Ghostboat (42 page)

“Now, let me tell you what the crazies have in mind, Skipper. We have set the demolition charges on the radar and sonar stations. Without radar and sonar, you won’t stand a chance chugging into Tokyo Bay—past the nets and the mine fields. Will you?
Will you?”

He waited until the Captain nodded his head in agreement. “Now, I’ll be willing to have Cassidy break those demo circuits—on one condition: We continue on this heading, course three-five-eight, without interruption for the next thirteen minutes. After that, I don’t give a shit what you do, because it won’t make one bit of difference. Either I’ll be proved right, or you can pitch me overboard. But we’re staying on this course!”

The Captain had turned purple. “Why?” he choked.

“Because if I let you take this boat west into Tokyo Bay, you’re going to be in for the surprise of your life—”

“HARDY!!” the Captain screamed at him.

Hardy felt his whole body vibrate with the bone-chilling force of it. The Captain stepped forward and made as if to grab Hardy’s neck with his bare hands. Hardy’s arm came up sharply in reflex, and the grenade with it, connecting with the Captain’s jaw. The Captain staggered back, then whirled on the helmsman.

“Left full rudder! Come about to course two-five-three!
Move!”

The helmsman hesitated. The Captain screamed, “That’s an order!”

The helmsman directed a shaking finger at Hardy. “That’s a grenade!”

“Stay on course!” Now Hardy was yelling. It was the only way he could keep control: match the Captain in rage and volume. “Captain,” he said, “in five minutes your boat will start coming apart at the seams!”

The Captain looked back at him blankly.

“Did you think you could
beat it?
Just turn and run away from it? It has to happen! Can’t you see? It’s part of the pattern!”

“The pattern? You lunatic—there
is
no pattern! I’m in control of this boat!”

Hardy drew himself up with the assurance of one who has penetrated the last defense. “Then why are you so determined to change course?”

“I—I—” the Captain looked confused.

“We’ve got him!”

There were sounds of a struggle below. There was an explosion and a dull clang. Hardy jumped back, frightened. What was it? A bullet...

Cassidy’s gun.

He whirled to the hatch, cutting around the ladder and looking down without turning his back on the Captain. It was all over below. Roybell and Scopes had Cassidy’s arms pinned.

As Roybell swooped down to recover the pistol, he yelled at the others, “Cut those switches!”

He was too late. The explosion came on top of his voice. It was the sonar gear—the first switch Cassidy had pulled. The explosion was short and sharp, but it was followed by the sound of the gear splattering all over the compartment.

Roybell and the others were knocked over by the concussion, and the Chief jumped up again with the pistol.

Hardy yanked the pin from the grenade, then stepped back, clutching the spoon handle tightly so it wouldn’t flip up.

“Forget it, Mr. Hardy. You’ve lost.”

The Captain’s voice had regained some composure.

“Control room secure, sir.” It was Stigwood’s voice, through the intercom.

“Damage?” the Captain shouted.

“Sonar is wiped out, sir. No one hurt. Should we alert the crew?”

“Yes!”

Stigwood’s voice went out through the battle-phone circuit to every compartment in the boat. “Attention, attention. This is Control. We’ve had an accident with a demo charge. Equipment damage only. We still have hull integrity.”

Stigwood switched off and called up the well, “Should I inform the crew of the mutiny, sir?” His voice was calm, not even an edge of distress.

“I don’t think there’s any need, Stanhill,” the Captain said coolly. He was daring Hardy to let the grenade go. “It really is over, Mr. Hardy. I can have Stanhill make the course change himself, on the emergency helm. Why don’t you be a smart fellow and throw that thing overboard? I wouldn’t want to lose you.”

Hardy checked the clock.

2130.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“What?”

“Go ahead and have Stigwood or Stanhill or whoever change course. Do it from here if you like. You’ll find out it’s too late.” He kept talking, stalling for time, rattling on like the madman they all thought he was, anything to hold them on this course another two minutes; that was all he wanted, he prayed for it through the babble coming out of his mouth.

The Captain turned to the helmsman.

“Course two-five-three. Now.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” He gripped the wheel and spun. Nothing happened.

The wheel didn’t budge.

He strained. “Captain, she’s not answering.”

There was a moment of awkward, frightening silence. The Captain’s eyes quivered. Hardy’s muscles tightened.

The Captain grabbed the wheel himself. It held fast. He turned and snapped down the phone switch to control. “Emergency, Stanhill—left full rudder—come to course two-five-three.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Stigwood gripped the emergency helm and struggled with it Nothing. It was frozen.

“Emergency controls jammed, Skipper. She won’t respond!”

The Captain grabbed the phone and the motor telegraph at the same time. “All back full!” he yelled into the mouthpiece, and rang it up on the MB.

They waited seconds; then the controlled reply came from below: “Skipper, maneuvering reports engine switches won’t answer.”

Hardy let out an involuntary yelp of laughter. He had been right. “It’s out of your hands, Mr.
Basquine!
It’s not yours any more—the
Candlefish
is running herself! She’s heading for latitude thirty degrees forty-nine minutes north, on course three-five-eight. When she gets there, she’s going to disappear—and you and everybody else who’s aboard will go with her!”

This time it was the Captain who yelled, “Get your hand off that thing!”

Hardy was holding down the intercom switch, spreading the word to the entire crew.

The Captain had just started to lunge for the hand grenade when the first tremor struck the boat.

The whole conning tower shook. All four men stumbled to one side.

A series of rattling shivers whipped the submarine from side to side.

The Captain’s eyes met Hardy’s. “All right, you son of a bitch,” he screamed, “I’ll take this thing through your fucking Latitude Thirty and still get to Tokyo Bay!”

CHAPTER 24

December 11
 

2132.

Hardy one-handed himself up to the bridge, still clutching the hand grenade. A thick gray mist covered the sea—a wall of cloud, obscuring everything as
Candlefish
cut deeper into Latitude 30.

The decks shook beneath his feet. The lookouts gripped their railings for support. Lieutenant Danby screamed an angry curse as the sub pitched violently.

Hardy took a long backswing and flung the grenade far out to sea. Seconds later he heard a dull thud. He turned and dropped back into the conning tower.

The Captain had shoved the helmsman aside and taken over the wheel himself, to no avail.

The inexplicable force whipped the submarine from side to side. The glass in the control-room clock shattered into a thousand fragments. Stigwood pulled himself up to the plotting table and grabbed the manifold controls.

And came away with a shout of pain.

They were red-hot.

Roybell managed to reach the indicator gauges, but his face twisted in surprise as he exclaimed, “Christ! She’s doing twenty-one knots!”

Danby clung to the bridge coaming and gawked at the spray pitching off the bow. Top surface speed. But why? Nobody had given the order—and to charge ahead through this fog like an enraged bull—

The shakes became long, sustained vibrations gripping the submarine in a vise and heaving it to port, then starboard, then straight up into the air. She came down hard, bruising the sea, sending waves high into the fog.

The lights went out. Air conditioning shut down. The Captain called for emergency power, and the red combat lights came on. But then those lights started to flicker on and off.

The Captain grabbed the battle phone and called Maneuvering.

“What are you making back there?”

“All ahead full, sir!”

“Slow to one-third!”

The senior controllerman reached up for his motor telegraph and tried to pull it back. It wouldn’t budge. He tried his panel levers. Nothing responded. He grabbed the speaker.

“Skipper, she won’t respond!”

Again he grabbed the MB. The bell wouldn’t move.

“Skipper, she’s stuck on all ahead full.”

In the forward engine room, Googles and Brownhaver checked dials and gauges. “She’s heating up!” yelled Googles.

Brownhaver’s feet slid out from under him. He shot across the deck and crashed ass first into main engine number one.

“Holy shit!” said a machinist at Googles’s elbow. He was staring at the dials; they were spinning erratically.

Then there was a mind-rending shudder that began in the bow and worked its way aft, rattling through each compartment, flinging men to the deck, tossing them between torpedo bays, clobbering them with falling gear. Like billiard balls they caromed from one bulkhead to another.

The Captain was clinging to the periscope well. Hardy yelled to him, “Get everyone off! Abandon ship!”

The Captain turned possessed eyes on him and snapped angrily, “You’re a coward, Hardy.”

Hardy felt a cold chill blast down the open well. He jumped the Captain and clung to him. “Get everybody off!” ‘

The Captain’s hand shot out to the battle phone:
“Battle stations! All hands—battle stations!”

The submarine began rolling and pitching as well as yawing left and right. Fixtures snapped off the bulkheads and crashed to the deck. Light bulbs popped and burst. Dial faces blew out of their settings.

High atop the conning tower masts, lookouts wrapped arms and legs about their railings and saw ocean rushing up to meet them, then falling away again as the submarine thrust itself faster through the waves.

In the control room, Stigwood shouted, “We’re under attack! We’re under attack!”

Scopes fumbled for his radar gear and switched it on. The entire radar installation shook in its mounting. The oscilloscopes came on; he saw green lights shooting in every direction at once.

Roybell pointed frantically at the Christmas tree board, the life-pulse of the submarine. The warning lights were blinking, green to red, red to green.

Now they had no way of knowing the condition of hull integrity.

Cassidy stumbled back against the valve controls and stared at the instruments going wild around the control room.

He had seen enough. He made for the forward door, yelling back over his shoulder, “Break out the life jackets!” He dove through the hatch and stumbled forward, repeating the message. He expected the order to abandon ship to follow him through the speakers.

The Captain felt the broken undulations rippling through the periscope shaft, rapping his body against the metal—yet he refused to relinquish his grip on the shaft.

Jack Hardy wobbled just beside him, clinging to the well ladder, regarding him with a resigned certainty. Hardy seemed to be waiting for him. The Captain felt boxed in, cornered by this bearded nemesis. He sprang from the scope and, shoving Hardy aside, clutched the ladder, staring up through the open hatch into the dark, swirling mist.

He thrust his head above deck level and stared, astonished, at the gyrating masts above the bridge. He was chilled by the rumble of creaking metal and the frightened yells of the lookouts. Frightened enough to back down, he turned and gazed below—and found Jack Hardy staring up at him, waiting, daring him to plunge on into absolute hopelessness.

“GOD DAMN YOU!” he screamed at the top of his lungs—and in one swift lurch he threw himself out of the hatch onto the unsteady bridge deck.

Even as he screamed into the battle phone, once again exhorting the crew to take up battle stations, he saw the terrible blinding flashes start up on the forward antenna cables, sparks lighting up the mist, turning it from ugly green to a golden brown, illuminating the sea as the bolts of electricity leaped from one cable to another, then ran up the length of each of them and shot toward the bridge. The sea was strangely calm and placid—except in the submarine’s path. There it continued to churn feverishly, licking at the hull on all sides, as if stirred from beneath by some mad hand. And suddenly he knew the reason why.

The
Candlefish
was not moving.

She was doing twenty-one knots—standing still.

She was caught!

The submarine’s communications system had broken down. No word could be passed from the bridge to below, or from compartment to compartment. The panic level rose.