Scorpion in the Sea

FIFTY-NINE

Mike sat in the Captain’s chair on the bridge, his mind paying only half attention to the departure navigation. The forced-draft blowers whining steadily atop the number one stack made a comforting sound. The Executive Officer was conning the ship, and they had finished the tough piloting part, the turn out into the river channel from the basin channel. The Exec had managed to swing the ship directly onto the river range course in one competent turn. They were pointed fair for sea, buoys on parade on either side, and a fresh sea breeze was already blowing the stale heat and humidity of the basin out of the ship as she came up to fifteen knots. With the setting sun behind them the eastern sky was deep blue, and the sea the color of indigo ink, with pillowy white clouds bunched along the far horizon. There was a deep swell which lifted the bows rhythmically but not uncomfortably; Mike could see the bosuns on the forecastle adjust their stance to ride the bow up and over each swell like old hands.

The sea detail crewmen in the pilothouse were quietly excited; rumors had been flying around the ship ever since she had cleared the pier. Mike had put on a severe face and made himself remote in his chair. The officers on the bridge had been closemouthed, and had kept their distance from the Captain. Even the bosun’s mate had backed off, sparing Mike the necessity of drinking the bosun’s miserable, salty coffee. The Exec had been all business, with none of the usual getting underway repartee, and the bridge crew picked up on this as yet another sign that something was indeed up. They covertly watched the Captain and the Exec for hints of what was going on, ready to pass along the word over their sound-powered phone circuits to their buddies at other control stations in the ship. Mike looked at his watch.

“XO,” he called. “I’ll speak to the crew at 1800, or as soon after you’ve secured from special sea and anchor detail as possible.”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” replied the Exec, formally, taking a bearing on the next approaching buoy to see if they were being set down on it by the current. He decided that they were. “Come right to 091.”

Mike got out of his chair and headed aft for his cabin, paying no attention to the flurry of mumbled messages being sent around the ship over the phones by the bridge talkers. He needed to compose his thoughts, think about what he was going to tell the crew. The closer that little chore got, the more uncomfortable he felt about it. They had so very little to go on, almost nothing in the way of concrete evidence. The Exec had tried to bolster his confidence earlier.

“They trust us absolutely, Cap’n,” he had said. “If it’s our judgement that there might be some bad guy out there, then they’ll trust us to tell them and to get the ship ready to fight. The only crime would be to keep quiet and then get surprised by the bad guy. And if it’s all bullshit, they’ll laugh about it, roll their eyes, talk about dumb-ass officers, but they’ll know you were erring on the side of being ready, which in the long run, aims at saving their asses. Besides, this is go nowhere, do nothing Goldsborough. Give these guys a chance to do something for real and the big problem will be holding them back.”

Mike went into his sea cabin, and automatically looked around for Hooker, but then remembered the bird had been left behind. He analyzed his thoughts about that, and it was a little bit scary. Didn’t bring the bird because they might lose this little gunfight; no sense in killing off the parrot just because they didn’t do their ASW right. Real vote of confidence in what was coming. He flung himself down on his bunk, rolled over on his back, and closed his eyes. He thought at once of Diane. Finally find the right woman, and she’s married to someone else, and I’m headed into God knows what. To do battle with a terrorist, a Libyan submarine, to save the carrier that’s carrying her husband home to Mayport. Where she’s going to tell him that she’s leaving him. If we get through this little deal in one piece. And if we don’t, well, it was a blast while it lasted, one of those marvelous things, etc., etc. He wondered if she’d leave El Jerko even if Goldy was trashed. He thought not. Right. You were a one of a kind, Man. Die young and leave a beautiful memory. This is total crap, he thought, finally. He swung his legs off the bunk as the phone buzzed.

“Captain,” he grumped.

“We’re about to secure from sea detail, Captain. The IC-room has activated your 1MC microphone. If you’ll let me know when, I’ll have the bosun pipe all hands,” said the Exec, the wind in the pilothouse making puffing sounds over the sound-powered set.

“Yeah, OK,” replied Mike. “Tell you what: don’t secure from sea detail, that’ll just have everybody milling around while I try to talk to them. Make sure there are no contacts close by, and go ahead and pipe all hands now.”

“Aye, Sir.” The Exec hung up, and moments later the long notes of attention, all hands whistled through the ship. Mike knew that people would automatically expect the word, “Secure from special and anchor detail” to follow, but instead, they heard Mike asking them for their attention, this is the Captain speaking. He very rarely used the 1MC himself, so he knew they would indeed pay attention.

“Gentlemen, as some of you have already been speculating, Goldsborough is underway for something more than a sea trial,” he began, hearing his voice echoing in the passageway outside his cabin. “We have a most unusual situation on our hands, a situation that may not even exist, or one which may mean that there is a hostile diesel electric submarine lying in ambush for the Coral Sea who, as some of you know, returns to Mayport tomorrow afternoon from Caribbean ops. The complication is that Goldsborough is the only ship that may be able to do something about the submarine. If it’s really there, that is. Let me explain to you what’s been going on.”

He went on to give the background of the case, speaking slowly and methodically, leaving out some of the details of the Admiral’s reaction to the entire hypothesis, but not his conclusion that the whole thing was a figment.

“The bottom line is that the Commodore has dispatched Goldsborough to rendezvous along the approach track with Coral Sea tomorrow afternoon, and to search the area for submarines, and to attack and sink this guy if he shows himself to be hostile or makes an attack on the carrier. The Admiral and his staff do not think there’s anything there. They may welt be right; the Admiral didn’t get to be an Admiral by being a dummy. If they are right, we’ll go out and ping around, find nothing, and Coral Sea will go on by and no one will be the wiser. On the other hand.”

He paused to gather his thoughts.

“On the other hand, the Commodore may be right and there may well be a terrorist submarine waiting out here, waiting in our own backyard, where we think he’s been waiting for more than three weeks, waiting for the chance to put six torpedoes into the Coral Sea and send her to the bottom not ten miles from home.

“So here’s what we’re going to do: tonight, we’re going to set battle readiness Condition Two throughout the ship. As soon as we secure from sea detail, we’re going to set material condition zebra from the main deck and below. We’re going to lock one shaft, turn off all the radars except the commercial navigation radar, turn off the fathometer and the sonar, rig the deception lighting on the masts, and go on out to sea tonight pretending to be a slow, single screw merchie headed for points east. Once we get into the area of probability, and that’s the area where Coral Sea has to drive through to get home to Mayport, we’ll wait until we actually make a radar contact on the Coral Sea sometime tomorrow afternoon, and then we’ll become a tin can again and go into an active search mode. If this guy is out there, he’ll hear that sonar and know somebody is on to his ass, and he will have to deal with us before he can attack the Coral Sea.

“Now, that brings me to the important part. If this guy is who and what we think he is, he will try to take us off the board if we get in his way. If we’re right, he has come a long way and waited a long time for his one shot at the bird farm, and he will probably not hesitate to try to kill us and then kill the carrier. If we’re right, this is a transplanted Russian submarine. A Foxtrot class. They carry great big, steam driven Russian torpedoes. Just one of his torpedoes would break this old girl in half. This is real guys, not ‘hit alfa’ from the battle problem. His fish go fifty miles an hour and put 2000 pounds of explosives into their target.”

“So from now on out, until Coral Sea is safely inport, Goldsborough is at war. I want you to secure from sea detail, and then go through your spaces and get them ready for a shoot out. Lash stuff down as if we were going to go through a hurricane. Get all the fire hazards and flying missile hazards taken care of. Just like we’ve trained to do, only now it’s for real. We’re going to lay out all the damage control gear, and we’re going to arm the torpedo flasks and the depth charges, and we’re going to put live ammo into the gun mounts. If we’re right, by mid-morning tomorrow we’re going to be in the torpedo danger area, and we’re going into battle readiness Condition One at sunrise and we’ll stay there until Coral Sea enters the river.

“Now, I know this comes as something of a shock. And I reiterate that we may be wrong and that this all may be for nothing. But I don’t want to find out that we were right and not be ready to defend ourselves and the carrier. Because the authorities ashore don’t believe it, the carrier has not, repeat, not been warned. And we’ll have no help for the same reason. We’re hoping the bad guys think they have a free shot, and that when we show up, we’ll screw things up for him for long enough that the carrier gets by him. But as I said before, there is something he can do about that. If he attacks us, we’ll finally have proof that he’s there, which is good as long as we get the time to holler and warn off the carrier. But right now, everyone ashore thinks we’re out on a one day sea trial. There are no other tin cans standing by, no heloes, no P-3’s, no nothing. If our theory is true, it’s going to be entirely up to us. Now: I want to see all officers in the wardroom in fifteen minutes, and all Chiefs in quarters thirty minutes after that. That is all.”

He clicked off the microphone and put it down in his desk. He found his forehead damp with perspiration. The phone buzzed, and in the passageway he could hear the bosun piping secure from sea detail.

“Yes,” he said to into the phone.

“That was perfect, Cap’n. You should see their faces up here.”

“I can just imagine, XO. You should see mine. Call me when you have everybody in the wardroom. You have the charts and stuff ready?”

“Yes, Sir, all set. We’ve got all night to get CIC set up and the weapons ready. We ought to be ready to go by sunrise, barring any surprises tonight.”

“Yeah. OK. What speed do we need to be in the middle of the box at around 1000 tomorrow?”

“No more than about eight knots, which is good for our deception profile. We’ll slow to five now and start rigging the lights and reconfiguring the plant.”

“How is the plant, anyway?”

“Engineer says everything is right and tight; so far so good. The water chemistry in 2B is a little shaky, so he’d like to shut down aft when we lock a shaft until he chases down the problem, but otherwise, no steam leaks.”

“Super. OK, call me when you’re ready to brief.”