Ghostboat (2 page)

Walinsky sidled over to him and spoke just at the level of the diesels, a mere shout, but low enough so Rieser had to strain to hear.

“You pull a stunt like that again and I’ll kick your butt from one end of this boat to the other, inside and then outside. Hear me?”

Rieser tried ignorance “Honest, Chief, I just couldn’t find the lieutenant’s goddamned sextant.”

“That’s because you’re stupid, Rieser. You’re the stupidest creep on this boat. Well, I got something you
can
find. The stop valve on the number two sanitary tank. Check it. It’s sticking.”

Rieser relaxed. That wasn’t too bad.
 

“From the
inside.”
Walinsky purred like a cat lapping cream from a saucer. He watched with great satisfaction the look of horror and dismay that spread over Rieser’s face. “If I don’t smell something mighty strange inside of ten minutes, we’re gonna talk some more!
Capisce?”

Hardy, Cyclops clutched in his left hand, pulled himself up the control-room ladder to the conning tower. Because the bridge hatch was open, the con was bathed in a red glow from the combat lights. As his eyes adjusted, Hardy .became aware of the other people sharing this, the topmost part of the sub’s interior.

Jenavin, the quartermaster of the watch, was positioned right behind the helmsman, an Officer Candidate School prep manual poking out of his back pocket.

Bates, Basquine, and Ensign Jordan, the gunnery officer, were hanging over the chart table playing war games.

The young ensign cleared his throat, looked from the Captain to the Exec, then jumped in feet first: “Supposing we did get through the mine fields, sir. Suno Saki here has suspected shore batteries, and the Japs have airfields ringing Tokyo. After all, it
is
their capital.”

Basquine had been following Jordan’s pointing finger on the chart. Now he froze and raked the top of the con with a withering look. “Who told you I needed a geography lesson?” His fingers started drumming on the charts. He wanted tonnage. “Don’t you guys understand? It’s
because
of the mine fields!”

Hardy smiled. He had to admire Basquine’s ballsy approach.

“If they won’t come out,” the Captain said, “we’ll just have to go in and get them! Okay?” The drumming fingers increased their tempo; then, without looking around, he barked: “Mr. Hardy, what the hell are you doing?”

Hardy’s admiration evaporated. “Permission to go topside, sir.”

“I don’t know any other way I’m going to send that position report by twenty-two hundred hours. Move it!”

Hardy retreated awkwardly up the ladder.

He popped through the hatch into the black Pacific night and stared at the Great Empty. The whine of the submarine’s diesels and the hiss of the sea—Hardy could communicate with these. His eyes slowly grew accustomed to the dark. He sucked in a lungful of the moist air, clearing his senses of the machine-oil smell of the sub. He snatched a life jacket from a corner locker and put it on. It cut the cold better than his foul-weather.

Behind him the lookouts were perched on the periscope shearwater, in the truncated crow’s nest that was the highest vantage point on the
Candlefish.
Above them loomed the twin periscopes and the radio and radar antennae. And beyond that, only the heavens.

Hardy looked up in surprise when the first strands of mist rolled in. He watched patchy hunks of the stuff creep by, low to the water, hovering on top of the deck slatting below. While he still had a clear canopy of night sky above him, he hefted Cyclops and moved to starboard of the bridge. He craned his neck to pick out stars, then steadied himself and raised Cyclops.

He locked in on the North Star, timed it, and moved the horizon glass. Adjusting the clamp screw, he found another star. Swinging his body, he picked up his third point. He jotted the positions down on his pad and then stopped.

The entire bridge shivered abruptly beneath his feet.

He looked around. The others on the bridge were reacting to the tremor: the lookouts; Stanhill, the Officer of the Deck; Lopez, the chief of the watch—they all gazed ahead, into the gathering fog, then to the sides. Had they struck something?

“Bridge—what the hell was that?”

Stanhill moved to the open hatch and looked down at the Skipper’s red-illuminated, upturned face. “Nothing topside, sir.”

Hardy joined Stanhill and ventured an opinion. “Maybe an underwater earthquake, sir?”

Basquine ignored him and turned to the sonar operator in the con. “Anything?” Collins adjusted his dials, listened, and shook his head. Then he whipped off the headset and offered it to Basquine.

And then the second tremor hit. It sounded even more like an earthquake.

The sub took another violent shimmy, and this time the men in the con could hear things below rattle and fall to the deck. Somebody swore.

On the bridge they heard Basquine’s familiar “Now nobody get your bowels in an uproar” boom through the ship’s comm line and up the open hatch. “Stanhill, sonar and radar don’t have a thing. What’s the sea like?”

Stanhill looked over the side. If anything, the water had grown calmer, more subdued. Hardy looked over too, and could make out glassy smoothness through the thick patches of fog. It felt as if the sub weren’t moving at all... Yet she must be. The diesels were still going. He checked his watch. It was 2130.

Without warning, the sub took a rending shudder that whipped her stern sideways. Hardy’s feet shot out from under him. He caromed off the TBT and slammed into Stanhill, cold-cocking him on the jaw with his elbow. Both men fell. Hardy’s Cyclops made a lazy arc in the air and landed with a sickening clank on the cigarette deck aft. Hardy tried to sit up, but this time the shaking wouldn’t stop; the sub was gripped by a series of tremors. Hardy reached out to protect Stanhill from the heaving deck plates. He wondered fleetingly what it was like below—

Basquine, in the well under the conning-tower hatch, managed to hang on. Bates was okay, but Jordan was down. He must have hit the chart table. The Captain took a fast nose count, then hollered up the well, “Bridge! Do you see any shell splashes?”

The sub took another shake and leaned starboard. Lopez’s head filled the hatch. “Mr. Stanhill’s out cold—Mr. Hardy’s shaken up a bit—but nothing else, sir!”

Basquine lurched over to the intercom. “All compartments, report!”

The
Candlefish’s
superstructure took one quivering jolt after another, and Hardy heard responsive cursing from the con.

From the forward engine room came Walinsky’s distraught bellow: “Skipper—we’re getting screwy readings! I think we should shift to batteries!”

Hardy struggled to his feet when the diesels cut out. He grabbed the Target Bearing Transmitter as the sub heeled sharply to port, whipping and bucking like a long steel shake. The panic welling up inside him subsided as the boat righted herself in a shower of spray. He ducked instinctively, then straightened and looked forward. Swirling fog was closing in, drifting higher. Then, as the bow disappeared in the mist, the
Candlefish
bucked again. Hardy gaped at seas that he could barely glimpse around the boat. The glassy smoothness was gone, replaced by churning, frothing waters. A teeth-rattling crash and flying spray blurred his vision. The sub was trembling and twitching in the throes of some incomprehensible disease. Hardy’s grip on the TBT loosened. He tried to shield his head as he fell. He got a fleeting glimpse of Lopez and the lookouts hanging on to the shearwaters. Stanhill was still down.

The next crunch slammed Basquine into the periscope shaft. Stunned and hanging on, he watched Jordan slide past him, his head bouncing off the back of Collins’s seat. He was dimly aware of a cry of pain, then saw the quartermaster clutch his face and reel back, blood streaming through his hands.

“Bates! Get topside! Report!” Bates nodded to the Captain, then staggered to the ladder and started up. Water showered through the hatch and knocked him loose. Doggedly, trying to match his steps to the now constant spasms of the submarine, he started up again.

Hardy felt the next big shake coming—a flutter fast and hard, rippling through the boat, followed by a wrenching convulsion. The juggernaut churning through the
Candlefish
refused to stop. And then he heard a godawful metal-grinding screech coming from somewhere below—somewhere aft—

“Main engine number one just jumped its mounting—God, what a mess!” The voice boomed up through the con. Basquine cut Mm off and screamed something unintelligible through the mike.

The submarine took to plunging up and down, in addition to its rapid sideward shakes. Two hands shot out of the dark, and Bates pulled himself up out of the conning-tower hatch. He looked into Hardy’s surprised face. In the fog and darkness, they could barely make each other out. Basquine’s bellows filtered up from below as he yelled instructions to the helmsman, trying
to
fight the starboard lean. Hardy and Bates lay face down on the twitching bridge. Bates used Hardy’s body for support and lunged upward, grabbing the side of the bridge to survey the boat. Over the roar of a howling wind that had come up from nowhere and now whipped around them in concentric circles he could hear the
Candlefish’s
plates groaning, but he could not see any signs of attack.

“Where the hell did this storm come from?” he yelled at Hardy. He moved to the voice tube, but Hardy, also on his feet, went spinning into the Exec, almost knocking his teeth out on the lip of the voice tube.

“Dammit, Jack. Make yourself useful. Get Stanhill below!”

Hardy ducked as a wall of spray hit them. He looked for Stanhill, then thought of Cyclops. Where was the sextant? A heavier wall of spray hit the bridge, and the sub was caught in an epileptic seizure. Bates wedged his hands around the voice tube, closed his eyes against the salt spray, and hung on. But Hardy went down again. His fingers splayed out, trying to get purchase on the wet metal. He rolled past the con structure and kept going, past the after machine gun and out the cigarette deck. His hands shot out too late as the lower railing of the cigarette deck passed over him. He fell on the top deck and landed with a crunch on his right knee. His scream was lost as the rushing water carried him back, slamming him into the base of the huge deck gun. He snatched at the traversing gear and tried to stand. His right leg was like jelly; it went out from under him. He fell, still clutching the gear, conscious of acute pain and terror. The submarine’s jolting tremors were even more severe on the deck than on the bridge. He held on tightly as the
Candlefish
shimmied and frothy waves formed high over his head and crashed down on top of him.

In the conning tower, Basquine grabbed the Intercom mike and shouted, “Come to battle stations! All hands to battle stations! Secure all compartments!” He whipped around to the helmsman. “Maitless, what’s our course?”

Maitless glanced at the compass as the alarm rang through the boat.

“Two-five-three, sir.”

“Left full rudder. Come to two-zero-five.”

Maitless strained at the wheel. It was frozen. “She won’t answer, sir.”

“Emergency helm!” Basquine shouted below.

Bates flipped up the cover of the voice tube and shouted over the howling wind, “Captain—there’s nothing shooting at us. I’m positive!”

Basquine’s voice crackled up: “Mr. Bates, stay on the bridge!”

Reports were pouring into the control room from all stations. Gauges and dials were getting so hot, the glass was shattering right out of them. Main diesel number one was still sliding around in the forward engine room. Shackles had snapped; a torpedo had rolled off its skid. The reports spelled pandemonium.

Basquine hit the diving, alarm and yelled, “Clear the bridge! Dive! Dive!”

Hardy sloshed around on the afterdeck, still clinging weakly to the traversing gear of the deck gun. He heard the OOGA! OOGA! of the diving alarm and felt a rush of fear—they were going to submerge and leave him. He could just make out fog-shrouded silhouettes on the top of the conning tower, the lookouts rushing down from their perches and disappearing below. He was alone on the deck of a twisting, bucking sub, and she was going to drop right out from under him.

Bates, the last man down the ladder, watched Quartermaster Jenavin secure the hatch, his face still streaked with blood. The sub’s trembling gathered momentum, and their teeth chattered in time to it.

“Bates! Where’s Hardy?” bellowed the Captain.

“Didn’t he get Stanhill below?” Looking around, Bates could see he hadn’t. He leaped for the intercom, swearing out loud, “Shit! Hold the dive! Surface! Surface!”

Basquine hit the alarm—three blasts. Bates was already up the ladder again, opening the hatch. The pumps reversed, and he could hear the air-intake valves.

Hardy heard the rush of high-pressure air as the
Candlefish
forced out the water ballast she had so eagerly sought seconds before. He had already started to make his peace with God, desperately cried out for his wife, Elena, and Peter, the son he would never see. Through the mist and flying water and the awful trembling of the boat he made out a figure standing on the bridge, looking for him.

Yelling into the wind, he hailed, “Down here! By the deck gun!”

He saw the figure turn, homing in on his voice. His joy turned to horror as the entire superstructure of the
Candlefish
lit up in a blue-white display of electricity. Bates froze. Still crying out for help, Hardy dragged himself along the strakes. The roar of air and the extra shudder that ran through the boat told him that the
Candlefish
was getting ready to submerge again.