He told her the various theories of why the boat was lost, and something about Chris Mayfield and the missing crew. He told her about the bullet hole in the nameboard. She listened intently.
“Now some of the local guys are saying that the phantom submarine got Mayfield, because of the bullet hole in the nameboard. So the Admiral decides to do some public relations damage control to make sure the local Navy doesn’t look as if it doesn’t care. Goldy gets to go back out next week and look for the phantom submarine again. It’s stupid. If Mayfield did mix it up with somebody, then druggies would be the most likely answer.”
She turned to face him.
“What if it’s true?” she asked. “What if there is a submarine out there, and it did sink the fishing boat?”
“C’mon,” he protested, sitting up. “It’s all sweetness and light between the Sovs and us; what would be the point?”
“What if it’s not a Russian submarine? Don’t other countries have conventional submarines? Diesel boats, I think you call them?”
He got up from the couch again, and put Hooker back on his perch. He began pacing around the dark lounge.
“Yes, of course. Our NATO Allies have exclusively diesel boats, except for the Brits and the French—they’ve got some nukes. But—”
“You keep labelling this thing as if it came from, I don’t know, a known source, like the Russians or NATO Europe. I think I’ve heard J.W. talk about other countries, like the North Vietnamese, and the Israelis, and some of the Arab countries—you know, some of the bad guys. If there really is a submarine out there, could it be one of theirs?”
He turned to look at her in the firelight; her body a white form on the leather couch. A Captain’s wife, talking shop. A sudden apprehension filled him. What the hell was he doing here, messing around with a senior officer’s wife? He was glad that she couldn’t see his eyes in the darkness at this moment. But she’d made a point—what if it were one of the crazies? He thought about it for a minute.
“I suppose,” he said. “I suppose it could be done … I mean, the Germans ran 12,000 mile patrols during the war; so did our guys in the Pacific. Diesels are economical as hell; long range is what they do best. I suppose if somebody wanted to deploy a diesel boat all the way over here, from, say, the Med, it could be done.”
He shook his head before continuing.
“But what the hell for? Yassir Arafat going to start a war of shipping attrition against the United States fishing fleet? Most of those rag-heads only have three or four boats, max, and most of them don’t work. Hell, Diane, it doesn’t wash. Dispatch a boat all the way to the east coast of the U.S. to start sinking the Mayport shrimping fleet? What’s more likely is somebody’s smoking dope or drinking too much Jim Beam. Some old fart dreaming about being in the convoys during World War II, waking up, and seeing U-boats.”
She got up and went over to the porthole. The storm was playing out, the lightning moving offshore, creating a vivid sound and light show among the piled clouds over the ocean.
“Well, at least you get to go out,” she said wistfully. “I have to stay at home. Which reminds me, we need to get me home before my sweet husband sends out the base police to check on his missing car and possibly his missing wife.”
He joined her at the porthole, and looked down at her.
“Last I heard, he didn’t seem to give much of a shit where you spent the night, just as long as he got his Volvo back in one piece.”
She smiled sweetly. “Which is one of the reasons I spent the best part of it with you, kind Sir.”
Before he knew what was happening, she turned and put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him, withdrawing before he had time to react. The momentary press of her body against his had transmitted a promise that made him ache.
“What time is it?” she asked then, matter of factly.
He looked at his watch, while trying to find his voice.
“It’s 1230. I guess it’s story time.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling ruefully. “Story time.”
He collected the wine glasses and the remains of dinner, and headed for the galley.
“No biggee,” he called over his shoulder. “We keep the essential elements as they happened, with the exception of you having come here. I did find you at the car, took you to the gas station, and then we waited around for them to do something. When they didn’t, we stopped for dinner in Orange Park, went back, waited some more, and then I brought you straight home to the quarters. I had reason to be out there at NAS because of the motorcycle accident, which the Group knows about by now.”
“I need to do something about my clothes,” she said.
“Take ‘em out of the washer and put ’em in the dryer for ten minutes; put them on all wrinkled—it corroborates your being out in the elements.”
“Or I could always tell him I got picked up by a super horny sailor, taken to his pad, and ravished repeatedly. It’d be worth it to see his face.”
She kept her voice light, but there was an undercurrent of bitterness in it. He paused with a dish in his hands.
“Well, you can always call. If you’re going to burn some bridges, the boat’s right here,” he said.
His voice had carried a hint of worry. She laughed at him in the darkness.
“I don’t even know your phone number,” she said.
“I don’t give it out to just anybody. They have to qualify.”
“That might take some time,” she whispered.
“Then you probably shouldn’t burn bridges. Yet,” he said. “Makes it hard to get back across the creek.”
The quarters were dark when they pulled up. There was not even a porch light on. She got out of the car. Her hair still damp from the trip from the houseboat to his car, her gray lady uniform a wrinkled, damp sack. She bent to look back at him in the window.
“I can’t thank you enough, Commander,” she said, loud enough for ears to hear if any were listening. “We’ll go recover the car in the morning, as soon as they get it out of that ditch.”
He smiled at her in the door. She closed it, and walked briskly up the walk to the quarters. A light came on inside the house as she unlocked the front door. Story time.
NINETEEN
USS Goldsborough, Monday, 21 April; 1730
Goldsborough swayed slightly as she cut across the afternoon ebb tide currents in the St. Johns river and pointed fair for the open ocean. The afternoon sunlight was a welcome relief from a weekend of rain. The beach sand gleamed in golden tones on either side of the river entrance. Seagulls swirled at the edge of the rip currents, and the rocks on the jetties along the base perimeter were spotted with fishermen in pursuit of flounder. The temperature was hovering in the mid-eighties, and everyone seemed to be in a better mood now that the rains were over and the ship was headed back out to sea.
Mike sat in his chair on the bridge, watching the Officer of the Deck conn the ship out through the river buoys. A warm breeze flowed into the pilothouse through the bridge windows, and the whine of the forced-draft blowers made a comforting sound after all the normal confusion of getting underway. He was glad to get free from the basin and all of its hectoring “support.”
Monday morning inport had been a zoo, with several stores trains appearing alongside, a visit from the Commodore and his engineering staff to take a look at the main plant, and the usual complement of last minute people problems that always seemed to crop up on a departure day. Some of the crew had acted as if the ship were going out on deployment instead of a week’s operations, and there had been a larger than usual complement of wives and girl friends on the pier when they pulled out.
Mike had still not briefed them on the details of their “mission”; he was not sure he had the right words together yet. The word was out in the ship that they were going after the mysterious submarine again, and that it was somehow connected to the sinking of the Rosie III. Make it look real, the Admiral and the Commodore had said. Appearances über alles.
The ship put her nose down into the first Atlantic roller as she cleared the St. Johns bar, and the men up on the forecastle stepped back handsomely away from the sides in anticipation of a blast of spray, but none appeared. The sea surface was almost flat calm under a big Bermuda high building in the southeast.
Mike reflected on the weekend, savoring his, what should he call it, encounter with Diane. He recognized that he was firmly in lust; he feared that he might also be falling in love. It had only been two days, and he wanted her so badly that he almost hoped something else would break down so that they would come back into port early. His face reddened at this disloyal thought; he called for coffee. The boatswain mate jumped to rig him a cup. Acting just like any other sailor fresh from a good liberty, he thought. He wondered how many others in his ship had set sail this afternoon with the perfume of a woman lingering in their faces. The Chief of Staff’s wife, Dummy, the little voice in his head said. I know, I know.
He had brought Hooker aboard Sunday afternoon to avoid being too flagrant about having a pet aboard the ship. The crew joined him in a conspiracy of silence because having a parrot gave their Captain a little extra panache. He tried not to flaunt it, however, and always brought Hooker aboard hidden in his drunk box, and then only on weekends when there was a minimum number of people onboard. His cabin steward had told him that there was always a sudden increase in the number of visitors to his cabin when Hooker was onboard. Electricians needed to check the lights, A-gang snipes wanted to check the air conditioning, and the yeomen cleaned out his outbasket hourly instead of once a day. Hooker’s vocabulary was much admired, and Mike suspected that the sailors had expanded it somewhat during their visits.
“Sir, recommend we secure the special sea and anchor detail,” said the XO, who was also the ship’s navigator.
“Yeah, OK. Wrap it up. What’s the start point for this caper?”
“085 for eighty miles,” replied the Exec. “Then I propose we work a box, north and south along the Stream.”
He eyed the Captain for a moment, and then stepped closer to the chair, out of earshot of the bridge watch.
“You plan to brief the crew, Cap’n?”
“Yes, I suppose I must.”
Mike got down from his chair, and moved over to the chart table at the back of the pilothouse. The XO went with him, and they looked down at the chart for a long moment.
“Soon’s I figure out how to describe all of this without laughing out loud.”
The Exec nodded thoughtfully.
“It does seem strange,” he said. “I can’t quite get my mind around the possibility that there’s some kind of hostile submarine dicking around out here and whacking fishing boats.”
“Don’t spend a lot of brain fuel on it, XO,” Mike snorted. “What we’ll really need are some inventive sitreps to send back in which we show how hard we’re trying. I gave Ops an addressee list for the messages. First one ought to go out, say, 1800 tonight. Maybe put a general plan of intentions in it, hunh?”
“Yes, Sir. Any suggestions as to what our intentions are?”
“No.” Mike grinned down at the XO. “I’m waiting for my executive staff to tell me. You guys use your fertile imaginations. I’ll approve it, OK?”
The Exec shook his head.
“OK, yes, Sir,” he said.
Mike was silent for a moment, looking down at the chart of the Jacksonville operating areas.
“Maybe you ought to brief the crew, XO. I think if I do it, my attitude about this whole deal is going to show through. I don’t want to infect the crew with the way I feel about it. We have our orders, and we should carry them out, no matter what I think about it. You get on the 1MC and give ’em the word, with as many facts as we have. I’ll go down to my cabin and pout.”
The Exec laughed. “Pout, aye. I wish to hell we were going south.”
“Yeah, me too,” said Mike ruefully. “That’s the thing that really pisses me off. We’re up here doing this birdshit op while the real players go do Navy stuff. I almost wish there were a submarine up here so I could sink something and kill somebody.”
The Exec was mildly surprised at this uncharacteristic blast of bitterness from his normally upbeat CO.
“Other than that, Captain, did you have a good weekend?” he asked innocently.
Mike gave him a look. There was no way the XO …
“Yeah, other than that,” he said, “my weekend was just fine. Rain day and night, power outages to help the air conditioning in my boat, one of my guys gets creamed on a bike, yeah, all in all, terrific weekend. Aarrgh.”
“Uh, yes, Sir. Got the picture. We’ll call you when we’ve worked up the search plan and the first sitrep.”
“Thanks, XO.”
At 1900, Mike was in his cabin giving Hooker a head scratch when the Exec knocked on his door and came in. Mike looked up.
“Evening, XO. Got the plan?”
“Yes, Sir. Plan, first sitrep, and some notes on what I’m going to tell the crew.”
“OK, lemme see. Back on your perch, bird.”
Mike flipped the parrot back onto the wooden A-frame perch standing next to his desk. Hooker complained and gave the XO a dirty look, and then began to sharpen his beak on the perch. The XO handed over the folders, keeping his distance from the bird; he did not care for birds. Mike read through the general plan for the search, and then the draft of the first situation report, nodding his head as he skimmed the material.
“OK, this looks good.”
He initialled the release line on the message draft and handed it back to the Exec.
“You’re opting for a southern orientation, which is as good as any, I guess.”
“Yes, Sir, six of one, half dozen of the other. One thing the ASW officer pointed out: we should map the bottom of the areas we search, you know, record the wrecks, pinnacles, and things like that. We’ve got a bottom contour chart, but we ought to tie the sonar picture we see to each anomaly in case we ever have to chase this guy around the area.”
“This guy? Careful, XO, you’re gonna have yourself believing this fairy tale.”
The Exec grinned self-consciously.
“Well,” he said. “I guess I’m getting into character. Seeing as I have to brief the crew …”
“Yeah, yeah, OK. Somebody has to be Joe sincere. Might as well be you. And I agree with that business of building a bottom chart. The mine hunting guys call it bottom conditioning—they work over harbor areas and the approaches to our major naval bases all the time, and map and map and map—everything on the bottom that sticks out. That way when some bad guy lays a mine out there, they can pick it up because it’s new. Takes time, though.”
“Yes, Sir, but Linc’s got that computer program, remember? He’s got a PC up in Combat that we can use to generate the maps; he’s been dying to use it for something, and this seemed like the perfect deal.”
“I agree. Then we can write it up and put him in for a tactical improvement program award. Kid’s pretty sharp.”
“Yes, Sir. Now the other things have to do with the watches: I can’t see putting the ship at ASW condition two for something we both think is a figment. We’re going to be doing this for at least a week, and we’ll exhaust the watch officers pretty quick if we put them up on port and starboard, six on, six off, watches. We get a contact that looks like something, well, then we set the 1AS detail. Otherwise three-sections on the bridge and in CIC. That sound OK?”
Mike swiveled in his chair and thought for a moment. The Exec’s reasoning made sense, as long as the premise was correct, namely that there was nothing out there. Out here, he corrected himself. But if they did turn up something, and this mythical submarine started a fight, the ship would be less prepared to defend herself than if a fighting watch was posted. A Captain could be forgiven many things, but being surprised was not one of them. The staffies at Group would just love to see the trouble-maker of the Goldsborough get caught with his operational pants down.
“Le
t’s do this, XO,” he replied. “I’ll grant you the three section watch instead of port and starboard, but I want the torpedoes and the depth charges ready to go, and enough people in sonar and CIC to execute a snap defensive move if something happens, OK?”
“Yes, Sir, that’s no problem,” nodded the Exec. “The sonar people are going to be six on, six off anyway to do that bottom mapping. We don’t have enough sonarmen to do a three section watch. And it’s no big deal to have the weapons consoles lit off and ready, as long as we don’t have to man up the tubes. It does mean having charged flasks in the torpedo tubes, and initiators in the depth charges, though.”
Mike nodded his head.
“I know, and I’ll sign the weapons fuzing sheet. We’ll also have to brief up rules of engagement pretty thoroughly —tell the guys no shooting unless I say so, and either positive ID or a hostile act before we let something go. I’d hate to whack a transiting U.S. sub, or a Soviet, for that matter. I just want to have a brick or two to throw back if something comes our way. Not that it will.”
“Yes, Sir, but something got the Rosie III.”
“I know, but I’m damned if I believe it was some frigging submarine. It just doesn’t compute. Submarines don’t fool with fishing boats; they like big stuff, like carriers and super tankers.”
“Unless part of its mission is to stay hidden; then it might whack a fisherman.”
Mike turned to look at his Exec.
“You are beginning to think there might be something to all this, aren’t you?”
The Exec rearranged his stack of papers for a moment. Then he met the Captain’s eye.
“It’s like what they always teach about intelligence, Cap’n,” he said. “You go on capabilities, not intentions. It is possible that there is a hostile diesel-electric boat operating out here. We’ve had a sighting, guy who saw a U-boat in the big war called this thing a U-boat, and an unexplained accident with a commercial fishing boat with indications of violence—as you know, the cops confirmed that that was a bullet hole. On the surface, the brass think enough about it to send out a ship, for a week, if necessary, to have a look. It’s just, well, it’s way out and all that, but it is possible.”
Scorpion in the Sea Page 19