“Lay out that tagle for Number Two,” Rhodes barked. He turned and put his big hands carefully on the exhaust pipe of the torpedo, braced his back against the rollers and pushed the torpedo the rest of the way into the tube with sheer strength, moving it gently until he felt it come up against the stop bolt. He grabbed the brass propeller safety guard from the torpedo and stuck it in his pocket and closed the inner door. Automatically, he reached over and adjusted the tail bumper stop in the center of the inner door. Moving swiftly and surely, he blew water up around the torpedo from the WRT tank, closed the valves, vented off the tube, charged the impulse tank and opened the outer door and made way for Ginty, who was closing the outer door on Number Three.
“Engage the gyro on Number One!” Rhodes barked at Johnny Paul.
“Fire four!” Captain Mealey’s voice was vibrant with emotion. The target was visible again, the huge sheet of water thrown up by the exploding bombs had subsided. He saw two aircraft above the battleship, streaking toward him. He counted down slowly. Mako and Captain Mealey were committed. The firing would go on, one torpedo every six seconds until all the torpedoes had been fired or the target had sunk.
“First two fish running hot, straight and normal!” Cohen’s voice sang out. “Can’t hear Number Three running. Number Four is running hot, straight and normal!”
‘A hit!” Mealey yelled. “Just abaft his bow! There’s another hit! Farther aft! There’s smoke over his bow!”
“Fire five! ...
“Fire six! ... There’s another hit! Lots of smoke over his bow! ‘All back emergency!
“Right full rudder!
“Give me all you’ve got, maneuvering!”
Mealey felt the Mako shudder under his feet as Chief Hendershot in the Maneuvering Room threw all the voltage and amperage in Mako’s two huge storage batteries across the buses of the electric propulsion motors, adjusting the immense, surging power with a delicate touch so as not to blow out the circuit breakers and leave Mako helpless, without propulsion. Mako began to go astern, gathering way, her bow swinging widely to port. A second VAL sighted on the periscope, stooped and shot downward. The two bombs missed well to the right side of Mako’s swinging bow.
“All stop!
“All ahead full!
“All ahead full! Stand by to shoot aft!” Mealey twisted the periscope around.
“Another hit! Right under her bridge! Here we go, Plot!”
“Mark!” Botts read the azimuth ring bearing and Edge cranked the bearing into the TDC.
“Range ... six zero! Meet your helm right there! Meet it, damn it! Don’t take me off course!
“Angle on the bow ... one four zero starboard!” He looked at the battleship, hearing the gears in the TDC whir.
“We’ve got a solution, sir,” Edge said.
“Fire seven!” Mealey counted down from six to one.
“Fire eight!”
The precision ballet began in the After Torpedo Room with Mike DeLucia as the ballet master and Lieut. Don Grilley assisting.
“Fire nine!
“Fire ten! Another hit! Under his after turrets! Lots of smoke from his bow! Now there are flames shooting way above his bow! There’s a big explosion, lots of flame! Another hit! Amidships! Six hits! Six hits!” He swung the periscope around, chanting the bearings of the ships racing toward him.
“Range to the nearest destroyer ... three zero zero zero yards ... I’m going to have to shoot at this one!”
“Torpedo Tubes One and Two reloaded forward,” Sirocco’s voice held a note of repressed excitement. “Outer doors open, gyro spindles engaged, depth set two feet. Number Seven aft is ready, outer door open, gyro spindle engaged, depth set two feet. Number Eight will be ready in five seconds, sir! You’ve got One and Two forward and Seven and Eight aft!”
“Very well,” Captain Mealey said. He steadied on the onrushing destroyer.
“Zero gyro angle! He’s coming too fast for a plot! Right down his throat! ... Stand by ... Fire one!” He paused. “Close tube outer doors! Flood negative! Take me down! Fast, Control, damn it, fast! Left full rudder! Down periscope! Stand by for depth charge attack!”
The torpedo burst out of the Number One tube and flashed toward the destroyer that was rushing at Mako. It roared down the destroyer’s port side, missing by 10 yards, leaving behind a trail of bubbles that reduced the lookout on the destroyer’s port side to gibbering fright. The destroyer’s captain, recognizing the lookout’s stammering shriek for what it was, pressed the buzzer to alert the depth charge crews at the destroyer’s stern and at the two Y-guns that would hurl charges far out to each side. He picked up his VHF microphone.
“Eagle’s Feather One to Eagle,” he said calmly. “We have the enemy in sight and have commenced an attack run. Enemy fired one torpedo, missing down our port side.” He nodded to his gunnery officer and the two Y-guns boomed and the depth charges began to roll off the squat stern of the destroyer.
“Drop is made, sir,” the gunnery officer reported. “Depth charge exploders were set for one hundred feet.” The destroyer captain nodded. Back of his ship there was a low rumble and the ocean began to erupt in great gouts of water.
On the bridge of the Fubuki destroyer leader designated as Eagle, Fleet Captain Akihito Hideki of the Imperial Japanese Navy, lately the commander of the Japanese Navy’s Advanced School for Anti-Submarine Warfare, rubbed his small gray goatee. Captain Hideki was a small man, physically, with delicate bones and a scholarly manner. That manner and his standing as the ranking expert in the Japanese Navy’s anti-submarine warfare department had led to his nickname, the “Professor.”
He rubbed his goatee again and then smoothed it and turned to the Eagle’s commander.
“Please tell all the Small Birds to deploy in a half circle from here to here....” His narrow forefinger traced a line on the chart that lay on the table beside the Eagle Captain’s position at the starboard wing of the bridge.
“Small Birds are to form a sonar listening line and report to us. Eagle’s Feathers One and Three form up port and starboard of Eagle’s Feather Two. Ask our friends in the Air Force on the atoll to please put some observation planes in the air at once. The water is very clear. They should be able to see the submarine down as far as two hundred feet.”
“The battleship, sir?” Eagle’s Captain’s face was stricken. The safety of the battleship had been the responsibility of the destroyer squadron and he was second in command only to the Professor.
“We can do nothing for her now,” the Professor said calmly. He steadied his binoculars and looked at the burning ship.
“She still has some way on her. I presume her commander is trying to beach her on the reef. The fires appear to be out of control.”
A junior officer approached, saluting smartly.
“Your message sent and acknowledged, sir.” The Professor nodded and looked down at the chart. Then he raised his head and looked at the battleship, flames soaring high above its forward turret area.
“A skilled, daring attack!” he said slowly. “Does the battleship commander know how many torpedoes were fired at him? How many hits he took?”
“He reported seeing the wakes of nine torpedoes, sir. He took seven hits, all down near the keel. The second torpedo set fire to his ammunition storage for the forward turrets, sir.” The junior officer was standing at ramrod attention, his moon face impassive.
“Lucky shooting!” Eagle’s commander said.
“No!” the Professor said. He touched the chart with his forefinger. “Eagle’s Feather One attacked here. The submarine got under us undetected and closed to point-blank range! That is not luck! That is skill and daring! Seven hits out of nine torpedoes is remarkable shooting! And getting his hits below the armor plating! We’d better make a note to inform Intelligence that the Americans have apparently solved their torpedo problems.” He looked at the chart again.
“He fired nine at the battleship and saved one if he were attacked. He fired tha
t one at Eagle’s Feather Two and missed. So now his fangs are drawn! He can’t risk a reload, reloading torpedoes is a noisy and slow business.” He rubbed his hands together and the skin made a dry, rasping sound.
“You know, I’d like to meet with this man below us, talk to him! But that is impossible because we are going to kill him! So we must now put ourselves in his place, think as he will think.” He turned to Eagle’s Captain.
“When I had you as a student you were very good at putting yourself in the place of a commander of a Japanese submarine. Now let me see how you will put yourself in the place of an American submarine commander! What will he do, do you think?”
The destroyer Captain looked at the plot drawn in on the chart by one of the junior officers.
“If I were he? I’d head straight for the target!” he said calmly. “He’d like us to believe that he might go into the atoll itself but he knows we won’t believe that. It would be too easy to put the cork in that bottle and keep him inside. But he should head for the battleship. Before he gets there he will turn to starboard and head down the reef. We would have trouble following him with sonar if he did that, the reef would interfere.”
“I agree with you up to there,” the Professor said. “But if he follows the reef line he is restricted; he can only go in two directions, forward and to his starboard. He knows by now that we have a number of ships after him. We could wall him off if he went along the reef.”
“But he might make his turn in that direction, follow the reef for a short distance to fool us and then make his move to go to the open sea, hope to find a layer out there and lose us.”
“I think that is what he will do, Isoruku,” the Professor used his former student’s given name easily. “There are no layers in this area where we are now but there are some farther out.”
“You anticipated an attack close to the entrance?” The destroyer Captain’s eyes widened slightly.
“No, I did not,” the Professor said. “I anticipated an attack, one always does that. But the logical place for the attack would have been farther out to sea and with more than one submarine. I ordered the layer check so I could know conditions.”
“Contact!” the radio operator on the bridge sang out. “Eagle’s Feather Two reports it has the target on sonar and is pinging. Bearing three five five, sir. Target is at two five zero feet and moving slowly.”
The Professor bent over the chart. “He’s on a course to the target! He is doing what you had anticipated he would do! As I anticipated he would do! Which means that he is intelligent!
“Order Eagle’s Feather Two to maintain the contact. Eagle’s Feather One and Three will form up behind and to each side of the sonar ship. I suggest that we take position astern and see what this fellow does.”
Captain Mealey looked down at the plot Joe Sirocco had drawn of the attack, noting the positions of the enemy ships.
“We’re going to have to make a turn very soon,” he said. “What’s that son of a bitch thinking about up there, what are all those sons of bitches thinking about?” He touched his white mustache gently. He put his finger on the chart.
“We have several courses of action. We could run for the entrance and go inside and he won’t believe we’d do that because we won’t, it would be suicide.
“We could turn to starboard and run down the edge of the reef but if we did that we’d be restricted, no maneuverability. But we could do that and make the bastard think that’s what we’re going to do and then turn to sea.
“The problem is that we have no chance for deception. He’s got us on sonar and he’s going to know what we’re up to as soon as we start anything. So we’ll keep it simple, we’ll come left and go out to sea, or try to do that.” He looked at Nate Cohen.
“Do you have anything on the battleship?”
“The target is still under way,” Cohen said. “He’s going very slowly, I can only hear one screw. He bears zero zero five.”
“We crippled the son of a bitch,” Mealey growled. “Why the hell doesn’t he sink with six fish hitting him?”
“He might be sinking now,” Sirocco said. “He’s close to the reef, getting closer each bearing. He might be taking a lot of water and trying to get his bow up on the reef before he sinks.”
“Two ships bearing one zero six and two zero zero and making slow turns,” Cohen said.
“They’re waiting for us to make our move,” Mealey said. He studied the plot closely.
“Okay, let’s start the performance, gentlemen. Left full rudder and steady on course zero zero zero. Make turns for two knots. I’m not going to waste the battery any more than I have to.”
“Another set of screws crossing astern, sir,” Cohen said. The sound of the searching ship’s sonar beam hitting Mako was making a ringing sound throughout the ship. In the Forward Torpedo Room Ginty looked at Rhodes.
“Bastard has got us nailed! Why in fuck don’t he start droppin’ his shit?”
“He will,” Rhodes said. He went down the room touching each member of the reload crew and the room’s torpedomen lightly on the shoulders or arms.
“Let’s keep it very quiet, fellows. Very quiet! It’s going to get awful noisy in a little while!”
“Four hundred feet,” Captain Mealey said to Pete Simms. He turned to Sirocco. “We’ll let him get a half dozen good pings on us, enough to show him that his triangulation indicates we’re down deeper than before. That will mean he’ll have to reset his depth charger exploders and that will give us some time.”
“Steady on course zero zero zero, sir,” the helmsman said.
“Very well,” Captain Mealey said. “As soon as he starts his run — let me know, Nate, when he does that — as soon as he does we’ll go down to six hundred feet. Throw the bastard off!”
On the bridge of the destroyer designated as Eagle the radio operator sang out.
“Eagle’s Feather Two reports target is on course zero zero zero and is now at four zero zero feet, sir.”
“To all captains,” the destroyer’s Captain snapped. “Reset depth charge exploders for five hundred feet!”
The professor smiled to himself as he walked a few steps away from the younger officer. His face was glowing, this submarine captain was an expert! Few if any of his own Navy’s submarine captains had shown as much imagination as this American down below when they were acting as targets for his anti-submarine warfare school destroyers. A worthy opponent, this man down below him, a worthy opponent for a man recognized as knowing more about killing a submarine than any other Naval officer in the world!
“The target is steady on his course and depth, sir,” the destroyer’s Captain said. “Would you do me the honor of taking command of this depth charge run?”
“No,” the Professor said. “You are doing very well, sir. I leave that honor to you.” He stood at the bridge wing as Eagle took position to begin the first depth charge attack.
In Mako’s Control Room all eyes were on Nate Cohen’s lean back. Cohen raised his head lightly and Sirocco tensed, ready to pencil in the bearing he knew Cohen was about to give.
“Very slow twin screws bearing one eight zero, sir,” Cohen said. “That’s the ship that has been pinging on us. One ship bearing one six five, one ship bearing one nine zero. One set of twin screws had circled those three ships and is coming to a bearing, now he’s steady on one eight zero and he’s picking up speed! This is an attack run, sir!”
Captain Mealey picked up a telephone and pressed the talk button.
“This is the Captain speaking. All telephone talkers pass this word. The dance is about to begin. All men not needed to man stations get into bunks and stay there. Report any damage to the Control Room at once.” He turned to Nate Cohen.
“He’s coming fast, now, Captain. He’s committed!”
“Six hundred feet!” Mealey said to Simms. The Engineering Officer’s eyes widened in protest. Mako was built to operate at a maximum depth of 400 feet with a 50 percent safety factor. S
ix hundred feet was her theoretical maximum depth, one to be risked only if circumstances made the depth unavoidable. He turned to the men on the bow and stern planes.
“Five degree down bubble. Six hundred feet.”
“Here he comes!” Mike DeLucia said to Lieut. Don Grilley in the After Torpedo Room. The sound of the destroyer’s screws began to fill Mako’s hull as the ship up above raced down Mako’s invisible wake.
In the Control Room Captain Mealey unconsciously rose to the balls of his feet and stood, quietly, beside the gyro table. As the sound of the destroyer’s screws built to a roar within Mako’s hull he said,
“Right full rudder! All ahead flank! He can’t hear us now, he’s making too much noise! How’s the depth?”
“Five hundred and fifty feet, sir,” Simms reported, his voice rising in an effort to be heard over the sound that was filling Mako’s hull.
“He’s dropped charges!” Cohen yelled. “Two other sets of screws back there are picking up speed, sir!”
Cohen half-turned on his stool to see if Captain Mealey had heard him and the first depth charges exploded with a gigantic roar that hurled Mako sideways and downward. Cohen was thrown from his stool. Sirocco, who was standing at the chart table gripping its edge with both hands, felt himself lifted and then flung bodily into Captain Mealey, who crumpled under Sirocco’s weight and went sliding across the deck into the legs of the machinist mate who was stationed at the high pressure air manifold, bringing that man down in a heap. The lights went out, leaving only the feeble glow of the emergency lanterns. The helmsman, who had been thrown backward into Lieutenant Simms, picked himself up and got back to the helm.
“No power!” he said. “We’ve lost power to the helm, sir!”
“Shift to manual power on the bow and stern planes and the helm,” Mealey croaked from the other side of the Control Room where he was trying to untangle himself from the machinist’s mate. Cohen, flat on his back, but still wearing his earphones, rolled over.
Final Harbor (The Silent War Book 1) Page 20