Scorpion in the Sea

FIFTY

Mike spent the next morning doing boat chores and cleaning house after a week of domestic neglect. Hooker had begun the day with another siege of whistling, but Mike had turned the vacuum cleaner exhaust on him. The mini-hurricane that followed required the bedraggled parrot to spend the rest of the morning settling all the severely ruffled feathers, effectively shutting him up. Mike’s thoughts strayed continuously to Diane’s impending arrival, until he remembered that the Exec was coming out to the boat that afternoon.

He paused to work it out. Orlando was about three, four hours from Mayport. If she went shopping until midday, then had lunch with her friend, and then drove up, it would be about four, five o’clock before she arrived. But maybe earlier. He’d better go see Max.

He found the Marina owner up at the front office, explaining the joys of boat ownership to a pair of urban sophisticates. Maxie was being polite, but his hackles were up just a little. Mike watched in amusement as the two explored every nuance of the marina lifestyle. One of them began giving Mike the eye behind his friend’s back, so Mike wandered out to the back pier porch until they were through. Maxie joined him in a few minutes.

“Just what we freaking need,” he growled. “Some more girls.”

Mike laughed out loud, and then told Max he had a problem.

“Yeah, what?” said Max, giving him the look. “You’ve invited two women down for the same weekend, am I right? And you want old Max here to shunt one of ’em off.”

Max was older than Mike, but still reputed to be quite active amongst the local ladies.

Mike laughed. “Not quite, but it is something like that; I’ve got one woman coming down for the weekend, but I’ve also got my XO coming out here for some business. I’ve got to make sure she doesn’t come tripping aboard while he’s still there.”

“This that tall brunette I been seein’? She’s too good lookin’ to be single, which means you’re doin’ somethin’ really dumb, and I ain’t gonna get involved in somethin’ that produces husbands showing up in the office with shotguns lookin’ for wayward women, unh-unh!”

Mike explained the situation about the husband and his girlfriend, and how it was a Navy triangle, so to speak. Max, who genuinely liked Mike, shook his head in wonder.

“You like livin’ dangerously? Is that it? You bored with no war on?”

Mike shook his head. “It’s more serious than that, Maxie. I think she’s going to split, and I’m actually entertaining the notion of marrying her if she does.”

Max whistled. “Man, this is some serious shit. Lemme make an observation, and then I’ll shut up. Married woman who plays around is unfaithful; what makes you think she’s going to become faithful just because she’s married to you? Think about it. OK, look, she shows up, I’ll tell her to go get a drink over at Hampton’s. Maybe I’ll take her into the back bar; those ole geezers over there need a shock. I’ll call you if you haven’t already called me, and you can get your XO home where he belongs on a Saturday anyways. How’s that?”

“That’s perfect, Maxie. And you’re right, of course, I’m probably waterskiing in a minefield.”

“But she’s worth it, right? And she’s gonna leave her husband for you, too. And the check’s in the mail, and I won’t come—”

“Awright, awright!” said Mike. “Any more shit and I’ll sic Hooker on you; he’ll whistle you to death.”

“That bag of feathers is usually too drunk to whistle. Hang loose, sport. And watch out for guys wearing raincoats on sunny days.”

The minor details arranged, Mike returned to the boat and called the Exec on the ship. Ben promised to be out at noon. Mike, knowing the usual level of cuisine on the ship on the weekend, called over to Hampton’s for a carry-out cold seafood platter.

The Exec arrived promptly at noon, carrying charts rolled up under his arm and a briefcase. He was somewhat conspicuous in his khaki uniform among all the denizens of the Marina, who typically dressed in as little as possible. Not a few of the boat owners stared at the Navy officer in uniform as if he were a man from Mars. Mike saw him coming across the floating piers and called Maxie to remind him that under no circumstances was Diane to be allowed into the marina until the guy in khakis had gone home. Maxie said he would see what he could do, as long as the lady was reasonably cooperative. Mike worried about that.

The Exec came aboard and was delighted to see a decent lunch. Mike took him to the porch where they spread out the planning materials. They then shared the seafood platter and some cold beer on the porch, talking about inconsequential things during their lunch. The inland waterway was filled to capacity with boat traffic, and the noise of engines, boom-boxes, and the occasional horns of boats trying to obey the inland rules of the road punctuated the bright sunlight. It was already getting seriously hot, with a promise of thundershowers unfurling in heavy, white cumulus towers to the west. Mike tried to relax over lunch but was aware of the clock ticking in the background and wondered what crazy old Max might really do if Diane showed up before the Exec left. He cleared away the remains of lunch, popped open two more beers, and they got down to business.

“I felt a little nervous about bringing these classified pubs out here, Captain,” said the Exec, putting the two plastic binders on the floor. “They’re not supposed to leave the ship.”

“Operational necessity, Ben. We’ll make sure nothing goes adrift, OK? Put them on that chair, there, so we keep them separate. So, how’s this problem shape up?” Mike said.

“Yes, Sir,” said the Exec, spreading out the large area chart. “Initially, the carrier will approach from the southeast. I constructed a notional great circle track from San Juan, with an end point here on the chart. From there, a rhumbline to the sea buoy is a straight shot, 300 degrees. Assuming an estimated time of arrival of 1730 at a point ten miles from the sea buoy, which I call point Bravo, the Coral Sea should be right here, at point Alfa, at 1530. This allows her time to slow down and enter the channel at a little before 1900, to meet slack water in the basin at 1900. Her track to the sea buoy looks like this, from Alfa to Bravo, assuming a speed of about fifteen knots.

“Now, you can see from the chart that the water depth would allow a diesel boat free range anywhere between Alfa and Bravo, so that’s where I would expect an attack. It ranges between 350 and 450 feet. His periscope depth is sixty feet, so he has on average around 300 feet of water to maneuver in. The bottom is pretty flat, except for a couple of wrecks and one large pinnacle along the track. This is the silt area from the St. Johns, so it’s a mud bottom, mostly. This large canyon is the result of a few millennia of the St. Johns digging out the Shelf, and its tributaries show up in the attack zone as lots of smaller canyons and ravines, with layers of river mud piled up along their rims. We hear mudslides all the time when we listen on the sonar. Inshore of point Bravo it starts to shallow up markedly.”

Mike examined the track lines on the chart. He could find no obvious errors, and the Exec’s logic seemed to be correct.

“OK. That looks reasonable to me,” he said. “The good news is that this whole attack zone is well inshore of the Gulf Stream, so we shouldn’t have the acoustic problems we’ve been looking at during our search excursions. We will have shallow water, though, which means reverberation for the active sonar, and it also renders our torpedoes almost useless with the bottom that close. You know, a lot’s going to depend on whether or not Coral Sea’s bringing any escorts with her.”

The Exec produced a piece of paper. “According to this, she’s coming north with three escorts. But all three are from Norfolk, so I figure she’ll detach them out at sea and be coming into Mayport all by her lonesome.”

“Incredible, when you think of it,” said Mike. “And yet, why not? It’s peacetime, she’s within fifty miles of her home port, in U.S. waters. There’s no threat, so why have any escorts, especially when they have another day’s trip to get home.”

Two boats got into a hooting match out on the waterway, prompting much vocal derision from the boat people in the marina. There were several suggestions called out from the marina to the larger of the two motorboats, but in the end, the smaller one gave way to the law of gross tonnage. Mike and the Exec watched the interplay for a few minutes, and then resumed their study of the ASW problem. The Exec reviewed the search tactics that applied to shallow water, confined hydrography situations, and then walked Mike through the attack tactics for depth charge and, in an emergency, given the water depth, the use of the torpedoes in bottom-close situations. Mike thought aloud about the timing.

“We have to be out in that tactical channel between Alfa and Bravo by fairly early in the morning, so we can work it over acoustically and also take a look at the bottom features,” Mike observed.

“Yes, Sir. And, ideally we would be between the sub’s potential attack position and the Coral Sea. But there’s no way to know if the sub will be north, south, or even along the track.”

“That’s why I want to get out there early, by Thursday evening, if possible, so we can start working the area. Maybe spook him into a wrong move; hell, we might even gain contact. If we could keep him involved in dealing with us, the carrier might slip through. Can we expect any other traffic in that area?”

“Well, it is the most direct route for any ship coming up from the Caribbean to go to Jax; the big oil tankers that go up to the northside refinery would be on that track. Those big Toyota car carriers also come up that way, from the Panama Canal.”

Mike reflected. That might be a good news, bad news factor. Good news in that the sub would have to come up to take a look at a big tanker or a car carrier coming through, in case it was the carrier; bad in that a tanker would plow through the area with no regard for what a destroyer might be doing in an ASW problem.

“OK, let’s say we get out there in the Alfa-Bravo channel area by first light Friday. How would we start the search?”

The Exec moved the area chart to one side and laid down a tactical chart he had drawn up, using tracing paper from the CIC. He pointed to the eastern end of the tactical box.

“I figure the sub will lie in wait at the deeper end of the box, out towards Alfa, rather than inshore where the water begins to shoal. You see this ridge on the track — it’s more of a sea mound, really, but it comes up almost eighty feet off the sea floor, and it’s a half mile in diameter at the base, with lots of canyons around it. If I were the sub CO, I’d get on the western, inshore side of that mound, hugging the bottom, in case the carrier did have escorts pinging out ahead. That would put the sub in the sonar shadow zone created by the ridge; when the escorts and then the carrier passed overhead, she could come up and put six torpedoes into the carrier from behind all of them.”

Mike nodded thoughtfully. “But we know there won’t be escorts. And if he did that, we’d have to meet the carrier head-on so we could illuminate the western side of the sea mound with our sonar.”

“Yes, Sir. And that raises another problem: what do we do if we gain contact? By the regs, we’re required to conduct an identification drill, to find out who he is. And we can’t determine that he’s hostile until he does something. And then, in this tactical geometry, we can’t go firing antisubmarine torpedoes directly into the path of the carrier — one of them might acquire the carrier. And we can’t run in there under the bird farm’s bows so we can drop depth charges. How in hell do we attack this guy?”

“I think we have to assume that, if we find this guy on the carrier’s approach track, he’s not there to take pictures. We’ll do the standard identification procedures, and then lock on to him with the sonar and make sure he knows we have his ass boresighted.”

“But to shoot at him, we’d have to make the carrier maneuver somehow.”

“Well,” said Mike. “What do we do, tell him over Fleet Tactical that there’s a sub waiting in ambush for him? I think they’d report us for smoking dope on the high seas!”

They both sat back in their chairs to think. Mike knew that the Exec was right. They would need to think up something that would make the carrier move almost reflexively, without question, if Goldsborough gained contact along her track.

“I’ve got it,” said the Exec, leaning forward. “Mines. We could say we’ve sighted a floating mine ahead of him, and request he move right or left. We can call the direction at the time according to what we see on the tactical plot. Nobody screws around when they hear mines.”

Mike nodded. That would indeed work. All you had to do was say the word mines, and ships would maneuver at high speed in the away direction. It would also relieve them of the burden of trying to explain to the Carrier CO just what they were doing out there.

“And, otherwise, we just apply our regular fleet tactics; search, gain contact, classify, hold him, and shoot his ass before he shoots ours,” said Mike.

The Exec nodded thoughtfully.

“That’s yet another loose end that bothers me,” he said.

A sudden breeze sprang up off the waterway, and there was a rumble of thunder in the western distance. The sunlight had taken on an orange hue. A sudden, hot breeze lifted the chart paper off the table momentarily, spilling the classified publications and the other charts onto the floor in every direction.

“What’s that, XO?” said Mike, grabbing for the charts.

“The business of shooting. So far this whole thing is conjecture on our part, that there’s even a submarine out there, waiting for the Coral Sea. And that it means to attack the carrier. Under peacetime rules of engagement, we have no authority to shoot anybody without making a pretty substantial effort to identify him first and then prove that he was hostile. I mean, suppose this is a colossal screw up, and that’s a Canadian sub out there, practicing shallow water ASW under a NATO OpOrder for the defense of the eastern approaches to U.S. harbors?”

“Surely we’d have known about a friendly foreign submarine operating here, XO. Hell, they would have provided some live sub training time for the Spruances as quid pro quo for letting him operate here.”

“You have to admit that it is feasible that there’s something we don’t know, Captain. It’s more likely that this guy is a Canadian or a Brit than he is a Libyan …”

Mike gave a short laugh. The Exec had a point. He piled the papers into a stack on the deck, and put one of the classified pubs on top as a paper weight.

“OK, but if this guy is what we think he is, he may solve the problem for us. Under the rules of engagement, if he takes a shot, either at us or the carrier, then we’re weapons free on his ass. And that might be how we in fact classify him in the end analysis.”

“Yes, Sir. We probably ought to talk to the Commodore about the R.O.E. before we leave port at the end of the week.”

The thunder rolled again, closer this time. Mike glanced at his watch. It was three-thirty. There seemed little left to discuss. What was required now were the actual search plans, the various attack patterns that could develop, and an acoustic prediction analysis of the area of operations. The Exec saw Mike looking at his watch. He stood up.

“I’ll work the details tomorrow; Sundays are dead quiet on the ship, and I can get to the pubs I need without attracting attention. I’ll tell the CDO I’m working up fitness reports.”

Mike stood up, lunging for the papers as the wind blew again, spilling his neat stack.

“Ben, I appreciate this very much; you call me if you hit any snags. Tell your wife we’ll get you a couple of long weekends after this is all over.”

The Exec gathered up his materials and the charts. The wind was visibly picking up across the surface of the waterway, and the rumbles of thunder were more frequent. The western sky was turning deep purple. Mike helped him gather up the charts and the pubs into an armload, and they went forward to the gangway. The Exec had to grab his hat in the stiffening breeze. Around them, the weekend sailors were busy stowing gear and deck chairs in anticipation of the approaching squall. Shroud lines could be heard clanking against their masts over the wind; some of the girls looked faintly ridiculous in their skimpy bikinis as they grabbed loose gear to get it below.

“You go on home, Ben,” said Mike. “Start again fresh tomorrow, and call me around noon, let me know how it’s going. And maybe we ought to think about going out quiet, not pinging at all, until the carrier does show up. It occurs to me that a pop-up destroyer act might be more effective in screwing up his attack on the Coral Sea than an all night pinging operation.”

“Yes, Sir, you may be right,” said Farmer. He was having to shout over the wind. “If he knows we’re there and we don’t gain contact, he’d have all night to hide out. If we delay, and go out quiet, we might be able to take him by surprise, and then make him do something that allows us to classify him and short circuit the rules of engagement problem. I’d better mosey,” he concluded, eyeing the approaching thunderstorm.

He peered at the pile of charts and books in his arms. “I hope I got everything.”

“If not, I’ll bring it in Monday. But think on it; we’ll talk some more tomorrow,” said Mike.

“Yessir,” shouted Ben into the wind as he walked down the pier toward the marina office.

Mike went back into the lounge and called Maxie, who answered on the third ring.

“She show up yet?”

“No sign; I see your guy is leaving. So if she shows up, she comes straight through, right?”

“Right. I hope she beats this storm.”

“Yeah, I gotta go secure some shit.”

“You need a hand?”

“Nope; as long as I git off this phone, I’ll make it.”

“Thanks, Maxie.”

Mike hung up, and went topside to make sure his own porch furniture was secured. The screens kept out most of the weather, but a good blow could knock things around, and from the looks of the darkening sky across the waterway, they were in for a good blow. As he stacked the chairs, he found one of the classified publications wedged between the couch and a chair. He looked quickly over to the parking lot, but Farmer’s car was just pulling out of the sand lot. Mike carried the pub to his briefcase and locked it inside. He wondered where Diane was.