Boomer, p.30
Boomer, page 30
“Agreed!” The General Secretary couldn’t believe it. Perhaps….
“Send the identification signal. Chief,” Steel called to sonar. “We’re letting it all hang out now anyway.” Manchester was careering ahead through black water toward an uncertain resolution. He turned to Peter Simonds with a wry smile. “At least Florida will know who the cavalry is.”
“Christ, everyone knows who we are now,” the XO snorted hoarsely. “Weapons-control coordinator reports torpedoes warm, presets entered, Captain.”
“Very well.” Steel was beaming. The tubes had been flooded, the pressure equalized—the weapons were ready. All they needed was a target confirmation.
What the hell was supposed to happen now? They’d sent the identification signal provided by Commander Burch over active sonar. In unique situations it was intended to provide access to the boomer’s sector, or at least security—each man hoped. It was Manchester’s ID, her authorization that she was supposed to be there.
They waited. It was akin to waiting for someone to answer the phone.
There was no response.
“You know,” Moroney remarked from sonar, “you know there is no such thing as a reply to that signal … don’t you?”
“Right, Chief,” Simonds answered. “Just sort of a letdown, I guess … not to get an answer, I mean,” he added to Steel.
“That other boat had to hear that,” the captain said.
“You mean Pasadena?” Simonds glanced out of the corner of his eye then quickly looked back toward the control board.
“That other boat.” Steel’s words were uttered carefully and deliberately. They also meant that the captain didn’t want to hear Pasadena’s name again. Steel rubbed his cheek thoughtfully, as though he might need a shave. “What would you do on that other attack boat if you heard our coded signal? Shit,” he answered himself disparagingly, “you’d be trying to get your own signal out super fast so Florida doesn’t know which end is up. Keep her wondering until it’s too late. And if you weren’t aware of it, and with the way we’re all approaching each other like someone’s going to shoot any second, you’d jump up and down and wave your arms and say, ‘Hey, it’s me—don’t shoot.’ Right?”
The XO nodded, although he found he was incapable of responding. Simonds could think of nothing to say, nothing intelligent or forceful enough that would express just how he felt. He pushed his glasses back on his nose and turned away from Steel to stare once again at the depth gauges.
“Targets, David?” Steel called out to his sonar officer.
“Both sound like they’re increasing speed. Starboard bow, the one that was heading north, that’s the boomer. Moroney concurs, and the other.…” His voice dropped off.
“Talk to me, David.”
“Pasadena, Captain. It’s got to be … like … looking in a mirror,” he choked.
“That’s my target,” Steel said with an exaggerated firmness. “Firing-point procedures, tubes one and two.” This had to be a trick of some kind … or perhaps a test of Manchester. Some sick son of a bitch of a staff officer with nothing better to do had dreamed up this whole scenario. No boomers had ever been sunk. It was all a ruse, even picking that SEAL out of the ocean. Commander Burch just made it more realistic. They were just testing Manchester … or more so, him. Ben Steel….
“One and two …” was the whispered response.
“Open the muzzle doors. I want them to hear that. Maybe.…” But Steel’s voice drifted off as he was interrupted.
“I heard muzzle doors out there,” Moroney shouted from sonar.
Someone else was preparing to fire! Which one?
“Captain, we’ve altered course slightly for the target,” said the OOD. “The ship is ready,” he concluded ominously.
“Captain.…” Peter Simonds’s voice was an octave higher than normal. “Ben …” he implored. No one in control had ever heard the XO use the captain’s first name. His face reflected a hurt that he couldn’t express.
“The weapon is ready,” the weapons-control officer whispered, his lower lip held tightly between his teeth.
Both captain and executive officer turned to each other. Steel stared back at his executive officer with an expression of inner pain. The XO nodded slightly two or three times, as if searching for the correct words before saying tentatively, “The solution is ready.” His eyes were tightly shut before he uttered the final word.
Manchester was ready to shoot.
“David,” Steel called toward sonar, “my target,” emphasizing the my as he spoke.
“Heavy machinery noise. Picking up speed.”
Steel glanced over at Peter Simonds. Yes, he’d heard. Nothing needed to be said. The solution was still good.
The XO answered with another slight nod. Yes, that increase in speed had definitely been covered. The weapon knew about the target also. That was an automatic.
“Wind her up,” Steel called out to the OOD. “Let’s make the best target they’ve ever heard.”
If they wouldn’t shoot, he would!
Newell had heard the familiar words in the background as he delivered his final pep talk over the IMC to the crew— warm the torpedoes … flood the tubes … equalize pressure—and Dick Makin’s responses as each evolution was completed and reported to him.
The presets had been entered. The torpedoes were ready to respond.
“Firing-point procedures, tubes one and two.…” Makin’s voice was steady even if his face radiated an inner turmoil. He was balanced on the needle point of an enigma. His faith in the Navy—in his captain—had been challenged as never before over the past few days. It was too easy to overlook the reality of a war on the surface when the real battle, the one that he could see and smell and touch, was taking place in front of him. It had been so easy to accept everything that naval intelligence provided, especially when Pasadena’s, captain had been briefed by SUBPAC himself. But the Wayne Newell he’d known was evaporating before his eyes … had he already disappeared? The man had been gradually consumed by the war, the devastating necessity of destroying submarines and human beings that gave every indication of being their brothers. It was forcing Dick Makin to question everything he’d ever accepted.
Wayne Newell had interrupted himself on the IMC to call over his shoulder, “Designate the boomer target number one. And his bird dog number two.” And then he’d continued his announcement to the crew in a frantic effort to keep his now fragile team from breaking apart.
“Captain, Mr. McKown reports the ship is ready.” Makin relayed the fact with an unusual solemnity as the IMC clicked off. The snap of the switch was magnified through control.
“Good, Dick, great … terrific.” His eyes darted about the control room, never once settling on anyone. “What about the other? Must be an Alfa designated to protect the boomer, I’d say.”
The executive officer stared blankly at Newell. The corners of his mouth were turned sharply down and the lines at the corners of his eyes had expanded as he prepared to speak. This was the time he had to say it. “Captain.…”
“The weapons are ready.” The weapons-control coordinator barked out his report in an exaggerated voice.
“Very well.” Makin, momentarily sidetracked by the report, continued, “Captain, that’s no Alfa out there.…”
“Must be,” an irritated Newell interrupted. “That’s what I’d use if I was a Russian. Stick one of those high-speed, hard-shelled suckers out there and—”
“The solution is ready.” The OOD was acting as fire-control coordinator for Makin.
“I’ll take it now,” Newell said loudly, his voice excessively high-pitched. He winked at his XO. “With all the problems some of these guys have with their wild imaginations about these targets being something other than Russian—”
“Captain,” Steve Thompson’s shout from sonar interrupted, “the other contact—the one we said sounded like one of our 688s—it just went active, some sort of signal an her sonar. It was definitely some type of code.”
“Mr. Thompson, that is a method of baiting us.” Newell looked quickly around the control room, then back at Makin. There was a frantic look in the XO’s eyes, no different from any of the others. “The Russians are trying to draw us away from their boomer. They are our enemy. They’re deceptive. That’s no 688 out there. They know that if we get this next boomer, it’s all over for them. They’ll do anything to stop us, and right this minute they’re fooling all of you.”
“But it could have been an ID for one of our own. You remember, entering a boomer’s sector?” Makin’s voice echoed an increasing sense of urgency. “They do that, you know. You were on one, Captain.”
“That’s for something entirely different,” Newell retorted. “They’re trying to fool us, but we’re not going to be fooled … no, sir.”
“Target number two is accelerating, fast.”
“Watch your depth!” The diving officer’s howl of rage lashed through the control room to draw everyone’s attention. “Watch it, damn it,” he snarled. His face was contorted in rage as he grabbed the back of the bow planesman’s neck and shook him. “You’re going to lose it.”
Makin’s eyes moved quickly from one man to the next, his gaze darting back to the officers. He’d never seen a submarine officer treat a man like that. They were on the edge. They were losing it.
The OOD reacted at the same time. “Get the bow up. Get it up or I’m going to have to re—”
Newell grabbed the OOD by the shoulder and spun him around. “Get that man off the bow planes. Now!” He whirled in the direction of the planesman. The sailor was rigid in his chair, his arms straight, hands pushing forward on the wheel. “Look at him,” Newell howled.
“Stirling,” the diving officer shouted frantically, now more frightened than angry. He reached forward to shake the man again. “For Christ sake, bring her up.” He grabbed the sailor by the shoulders as if pulling back on the man would bring the planes back up.
“Why isn’t he off that control? Who’s his relief?” Newell shouted. In the next breath he said, “I don’t care who takes it.”
A sailor appeared beside Stirling, to help the diving officer. They had to pry the planesman’s hands from the wheel.
Dick Makin’s voice was sharp. “I’m getting a problem with the solution, Captain. We have to steady up.” He was trapped between two worlds. Whether it was instinct or training, he was struggling to keep an accurate solution in the torpedo. Yet he didn’t want to shoot!
Newell was beside Stirling’s relief, pushing him bodily into place. “Get that bow up … get us level if you ever want to.…” But Newell had already turned away to shout to Dick Makin. “You call down to the torpedo room and tell them that they’re going to set a record in reloading or I swear no one down there will ever see land again.” He licked his lips. “We are going to hold the wires as long as possible before we turn on that Alfa and blow that son of a bitch out of the water. After that we’ll finish off the boomer, if we don’t get him the first time.” He waved a hand at the executive officer. “You tell Chief Sanford that,” he added.
Stirling, the planesman who had been pulled from his chair, lay on the deck rolling his head from side to side. Then, as if he had been stung, he opened his eyes and leveled a finger at Newell. He tried to speak. His lips moved and his tongue worked but the words he was trying to speak ran together until his hand dropped, then his head, and finally his voice.
There was dead silence in the control room for almost five seconds before Newell glared at Makin. “Well?”
“I have a solution again,” he answered, expelling a deep breath.
Newell clapped his hands together. “Tube number one, shoot on generated bearings.” The air-operated ram ejected the water slug and the first torpedo. The sensation could be felt throughout the ship.
“Unit’s running correctly, sir.”
“Tube number two, shoot….” Newell’s voice cracked perceptibly but the order was understood.
The second torpedo leaped from its tube.
The only sound that could be heard in the control room was the low moaning of the planesman, Stirling, still lying on the deck.
The silence was not broken by the standard after-firing reports on the second torpedo.
“Well?” Newell inquired angrily.
“Doesn’t sound right.”
“Wire continuity on number one still good.”
“Number two?” Newell shouted. “Number two?”
“Something’s wrong.”
“Number one still good.”
Steve Thompson’s voice shattered the coordination of the control room. “I heard muzzle doors. Target number two must be preparing to shoot.”
“See,” Newell said to Makin, as calm now as he’d been loud a moment previously. “See, that’s no friendly. He intends to shoot at us. They all do. We’re at war,” There was a light tremor in his voice. “This is what it’s really like,” he said for the control room’s benefit. “Now you know why they couldn’t fool us,” he concluded with a dramatic sweep of his hand.
‘Torpedo in the water on the boomer’s bearing. They’ve fired on us.”
“Cut the wires,” Newell shouted. “Come right for target number two. Noisemakers in the water. We’re going to take out this Alfa before we evade. Firing-point procedures, tubes three and four.”
“The ship is ready,” Andy McKown, the OOD, reported mechanically. Then he wondered why he’d spoken. They hadn’t settled on their new course yet. At the same time, he realized that his voice was hollow, and he wasn’t sure why. The idea of a torpedo racing at Pasadena had no effect on him, and that was equally puzzling.
It was strange to realize that what really concerned him was this preparation to fire on the next target. McKown had been following the entire sequence of events—and I know this is a 688, not a Soviet Alfa! Yet he couldn’t understand why he’d brought the ship onto a new course. But he had—I don’t have the guts to counter Captain Newell’s orders! None of us do … not even the XO!
“Weapons are ready.”
“Do you have a solution?” Newell demanded, “No … we need a.…” Makin never had a chance to finish.
Newell understood instantly. “Steve, go active. I need an accurate range.”
In a split second the giant bow sonar emitted a powerful sound wave to mark the second sub. The silence in control was eerie until the sonar officer reported, “Ten thousand five hundred.”
“You got that?” Newell asked irritably.
There was another pause, until Makin replied, “Solution is ready.”
“Tube number three, shoot on generated bearings.”
No sooner was the first torpedo on its way than Newell fired the second. There was no concern about the wires this time. They had a perfect range on the target. The boomer already had fired on them. “Go deep,” he shouted to the OOD. “Right full rudder. More noisemakers.”
Pasadena lurched sharply as she responded to the rudder and the planes biting into the water. The men in control grabbed for support as the deck fell away and she heeled to starboard. The clatter of loose gear broke the silence that had descended through the space after the final torpedo was fired. Now Pasadena was running for her life.
“Those bastards in the torpedo room better be on top of it.” Newell’s voice was shrill. “We’re going to get both of them.”
“Torpedoes on target two’s bearing.”
No one noticed Dick Makin slip into the sonar room.
Chapter Sixteen
The telephone rang once … twice … three times.
“Screw it,” Myra Newell sobbed to herself. “Screw it … I don’t want to talk to anyone.” She stroked Jack Tar’s ears. They were damp from her tears, “How about you? Do you want to talk?” The big dog raised his head and licked under her chin.
Four rings … five … six, “We’ll take care of each other, won’t we?”
Jack Tar tired of licking Myra. He sat down and swiped a paw at his muzzle as if he were swatting mosquitoes.
Seven … eight … nine … ten. Ten—that was the magic number for the caller. The phone stopped ringing. The Newell house was once again deathly quiet. Jack Tar cocked an ear to the sudden silence, realized the only sound now was his mistress’s sniffling, and climbed into her lap with that strange sense of comforting that dogs have for humans. She made no effort to push him down.
Who could it have been? Who was so insistent that they’d let it ring that long? Perhaps it had been SUBPAC calling. Something about Pasadena? An emergency? Perhaps someone had been hurt and they needed her to visit his wife? That had happened before. It was something the captain’s wife should do. It came with the territory. Oh, hell, maybe she should call Neil Arrow’s office. No. If it were that important, if it were worth ten rings, they’d call back.
Myra knew this wasn’t just unhappiness she was experiencing. She was lonely, lonely as hell. Another voice would help, a kind one, an understanding one. Maybe Connie Steel. They’d known each other for so long, even before the kids. And their conversation the other day at lunch—that was it! Myra remembered running on about Wayne … and Connie really had understood. Even if Ben Steel wasn’t like Wayne, Connie knew so many of the other C.O.s. And everyone’s wife talked at one time or another. It was just natural for them, what with their husbands away for so long. Connie’d understand.
Myra wiggled her hips forward to get up off the couch but the dog was a dead weight. She nudged him. “Come on. Move it.”
Jack Tar looked up. He was comfortable, and immovable.
“Come on, old fellow. Time to move.”
