Boomer, page 33
Before he could finish the sentence. Steel had barked the order and they were plunging. The blast that followed was too close. Manchester reeled sideways and over as if she had fallen downstairs. Hall disappeared into sonar. Ben Steel was hurled against the OOD. Together they landed at the feet of the diving officer, who was already braced against the control panel to his left. It seemed as if Manchester’s bow was pointing straight down.
Peter Simonds maintained a death grip on the support above him. “Up angle, Chief. Stand by the ballast tanks. We may have to blow.”
The executive officer was the only one left standing as the lights flickered out. His hoarse voice was steady, barking orders. “Emergency back full.”
Then the beams of battle lanterns pierced the dusty gloom. There was an eerie silence broken only by the moans of those who had been injured. Manchester had righted herself and she no longer seemed to be standing on her side, but there was still a steep down angle to the deck. She hadn’t leveled off.
Steel stumbled to his feet. Blood from a gash on top of his head ran down the side of his face. “Can you stop the dive, Chief?”
“We’re passing nine hundred feet but it’s slowing, Captain. Control surfaces seem to be okay.”
“I don’t want to blow main ballast if I can help it. Chief. Damage reports, XO.”
“Nothing yet. We’re just reestablishing communications with other spaces.”
“Captain, torpedo room has a loose weapon. Two men badly hurt. One’s the chief.”
The voice was unfamiliar. “Who’s in charge down there?” Steel inquired.
“Commander Burch,” the voice boomed back from the SEAL who loved the shiny torpedoes.
“Secure the unit any way you can for the time being. Wrestle it if you have to. But don’t slow down loading tubes. I want a status report on time to shoot again. We’re in this up to our ass.” Steel remembered Wayne Newell’s habits well, his persistence, his lack of fear. Only the sounds of an imploding hull would stop him, how do you change everything you’ve been taught?
“Engineering reports some flooding from internal piping. Electrical system back on line no more than two minutes. No problems with the reactor. Some vibration in the shaft. Could be the propeller. Ready to answer all engine orders.”
David Hall reappeared in the entrance to sonar. His left arm, obviously broken, hung at his side. His left eye was swollen shut. “The sphere and hull arrays appear to be functioning properly. Nothing from the towed array. Probably lost it. There’s nothing out there but wild water. It’ll take a while to regain any contact.” He was still as calm as before the blast. “I think it must have detonated prematurely, Captain, or we’d be dead meat by now.” The sonar officer’s voice rose to its familiar level. “I would appreciate it if we could get on the other side of this mess so I can locate that son of a bitch.”
More reports came into the control room. The hull was still sound. Damage to auxiliary systems was minor. Damage control reported they were even with the flooding. Most injuries were cuts and bruises, with some broken bones. Manchester was level and maneuvering at ten knots. The exterior controls, rudder, and planes reacted normally.
“Commander Burch reports he’ll have tube one ready in about one minute. Tube four is still loaded and the unit is ready to fire. Number two’s was the one that broke loose while they were loading. Tube three’s unit is in position. Give him four minutes.”
“Captain,” Peter Simonds reported, “we’ve already got it together enough to fight the ship again.”
Steel nodded and peered down at the deck for a moment. Manchester had shot a single torpedo, her third, and turned away from Pasadena. There had been a counter fire and Pasadena probably had turned the opposite direction. Newell’s ego must have figured his strategy couldn’t fail him.
The boomer was to the north of them, hopefully making tracks. Shit, Florida wouldn’t do that if Buck Nelson thought they couldn’t outrun an attack boat. He’d go silent and wait, protect himself if he had to. And Newell would know that! That last shot, if it didn’t hit here, was to at least keep Manchester occupied while Wayne Newell went after his major target. But he won’t forget us. He’ll come back to see if anything’s still afloat here.
“XO, you take it. Come right and head for Florida’s last known position. I’m going to—”
But Steel was interrupted by Chief Moroney’s voice from sonar. “I’ve got that last unit of theirs in a search out there. It’s still too turbulent to sort everything out, but that torpedo has a bad habit of operating on its own.”
Goddamn. Persistence. That son of a bitch is persistent. “Noisemakers, XO, now. And wind it up. We’ll worry about any other problems later.”
There is a point in a melee when the environment is contact rich but not target rich. There are too many sounds—decoys, noisemakers, explosions. Man has turned the dark, silent ocean into a maelstrom of sound. It’s up to the commanding officers to select the highest-valued contact … and hope.
Wayne Newell struggled to his knees. His head swiveled. The battle lanterns had switched on automatically, cutting through the dust that had shaken down from the overhead. He remembered Dick Makin’s outline in the sonar entrance … about to say something … Pasadena was coming around to port … away from that other boat … they’d fired at her again … must have sunk her … and the boomer!
Newell rose to his knees. He recalled something being said about steering control. Yet there had been no response. Was it just from fear while Pasadena was tossed about in the turbulence of the blast? In the glare of the battle lanterns he could see others looking about them, some sprawled on the deck, others still strapped into their positions. Yet no one uttered a sound. Some were obviously injured. But those last words—something about steering control.…
“Does emergency steering work?” Newell bellowed. He was surprised at the strength of his voice. Or was it the silence in the control room?
The sailor at the helm position, the one who had taken over when Stirling snapped, slowly placed his hands on the small wheel and turned it. He looked up at the dial on the control panel and turned the wheel the other way. “The indicator seems to be functioning,” he said blandly.
Pasadena was at a moderate up angle. Newell noticed that the diving officer was sitting on the deck, his head cradled in his bloody hands. “The bow planes,” he asked patiently, “are they working?”
The control was pushed slowly forward, then pulled back. The sailor put a hand on the shoulder of the man beside him and murmured something that Newell couldn’t hear. The other sailor did the same with his own control, his eyes fixed on the panel in front of him, then nodded.
“We have control, Captain.”
“Depth?”
“Three hundred ten feet.”
They’d been heading up to evade. “Hold her there.”
The OOD—where the hell was the OOD? Newell pulled himself to his feet. The OOD lay unconscious, his body in an awkward position at the base of the periscope. Newell saw the quartermaster pull himself to his feet beside the tiny chart table. “Get damage reports for me, Clark. All I need to know is if we can shoot and if engineering can get us back to that boomer.” He turned to the sailors at the controls. “Come left to zero zero zero. We’ll feel our way at ten knots for now until sonar tells us what’s still out there.” He was talking to them calmly, logically, as if they were having a pleasant conversation in his living room. Yet the setting was bizarre—with the beams of battle lanterns arching through the dusty haze of the control room.
His executive officer was the major concern right now. He remembered Dick Makin appearing from sonar like the grim reaper, uttering words that sounded important—yet he couldn’t remember what they were.
When Newell stepped into sonar, he found Makin sitting on the deck with his legs out in front of him, his eyes half shut. One of the sonarmen was tying a handkerchief around the XO’s head. What was it Makin had said? As he looked down at his executive officer, he remembered that look on Makin’s face and the words “it’s my duty,” after some garbage about American submarines. “Get back to your station,” the captain said evenly to the sonarman. “We are still under attack. I’ll help the XO.” And when the sailor failed to move quickly enough to suit him, he snapped, “Now.”
Makin looked up at the captain. Even in the blue haze of sonar, Makin’s narrowed eyes were beacons. Was it pain? Anger? Newell couldn’t be sure. Both his OOD and his diving officer were down, and he needed the XO’s help. But he also sensed that he’d have to watch him like a hawk. He wasn’t sure why now, but something in the back of his mind cautioned that he’d have to watch everybody. Newell stuck out his hand. “Come on there. On your feet. I need you in control. We’ve got Russians to kill.”
The XO looked away. Then he rolled to one side with a grunt of pain and moaned slightly until he was balanced on one knee, his back to Newell. He rose unsteadily to his feet. Without looking at Newell as he turned around, he brushed roughly by him into the control room. He saw the OOD crumpled beside the periscope. The diving officer remained in a sitting position, face and hands buried in his knees, his uniform now drenched with his own blood.
Newell stepped up behind him. “Are you ready to help me now?” Makin had yet to speak a word. Newell was hesitant, unsure of his XO’s intentions. Watch him … watch him! The silence pervading the control room added to the eerie glare of the battle lanterns.
Makin whirled around. The handkerchief across his forehead was soaked a bright red. Blood was running down one side of his face. He opened his mouth to speak. His lips moved but there were no words. His eyes seemed to glaze slightly as he stared right through Wayne Newell.
“Dick?”
Makin’s knees buckled and he slumped forward into Newell’s arms. The captain let him slide to the deck.
I’ll do better at knocking off those Russians myself, Newell thought. Those clowns on the attack team are too scared to say anything.
Dan Mundy stood beside Buck Nelson in Florida’s control room and shook his head in wonder. “I don’t know how, but they’re both under way. I can’t imagine those torpedoes blew just noisemakers. I’m picking up a slight shaft problem on one of them, vibration. But they both seem to be headed this way, Captain.”
“And you don’t know which is which.” Nelson inclined his head slightly and glanced over the top of his rimless glasses. Mundy had already explained that twice.
Mundy shrugged. “If Delaney can’t tell, no one can. With those torpedoes messing up the water like they did, it’s not going to be easy to sort out which is which. They’re both 688s. One’s a good guy, I guess, and one’s a rogue. I don’t understand it. What do you think, Captain?”
Buck Nelson knew the bad guy, but he waved off the question with his hand. Chief Delaney had picked out Pasadena’s signature. Nelson knew who; he just didn’t know why. What was motivating Wayne Newell? He’d fired on them. He’d fired on the other 688. He was coming back now. Which one was he? Port? Starboard?
Nelson turned away and took a few steps back toward the quartermaster’s chart table. What do you think, Captain? He rested his elbow in his left hand and bent his head, massaging tired eyes with his fingers. He was outside once again, beyond Florida, gazing down upon two SSNs jockeying for the shot that would destroy the other. One of them wanted to sink him—the other was making a desperate effort to come to his aid. But even out there, even beyond the fray, he couldn’t…. No, I can’t, a voice inside him cried. Can’t tell which….
“Designate the one to port target number one, the other number two,” Nelson indicated, turning around. “Prepare all tubes.”
“The one who signaled us before will be crazy if he doesn’t do it again,” Jimmy Cross said. “Then we’ll only have one to worry about.”
Nelson shook his head. “We all heard that signal,” he said patiently. “They’ll both use it now. It’s useless. We have two targets. If one gets through, we’ll sink it.”
“How will we tell which one we sank?” Cross asked defensively.
“Maybe we never will.”
Manchester, seven hundred feet below the surface, was proceeding toward the boomer’s last known position at twenty knots. When Chief Moroney reported that Pasadena’s last torpedo had gone into a homing run well above and astern of them, Ben Steel held his depth until the weapon was drawn into one of their noisemakers and exploded. Then he gradually brought the ship up to four hundred feet.
As they drew farther from the turbulence caused by the encounter with Pasadena, the other boat was detected off their starboard beam.
“It looks like they’re moving close to the same course and speed,” Moroney said, “maybe closing us a little.”
That meant Newell would hear them, too. He’d know that somehow they’d escaped his wild attack—but he had no idea if they’d be able to hunt Pasadena. Newell would be wondering whether to go after the boomer first or take the chance of finishing off Manchester.
“Any indication of damage?”
“Nothing we can pick up. Nothing as obvious as our shaft, anyway.”
Peter Simonds appeared from the engineering spaces. “Mac says not to worry. He wouldn’t want to leave port with something like that shaft and he wouldn’t want a full-power run, but he thinks he can sustain twenty knots without shaking anything apart. No more than that, though. And he can get us home too, he said.”
“And over twenty knots?” Steel asked.
“He thinks the vibration then will be bad enough to affect sonar. Eventually we have to slow down. We’re going to screw up the calibration on the fine-tuned equipment, like the attack consoles, anyway. So we better finish this off quick. Actually, Dave Hall says we’re close to the edge at twenty knots. Lots of our own ship’s noise interfering with his sonar.”
“Any problems with developing a fire-control solution?” Steel asked.
“Not that I can tell,” Simonds said. “Commander Burch says tubes one, three, and four are ready. They’ve got a problem with two that they’re working on.”
Again Steel closed his eyes and imagined the scene. If he were in Buck Nelson’s shoes, he would have gone as quietly as possible after evading Pasadena’s torpedoes. Perhaps he was as much as ten, certainly no more than twenty, miles beyond his last position. He didn’t want to be heard and he wouldn’t be moving at more than ten knots. And his muzzle doors would be open and weapons ready.
Pasadena was to Manchester’s east, so Newell would have to come more to the northwest to search for the boomer. He couldn’t go fast enough to place himself in front of Florida. In a picture-perfect sequence at this speed, the two 688s should intersect close to Florida.
Newell would be trying to place each of them in his mind in the same manner. Once his sonar picked up the vibrations in Manchester’s shaft—they would have had to by now—he would know exactly what Steel was planning.
“Slight change of plans,” Steel said to Simonds. “They can get to the boomer before us, as far as we can tell. I want a course to come in behind them about three thousand yards because there’s no way we can get in front, especially when he hears us coming like this. We’ll force him to turn before he gets to Florida.”
The casualty reports aboard Pasadena might have concerned a captain in full control of himself. It certainly would have altered their tactics. Wayne Newell barely acknowledged them. The boat would remain on emergency electrical power until sections of burned-out cables could be cross-connected.
There had been more damage to the crew than to the submarine. The most frustrating aspect to Newell was the fact that many of the spaces were vague about when they might return to normal operations. They didn’t seem to care, and there was no time to go into each one to talk with them.
“Sonar,” Newell questioned, “what do you have on our contact now?”
“Target motion indicates it might have altered course to intercept us before we reach the boomer’s projected location.”
“How about that noise you picked up?”
Another voice from sonar answered. “Engineering says from my description that the target must be near max speed. Probably has shaft problems.”
“Range?”
“Fifteen thousand.”
“Come left another ten degrees,” Newell ordered. “Torpedo room, status report.”
“Tubes three and four ready. Tubes flooded, pressure equalized. Both units warmed.” There was a slight pause. “Damage to the piping repaired in a few minutes, then we’ll have one and two ready.”
“Open the muzzle doors.” There was nothing to hide at this stage.
Bob Holloway, the weapons-control coordinator, stared back blankly when the captain looked over at him. He was still functioning, but more from instinct than anything else.
Newell took a couple of steps in his direction. “Your target could be at maximum speed now. I will hold this course and speed until either he shoots or we’re at ten thousand yards. Then we’ll adjust our course twenty degrees to port for firing.” It struck Newell that he was talking to a child. “Will the weapons be ready within two minutes?” It was not a question a captain would normally ask, but the man’s expression bothered him more than the possibility Pasadena would be fired on.
“Sixty seconds.” The voice was a monotone, but the job would be done in half the time.
“That’s what I like to hear,” Newell said heartily. “I want you to increase the pitch on number four—deeper target.” He saw Holloway staring at him uncertainly. “Problems?”
The man shook his head but said nothing. And when Newell frowned at the lack of response, the man nodded and managed, “All set, sir.”
What was wrong with these people?
Newell moved over behind the two planesmen at the control panel. They’d been strapped into their chairs and were uninjured. “You men are doing a fine job. I’m going to recommend you for medals when we get home.” That would do it. They’d respond more positively to a pep talk like this. “It’s tough without an OOD or diving officer to back you up, and I’ve got to coordinate the attack. But we’re at war, and the enemy finally gave us a little bit of what we’ve been handing him. I’ll point out in my report that you two assumed the watch for the officers and at the same time you continued to handle the controls.” He rested a reassuring hand on each man’s shoulder. “You just listen to me and we’ll come through this fine. I think the world just may rest on our shoulders right now. We have to get through to that boomer, you know, before she launches, so it’s going to take some pretty fair boat drivers. I’m going to call for some wild maneuvers,” he added with an encouraging squeeze. “I know you’ll do just fine.”
