“No idea, Charlie, but we’ll find out soon enough.” He pointed ahead, where a yellowish glow reflected off a low-hanging cloud of smoke, seeming intolerably bright in the dimmed-out town. The Electric Boat Company was the largest submarine shipyard in the world, now running around the clock to turn out the boats the country needed so desperately for the war in the Pacific. Thousands of workers streamed through its carefully guarded gates three times a day. By the time the line of buildings that was the landward face of Electric Boat appeared on their right, Jack found himself caught in a mass of cars that moved at a crawl, then stopped altogether. He cursed loudly, swung the jeep into a side street, and sprang out, with Andrews close on his heels.
The guards at the gate nearest the pier were jittery because of the fire and seemed inclined to keep Jack and Charlie out, but in the end they could not argue with their passes. All the officers assigned to Manta had been in and out every day for the past six weeks, keeping track of the thousands of details involved in fitting out and manning a new warship and filling out the even more numerous forms required by Washington.
As they picked their way across one of the railroad sidings that interlaced the giant shipyard, Jack was seized by a sense of foreboding. The Manta was tied up at one of the finger piers, along with two other Gato-class submarines that were near completion. Because she was already undergoing sea trials, she was the outboard of the three new boats. And it was increasingly apparent that the fire, which still lit the night sky, was somewhere very near the Manta. Jack broke into a run and heard his third officer’s feet pounding right behind him.
A crowd of onlookers blocked their way. Jack shouldered his way through them, muttering apologies, and stopped as the full peril of the situation struck him. The incredibly swift expansion of the shipyard after Pearl Harbor had led to a severe shortage of space. The management of Electric Boat had responded by building a series of temporary two-story wooden structures on the piers. One of these, on the very pier that Manta was moored to, was engulfed by fire. Worse, the gusty northwest winds were blowing the flames directly toward the nest of submarines. It seemed to Jack, in the fitful light, that the paint was already blistering on the boat closest to the pier and he could imagine the damage being done to the complex and delicate machinery inside its three-quarter-inch mild steel hull.
He swung his eyes to his boat. A knot of sailors stood on the foredeck staring at the efforts of the firefighters, and Jack thought he could see the duty officer, a kid named Fuller, on the bridge. As far as he could tell, none of them was doing anything more than gawk. Strictly speaking, Jack had been out of line to station an anchor watch on Manta at all. Until she was commissioned, she was the responsibility of the builders, not of the Navy. The excuse he had given for leaving a skeleton crew aboard was that it would help familiarize the men with their new berth; the truth was, he simply felt more secure knowing that the boat was manned. Now he had good reason to be glad of his caution.
He stood at the edge of the bulkhead and shouted to his men, but no one heard above the noise of wind and fire. The usual way to board, along the pier and across the decks of the other two subs, was obviously out. He scanned the edge of the bulkhead; if necessary, he would swim. That might not be necessary, though. Fifty feet along, an iron ladder led down to the river, and he thought he saw a dinghy in the deep shadows at its foot. He grabbed Charlie’s arm, pointed, and shouted in his ear. Moments later they were in the dinghy, and moments after that they were clambering up the tumble home of the submarine, helped by eager hands from the crew. Jack’s climb to the bridge was made harder by a right shoe full of river water.
“Right, Fuller, I relieve you,” he snapped. “Report.”
“Aye, aye, sir. The maneuvering watch is at its stations. The men on deck are line-handlers.” His shoulders slumped a fraction from attention, and a look of worry crossed his face. “I didn’t know what to do, skipper. I’ve never gotten a boat this size under way, but I figured if worse came to worst, I’d rather go aground on the other side somewhere than watch her burn to the waterline.”
Jack clapped him on the shoulder. The kid couldn’t be more than twenty-two, barely old enough to buy a beer, but in an emergency he would have to be ready to take responsibility for the ship and the lives of her crew. By the time Jack was through with him, he would be. “Good work, Fuller. I’ll want you on the bridge with me. Charlie, stand by in the maneuvering room.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Andrews slid quickly through the hatch and disappeared.
Jack thumbed the button on the squawk box and shouted, “Maneuvering!”
“Maneuvering, aye, aye,” came the distorted reply.
“This is the captain. Prepare to answer bells on four engines.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” The engine-room jockeys must have been hoping for that; the command was answered instantly by a whine as number-one diesel turned over and caught with a roar, followed rapidly by the other three giant engines.
He cupped his hands and leaned over the metal fairing that protected the bridge. “Line-handlers!” he shouted. “Single-up fore and aft!” The Manta was linked to her neighbor by twelve thick hawsers, three from each of the four stanchions spaced along the deck. The men leaped to the nearest stanchion and started untying two of the three hawsers, or ‘singling-up,’ in preparation for casting off. Jack watched them for a moment, then turned to study the fire. It had continued to spread through the wooden building, but more slowly, he thought. Perhaps the fire crew was beginning to get the upper hand. They would not be in time to save the sub closest to the pier, though. He thought of the sweat and treasure that had gone into the building of that boat, and of the lives that might be lost because the Pacific Fleet was short a vital warship, and made an instantaneous decision. “Belay that!” he shouted to the line-handlers. “As you were!”
Fuller was staring at him, wondering what had happened. He was not in doubt for long. “Fuller, I want you to take three volunteers across to that far sub and cut her loose from the dock. Take fire axes; you’re not going to want to waste any time around the campfire. Work from stern forward, and as soon as the bow lines are cut, hang on; this may be a bumpy ride. What’s the tide now?”
The ensign glanced at his watch. “Still ebbing, sir; half an hour to slack.”
“Very well; off you go.”
Fuller gave him a snappy salute. “Aye, aye, sir!”
As soon as he was on his way, Jack started having second thoughts. What he was proposing to do was to use the Manta to tow the entire nest of three submarines away from the burning dock and out into the river. He had no idea how such an ungainly raft would handle. The lines connecting the boats might break under the strain. The repeated collisions of one boat against another might do major structural damage, in spite of the thick rope-fenders placed between them along their lengths. He might overstrain Manta’s engines, delaying her commissioning and his formal assumption of command. No one would blame him if he saved his boat and left the others to their fate, but if he went ahead with this crazy scheme and failed, plenty of people would be ready to second-guess him and claim that the other subs would have been safer left as they were.
Fuller and his men had reached the inboard sub and were sheltering from the flames behind the conning tower, preparing their dash to the stern moorings. There was still time to call them back. Jack gnawed briefly at his knuckle. No, by God! He was not going to leave a brand-new submarine to such a doom. Better that all three should sink in the middle of the Thames River—not that he expected that to happen—than that he should desert that boat at a time like this.
Four figures ran across the deck of the distant sub, brandishing axes and reminding Jack for a moment of an old engraving of the Boston Tea Party. One of the firemen saw them and directed a spray of water at them, to cool them down and protect them from the heat of the flames. Jack hoped they wouldn’t freeze instead.
T
he Manta trembled slightly as the thick hawsers parted under a rain of ax blows. Jack leaned over the bridge speaker. “Conn!”
“Conn, aye, aye.”
“Who’s on the wheel?”
“White, sir; quartermaster.”
“Okay, listen up, White: we’ll be under way in a minute, and you’re going to feel like you’re steering a runaway truck by dragging your foot behind it. So stay awake, and whatever you do, do it handsomely.”
A gruff but enthusiastic “Aye, aye, sir” from the speaker. Fuller’s crew had disposed of the second bunch of lines and were starting on the third. When those let go, the three submarines would be linked to land only by the bow of one of them. Under pressure from the wind and the ebbing tide, the boats would swing at that point, crushing the bow of the Manta into the concrete bulkhead along the shore. As one of the men raised his ax for a final blow, Jack ordered, “Rudder amidships—all back one-third.” The water foamed under the stern of the Manta as the powerful electric motors drew current from the generators and turned the huge bronze propellers. The boat shuddered, and an unearthly shriek came from one of the hawsers as it slipped under the strain, but the three boats maintained their position, safe from a collision with the bulkhead.
The four men were at the bow now, chopping furiously at the last bunch of lines. What should Jack do when the boats were free? As he backed out into the river, the sterns would swing downstream. His wisest move would be to go with it, ending up in the fairway, well away from both banks, the bows facing into the wind and current, then try to hold the boats there until help came.
The last line was severed, and the linked boats started to move slowly backward. As the stems began to come out of the lee of the pier, the wind and tide caught them, just as Jack had expected, and started a lurching counterclockwise swing. Now it was the bow of the inboard sub that was in danger of colliding, with the burning pier. “Rudder left one-third! All aback full!”
Foam boiled up between Manta and her neighbor and was caught by the wind. Jack was drenched instantly. The water of the Thames tasted foul, and he resolved not to think what might be in it. The boats were backing straight into the river now, and the bows were almost clear of the pier. “Rudder amidships—port back two-thirds!” That would pull the tail around into the fairway, leaving him where he wanted to be. He spared a moment to watch Fuller and his three men leap across onto the Manta’s deck. The boy had a lot of guts; he would do well if he survived.
Time to stop this do-si-do. “Rudder left full—all ahead full!” Three submarines, at two thousand tons apiece, gather a lot of momentum once they start moving. It was not easy to stop the swing with their bows pointing upriver, then to balance the force of tide and wind with the force of the Manta’s motors, to keep the boats alongside the Electric Boat complex, but Jack and his quartermaster managed for nearly a quarter of an hour. At that point two of the shipyard tugs showed up and took the straying submarines under their wing, and half an hour after that the boats were safely tied up at another pier where a first-aid crew treated Fuller and his men for minor burns.
The eastern sky was starting to pale when Jack finally located the jeep he had abandoned less than two hours before. He had left the Manta in the hands of a dockyard crew that swarmed over her and her two sisters, assessing damage and starting to make repairs. The man in charge, a crusty retired four-striper named Birch, was careful to express no opinion about Jack’s exploit but seemed happy that the boats had not suffered greater damage.
As he steered through the narrow streets on his way back to the base, Jack started composing in his mind the report he would have to file on the night’s activities. Strong mention, of course, of Fuller and his men for their bravery under fire. Jack chuckled briefly as the double meaning of the expression struck him, but then his thoughts took on a more sober tone. He was bound to catch some flak on this; the only question was how much.
“Goddammit, McCrary! You’re a big boy now; you know your rocks and shoals!” Admiral Schick’s desk was piled high with reports, urgent requisitions, and recommendations from his staff. The admiral looked as if he had not gotten enough sleep since Pearl Harbor. To Jack, who had had more than his share of dressings-down by the brass, it sounded as though his heart wasn’t in the rebuke he was delivering. “This lone-wolf crap may go down when you’re in enemy waters, but while you’re in my command you’ll do it by the book. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Jack murmured.
Admiral Schick thumbed through a stack of papers and extracted one. “I’ve had a report from the yard on Manta’s condition. You’ll be happy to hear that there was no damage serious enough to delay her commissioning next week. I understand that your father is planning to be here for it?”
“Yes, sir.” Jack’s father, since his promotion to rear admiral, had been holding down a desk job in BuShips in Washington. This would be his first chance to see Jack aboard his own command.
“Good. I look forward to seeing him again. I haven’t seen him since the outbreak of hostilities. I hope you, your officers, and your father will join me for lunch after the ceremony.”
“Thank you, sir. We’d be honored to.” The response was obligatory, but Jack meant every word of it. The invitation was Schick’s way of telling him unofficially that, rebuke or no rebuke, his action in saving the Manta and her sister subs had won the tacit approval of the Navy.
In another part of the same building Ted Fuller, Ensign, U.S.N., was enjoying the sensation created by his bandages. The effect was particularly marked on Lois Laverdiere, a local girl who had enlisted in the WAVE’s right after high school and was now an ensign with the Office of Naval Intelligence. She had never talked about her work, of course, but Ted had an idea that she was involved in code-breaking.
“The skipper gave me the day off,” he was saying, “in recognition of my wounds suffered in the line of duty, so I came right over. Can you get the afternoon off?”
“But Ted, shouldn’t you be resting? Doesn’t it hurt?”
He laughed nonchalantly. As a matter of fact his left cheek hurt like hell, but he wasn’t going to let Lois know that.
She shook her head sadly but decisively. “I can’t, really. The work just keeps piling up on us.” His spirits sank. Even in the short time he had known her, he had learned the futility of arguing with her when she used that tone of voice. “But I’m free this evening,” she continued. “There’s not much we could do this afternoon anyway, is there?”
“I thought you might like to go on a picnic.”
“A picnic! But Ted, it’s thirty degrees out there!” For answer he hummed a few bars of “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” Lois blushed. After a year as a WAVE she was no bashful schoolgirl. She had had some good times with other young officers—New London was full of them, and a new batch arrived daily—but she sensed that Ted Fuller, in spite of the way he liked to kid her, was more serious. She was beginning to think that she was, too. In her mind she heard the words of her gran’mere when she had joined up: “Ma foi, you’ll wed one of those boys and be a widow before you’re grown.”
Ted persisted. “Can I drop by this evening, then?”
“Of course! Come for dinner; you know how my mother loves to feed you. I can’t convince her that anybody in the Navy knows how to cook.”
He wasn’t thrilled by the idea of sitting around the dinner table discussing submarine construction with Lois’s father, a skilled lathe operator at Electric Boat, while Lois, her mother, and her little brother sat listening silently. But at least Mrs. Laverdiere had the tact to clear everyone out of the living room afterwards and give him and Lois some time alone. And tonight he could thrill them all with the story of his adventures of the night before—with a suitable modesty, of course. His bandages would speak for themselves. He could already imagine the expression of open-mouthed wonder on the face of Greg, Lois’s brother. Maybe the little so-and-
so would be so impressed that he would give up his usual game of trying to spy on them!
Chapter 2
Jack McCrary straightened his tie, stooping slightly to see his image in the small, awkwardly placed mirror, and shrugged on the heavy double-breasted blue dress jacket. The unaccustomed weight of it took him back to the two years of his exile in Washington following the Sebago disaster. He wouldn’t think of that now. No bad omens should be allowed to cast a shadow on his first day in command of the U.S.S. Manta.
His eye fell to the message flimsy that lay on the dresser top. One omen had marred the day already. He reread the message, though he knew it by heart:
ON SICK LIST WITH BAD COLD REGRETS
SINK EM ALL DAD.
He did not allow himself to realize how much he had wanted his father to be there today, nor how disappointed he was.
He glanced at his watch: 1015. The commissioning ceremony was set for 1100. He paced across the narrow room, checked the set of his tie in the mirror again, and felt inside his coat for the reassuring crackle of his orders. With a muttered oath he snatched up his hat, unfamiliar in its gleaming white cover, and a pair of gray leather gloves, and strode out of the room, banging the door behind him.
A yard crew from Electric Boat had sailed the Manta upriver to the submarine base the night before. As Jack neared the pier, his steps slowed to a halt and he studied, with the perspective of distance, the submarine that would be his home for the months to come. At 312 feet she was a few feet longer than his previous command, Stickleback, but internally the only difference between the two boats was the addition of a watertight bulkhead separating the two banks of engines. Like Stickleback, Manta had ten torpedo tubes, six forward and four aft, and carried a full war load of twenty-four fish. He hoped they would perform more reliably than the torpedoes he and the other men of the Sub Force had been cursed with during the opening year of the war. Jack had done a good deal more than his share to expose the faults of the Mark XIV fish, with no thanks from the bureaucrats and timeservers in the Bureau of Ordnance.
The Richard Deming Mystery Megapack Page 37