Ghostboat (34 page)

“Control!” he blurted. “Jesus!” Hardy lunged for the ladder and slid down the metal rails, ignoring the sting in his palms.

He shot through the empty crew’s quarters and burst into the forward engine room, startling Cassidy.

“Chief, get a tool kit and follow me.”

Cassidy set his clipboard down and grabbed a heavy metal box. “What’s the problem?” he called after Hardy, who was already retreating past the engines.

“NLO tanks! Come on!” Hardy pulled himself through to the after engine room. Cassidy scurried after him, wondering what in hell could go wrong with the Normal Lubricating Oil tanks.

He caught up with Hardy in the maneuvering room. He was down on one knee, lifting a deck hatch. He waved Cassidy over, and both of them horsed the hatch upright.

Hardy switched on a battle lantern and played the beam over the maze of lines and tanks that filled the motor room crawl space below.

“There!” His beam locked in on a cluster of pale green hoses leading from a T-shaped tank just behind the after bulkhead. “NLO tank number three. Those lines are the main oil feed to maneuvering. Get down there and watch them.”

“For what?” asked Cassidy, suspiciously.

“For the leak. When it starts, you stop it.”

“What leak?” Cassidy was astonished.

“Just get down there!”

Cassidy lowered himself into the open space and pulled the toolbox down after him. He took the battle lantern and fixed Hardy with a beady stare. “How do you know?”

Hardy stood up. “Just
watch
it I
guarantee
you, it’ll blow.”

He swooped to the hatch and was gone, leaving Cassidy to squeeze himself and his toolbox into the cramped crawl space.

Hardy hurried back to the conning tower, wondering fleetingly why no one else had picked up on the NLO tank. After all, wasn’t everybody studying his log?

Frank, still glued to the scope, was tracking the target on final approach. “All ahead dead slow,” he said.

The helmsman rang it up on the MB.

“Range!”

“Two four hundred.”

“We’ll let her have it at two thousand.”

Hardy read the anticipation on their faces. They were getting ready for the kill, feeling it build in their bones, their fingers.

“Captain, sonar reports a second target,” announced Colby. “Bearing one-five-three relative.”

Frank quickly walked the scope around, trying to penetrate the rain and mist astern. He saw a second gray shape emerging from a wall of spray far behind them.

“Christ! We can get two of ‘em! Prepare stern tubes!”

“Stern tubes loading, sir.” Frank ignored the talker as he swung back to line up on the first destroyer. “Open all outer doors.”

“Ready all tubes, sir.”

“All stop!”

They marked the bearing at 010, range 2100, speed 14 knots.

“Couldn’t miss if we tried. Fire one! Fire two!”

Danby’s hand stopped hovering over the firing keys. He slammed them down.

Isolated and uncomfortable in the cramped crawl space, Cassidy was debating with himself about sitting there any longer. He was shifting his body, toying to find a less tortuous position, when two torpedoes tore from the bow tubes.

The instant after they were fired, even before the boat finished its responsive shudder, he heard the
sprang!
A jet of warm oil spurted up, hitting him in the face.

“Shit!” he yelled, and groped for the cutoff valve. His oil-slick fingers slipped off twice before he could turn off the metal petcock. He found himself lying in a pool of oil. It soaked his pants, his shirt; he could taste it in his mouth.

He rummaged in the toolbox for a roll of friction tape. He found the break and was just starting to wrap it when the first torpedo struck its target, sending a metallic
ca-rrump
reverberating through the sub’s hull.

The column of water marking their first hit soared still higher into the sky. The force of the blast had heeled the destroyer over, exposing her waterline. As she strove to right herself, the second torpedo slammed home.

Her midsection collapsed in a burst of flame and flying debris. In a convulsive eruption, the forward section leaped out of the water and flew apart. A gun turret detached from the deck and spun lazily into the air. Flaming chunks of wreckage showered the ocean, raising answering splashes where they fell.

The stern section, covered with sheets of flame, rolled over and slipped beneath the waves, leaving a cloud of oily black smoke and steam.

Frank yanked his head away from the scope and looked at Dorriss. “Son of a bitch,” he said, in a voice filled with awe. “She’s gone.”

The Exec’s face was wreathed in a toothy grin. “We got her! We got her!” he chanted.

“Direct hit. Both fish,” Frank announced.

Stigwood let out a whoop, grabbed Vogel in a bear hug and pounded him on the back. Danby and Lang scrambled to shake Frank’s hand. The other quartermaster was standing by Hardy, his sweat-streaked face glistening in the half light of the con. “How about that, Lieutenant?” he chanted at Hardy. “How about that?”

Hardy took no part in the celebration. He cocked his head and listened, hearing the faint
ping-ping
of search sonar. He left the hatchwell and moved to the periscope. He shouldered Dorriss away, grabbed the scope handles, and pressed his forehead against the soft rubber padding of the eyeshield.

Frank, his voice strident, shouted over the bedlam. “Okay, knock it off. Maneuvering says we’ve got a problem.”

Hardy, pivoting, was trying to pierce the rain and scud that obscured his vision. “That’s been taken care of,” he said firmly, and hoped that Cassidy
had
taken care of it. “We’ve got another problem up here—that second destroyer.”

Where the hell is it? he thought. There! Slashing through the water, her bow cleaving the storm-tossed seas and steaming straight toward them.

“Prepare for a stern shot!” he announced. “Bearing!”

What were they all waiting for? He pulled his head away and cheeked the bearing line. “I make it one-eight-four astern. Range, two three hun—”

“Stand away from that scope, mister.”

Frank stood on top of Hardy, glaring at him, red-faced with anger. Surprised, Hardy let his fingers slip off the scope handles. He backed away, his mind a jumbled confusion of embarrassment. Frank took over the scope, fitting his body to it, as if he were made for it.

“Belay that last setup. Bearing—mark!”

“One-eight-zero relative.”

“Range—mark!”

“One eight hundred.”

Frank winced as the destroyer’s forward turret opened up. There was a flat smack as the shell plowed into the ocean somewhere over their heads.

“It’s going to be down-the-throat! All stern tubes—give me a two-degree spread.”

Nadel must have turned his speakers up. The churning noise of the high-speed screws overrode the
pings
of the destroyer’s sonar as it homed in on the return echo.

Through the scope Frank saw the forward turret flash again as the destroyer charged in and cut loose three salvoes in a row. He waited five more seconds, letting the range close even tighter while shell splashes dropped in on either side and rocked the hull. He waited for the motion to stop, then yelled: “Fire seven! Fire eight! Fire nine! Fire ten!”

Danby hit the firing keys, and the sub shuddered four times as four fish leaped from the stern tubes.

“Down scope! All ahead emergency! Left full rudder!” He whirled to the hatch and bellowed below, “Mr. Adler, take her deep!”

The
Candlefish
clawed for the safety of the depths, trying to put as much ocean as possible between herself and the hard-closing destroyer before it could cut loose a string of depth charges.

On the surface the four fish raced toward their target, their ribbon wakes visible to the destroyer’s lookouts, who spotted them and shouted—but it was already too late. The destroyer didn’t have a chance.

The
Candlefish
was just passing the one-hundred- foot mark when two powerful explosions rumbled over the speakers.

Two hits.

Frank checked their dive, and the boat leveled off. The conning tower was hushed as everyone listened to the grinding metallic sounds of collapsing bulkheads giving way to the rush of tons of sea.

The noise trailed off, lost in the vastness of the ocean, but the cheering in the
Candlefish
surged and dipped in waves of emotion.

Frank took the role of hero as if he were born to it, lightly shrugging off the compliments from the surrounding circle of faces.

Hardy tried to wedge through the tightly bunched group, but. Frank’s face turned cold as their eyes locked. In the uncomfortable silence, his lips curled in a sneer.

“You never could do it right,” he muttered.

Hardy felt a tightness grip his chest. His jaws worked back and forth, but he couldn’t speak.

The last time he had seen hostility like that—naked and unchecked—it was on the face of Billy G. Basquine. The memory filled him with a mind-numbing horror.

The
Candlefish
surfaced in the squall; the rains pelted the sub, soaking the men who zipped up to the bridge. The stench of diesel oil filled the sodden air. A large patch was burning about a mile off the bow. Frank headed for it, intent on investigating the carnage he had created.

Forward and aft deck hatches were popped, and the men poured up, their elation still unchecked as they pointed out recognizable bits of wreckage floating by. But their laughter choked off at sight of the first bodies—oil-encrusted lumps of dead flesh, turning lifelessly in the water.

And then the living ones.

The throb of the
Candlefish’s
engines was muffled by the pounding rain. But neither of these sounds could drown out the screams of the dying. Bodies suspended in the sticky maw of diesel fuel bumped against the sides of the sub and spun like water bugs down the length of the hull, bouncing off the stern vanes and floating away.

Most of the submariners looked away. Billows of black smoke poured past and stung their eyes; the rain soaked them to the skin.

Frank was aware of their white faces. “What’s the matter with them?” he demanded of no one in particular.

Dorriss tore his eyes away from a headless body draped over the charred remains of a life raft. “I— uh—I don’t think they expected it to be like this, sir—”

Frank snorted. “Is that a fact?” He felt an anger—no, a hatred—for the seared and maimed shapes bobbing all around him.

Cassidy was feeling pretty good about the way he had seated the new hose in the NLO line. He came up the bridge hatch and found Hardy on the cigarette deck, standing in the rain. “Hey, Lieutenant, you were right! She really let go. How we doing up here?” He followed Hardy’s gaze down to the water.

He saw the blackened bodies and recoiled in horror. He muttered a curse, his voice filled with revulsion.

Frank leaned over the bridge and roared: “Take a good look, gentlemen—and just remember, those sneaky bastards deserve everything they get.” He waited for a positive response; none came.

“It didn’t work then, Captain—and it won’t work now.”

Frank turned to the Professor. “Don’t hand me that crap,” he snarled. “If I had let a screwup like you make this shot, those sons of bitches might be looking at
us
in the water!”

He swung around to Dorriss. “Be sure every man below comes topside to see this—then hit the horn and take us down.”

Dorriss nodded dumbly.

Frank dropped through the bridge hatch, leaving his stunned crew still lining the decks. Slowly they shuffled to the hatches and were swallowed back down into the hull. The on-duty watch straggled up, only because they had been ordered to.

Hardy and Cassidy stood apart, letting the rain wash down their bodies, in some sense hoping it might purify them of this disgrace. Finally, as an afterthought, Cassidy spoke. “The tank blew, Lieutenant, just the way you said it would.” He blinked, shielding his eyes from the rain. “I gotta admit,” he continued, “you have one hell of a memory.”

Hardy smiled ruefully. “Sometimes it’s too good, Chief.”

In the quiet of the CPO cabin, Hardy shrugged into a dry shirt and tried to rationalize Frank’s behavior.

Nothing normal could excuse the Captain’s actions.

Granted, a man could become excited in the heat of combat. Most skippers were often guilty of things they later regretted, but Hardy sensed there would be no regret forthcoming.

The explanation? That could not have been Ed Frank.

But if it wasn’t Ed Frank, then who?

He rolled into his bunk, facing the bulkhead; he shivered as the name formed on his lips.

“Basquine,” he muttered, and wanted to retract it right away. It had to be Basquine. But how?

In all the excitement, Hardy had forgotten about his log and the fact that no one seemed to be following it any longer. He went looking for the copies, quietly checking the wardroom, the control room, forward torpedo... He couldn’t find a single one.