Scorpion in the Sea

THIRTY-FIVE

“Just how much has the Commodore told you about all this?” asked Mike.

He was speaking on the phone to Commander Pierce Marshall, IV, skipper of the Deyo, one of the eight thousand ton Spruance class antisubmarine warfare destroyers based in Mayport. Pierce Marshall had been aide to a Vice Admiral in Washington before getting the Deyo, and he was an extremely smooth operator. He came from a Navy family, and his contemporaries called him “the I–V” behind his back.

“Not much at all, Michael,” replied Marshall. “Just that he wants us to conduct a passive sound survey of some sort against diesel engines, of all things, in the Mayport opareas, especially at night. And that we’re looking for something ‘different.’ He said he did not want to tell me more because he wants a clean look, not something predisposed by our knowing what we’re looking for. He did say it was for something connected to Goldsborough, and the only thing I’ve heard about Goldy lately is that you’ve been chasing down some mystery in the opareas about a U-boat, I believe. Any connection?”

“Well, yeah,” said Mike. “You’ve got the most sophisticated passive acoustic detection and analysis gear down here; I think he wants to see if you can detect the presence of a conventional boat on the snort amongst all the fishermen out there along the Stream. I’m surprised that he wouldn’t tell you that.”

“Well, you know Aronson,” said Marshall. “I have to tell you that he sounded like this was a firefly.”

“A firefly?”

“Yeah, you know, one of those issues that comes swimming up out of the grass and merits a passing swat, but not something we go worrying over for very long. Pentagon E-ring term. Anyway, this will give my sonar girls something to do while we work the bugs out of our new main engine. Although I’m not sure what we’re going to hear among all the other diesels that bang around out there every night — there must be dozens of boats in addition to the fishing fleet. You guys find something out there?”

Mike thought quickly. He may have already said too much, especially if Marshall was to talk to one of his buddies on the Group Staff.

“No, not really. I think the Commodore wants to be able to say that we did a very thorough job of disproving the submarine myth, and since Goldy has no passive capability whatsoever, you guys run the drill out there, come up empty, and we can put the whole thing to bed once and for all.”

“Right, got it. OK, Michael, thanks. The IC-man is here to cut the phone lines, so we’ll see you Friday. Enjoy your boiler work, my friend.”

“Thanks a heap, shipmate,” replied Mike, hanging up.

Enjoy my boiler work, indeed. The Spruance community took great pride in not having the albatross of a steam plant hanging around their precious necks; the Spruance class ships ran on airplane engines, and when there was a problem, they simply changed out the engine and they were back in business in a week. Every steamboat skipper envied the gas turbine ships, who could light off their engines and be underway in literally thirty minutes, as compared to the steam plants which had to light off one or even two days before departure. Mike called the Exec.

“XO, I just got a call from Deyo; they’re gonna do the passive sound survey on diesels, just like the Commodore said.”

“That’ll be a project, Skipper,” said Farmer. “The passive environment out there has to be a real bear. I’ve got the engineering assist team assembling in the wardroom in five minutes. Do you want to come down and kick it off?”

“No, but I will. I don’t suppose we’ve heard anything from the guys in Norfolk yet, have we?”

“No, Sir, not yet, other than that they got there OK and got rooms at the Dam Neck BOO. Line’s gonna call me at 1700 today, let me know what’s shakin’.”

“OK, XO. Sounds good. I’ll see you in the wardroom — call me when everyone’s there.”

He hung up, and leaned back in his chair, dismissing the engineering team and the submarine so that he could conjure up the memory of his weekend with Diane. She had stayed the entire day, not going back to her quarters until late Sunday night. After their first brief conversation in the morning Mike had backed off and given her some space, and she had relaxed. They had taken a nap in the afternoon, promising each other that they would just cuddle and ending up in an exciting bout of lovemaking. He had fixed her dinner again, and they had finished the evening on the porch, watching the sun go down over the waterway and talking quietly, holding hands.

She said that she would tell J.W., if he called, that she was driving down to Lauderdale during the week to see some friends, and that she would be out at the houseboat every night. Now Mike couldn’t wait for 1730, when he could leave and get back to the boat. Just like a sailor, he mused, dying for liberty call. He firmly squashed the little voice in his mind that said he was playing with fire. The phone rang and the XO said everyone was ready. Mike pulled himself out of his reverie and went below to begin the week.

At 1700, Mike sat sprawled on the couch in the Exec’s cabin while the XO talked on the phone to Line, who was calling from Norfolk. He watched the Exec’s face as Line made his report, and tried to concentrate on the business of the possible submarine. His mind, however, was very much on other things, like his weekend with Diane. Two more days until her husband came back; two more nights and a day, to be precise. He tried not to think about that aspect, or how they would manage once J.W. Martinson III was back in town. Diane had told him that she would start cutting back on the Navy social life; she had been threatening to do that for some time, anyway, claiming terminal boredom. J.W., who spent most of his time at Navy functions allocating face time, had not seemed to care very much. He had said that he was happy she was finding other interests. Mike started to smile at the irony of that thought when he was pulled back to reality by the sounds of the Exec finishing his conversation with Linc.

“So — what’ve we got?” he asked, as the Exec hung up.

“A strong possible,” said the Exec.

Mike groaned. The ASW Classification Center was living up to its reputation for ambivalence. The Center was known for contact classification fence straddling. Three years previously they had analyzed the sonar tapes of a destroyer which had capped off a NATO ASW exercise by colliding with a submerged British submarine, and the highest classification the Center would grant to the destroyer’s contact tapes was “possible.”

“Not very useful, I admit,” said the Exec. “But Linc said the three master Chiefs who did the analysis of the tapes thought it was a real contact and not marine life or bottom. They just couldn’t get their bosses to go out on a limb with a ‘probable’ classification. You know how they are up there.”

“I surely do,” said Mike. “But now what the hell do we do with this thing? Group isn’t going to jump through their hoops on another ‘possible submarine’ contact that’s, what, four days old now.”

He sighed, and thought for a minute.

“Linc going to come home tomorrow? And he knows he’s to bring those tapes back here?”

“Yes, Sir, to both questions. I guess now we wait for the Deyo’s little witch hunt.”

Mike shook his head slowly in resignation.

“They’re going to go out and tape diesel engines in the fishing grounds. And nobody’s going to be amazed when they find a dozen or so. Even if they record an unusual engine, or an out of pattern detection, it’s not going to resolve the general ambiguity. We need something concrete.”

The distraught face of Christian Mayfield’s sister had popped suddenly into his mind, for no apparent reason.

“One way or the other,” he added.

“Should we call the Commodore and give him the word?” asked the Exec. “I can’t remember what the arrangement was.”

“I’ll call the Commodore’s office here, although I think he was going to talk to the Center directly. I don’t think the CSO’s been cut entirely into the loop, so I’ll just tell him that the verdict was ‘possible’ in case the Commodore calls him. If the Commodore wants to share it with him, he will.”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” said the XO. “You going to shove off, then?”

“Yeah, I think so, XO.”

Mike wondered if the Exec had detected his preoccupation during the day of meetings and planning sessions on the engineering work. He knew that he had been quieter and less intrusive than usual, his mind bemused with thoughts of Diane. But if the Exec had noticed anything, he was not revealing it. Which was good, because Mike was in no position to explain to his Number Two his sudden involvement with the Chief of Staffs wife. Just the thought of seeing her again excited him. He pulled his large frame off the couch, and paused in the doorway.

“Somehow I think this submarine business is going to rise up and bite somebody in the ass,” he said. “I want us to pay enough attention so’s to ensure it ain’t us.”

The Exec grinned.

“No sweat, Cap’n,” he said. “We’ll call it a UFO — underwater flying object, and then the Air Force’ll get stuck with it.”

“There you go, XO,” laughed Mike. “Knew you could handle it.”

But then his face grew serious.

“You know, the missing element in all this is still the motive, if that’s the right word. If there is a foreign sub loitering in the Jax opareas, why is he there?”

The Exec sat back in his chair, staring blankly at the bulkhead.

“Maybe,” he mused, “maybe it’s a test. Maybe the higher ups have plunked a guy down here to see how long, or even if, all these tin cans will stumble across it. You remember the Soviet tape incident.”

Mike nodded. The Fleet Commander, a dynamic Flag officer with many pet projects, had positioned a Navy electronic warfare training van in the State park across the river and had it transmit the simulated radar signal of a Soviet missile cruiser into the base across the river. It had taken three days before one of the ships there, the Barry, had detected it, and another two for that ship to make a report. There had followed several homilies from Norfolk on improving electronic warfare readiness.

“Yeah, I suppose, but we don’t own any conventional subs; ours are all nukes. Which would mean he would have had to get one of the Allies’ boats, like a Brit or a Canadian. That’s stretching it a bit, I think. But maybe … shit, I don’t know. This whole thing has me baffled. And I hate to be the guy who raises the issue — you remember how Barry got shit on for delaying his report, even though he was the only ship in the harbor that picked up the signal.”

The Exec nodded slowly.

“Yes, Sir, on the other hand, you remember what the Commodore said — it’s not up to us to sort out the political impact. We get a contact, we report it.”

Mike snorted. “Right, and hang the consequences. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead! Easy for you to say, XO, but not so easy for me to do. I get the distinct impression that some of we commanding officers are tolerated, but only just so. You light enough fuzes, one of ’em will get you a bang.”

“Yes, Sir, I realize that,” said Farmer. “But when you first took over, you lit fuzes all the time. I would kind of think they’d be used to it.”

“Not when you have somebody like Martinson in the backfield. I have it on pretty good authority that he would love to find a way to yank me offa here. I’ve been advised that if I want to complete my command tour, I have to be, what was the word, more circumspect, yes, that’s it. Circumspect.”

Like when screwing the Chief of Staffs wife, he thought. That’s really being circumspect. The Exec saw Mike’s expression change, and decided to drop it.

“Figure out the motive, XO,” Mike said. “If Deyo comes up with something, and we can think of a motive, I’ll pursue it. With whom, I don’t know, but I will pursue it, at least until they fire my young ass. OK?”

“Yes, Sir. We’ll think of something.”

Mike went back up to his cabin and called Commander Barstowe. He waited for the yeoman to find the CSO. The late afternoon sunlight streaming through the single porthole cast peculiar patterns on the wall of his cabin. The noise level in the ship had diminished now that two hundred forty of his crew had gone ashore with the 1630 liberty call, settling into the occasional noises of the duty section sweeping down the passageways and getting ready to put her to bed for the night.

The CSO came on the line and Mike reported the gist of the word from Norfolk about the tapes. Barstowe gave no sign that he knew what Mike was talking about, but he promised to relay the message, and no, he had not yet talked to the Commodore. Mike asked when the Commodore was coming back to Mayport, and was told late Wednesday afternoon; the Commodore would return with the rest of the Mayport contingent on a Navy transport aircraft that would land at the Mayport naval air strip adjacent to the base.

Wednesday afternoon, Mike reflected, after hanging up. So we have tonight and tomorrow night. And after that? Whatever we can get, he told himself. The submarine thing seemed to be fading back into the shadows again, he thought, with some relief. Now that Diane was in his life, he would be only too happy to step back out of any limelight at Group headquarters and leave the face time to the more ambitious of his peers at Mayport. He suddenly realized that what he really wanted was to finish the command tour and then get out of Dodge and the Navy and all the bullshit with his twenty intact and a retirement check for life. And after that? He would probably follow the old adage and put Hooker on one shoulder and an oar on the other and walk inland. When someone finally asked what the oar was, he would be far enough from the sea to stick it in the ground and call it home.

But right now he had a warm woman on the near horizon and steam up. He got up, and went into the tiny head at the forward end of his cabin to change out of his uniform. As he stuffed the wrinkled wash khakis in his laundry bag, he looked at himself in the mirror mounted on the back of the door by one his predecessors. He was still in pretty good shape, all things considered. It suddenly occurred to him that Diane might already be at the boat. He had given her a key to the main lounge hatchway door. If she was, he did not want to appear in a five o’clock shadow and khakis that smelled of that unique Navy destroyer aroma of fuel oil, ozone, steam, galley grease, disinfectant, and metal.

He stripped down and took a quick shower, shaved, and then put on slacks, a sport shirt, and some loafers. He splashed a touch of cologne around his jaw, and grinned at himself in the mirror. Now I look and smell like most of my troops who are headed for the liberty trail. He wondered if the quarterdeck watch would notice the difference. He suddenly didn’t care if they did.

As he walked aft to leave the ship, he thought about what might be going on up in Norfolk. It was up to the Commodore now to decide what to do next. He might wait for the Deyo to do its thing, but he also might tell the Group Commander what we’ve got so far. Maybe take the sting out if they get to think about it for a few days. Hell, he might even get the Admiral to go over to the Center to see for himself. But he doubted it.

The Exec was waiting on the quarterdeck.

“I told the CSO I’d be home in a half hour, in case the Commodore wants to talk.”

“Aye, aye, Sir. If he calls here we’ll forward the call.”

“Thanks, XO,” said Mike.

He was aware that the Exec thought he should not be going home until the loop had been closed with the Commodore. Barstowe would call Captain Aronson, and then Aronson would probably want to talk to him, and might even expect him to be aboard and not at home. But there was Diane.

Five minutes after he arrived onboard the Lucky Bag, Diane arrived, slipping into the lounge and giving him a breathtaking kiss. He promptly forgot about the submarine, the ship, the Commodore, and the rest of the world, until it intruded abruptly one hour later when the Commodore called.

“OK, Mike, CSO gave me the word,” said Aronson, starting right in as if he and Mike had been talking for the past half hour.

“I’m gonna have to see the Admiral and fill him in; I’ll try to do it without Martinson getting into it, at least initially, because he’ll want to focus on you and not the submarine. Man’s in a foul mood, anyway — says his wife took off for Lauderdale to go shopping again; last time she did that it set them back a coupla grand.”

“Yes, Sir,” said Mike, swallowing.

He was sitting at his desk in the lounge, looking at said wife on the couch ten feet away. He thought he felt the first faint tugs of the web of deception he was weaving. She was watching the evening news on television, apparently ignoring Mike and his phone conversation.

“I want you to send a message to the CO of Deyo — personal for, OK? And ask him to send you a sitrep on their passive search as of Wednesday at 0800; that’ll give ’em two nights of search and analysis. You relay the dope to me at 1000 Wednesday through Barstowe; he knows how to reach me. If I can catch the Admiral for a few minutes tomorrow during the conference, I’ll brief him on what we know so far, and what we’re doing. If Deyo comes up empty, I think the Admiral will just drop it — the Center’s evaluation isn’t all that strong. But just to be sure, I’m going to talk to them tomorrow, too, in between these goddamn scheduling meetings. How’s the engineering work going?”

Mike related the events of the day, and the prognosis for the pump repairs. It would probably take two weeks, not one.

“Yeah, well, that figures, Mike,” agreed the Commodore. “You just push ’em to do a good job, and let’s hope there are no more mysterious incidents out in the opareas for a while. The Navy’s got enough trouble trying to work up a fleet operating schedule against all these budget cuts.”

“Yes, Sir, we’ll do it. Thank you for calling, Sir.”

But the Commodore had already hung up. Mike then called the Command Duty Officer on the Goldsborough and dictated a Personal message for the CO message to Deyo, telling the CDO to release it as a priority. He then joined Diane on the couch.

“Sounds interesting,” she said, snuggling in under his arm.

“I didn’t think you were paying any attention to all that,” he said.

“Navy wives learn to tune in to those kinds of conversations even when they’re talking to someone else, my love. Anything out of the routine usually means something’s coming or someone’s leaving.”

“Well it certainly won’t be Goldy-maru,” he said. “We’re in for the better part of the next two weeks changing our main feed pump steam seals.”

“But the mystery submarine hasn’t gone away, has it?” she asked. He turned to look down at her, to see how much she might really understand.

“No, actually, it hasn’t, although it might well have taken off by now. What the Center found is a possible contact that happened last week. Now the Commodore has Deyo out doing a real needle in the haystack search for any peculiar diesel engines, on the theory that, if he’s still there, he’ll snorkel at night to recharge his batteries.”

“What’s a snorkel?”

“It’s a pipe, basically, that a sub can stick up like a periscope and provide air to diesel engines without surfacing.”

“Oh. OK. But if there is a submarine out there, why?” she asked.

“That’s the million dollar question, Sweet Cheeks.”

“Sweet Cheeks?” She sat up, a mock severe expression in her face. “Did you call me Sweet Cheeks?”

Mike stared hard at her face and then tracked somewhat lower on her anatomy.

“Well,” he said, “that’s just my memory speaking; it has been a long time, you know. Might be wrong … you know what they say — memory is the second thing to go.”

“And the first, may I ask, is what?”

“Don’t remember,” he pronounced solemnly, and then he pulled her toward him to refresh his sadly failing memory.

“Remember, I get dinner,” she said, her voice muffled in his shoulder. “And for calling me Sweet Cheeks, I also get dessert.”