Cold is the Sea (44 page)

“Thanks, Skipper! With no speed and all this changing of weights, I've got all I can handle today!”

“We might be firing a torpedo or two forward, Tom, to make it a little less boring for you. He's already shot at us!” Buck left Clancy staring at him, started back to the sonar room. The angle already had lessened and the climb took only moments. “How's it going?” he said.

“Our decoy's out about a thousand yards ahead now, still sounding like a great little old submarine, and JT reports he thinks that thing the Russian shot, whatever it was, is about to merge in with it.”

“Schultz, what do you think?” Buck had to lay a hand on his shoulder to attract the sonarman's attention.

“There was something out there all right, coming closer. It was on a steady bearing with us for a while, but then when we slowed down it started to pass ahead. Maybe it had a steady bearing with our decoy.” The chief sonarman had laid back one earphone. “Now it's mixing in with the decoy, sniffing around it, like.”

“Has it passed it, or is it about to?” Buck asked.

“It should have passed it by now, but it hasn't. It's still sniffing.”

The angle was rapidly returning to normal. Abruptly, Williams picked up the phone. “Maneuvering! Make turns for two knots! Control, report that to Mr. Clancy and the helmsman!” He was returning the telephone to its bulkhead cradle when suddenly Schultz ripped off his headset with an exclamation. “Ouch!” he said, massaging his right ear, but neither Buck nor Rich heard him, for the sonar room was filled with the reverberations of a sharp, distant explosion.

The surprise with which Rich and Buck stared at each other was real, even though the explosion had not been entirely unexpected. “How long do we have before he realizes he didn't tag us after all?” asked Buck rhetorically.

“A couple of minutes, maybe. The longer we stay in
Cushing
's
sonar shadow, the longer it will take him to figure out what's happened,” said Rich.

“What about Keith?”

“He'll realize we're close aboard, and will guess we fired the decoy.”

“I'd like to shoot one of our Mark Forties at that bastard!”

“Buck, I'm in command of this force. I order you to return the fire. See that my specific order is entered in the log!” Buck Williams stared at his superior. The look on his face, the determined fury in his eyes, were clear, and all too familiar. Richardson was glaring at him unblinkingly. “Put it in the log, Buck,” he said softly. “If you do not carry out my order, I shall relieve you from command!”

Buck was puzzled for a fraction of a second. Then his brow smoothed, and he knew what to do. He knew Richardson meant precisely what he said, and he had thought of the reason why. “Aye, aye, sir!” he said. He picked up the phone. “Tubes forward,” he said, “the commodore has ordered us to return the fire. Load the other decoy in the empty tube. Prepare one Mark Forty for firing! This is a war shot. This is not a drill!”

Backing out of the sonar room, Buck took three steps forward and to the right, where Brown and his fire controlmen were standing at their stations. “Deedee, have you been keeping the setup on your TDC?”

“Affirmative, Captain.”

“Very well.” Buck knew that some of Richardson's suddenly icy demeanor was infecting him too. “Tubes forward have been ordered to prepare one Mark Forty war shot for firing. Set your inputs accordingly!”

“Aye, aye, sir!” Brown was tall, blond, sensitive. His blue eyes were shouting the questions in his mind.

“Quartermaster!”

“Here, sir.”

“Enter in your rough log as follows: ‘The intruding submarine has opened fire upon us, and is identified as an enemy ship of war. The explosion just heard was an attempt to sink the
Manta
. The squadron commander has put this ship on a war footing and has directed
Manta
to return the fire.' You got that?” Buck was speaking slowly and precisely, waiting for the quartermaster to scribble the words as he dictated them.

“Yes, sir!” said the man, his eyes widening.

More rapidly, Buck went on, “We're already at general quarters. Do not sound the general alarm. Have the word passed by telephone to all compartments!” This, perhaps, was not necessary, for all hands would have the information within seconds anyway. Probably they already knew, for at battle stations all compartments automatically manned all telephones.

He turned back to Brown. “How are you doing, Deedee?” Buck could see the men industriously turning dials, making entries into the complicated instruments arrayed against the curved skin in the ship. Deedee Brown himself was busily transferring figures from a plastic card inserted in a receptacle on the face of the TDC into the input section.

“Ready in a minute! We need a good range and the depth of the target.”

“You'll have to use three hundred feet for depth; that's the best I can give you. When you're ready to shoot, we'll get you a ping range. As soon as you have that in the fish, we'll let her go!”

Brown stepped close to Buck, whispered, “What was that explosion we heard just now? Did it have anything to do with our decoy?”

“Yes, it did, Deedee. It destroyed it. If we hadn't slowed up and sent the decoy along our track in our place, we'd all be dead right now!” Buck felt a sardonic satisfaction in telling Brown. Someday he'd be a submarine skipper, and it might be well for him to remember this day. Suddenly Buck was recalling certain experiences of his own, and then he realized that another such experience had occurred less than a minute before.

Buck turned away, returned to the sonar room. For the moment, sonar was the center of information. He would fire the torpedo from there. Swiftly, he explained his intention to get an accurate range with a single ping just before firing. Schultz nodded his comprehension. The single-ping range was a standard prefiring procedure.

Rich, also nodding, said, “We've got to do it, all right. We can't tell from the sonar what his course or speed is, or if he's got way on at all. I hate to, though, because it will alert him that much sooner.”

“Me, too,” said Buck, “but there's no way out of it. Deedee has the best bearing Schultz can give him, but the Mark Forty
has to have a range to know where to start its search. We're pretty close to the
Cushing
. Maybe he'll have us both merged in his sonar and will think the
Cushing
did it.”

Brown appeared directly behind Buck in the sonar room doorway. “We're ready,” he said. “Tube's flooded. Outer door's open.”

“All right, Chief; get a single-ping range. Get the best bearing, too. Feed 'em both automatically to the TDC.” A single white spoke lashed out from the center of the sonar dial, impinged directly upon the faint dot representing the enemy sub. He heard the squelched transmission signal, and the clear, solid echo which returned.

“Thirty-eight-fifty,” said Schultz. “Bearing zero-three-seven and a half, relative. TDC's got them both, sir!”

Despite his statement to Brown, Buck could not remain in the sonar room. He leaped out the door, heard Deedee call out loudly, “Set!” Rich, he felt rather than saw, was right behind.

“Fire!” cried Buck sharply. Brown, his finger poised on the firing key, punched it hard to the left. He stepped back, waited, eyes on the indicator lights.

“Torpedo started, ran out normally,” said the telephone talker. Brown was watching his fire control panel carefully, nodding his head. “She's away,” he said.

Back in the sonar shack, Schultz was watching the path of the torpedo. It had curved to the right, was speeding toward the spot occupied by the enemy submarine. It would run at high speed into the general area, then slow, make a circling search, finally go back to speed and home in on magnetic attraction. It was the best torpedo the U.S. Navy had, the product of years of research. Its record of successful firings was outstanding. It was fast, nearly silent, and almost 100-percent deadly.

“Good shot, Buck,” said Richardson. “I think he's a dead man!” But as they watched the sonar scope, suddenly the spot the Russian submarine occupied became suffused with its own white light, a light which persisted. The speeding trace of the torpedo entered the enlarged spot and vanished. Disbelievingly, the three men in the sonar room watched for an appreciable time, but nothing happened. The large white spot died down, disappeared, leaving not even the original indication of the presence of another submarine.

“I think I saw him take off,” said Schultz, by way of possible explanation. “He was making knots, behind all that white, and he went right off the scope!”

“At least, you scared him silly, Buck. Maybe now he'll leave us alone!” But the grim look on Rich's face showed he did not believe his words, nor did he expect Buck to. “How fast do you think we can tow Keith?” he went on.

“Maybe six knots, or a fraction more,” said Buck.

“Make another radical course change, away from the direction he went, and go as fast as you can. Run up close to the ice, too, as close as you dare. That will confuse his sonar. We've got to take this opportunity to lose him. I'll explain it to Keith. On our third day with the
Besugo
, we ran overloaded for several hours. Can you find those strain-gauge readings?”

“They were all logged. I'm sure we can.”

Despite Buck's misgivings, resuming towing resulted in only a few bumps as the towline was again stretched. Once a steady towing condition was achieved, he gradually increased speed until both ships seemed fairly flying along, close under the ice pack. They might have been able to go even faster than the seven knots shown on the log had it not been necessary for Keith to maintain a small amount of plane angle because of the
Cushing
's tendency to tow a few feet above the
Manta
. After three hours, Buck was contemplating ordering his crew off action stations, and slowing to conserve the strength of the towline as well as to reduce his noise level. But this was the moment sonar chose to pick up contact once more.

It was Schultz, still religiously maintaining his solitary watch, who was forced to bring the bad news. “Sonar contact,” he announced in a heavy voice over the speaker system. Rich and Buck crowded into the sonar shack. “It's him again!” said Schultz. “No doubt about it anymore. I'd know that signature anywhere!”

“We have to break the towline, Buck! We'll have to fight this guy on even terms! If he sinks us, Keith's done for anyway. We've no hope at all if we stay tied to him!”

“I've been thinking the same! Shall I do it now?”

“Yes! I'll go tell Keith!”

As Richardson picked up the UQC handset, he heard Buck order, “All ahead full!”

“Keith,” Rich said in the low tone which had become habitual, “that fellow is back again, and we're going to have to break the towline. After we dispose of him we'll be back to pick you up with the other tow rig.”

“I understand,” said Keith's distorted voice, and Rich knew he did, fully. He quickly described his own already laid plans for this contingency, and then said, “If we get a chance to, we'll try a Mark Forty on him ourselves. We still have a few strings left. And, Skipper,” Keith's voice deepened, took on an expression of determined will, even under the poor reproductive quality of the equipment, “whatever happens, we'll never give up this ship. Never.”

It was Richardson's turn to say, “I understand.” He followed it with, “If we don't make it back, wait him out at test depth or below. I doubt he can follow you down there, nor can his fish!” As he said the words he found himself wondering what good that could possibly do, for without
Manta, Cushing
was dead too!

And then the nylon line snapped with a shuddering flip, and Buck sent
Manta
sliding down into the depths. The last thing Rich heard was Keith's quiet “Wilco!”

“It's us he's after; so it's us he'll chase, Buck. We've got one decoy left, and we've no idea how many fish he's got, nor how many of those defenses against the Mark Forty.”

“It didn't make any noise, at least nothing we heard. Maybe it's not a weapon he shoots at all,” said the disconsolate Buck.

“You mean, some kind of a magic energy device? Inexhaustible, maybe?”

“All I mean is he might not have to shoot a piece of hardware. So it wouldn't be something you could count, like our decoys. But maybe he wasn't all that sure it was going to work either. He sure ran off in a hurry. If he'd only run a little longer, we might have shaken him!” Buck spoke morosely. His disappointment was keen.

“True, old man, but right now our problem is to kill him before he kills us. We have six Mark Fourteens and five Mark Forties left forward, is that right?”

“Plus two Mark Forties in the skids in the after torpedo room.
I've told Deedee to unrig the after room for towing and load both of the Forties he has back there.”

“The Forty is a single-shot fish. You shoot it very carefully, one at a time. You can reload one quicker than you can fire a second shot. So if you have one of them and our remaining decoy loaded, you can also have a salvo of four Fourteens in the other tubes forward.”