Sins of the Fatherland (Scott Jarvis Investigations Book 6)

by Scott Cook

  “The Old Man has a request,” Cob said with a wink at Lambert.

  “Christ on a soda cracker, Cob!” Sparks growled, “Like I don’t have enough fucking work to do what with load outs and turning these fucking sound heads. Does he want me to come up to control and give him a fuckin’ back rub, too?”

  Lambert schooled his expression. Although most of Sparky’s bluster was just that, he knew

  To most civilians, and even many sailors who’d never served aboard a submarine, the loose talk among the enlisted supervisors would have shocked them. On the surface of it, Sparks might have seemed to be speaking with gross disrespect. However, in the silent service, it was common for the men to gripe and grumble about the officers. It was understood that this was a tension breaker and everyone knew the line between light hearted lip flapping and true insubordination.

  “He needs two fish shipped aft,” Cob said, “We might be up against a Kraut U-boat soon. He wants to make sure—“

  “We can shit from both ends, I got it!” Sparks grumbled, “Would’ve been nice to hear this earlier… You offering a hand, Buck?”

  “You bet,” Rogers replied, “Me and Lambert here.”

  “Okay,” Sparks said, “There’s a transfer cart up here. Jonesy, Wilkins, Tommy and Mendez, get your sorry asses over here and do whatever the Cob says. We gotta take seventeen and eighteen aft.

  The four men groaned as they finished heaving on the tailing tackle, or taggle, that pushed a torpedo into tube three.

  “Stop your belly achin’,” Sparks said, “you got wheels! Just push the fucker back and hand it off to Murph and get your asses back up here. Let’s look alive before the Old Man places an order we can’t fuckin’ deliver!”

  “We’ll take a fourteen and an eighteen,” Cob told his gang, “Let’s go!”

  “These fish are twenty feet long, chief!” Jonesy, a beefy man in his mid-twenties griped, “how the hell we s’posed to turn it around in here?”

  The beam of the submarine wouldn’t allow a torpedo to be turned. There wasn’t nearly enough room.

  Sparky glared at him, “how the fuck you think, numb nuts! You gotta take off the tail and nose cone assembly first. Didn’t I just say Cob would tell you what to do? Maybe when you’re done, we can show you how to wipe your ass again, cuz’ if you can forget how to turn a goddamned fish, you sure as shit can’t remember how to clean your own crack!”

  Lambert choked down a laugh, but not entirely successfully. Jonesy, who was a first class seaman scowled at him and then blushed and grinned sheepishly, “Aye, aye, Chief.”

  The two torpedoes were partially disassembled, turned laboriously around and then reassembled. After this arduous task, the six men hoisted one of the mark fourteen torpedoes using chain hoists onto a reinforced rolling cart. The twenty foot long, twenty-one inch wide torpedo sat in a curving cradle on the ten foot long cart and was held in place with three four inch nylon straps.

  The weapon weighed just over three thousand pounds and there was no way other than the cart to move it. The biggest trouble they’d have is going between the submarine’s compartments. Each compartment was accessible through a water tight hatch. Like all water tight hatches, the access way was set into the bulkhead a few inches above the deck. This would’ve been a major problem for the crew if it weren’t for the cart’s special design.

  “Hank!” Rogers said from the rear of the cart as he and two other men pushed, “Your job is to both pull and make sure the passageway is clear, hear me?”

  “Yes, Chief!” Lambert said, leaning forward and heaving on the tow line as the gang trudged toward the stern.

  When they reached the first knee-knocker, the one that led out of the forward torpedo room, Tommy activated the wheel walker.

  The cart’s wheels were set inboard from the end about a foot. When the cart pushed up against the bulkhead, the wheels were locked and an alternate set of wheels were flipped forward and locked into position on the far side of the hatchway and these were locked as well. Then the first set was released. Essentially, this allowed the cart to step over the knee knockers and move along relatively easily.

  “Christ!” Lambert groaned as he and Tommy pulled the cart forward.

  “Don’t whine, kid,” Torpedoman first class Tommy Johnson said with a smile on his sweat-soaked face, “Least it’s calm! We had to do this shit one time on the surface in ten foot swells off Diego Garcia! You talk about a ball buster!”

  On the bridge, Captain Turner stood next to Williams and held the phone in his hand, “Dutch, range to target?”

  “Twenty-seven thousand yards bearing zero-three-zero relative,” Came the reply, “Looks like she’s still headed due north. Hydrophone readings indicate she’s still on top, too.”

  “Not close enough for a radar contact just yet,” Williams said, “Although we should get one any second. How’s it up there, Graff?”

  It being peacetime, Turner had relaxed the lookout procedures. Where there was usually a port and starboard lookout, now only a single sailor hung in the periscope sheers. Seaman first class Jody Graff was peering off the starboard bow with his binocs, “Nothin’ yet, sir. Pretty light out with all these stars and the moon, but my sector is negative.”

  “The twenty-one has a low profile,” Turner said, “Probably can’t get a visual until we’re another three or four miles closer.”

  “Yes sir,” Williams said, peering into the TBT. Both men knew that if the lookout, who was ten feet higher up than them couldn’t see anything, then the target bearing transmitter wouldn’t do any good. But Williams couldn’t help himself, “Recommend we don’t use radar. Keep our electronic signature quiet. We’re getting plenty on the sound gear.”

  “Concur,” Turner said. He spoke into the phone again, “Dutch, belay the sugar jig. Let’s not give them too much to sink their teeth into just yet.”

  “Aye, aye,” the watch officer replied, “Kill the radar.”

  “How’s the fish load going?” Turner asked into the handset.

  A chuckle, “Cob and his party just huffed past us with a fish. They didn’t look happy about it. Sparky reports tubes one through six loaded and ready.”

  “Very well,”

  “You think that Nazi bastard knows we’re out here?” Williams asked.

  “I’d guess so, Elmer. If we picked him up, then he picked us up. And we weren’t even trying to be quiet. Then we double our speed and head more or less toward him? He knows. What’s funny is why he hasn’t dived yet.”

  “Maybe he’s really not an enemy,” Williams entertained, although he had a hard time believing that.

  “I’d like to think not,” Turner said, “But I sure as hell won’t assume it. I’m not going to take any chances either…”

  He snatched the phone again, “Control, bridge. Send gun crews up here. Set battle stations gun action as well as torpedo. Give me what you can, Dutch”

  Throughout the ship, the general alarm blared and men began to pour up through the conning tower hatch. Notably absent was Lambert and the Cob.

  Eddie Carlson, who served as ammo man on the five inch began inspecting the rounds in the water proof shot locker while his mate readied the stainless steel waterproof deck gun just below the bridge.

  After another fifteen minutes, the Chief of the boat and Lambert burst onto the deck, both breathing heavy and sweating profusely. Lambert went to take his position as ammo server on the forward Pom-pom and the Cob stepped up to Turner and Williams and snapped a salute.

  “Tubes seven and eight loading,” Cob huffed, “A fourteen in seven and an eighteen in eight, sir.”

  Turner clapped him on the shoulder, “Good work, Cob. Fast, too.”

  “We fighting a surface action?” Cob asked. Being the senior enlisted man, he was the only crewmember who wasn’t an officer who could ask such a question of the captain under the circumstances.

  “Not sure yet, Cob,” Turner said, “But I want to cover my bases.”

&nbs
p; “Bridge!” Graff called down, “I’ve got visual. Low-profile vessel bearing… zero four-zero horizon. Definitely a sub, sir!”

  “Here we go,” Turner said, speaking into the phone, “Control, bridge… come right standard. Steady up on course two-zero-zero. Start the track and make ready the TDC.”

  The acknowledgment came. Down in the conning tower, the dead reckoning tracer would be plotting the enemy’s course and the torpedo data computer would be outputting information based on both manual inputs and automatic data fed in. The other submarine was still surfaced and only about six miles off now.

  As he stood by at the Bofors 40mm cannon, colloquially known as a Pom-pom for the sound it made when fired, Henry Lambert felt his innards twitching. This was a tense moment for everyone. That critical moment before a battle began when the excitement and the fear mixed and made the seconds seem like hours.

  That was especially true for a green seaman whose only combat experience had been in the forward torpedo room when the Bull Shark had sunk a couple of merchant ships and a tin can. It was more or less a one sided battle. Because the vessels they’d sunk were out ahead of the main force, and because the submarine had torpedoed the escorting destroyer, no counter attack had occurred.

  The Bull Shark had exited the area before the main battle force and a German submarine could intercept them. So he’d never really been in a true battle to speak of. Never had to sit quietly in a hot submarine while surface ships dropped depth charges on him. Never wondered when the next explosion would crack the hull and send him and his comrades to a watery grave.

  But now… now it might be different.

  Either they were about to make contact with a submarine full of Germans who wanted to defect… or they were about to engage an enemy. An enemy who didn’t seem to care that peace treaties had been signed.

  If that were the case, then even the eighteen year old sailor knew that such an enemy would be a ruthless one.

  Chapter 5

  I drove home with a heavy heart.

  Not for anything that Audrey Lambert had told me about her grandfather, which was admittedly very little. Sure, all that stuff about Nazi submarines and a deadly threat to Florida and the U.S. from the past was intriguing. I suspected though that she might be laying it on a bit thick. Or maybe that the doddering old man had done so and gotten her to play along.

  The odds that some big Nazi plan was in the offing and never came to pass just after the end of the war… and that nobody had ever heard of it was a bit hard to swallow. It struck me as just another conspiracy theory. Like ancient aliens building the pyramids as landing markers or a face on Mars or whatever.

  While things like Area 51 or Megalodons living in the waters off Durban, South Africa were fun to think about, the thing that made all this stuff impossible for me to believe was that most people just couldn’t keep a secret. That and our own government couldn’t even balance its own checkbook but somehow could cover up events that hundreds of people saw and yet could be convinced was just a weather balloon… when in fact it was interstellar salesman peddling timeshares on the vacation world of Squinchmongler VI.

  No, what was preying on my mind as I made my way eastward on 528 was Audrey Lambert herself.

  After our meal at Hemmingway’s, we’d taken a stroll around the grounds behind the hotel. They were lush and really made you forget you were in the middle of a city. Because it was nearly ten on a weeknight, there weren’t many people about, even in the several pools. In particular, not many kids up, so it made the scenery seem a bit more secluded and romantic.

  We’d talked companionably enough. She told me about herself and a few Navy stories and I told her a little about me. We even held hands for a bit, which was a little strange at first but seemed appropriate after a time.

  Strange because only that afternoon we’d seemed to have an adversarial relationship. That had vanished throughout the evening and she seemed a lot less the hard government agent and more the relaxed and attractive woman that you’d want to spend an evening with.

  She’d asked me to come up to her room for a drink. I’d agreed to walk her back but had hesitated at the door.

  “It’s all right, Scott,” She said with a smile, “I don’t bite.”

  I smiled thinly, “Audrey… it’s not that I’m not flattered… but…”

  She wore a sleeveless blue dress that fell just to her knees that showed a little of her cleavage. Not quite conservative but not blatantly sexy, either. Especially with the matching jacket she’d put on after dark when the temperature had fallen into the mid-fifties. With the matching three inch heels, though, she was nearly as tall as me.

  She looked into my eyes and smiled, “I’m sorry… I must seem a bit forward. Or I’m giving the wrong impression. I was only asking you to have a drink, Scott. This isn’t a sleep over invitation.”

  I felt heat rise into my face then. Perhaps I’d misjudged the situation. I cleared my throat, “Uhm… I guess it’s my mistake… sorry.”

  She put a hand on my arm, “Don’t be. A woman asks you to dinner, goes for a night walk and then asks you to her room for a drink… you don’t have to be a harlequin romance writer to draw certain conclusions from that. If I did want to sleep with you… well, maybe I should say if I did want to sleep with you already… that’s just what I’d have done, so don’t feel bad.”

  I chuckled.

  “I know about you,” She added, “As I said. And I know that you recently came out of a relationship that was important to you.”

  “It’s been about four months,” I pointed out, “It’s not like it was last week.”

  “No,” She admitted, “But still… I get the sense you’re still feeling the loss. I’m not the kind to take advantage of somebody’s vulnerability like that. I’ve been through it myself.”

  I cleared my throat and tried to lighten the heavy mood a little, “Okay, I’m glad we’re clear. You’re a potential client, you aren’t interested in getting me in bed and this is just two adults having a nice night cap.”

  She grinned, “Well, you’re one-third right. This is just a night cap. However, it’s my granddad who really wants to hire you. I’m just a consultant. And I never said I didn’t want to sleep with you. You’re an intelligent, funny and very attractive man. I’m only human.”

  I chuckled, “Thanks. So what’ve you got?”

  As I neared home, though, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was only saving face. What if I hadn’t protested?

  As I got comfortable in bed a bit later, with Morgan occupying the other side on top of the comforter, my thoughts wandered to what might have happened if I hadn’t gotten cold feet.

  She was quite attractive, after all. And it wasn’t every day a six foot blonde came on to you. Like Audrey, I was only human, too.

  Yet I also couldn’t help think of Lisa. I couldn’t help feeling a little guilt about even considering being with another woman. That was dumb, of course. Dumb for several reasons. First, because Lisa herself told me not to wait. Second because she was the one who left and third because it had been four months. Wasn’t four months long enough to mourn for a ten month relationship?

  Was Lisa over it? Was she lying in bed thinking of me? Or was she over it already… or worse… was she lying in bed in somebody else’s arms?

  I groaned. I had tortured myself with just these kinds of thoughts off and on since October. Thankfully, though, the frequency was slackening. At least until I even considered talking to another woman and thought of a physical relationship.

  “What the Christ…” I mumbled, “I don’t need this shit. I’ve got nothing to feel guilty about.”

  I vowed then and there not to. Guilt was a useless emotion, like worry. It solved nothing and only served itself. I could reproach myself for making a poor decision or not acting the way I should. That was fine. A little self-reflection was a good thing.

  Yet feeling guilt over things I couldn’t control and holding up my life because o
f it was useless.

  You have to live in the here and now. The past was the past and trying to dwell in it would only muck up the future.

  Eventually I must have drifted off because the next thing I knew, my cell was ringing and sunlight was filtering in through my bedroom curtains.

  I fumbled on the night stand and managed to activate the phone, “Hello?”

  “Good morning,” Audrey Lambert said cheerily, “Did I wake you?”

  “Nah…” I looked at the clock on the night table and it read eight-fifteen, “I was only resting my eyes…”

  “A late sleeper, eh?”

  I scoffed, “It’s quarter after eight. Although I’m usually awake by now. How can I help you, Ms. Lambert?”

  She chuckled, “My grandfather wants to meet with you as soon as possible. Do you have some free time this morning?”

  “Sure. Can I meet you someplace? Is he… is he in a… uhm… retirement community?”

  “As a matter of fact, no. He’s ninety-three and still lives alone… well, alone since my grandmother died eight years ago. Do you know where Elmwood Isles is?”

  I pondered that for a moment while the tendrils of sleep fell away, “Not sure. There are hundreds of neighborhoods in this town, though. Can you give me a clue?”

  “It’s in the Dr. Philips area. Which is why I’m staying here. It’s a high end sub-division off Apopka Vinland not far from Sandlake Road. Sort of between my hotel and Sandlake.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I’ve got the idea. Can you text me the address? I can be there in maybe… half an hour, forty minutes.”

  “See?” She teased, “You’d already be in the area if you’d stayed last night.”

  “I wasn’t invited to stay,” I quipped, “You said you wouldn’t sleep with me if I were the last man on Earth.”