Ghosts of Bungo Suido (14 page)

“Radar contact, one four five, range sixteen thousand yards.”

Then he remembered their orders: Make no attacks until the carrier had been dealt with and whatever other tasking was in that envelope had been taken care of. He instructed the attack team to set up a solution on the warship, with another single-sweep radar range mark in five minutes. He’d be prepared to shoot at this guy, but only if he made trouble. Meanwhile, they needed to get out of their spider box.

“Anything, XO?” he asked.

“We’re passing our original track heading now, Captain. I’ll twist sixty starboard. We may need to submerge below periscope depth and see what’s what, say at two hundred feet.”

Gar closed his eyes to envision the 3-D picture. Then he realized that they couldn’t do that. There might be one or more mines right below them right now.

“Continuing up Doppler on the echo ranger,” Sound announced. “But not like he’s coming right at us. Estimating he’s transiting, not attacking.”

“If he’s transiting, then he’ll know where the safe channel is, Captain,” the exec said. “If we could get behind him…”

“Popeye, can you tell the depth of the mines you’re seeing on that thing?”

“The transducer is at periscope depth, Captain,” Popeye said. “It looks up at five degrees. Everything I’m seeing is fifty, sixty feet below the surface. These are all aimed at submarines running at periscope depth.”

Gar thought fast. The boat was trimmed bow down 5 degrees to compensate for the sonar’s 5-degree up-look. If he leveled the boat to an even keel, and some of those mines around them “disappeared,” then they had a way out—on or close to the surface. First he needed another range on that Jap ship, and another navigation fix.

He ordered the radar plotters to double up, one for the ship contact, one for the navigation ranges. He couldn’t afford to make two sweeps if that warship coming up behind them was equipped with passive radar sensors. As it was, the Japs had already been given one chance to detect their presence.

“Doppler steady on the echo ranger,” Sound announced. “He’s probably at CPA.”

“Radar team ready?”

They nodded, grease pencils poised over the radar repeater’s scope. The last range to the destroyer had been at 8 miles, so there shouldn’t be a problem with the Jap’s lookouts seeing the radar mast. Gar waited for him to get past CPA, his closest point of approach.

“Do it.”

As the mast went up for its radar snapshot, he felt the trembling of the screws subside. He checked the gyro repeater. The bow was still swinging lazily to starboard. He could hear the trim pumps whining down in Control as the diving officer fiddled with the ship’s trim. Without way on,
Dragonfish
was essentially trying to hover, with no help from the dive planes. He asked the exec if there was a hole to starboard at sixty feet. The exec shook his head. They were still boxed in.

Gar explained what he planned to do: Wait for that destroyer to go by, come all the way up to the surface, and then get behind the tin can or whatever it was and follow him through the Bungo and Hoyo channels into the safety of the Inland Sea.

“We won’t move until Popeye thinks there are no antisurface ship mines riding just under the surface.”

“And if there are?”

“We look for another goddamned hole, XO. Nav team, you get a fix?”

“We got two ranges and bearings, Captain. Not great, but they confirm a set to the east-northeast, two knots. The tide’s still slack-water, so this is probably the base current.”

Gar turned to the TDC. “What you got?”

The weapons officer, Tom Walsh, was operating the torpedo data computer. “We have a fair solution on that guy, Captain. We have Cuties in five and six.”

“How fast is he going, Plot?”

“Twelve, maybe thirteen knots, Captain.”

“Forget the Cuties. They’re too slow. If we have to, we’ll use electrics.”

“How can we surface safely without knowing if there’s a floater right above us?” the exec asked.

My straight man, Gar thought. “Great question, XO. But we just twisted in place a hundred twenty degrees. I didn’t hear any chains scraping the hull during the twist. Control, bring us up to decks awash.”

“Control, aye.”

They were still pointed in the direction of that surface ship’s wake. As Control blew ballast tanks and the sub began to rise, Gar decided to get the boat back under control by putting on some forward motion. “XO, go all ahead one third, make turns for four knots.”

As the exec had pointed out, they were taking a big chance. Popeye still couldn’t verify that there weren’t antiship mines lurking just below the surface. He wouldn’t be able to do that until the FM sonar could see into that depth layer, but Gar knew they had to get some way on if they were ever going to keep up with that surface ship and trail him into the relative safety of the Inland Sea.

“There’s nothing showing up in front of us, Captain,” Popeye said.

“That a guarantee, Popeye?”

“Negative, sir. Anything hanging just below that five-degree up-look is
not
visible.”

That produced a strained silence in the conning tower. What the hell, Gar thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. Besides, if something was lurking right above them, where was its chain?

“XO, once we get behind that ship, we’ll turn to his strongest sound bearing, and then we’ll go on the diesels. We’ll never keep up on the battery.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

He was beginning to like this command-and-control setup. He could stand back, take in the whole picture, and make decisions without being mired in the minutiae of steering the boat, order by order. Mush Morton had been right. On the other hand, Mush Morton and his beloved
Wahoo
were now dead and lying probably not too far away from here, either.

“Come left to three four zero,” the exec ordered.

“Conn, Control, we are on the surface, decks awash. Main induction is clear.”

Gar went to the night periscope for a look-around. It took a moment for his eyes to adapt, but he saw absolutely nothing.

“How far behind that guy are we?”

“By the plot, he should be at least ten thousand yards. Radar?”

“Negative.”

Five miles, he thought. Would he hear the submarine’s diesels lighting off? He sighed. They had no choice. If that guy turned to conform to the cleared channel and they missed it, they’d drive right back into the minefield. He reached for the bitch-box.

“Maneuvering, Conn, open main induction and light ’em off. Put some amps in the can, but gimme three so I can stay with this tin can.”

He turned to the exec. “XO, take a radar range from time to time, single sweep. See if we can close up on him so we don’t miss any important turns. We’ll let him do the navigating for the next hour. And open the hatch—let’s get some fresh air in here.”

“Lookouts?”

“Negative. One plane and we’re back in the soup. I don’t want to leave someone out there.”

NINE

The destroyer led them through a series of dogleg turns for the next forty-five minutes, maintaining a steady 12 knots through the darkness. The nav team made periodic radar-fix sweeps until Gar realized that there were operational navigation lights on the shore. He got Hashimoto up to the conning tower to see if he could identify the lights using the periscope and then mark them on the chart, after which they began to get much more precise navigation fixes. The mine-hunting sonar indicated that they were running on the north side of the minefields and that there were no mines above 40 feet depth, and no mines at all once they reached and passed through the Hoyo channel. The tide was just beginning to flood back in, so the famous whirlpools were not in evidence.

By midnight they were inside the Inland Sea. Gar slowed down to let their tour-guide destroyer draw away toward Hiroshima Bay, secured the diesels, and, after one final visual fix, submerged. The water depth shown on Hashimoto’s chart was 450 feet, which agreed with the boat’s own fathometer. Gar ordered the boat down to 250 feet, where they’d be protected acoustically by a distinct thermal layer hovering at 200 feet.

The exec sent the crew to midnight rations and then set a modified battle stations watch throughout the boat. He told people to get some sleep on station while they could. Gar met in the wardroom with the ops officer and the navigator to go over the consolidated chart, the U.S. Navy’s version as marked up by Hashimoto. The Inland Sea was like a bathtub, with steep sides and depths ranging from 700 to as little as 40. The islands surrounding it were the tops of drowned mountains, and there were plenty of pinnacles rising from the sea floor to just below the surface to make the navigation even more interesting. Hashimoto knew where each of them lay because that’s where the best fishing was, and he had marked the chart accordingly. It was important for them to know where the fishing boats would and would not typically go, because they were going to have to hide for most of their tenure inside this basin.

Radio had copied the fleet broadcast while on the surface, which contained a December weather forecast for the Inland Sea area aimed right at
Dragonfish.
A cold front was predicted to move across the Sea of Japan, bringing rain, snow, and fog over the southern Japanese islands by late morning; lousy weather for navigation, but great for hiding right under the noses of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Come the dawn, Gar expected, there’d be all sorts of traffic up on the surface—interisland ferries, tugs, cargo ships, fishing boats, not to mention harbor patrol craft, mine tenders, and even transiting naval shipping. Tomorrow they’d lie low; tomorrow night they’d make their move under the cover of all that predicted slop and try to get close to the Kure naval arsenal, and then, oh by the way, locate, identify, and attack the world’s biggest aircraft carrier—at its moorings.

Piece’a cake, as the Cob would say.

Then Gar remembered that he had one more envelope to open, but first they needed a lair. He climbed back up into the conning tower with the chart. With the navigator’s help, he drew a box enclosing the deepest parts of the Seto’s western basin on the DRT chart, clearly marking two pinnacles that rose from the bottom to within 50 feet of the surface.

“Stay in this box at two knots,” he told the nav team. “Keep the boat quiet and under the layer at all times, and be alert for set and drift as the flood tide builds back in. Use the FM sonar to locate these pinnacles, and use them as navigation reference points.”

Then he called for the exec and went to his cabin. When Russ got there, he got the second envelope out of his safe. Inside they found two pages. One contained two paragraphs addressed to CO
Dragonfish,
CO’s eyes only. The other was a diagrammatic set of instructions for some kind of device. Gar read the two paragraphs aloud to the exec.

“Upon safely reaching the interior waters of the Inland Sea, and
before
prosecuting any attack on the target aircraft carrier, proceed to the vicinity of the fishing village of Akitsu (34°19'0" North, 132° 49'18" East). Once there, put Minoru Hashimoto safely ashore by best means available. Ensure that he takes with him the contents of the small box given to him by LCDR Tanaka at Pearl, and that he understands and agrees to the operating instructions contained on the following page.

“This part of your mission takes precedence over the attack on the carrier, which shall be conducted as soon as possible thereafter. In that regard, a mobility kill is sufficient to accomplish your objective. Maintain radio silence until
Dragonfish
is either safely out of the Inland Sea or the strong probability exists that your escape from the Inland Sea is in doubt.”

“In other words, Spartans, come back
with
your shield or
on
it,” Russ said.

“Lovely,” Gar said, looking at the second piece of paper. “What is this thing?”

The exec looked over his shoulder at the instruction sheet. The diagram showed a device shaped like a small thermos bottle, about ten inches tall. On the bottom was a butterfly switch, and on the top a thin, telescoping antenna. The instructions were pretty simple: Hashimoto was to go to the gardens surrounding the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, on the eastern side of the Motoyasu River in Hiroshima City itself. Once there, and without being observed, he was to turn the butterfly switch to the right to the on position, pull up the antenna, and hide the device somewhere in the gardens where it would not be visible. He was to do this on the day when paper rained from the skies over Hiroshima City.

“Paper rain?”

“Beats me,” Gar said. “Intel-speak. Get him up here, let’s see if he knows.”

In the event, Hashimoto did not know. Paper rain sounded like some kind of haiku to him. He’d brought the cardboard box containing the small thermos bottle. The switch was clearly marked
OFF
and
ON
, and the antenna could be pulled out to nearly 2 feet in length. The device weighed perhaps 3 pounds.

“This, apparently, is the price of our bringing you home,” Gar told the old man.

“Is this weapon?” Hashimoto asked.

“If it is, it’s a pretty small weapon,” Gar said. “We don’t know what it is. We are supposed to put you ashore at Akitsu and then leave the area. Do you know that place?”

“Yes,” Hashimoto said. “I have family there.”

“Do you have papers? ID card? Money?”

“Tanaka-san give me these things,” he said and pulled out some papers from a small pouch. “For police.”

“If you just show up in Akitsu, will someone report you to the police?”

“No,” he snorted. “Everyone hates police. They steal. Beat people. Family there. Safe.”

“How will you get to Hiroshima when the time comes?”

“Walk. Bicycle. Bus, maybe. No problem.”

Gar rubbed the side of his face for a moment. “I wish I could tell you what this is all about, Hashimoto-san, but I have no idea.”

“Like Tanaka-san said, secret stuff,” Hashimoto said. “I do it.”

“Okay,” Gar said. “Let’s go look at a chart. If you’re ready, we’ll get you ashore tonight.”