Cold is the Sea (39 page)

“Are all diving officers as persnickety on details as mine?” Buck asked Rich with a relieved grin of his own. Successful passage of
Manta
's first test in the Arctic ice had infected him too.

“I sure don't know as to that,” answered Richardson with mock gravity, “but I can remember a certain torpedo officer who was every bit as persnickety. How he ever got to be skipper of a nuclear boat I'll never figure out!”

“Now, Commodore, you please be quiet about that pore ole nuke skipper, you hear? Can't have my boys getting the wrong idea, you know!” The success of the moment was to be savored, even though fleetingly. Buck adjusted his face mask, spoke hurriedly to Jerry Abbott, stepped to the ladder leading into the hatch trunk, squeezed his bulky garments through the opening, began to climb through the lower hatch.

“Skipper,” said Buck savagely, “do you know how much good useful time we've wasted getting that damn message off?”

“I know.”

“Just about a full day. More than twenty hours! First we couldn't find a thin place to break through. Then when we finally got up, there was so much ice driven down into the openings on the top of the sail that the antenna couldn't be raised. But before we could get someone out there to work on it, we had about an hour's chopping of ice on the bridge to clear away that huge chunk of ice on top of the sail so that a man could even reach the place. Then, when finally we got the antenna up, we couldn't get anyone to answer our call-up. I got so cold waiting up there I couldn't take it anymore and had to send for Jerry to take over. You'd have thought ComSubLant or somebody would have had every shore station in our whole system alerted!”

“It probably wasn't ComSubLant's fault, Buck. Radio conditions were bad, that's all. Probably because the sun's above the horizon now.”

“Maybe it wasn't his fault. But then when we
finally
got Radio Guam to answer—think about that one, Guam!—they said we'd
have to wait with our message because it didn't have enough priority!”

“That was our own fault. We should have raised Keith's priority. We did, after we got the word.”

“Well, okay. But we shouldn't have had to do it. If Keith's message was so important, better arrangements should have been made to get it by those who wanted it. Anyway, after three more hours fiddling around poking up through the ice like a damn black lighthouse, beating our brains out on the radio, sending repeats over and over again, finally we get the receipt and can go back down and begin what we came up here for.”

“I don't blame you for feeling frustrated, Buck,” said Rich. “I feel the same way. I tried to argue Admiral Donaldson out of making us do this, but I couldn't. It was a JCS order. Anyway, now it's done. They've got their message, and we're free to do our stuff.”

“I suppose I should look at it that way too,” said Buck morosely, “but I'll sure feel better after we've got the
Cushing
out of this place. Whatever goes wrong I'll blame on this delay, I know that.”

15

“K
eith,” said Richardson over the UQC, speaking softly with the transmitter set at minimum gain, “do you have our dispatch about towing procedure? Any questions? Before trying the hookup we want to look you over through the periscope. What is your heading and exact depth, and where's your anchor?” The words reverberated out along the carrier wave, could be heard dying in the distance.

“Affirmative on the dispatch, and three cheers, no questions. We're against the ice. Depth seven-three feet. Anchor's housed. Ship's head one-two-eight,” responded Keith Leone's voice seconds later.

“Okay, old man. Just keep a zero bubble. We'll pass under you with the 'scope up and take a good look. There's enough light coming through the ice.”

“Roger. We'll keep our anchor housed until you give us the word to lower away.”

“Roger. This won't take long. Out.” To Buck, Rich said, “Finding Keith the second time was a lot easier than the first
time. It helped a lot that he thought of reactivating the homing signals.”

“That's true, Skipper,” Buck muttered, “but still this whole thing took too long. All together, it's more than twenty-four hours now. You and I've been up the whole time. So have a lot of others. We're already beat, and our real job's just beginning.”

“Can't be helped, Buck, but we'll all get some rest once we have Keith moving out of here. What depth do we need so as not to hit him with the 'scope up?”

“The high 'scope will just graze him at one-three-five feet, if we go right under him. Recommend we make our first pass a few yards abeam at a hundred forty feet, and check for anything dangling below his keel. I'd sure hate to hit a piece of debris hanging there.”

“That sounds like good sense to me. Set him up on the TDC and conn us under him parallel and off to the side at minimum speed. If it looks clear we'll go closer the second time, and then right under, if necessary. Once we get a good feel for it, we'll try to hold in position for a careful look at that wrecked propeller.”

Manta
slowly positioned herself in line with the
Cushing
's heading, from ahead, as it turned out, this being the shortest distance, in the meantime rising to the prescribed depth. “The depth is critical, Tom,” said Buck to his engineer. “It'll be tough to stay right on at the slow speed we'll be making. Be sure we have experienced men on the planes and the ballast control panel—and maybe you ought to stay here in the control room yourself.”

“Aye,” said Clancy. “Deedee has the dive. Want me to relieve him? He's about due for relief anyway.”

“Yes. We'll be making only about one-knot speed; so you'll practically need a stop trim.”

“Aye, aye. I'll take over. Stop trim it will be.” Clancy conferred briefly with Deedee Brown at the diving station in the control room's forward port corner, then announced to Buck at the periscope station and everyone else in the control room, “I have the dive.”

With Clancy making tiny perfecting adjustments to the trim, her propellers turning at creeping speed and Buck and Rich manning both elevated periscopes, the
Manta
swam slowly
toward and beneath the
Cushing
. Raising the periscopes out of their wells against the sea pressure of only 140 feet had been a slow and laborious process for their hydraulic hoists, for they had been designed with periscope depth, less than half that, in mind. Great care would have to be exercised in lowering the periscopes when the inspection was completed; the pressure would drive them down correspondingly fast, with possible damage on bottoming. Both were much more difficult to turn than at normal depth: pressure was driving them hard against their support bearings in the hoist yokes.

Sonar and the TDC continuously reported bearing and range. Slowly the range shortened. The
Cushing
was nearly dead ahead. They would pass almost directly under her. “Losing her forward,” said Jeff Norton on the speaker from the sonar room. This was to be expected; the sonar transducer was located under
Manta
's forefoot. “Last range, one-four-oh,” said Jeff. “Ten degrees off the port bow.”

“That checks, TDC,” said Deedee Brown from the starboard side of the control room, drinking deeply from the mug of coffee which was all he had permitted himself before manning his battle station. “Now it's one-three-oh.”

“I figure we should see him in four minutes, Commodore,” said Buck, mindful that everyone in earshot was eagerly listening. Richardson did not answer, for the same reason. His own estimate was more nearly five, to allow for the additional distance from
Manta
's bow to her periscopes.

“One hundred yards,” announced Brown.

“I wonder if sonar can hear any of his machinery noise, Buck,” said Richardson, his face still pressed against the rubber buffer of the periscope eyepiece.

“Ask them, Jerry,” said Buck, likewise immobilized against his own periscope. “Also ask the
Cushing
if they can hear us.”

Both heard the answers to Abbott's questions directly. “Affirmative,” said Jeff Norton, using the ship's intercommunication speaker from the sonar room. “He's quiet, but we can hear a steady hum. We've had him ever since a thousand yards.”

“Affirmative,” said Keith over the Gertrude set. “We can hear you very loud. One pump especially. Sounds like your condensate pump.”

“Fifty yards,” said Deedee Brown. “Twenty-five yards. Ten. Five, four, three, two, one, mark! We should be passing under him now.”

“You must be about to pass under us,” said Keith's familiar yet distorted voice over the UQC.

Suddenly, shockingly, a tremendous black mass swept into view, dead ahead. Startled, Williams grabbed for his periscope hoist control lever, nearly jerked it toward him, recollected himself just in time. “Wow!” he exploded, with a nervous expulsion of breath, returning his face to the eyepiece buffer and swiftly manipulating the hand controls.

To Jerry Abbott and the other anxious watchers in the vicinity, it was clear that both Rich and Buck had had a scare. The huge bulk of the other submarine, appearing so suddenly directly in their fields of view, must have seemed about to strike them, the mathematical calculations notwithstanding. But now both men had recovered, were tugging at their periscopes, operating the motorcycle-type controls in the handles, shifting from high-power magnification to low- and back again, elevating and depressing their angles of sight.

“Say, this is interesting,” said Buck Williams. “Keith's sail is painted white! It sure wasn't that color when he left New London! Wonder when he did that?”

“There's a scratch!” said Richardson. “It's a dent. A small one.”

“Where is it?” asked Abbott swiftly, pencil poised over the clipboard prepared for notation of observations.

“After end of missile compartment, port side, halfway between keel and waterline!”

“There's the EPM! It's dangling on a bent girder about fifteen feet below the keel!” said Buck. “It's really mangled, too! Good thing we didn't pass directly under—it could sure wreck a periscope!”

“Here's another dent! A big one! Ten feet below the waterline, middle of the engineroom, I'd estimate! No doubt she was hit from the port side!”

“Right!” exclaimed Buck. “I can see a lot of dents all along the port side, from here on aft!”

Jerry Abbott was writing rapidly. “Can you see the propeller?” he asked.

“Here's the port stern plane! It's really bent! Folded right up against the side like an aircraft wing on a carrier hangar deck!” Buck's excitement had transmitted itself to everyone in the control room. Only Tom Clancy and his diving station crew kept their eyes rigidly on their instruments.

“The rudder looks okay,” said Rich, “from here, anyway—no, it's bent to starboard. The top rudder is okay. It's got a lot of white paint on it, too. The lower rudder is bent to starboard, but maybe it's still operable. The propeller is total. It's a mass of twisted junk. Even if he could get the shaft turning, it wouldn't give him any thrust at all. I've never seen one as bad as that!” He drew back from the periscope, saw Buck Williams looking at him contemplatively. “I'd like to go back and hover near the propeller and stern control surfaces,” he said. “Do you think we could balance right off her stern for a closer look, perhaps from right aft?”

With Buck's nod of comprehension, he went on. “I don't think there's anything more to be gained by looking over the rest of
Cushing
's underwater body, but we ought to have as good an idea as we can of how the situation is back there. Especially whether Keith can steer or not. Towing him will be a lot harder if he can't. While you're maneuvering around, I'll get on the underwater telephone with Keith and tell him what we're up to, and ask him to try to operate the rudder while we're watching. Stern planes too, although that looks pretty hopeless.”

“Keith,” Rich said a few moments later into the Gertrude mouthpiece, “we're dead astern of you. How do you read?”

“A little mushy, but clear enough, Rich. How does it look?”

“Not good. Several big dents, your port stern plane is folded up against the side and the rudder is bent. The propeller is useless, I'm afraid. We're closing in for another look at your stern. Can you operate your rudder?”

“Affirmative. It moves slowly and we can't go as far right as we used to, but I think it's usable.”

“Good! That's very good news. How about the stern planes?”

“We have a little travel in them before they bind, but not much. We can go from five degrees rise to three down.”

“Good,” said Rich again. “When we get into position I'll ask you to operate the rudder and stern planes and maybe the propeller shaft. Can you do that?”

“Affirm. We know the shaft's bent out of line. Max rpm is about twenty.”

“Roger. Back soon.”

“Roger.”

“Well, what do you think, Buck?” Rich and Buck were again at their periscopes, with
Manta
now balancing at a slightly shallower depth than before, directly astern of the
Cushing
so that the tips of her extended periscopes appeared to be only a few feet away from the mangled propeller of the disabled submarine.