyes, then retreated into a corner, there to wait and watch with the rest of them.
8.
At 0645 Commander Allison estimated that he had brought the Bedford within a half-mile of the Hood. It was only a guess, but an educated one backed up by his considerable seaman’s instinct for the effects of wind and waves. Twenty minutes earlier he had shut down the master fathometer, depriving himself of his “blind man’s stick” in retracing his steps by the bottom contour. That instrument transmitted a strong submarine signal, and although it went straight down in a narrow cone, he was taking no chances that the Russian would hear it. The near broach had shaken him enough. But if he had to navigate the last few miles by guess and by God, then he needed to do it closer to the elements and outside the stifling confines of the blacked-out wheelhouse. The helmsman who so nearly lost control had vomited immediately after saving the situation, permeating the darkness around him with a horrible rancid smell; the relief lookouts, thawing out by the heater during their twenty-minute rests, cooked in their soaking clothes and added a peculiar pungent odor of their own. The executive officer squirmed into his parka and went out on the bridge.
It was even darker out there, of course, but the wind and snow were crisply clean, and he could hear and feel the sea surging along the hull of his ship. It was not blowing hard, less than Force 2 from the northeast; the swells were rolling along as big as ever, but without breaking and with longer periods between them. Snowflakes swirled and danced around his face, invisible, but stinging when they brushed against his skin. As he moved along the edge of the windscreen, he bumped into the port lookout, who jumped as if he had been awakened from being asleep on his feet.
“Watch it, son! Keep moving and keep looking.”
A frightened apology came stuttering from the dim shape. Allison moved on to the wing and noticed that Commodore Schrepke was no longer in his usual place, but he did not give that much thought. For two or three minutes he concentrated on sensing the unseen forces of the arctic night which were affecting his ship. He only considered the navigational problem at hand and did not speculate about where Moby Dick was out there, lurking just beneath the black waves or in the blacker deep — or not there at all. That was CIC’s problem, Finlander’s and that poor skinny kid Merlin Queffle, who was tearing his nerves to shreds over his MTS. All Allison had to worry about was putting the Bedford back over the Hood — although he realized that only blind luck would put him exactly over it without using the fathometer. But they were close, very close now. He crossed the bridge and stepped back inside the wheelhouse, picked up the telephone and called the CIC.
“We are plus or minus a thousand yards.”
“Are you sure, Buck?” Finlander’s voice asked.
“As sure as I possibly can be, sir.”
“Right. Stop engines and let’s listen awhile.”
Commander Allison passed the order on to Ensign Whitaker and went back out onto the bridge. As she lost steerage way, the Bedford slowly swung broadside to the swells and began rolling heavily as she lay dead in the water.
Up in the masthead lookout, Seaman Jones had just spelled Square-head and he muttered furiously as he felt the motion begin to accelerate from the relatively mild one when the ship was loping along a following sea. “Here we go again, like a god-damned yo-yo!” he shouted down to his partner. Suddenly he smelled the smoke of a cheap cigar come wafting up the shaft, trapping itself in the pitching crow’s-nest. “Jesus, Squarehead! If you don’t put that thing out, I’m going to puke on your head, so help me!”
Squarehead laughed, tamped out the precious cigar in his glove and tenderly put it back inside his jacket pocket. It was the last o
ne, reserved for himself, of the twenty he had distributed in honor of the birth of his son. Wedging himself into the tube of the mast with one leg hooked through a rung of the ladder, he closed his eyes and thought about the remote joys of buying toys for Christmas.
Down in the CIC, Lieutenant Spitzer confirmed the accuracy of Commander Allison’s conning. Switching on the magnetometer, he detected a definite reaction from the needle. “We are in a fairly strong magnetic field, Captain. The wreck of the Hood, most likely.”
“Or possibly a big fat Russian pigboat?” Finlander asked.
Spitzer shrugged. “Possibly, sir. But at least we know the Hood can’t go anywhere. It’s there.”
“What do I have to do to give you some faith in your own skills, Spitzer?” the captain wondered wryly. “Very good. Let’s remain on passive while we pull a QBH on him. He’s got to make a move sometime, even if it’s just to ride his tanks up for a snort. He’s been going for forty-three hours and forty minutes.” In the back of his mind he was wondering how he would debrief these men if it turned out that Moby Dick had managed to sneak away and was long since departed. He forced that dismal problem out of his mind, leaned back in his chair and congealed his body into an attitude of patience. But the strain was beginning to tell on him as it was doing on everybody else. The abysmal silence was getting on his own nerves. He noticed that Queffle’s knee was dancing again and he had to suppress an urge to yell at him to control that abominable muscular twitching. However, it was Ralston who gave him a chance to vent his mounting pressures. The ensign swore when it came time for him to give up his position at the firing switches to Lieutenant Aherne.
“Just my damned luck to have to sit on my hands when things may get hot! Hell!”
“If you don’t keep yourself under better control, Mr. Ralston,” the captain shouted at him, “I’ll send you below!” Then he wheeled on his hapless ECM officer. “It’s also your job to maintain discipline in this department, Mr. Spitzer. Look up from your instruments just once in a while and see what’s going on in here!”
Spitzer peered around with something which passed for severity. “All right! Everybody ease up. It’s only an exercise.”
Captain Finlander erupted violently for the second time that morning. “It is not only an exercise!” he bellowed at Spitzer. “There’s a real, live Commie submarine down there and you’re letting everybody get sloppy careless about it. Wake them up!”
Spitzer cringed in his chair. “B-but, sir. I thought you were reprimanding Mr. Ralston for being overanxious.”
“Are you arguing with me, Mr. Spitzer?”
“N-no, sir . . . no.” He turned from the livid Finlander and this time pressed forth a genuine snarling kind of anger. “Get on the ball in here, damn it!” he shouted at everybody in general, then singled out Ensign Ralston in particular. “You, Mr. Ralston! Try to alternate with Mr. Aherne without any hysterical demonstrations, okay? Go into the head and stick your face in cold water or something.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Ralston gulped, speaking to the captain, not Spitzer. “I admit I’m overexcited and must control myself. I am sorry.” He slumped down unhappily in the chair behind Aherne and stared into the sweating palms of his hands.
Normally Captain Finlander would have accepted the apology and even soothed Ralston with a few encouraging words; the young ensign was one of his favorites. But now he chose to ignore him and instead began to worry about whether he had unduly shaken his vital ECM officer, a man whom he did not understand at all and subconsciously distrusted. As proud as he was of this technological marvel of a ship, the scientific types necessary to run her sometimes baffled and irritated him. There was too much science and too little navy in them and he wondered how they would react when the chips were down, in a real naval battle. But then it struck him that this time it was Ralston, the epitome of the young Annapolis line officer, who was at fault. Later he would have to at least soften his rebuke to Spitzer. But for the time being he continued to seethe, his eyes fixing themselves on Queffle’s dancing knee.
“Queffle! You’re going to wear a hole through the deck with your jiggling!”
The Breton Kid did not react in the least, being lost in his own world of divining the deep, everything beyond the earphones and PPI scope totally shut out. His relief, sitting behind him, heard the captain and reached out, putting a restraining hand on the offending knee. Queffle’s hand left its tense position on the left earphone, swung down and viciously parried the gentle touch. The relief jumped back and stared helplessly toward Captain Finlander.
“Oh, hell! Let him alone!”
For several minutes the captain sat back, watching and listening to the completely inert readouts. As the Bedford wallowed in the troughs and topped the crests broadside too, the rolls became extreme and the aches and pains in tired bodies became aggravated by the motion. Through the open hatch to the CSP room came the sound of Krindlemeyer’s slide rule falling off the desk and clattering noisily against the deck.
“Can’t you keep things properly secured down there?” Finlander shouted.
Spitzer almost simultaneously hit the appropriate intercom button on his communications panel and yelped into the microphone: “For Christ sake’s, Krindle! We’re supposed to be rigged silent!”
A long, uneasy and sterile silence followed during which Finlander gradually became aware of a prickly feeling in the back of his neck. When he finally turned around and looked behind him, he found himself staring into the impassive face of Commodore Schrepke. The German had not moved from his position against the bulkhead since entering the CIC nearly an hour earlier. The two men locked eyes for a long moment.
“Well, Commodore,” Finlander finally exclaimed, managing a nearly pleasant tone, “how do you estimate the situation? Don’t you think our Commie friends are nearing the end of their endurance?”
Schrepke nodded. “They are only men just like your own crew. And you can see how near the end of theirs they are.”
Finlander’s face blackened, but he managed to maintain an even tone by a tremendous effort at controlling himself. “Don’t let a little family squabbling fool you, Commodore,” he answered. “We’re a long way from the end of our rope. Anyway, longer than the Russian is from his, I bet.”
The black leather rippled under a shrug of the massive shoulders. “The strain is worse in a submarine, no doubt about that.”
Finlander nodded and thought for a moment. Then he asked the German officer: “What would you do if you were in the Russian’s place right now?”
“I would not lie down there and suffocate,” Schrepke retorted.
Finlander nodded again, this time with evident satisfaction. “Then it’s only a matter of time,” he exclaimed loudly enough for everybody in CIC to hear him.
But time passed and nothing happened. The terrible rolling continued to inflict a ceaseless torture of perpetual motion. Spitzer noticed that the needle of the magnetometer was registering a fading magnetic radiation from the Hood, which clearly indicated they were drifting away from it. One dubious encouragement came when the radarman reported his scope was clearing of hash, indicating the snowfall was easing up, and providing at least four miles of effective radar scanning; but no blip was activated by the sweeper.
Up on the bridge, Commander Allison took notice of the lightening snow; it was still pitch black, so he could only feel the lessening sting of the flakes against his numbed face. The wind was freshening and veering uneasily around the compass, upsetting his estimation of their drift. However, there was little doubt in his mind that they had now passed to the southwest of the wreck. Stepping into the wheelhouse, he reported this to the CIC.
In the Communications Center, Lieutenant Packer had cleared his troubled mind and stood behind one of the radio operators as he received a priority signal from NATONAV 1, requesting immediate acknowledgment and a tacrep. When the operator looked at him questioningly, he shook his head, picked up the phone and called Captain Finlande
r about it.
“Maintain radio silence as ordered!” he was told curtly.
A few minutes later they intercepted an exchange between NATONAV 1 and the Fritiof Nansen. When he decoded it, Packer found that the destroyer was being ordered to their position to investigate the Bedford’s silence. They were obviously becoming alarmed at NATONAV 1 and he began to wonder if he might not be partially blamed for not keeping them informed. Perhaps they would expect him to protest to Captain Finlander and Commodore Schrepke. As he mulled this over, Lieutenant Beeker came in from the EDA room and announced: “We’re picking up some weak radar emissions.”
“The Tiburon Bay?” Packer asked.
“Negative. Probably the Novo Sibirsk.”
“Ouch! The Russian mother ship is coming to look for her lost chick!” Packer exclaimed. “Of course! They have been out of touch too for over forty-three hours!” He grabbed the phone and called the captain again.
After receiving the second report from Communications Center, Finlander’s mind became a turmoil of thoughts, all unpleasant. With no signs of a contact, NATONAV 1 getting excited, the Fritiof Nansen on the way and the Novo Sibirsk probably approaching their position, he was coming to realize that his tactical situation was rapidly deteriorating. It would be at least four hours before the Russian “research ship” could reach the area, but it would be compromising to allow her to find the Bedford here. The Nansen should be stopped from a useless digression; NATONAV would have to be answered very soon, or his own COMFLANT would start screaming too. It had finally become urgent to consider breaking off this action, of admitting that Moby Dick had outmaneuvered him again, that even an old-fashioned Russian snort boat could evade a super-destroyer like the Bedford. What chance would there then be against the atomic units the Russian navy was readying? Finlander fought down a surging feeling of wild frustration and tried to keep his mind professionally objective. For a moment he stared at Queffle’s dancing knee, then swiveled around in his seat to face Commodore Schrepke.
The Bedford Incident Page 27
