Ghostboat (43 page)

In the forward engine room, Brownhaver and Googles fought to keep the engines under control. Googles got on the horn and hollered for Cassidy. It was then he realized the battle phones were dead. He threw the mouthpiece aside and lost his balance. The sub shook and quivered, and he could hear the rivets straining.

The lights were gone. Even the red combat lights could manage only an intermittent flicker. Brownhaver found a torch and switched it on.

“The hull!” Googles shouted at him, and struggled to his feet.

Brownhaver aimed the light at it, and they saw the inner hull bloat and stretch and push inward, pulsing. Tiny fingers of water shot in past stretched rivets. With a great lurch, main engine number one was ripped from its hold-down studs and belched out of the mounting, its metal casing screeching across the deck until it bashed into the forward bulkhead. Googles screamed a warning.

The other crewmen in the forward engine room tried frantically to get out before the entire compartment caved in. Diesel pumps and pistons twisted out of their casings, screeched and ground themselves to ruin below decks. The entire companionway was pushed up at an angle and vibrating with the unrelenting tremors that still coursed through the boat.

Brownhaver rushed to the intercom and yelled into it, “We’ve got a diesel loose down here!” But his voice never got beyond the engine room.

Then the pipelines started to go. Bitten, gnawed, chewed to shreds by main engine number one, they broke in a hundred places. Oil blasted into the compartment, filling it ankle-deep with an odorous slush.

As word was passed to the control room from the frantic crew about the extent of damage in all compartments, Hardy finally yelled up the hatch at the Captain, “She’s breaking up! How much do you
want?”

The Captain slid around the bridge to starboard.

It was time for Hardy to take over.

He ordered the helmsman to stand by to abandon ship: The helmsman was shaking with fright. “Aye, aye, sir!”

Hardy dropped below to control. It was a shambles.

Roybell was using a fire extinguisher on the diving- plane controls, trying to cool them down.

Hardy was struck by the absurdity of the situation. Thirty years ago he had missed all the action below. He had been topside, tumbling off the cigarette deck. This time he would get to see it all firsthand. He laughed. Nobody even noticed his laughter.

A savage voice boomed from above, roaring down the hatch funnel and resounding off the bulkheads:

“HOLD YOUR STATIONS! THERE WILL BE NO ABANDON SHIP!”

The officers froze for a moment, wavering between loyalty and common sense. Then Stigwood whirled to the after hatch and bellowed, “Hold your stations! Orders from the bridge!”

Hardy heard the order passed down the line. It rang out over the hideous cacophony of sounds throughout the boat.

He turned and dove through the hatch on his way aft Engine room. Cassidy. Had to find Cassidy.

Cassidy had made it to the forward torpedo room and was up on Clampett’s shoulders, pulling the dogs on the forward escape hatch, when the submarine pitched and jerked back on itself.

Clampett flew out from under Cassidy’s legs, and Cassidy crashed to the deck. Chains snapped, and men clawed to get out of the way; they knew the sound without even looking. The two torpedoes forward on the skids broke their restraints and shot down the rollers, crashed headlong into the closed tube doors, then fell to the deck. Clampett got up and ran to the intercom, but was stopped when a lubrication line burst. He backed away and turned, a mass of black slime.

“The hatch!” yelled Cassidy.

They got it open just in time. As they swung up out of the way, one of the rear torpedoes slipped its chains, flew off the bay, and ruptured the pressure hull.

Sea water burst through arid cascaded down the deck.
 

“Switch on the bilge pump!” Cassidy yelled. “Get everyone out of here! Up the hatch!”

He fumed; he slipped and slid across the sloshing deck toward the maneuvering room.

Hardy. He had to find Jack Hardy.

Hardy charged through the galley and the crew’s mess, briefly joining a line from the control room passing life jackets aft.

Then he left the line and pushed his way into the crew’s quarters. Vogel was there, pulling up the after battery hatch, thrusting his body below to check out damage to the cells. The vibrations were coming in rhythmic pulses, surging the boat back and forth on itself as if it were a bucking horse.

“Christ Almighty,” said Vogel. “They’re all rolling around down there. Must be a ton of sea water in the bilges. If those mothers crack—”

“Get everybody out of here,” said Hardy. “Clear the compartment. Have men stand by the doors to seal it off. I’m going aft.”

“Can’t get through the forward engine room. Number one jumped its mounting—”

Hardy rushed the hatch anyway.

Cassidy had made it to the forward engine room. He was at the aft control stand, staring at his number one diesel sliding around on the crumpled deck plates. He couldn’t believe the devastation. Oil lines, fuel lines—everything seemed to be going.

“Forget the engines! Get everybody aft! The batteries are gonna go!” Hardy shouted. He spotted Cassidy and grabbed him. “Go forward,” he said. “See that they get the rest of the life jackets to the crew. Then send them up the forward hatch if you have to.”

“Why not the bridge?”

“The Captain.”

Hardy shoved past him and was gone before Cassidy could object. He went on through the aft engine room. Lights were out, and Hardy had to feel his way. He was going on blindly because he wanted to see...

“Captain—men coming up the after hatch!” one of the lookouts reported. The Captain stumbled to the cigarette deck and stared at the straggling bodies hoisting themselves topside. “Who told you to abandon ship? Get below!”

They hesitated. Then one of them cupped his hand to his ear. The others followed his lead. Every time the, Captain yelled for them to go below, they shook their heads and cupped their ears. And hoisted other men out.

Danby clung to the coaming, staring at the foaming sea around the hull, the electricity dancing on the antenna cables. He saw the deck plates straining, the strakes splintering, bits of wood flying off into the sea. And the constant, relentless shaking: cruel spasms shuddering through the boat. He was green and sick with fear, and he couldn’t stand the wild look of determination on the Captain’s face.

“Captain—what are we going to do?”

The answer seemed to come from the sub: an abrupt trouncing to starboard. Danby was whipped off his feet and thrown over the bridge. Only by clinging to the coaming did he prevent himself from being plunged into the churning sea below. He hung there, suspended. Then she heeled to port, and he managed to climb back aboard. The Captain was yelling at the men on the forward deck.

Danby pleaded with him, “Get us out of here!”

The Captain ignored him.

Hardy slipped past the maneuvering room, glancing through the dark at the controllermen still trying to hold the boat steady and keep the remaining engines running.

He ducked into the after torpedo room. Water was still pouring in through the ravaged hull. Torpedoes were racketing. Two men were risking their lives trying to lash the fish down. Hardy was suddenly whisked off his feet as pipes leading to the diving plane motors burst and spewed hydraulic oil over the deck.

“Clear out!” yelled Hardy.

The torpedomen scrambled for the after hatch. Hardy reached up to the nearest torpedo skid, pulled himself to his feet, and lurched toward the hatch.

The Captain screamed obscenities at the men from the bridge as the first life raft was inflated and flung out to sea. And then he heard voices below. More men were crowding into the conning tower, starting up the ladder. He appeared over them and stared them down. “Back to your stations!” he yelled.

“Captain—we can’t! She’s coming apart! Can’t you hear it?”

“Abandon ship!”

It came from Danby. “All hands man your abandon-ship stations! Pass the word!” The Captain “whirled, and Danby confronted him with all the courage he had ever mustered.

“Sir, I am taking responsibility for getting the men off. Abandon ship!” he screamed again, and there was an edge of terror in his voice.

He was drowned out by the sudden increase in vibrations. With a twitching, convulsive shudder, the
Candlefish
began to wobble on a gyrating axis.

The Captain was thrown back against the conning tower superstructure as he mouthed the words, “We’ll get through—I swear it—”

The men started piling up to the bridge, charging up the ladders.

The Captain shuddered with rage, and the vibrations coursing through his body matched those rattling the submarine. He felt his mind become one with it—meeting it on equal terms—rushing forward to one last desperate act.

The diving alarm.

It went off with two resounding blasts: OOGA! OOGA!

Danby whirled. “Who did that? We’re not diving!”

The Captain was nowhere near the diving alarm, but he was smiling.

Danby leaned over the bridge hatch. “Who did that?” he yelled again.

Roybell stared at the vent indicators and the plane controls, and his eyes widened in horror. “She’s diving herself! Get out of here!”

Danby jumped to his feet as men started to pour up from below. The forward torpedo loading hatch and the far forward escape hatch were popped, and men fought to get out.

Danby jumped to the deck, and ran forward to help pull men out of the hatches.

Hardy was standing by the controls at the maneuvering panel. At the order to abandon ship the controllermen had left their stations and rushed forward.

When the diving alarm sounded, Hardy grabbed the levers and tried to hold them. Propulsion. That’s what he was hoping for. Strain the engines that are left—push this boat out of the grip. He knew it was hopeless—knew it for certain when Cassidy appeared around the edge of the panel and shone a battle lantern in his face.

“Hardy, forget it. Let’s get out of here!”

“I’m trying to—”

His voice choked off as a thundering vibration struck the maneuvering panel. It creaked and groaned and then split in two.

“She’s breaking up!” said Cassidy. “This way!”

Hardy followed him. “Can they keep her afloat?”

“Roybell’s trying—up in control—but it won’t work.”

“They have to—until the men are off!”

Stigwood inflated two more life rafts and chucked them clear of the churning water around the sub’s hull. Men dove in after them; Stigwood guided them off the bridge to the side and then into the water, taking charge calmly, efficiently.

He looked down to see his ankles swirling in water. The sub was edging under, slowly but inevitably.

He wished the violent metallic creaking would stop, and those antenna cables. Every man who came to the side to jump hesitated a few costly seconds, afraid to cross that barrier of electricity, preferring the questionable safety of a flooding deck to death by electrocution.

Stigwood could not figure where in hell the electricity came from. The power in those cables was off. Communications below were out.

He looked up and saw the triple masts banging against each other; the lookouts climbed up their railings and jumped into the sea. Other men coming up the hatch from the con followed their lead.

The Captain stood on the bridge, gripped the coaming, and watched his men flee the
Candlefish.
He was motionless as he settled down to wait for Jack Hardy.

Googles and Brownhaver were the only ones left in the forward engine room when Cassidy and Hardy burst through.

“What the hell are you still doing here?” Cassidy yelled.
 

“Trying to keep up speed—bust out of this—”

“Bust out is right!” Cassidy flung them both toward the exit. “Get out of here!”

They picked their way past the sliding diesel, fighting the pitching deck, striving to reach the crew’s quarters.

“Go straight to control—up through the con!” Cassidy hollered. He pulled Hardy along.

Brownhaver was the first to cough.

“Gas—” he said.

Cassidy stopped and looked down at the after battery hatch. Even in the half light he could see the wisps of greenish-yellow chlorine gas seeping up through the cracks, He shoved Hardy ahead of him, flinging him the lantern. “Get them through!”

They piled into the crew’s mess, staggering out of the hatch, coughing and spluttering. Cassidy whirled and dogged the hatch, then went to the bulkhead flappers, closing off the vents from aft.

He turned and saw the others waiting for him. “Go!” he screamed, and pushed them on. They raced forward now, lunging into the control room. Roybell and the two auxiliarymen were still struggling with the flood valves.