Scorpion in the Sea

by P. T. Deutermann

  “How bad are the injuries?” Mike had asked, his voice a strained whisper after the Doc had finished working on his ankles.

  The Doc was one of those old-young men that seemed to inhabit the Chief Petty Officer ranks of the Navy. He was only thirty four, but looked about forty five. After the past hour, he looked about sixty. His face was haggard behind the multicolored hues of his black eye, and his eyes barely disguised his shock at the scale of the injuries.

  “We have four dead above decks, at least four dead in the main holes, and easily one hundred fifty serious injuries, Cap’n,” he said with a sigh. “I’m not counting superficial injuries like mine—but broken limbs, concussions, burns. The Baby Doc is working with a crew of four volunteers, and I’ve got these two guys. But we’re running outa stuff pretty quick, especially morphine and the other pain killers. I hope to Christ we got some help coming.”

  He adjusted his stance on the wet deck to remain upright, and saw Mike glance over at the inclinometer. Ten degrees to port.

  “I think we do, Doc. The helo that was with us has undoubtedly been on the radio to the carrier, and there were supposed to be two Spruances coming out in the next hour if they could get them past the wreck in the channel. I’m still waiting for the snipes to get me a diesel generator so we can use a radio.”

  The Chief Corpsman shook his head.

  “The snipes are pretty fucked up, Cap’n,” he said. “Anyone who was below decks is either busted up or walking around in shock. I saw the XO trying to round up people to patch and plug, but a lot of them just looked at him, even though they weren’t busted up. The four guys who died below were in two fireroom, where a steam line let go and —well, you can imagine. Nobody’s been down there yet—the temperature in the space is still over 300 degrees. One fireman got out by diving into the bilge and coming out the escape trunk, but the steam got the others.”

  He looked around.

  “It’s kinda weird—the ship don’t look that damaged, but she’s literally had the slats kicked out of her. I’ve seen hundreds of little leaks.”

  “Yeah, I’m very worried about the hundreds of little leaks,” Mike said, scanning the horizon again for signs of help.

  The two fishing boats who had been southwest of them were small specks on the horizon, and there were no pleasure craft around. The sun was slanting into the low western horizon. He looked back at the Doc.

  “As you make your rounds, get people to stuff something in the leaks, any kind of thing to slow down the water. Get ’em to tie rags around the busted piping, and stuff anything that’ll stick in any leak below the waterline. I’ve had no reports of a big hole anywhere, and I know they’re doing some shoring in Mount Fifty Three’s magazine, but it’s the little stuff that’s putting this list on. If it keeps up, we go down. It’s that simple, Doc. You’re ambulatory. Spread the word.”

  “I will and I have been, Cap’n,” said the Doc, somewhat defensively. “But people are dazed. They pick up a rag or some shit to stuff in a crack and they just look at it. But we’ll keep on it.”

  “Thanks, Doc, I know you’re hard pressed.”

  As the Doc hurried down below, Mike was startled by the sound of a gasoline engine starting up on the main deck. Mike realized that the Exec must have organized a portable fire pump gang. The P-250 fire pumps were gasoline engine driven, and could either pump water into fire hoses or suck water up out of a flooding space and pump it overboard, or both at the same time. Mike was comforted to hear the ragged little engine running at full blast. Goldsborough carried two more of the P-250’s, and he found himself waiting impatiently for the other two to light off.

  He leaned back in the chair. He was in the peculiar position of having almost nothing that he could do. Ordinarily he would have been sending a stream of orders to organized damage control teams, but with so many casualties, the DC organization had broken down completely. The Exec was out in the ship somewhere, organizing small teams of men who could function to attack the flooding problem below decks. The two Docs were trying to cover the ship to treat the wounded. The rest of the crew was dazed, crippled, or lying in shock at their stations. Mike kept passing down orders to anyone they could contact to work the flooding problem first. Beyond that, there was little he could do but wait.

  He had tried moving, but his head hurt so badly he could no longer even lift it. He wondered if he had suffered a concussion. The bandage on his head felt like a wet mattress, and from the looks the men on the bridge were giving it, he must have been a sight.

  The situation was indeed weird, just as the Doc had described it. Normally there would be a throng of men scrambling all over the ship, fighting the flooding problem, digging through debris, dewatering and de-smoking, and helping out the injured. There would be noise and confusion and officers milling around trying to restore order. But the ship was almost silent except for the noise of the firepump engines. There were too many injured men lying about the decks in small clumps, some bandaged, but most with their legs up on blankets as the two medical teams made their way through the ship and tried to make men comfortable and to fight off shock. Beyond the blown out windows and the mess on the deck, the bridge equipment had not suffered much. Mike remembered the wreckage of CIC, where large equipments had been bolted to a false deck in some cases, but topside, at least the part of it he could see, the guns were in place, the radars still on the mast, the lifelines tight. Only the clumps of men lying against bulkheads, or supine on a nest of extra lifejackets, showed the scale of the disaster.

  “Captain,” called one of the signalmen from the signal bridge. “I think I see a coupla heloes coming.”

  “From which direction, Sigs?” asked Mike.

  “From the east, Sir.”

  The carrier was east of them. The helo must have gone back, dumped its sonobuoys, and hopefully loaded up with doctors and medical supplies. The big SH3’s could carry up to eight men in the passenger compartment if they had to.

  Mike scanned the horizon. He tried to lift his binoculars out of their case, but the movement sent his head spinning. He finally saw the two dots coming in, low off the water. As he was watching, the Exec came back up on the bridge. His uniform was wet, filthy, and stank of fuel oil. He looked exhausted, and more than a little afraid.

  The dots materialized into heloes, who began their flare to a hover, approaching the port side, sliding back down towards the stern, and then they came sideways back up the port side to hover near the bow, slow dancing with each other as the pilots sized up the situation. Mike grabbed the Exec’s wet shirt, and pulled him nearer.

  “The fantail must be clobbered,” he shouted over the noise of the rotor blades. “Can you go forward and direct them to put their stuff on the fo’c’sle?”

  “Yes, Sir,” shouted the Exec.

  He took a deep breath, appeared to be about to tell Mike something, but then turned and disappeared out the back door to the pilothouse. Moments later he appeared on the forecastle, and helped to drag injured men back behind the gun mount. He then climbed up the steel rungs on the side of the Mount Fifty One and positioned himself where the pilots could see him, waving his arms slowly up and down to attract their attention. His wet shirt and trousers were whipping hard in the rotor downblast. He held his arms level like a crucifix, and then bent them inward, making the signal to advance.

  The first helo moved right in, as the Exec used arm signals to bring him up, advance him, and then hold him level over the deck that the pilot could no longer see, while the winch-man began to lower khaki clad men wearing life vests and protective head gear down to the destroyer’s deck. The first helo unloaded ten people, an emergency load, and then banked away to stand off. The second helo came in and unloaded three more people, and then several loads of medical supplies in gray boxes with red crosses stencilled on their sides. Both heloes then banked away back towards the darkening skies in the east.

  Mike watched from the bridge as the Exec gave the medical team a quick bri
efing, and then they all fanned out and began administering to the wounded littering the decks. The Exec came back up on the bridge with a doctor wearing the eagles of a Captain, Medical Corps, USN.

  “Cap’n,” said Farmer, “this is Captain Worthington, senior medical officer on the Coral Sea.”

  Mike blinked weakly at him, afraid to move his head very much. The doctor’s eyes widened when he saw the Captain’s blood smeared face, bandaged head, and ballooning ankles. When Mike leaned forward to greet him, he saw that the back of the Captain’s chair was soaked in blood. He did not shake Mike’s hand, but bent down immediately to examine Mike’s ankles while he talked.

  “Skipper,” he began, while undoing the splints, “the helo that was operating with you radioed in about an hour ago that you had been torpedoed by some kind of submarine out here, and that the explosion looked like a small nuke. They did a—sorry about that,” as Mike gasped in pain—“they did a quick survey, saw bodies and smoke everywhere, and the ship listing, and came running back to the farm to get some help for you. They’re on their way back now for some more people—how bad are your casualties?”

  Mike took a deep breath. “Eight dead and over a hundred fifty with serious injuries,” he said in a small voice. His vision was beginning to blur.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” exclaimed the doctor, stopping what he was doing with Mike’s bandages. He stood up, and unsheathed a small portable radio from his belt, pulled up an antenna, and spoke into it.

  “Big Mother 501, this is SMO, over?”

  He put the radio up to his ear, and then back to his mouth.

  “501, this is SMO, inform Mother that there are over one five zero, repeat one five zero casualties here, and we need all the medics we can get!”

  “And morphine-pain killers, and plugging and patching gear,” added Mike weakly from his chair. “And—”

  The doctor nodded at him silently while he listened to the radio, and relayed the additional requirements. He listened again, said, “Roger, wait one,” and then turned back to Mike.

  “The CO has asked me to ask you: is your ship in danger of sinking? Apparently the beach is bugging the hell out of him.”

  Mike took a deep breath, and looked at the Exec. The heloes had arrived before he could get a briefing from Farmer, but Goldy was continuing to list to port, and she was not rolling in the light chop that was beginning to blow up. She felt like an old, rotted, watersoaked log in a lake, responding to the wave action about half a wave late.

  “Yes, she is,” interjected the Exec, forcefully.

  He turned to Mike, his face tight with concern.

  “We have more casualties than that, Captain, more like two hundred fifty. All the same kind of injuries—broken legs, feet, ankles, or concussions. The people who can walk are zombies. They’re mostly in shock.”

  He shook his head as if to clear away all the bad news.

  “I’m sorry, I haven’t had time to brief you. We’re trying desperately to find able bodied men to plug holes and dewater the spaces, but all the machinery’s been dismounted down below—all the pumps, the fire pumps—we have no eductors, only the portable gear to dewater with. We’ve got lots of little smoky fires, and we’ve got fuel leaking into the main spaces.”

  He turned back to the doctor, whose mouth was agape as he tried to take it all in.

  “Tell Coral Sea that if we don’t get about a hundred able bodied guys aboard here in the next hour, Goldsborough will capsize with two hundred fifty guys with broken legs onboard.”

  The doctor swallowed hard, nodded, and then stepped out on the bridge wing to relay the message to the heloes, who were once again just white specs on the horizon.

  “Bad as that, XO,” said Mike weakly.

  “Yes, Sir, although I think she’ll go more than just an hour. The problem is this list. As the water gets deeper in the main spaces, more shit rolls downhill and she goes over more, and more water comes in—you know the problem. I’ve got some small teams trying to find leaks, but they’re mostly cracks in the hull, not big obvious holes. The shaft alleys are flooded, and two engineroom has a cracked main condenser—water’s halfway up to the upper level. We can’t get into the firerooms, so God knows what we’ve got going on down there. You can’t see it from here, but the stern’s way down; water’s near the lifelines. The after MG room is flooded, and the storerooms along the port side. I had a guy safe the depth charges—remember that ship in World War II that didn’t, and killed all their survivors?” He paused.

  “I’ll tell you what. I think we better get the CO2 life rafts down off the racks, inflate them, and tie them alongside and start getting these wounded over the side.”

  “We can’t save her?” cried Mike in an anguished voice.

  The Exec looked down at the deck.

  “No, Sir,” he said softly, “I really don’t think we can. If we had the whole crew, or most of it, we could give it a try. But if the few able bodied guys we do have work on the flooding, and lose, the wounded don’t stand a chance. I don’t have enough guys to fight the flooding and get the wounded into rafts. I guess it’s your call, though.”

  “Thanks a bunch, XO,” said Mike, trying for a little levity, but not succeeding.

  He looked over at the inclinometer, eleven degrees now, and then back at the eastern horizon. There was nothing out there, no contacts, no merchants, no fishermen, no pleasure boats. Just the waiting sea, shimmering in the fading sunlight, and darkening to the east as the sun went down behind them. Eighty percent of his crew were casualties. And he still did not know what had hit them.

  The doctor came back into the pilothouse. Two of his team came through the door and began to treat the injured on the deck.

  “I’ve relayed the essence of that back to the carrier, Captain,” he said. “I’m sure the heloes can run relays; it only took thirty minutes to fly back here. They’re gonna try. And they said there are two ships coming out.”

  He looked around the bridge, and then back at Mike, trying to gauge Mike’s condition from the pallor of his face, and trying to judge the amount of pain from Mike’s voice.

  “Your doc give you something for the pain?”

  “I took some Tylenol,” said Mike.

  “That’s not going to do shit,” said the doctor, reaching for his bag.

  “I can’t take anything stronger; I’ll pass out, and then this young man will be in charge, and he’ll probably fuck it up,” said Mike with a weak grin. “Besides, I’ve got a decision to make.”

  “Yes, Sir,” said the doctor, closing up his bag. “Let me look at these guys up here, and then I better change that dressing on your head, or you’ll pass out from loss of blood. You guys keep this radio. It’ll beep if someone calls you.”

  He handed the radio to the Exec, and turned to join his team. He looked around at the bridge again.

  “Sweet Jesus,” he muttered.

  Mike leaned his head back on the soggy chair. He had to sit at an angle in the chair due to the list. He closed his eyes for a moment.

  “Captain,” said the Exec, quietly. “We gotta decide.”

  “Yeah, I know. OK. Get all the wounded moved out onto the 01 level, amidships, or onto the main deck forward. Two groups. Have some guys break down the inflatables, and get them opened up along the port side, like you said. She’s at eleven degrees now. If she gets over to twenty, we’ll start getting everybody off. We can use the stokes litters to put twenty men to a raft; they won’t be in them long, and once she gets to twenty degrees, we may not have much time. But I don’t want to abandon her just yet; let’s see what the carrier comes up with. They got 4000 guys on Coral Sea. And two Spruances coming. The Navy didn’t believe us before, but it’s usually pretty good at coming to the rescue. Tell the troops we’re getting them assembled in one place so the docs don’t have to look for them all over the ship. Use Chiefs, if we have any left, to get the rafts down. Tell that Captain medico what we’re doing. Go on, you better get on it. When the hel
oes show up, we’ll peel a couple of guys off to help with the liferafts, and the rest of them can go do some damage control. Now: hand me the deck log before you go down below.”

  The Exec retrieved the deck log from the tilting chart table and handed it to the Captain, along with a pen. Mike promptly dropped it, and the Exec retrieved it after chasing it across the sloping deck.

  “Thanks, XO. You’ve done great, as always. Go get people set up.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” replied the Exec. He looked as if he wanted to say something else, his face working, but then he turned and went out the starboard bridge wing door.

  Mike flipped open the deck log, and found the last entries of his hold fire order on the depth charges and the full rudder turn. There had been no other entries. He clicked on the pen, and began writing. He wanted to explain the final, right turn. It was suddenly very important. His battered brain told him that his final maneuver had saved his ship, although what he saw around him put a whole new meaning to the word saved. Half an hour later, the pen slipped out of his hand as he passed out; his head drooped onto his chest, and drops of blood from the soaked bandage began to drip down onto the pages of the deck log. In the gathering darkness on the bridge, no one noticed.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  USS Goldsborough, 1930

  Mike awoke to noise, a great deal of noise. There were many people around him, moving around his chair, and some of them were talking to him. He was bewildered by all the noise and the fact that he could hear all of them but understand none of them. He was unable to move his head at all, and had to look up at the figures around him from under his eyebrows. It was both dark and light inside the pilothouse, the darkness of night stabbed by the dazzling beams of carbon arc spotlights blazing on both sides of the ship.

  He tried to move but several hands restrained him, voices saying, easy, easy, Jesus, look at his head, we need to get that thing offa there, and then they were picking him up and putting him down in a steel meshed Stokes litter, a stretcher molded to fit the human body and made of wire mesh instead of canvas fabric, with the frame of the litter draped in kapok flotation material. Hands strapped him in while other hands changed the heavy bandage on his head. He was amazed that there was no pain when they picked him up; he could no longer feel his ankles, and his head felt like a wooden block, even when they pulled the bloody bandage out of his matted hair. He could hear it, but not feel it. No pain at all. He tried to talk, but his lips were stuck together, his face felt crusted, even his eyelids seemed to stick together. He could hear the noise of a helicopter outside, maybe even two, and as they strapped him into the litter. By turning his head slightly, he could see the darkened bulk of a ship right alongside out the starboard pilothouse door, a bright red running light shining steadily amongst the dazzle of the blue-white spotlights. He moved his head slightly the other way, and saw the massive shadow of what had to be another ship out the port side door, the edges of its silhouette sparkling with lights.