Deadly Shores (24 page)

“Range twelve hundreds an' closin'. Down doppler. Taagit course estimated one two seero, speed five knots!”

Matt had hoped to get around in front of whatever it was, but it must've surged ahead for a while before slowing back down.
Walker
had come up behind it. “Estimated range between the target and the closest DD screening the fleet?”

“Ah, eleven t'ousands,” Minnie replied after repeating the question to Sonny Campeti on the fire-control platform above the bridge.

“Make your course one two zero,” Matt instructed Chief Quartermaster and acting First Lieutenant “Paddy” Rosen, who'd quietly taken the helm.

“Making my course one two zero, aye,” Rosen replied. “My course is one two zero,” he said a few moments later.

“Very well. Slow to two-thirds. See if Wally can find the target again. Y-gun crews will stand by to throw a couple of eggs out in front of it. That should chase it away,” he added to Gray.

“You think it's a baby mountain fish after all?” Gray asked a little worriedly, and Matt looked at him. Apparently, the rogue-sub scuttlebutt was gaining currency.

“I sure hope so, Boats. We don't know much about the little ones. Maybe they're extra curious, or aren't as susceptible to our sonar. I guess we'll find out.”

“Lookout says there's screwy fishes, er somethin', jumpin' outa the water!” Minnie suddenly cried. Matt raised his precious Bausch & Lomb binoculars. Sure enough, just a few hundred yards ahead, strange creatures were leaping out of the water. From this distance, they looked like giant bullets—battleship shells—with wings. He snorted. “They're squids! Some kind of flying squids! Look at 'em all!” Spanky had joined them on the bridge. His normal battle station was atop the aft deckhouse, at the auxiliary conn, but there was no reason to expect a surface action and he'd always joined his captain on the bridge unless otherwise directed. “I think you're right, Skipper!” he confirmed, staring through his own binoculars. “Flyin' squids! I'll be damned. Look! They're glidin' across the water a pretty good distance before they flop back in it.” He sobered. “Act like somethin's spookin' 'em from below!”

“Minnie?” Matt demanded.

“Mr. Faar-child got a contaact—a big one—but he don't know what it is.”

“Must be a whole swarm o' them critters underwater,” Spanky speculated, then brightened. “And you know? I bet
we're
the ones spookin' 'em!”

“You think that's what we've been chasin' all along?” Gray asked. “A big school of creepy squids, cruisin' along, all bunched up?”

Matt felt the tension ebb. Of
course
that was what it was. It was far more probable that his recent concerns had been initiated by yet more weird marvels native to this very weird world, than that they were being haunted by an enemy submarine from the old one!

“Secure the Y guns,” he said. “Slow to one-third. No sense in steaming right through that mess. There's hundreds of them, and they're big enough to hurt somebody if they hit us.”

“Might even dent our plates,” Spanky agreed.

Walker
began to slow, and sure enough, the frantic leaping and soaring of the flying squids diminished—until they suddenly erupted again, even more violently than before.

“What?” Matt muttered, raising his binoculars again.

“Skipper!” Minnie shouted. “Crow's nest say them, them ‘skids,' is jumpin' in a straight, fast line, right toward the fleet!” She held the earpiece to her head under her helmet. “There's two lines now!
Three!
”

For just an instant, Matt stood watching for himself. The explosion of squids was following several unnaturally straight and rapid lines of advance, and he could fathom only one explanation. “All ahead two-thirds,” he suddenly barked. “Y guns and aft racks stand by!” He looked at Spanky. “Go aft,” he said bitterly. “Looks like you were right the first time, but now we've got
torpedoes
scaring the squids! Signal Keje that he's got torpedoes inbound. Multiple torpedoes, from directly in front of our position—use the TBS, damn it.”

“Should I maneuver, Skipper?” Paddy asked desperately.

“No. If whoever's out there fired at us, we're better off threading the fish. Tell Mr. Fairchild he better pick something out of that mess below for me to kill right away!” he shouted back at Minnie.

“He say some-teeng comin' outa the return cloud. Range, seven hundreds. Course one, two, seero. Ten knots, down doppler. He's startin' a plot!” Bernie Sandison already had his own plot going on the chart table in the pilothouse, frantically pushing a grease pencil alongside a straight edge while Commander Herring stared at his watch. Minnie's voice rose. “Lookout gots tor-peedoes comin' at
us
! Two tor-peedoes! Ah, they's four headin' for the fleet now!”

Matt stared through the windows ahead, watching the panicked squids betray the approach of the mysterious undersea weapons screaming straight at him. “Come right two degrees,” he told Rosen tersely. “Now, steady! Steady as you go.” Suddenly, he stepped briskly toward the starboard bridgewing, just as a gliding flock of big-eyed squids jetted past dodging crewfolk on the fo'c'sle, or ricocheted off the hull. He looked down in time to see a long, sun-dappled cylinder streak by the starboard beam less than a dozen yards away, leading a white, steamy wake.

“That was the close one,” he explained, charging back to stand beside Rosen. “Make your course one one zero, all ahead full. Set depth charges for one fifty!”

“That deep, Captain?” Herring asked, and Matt jerked a nod. “The target will have been at periscope depth to launch,” Herring persisted.

“Yeah, but Wally's a good sound man. If he says the target's making ten knots underwater, I believe him. What's more, whoever shot at us had to see us, so they have to know what we are and that we'll come after them. My guess is they'll go deep, try to get under those squid things. If they do, they'll get there quick at ten knots!” He pointed at a spot beyond the dark line on the chart. “One fifty, right here.”

“Range four hundreds,” Minnie reported shortly. “Three hundreds . . . We losin' 'im! We too fast again!”

“Jesus,” Paddy suddenly exclaimed. That's all he had to say, because everyone on the bridge immediately saw what caused his outburst. Most of the ships of First Fleet South had held their course. Wild maneuvers in such a congested formation were just as dangerous as torpedoes, and there hadn't been time at any rate.
Big Sal
had adjusted her course just enough to thread the wakes herself, and though she'd probably been the target, nothing hit her. One of the DDs wasn't so lucky. A massive plume of dirty spray erupted into the sky, and the ship beneath the rising column simply ceased to exist. A dull boom reached them several moments later, racing across the water with a physical jolt that shook the windows in the pilothouse. Tragic as the loss of the as-yet-unknown ship was, Matt was just beginning to feel a sense of relief that it hadn't been worse, when two towering columns of water rocketed into the air at the side of
Respite Island
.

“Keep your eyes on your course, Mr. Rosen!” Matt ordered sharply.

“But . . .”

“Captain Reddy,” Herring interrupted, his voice strained, “there will be people in the water over there! And
Respite Island
may need assistance!”

“And there's a whole fleet over there to give it,” Matt snarled. “We have other business first.”

Everyone but Rosen was still looking at the distant cataracts of water collapsing down on the massive SPD. “Here,” Matt snapped, stabbing his finger down on the Plexiglas-covered chart. “Now!” Most heads turned to him. “He'll wait till we're nearly on top of him, then turn,” he explained grimly, mostly for Herring's benefit. “But he won't be expecting this.” He raised his voice. “Y guns will commence firing! Stern racks, roll four, at three-second intervals.”

The Y guns thundered, and the “Roll one! Roll two! Roll three! Roll four!” was repeated on the bridge. Shortly after, the sea astern spalled and shook, and an opaque white mound of water and smoke convulsed beneath the clear afternoon sky.

USS
Walker
's Y guns weren't exactly like the weapons that inspired their creation but served essentially the same purpose. Improved over the first models, these could each throw two depth charges off either beam, at forty-five and ninety degrees relative to the centerline of the ship. The hefty black powder charge that propelled the (vastly improved over the early model) three-hundred-pound depth bombs could throw them only about a hundred yards, but that was sufficient to prevent underwater damage to
Walker
at any depth, really, although it did leave a large gap directly under the ship. The aft racks took care of that, rolling more charges off the stern directly in the wake. The sinking pattern of explosives, designed to detonate when the water pressure at the preselected depth actuated the fuse, was ridiculously simple, but the addition of the Y gun made it far more effective than the stern racks alone—which was all
Walker
had been equipped with before. Against the Japanese, she'd had to virtually run right over her target to have a chance of inflicting any damage. The likelihood of that wasn't great, considering her primitive, glitchy sonar. Now, with the addition of the Y guns, all she had to do was get close. Chief Gray, no supporter of depth charges, said it doubled their chances. But since two times zero was still zero, he wasn't optimistic. Wallace Fairchild, Bernie Sandison, and even Spanky believed their old chances of damaging a target were more like five or ten percent, depending on the sea's state, the size and speed of their target, and the skill of the sub's skipper, of course. If the Y guns doubled their chances, they'd certainly take ten to twenty percent. Captain Reddy wasn't considered a variable. By now, everyone just assumed that if it could be done, he could do it. Matt would've laughed at that confidence, considering his inexperience at ASW.

Whatever the chances, whether it was skill, better weapons, or just insanely good luck, the results of their third pattern, laid just eleven minutes after the first, had a distinct impact on the target. A ghostly return had somehow flashed feebly through all the underwater tumult and columns of water displacing bubbles of smoky gas, across the green-lit cathode ray tube Wallace Fairchild worshipped so intently, and USS
Walker
mercilessly hammered it.

“It's comin' up!” Minnie squeaked over the thundering blower and the rush of the convulsing sea. “Spanky thinks the taagit's comin' up!” she repeated. “He sees ‘oily air gushin' up,' an' gots debris in sight!”

“Where?” Matt demanded.

“Starboard quarter, about one six seero, relative!”

“Right standard rudder,” Matt ordered. “Pass the word for all gun batteries to stand by for surface action, starboard!” He stepped out on the bridgewing and focused his binoculars. The lookout already there was scanning as well. Bernie raced to his precious torpedo director, ready to confirm Campeti's ranges and bearings.

Several minutes passed while
Walker
described a gradual arc in the sea. Her 4"-50s, .50 and .30 cals, and twin 25 mms aft, were all trained out toward a growing, roiling oil slick about six hundred yards off the starboard beam. Suddenly, what looked like the knife-edge bow of a fair-size ship roared up from the depths, streaming water, laced with all the colorful hues diesel fuel could give it.

“Get a load o' that!” Bernie gasped. The thing was obviously a submarine, but it was huge! Twice the size S-19 had been. And it wasn't shaped like any sub he'd ever seen. Gradually, the bow came down as the boat leveled out and a conn tower—or something—emerged from the sea. The first part that rose into view was a pair of very large guns protruding from a rounded housing of some sort, followed by what appeared to be a relatively normal conn tower, complete with periscopes and light weapons. But the conn tower didn't seem to end; it just kept coming up, exposing a long, arched structure aft. Finally, it did end, about the time an ordinary deck gun emerged from the sea.

“I'll be . . . ,” Matt muttered, confusion evident in his tone. “That thing . . . ,” he started, but stopped when men appeared atop the conn tower, looking back at him. Other men, dressed in shorts and cotton shirts, dashed from the side of the tower toward the deck gun aft—just as the boat began turning toward his ship and the two massive guns forward began to twitch. “Commence firing!” he roared up at the fire-control platform above.

“But Skipper,” came Campeti's stunned voice, “that's . . .”

“Commence firing
now
, damn it!
They're
about to!”

The strange submarine showed obvious damage: warped railings and washboarded plates. And the arched structure aft had taken a particularly brutal beating. The stern never came completely up, and the bow, with its four torpedo tubes, never lowered all the way back into the sea. The thing was sluggish, but still maneuvering, still clearly trying to fight. Before it could turn all the way to face USS
Walker
, however, bringing those giant, apparently fixed guns to bear, the salvo buzzer rattled and three 4"-50s barked as one. Only one round struck the boat on the first salvo, the others launching towering columns of water just beyond, but the target was barely moving. The next three rounds exploded against and within the odd conn tower a few moments later, and the 25-mm gun tubs and machine-gun tracers were already reaching for it. Flames vomited out of the rounded casemate housing the two guns forward, and the weapons seemed to actually droop as blue-yellow flame jetted out between them. Matt suspected they'd punched through the light armor and ignited the powder train as ammunition was brought up to the weapon from the handling room below. Somebody probably closed the hatch just in time because the magazine didn't blow, but already, it didn't matter. The strange, belligerent submarine had been a sitting duck—
its officers had to know it was a sitting duck!
Matt suddenly realized with a sick certainty—and
Walker
's veteran crew of men and 'Cats made short work of it. Its apparent intention to make a fight only doomed it a few minutes later than its attempt to claw its way to the surface had delayed its fate.