Cold is the Sea (31 page)

Admiral Donaldson clamped his mouth shut with almost an audible snap as he finished reading. No one spoke. “What do you reckon happened?” he finally said, spitting the words out to the room in general. Then, singling out Admiral Murphy, who was already looking slightly uncomfortable, “Murph, this has got to be the
Cushing
they're talking about. What do you make of it? You're not putting any new weapons on your boats that I haven't heard about, are you?” Although there was a light tone to his question, and in his voice, the look on his face had no levity in it.

“Nosir—umm,” said Murphy. “It couldn't have been the
Cushing
. She has no such weapons. A couple of rapid-fire rifles, maybe. Nothing that fits this description. What do you think, Tready?”

“It probably was the
Cushing
all right,” said Treadwell, “but I agree with Murphy. She could not have shot down an aircraft. It just doesn't make any sense.”

“You knew the Soviets protested our sending a missile sub into the Arctic, didn't you, Tready?”

“I heard about it, yes sir. But we didn't pay any attention, absent any instructions from Norfolk or Washington.”

Buck Williams whispered something to Richardson. Rich nodded his understanding. “Based on the protest,” he said after Treadwell had finished, “it figures they knew a lot more about Leone's mission than this press release indicates. So it's a front job. Some kind of a coverup for something.”

“Maybe they're doing the old Japanese bellytalk—maybe they are accusing us of doing what they've done,” said Treadwell.

“You mean maybe they've sunk the
Cushing?
That's why they claim they lost a plane?” Donaldson laughed a brief laugh of derision. “That doesn't hang together. Murphy, what do you think?”

“Umm . . . none of it makes any sense to me, except that the
Cushing
could not have done what they say.”

“Brighting?”

“I'm only an engineer. This is an operational matter. Analytically, it seems to me the Soviets are saying they've lost an aircraft in the Arctic.”

“You're right. That's the only positive statement in the whole press release,” said Donaldson, “but we've still got no idea what
Cushing
could have had to do with it, if anything.”

“It's all lies,” said Admiral Murphy. “Umm . . . Brighting's right. They are saying they lost an aircraft, so that must be true. But also they're saying it's because of the
Cushing
. That's what's so um—um . . . weird.”

“Murph, put it all in your next message to the
Cushing
. Maybe Leone'll have a simple explanation, if he can ever get clear to use his radio. We'll know in a couple of weeks anyhow, when the
Manta
gets up there. I have to go to the tank with this in the morning, so we have to compose a message to the
Cushing
before we can close off this meeting, and I'll tell the other Joint Chiefs that we'll just have to hold the fort awhile.” Admiral Donaldson paused a moment, put his hands on the arms of Rich's office chair, in which he had been sitting. “Well, I guess that concludes
the business we came up here for. I wonder how many people we fooled with these civilian clothes. Rich, will you have someone alert our pilot and organize transportation for us back to the airport as soon as we get the message done? Oh, wait a minute”—as Rich reached for the communication handset on the bulkhead behind his desk—“have you thought about going on this expedition yourself?”

“We had thought about it, yes sir, but . . .” Indeed he had thought about that. And he had come to know that there was nothing he wanted so much. But even as he was talking, in the middle of a very short sentence, there was an instantaneous flash of self-understanding. The days aboard the
Walrus
and
Eel
had been the highpoint of his life. The single-minded concentration they demanded of him had so focused his energies that even now, a decade and a half after it all had ended, those four years loomed in his mind as the most imperative of the psychological imperatives that drove him. Being off in the
Manta
, with Buck, was the closest he could ever come again.

But it would not do to be too affirmative. This might transmit lack of confidence in Buck Williams. And he well remembered his own ambivalent reaction at taking his own old skipper, Joe Blunt, on that second, fatal, war patrol of the
Eel
. “I'm sure Buck Williams is fully able to handle this mission on his own,” he went on swiftly. “He's the skipper, and he's trained both his people and himself. Having a squadron commander along would just weight him down. I'd be excess baggage. . . .” This was the speech Joe Blunt should have made, would have made if he had only known himself better. But times were different then, although perhaps there were similarities too. The prewar submarine skipper, sidelined while his juniors took to war and glory the new fleet submarines he had helped design and build, was not so far removed from himself, thirsting for one more fling at the old days with a newer and greater ship under him.

Yet it could not be the same as before. Could never be, could not even approach it. There was too great a difference in the situations, and the people, not to mention between
Manta
and
Eel
. He would not be sailing again with Keith and Buck in a well-found ship, but on an emergency mission with one of his most trusted friends to the rescue of another. That in itself was an incentive, of course, and of the strongest kind. . . .

“Your modesty does you credit, Richardson.” That was Admiral Donaldson piercing through in his best Chief of Naval Operations voice, “but I'm going to have my way on this. The place for you is aboard the
Manta
, overseeing your own brainchild. I'm sure Commander Williams won't agree that you'll be a weight”—Buck was shaking his head visibly in agreement—“and besides, I want someone up there who can take special initiative on his own, if the occasion demands.”

The eyes that returned Richardson's puzzled look were as free of hidden meaning as a child's. Rich wanted to pursue the matter, ask him to explain the apparently offhand comment, but could not.

Manta
's bridge was as different from
Eel
's as it could possibly be, narrow and streamlined for minimum underwater resistance, totally enclosed except for a tiny cockpit just forward of the periscopes and retractable masts, devoid of armament of any kind. The main deck, from its flatness superficially resembling
Eel
's, was narrow, smooth, free of all protuberances, slick except for a sandpaperlike nonskid surface. Its most noticeable feature, other than absolutely clean lines, was a recessed T-shaped rail in the center, to which, at strategic points, a movable safety belt could be attached, running its length and curving around the sail. The mooring cleats ranged along both sides had already been locked in their folded underway positions, showing only a smooth underside flush with the main-deck surface. Lifelines and their stanchions had been stowed in deck lockers. The capstans used to handle lines while alongside
Proteus
were in the process of being demounted and likewise stowed for sea as the submarine proceeded slowly down the Thames River.

Richardson, a useless extra number on the bridge beside Buck Williams, savored the cold morning river-mist despite two nearly sleepless nights in a row. He had become well acquainted with it during the past weeks. The only difference was that he had been less fatigued, and this time, instead of a short jaunt a few miles to sea for testing,
Manta
was setting out on a long voyage thousands of miles to the north. At its end, trapped under the Arctic ice cap, lay a crippled submarine unable to communicate, whose only chance for survival rested in the efficacy of a pair of new and untried (though well-tested) devices loaded in
Manta
's two stern
torpedo tubes. That, and the ability of the people on board to cope with the extraordinary and unexpected conditions they were sure to encounter.

A couple of hours' sleep had partly alleviated the need which Rich recognized nevertheless as just over the horizon, waiting to claim him as soon as the heightened excitement from getting underway had worn off. Buck, he knew, was not much better off, except that he had had no last-minute personal preparations to make before departure. A system which demanded so much of its principals just before sending them on special missions ought, somehow, to be improved—a mental observation Rich was oblivious of having made at least a dozen times.

The Thames River air was bracing: cold, but not chilling; mist rising off the water, diffusing the angular outlines of the ancient buildings lining its banks on both sides. A broad waterway to adventure, between the great industrial complex of the General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyard to port, on the Groton side, and old Fort Trumbull to starboard, on the New London side, which now housed the Navy's underwater sound laboratories. Farther downstream the vista softened, became less industrialized, with pleasant riverfront homes on both banks, broken only by the refinerylike complex of the Pfizer pharmaceutical laboratories.
Manta
was the only ship underway in the channel, slipping quietly and effortlessly at slow speed through the placid river water.

No roaring diesels spewed a mixture of water and smoky exhaust through mufflers beneath the main deck aft, no open induction valve in the after part of the sail sucked in a torrent of air to supply demanding engine air-intake blowers. Astern a purposeful current surged backward, frothed with white edges against the undisturbed water on either side, burbled under the thrust of two deep-lying propellers—and inside
Manta
's smooth-lined hull a torrent of steam was spinning four deceptively small, heavily insulated turbines, two connected to each set of micrometer-matched speed reduction gears. All this had been brought about by raising control rods built into the top of her reactor: a great, inverted, stainless-steel jug in the bottom portion of which, in carefully configured geometry, lay the active nuclear material that provided the heat, and thus the power. This was the product of that strange, difficult, gnomelike man, Admiral Brighting,
who, because of his intransigencies, his temper tantrums and his disregard of the human qualities, had made himself hated in the U.S. Navy even as that same Navy, at the same time, acknowledged the incomparable debt.

There had been an extraordinary change in submarining since the war. Had the Navy possessed but a few vessels equivalent to the one Rich now rode, and dependable torpedoes to match their performance, the entire course of the Pacific war, and possibly of the Atlantic as well, would have been different. For one thing, no submarine skipper would have feared any enemy task force, nor been forced to give over pursuit and impotently watch it pass by out of range. The strenuous and dangerous (when there was possibility of enemy air cover) surface “end-around” to reach an attack position ahead would have been unnecessary, replaced by a straight-out submerged chase from which no merchant ship and only the fastest warships could escape. ComSubPac's problems would have become much more heavily weighted in logistics than they had been anyway, to keep those few extraordinary submarines supplied with the torpedoes they would have needed. If the torpedoes had worked properly, as they finally did, the Japanese would have been driven from the sea in a year. And, on the other side of the coin, there would have been no water mole, nearing exhaustion of its already depleted battery, writhing in the agony of repeated depth charges, groping blindly—and so slowly—to avoid the threatened dissolution, the terror of the crushing death or, in shallow water, the more generous, if slower, suffocation as the air gave out in an immobilized steel tomb.

Being at sea in a nuclear submarine always caused Richardson to think this way, but as squadron commander there had been little opportunity to leave his desk except for the occasional underway inspection of one of the boats in his squadron—until the near daily series of test runs in
Manta
, for which he had somehow been able to free himself. Now, what he had wanted most of all, a long cruise to savor the nuclear changes fully, was beginning. There was guilt mixed with the pleasure, however, for the mission on which he was embarked was a desperate one. Yet the pleasure was undeniable. He willed himself to concentrate on Keith, and the ship and crew whose lives hung in the balance—and found himself instead thinking of Admiral Donaldson with gratitude and uneasiness combined.

“When Southwest Ledge Light is abeam, go ahead standard and set a course for the Race, Deedee,” said Buck to his OOD, a lieutenant named D. D. Brown, whose title on board was the anachronistic “gunnery officer.” The lighthouse, a solid, square structure, built of brick on a rocky outcropping almost in midchannel, could have passed without much notice in any town or city, except for the unusually thick walls which made its windows resemble the gun embrazures of an old fort. There had been a time when keepers would wave to the submarines as they entered or left the Thames River, but no more. The light on its roof had been on automatic for years. “Topside is secured for sea, Commodore,” said Buck, “and the ship is rigged for dive. We'll be securing the maneuvering watch after we round the Ledge.”

“Very well,” said Rich. He put down the binoculars with which, from habit, he had been inspecting the lighthouse, settled his parka hood more firmly around his head. He and Buck had been standing on opposite sides of the bridge cockpit, on folding metal steps which lifted them a foot higher above the bulwarks. Buck stepped down at the same time Rich did. At higher speed a little more protection from the cold wind would be welcome. The move brought the two men shoulder to shoulder against the after edge of the cockpit.