The Iceman

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Captain, the radar can’t see anything inside of one thousand yards,” the XO reported. “Recommend we clear the convoy until conditions improve.”

  “I concur, XO; get us out of here.”

  The boat continued to turn, past the bearing of the final ship in the convoy and out to clear water behind the lumbering parade of 10,000-ton steel monsters. The relative wind rose as they headed back east. Between the sheets of spray from the bow and the downpour from the skies, Malachi was totally blind. He nudged the boatswain, and then they both went down the hatch into the conning tower itself. Just opening the hatch had caused a minor deluge within the conning tower, accompanied by curses.

  “Set up for an end-around,” Malachi ordered as he shucked his soaked oilskins. “Get us five miles north of the convoy’s base course and then parallel that course until we can get a better picture.”

  “Anything would be a better picture,” the exec noted, pointing to the PPI scope. Malachi saw that the entire scope was just a blotch of dim, white light, no matter what range setting the operator switched to.

  “What’s an end-around?” the boatswain asked, never having been in the tower during an attack.

  “Jap maru convoys can only go about ten, twelve knots,” the exec said. “If we miss an attack, we drive away from the convoy, then parallel their course and come to twenty knots. Once we get ahead of them, then we sneak back in for another try.”

  “And right now we’re driving away?”

  “Right. They’re headed roughly northwest. We’re headed due north, and then we’ll turn to match their course and make our end-around run.”

  “Pretty neat,” the boatswain said.

  “Yep, and now it’s time for all boatswain’s mates to lay below,” the exec said. “As you may have noticed, there’s not a lot of room here.”

  “Oh, yes, sir, I’m sorry.”

  “Once you get below,” Malachi said, “you can tell everybody what we’re up to.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll do that.” The boatswain dropped down the ladder to the control room.

  “As if we could stop him,” the exec said, and the attack team all grinned.

  “How’s the radar?” Malachi asked.

  “A little better, Captain, but we need a few more miles of offset before I’ll be able to see the formation again.”

  “Okay, we’ll keep going. Is it my imagination or do I feel a swell building?”

  “Yes, sir, I believe we’re coming out from under the lee of Brunei. This may be a bigger storm than we thought.”

  They waited, smoking cigarettes and increasingly looking for a handhold as the boat, running at 20 knots, began to roll. Firefish, with her pointed bow so close to the water, would cut through waves like butter, but a deep Pacific Ocean swell would roll her like a slick log. By the time the radar operator could again pick up the convoy, the boat was rolling trough twenty degrees in each direction.

  “The formation looks like it’s coming apart,” the radar operator announced. “They’re currently at nine miles, bearing one niner zero from us.”

  “Control, Conn,” Malachi called on the bitchbox. “I’m going to open the conning tower hatch. Once the pressure in the boat stabilizes, tell me what the barometer is reading.”

  “Control: aye.”

  A plotter went up the ladder and opened the hatch to the bridge. Immediately there was a blast of fresh, if seriously wet air streaming through the hatch and into the boat. As that subsided, Control called back. “Niner seven one millibars, Captain.”

  “Suspicions confirmed,” Malachi said. “There’s a typhoon coming.” He looked at the fathometer, which read 600 fathoms, or 3,600 feet of water beneath the keel.

  “Okay,” he said. “This mission is a bust. We’ll slow to five knots and head into the swell to stop this rolling. Once the batteries are fully charged, we’ll go down and ride this bitch out. Dammit!”

  All those days of waiting, he thought as he went below. And nothing to show for it except one possible hit on the back end of an oil tanker. Now they’d have to hunker down as deep as they could and ride out what was coming in relative peace and quiet. The tanker convoy was on its own and probably in great danger. What a waste of time.

  It took them seven hours to cram as much energy into the batteries as they could hold, which was good, because by that time, the seas were becoming truly monstrous. Malachi had posted an OOD and two lookouts when he’d first turned into the train of swells, but pulled them back down two hours later because they’d had to lash themselves to the periscope shears to keep from being swept overboard. At a depth of 200 feet it was much quieter but still not exactly calm. They could feel the regular pulse of the swells and the sonar gear had been turned off because of all the ambient noise. Malachi ordered the boat into electrical conservation mode, turning off as much gear as they could and running the air-conditioning system for an hour on, an hour off. He wasn’t sure how long they’d have to stay down. Just before they had submerged the radioman brought him a weather advisory saying there might be a typhoon approaching his patrol area.

  The question now was what to do once the storm passed. Go back to Brunei Bay? The convoy may have turned back to seek shelter there once they realized a typhoon was chasing them. If so Firefish would get another chance to do some good work. If not, he still had all but two of his torpedoes. They’d gotten one message off to Perth that they had hit one tanker and were now executing storm evasion just to the northwest of Borneo. The operations officer had some doubts about whether the message actually got out with the atmosphere so badly disturbed. Perth might move them to another patrol area, but the boat’s fuel situation might not permit that, and then they’d have to return to base. Malachi could just imagine what the admiral would make of his least favorite skipper turning in an empty-handed patrol.

  The effects of the typhoon intensified after twelve hours of submergence. They had rung up three knots and were steering a course into what seemed like the direction from which the storm was coming, but the boat was being pushed around with increasing energy. Malachi ordered them down to 250 feet, which provided some relief. He couldn’t imagine what it was like up on the surface. He’d experienced nothing like this in his S-boat, even though the North Atlantic was notorious for savage winter storms. The batteries were down to forty percent and the atmosphere in the boat was beginning to get heavy. He wasn’t ready to release air from the ballast system into the boat yet, but he knew they’d have to eventually if they couldn’t go back up for another twelve hours.

  In the event it turned out to be more like eighteen hours before they could go up to periscope depth and take a look as daybreak broke. The seas were confused and the sky still overcast, with a low scud flying across the sea at about a thousand feet. They put the radar mast up and checked for steel. There was still a great deal of interference from the leaping waves, but no contacts. The relief when they surfaced and opened up the hatch was immense. The giant swells were gone so the boat wasn’t moving around so much. The engineers lit off the diesels and took a brief suction on the interior of the boat to draw down the concentration of CO2. This caused a small tornado in the conning tower until the snipes switched over to the main induction pipe to feed the diesels. The batteries were dangerously low, which meant they’d have to stay on the surface during the day. Malachi was counting on the residue of the typhoon to keep Jap air resources on the ground.

  He ordered the boat back to the area where they’d hit that one tanker. If she was still afloat they could finish her off. The radar finally picked up a single, small contact toward the end of the day. Malachi elected to remain on the surface as dusk fell and was finally rewarded by the sight of an overturned ship. She was upside down in the water with only her stern quarter visible. Malachi called the exec to the bridge to get a picture.

  “That’s the one we hit, I think,” he said.

  The exec took some pictures as the light dwindled. “How so?” he asked.

  “
She’s missing her rudder and propeller,” he replied. “We fired from astern. Without a rudder, the typhoon probably pushed her into the trough and then capsized her.”

  As if to confirm his theory a sudden wind shift brought the stink of bunker fuel oil streaming over the uneasy sea. Malachi ordered a course change away from the wreck. He didn’t need oil fouling his various cooling water intakes.

  “Get me a course back to Brunei Bay,” he said. “Let’s see if they turned around.”

  By nine that night they were approaching the entrance to Brunei Bay. They’d been navigating by taking hand-cranked radar bearing shots at the coast of Borneo to avoid sending any radar signals into the bay or the surrounding airfields. Finally it was time to paint the bay itself. Malachi came down from the bridge to the conning tower.

  “Three contacts,” the operator called out. “Pretty good sized, too. They appear to be stationary just outside the bay.”

  “Anything that looks like a destroyer?” Malachi asked.

  “Negative, sir. I’d say tankers.”

  “Down the radar,” he ordered, and then went over to the navigation plot. They were just off the tip of the submerged delta, with mud to the east and deep water to the west. Where was the rest of the convoy, he wondered. Still out there on the track to Japan? Scattered by the storm? He studied the chart.

  “Okay,” he said. “I want to set up an ambush position five miles northwest of here. I’m assuming these guys will come back out and try again for Empire waters. We’ll stay on the surface through the night. If they do come out before dawn, we’ll attack on the surface. The seas are subsiding, so we’ll use torpedoes and guns with incendiaries. I want single radar sweeps in a small wedge centered on that cluster of anchored ships. Once we’re in position, shut down three of the four diesels to conserve fuel. We’re going to call this the hurry up and wait patrol. I’m going topside.”

  Back up on the bridge he felt a little better about their situation. The night was clear, but still no moon; the weather was only going to get better. On the other hand, their fuel situation was not going to get better. They had enough to stay up here for another day or so before having to start back to Perth. The Brits had told him that the Germans were using specially configured U-boats to act as mobile refueling ships for the U-boats on distant station. They called them milch cows, but it meant that their boats could stay on station instead of having to drive thousands of miles back to base. I’ll have to suggest that to the admiral, and then he laughed, a short, sarcastic bark that startled the lookouts. He sent down for a reheated greaseburger and some coffee, and then lit up a cigarette, using the boatswain’s technique of lighting it in the sound-powered phone box.

  It was the COB who brought him his sandwich. He then went back to the hatch to get the mug of coffee being handed up from below. “Hamburgers are all gone,” the COB reported. “So there was a choice of Spam and Spam, so I chose Spam. Mustard, mayo, hot sauce.”

  “Great choice,” Malachi said. He then explained to the chief what they were doing, besides just waiting around for the Japs. Then he waited for the COB to get to what he wanted to talk about.

  “The XO,” the COB began.

  “What about the XO?” Malachi asked, as if he didn’t know.

  “He seems really down. Upset about something. Crew’s beginning to talk. They can’t get close to you, so he’s been the Friend in High Places for them. Now they’re worried.”

  “The Iceman has done something to their friend in court?”

  “Something like that.”

  Malachi explained what the problem was. It was the COB’s turn to bend down and light a cigarette in the phone box. He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he did.

  “You know, Skipper, if you’d told me about that when it happened I could have grounded out a lot of this static. The guys simply don’t get you. Firefish’s been the hottest boat in Perth since you came aboard, but you’re always up on a mountain somewhere, like God hiding in the clouds.

  “I’m the captain,” Malachi said. “I am God.”

  The COB grinned in the darkness. “I beg your pardon, your Holiness. But you know what I’m talking about, surely.”

  “Of course I do, COB,” Malachi said. “Consider it a character flaw. I’ve been this way since I joined the fleet, way back in nineteen thirty. I’m a solitary man. No wife, no family, no relatives. I can’t fake it just because I’m in command. I don’t sleep—did you know that?”

  “Jesus H. Christ, Captain, who doesn’t know that?”

  “Well, you try to convince your brain to shut down when it doesn’t want to. I have some melancholy personal history, COB. It’s not for publication. It’s my business and no one else’s. But I hear what you’re telling me about the XO.”

  “He’ll be leaving once we get back, then?”

  “I think so,” Malachi said. Then he turned to face the COB in the darkness. “He’s a fine officer. Brave, too. He’s in for a Navy Cross for that fire. But that’s not me. I’m a killer, Chief Torpedoman O’Bannon. That’s why I’m here. I’m going to kill Japs, kill Japs, and then kill more Japs, just like Halsey ordered us to. I am what and who I am. I know that captains are supposed to be more than that: a leader, compassionate, fair, encouraging, sympathetic to the crew’s problems, a communicator, reassuring in time of danger, protective of the command. I wish I could rise to those standards, but I can’t. The crew’s got it right. I am The Iceman.”

  The COB stared at him in the darkness.

  “I appreciate your candor and your advice, COB,” Malachi continued. “Where I can, I will follow it. Firefish is a good boat, and the crew is one of the best out here. I’m the flawed one, but there it is.”

  The chief took a last drag on his cigarette and rubbed it out under the bullrail of the bridge. “I apologize if I upset you, Captain.”

  “Not at all, COB. I thank you, as always.”

  “That last part, Captain? This crew being one of the best out here? It would mean something, I think, if you maybe told them that.”

  Malachi stared out into the darkness for a moment. “Absolutely, COB. You’re absolutely right.”

  The bitchbox transmit light lit up. “Contacts are moving, Captain.”

  “Battle stations, guns and torpedoes,” Malachi replied. The COB hurried below.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Malachi went down into the conning tower a few minutes later to take a look at the radar picture. The operator said one contact was definitely standing out to sea; a second had moved from its position toward the bay’s entrance. The third was still stationary.

  “Nothing else out there?” Malachi asked. “No destroyers approaching?”

  “There’s a big rain squall out to the west,” the operator pointed out. “If there are ships in that thing, we couldn’t see ’em.”

  “Okay, keep an eyeball on that sector. In the meantime, help the plotters set up for torpedo attacks on the ones that are moving.”

  The exec arrived in the tower to see what was going on. Malachi told him what he wanted to do, which was torpedo the two contacts that were in motion. If the third one stayed behind in the bay, he wanted to go in and use the five-inch to set him on fire. He showed the exec the large white blob returning from the rain squall. “Keep an escape course handy in case that spawns a couple of tin cans,” he said. “Shortest route to deep water.”

  “Yes, sir,” the exec said.

  “I’ll use TDTs to feed the computer visual bearings, assuming I can see them. Otherwise, radar track, conventional attack. Two fish per target. Depth set for six feet, speed high, contact exploders.”

  “Got it, Captain.”

  Malachi refilled his coffee mug and went back topside. The five-inch crew were out on the foredeck, and the boatswain and his team were lovingly feeding the 20mm cannon. Malachi uncovered the two TDT binoculars on either side of the bridge and then waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  “What’ve we got, Skipper?” t
he boatswain asked from the 20mm cannon platform up behind the periscope shears.

  “Three tankers who made it back into port after that storm,” Malachi said. “Two are under way, coming back out. Number three isn’t moving yet.”

  “Is it true we sank that one we shot at the other night?”

  “The storm turned him upside down because we blew his rudder and propeller off, so I guess we can claim him.”

  “Damn right, we can,” the boatswain asserted.

  The bitchbox light went red. “Captain, the lead ship is coming straight out of Brunei Bay, course three fifty, speed twenty. Recommend we come to one eight zero, speed ten to intercept for a torpedo attack.”

  “Speed twenty? That’s not a tanker.”

  “Concur, Captain. Maybe we need to send down the gun teams?”

  “Good call, XO,” Malachi said. “Set us up for a surface torpedo attack. You run the attack. Get into about fifteen hundred yards and let him have it. Then head for number two.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” the exec said. Malachi began to scan the darkness through one of the target data transmitter binoculars to see if he could spot the oncoming contact. Another cruiser? He called for a relative bearing to the target.

  “One seven five true, three three zero relative,” the exec responded. “Range, two thousand one hundred yards.”

  Malachi strained his eyes to see something, anything in the darkness, training the TDT to the port bow and swinging it through a ten-degree arc. The exec would be focused on the torpedo attack geometry. Malachi’s job right now was to make sure the boat didn’t drive under the bows of the contact. Suddenly, the boatswain erupted.

  “Holy shit, holy shit: look at that thing!”

  The boatswain had acquired a set of binoculars. Malachi turned to see where the boatswain was looking, and then swung the TDT to the right ten degrees. The unmistakable silhouette of a Japanese battleship filled the optics. Towering pagoda superstructure. Enormous black gun barrels nested forward in two huge steel turrets. A city block wide. Huge, black, silent, and coming on like a moving mountain. He reached for the bitchbox. “XO, it’s a battleship. Fire all six forward when the solution locks. Change running depth setting to ten feet. Now!”