The Iceman_A Novel

by P. T. Deutermann

  The exec didn’t reply, but instead snapped the talk-switch twice to indicate he’d gotten the message. Fifteen seconds later, the entire load of the six torpedoes forward began thumping out of the front of the boat. It took just over ninety seconds for them to all head out. Malachi stared into the darkness. Then he remembered the ship behind the leader.

  “Execute a left turn away,” he called down to the exec. “Maximum speed.”

  The boat heeled sharply as the diesels accelerated and began a swing to the left, away from what was about to happen half a mile in front of them. Then the torpedoes began to hit. One. Two. Three. Nothing. Nothing. Four. No visible fire. No giant explosions. Just the sounds of four solid hits, each raising a red pulse followed by a bright white fountain of water high into the air all along the starboard side of the battleship. To Malachi’s amazement, the monster kept going as if nothing had happened.

  Malachi ordered the gun crews and the lookouts to get below, and they cleared the decks in record time, having seen what was out there. As the boat swung left he watched the behemoth slide on by in the darkness, seemingly untouched. Behind the battleship a searingly bright white light switched on and began to probe the surface of the sea. Then a second one. Malachi took a bearing on the searchlight with the TDT and called it down to the tower.

  “Second big one,” he said, as Firefish began to gather speed in her run to safety. “Mark the bearing. Prepare to fire tubes seven through niner. Enter the same course and speed of the big guy. What’s the water depth?”

  “Eighty-five feet.”

  At that moment, one of those sixty-inch diameter carbon arc searchlights found Firefish. It passed over, and then swung back, bathing the frantically running submarine in its harsh, blue-white light. Immediately what seemed like a hundred guns opened up from the number-two ship. A firestorm of shells howled in, landing all around them. Long, for the moment, but not long enough. Shell fragments started to snap and whine off the conning tower.

  “Plot set!” the exec called.

  “Fire at will,” Malachi said. “Can we dive?”

  “Negative, Captain, another mile to go to one hundred feet.”

  More bits of shrapnel whined over the water, one close enough for Malachi to feel its hot breath. “Start zigzagging then, XO,” he called. “They’re on us with a searchlight and five-inch guns. Prepare to dive.”

  He checked one more time to make sure the gun teams were securely back inside and then scrambled over to the hatch just as that blue-white searchlight beam settled on the conning tower. He dropped down and slammed the hatch, completely blinded.

  “Emergency dive!” he yelled when he was halfway down the ladder. “Take her down to periscope depth. XO, lay below to supervise the dive.”

  The exec dropped down the ladder to the control room about the time Malachi hit the deck plates in the conning tower. He could barely see. The light from that five-foot-diameter searchlight was the same light created during a welding arc. It was designed to blind. The diesels shut down with a whoosh as the main induction valve was slammed shut. The boat was diving at nearly 20 knots, which meant that plane control would have to be perfect in only 80 feet of water. As water rose over the conning tower they could hear the thumps of near misses around the boat.

  Malachi stared at the depth gauge. Periscope depth was 60 feet of water. There would be only 20 feet of water beneath the keel until they got away from the mud banks. “Retract the sound heads,” he ordered, hoping the sonarmen could get them up before they got wiped off the hull.

  He checked the pit log: they were still doing 15 knots. Good news: they’d get under quick. Bad news: they’d probably overshoot the ordered depth. He also needed to turn the boat as soon as possible. With that searchlight on them, Jap spotters would have been able to determine their course. He wasn’t sure what that second big ship had been, but in these shallow waters they could ram Firefish with relative ease, even submerged. But not right now: he needed to leave the dive team below alone so they could truly concentrate on maintaining depth control. This was no time to go slamming into the bottom and then broaching in full view of two Jap capital ships. He checked the depth gauge: 50 feet. Then 60 feet. Then 65 feet. The numbers were fuzzy.

  The deck under his feet began to level. The pit log read nine knots. Still too fast but better than 15. Nobody in the conning tower said a word. They could hear the exec down in the control room issuing quiet but confident orders to level the dive and get back up to 60 feet without exposing the periscopes.

  Seventy feet. Catch her, XO, he thought, knowing there was no point to saying that.

  Sixty-five feet. Six knots, almost level again.

  Then, without being told, the exec put five degrees of left rudder on to turn away from the last observed course on the surface. Malachi felt a surge of pride. He’d trained them hard, and it was paying off. If they got out of this he’d have to make sure the exec was recognized as CO material. He may not have the killer instinct, but he was savvy and focused. The thumps up on the surface began to wander astern. Then he looked at the fathometer: 15 feet between the bottom and the boat’s keel. He thanked God it was dark topside, because in the daylight they would have been clearly visible to any aircraft.

  Over the next fifteen minutes the fathometer slowly, achingly slowly, began to show more water beneath the keel as the boat struggled to seaward of those mud banks. Now there was 25 feet beneath the keel. Then 40 feet. He closed his eyes to create the tactical picture: they were headed west northwest, six knots, away from the coast of Borneo. In a few more minutes they could get deeper. Once the depth began to really drop off they’d slow down to three knots to conserve battery. Then what?

  Get down to 200 feet, redeploy the sound heads and take a listen. Had the big boys left the area? And where the hell were the destroyers? Battleships didn’t go out to sea without a clutch of escorts around them.

  “You okay, Captain?” the radar operator asked. Malachi blinked open his eyes. The entire attack team was staring at him.

  “Yes,” he said. “The searchlights blinded me for a few minutes.” He looked at the fathometer: 180 feet and dropping.

  “Take us down to one hundred feet, XO,” he called down. “Nice job controlling the dive. That was perfect.”

  “XO: aye.” The exec sounded like he thought he hadn’t heard right.

  “Redeploy the sound heads,” he ordered. “Plotters: you had a track on that battlewagon. Assuming he kept going, tell me where he should be now.”

  “He was going twenty knots, Captain,” the senior plotter said. “If he didn’t slow down he’s long gone.”

  “We hit him with four torpedoes,” Malachi said. “I’m betting that, eventually, he has to slow down. Run the plot.” He turned to the bitchbox. “XO, secure from battle stations. Get all tubes reloaded as quickly as possible. We’re going to go look for that big boy.”

  He went below to make a head call and to get some coffee. As he passed back through Control he saw the fathometer reading 110, but it was on the fathoms scale, which meant they had six hundred feet plus beneath the keel. “Make your depth two hundred feet,” he ordered as he was climbing back up into the conning tower.

  “Planesmen,” he called over his shoulder. “That was slick wheel-work tonight. Thank you.”

  The two men at the planes broke into wide grins. The COB, who was standing behind them as the diving officer, cleared his throat and told them to mind their depth in a stern voice.

  Malachi smiled. The COB, not wanting big heads on the planes just now.

  They came back up to periscope depth thirty minutes later for a radar sweep. Nothing. Malachi checked the time: 0100. If he was going to chase a battlewagon in the dark, it would have to be on the surface.

  “What’s the battery status?”

  “Seventy-eight percent,” the OOD replied.

  “Okay, let’s surface, recharge, and run fast enough to find those guys. We’ll give it two hours.”

&n
bsp; Once on the surface they ran down the last-known course of the big boy, which indicated he was on his way to Singapore. They got out a radio report of having torpedoed a battleship, but without visible effect. They did claim the one tanker. Malachi went back up to the bridge while they ran at 20 knots through a relatively calm sea. There was no moon and a high, thin overcast. They could stay up until dawn, which should allow a full battery recharge.

  He ran back through the attack parameters on the battleship. He’d ordered 10 feet, which should have resulted in a 20-foot depth. Maybe that hadn’t been deep enough. Maybe the fish had all hit the big guy’s armor belt. Or prematured. Or the warheads just weren’t big enough. He did know that he’d hit that thing with four out of six fish. Should have done something. He called down and told the radar operator to give it one sweep every fifteen minutes.

  Just after one hour of running on the surface at 20 knots the radar operator reported a contact ahead. Three contacts, in fact. One large, the others smaller. Bearing 225, range 12 miles.

  “Moving?” Malachi asked.

  “I’ll need another sweep in three minutes,” the operator replied.

  “Don’t sweep it. Point the antenna down the bearing by hand, crank it by hand, and see what you get on the A-scope.”

  “Radar: aye.”

  One large, two others small. A wounded battleship, surrounded by destroyers? And where was that second big guy, the one with those searchlights?

  The relative wind was from ahead and it felt good, even at eighty-eight degrees. He had four lookouts posted above him, and the sound of the diesels was actually comforting. The question now was: what do I do when we get there?

  Radar called back up after five minutes. “Targets are stationary, Captain.”

  “I want to get into four thousand yards of them on the surface,” Malachi told the radar operator. “Give me a thousand-yard heads up.”

  “Radar: aye.”

  “Ask XO to come to the bridge.”

  A minute later the exec came up through the conning tower hatch.

  “Over here,” Malachi said, knowing that the exec wouldn’t be able to see anything in this darkness.

  “Yes, sir?” the exec asked when he’d felt the bullrail.

  “I think we hurt that big bastard,” Malachi said. “Radar indicates a large contact stopped and surrounded by two smaller contacts. Here’s what I want to do: we’ll go into four thousand yards on the surface, shift propulsion to the batteries, and see what we can see. Then we’ll submerge. This time I want to use the magnetic exploders, contact backup. I don’t want to get in close, not with all those tin cans. So I want low speed, a fourteen-foot-depth setting. The way they’re running deep, that should get the fish under his keel. No point in shooting at his armored sides. We’ll fire three fish on magnetic. If nothing happens, then we’ll change to contact only and change the depth setting accordingly.”

  “And once we shoot?”

  “We’ll wait and watch. If we don’t get results from the magnetics, we’ll shoot again on contacts only and then get the hell out of here.”

  “We don’t know where that second big guy is,” the exec pointed out.

  “Being a big guy, he won’t be a destroyer,” Malachi said. “If we’re gonna get a second chance at this guy, we need to stay hidden from the tin cans.”

  Malachi waited impatiently as the boat closed in to the cluster of contacts. They had only about an hour and a half until dawn, so they had to get this done before the Kawanishis came up.

  “What’s the range?” he asked over the bitchbox.

  “Four thousand, five hundred yards. Dead ahead.”

  “Switch to the battery. Prepare for a quick dive.”

  “Conn: aye.”

  He ordered the lookouts to go below. If one of those tin cans attending the wounded battleship spotted them, he didn’t want to wait for lookouts to get back in the house. Then he had a thought. “Send up the boatswain,” he ordered.

  A minute later Boatswain McReedie popped up out of the hatch and began feeling his way toward the front of the bridge.

  “Over here, Boatswain’s mate,” Malachi said. “I need you to man up one of these TDTs.”

  “Can’t see shit, Cap’n,” the boatswain said. “Even on red light. Damn, it’s dark.”

  “I understand,” Malachi said. “But you’re the only other guy who’s seen this battlewagon, so I want you to start looking. You’ve got a good eye. He should be about thirty-eight hundred yards dead ahead. You take this TDT; I’ll go over to the port side. We’re headed right for him.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  They crept through the dark toward the last reported radar position on the targets. It was the boatswain who finally saw them.

  “There,” he announced. “I see ’em.”

  “Bearing?” Malachi asked patiently. “There” didn’t tell him anything. The boatswain looked into the dimly lighted dial of the TDT. “Two five one,” he replied.

  “Visual bearing, two five one,” he said over the bitchbox.

  “Conn: aye. Two five one. The range is twenty-eight hundred yards.”

  “All stop,” Malachi ordered. Then he started looking hard. His eyes were fully night-adapted, but apparently not as sharp as the boatswain’s. Then he saw it: a large, black shape, with smaller gray shapes around it. The boat glided silently forward as it slowly came to a stop.

  “He’s over, Cap’n,” the boatswain said. “Big starboard list. There’s a tin can alongside, and another one out front, maybe setting up a tow.”

  Malachi stared hard at the image in the TDT optics. There was a thin, white column of steam coming from the big guy’s stack. He thought he could see red lights on the decks of the two ships. “How far over, Boatswain?”

  “Maybe twenty degrees,” the boatswain said. “Ain’t no lights in that big castle thing, either.”

  He’s lost electrical power, and he’s venting steam from his boilers. There was no fire, but there was definitely flooding. As they used to teach in damage control school, if you’re facing fire and flooding, deal with the flooding first. If you don’t, the fire won’t matter. Malachi knew what he had to do.

  “Come left and reverse course at five knots,” he ordered.

  “You’re not going to shoot?” the exec asked.

  “Not yet,” Malachi said. “He’s listing at twenty degrees to starboard. We need to get around this cluster and attack from his port side. That way we’re shooting at exposed hull, not armor belt.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the exec said. “Dive now or stay on the surface?”

  Malachi was torn. He could see better on the surface. But there was always the chance that some sharp lookout on one of those tin cans might see them, too. The boat’s speed would be the same either way as long as they were on the battery: slow.

  “How much time before nautical twilight?” Malachi asked.

  He waited for them to consult the navigator. “Just under an hour,” the exec replied, finally.

  “Okay, give me full power on the battery. You have a position plotted on the table. I want to stay two thousand yards away from them while we circle around. We’ll stay surfaced unless they spot us.”

  “Conn: aye,” the exec said.

  Malachi could feel the vibration as the boat came up to eight knots, the max speed they could get from electric motors on the battery. But it was silent, and that was important in these calm waters, especially at night. If he’d lit off the diesels, the Japs would have heard it and come a-running.

  It took twenty minutes to slip around behind the group of Jap ships and into a position where they could look at the big guy’s port side. It looked a lot like the starboard side to Malachi, but the boatswain said he could see red lead, an antifouling paint used universally by ships who sailed the Big Salt.

  “All stop,” Malachi ordered. “Visual bearing is zero two five true. Range?”

  “Two thousand, three hundred yards.”

  “Come
right to zero two five. Open the forward outer doors. Set running depth for ten feet. Speed slow. Contact exploders. I want to shoot two fish. If they hit, we’re leaving. If they don’t, we’ll try two fish, magnetic.”

  “Conn: aye, plot set.”

  “Fire when ready,” Malachi said. “Boatswain, lay below now, and thank you.”

  “Aye, sir,” the boatswain said and scrambled across the bridge to the conning tower hatch.

  One thump, then a second. He thought he could see the torpedoes’ wake as they streamed out toward the stricken battleship at 33 knots. And then a destroyer came up from behind the big guy and slid alongside.

  Shit, he thought. Running depth set for 10 feet ought to mean the fish would run at 18 or even 19 feet. How much did that damned tin can draw? Fourteen? Sixteen? He waited, staring hard through the TDT optics.

  A pulse of red light blazed beneath the destroyer, followed by a second one ten seconds later. An enormous waterspout rose into the air alongside the battleship. An even bigger bolus of white fire bloomed into the night air from one of the destroyer’s magazines as she broke in two alongside the battleship and capsized.

  “Goddammit,” Malachi swore. He reached for the bitchbox. “A tin can ate our fish. Prepare for a second attack. Two fish, depth twelve feet, magnetic exploders, speed high. Fire when ready on the same bearing.”

  He swung the TDT to the right of the battleship, and saw what he’d been expecting: a Jap destroyer was accelerating out from behind the battleship’s other side. In a minute he’d be heading in their direction. He felt the first thump, and then the second of the follow-up torpedoes.

  “Emergency dive,” he ordered. “Make your depth two five zero feet. Steer zero two five.” Then he ran for the hatch as the boat slanted down. As he was dropping into the hatch he felt, rather than heard, an underwater explosion in front of them. He waited for a second, but none came. Typical Mark fourteen, he thought.