Scorpion in the Sea

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Mike, I’ll try to think of something. Maybe talk to one of the helo squadron CO’s. But I can’t go through channels or we’re gonna get caught. But I’ll try. I know Mike Sinclair from a couple of golf games; he’s got a LAMPS helo squadron. He might be able to send a guy out, but he’ll have to come out there ignorant.”

  “I’ll take anything I can get, Commodore,” Mike said.

  “Hey, don’t forget the carrier—he has heloes, too.”

  “Yes, Sir, but they usually fly the airwing off before they come into port. He might be fresh out of fling-wings by the time I see him.” He paused for a second. “At this juncture I’m still hoping we’re both entirely wrong.”

  “I know, Mike. I hope we’re wrong, too. But the more I think about it, the more I don’t think we are. And if we’re not wrong, you and Goldsborough are all that’s between Coral Sea and a major tragedy for the U.S. Navy. What do the snipes call it—a no-shitter? I’m afraid you’re going to have to forget the past two years of admin, politics, paperwork, and liberty weekends and pare down to the bleeding bone. Get on the 1MC and brief your crew as soon as you’re clear, and then get into Condition Two right away—tonight. Button her up like you were at Condition One, and keep a damage control team manned up at all times; the first hint you get of a contact, get your entire damage control organization into Condition One. And—but, shit, I’m telling you your business. Gimme a call just before you sail if you need anything.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” said Mike, and hung up.

  He called for the Exec to come up so he could pass on the Commodore’s arrangements and review their plan for bringing the ship’s readiness up as soon as they were clear of the channel. He reminded himself to call Diane if he could before they sailed. As he waited for the Exec, he thought about the upcoming operation. The Commodore’s warnings on damage control readiness had brought home the grim possibility that things could get nasty out there in a hell of a hurry. He recalled the vivid images from the Victory at Sea documentary films, of bigger ships than Goldsborough blown in half by a single submarine torpedo, their seemingly impervious armored steel hulls being punched up effortlessly by a thundering sea, bending first upwards in the middle before settling back down into the fatal, V-shaped sag that preceded a swift slide into the deep, with everybody aboard still able trying to get to their feet even as the sea sucked them down to spend eternity, entombed in sealed, flooded steel compartments.

  He knew, without ever having experienced it, that the reality of a sea fight was a far cry from the antiseptic playacting of the annual fleet battle problems. He wondered how the crew would react. The typical Navy destroyer went to sea with last year’s high school class, the average age aboard ship being around nineteen. Outside, in the passageway, he heard the 1MC order the crew to set the special sea and anchor detail, and the familiar cold worm moved in his guts. It was one thing to be Captain at the head of the wardroom table. It was quite another to be Captain on the bridge, getting underway for what might be the battle of his life, of his ship’s life.

  The Exec knocked on the door and came in. Mike briefed him on the Commodore’s arrangements, and went through the details of how they would tighten up the ship’s readiness as soon as they were clear of the river entrance. The Exec, as usual, wrote everything down in his little green notebook.

  “Now,” said Mike, “I have to figure out how much to tell the troops—how much or how little.”

  “Yes, Sir,” said the Exec. “I think they need to know what we think is going on. Maybe hold back on the Libyan aspect, but the rest of it—I’d just tell ’em right up front.”

  “I agree, XO,” Mike said, nodding his head. “I’m going to lay it out for them, tell ’em we may be full of shit, but then again we may be right, and, if so, that we’ll be the only thing between Coral Sea and a very bad afternoon.”

  “Operationally, nothing beats the whole truth, Cap’n,” the Exec said, closing his notebook. “I’d tell ‘em the ‘evidence’ too.”

  “Yeah, I will. I think what I want to do is get on the 1MC and brief the whole crew, but then have a meeting in CIC with the principal officers to lay out our search and attack tactics.”

  The Exec got up. “I’ll make an announcement that you’re going to speak to them about fifteen minutes after we secure from sea detail. We going out in a deception mode?”

  “Yes. I think you were right about that. I’ll want to lock one shaft, shut down the military radars—just use the Raytheon, and keep the sonar and fathometer silenced until the right time.”

  “When is that, Sir?”

  Mike looked up at him. “I’m damned if I know yet, XO, but it’ll probably come to me.”

  The Exec grinned. Mike threw up his hands.

  “Probably when we have a confirmed contact on the carrier,” he said. “Right now I need to study the hydrographic charts very carefully, and I’ll need Linc’s PC. The sub can’t know yet, or shouldn’t know, anyway, that the carrier’s escorts are all going to leave her when she turns west, so the bad guys should be hiding, initially. In that water depth, they’ll need to use the bottom topography, and my guess is that they’ll be on the west or inshore side of any good shadow zone. Let the carrier approach, which they can easily hear and classify, go over top, and then rise off the bottom and fire. If she had escorts, they would all be looking out ahead of the carrier, not behind her, especially one hour out of home port. It’s not like there’s been any warning.”

  The Exec nodded. “That’s the part I really don’t like about this whole deal. For fear of looking silly, nobody’s willing to tell the carrier he may be walking into something.”

  “It may indeed be silly, XO. Part of me is hoping that we are indeed a bunch of dummies who’ve talked themselves into a wolf in the woods. We’re taking a chance that we may look quite the fools come tomorrow night, especially to the crew.”

  “That’s why we get paid all this extra money, Cap’n,” the Exec said. “To take all these chances.”

  “There you go, XO. Now, I gotta make a phone call.”

  The Exec nodded and slipped out the door. Mike dialed Diane’s home phone number. She answered on the first ring.

  “Yes?” she said anxiously.

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Mike said. “A pretty girl who says yes.”

  “Oh, stop,” she said. “I was afraid you’d leave without calling me.”

  She paused for a second, and then let it all out in a rush. “Mike, I’m scared. Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I was determined to keep a stiff upper lip, pretend this is just an ordinary underway. But you guys could get hurt, or worse. I couldn’t stand that, not now, not after—”

  “I know, Diane, I know,” said Mike softly. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m a little scared too, but I have to tell you, I’m more scared of fucking it up than I am of getting hurt.”

  “Oh, Mike, you need to stop worrying about how your actions are going to look. You just focus on getting that bastard out there before he gets you, your ship, and your crew. Don’t let all the Commodore’s lectures about getting along politically interfere with your instincts. If all those ribbons you wear mean anything at all, they show that you have a fighter’s instincts. Listen to them.”

  “Yeah, I know. But Vietnam was a long time ago. And this whole thing may yet be a phantom of our imaginations.”

  “But if it isn’t, a lot of guys are depending on good old Goldsborough and Mike Montgomery, and the hell of it is, they don’t even know it.”

  “Including, I guess, even your husband.”

  “He’s not my husband,” she said defiantly. “Not any more. Not for a long time. I had to meet you to find that out, and now you’re going off to sea on this crazy mission. Oh, listen to me. I’m sorry. I sound like I need a widow’s walk up on the roof of these quarters so I can pace around up there until I see you coming back in. Oh, Mike, I’m so glad you called.”

  “I love you, Diane,” he whispered.

 
“I love you, Mike. Please, please keep safe and come back to me.”

  “Count on it, Love.”

  There was a knock on the door, and the IC-man stuck his head in.

  “Outside line coming down, Cap’n,” he announced.

  Mike waved his acknowledgement and the IC-man closed the door.

  “Gotta go,” he said to the phone.

  “I heard him,” she said, her voice under tight control. “I’ve hated those words for too many years. I’ll be right here, waiting.”

  “I know. I love you,” he said, and then the line went dead as the IC-gang disconnected on the pier and pulled the line aboard.

  FIFTY-NINE

  USS Goldsborough, Mayport approaches, Thursday, 8 May; 1715

  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.”