Scorpion in the Sea

FORTY-ONE

The officers stood up around the metal table in the tiny wardroom as the Captain and the Musaid came through the curtained entrance. The Captain slid sideways into his chair at the head of the table, and nodded once. All of the officers except the Deputy sat down together. The Musaid remained standing behind the Captain.

The wardroom was hot and stuffy, as was the entire boat, and three small electric fans mounted on the bulkheads did nothing more than displace the stale air. The Deputy stood by a briefing easel at the end of the table, to which he had appended some navigation charts. His face shone with a layer of perspiration, and there were large dark circles on his shirt around his armpits. The Captain looked at him expectantly. The Deputy cleared his throat.

“Sir. My briefing this evening concerns the reconnaissance we shall make on the entrance to the Mayport naval base river in preparation for the mine laying operation. I have three charts. The first is the ocean approach chart to the St. Johns river and Jacksonville, Florida. The second is the harbor chart of the entrance to the naval basin itself, and the third is a schematic. If this is satisfactory I shall continue. Sir.”

The Captain nodded again; he glanced through the crack in the curtain to his left and saw the steward and motioned to him with his head. The steward pushed a cup of hot tea through the curtain and hastily withdrew, not wanting to see any more guns. The Deputy waited patiently until he had the Captain’s attention again.

“Sir,” he began. The other officers watched attentively. “I will recommend a straight-in approach to the river entrance at about 0100, three nights from now, on a rising tide and a new moon.”

“Why that particular time?” asked the Captain. He anticipated the answer, but he wanted to verify the Deputy’s tactical reasoning.

“Sir. The new moon gives dark conditions. The rising tide counteracts the river currents and minimizes the cross current at the entrance. And if we ground, the water will be coming up and not down, so that we might pull ourselves off.”

“We will not ground, Deputy,” said the Captain with a chilly smile. “Because you will, of course, do a perfect job of piloting us in and out, yes?”

“Sir.” The sheen of perspiration on the Deputy’s forehead was bright in the fluorescent light.

“But the timing is correct, Deputy. If the sea will cooperate and make escape routes available, only fools would not take advantage of it. Continue.”

The Deputy brightened.

“Sir. There is a prominent, lighted range on the north shore of the St. Johns river that allows for good visual navigation during an approach. The range consists of two towers, one with a white light and one with a yellow light, in line, with a quarter mile separation. I shall fix the periscope on that range, and make course recommendations left or right to maintain us on the range against the currents.”

“Do you propose that we enter the river itself?” asked the Captain.

The Deputy was aghast.

“No, Captain. Absolutely not. As I understand it, we need only to approach within 500 yards of the actual entrance, turn, and fire the mines into the channel.”

“That is correct, although we need to get a bit closer than that, because the river current coming downstream will shorten the actual distance travelled by the mines upstream. We need to come into about 250 yards of the defined channel junction, turn completely around, and then fire the mines into the junction. And when I say junction, I am referring to the junction between the river channel and naval base channel. The carrier will stick to the defined channel area, so we must be precise.”

“Sir,” asked the Weapons officer. “When do we intend to plant the mines?”

The Captain looked around the table at their expectant faces. So far, he had not revealed any of his plans. Perhaps it was time.

“The night before the carrier returns to port,” he announced. “We await a report from our intelligence services as to which day the Coral Sea will return. We have indications that it will be within a week.”

There was a murmuring of anticipation around the table. The end of the mission was within sight. A week!

“This must still be confirmed,” warned the Captain. “And we must be even more vigilant than before. The Americans may raise security precautions around their base with the imminent return of such a large ship.”

“Would it not be better to fire the mines on this reconnaissance run, than to come in so close two times?” asked the Chief Engineer.

“It would be safer, yes,” replied the Captain. “But there are many large ships that use this channel. We take the chance of having the mines go off under a tanker or one of those automobile carriers if they sit there for five or seven days.”

“Can they not be set to lie inert for a set number of days, and then turn themselves on?”

“They can,” interjected the Weapons officer. “But the Captain does not trust the delay mechanisms. If they fail, or malfunction, the mines might not activate for days or even weeks. Or worse, they might activate at once with zero delay.”

“This is true,” said the Captain. “If this practice run into the coast goes well, we could indeed fire the mines and set their delay circuits. But there is a more fundamental problem, Engineer. We do not know for sure what day the carrier returns; even if we did, it might be changed in the course of a week’s time. Once the delay circuits are set, and the mines deployed, there is no way to go back and reset the mines. Thus I wish to wait until the last night to lay the mines, and, since that operation must proceed flawlessly, we will conduct a practice.”

“Sir,” the Engineer persisted. “I do not mean to offer objection. But we risk much to conduct such a practice: we must come in on the surface right up to the enemy’s coast. He must have guards at the base, and radar surveillance of the approaches to the river and the base. Surely somebody or some thing will detect a darkened surface contact and raise the alarm. I recognize we must do this once, but twice?”

The Captain sat back in his chair, looking down the middle of the table. He had thought long and hard about these very points. It was extremely risky, and the Engineer was right: they had to do it once, but twice?

“I acknowledge your opinion, Chief Engineer,” replied the Captain. “And I value your concern and questions. Here is my reasoning: the Americans do not guard their naval bases from the sea. They only guard them from the land. We have good, firm intelligence of this. There is no radar surveillance of the entrance to that river, or any others. Yes, the ships in the harbor may have a radar on for maintenance, but a destroyer radar’s minimum range is beyond where we will be operating; we would be in their radars’ shadow zone. But more importantly, the Americans dismiss any threat coming from the sea, because their Navy is vast and powerful. They appreciate no threat, therefore we approach with some impunity.” He paused to sip some tea.

“Second, when we go in to actually deploy the mines, the operation must succeed. There will be no room for surprises or last minute discoveries, such as the water depth is not sufficient, or the current too strong, or the presence of a physical barrier of some kind. We have charts and intelligence reports, but until we go there and see with our own eyes, we do not know the ground truth of the situation in the river mouth. If we discover impediments on this reconnaissance, we will have time to withdraw and several days to think of solutions, time we would not have if we wait until the last minute to try it for the first time.”

The men around the table nodded at the Captain’s arguments. The Captain did not enunciate the third reason, which was that he wanted to test himself, to confirm that his nerve held. He was tired; they were all tired. The waiting, the hiding, the four hour battery rechargings every other day from twelve to four in the morning, short rations of water, and the humid heat had all begun to exact a toll on human endurance and morale in the submarine.

He himself had spent too many hours iron-eyed in his bunk wondering, worrying, and, worst of all, doubting. He was going to have to push his submarine’s nose right into the American Navy’s complacent face, not once, but twice. The more he had thought about the mission, the more important the mines had become. He was no longer quite so sanguine about their chances of success with the torpedo attack. There were so many unknowns: from which direction would the carrier approach? The carrier only had to be lucky once to get by them; he and his submarine had to be lucky every time he made a choice about where and when to set the ambush. How many escorts would she have, and of what type? Would there be the accursed aircraft? Would the Americans make their passage in bright, broad daylight, or would the Al Akrab have the mercy of darkness? There were so many variables that their chances were less than even. But the mines only had to lie in wait in the mud of the river bottom to tear the bottom out of the first very large ship that came across them. And the mines heaped a double insult on the torpedo attack: it would be doubly egregious when the Americans finally deduced that he had sailed right up to their doorstep to plant them. The Musaid cleared his throat discreetly behind him. He realized they were looking at him. He sipped more tea.

“Deputy, continue: show us the charts of the approach, and your schematic of the maneuver.”

“Yes, Captain. We can approach to this point on the chart from virtually any direction, right up to the area of this buoy which the Americans call the sea buoy. It watches five miles offshore, and marks the seaward end of the river channel. On a clear night, the lighted range is visible from the sea buoy, so we would turn on range course and close in. We will need to surface nine miles from the sea buoy because of shallow water.”

He flipped over the sea chart and unrolled the approach chart.

“From the sea buoy in to the actual river entrance there are six buoys, alternating in number on either side of the channel. They are lighted, and the channel is four hundred yards wide. If we could use radar the channel would be clearly marked, but we will, of course, be radar silent. On a visual approach, we must depend on the lighted range ashore, and confirm our track when we see the buoys on either side. We shall drive in at low power, on the battery to reduce noise, to this point here, which I have marked point A, twist in place, lay silent for the time it takes to fire the mines, and then exit at high speed on a reverse of the approach course.”

He stopped and looked expectantly at the Captain. The Captain nodded slowly, studying the chart and the proposed track. Then he spoke.

“I have one change. Submarines cannot twist on their engines very well in the best of circumstances. We will be in the mouth of a river, with currents, eddies, and cross currents, and shallow water. It might take us five minutes to twist around, during which we would be set down in some unknown direction. No. Deputy, set up the track so that we execute a turn in the channel entrance, and then we will back in to the firing point, stop, come ahead slowly, simulate deploying the mines, and then escape at high speed.”

“Very well, Sir,” said the Deputy, making notes on a piece of paper.

“Sir.” It was the Engineer again.

“Yes, Engineer?”

“Sir: what do we do if we encounter civilians, or a fisherman, or even a merchant ship?”

“We will fly an American flag, and pretend that we are an American submarine. We will, of course, do a surveillance before we start in, and let any fishing boats or merchants out or in as the case might be. But once we surface, we will be an American submarine. You made a good point on being darkened: that would attract attention. We will show dimmed running lights, and a dim white light on the American flag. That will not fool any military people, but, as I said earlier, they do not watch the sea. Civilians will want to believe it. There should not be much traffic at 0200. It is as safe as we can make it, Engineer.”

“Shall we flood down so that the decks are awash, Captain?” asked the Weapons officer. “That would do away with the distinctive silhouette of a submarine.”

“I will have to think about that. We can do that if we are surprised by something coming down the river. But we are going to be in shallow waters; flooding down changes our effective draft, and raises the risk of grounding on a sandbar. It also makes the boat very much harder to maneuver. But, your point is well taken. I will keep that option open. Now, Weapons, describe the mine launch procedures.”

The Weapons officer consulted his notebook for a moment.

“Sir,” he said. “For safety purposes, the mines are never activated while still in the tube. We will access their computers with the test set to double check settings, and then activate the memory battery. This can be done one hour before launch, but no earlier. The lanyards have already been attached when we loaded the mines. After we verify settings with the test set, we pressurize the flasks and fire them as we would any torpedo. They are expelled from the tubes at an effective speed of about thirty knots. They will go as far as gravity allows and settle to the bottom. As soon as they are fired, the setback activates their clocks, the clock turns on memory, the computer sends the settings to the sensors, and they are ready for business even as they land on the bottom. Effectively, there is a short delay to allow the submarine to get clear. Except for the fourth mine, whose computer does not seem to be functioning properly. That one I worry about.”

“Which is why we will hold that one back for an emergency situation at sea,” the Captain reminded him.

“Yes, Sir, but even then, I worry that it might arm at once and blow our stern off. These are very large mines.”

“Yes, it might arm at once, but it should not fire at once if the magnetic field is decreasing, as it would be after being fired out the stern tubes.”

The Weapons officer seemed to want to argue, but decided to return to his briefing. He consulted his notes again.

“Normally we would fire the mines at 1000 yard intervals, so that they would be spaced far enough apart to prevent countermining the entire field when one mine goes off. In this case, however, we want them to countermine, to triple the explosive power of the blast under the carrier’s hull. I recommend, therefore, that we fire them at quick intervals so that they group together on the bottom.”

The Engineer, who had been mentally chewing on the remark the Weapons officer had made about the fourth mine blowing the submarine’s stern off, had a question.

“Regarding the fourth mine, Captain?” asked the Engineer.

“Yes,” nodded the Captain, patiently.

“I understand that you have decided not to deploy the fourth mine because its computer is unreliable, and that you are keeping it to act as a torpedo if we are being pursued closely by an enemy ship. But it seems to me that, if the computer is unreliable, we have no way of knowing what it will do if fired. It might indeed arm and fire on even a decreasing field. I seem to recall that the firing decision is based upon first sensing a rising field, and then the decreasing field, which means the target is passing overhead. It might—”

The Captain raised his hand, his expression showing exasperation.

“There are four mines. The fourth would not accept the settings for the carrier; it would only accept a setting of first ship, first encounter, any tonnage. I elected to keep that one back from the channel mining so that it would not go off on the first fishing boat that came down the channel, with the possibility of setting off the other three in sympathetic detonations. Now: remember that we had to give up our four defensive torpedoes in the after tubes to load the mines. This mine will serve as a substitute in an emergency, since it can be fired into the path of a pursuer and get his attention while we escape. I would order such a firing only in a desperate emergency, and I will ensure that we are moving away at high speed before doing so. That is my decision.”

The Engineer flushed and looked down at the table. The Captain glanced at the Deputy and saw that he was finished with his briefing.

“Now,” he continued. “This is what I wish to be done: Deputy, you shall construct a navigational exercise which simulates going to the channel, turning, laying the mines, and withdrawing. I want all the navigation aids plotted out, and a trial paper run made for bearings, turn points, and turn times. Weapons, I want the firing consoles manned so that we practice the firing of the mines at the appropriate time. We will surface tonight to recharge batteries, and I want the diving team to participate by exercising the flooding maneuvers to hold the boat with decks almost awash without actually submerging. Musaid, I will want the special team to be positioned up forward, ready to go on deck to deal with any close up surprises we might encounter in the channel.”

He looked up at them. “We have three days to practice this operation, and I want to take maximum advantage of that time. Deputy, leave the charts. That is all.”

The officers arose immediately and filed out of the wardroom, one at a time due to the constricted space. Finally, only the Captain and the Musaid remained. The Captain turned in his chair to look up at the Musaid.

“Well?” he asked.

The Musaid walked around the table and examined the charts. The Captain got out of his chair and passed his empty cup out to the waiting steward, who refilled it and passed it back through the curtain at once. The Captain walked up to the charts.

“Do you think we should lay the mines the first time?” he asked.

“No, Effendi. I think you are correct in going in to take a look. Who knows what surprises the Americans might have for us.”

“I am more concerned with what surprises the river might have for us,” muttered the Captain, studying the chart. “I also need the rehearsal to imprint the operation on my mind. That way I can react to unexpected threats or emergencies on the night we actually plant the mines against the background of having done it once. That is important, Musaid.”

“Seven days,” mused the Musaid, quietly. The noise of the three fans almost buried his voice.

“It is difficult to believe we have come this far and may yet strike the treacherous Americans. It astonishes me that no one has found us.”

The Captain sipped his tea before meeting the Musaid’s eyes.

“We must not underestimate the American Navy,” he cautioned. “But it is difficult to respect them when we have been able to prowl at will in their own waters. The Colonel was right: they are supremely arrogant, Allah be thanked.”

“And what of this fourth mine business?” asked the Musaid.

The Captain remained silent for a minute.

“It would be risky to use it,” he replied. “But even if it armed and fired right away, our hull would be as a pencil, pointing at the shock wave. The surface ship, on the other hand, would be right on top of the shock wave. The explosion will be vast, but so will the confusion that follows, which would allow us to get away. I shall simply have to judge the situation and decide.”

The Musaid nodded. “I shall prepare the diving team’s part of the rehearsal plan,” he said.

“Very well.”

The Musaid stood back, but did not leave the wardroom. The Captain remained, staring down at the charts. He could say all he wanted to about using that mine as a close range torpedo: the fact was that a warhead that large would probably do quite a bit of damage to the submarine if it went off prematurely. The fourth mine was an unknown. To fire it might indeed invite self destruction. On the other hand, if he were in that serious a situation, the final paragraph of their mission orders, known only to him, would be invoked as the Lieutenant Colonel had reminded him. The order made it explicitly clear that he was to sink the Al Akrab rather than give up any physical evidence that would point to the origin of this operation should it go wrong. And if he had to do that, he was determined that he would take any American naval pursuers with him. So the fourth mine might solve two problems for him. He studied the close-in chart and tried to visualize what the enemy’s front door might look like.