Attack of the Seventh Carrier

by Peter Albano

  But Dale was troubled. Brent could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. One morning just before dawn, lying side-by-side after a night of frantic lovemaking, she awoke from a nightmare, crying.

  He held her tightly as she sobbed against his cheek. “What is it, darling? What is it?” he pleaded.

  It was a moment before she could talk. “It’s us — what is there for us?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what is there for us in this world ruled by a bunch of homicidal maniacs?”

  Although roused from a deep sleep, and surprised by the question, Brent answered thoughtfully after a silent moment. “If we knuckle down to them we deserve to be destroyed.”

  “In a few days they’ll take you from me — tear us apart.”

  “I know, Dale.”

  She lay silent again, staring at the ceiling. “Maybe it’s for the best.”

  He rolled toward her, shocked. “Why do you say that?”

  She ran a finger over his cheek, down a cord of his neck, found the hair on his chest and the bare tracks of long-healed knife wounds. Softly and with great sadness she said, “Brent, when you’re my age, I’ll be fifty-two years old.”

  “Is that important?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why?”

  “You want some kind of long-term commitment from me — don’t you, Brent?”

  “There is no long term in this world, Dale.”

  “You mean there are moments and that’s it?”

  “Yes. The Japanese would say life is a succession of moments, so live each one to the fullest. Nothing else is worth recording.”

  Sighing, she drew his head down and kissed him. “The Japanese are wise, Brent. Maybe we should leave it all outside. I’m sorry.”

  As the sun, reddened and diffused by the morning mists, crept into the room, she inclined her pelvis toward him and her hand groped low, gently caressing. He seized one of her buttocks in each hand and pulled her to him. Breathing in choking gasps, she rolled to her back, spreading her knees and pulling him between them. They made love for the last time.

  *

  The four Fairbanks-Morse engines rumbled and vibrated Blackfin’s steel hull, spewing acrid exhaust into the dark mists of the morning air. Standing on the bridge with Admiral Mark Allen and the helmsman, a competent, experienced second-class quartermaster named Harold Sturgis, Brent felt an amalgam of excitement and anxiety as Admiral Allen prepared to take the sub to sea for her first sea trial. The engines were warmed up and primed, batteries fully charged, the Special Sea Detail posted. All lines to the dock had been “singled up” and seamen were standing by the four cleats, ready to cast off. The sailing list with the names and addresses and next of kin of every man on board had been taken ashore by the four engineers from Electric Boat who had left an hour before.

  Binoculars hanging at their waists and leaning on their safety rails, two lookouts were standing high on their platform attached to the periscope shears. A sixth man, Captain David Jordan, stood next to Admiral Allen. Jordan, a round, heavyset man in his late fifties with a bald pate and cherubic cheeks, had retired from the Navy after twenty-seven years in submarines. Iconoclastic and with a salty, earthy tongue, his vocabulary was more fitting for the mess hall than the wardroom. It was said, when angry, his store of expletives could leave a chief boatswain’s mate standing in wonder and envy. In fact, his outspokenness had barred him from flag rank. However, everyone respected his knowledge of submarines, regarding him as one of the premier submarine men in the country. The route that found him assigned to Blackfin had been circuitous. An employee of the CIA, he was ostensibly a consultant for the Profile Boat Works. A dummy CIA company, Profile had a contract with Japan’s Department of Public Parks and had subcontracted David Jordan to the department for an indefinite period of time “…to advise and train.”

  Jordan turned to Mark Allen. “There’s a fairly heavy current in the river at this hour, Admiral — because of the ebb tide. You’ll have to back into it.”

  “I can see it making around the buoys and pilings,” Mark Allen said.

  The old admiral gave his commands with confidence and a youthful zest Brent had never seen. “Take in the brow!”

  A chief boatswain’s mate shouted a command and a pair of sailors on the dock pulled the gangway ashore.

  Mark Allen turned to Brent and stabbed a finger downward. Brent leaned over the open hatch to the conning tower and shouted, “Stand by to answer bells!”

  Mark Allen shouted to the deck crew, “Take in two and three!” The middle lines were lifted from their cleats and tossed to seamen waiting on the submarine’s deck. Hurriedly, the lines were coiled in their stowage bins under the deck.

  “Take in four!” Allen shouted, leaving only the number one line from the bow still cleated to the dock. Berthed on the downstream side of the dock, the current tended to push the boat away from the berth. Admiral Allen read the set perfectly. As the stern began to swing with the flow, he shouted, “Slack one!” And then to Quartermaster Sturgis, “All back one-third.” Sturgis pulled the annunciators back with a ringing of bells and the rumble of the diesels picked up. The slack in number-one line began to lessen. Allen turned back to the men at the bow. “Take in one!” The line was cast off and hauled aboard. “Left standard rudder!” he shouted at the helmsman.

  “Left standard rudder, sir,” Sturgis said, glancing at the rudder angle indicator.

  As the boat gathered sternway, Jordan warned, “Watch the set here, Admiral.”

  The old captain had hardly uttered his warning when the stern began to swing downstream. “Starboard back full, port ahead two-thirds,” Allen shouted, anxiously leaning over the windscreen and staring over the stern.

  There was a clanging of bells and shouts from below. Immediately, the boat began to tremble and shake as the engines strained against each other, twisting Blackfin so that she seemed to be trying to turn on her own length. Slowly and with white water boiling up from the screws, the stern stopped its slide to starboard and gradually resumed its turn to port.

  Allen grunted with satisfaction. “All stop.” The shaking stopped. “All back one-third.” Smartly, Blackfin cleared the end of the pier and backed toward the center of the river.

  Suddenly, Brent saw something black and shadowy emerging from a bank of low mist hanging in the middle of the river. “Tug and tow bearing one-six-five, range one thousand,” he said to Mark Allen. His sighting was followed by shouts from the starboard lookout.

  Allen threw a quick glance toward the sighting. “Very well.”

  Jordan said to Mark Allen, “The ‘honey barge,’ Admiral — enough shit there to feed Kadafi for a year.”

  “I see him. We’re well clear.” Allen shouted at the chief boatswain’s mate, standing on the forecastle. “Secure the Special Sea Detail.” Immediately, the chief and his crew vanished down the forward hatch and dogged it.

  Looking around anxiously, Jordan said, “There’s more traffic in this stream than whores on Broadway, Admiral.”

  “I know, Captain.”

  With the sub clear of the dock, but with a misty channel ahead, Mark Allen shouted, “All stop.” The vibrations faded and the vessel slowed, idling exhaust firing into the air and burbling in the water as the boat rocked gently. “All ahead one-third. Right standard rudder.” The admiral glanced at the gyro repeater, “Steady up on one-nine-zero.” He shouted at the lookouts. “Keep a weather eye out. There’s a lot of traffic and visibility’s poor.” And then down the hatch. “I want to know why radar didn’t report that tug and tow off our starboard quarter!”

  There was an embarrassed babble. “We have her, sir.”

  “Bully for you. You’re just a little late.”

  The voice from the conning tower: “We have a lot of clutter, sir.”

  “Very well, but keep alert. We have terrible visibility up here.”

  “Steady on one-nine-zero, speed eight,” the helmsman said.
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  “Very well.”

  David Jordan spoke, circling an arm. “There are cities on every quarter.” He stabbed a finger toward the sea. “Ellis Island, Governors Island, Liberty Island, Statue of Liberty. A lot of garbage for radar scopes.”

  “I know, Captain.” The admiral shouted into the bridge speaker, “Navigator, you should be cutting us in.”

  Cadenbach’s tinny voice came back. “I’ve started my DR track, sir. Radar’s giving me good readings. Do you wish a course for the narrows?”

  “Negative. We’ll pilot from here.” Turning to Brent, Allen gestured at the parting mists. “That’s Ellis Island and that’s Governors Island. Give me a course between them.”

  Brent bent over the gyro repeater, squinted through the gun sight of the bearing ring. “One-eight-five, sir.”

  “Very well. Come left to one-eight-five.” Brent shouted the changes into the speaker to Cadenbach.

  “Steady on one-eight-five, sir.”

  “Very well.”

  A voice from the conning tower; “Radar reports a vessel underway bearing zero-three-zero, range two-thousand.”

  A lookout shouted, “Tanker, bearing zero-three-zero, range two-thousand.”

  “Is her bearing steady?”

  “Negative, Admiral.”

  Brent picked up the big ship in his glasses. “I have her, sir. We’ll pass well clear.”

  Allen punched the windscreen. “Damn this fog. What a way to start on your first run, with a new crew, too.”

  Almost as if his words had been heard by the gods, the mists parted abruptly, brilliant shafts of the morning sun breaking through. Allen’s sigh was audible.

  Within minutes, Blackfin steamed into the middle of the Upper Bay. A small change in course and she pointed her bows into the center of the Narrows. Lower New York Bay was ahead and then the open Atlantic — Blackfin’s natural habitat, a place where she had room to dive, maneuver, and hunt — and, perhaps, die.

  Passing through the Narrows, Brent could see morning traffic — mostly buses — on Brooklyn’s Belt Parkway to his left and the docks and buildings of Staten Island to his right. Then the magnificent span of the Verrazano Bridge swept overhead and he felt the first surges of the open sea take Blackfin by the bow. The boat rose heavily to each swell, sluicing water over her deck eagerly as if she sensed her freedom and charged for it impatiently.

  Leaving Coney Island’s Norton Point to port and Hoffman and Swinburne Islands to starboard, Blackfin charged into the open Atlantic at last. Here the sea is capricious, can have many moods and faces. This day it seemed to smile at Brent. Staring off into the infinite acres of the vast wasteland, he saw swells moving down from the northeast — rows of slow, oily combers advancing relentlessly to pass in smooth weighty majesty beneath the ship’s hull. Heavy and with very little freeboard, the sub rolled and pitched sluggishly as she rode with the seas, deck awash like a great basking whale, climbing lazily up the gentle slopes and dropping ponderously into the valleys.

  In the eastern sky, the sun crept higher in the pristine blue sky, glaring off the last traces of fog, painting a few persistent patches with soft pinks and misty rose. But the sky was not clear all around. To the north off the invisible Hamptons a long row of thunderheads soared to thirty-thousand feet and rolled like great gray curtains swirled by the wind. Beneath them, line squalls dumped rain into the sea uselessly like slabs of slate. But every other quadrant was free of threat, showing only an occasional train of high cirrus scudding like frightened sheep before the wind. Turning his head and drinking it all in, Brent felt a joy build and grow, a swelling happiness he had not known for months.

  Uninterrupted by land mass, the swells grew larger, the wave patterns building up into successive ranges of small green cliffs.

  “All ahead standard,” Mark Allen said.

  At sixteen knots, the low, heavy vessel on the very edge of negative buoyancy no longer rode with the seas. Instead, she challenged them, burying her nose in the swells, throwing spray and blue-green water high into the sky, the seas rolling over the foredeck, sweeping her from stem to stern and splashing angrily against the bridge. Brent grasped the windscreen and sank deeper into his foul-weather jacket, feeling the spume hit his face like tiny steel darts, filling his lungs with the pure air, reveling in a joy only known by men who challenge the sea.

  Captain Jordan said to Mark Allen, “I suggest you ‘blow her out,’ Admiral. The old girl could be constipated.”

  Mark Allen shouted down the hatch, “Radar, give me a report — S-Band.”

  “Two targets bearing zero-nine-seven and zero eight five. Range eighteen and twenty miles. Another at two-one-zero, range forty,” the voice came back. “Do you want A-Band (air search), too, sir?”

  “Negative, radar.” Allen pushed the bridge speaker button, “Sonar, begin a beam to beam search.” Immediately, the rhythmic “pinging” of the underwater search began. The admiral said to the captain, “Might as well give them all some practice.” Jordan grunted his approval.

  Mark Allen turned to Quartermaster Sturgis. “All ahead flank.”

  The helmsman pushed the annunciators full forward. The rhythm of the four big engines picked up, exhausts firing from Blackfin’s quarters in big blue clouds and explosions of spray that flashed rainbows in the sun. Now the war with the swells was even more violent, the bow thundering into the seas, parting them like a club instead of a blade, the sub’s empty ballast tanks reverberating with low, booming sounds like great temple drums. Astern, the wake boiled white, leaving a spreading scar to the horizon. Banners of water shot high into the sky and rained down onto the bridge, soaking everyone. Gripping the windscreen, Brent bent his knees and rode the sub like a man roped to the back of a wild horse. His knees began to ache and his thigh muscles tired quickly from the unaccustomed strain. The fun was gone.

  Allen keyed the speaker button. “Control room. Pitometer reading.”

  A voice came back, “The pitometer log reads twenty-five knots, sir.”

  “Very well.” Mark Allen spoke into the speaker. “Chief engineer report.”

  A voice came back. “Dunlap here, sir. All engines and power trains operating normally, sir.”

  “Very well. Control, Mr. Williams report.”

  There was a pause before Williams’s voice returned. “All stations secure and functioning normally, Admiral.”

  “Very well. All ahead one-third.” The wild ride slowed and everyone sighed with relief.

  Captain Jordan said, “I suggest you conduct your drills, Admiral.”

  “Very well,” Mark Allen said. He turned to Brent. “We’ll exercise at fire control and emergency drills — as many as possible.”

  “Diving stations, sir?”

  The old man nodded. “Yes. But we won’t flood our tanks. A dry run.”

  “Good idea,” Jordan said.

  For four hours, the crew ran through drills. Over and over the same drills were called. Mark Allen and David Jordan left the bridge to Brent, and when Brent was called to stations, other officers relieved him. Meticulously, Mark Allen and David Jordan inspected every station in every drill, both men taking notes in little black books. Finally, with the sun low on the horizon and the crew near exhaustion, Mark Allen resumed command on the bridge and turned the boat for home.

  *

  “I’m sorry, darling. I can’t see you tonight.”

  Brent gripped the phone tighter. “But why, Dale? Why?”

  “I just got the call. I’ve got to catch the first flight to Washington.”

  “When will you be back?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Her voice began to break.

  “Your home office is New York?”

  “Yes, Brent.”

  “You’ll be back.”

  “But I don’t know when.”

  He kicked the side of the booth. “I’ll be gone soon.”

  “I know.”

  “Write me, or send me messages through channels.
”

  “I will. And Brent — you mean a lot to me. You’re everything. Take care of yourself.”

  “You’re never out of my thoughts, Dale.”

  “Please be careful.”

  “I’m always careful, Dale.”

  “And Brent, I love you.”

  Holding the phone tight against his ear, he ground his teeth together.

  “Brent. Brent. You didn’t want to hear that, did you? We’ve avoided that word.”

  “Of course I wanted to hear it.” He sighed. “I love you, Dale.”

  “Oh, darling, you’ve made me so happy.”

  “When I see you again, I’ll make you happier.”

  “That’s a promise?”

  “It’s a promise, Dale.”

  “I’ve got to leave — got to leave.”

  After he left the booth, he thrust his hands into the pockets of his foul-weather jacket and walked slowly back to the ship.

  *

  Two days later, Blackfin made her first dive. With David Jordan on the bridge with Mark Allen, Brent Ross, and Quartermaster Sturgis, Blackfin steamed out into Lower New York Bay past the hundred-fathom line. It was a perfect day: sky clear, sea calm, with only a small swell running and a light force two breeze from the northeast. Everyone was tense.

  Mark Allen said to David Jordan, “We’ll take this slow.” The old captain nodded. Allen pointed at Brent and turned to the speaker, “All stations, rig for dive.” Brent shouted the command down the hatch into the conning tower.

  Immediately, enlisted men in each compartment went through their check-off lists, closing vents, valves, and completing the dozens of other tasks required before a sub can submerge. Mark Allen leaned over the speaker anxiously. “All stations report.”

  Jordan and Allen had carefully choreographed this first dive. In fact, each compartment would be inspected by off duty officers before actually opening the ballast tanks regardless of how many green lights were shown by the “Christmas tree.”