by Peter Albano
“Well, lads,” David Jordan grinned. “You just earned the Navy Cross or the emperor’s personal citation — posthumous, of course.” No one laughed.
The efficiency of the crew grew, the attack team becoming a well-oiled unit. However, Mark Allen was often confused by the destroyer’s zigzag and on several occasions pounded the periscope with frustration. Brent Ross, Reginald Williams, Ensign Freddie Hasse, Lieutenant Charles Cadenbach, and Lieutenant Bernard Pittman took turns at the attack periscope. With the instincts of the hunter, Brent took to the periscope like a natural, outperforming all of the other officers. Immediately, he showed a talent for picking the base course out of the destroyer’s zigzag.
Hasse and Pittman were extremely slow attack officers. While the pair fumbled their approaches, Brent found his long, dry periods standing before the TDC dull and irritating. His wandering mind inevitably found its way back to Dale. He could see her, feel her, smell her. The silk of her hair slipped through his fingers, her body pressed against his. He would shake his head, concentrate on the face of the TDC. He memorized every word, every number of the face plate:
US Navy Bu. of Ord.
Mk.3 Mod. 5
Contract WXSD-13913 Serial No. 240
Volt 115DC 115 AC
Insp. E.K.W. Ord. Dwg. No. 291807
Date 1944
Arma Corp.
Brooklyn N.Y.
One afternoon he found himself debating with himself over Inspector E.K.W. Had the inspector been an old man? A fat, middle-aged woman? No. Probably a young, beautiful girl whose lover was at sea. That was it. She had been doing her bit building this killing machine. He laughed aloud and the other men looked at him. His face flushed.
On the fourth day ammunition and twenty-four Mark 48 torpedoes were loaded. Because of restrictions imposed by the Soviets and Americans meeting at Geneva, all torpedo guidance systems were prohibited. Mark 6 contact fuses were installed and new circuits wired so that the torpedoes’ gyros could be controlled from the TDC. One with a dummy warhead was fired from one of the boat’s new Mark 68 tubes and the weapon functioned perfectly, tracking straight, true, and maintaining its depth. Driven by a gas-piston engine and designed to overtake and hit new Soviet high-speed attack submarines, the torpedo had a range of thirty miles and a speed of fifty-five knots. “Incredible,” Mark Allen said. “Makes the old Mark 14 look like erratic junk.”
On the fifth day, the submarine’s hull and upper works were sprayed with a new RAM (radar absorbent material), Deflecton Four. Thick like a rubberized paint, Deflecton Four had been developed by the Air Force in its research for the defunct stealth bomber. “It’s a radar repellent,” Mark Allen said that afternoon in the wardroom. “And it’s been modified by the Navy to distort sonar returns — better than the sonar absorbers they’ve been using on the latest SSBNs.”
“Respectfully, sir, that can’t work. I helped develop some of the latest materials and none of them were very efficient,” Williams said politely.
Mark Allen nodded. “True, XO. They’ve had problems. However, it does confuse radar signals and diffuse them. With our low silhouette, it just might make us almost undetectable.”
“Almost,” Brent and Williams chorused.
Each evening Brent phoned Dale. However, there was no answer. Had he lost her? Was she gone forever? She had told him she loved him. And he had said the same. Had he meant it? He did not know simply because he did not know what this elusive “love” was all about and he had told her as much. Certainly, he had grown attached to her. Certainly, he was unhappy when he could not see her. Maybe, on the stern of one of Kadafi’s destroyers, there was a six-hundred-pound depth charge that would solve these problems forever. He shuddered.
On the sixth day, Cryptologist Donald Simpson called Brent to the radio room. He held a printout in his hand and was studying it with a confused look. “Doesn’t make sense, Mr. Ross,” he said. “Sixty-two groups and they don’t fit any of our programs. Came out of the encryption box this way. Must be a code we aren’t hard-wired for, sir.”
Brent examined the message. The first group was five “C’s” and the remaining groups were numbers, except the Greenwich Civil Time of transmission which was typed across the top. Brent felt a surge of excitement. The new top secret CISRA code, developed by Israeli Intelligence and the CIA and reserved for transmissions pertaining to Yonaga and the forces under the control of Admiral Fujita. The basis of the code was unique, a computer-generated system that expressed the alphabet as an eight-figure sub-routine which in turn was based on random combinations and permutations of a ten-figure master. Thus far, Arab and Russian monitors had found it impossible to break. But with the brute force of main frames located in Moscow, Damascus, and Tripoli, it was only a matter of time and everyone knew this. However, the master was changed randomly and the whole process began again. “C Code,” Brent said simply. “This is my baby.”
He took the printout to his cabin and pulled a small but powerful NEC lap-top computer from a drawer and placed it on his desk. Quickly, he typed in the eight-figure digital control code governed by the moon phase and Greenwich Civil Time of reception plus three. The NEC digested the information in a millisecond and flashed, READY TO DECODE.
As Brent typed in the numbers, the message unfolded letter by letter across the screen:
TOP SECRET
091736Z – – 27649
ARAB NAV OPS – – BLACKFIN OPS
FM. COMYONAGA – – TO. COMBLACKFIN
INFO – – COMCIAXX COMISINTXX COMPAC
REPAIRS ARAB CARRIER SURABAYA COMPLETED APPROX FOUR WEEKS XX DESTINATION TOMONUTO ATOLL XX ENEMY FORCES TOMONUTO – – ONE CARRIER TWO CRUISERS TWELVE DESTROYERS TWO OILERS THREE REPLENISHMENT VESSELSXX
BLACKFIN PROCEED TO TOMONUTO ATOLL IMMEDIATELYXX ENGAGE AND DESTROYXX
Brent leaned back and chuckled. “Is that all?” he said aloud. “That’s Fujita.” Fragmented memories of one of the old admiral’s favorite passages from the Hagakure replaced the grin with a hard set to the jaw: “Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily… One should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, spears, and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into a great fire, committing seppuku…and every day without fail one should consider himself as dead. This is the way of the samurai.”
Grimly, he ran the message out through his printer, tore off the sheet, and walked to Admiral Allen’s cabin.
An hour later, all eight officers were crowded into the wardroom, seated before coffee mugs kept full by the ubiquitous mess manager, Pablo Fortuno. Every man was seated except Admiral Allen, who stood in front of a chart mounted on the bulkhead. “Gentlemen,” he began. “It’s time we started to earn our pay.” He read the CISRA message. A rumble filled the room and the men hunched forward eagerly.
Picking up a pointer, he stabbed the chart in the western Pacific. “Tomonuto Atoll — in the western Carolines. The enemy force will be assembled in approximately five weeks. Two carriers, two cruisers, and a dozen ‘cans.’ Heavy odds even for Yonaga. I intend to reduce those odds.” There were shouts of “Hear! Hear!”
Allen moved the pointer to the Marianas. “As all of you know, the enemy is establishing air bases here on Saipan and Tinian. These bases pose a mortal threat to Yonaga and all of Japan, for that matter. If those dominoes fall, the terrorists will run wild and the US is next in line. All of you know this, or you wouldn’t be here.” He slapped the table with the pointer. “If we can just pick off one of those carriers, Yonaga might be able to handle the rest of it.”
“Might, sir?” Hasse said.
“Yes. To clean out all of the vermin, we must mount an amphibious assault on Saipan and Tinian. An amphibious force is now being trained.”
“We took those islands in WW II, sir,” Ensign Battle noted.
“I know,” Allen said, smiling. “I was there.” He turned back to the chart. “Lieutenant Cadenbach and I have calculated our run.” The tip of the pointer sl
id down the chart. “Seventy-eight hundred miles total. Our first run will be south from New York to this point off the Antilles. Then southwest through the Mono Passage between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico and into the Caribbean.”
“Speed of advance, sir,” Lieutenant Bernard Pittman asked.
“SOA twenty-one-knots.” Pittman whistled. Allen waved at the engineering officer, Lieutenant Brooks Dunlap. “No strain on engineering?”
“That’s right, sir. No problem for our new Fairbanks-Morse engines,” Lieutenant Brooks Dunlap said.
Allen returned to the chart. “Southwest across the Caribbean to Panama and then west to Pearl Harbor where we’ll top off our tanks and take on stores.” He turned to the table and tapped the pointer on the floor. “Then our run of twenty-eight hundred miles to our patrol area off Tomonuto Atoll.”
“ETA (Estimated time of arrival), sir?”
“Twenty days from today.”
“How many entrances does the atoll have, sir?” Ensign Robert Owen asked.
“Two. But only one can handle vessels of deep draft.” Allen waved to Charlie Cadenbach. Quickly the navigator tacked a chart of Tomonuto Atoll next to the chart of the Pacific. Allen gestured with his pointer. “According to our sailing directions it’s enormous, eighteen miles long and about six and a half miles wide at its widest.” He circled the atoll with the pointer. “Almost a perfect ellipse — it’s circled with a coral reef. A few of the larger reefs appear like long, narrow islands. In fact, some have enough soil to support thick stands of coconut trees. From a distance the trees appear like a fringe on the horizon. Ideal anchorage.” He sighed. “The Marshalls, Gilberts, and Carolines have dozens of these atolls — the best natural anchorages in the world. Any one of them could accommodate every ship on earth with plenty of room to spare. I anchored in several when serving with Admiral Nimitz in Task Force Fifty-Eight.”
Allen moved the pointer to a break in the reef. “We’ll station ourselves here — off the entrance. We’ll patrol submerged during the day and surface at night to recharge our batteries. If we keep our speed submerged at three knots and keep our use of our main engines at a minimum, we have enough fuel to patrol for maybe five months — here off the entrance. In fact, we could run out of food before we run out of fuel.” He thumped the chart. “The Arabs are inefficient, but I would expect a ‘can’ to be either running a ‘ping line’ off the entrance, here, or to be anchored in the entrance with sonar on passive — or two cans manning both stations.”
“We could still run out of fuel before they sortie, Admiral,” Battle said. “They could remain at anchor for six months, sir.”
“Yonaga will take care of that problem.”
“Sir?”
Allen nodded at the young diving officer. “As soon as we’re on station, we will send a signal. Yonaga will sortie and run south. The Arabs will have to stand out or be caught by her air groups in the anchorage.” He pushed the long white hair back from his forehead. “That will be our chance.” He slapped the table with the pointer so hard, it sounded like a pistol shot. “We’ll fish one — maybe both of them.”
More shouts of “Hear! Hear!”
Pittman interrupted the shouts. “Sir. The worst case scenario — if Yonaga doesn’t rendezvous or if she’s sunk.” He waved a hand at the chart. “As Ensign Battle said, we could run low on fuel and it must be two thousand miles from Tomonuto to Japan.”
“True,” Mark Allen said. “However, the CIA has anchored a tanker here, at Kossol Passage at the northern end of the Palau archipelago. It’s camouflaged and anchored close ashore.” He struck the chart. “That’s only three hundred eighty miles from our patrol. We can refuel and replenish there.”
“The Palauan government has agreed to this?”
“Let’s say they’re looking the other way.” There were chuckles. “Gentlemen, prepare the boat for sea. I intend to get underway within an hour. You are dismissed.”
Talking excitedly, the officers filed out of the room. Pablo Fortuno dashed from the galley and hurried into the mess hall. Waving his arms in excitement, he began talking to a dozen men.
*
At twenty-one knots and steaming directly south on course one-eight-zero, the bridge of Blackfin was swept by spray and sometimes solid sheets of water. Despite the near-suicidal nature of their mission, the rough ride as the boat slammed into the swells at twenty knots like an enraged bull, Brent enjoyed being at sea again. He chuckled to himself and clung to the windscreen railing as the sea with its many moods capriciously punished the sub again and again with sledgehammer blows from attacking swells.
Crossing the thirtieth parallel, more power had to be called on to counteract the set of the Gulf Stream which flowed with a three-knot speed. The sky darkened, and for days on end the sun showed with the dim glow of a failing lamp. Repeatedly, Brent heard the navigator, Lieutenant Charlie Cadenbach, curse when he was unable to make precise sights at dawn and dusk. Geneva refused to allow the installation of a modern inertial navigation system (SINS).
The topside steaming watch consisted of four lookouts — one assigned to each of the four sectors around the ship — a helmsman and the Officer of the Deck. All six men on bridge watch wore binoculars over their foul-weather clothes. There was a chance an Arab Whiskey or Zulu might be lying in wait for them. Zigzagging was out of the question, and knowing the best defense against a lurking submarine was speed, Blackfin was forced to rely on her powerful engines and the alert eyes of her bridge watch. All men were carefully instructed to keep a close watch for low-lying dark hulls, periscopes, or mysterious streaks in the water. At night the running lights were not burned, the only light on the bridge coming from a tiny red light in the gyro repeater and the dim reddish glow coming out of the open hatch to the conning tower. As a further precaution, all watertight doors were latched shut, ready for instant dogging. Any ship picked up by radar was given a wide berth.
When they entered the Horse Latitudes, the wind began to shift without warning, sometimes whipping sheets of spray from the waves like white cotton from a burst mattress, flinging spume into Brent’s face, and other times following the boat and not felt at all. Nearing the Antilles and turning southwest, the sky filled with a solid mass of scudding cirrus and cumulonimbus, taking on ominous black-gray hues, the sea glittering like molten lead. They were nearing a storm.
Stirred up by a hurricane just south of the equator, the wave patterns built up into a series of marching mountain ranges. The submarine took them like a battering ram, bursting through each with a burst of water like an exploding torpedo. Solid water tumbled and streaked her length, sweeping over her as if she were submerging, pouring over the bridge and leaking into the conning tower through the hatch that was latched but not dogged. After each mountain came a valley and the boat sheered off into the cavern ahead of her. Sometimes the screws broke clear and the vibrations shook every plate, every rivet. Then she slid forward like a skier on a down slope and finally bottomed in the valley between crests, where the wind was blocked and an eerie silence made the looming cliff ahead appear even more menacing. Then she threw her head up, attacking her new adversary and repeating the cycle again.
Mercifully, as they approached the Mono Passage between Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico, the storm gradually lessened and finally charged off to the south and west, leaving the skies an aching blue void, the seas calm. Entering the passage and hugging the coast of Santo Domingo, Admiral Mark Allen waved and said, “Hispaniola, the Pearl of the Antilles.” His mood as bright and cheerful as the weather. “Loads of history here.” He stabbed a finger ahead to the Caribbean. “The Spanish gold galleons, Drake, Morgan, Kidd, Captain Blood — they all sailed here.”
“And now Blackfin, sir.”
The admiral laughed. “Right, Brent. And now Blackfin.”
It took almost two days to cross the broad expanse of the Caribbean. Brent was impressed with the beauty of the area. It was warm, calm and peaceful after the Atlantic
. But it was treacherous, capable of producing in very short time the most violent storms and hurricanes. However, throughout their transit, the sea was on its best behavior.
It was a brilliant morning when they made their landfall on Cristobal, the port on the Caribbean side of the Panama Canal. Passing through the breakwater into Limon Bay, the signal tower on the beach began flashing a challenge. Crog was summoned to the bridge and quickly the radioman flashed a “K.”
“Proceed to the entrance to the canal, sir,” Crog said, flashing the shore station a “Roger.”
“You will make transit immediately. Pilot en route. Stand by.”
At that moment a lookout shouted, “Boat approaching at a high speed, bearing three-two-five, range one thousand.”
“Very well. All stop,” Mark Allen said. “Deck crew stand by to receive small boat. Port side to.”
In a moment the small speed boat came alongside and the pilot, a small, dark man of about thirty with obvious Latin antecedents, climbed up onto the bridge. He introduced himself. “Pedro Garcia,” he said, his black mustache lifting with his grin. He took a single sighting through the bearing ring and said to Admiral Allen, “I suggest you come to one-seven-zero, speed slow.”
“Very well.” Mark Allen nodded to Brent who was officially the OD. Brent gave the commands and Blackfin headed for the canal.
As they approached Gatun Locks, Garcia waved and spoke proudly. “Over seventy years old, but still one of the marvels of the world. Took a half-million men ten years to build it.”
“Blackfin will make the transit alone,” Garcia said as they entered the huge one-thousand by one-hundred-ten-foot chamber. The gates closed and the moss-covered lock flooded, lifting the boat. “Three lifts,” Garcia said. “We’ll leave this lock eighty-two feet above sea level.”