Scorpion in the Sea

by P. T. Deutermann

  Ben Farmer closed the door and sat back in his seat in shock as the rain drummed on the roof of his car. The windows fogged over after a minute, completing the obscuration of everything outside. A flash of lightning speared the waterway to his right, and the clap of thunder made him wince.

  The Exec had been happily married since he was a junior Lieutenant. He and his wife had three children, and lived in quarters on the base in the CO-XO housing area near the beach. He had, of course, noticed Diane Martinson. Every adult who lived in CO-XO housing, male and female, had noticed Diane Martinson at one time or another. His wife had caught him looking for just a shade longer than marital propriety permitted and had pinched him just above his belt line for staring. Diane’s arrival at the Marina, on a Saturday afternoon, complete with an overnight bag, was evidence of a situation that he fervently wished he did not know about. The rain drummed louder.

  Navy ship wardrooms had a well defined hierarchy among the wives. The Captain’s wife was socially in charge, and organized, usually with the help of the Executive Officer’s wife, most wardroom functions such as the annual Christmas party, charity events, cocktail parties, and homecomings when the ship had been away. The CO and the XO’s wives also handled a myriad of family problems, officer and enlisted, that inevitably cropped up when the ship was out of home port for extended periods.

  When the CO did not have a wife, the “duties” of the CO’s wife fell upon the Executive Officer’s wife, as was the case in Goldsborough. The Captain contributed funds for many of the functions, and Ben’s wife, Carol, ably ran the show. The fact that the Captain was a bachelor lent spice to some of the social occasions, as the wives were always eager to see what he might bring along as a date. Some of the bachelors’ dates had found the Captain to be more interesting than their escort for the evening, which usually caused the Captain some acute embarrassment.

  As Exec, Ben kept himself in the know about which officer’s marriage was in trouble, who had a chronically sick child, and which of the ship’s bachelor officers was in danger of getting himself hooked. But Ben had carefully eschewed knowing anything at all about the Captain’s private life. The Captain kept all of that to himself, which was just fine as far as Ben was concerned. And now this little discovery. His CO was seeing the wife of the Chief of Staff, and from the way he had sheltered her from the squall, their relationship was well advanced.

  He decided to get the hell out of there while it was still raining. The Captain could bring in the pub, and he recognized that the only thing worse than knowing what he now knew would be for the Captain to know that he knew. The bulk of the rain squall was passing, and he could just begin to see across the parking lot again. Just when you think you’ve seen all the problems that an XO tour can throw at you, something bigger and better smacks you in the face, he thought. He started the car, turned the wipers on high, and began to navigate his way through the downpour very carefully across the parking lot and out onto the road back to the base. He wondered how long he could keep this from Carol.

  FIFTY-TWO

  The Al Akrab, seaward approaches, St. Johns River, Sunday, 4 May; 0100

  The Captain wiped the rain out of his face and tried to clean the optics on his binoculars. He was wedged into the conning tower cockpit, bent low behind a makeshift plexiglass windscreen which did very little to keep the weather out of his face. The two lookouts perched above and behind him on the periscope shears were shapeless bundles of raingear in the dark. A warm wind streamed over the conning tower as the submarine plowed steadily through a heavy chop, the air redolent with the scents of the shoreline ahead. He had decided to bring the Al Akrab in partially flooded down after all, so that the usual shape of the bows and the foredeck ahead of the conning tower were missing, revealed only when larger waves broke over the black, rounded hull like the roils of water in a river over barely submerged rocks. The rain came in intermittent sheets, followed by slack periods when the night sky opened to reveal a large thunderstorm booming its way out to sea to the south. The lights of Mayport and the naval base were visible as an orange glow against the base of the low flying clouds up off the port bow.

  The Captain was grateful for the shield of the foul weather, but he knew that the Deputy, as Navigator, would be not so grateful. He could hear the periscope swivelling in its tube as the Deputy in the attack center attempted to take bearings on the navigation aids ashore. The Captain peered again through his Russian binoculars. The lighthouse at Mayport was clearly visible, beaming a strong flash of white light every twenty seconds from atop its man-made hill on the base. But he had not yet detected the two river range lights. Without radar, and without those lights, their position was essentially a guess. They knew that they were somewhere on a line of bearing from the lighthouse, but the all critical factor of range from the river’s entrance was missing. They had to find at least one more light for a cross bearing. He felt a tightness in his gut as the submarine advanced inexorably on the darkened shore at four knots.

  “Navigator, Captain,” he growled into the intercom box.

  “Sir,” replied the box, barely audible over the noise of a new squall of rain and wind rattling on the plexiglass shield.

  “Can you see the river range lights?”

  “No, Sir. Not yet. We are searching on high power, but there is too much weather.”

  “When was our last good fix?”

  “Uh, some time ago, Sir. We have now only an estimated position. We are using a dead-reckoning plot, bearings from the lighthouse, and the depth sounder. The range to the river’s mouth is estimated at ten thousand meters, and there is sixty feet of water beneath the keel. We need—”

  “Yes, yes, I know what we need—another light!” the Captain said. He brought his binoculars back up to his eyes and continued to sweep the shore, or at least the sector of the horizon ahead where the shore ought to be. He realized that the navigation team was doing the best it could. The wind was from dead ahead, but the local currents along the Florida coast set northerly. With the submarine flooded down, the current’s effect would predominate over the wind, and the nearest shoal waters were to the south of the channel, away from the direction of drift. He glanced at his watch. If they could not get a fix within the next twenty minutes, he would have to break it off. He needed one accurate fix to give him the intercept course to the sea buoy; after that they could buoy hop their way into the channel. He scanned the shore again, starting with the lighthouse and moving right, to the dark sector to the right of the naval base lights that had to be the river, and then searching inshore of the river’s mouth. One of the lookouts gave a low shout.

  “Stay on it!” ordered the Captain, craning his neck to see which way the man was looking. The man’s binoculars were trained well to the right of where the Captain had been looking. He put his glasses up to his eyes, swept right, and saw the blinking red light, down low on the surface. A buoy. They were going to pass it close aboard to their starboard side. Very close.

  “Left full rudder!” he shouted into the intercom box. “Navigator, we have a buoy close aboard to starboard!” He watched as the rudder angle indicator dial, a green blur on the rain soaked instrument panel, swung left. The boat ploughed on for a few heart stopping moments before finally answering the helm. He looked up anxiously as the buoy came down the starboard side, only some thirty feet away. They could hear the metallic clank of its buoy bell as it bounced in the windswept chop.

  “Shift your rudder,” he ordered, to swing the stern and the screws back away from the buoy now that the boat had begun to swing. “Steady 270.” He yelled to the lookouts to get the buoy’s number if they could.

  “Two,” called the starboard lookout, as the submarine’s head swung slowly back to the west.

  “Mark buoy number two abeam to starboard,” yelled the Captain into the intercom. His whole body listened anxiously for the rumble of a propeller hitting the buoy’s anchor chain, but they slipped safely past. The wind whistled around the conni
ng tower, as if in appreciation. The rain suddenly stopped in a final sweeping gust of wind, and moments later the periscope stopped swinging.

  “Contact on the river range,” called the Deputy from below. “Stand by for course recommendation.”

  The Captain straightened up as the Al Akrab came out of the squall line, and let out a long breath. There were many lights suddenly visible ahead as the air cleared; they were closer in to the shoreline than he had thought. He scanned ahead to find the range, aligning his binoculars with the glass face of the periscope, and found it almost at once. They were to the right of the range. As he prepared to make a course adjustment, the intercom sounded off.

  “Recommend come left to 267 to regain track,” said the Deputy. “We hold ourselves 7200 meters from the turn point, and we have a good fix.”

  “Very well; come left to 267,” replied the Captain. He turned around to the lookouts. “We have found the river range; search now for small boats coming down the river; look for running lights.”

  The lookouts acknowledged, and the Captain resumed his own surveillance of the river’s entrance. He could see the pattern of red and green buoy lights now that the rain had passed, and the channel into the river was clearly marked, even against the brightening backdrop of the shore lights.

  “Depth beneath the keel?” he asked of the intercom.

  “Depth is forty five feet beneath the keel and conforms to the charted depth,” replied the box. Behind the conning tower the rumble of thunder and lightning was diminishing in the distance as the storm cell passed out to sea. The wind had freshened in its wake, veering around to the submarine’s starboard quarter as she approached the shoreline, returning to the normal on-shore breeze pattern after the squall line. The submarine was dead quiet, running on the battery with electric propulsion.

  “Turn on the navigation lights, dim position,” ordered the Captain. If there was radar surveillance, the only substantial echoes would be returned from the conning tower, as the rest of the submarine’s shape was awash. The dim navigation lights, red and green on the sides and one dim white light on the front of the sail, would look like a fishing boat to any watching eyes. So far, the electronic surveillance console had reported no radar signals sweeping across the Mayport approaches. He continued to watch for several minutes while the submarine thumped and bumped its way through the choppy waters.

  “Based on a good fix at time 24, range to the turn point is 4200 meters; recommend come back right to 271,” spoke the box.

  “Very well, come right to 271,” replied the Captain. Another buoy was shaping up in the darkness, to port this time, its green light winking comfortably in the rapidly clearing night air. The squall seemed to have scrubbed the coastal atmosphere; all of the lights ashore were now unnaturally bright. The Captain suddenly felt very exposed. He could make out the red aircraft warning lights atop the masts of the ships bunched together in the Mayport basin. He could even make out the vast bulk of the aircraft carrier moored to the bulkhead pier along the river. It was incredible: they were within a few miles of the American Navy’s largest southern naval base, and operating on the surface with total impunity. The Captain felt a surge of pride at their achievement.

  “Look at them,” he mused aloud. “Dozens of destroyers, all asleep even as we bring our scorpion to their very doorstep.”

  The lookouts grunted their acknowledgement, surprising him. With the wind no longer blowing in their faces, the Captain’s every word could be heard at the top of the conning tower. The Al Akrab pressed on, even as the shimmering rays of amber light from the sodium vapor streetlights on the base began to reach out for them across the surface of the St. Johns river.

  “1500 meters to turn point,” spoke the box.

  The Captain detected a note of apprehension in the Deputy’s voice that penetrated even the fuzzy sound of the intercom. He imagined what it looked like on the chart below, as the submarine crept into the outer channel along a series of small, pencilled X’s on the chart. He could see in his mind’s eye the tight knot of officers surrounding the plotting table in the red light below, looking fearfully at the chart’s depiction of the naval base. Into the lion’s den. He scanned the river range through his glasses, and saw that they were back on track. At 1000 meters he would come right to allow room to make the turn in the river entrance.

  A mile and a half ahead to port lay the junction between the St. Johns main channel and the dredged channel into the Mayport naval basin, which slanted off to the left in a Y intersection with the river. The junction that was the target for the mines. The Coral Sea had to turn left into that basin channel at precisely the right time to avoid the sandbar just upstream of the junction. He would plant the three mines in the river channel just downstream of the turn; they would tear the bottom out of the carrier and send her careening across the channel to run aground on the opposite shore, thereby blocking the entire river exit. Perfect.

  “950 meters to turn point; recommend come right to 280 to offset for the turn.”

  “Very well,” replied the Captain. “Navigator is to take control of the conn in the attack center and position the ship to make the turn; use power for standard speed to twist the boat.”

  The Deputy acknowledged; with their navigation plot now accurately updated by the half-minute with buoys, the range lights, and the lighthouse, they had a much better picture on their chart than the Captain did perched in the darkness at the top of the conning tower. They could shoot bearings with precision through the periscope, determine their exact position on the chart, and maneuver the boat to come right into the mouth of the river, turn sharply, stop, back up if they had to, simulate firing the mines, and start back out. The submarine began swinging to the right.

  The Captain looked at his plastic, Japanese watch; the lights from the shore were almost bright enough to read it without hitting the light button. 0155. An excellent time for this night’s work. He wished he could fire the mines tonight, but they still did not have a precise arrival time from fleet intelligence. He studied the layout of the river approaches, the lights, and the position of the stone breakwater. He had noticed the long wake each buoy was carving through the water, a wide V pointing upstream, indicating a stiff current from the river. They would have to note that current when they put the mines down; it would not do to have them shoot out the stern torpedo tubes and go only twenty meters in the face of the current.

  “Surface contact, bearing 350 relative,” sang out the port lookout. “I have running lights, and a red over white combination on the mast; contact is coming downstream.”

  The Captain cursed, and then informed the Deputy.

  “Begin the turn now,” he ordered. “We have company.”

  Almost at once the submarine steadied, and then began her turn to port, although it seemed to the Captain to be exceedingly slow. Ballasted down as she was, and in shallow water with a river current on her head, Al Akrab seemed reluctant to swing through the turn. The Captain was reaching for the intercom when he felt the sudden rumble of a propeller shaft as the navigator increased the power on the opposed shafts to bring her around. He scanned ahead again with his binoculars, and finally picked out the dim red and green lights, low on the surface of the dark river ahead of them, upstream of the naval base. The boat was coming quickly, her speed augmented by the downstream current; her top lights indicated a fishing boat. Someone had waited to get underway until after the squall lines had subsided.

  At long last the submarine began to swing with authority, as the current caught her starboard bow and shoved her around. After another minute and a half, she was pointed seaward.

  “Increase speed to twelve knots; turn off all running lights,” ordered the Captain. “We will simulate the mine firing at high speed.”

  He wanted very much to get away from the fishing boat that was bearing down on them from behind. The boat looked to be about two miles distant, enough distance to cover them, although her skipper might be curious about the co
ntact coming upriver that had suddenly turned around. He had decided not to back up into firing position; having seen the current, he knew what he would have to do next time.

  The Al Akrab began to move out now, her ballasted hull pushing up a large bow wave that revealed her forward decks intermittently. The Captain noticed that the submarine was also beginning to porpoise a bit. The planesmen were trying to counteract the effect of the ballasted down hull as it met the incoming swells from the sea.

  “Blow ballast tanks to full surface condition!” he ordered into the intercom.

  The last thing he needed was to inadvertently dive in only sixty feet of water. He moved over to the side of the conning tower cockpit and swept the river behind them with his binoculars. It was very hard to make out the fishing boat’s lights against the glare of the base lights.

  “ESM reports commercial radar set on the air, bearing 271,” spoke the box.

  “Very well,” replied the Captain.

  The fisherman had turned his radar on as he approached the sea channel; they would hold contact on the Al Akrab, but there would be no lights. He felt the submarine lighten as the ballast tanks were blown clear. The submarine stabilized on the surface with a rumbling rush of compressed air and sea foam along the sides as the bows and foredeck rose clear of the swells rolling in from the east.