Scorpion in the Sea

FORTY-FIVE

Mike stretched out on the chaise longue in his bathing suit and sneakers and watched the boats go by on the intracoastal. The back porch of the boat was hot and humid in the early darkness. He sipped the remains of a gin and tonic, absently letting the cold glass sit and sweat on his bare midriff. Two piers over a couple was having an increasingly loud argument over whether or not one of them was going to leave in the morning. One of you leave tonight, he thought, and then we can restore the peace. He wished Diane were there; he badly needed somebody to talk to. The Admiral had probably gone back to his office and called the Bureau to get a new CO for the Goldsborough. Or, better, had Martinson do it. Martinson would like that.

He wondered about the Commodore, giving up so easily; it wasn’t like him. He had seemed genuinely convinced that there was something worth looking into. But he had folded like a napkin when the Admiral dismissed the whole thing. Preposterous. OK, maybe it was preposterous. But what if it were true? What if Mrs. Khadafi’s bouncing baby boy, Muammar, had sailed a submarine to Mayport to exact some vengeance. So it wasn’t a modern, atomic powered submarine. But after the Second World War the Russians had modelled their F series class on the last (and best) class of the German U-boat fleet. German submarines had sailed with impunity to the east coast of the United States, and farther than that during the war. They had lingered for forty-five day patrols, without support ships, and then sailed all the way back to occupied France. Routinely. Less capable American submarines had sailed all the way across the Pacific to conduct long patrols off China and Japan. The diesel boats were capable then, and more capable now. It was feasible.

But was it likely? That’s the rub, thought Mike. Would he do it? Would he risk war? Or was this simply a very high tech Arab suicide squad, steeled to deliver one fatal attack and then implode the boat at depth to guarantee anonymity and entrance to raghead heaven? Depending on where they made the attack, the boat would only have to evade for two hours at full underwater speed to reach the edge of the continental shelf, and then go down in 10,000 feet of water, to be lost forever in the ancient slime at the bottom of the sea.

It would be a terrorist attack on a grand scale, unless the Navy could find them and force them to the surface almost immediately in order to produce a suspect in hand. Otherwise, big explosions along the carrier’s side, mass confusion outside and in the harbor, escorts going everywhere, not knowing what had happened — which of the current skippers had ever seen a submarine torpedo go off under a ship? And the bad guy snaking seaward on his silent electric motors, hugging the bottom until he reached the acoustic safety of the swirling biomass of the Gulf Stream. If he actually got away into the Atlantic, all the guy had to do was get into the shipping lanes and go back to the Med among the hundreds of ships that traversed the Atlantic.

It was feasible. He kept coming back to it. It was feasible. It was possible. They ought to go out and take a look. They sure as hell ought to warn the Coral Sea group that there was the possibility of trouble when they came home.

No way, the Admiral had said. No frigging way. We don’t have the money, we don’t have the assets, and I might look stupid. I might be wrong, but I will not look stupid. Mike shook his head in the darkness. The appearance of things had become so important. We don’t have any problems here, Boss. And if we do, tell ’em we don’t, and fix them, out of sight and behind the scenes, but we never, never, let it show. You gotta look good, regardless of whether or not you are good. Look good and everyone would smile, and say, yeah, good looking ship, smart crew, must be a top skipper. Unlike that weirdo that thought there was a submarine hiding out offshore. Some poor toad who had command of the oldest ship in the basin, the one they were going to decommission, the guy who never had to deploy and show his stuff with the first team overseas. So he dreams up this little fable about a submarine, gonna get some attention, some visibility. Gonna get relieved early and sent ashore was more likely. He drained the rest of his drink, and headed back inside to make another. He wished Diane would call.