Scorpion in the Sea

TWENTY-TWO

The Captain lay back in the luxuriant warmth of a hot bath. The Lieutenant Colonel’s cabin actually had a bathtub; merchant tankers, unconstrained in volume above deck, had cabins that were much larger and more comfortable than most cruise ships. The cabins were built in proportion to the superstructure, which in turn was sized in proportion to the ship’s 25,000 ton capacity hull. He relaxed in the hot water, letting the strain of the past five weeks soak away. He could hear the taped sounds of an Arabic language radio station being played over the outside announcing system for the benefit of his crew, who were lounging about on the tank deck, enjoying the sunset.

The sea remained flat calm, which was exceedingly fortunate. The big ship moved very slowly, hardly disturbing the ugly, black object lying alongside. He drifted, partly listening to the tape of the radio outside, and partly dreaming of home. A noise in the cabin bedroom intruded.

“Who is there?” he called.

“Jenan, Effendi,” answered a soft voice. “I am the Lieutenant Colonel’s masseuse.”

The Captain did not know what to say to this, so he said nothing, a habit which had helped him become a Captain. The Lieutenant Colonel’s masseuse. He looked down at his long, lean body, wavering in the ripples. A massage. That would be very pleasant, as long as she wasn’t one of those Turkish 200 pounders who enjoyed tenderizing their clients. If she was, he would dismiss her.

“I’m coming out,” he called through the bathroom door. There was no reply. He wondered if she was still there. He rose from the tub, stepped out, and slipped into a full length, towel-like bathrobe hanging on the bathroom door. He dried his short, wiry hair vigorously, and then stepped out into the bedroom of the cabin.

Jenan was not a 200 pounder. She was very young, dark skinned and black eyed, and slender. She was dressed in a one-piece, white cotton gown which draped all the way to the floor. She did not look directly at him, but kept her gaze demurely downward. She stood to one side of the wide bed, next to a small, wheeled table, which contained small vials of oils. There were towels spread on the bed. She was not beautiful, but she was not plain either. He thought he saw the barest trace of a smile on her face, and then he realized she was waiting for him to lie down on the bed. What to do with the robe? He had not wrapped a towel around his middle before putting on the robe. Fearing embarrassment more than nudity, he finally walked over to the bed, turned his back to her, and took off the robe, and then lay face down on the towels. She immediately draped a towel across his buttocks, and then knelt on the bed alongside of him, and began to rub his back.

His muscles were tense and tight, partly from nervousness about being on a bed and alone in a room with a strange woman. She probably had other skills besides massage, but he was apprehensive. He had stopped seeing the prostitutes near the submarine base two years ago, not for any moral reason but because of this new, American disease. His abstinence had been vindicated: two middle grade officers at the submarine base had been removed suddenly to the military hospital in the past year, where they had reportedly died of mysterious pneumonia complications. The Americans made much noise about the Colonel’s chemical weapons program, but, according to the Soviet advisors, this new virus borne disease had reportedly escaped from one of the Americans’ own biological weapons laboratories. They spoke of thousands of deaths in the United States.

The girl’s probing fingers, replenished with warm oils, worked their magic down his back. She was obviously a professional masseuse. She worked whole groups of his muscles, going from one to the next along connections he had not known existed. She performed her ministrations in such a way as to not excite him sexually, for which he was grateful. She also did not speak, which was a wonder in itself. He did not need any more complications in his life just now. He drifted off to sleep.

Waking an hour later, he found himself still on his belly, a light sheet draped across his back. The night was at hand, and the only sounds were those made by the air vents washing humid Atlantic air through the cabin. Then he became aware that someone was knocking, softly, on the cabin door. He rose up on his elbows.

“Yes?”

“I have your evening meal, Effendi.” The girl’s voice again.

“One moment.”

He got up, switched on the table lamp, and pulled the robe around him again. “All right, come in.”

She brought in a tray table which had been covered by a cloth. She wheeled the table to the main dining table, and set his meal out. She left as quietly as she had come. The telephone rang. He looked at it for a moment and then picked it up.

“Captain, this is the Master. The Lieutenant Colonel asks that you call him in my cabin when you have finished your evening meal. He wants to discuss some more of the plans, whatever that means. The extension is 201.”

“I shall, thank you. Are all the transfers complete?”

“Yes, they are. But we have one surface contact now, which may be a problem. She is still thirty-two miles out, and her closest point of approach will be more than nine miles, but we have to watch her.”

“Tell the Lieutenant Colonel that I thank him for his consideration in allowing me to use his cabin and dine alone, but I will be pleased to see him now. That way …”

“Yes, I understand.” The Master broke the connection.

Five minutes later, the Lieutenant Colonel let himself into the cabin, greeted the Captain, and helped himself to a cup of tea.

“You are rested and refreshed?” he inquired, taking a seat on the couch while the Captain finished his meal.

“I am indeed. You have been very gracious.”

“Good. Jenan was — satisfactory?”

“She gave me an excellent massage. I’m afraid I fell asleep right in the middle of it.”

“Yes, that happens. If you wish, I will send her back after you have eaten. In case there is anything else she can do for you.”

The Lieutenant Colonel raised his eyebrows in a sign of inquiry. The Captain smiled at the Lieutenant Colonel’s not so subtle suggestion.

“That will not be necessary, Lieutenant Colonel. You have already been most accommodating. You have more information to give me?”

“Yes,” replied the Lieutenant Colonel, getting up and going to his desk, firing up a cigarette on the way. “I want to review the basic plan, and then give you the date we expect the carrier to return to port. I have deliberately held that back until just before you depart; that way the secret remains a secret, yes?”

“Most wise. So, the plan: we have completed the first phase, which was to make the transit to American waters, and to scout the operating areas around the entrance to the carrier’s base. This we have done, including making a good chart of the bottom areas for places to hide should we be pursued.”

“There are such places?” asked the Lieutenant Colonel, puffing vigorously on his cigarette.

“Yes, there are some shipwrecks — tankers torpedoed in the German war, some of which are large enough for us to lay alongside in an emergency. There are also topographical features — underwater wadis, if you will, and hills. On a sonar they look like contacts, but when the American checks his chart, he will see a pinnacle, as it is called, and then ignore it. We spent a great deal of our waiting time checking our charts for these things.”

“Did you have to operate your own sonar to find these obstacles?”

“No, we would never do that. A submarine sonar is a very distinctive sound. Any sonarman listening on a surface warship would know it at once. No, we used our fathometer — our depth measuring device; it sounds like all depth finders everywhere; fishermen use them all over the world, and the sound is propagated straight down, which helps. Would you care for more tea?”

“Thank you. And your instructions also said for you to establish operating patterns of the defensive forces; were you able to do this?”

The Captain laughed, and pushed away from the table. The cigarette smoke was strong in the air, and suddenly he wanted one, but he resisted.

“There are no defensive forces,” he said. “The Americans are not like us. There are many ships which come and go in the operating areas, but all for training. We were told that they never patrolled their own coasts; I did not believe our Russian friends, but it is true. There is no defense.”

The Lieutenant Colonel thought about that for a moment. “But that almost makes it more difficult, does it not? If there are no regular patrols, then you must deal with irregular encounters with warships, yes?”

“Yes, precisely. But the American warships are never silent when they come out of port; they fire up all their electronics and their sonars, and usually run up their engines too. We can always hear them; any submarine could. I think that if they gained contact on us, they would pass right by; they are that confident about their own waters. And there are many fishing boats and merchant ships around, and they, too, use radars and sonars and fathometers; as long as the Americans are not alerted, we are reasonably safe.”

“This is amazing, really,” said the Lieutenant Colonel, lighting a second cigarette off the first one. “This does not offend you, I hope,” he said, gesturing at the cloud of blue smoke.

“I used to smoke, but am now being very self-righteous.”

The Lieutenant Colonel laughed. “I’ll blow some your way. I have tried to quit many times, to no avail. So, you have scouted your target area, prepared escape and evasion tactics, and determined that you can operate there with relative impunity.”

“The key word is relative, Lieutenant Colonel. There are over twenty destroyers and frigates at that base; if they ever suspected—”

“Yes, I understand. Now, the mine scenario: this is a new element; you will need time to plan it.”

The Captain got up from the table, and stared out of the porthole into the darkness.

“That is going to be a very dangerous operation. We are going to have to go in on the surface, at night, and probably in bad weather if Allah provides it. It will have to be done very late in the operation; perhaps one or two nights before the carrier comes.”

The Captain returned to the table. The Lieutenant Colonel stood there, nodding.

“I agree; seeding the mines will present the first real opportunity for them to know that you are there. They would make the connection between the carrier’s return and your presence very quickly. But would not the mines keep them locked up in the harbor?”

The Captain shook his head.

“No — they are set for an aircraft carrier. A destroyer would not set them off. Except for one.”

“One?” asked the Lieutenant Colonel, alarmed.

“One would not take settings; it is programmed to its default settings, which is first ship, first encounter, and a minimum signature. I kept it as a defensive weapon.”

The Lieutenant Colonel shook his head.

“Wouldn’t you know it; one out of the four does not work correctly. This is the way of military operations; the politicians never understand that.”

“I view it differently: three of the four do work; that’s pretty good, for modern weapons. Even for French weapons.”

“I know what you mean,” the Lieutenant Colonel laughed. “All right; let’s assume you get the mines planted, and then you take up an attack position. Once we give you the date for the carrier’s arrival, where do you station yourself?”

“There is a line of shallow submarine valleys and submerged seamounts southeast of the river entrance. They are on the line of approach for a ship coming from the Caribbean. The water depth is just over one hundred twenty meters, which is deep for this area. My plan is to deploy to the surface two British electronic direction-finding buoys tethered on wires from the bottom, to pick up the electronic signals of the carrier when it comes over the horizon. The carrier has a unique radar, which the buoys are set to search for. I will space them three miles on either side of us. From the air or surface they will look like fishing buoys — the area is full of them. The submarine will be between them, on the bottom.”

“If they are tethered to the bottom, how will they communicate with you?” asked the Lieutenant Colonel.

“When they make a detection, they transmit a low powered signal through a transducer in the bottom of the buoy. We have a decoder in our sonar receiver that can extract the bearing information from that signal.”

The Lieutenant Colonel nodded his understanding.

“Initially,” continued the Captain, “the bearings from the buoys will be almost parallel; as the carrier approaches, they will begin to point inward, which will give us a rough range, and we can begin setting up our torpedo fire control solution. Eventually they will get so close that the bearings will merge, and we will then come up, take a look, and take our shot. After that, we will run like the devil.”

“As simple as that, Captain?” The Lieutenant Colonel was smiling. The Captain turned from the porthole.

“No, of course not. It might in fact be that simple, but there are many factors which can disrupt the entire thing. We might be seen; the buoys might be picked up. The carrier might be closely escorted — destroyers and frigates riding in close, so that our torpedoes cannot get in. There could be fog, or helicopter escorts. Any number of things can go wrong. But we are counting on complete surprise. They will be coming home after several weeks away. The destroyers will probably go in first, because the carrier will take the most time getting into that tiny basin. There may not even be any destroyers, if she releases them out at sea and they go to other homeports — that is a question to ask intelligence: which escorts will be with her, and where are they homeported?”

The Lieutenant Colonel pulled out a notebook and made a quick note. “It shall be asked.”

“They will probably have to time her arrival to meet high tide in the basin, and the time of the least river currents in the entrance. This fixes the attack window more precisely than just a known date. If I can get into 6000 meters attack range, and fire six type-50 torpedoes, I will tear her guts out. If they all hit on the same side, we might even capsize her. Inshallah.”

The Lieutenant Colonel stood up.

“In God’s hands; yes. What a coup this will be. Especially if you can get clean away, so they have no way of knowing who did it. We owe these arrogant bastards. It was the American Navy which first came to Tripoli in the early 1800’s to ‘suppress,’ that’s the word their history books use, our corsairs in the Mediterranean. They have been coming ever since. Now it is our turn to come. Well, let me get you the sealed envelope, with the date of the carrier’s arrival. And then you should probably go. There is a ship coming, the Master informs me.”

“I must get the word out to my crew to re-board the boat.”

The Lieutenant Colonel worked the combination of his desk safe.

“I have already done that, if you will pardon my presumption,” he said, over his shoulder. “Your ship should be ready to go. Here.”

He gave the Captain a single, brown envelope, sealed across the back with red sealing wax. The Captain fingered the oily wax. The Lieutenant Colonel smiled.

“Very traditional, yes? Someone saw this stuff in a movie, I think. But now only you know the date; I have not been told, and I have not opened that envelope. It comes from Him.”

The Captain did not have to ask who Him was. He took the envelope, and shoved it in his trousers pocket.

“One final matter,” said the Lieutenant Colonel.

“Yes?”

“I have been instructed to remind you of the final paragraph of the mission orders and to obtain your acknowledgement.”

The Captain’s face hardened. The final paragraph of the mission orders had been short but explicit: if the mission failed, and the submarine did not achieve an attack on the carrier, the Captain was directed to ensure that no physical evidence could be obtained by the Americans that would point to the origins of the mission. He was directed to destroy the submarine and everyone in it if that were necessary. Outside, he could hear the sudden rumbling of the submarine’s main engines coming to life.

“I alone onboard the Al Akrab am aware of those conditions,” he replied carefully. “And I will do what must be done if and when the time comes.”

The Lieutenant Colonel nodded. “I am sorry to have to bring it up. But we cannot afford any more fingers pointed at us.”

He looked down at the carpeted deck for a moment, as if trying to remember his lines. Then he looked up with a brief smile.

“We are of course confident that no such measures will be necessary,” he said.

The Captain looked at him for a moment, but said nothing. He stood up, put on his hat, and opened the cabin door to leave. The Ibrahim’s Master was waiting outside in the passageway.

“That contact will pass within ten miles, it appears,” he said. “That should not present a problem, yes?”

The Captain nodded. “We will depart anyway; your hospitality has been excellent. You will go back home now?”

The Master laughed. “No, we go to Aruba, for a load of specialty crude. Part of the cover. The Americans track us now, ever since the Red Sea mining business. They track every one of our ships, harbor to harbor. So we must show up somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic, to keep this business secret.”

They began the walk back to the ladder on the starboard side, crossing the empty tank deck.

“How will you prevent your crew from talking?” asked the Captain. “In Aruba, I mean.”

“We do not go ashore; we mate to an offshore pumping terminal buoy. Load up in 18 hours, and then head home.”

They arrived at the sea ladder. The Captain turned to the ship’s Master.

“My thanks to you. It was good to get a hot bath, and my crew appreciated your hospitality.”

The Master smiled and nodded. The Captain turned to the Lieutenant Colonel.

“Tell Him that we understand how this mission must end, one way or the other, and that we trust in God to see justice done.”

“God go with you, Captain,” said the Lieutenant Colonel. “Your mission is just; strike them hard.”

“I shall.” They embraced in the traditional fashion, and the Captain went over the side to the submarine waiting below in the darkness.