Dust on the Sea (20 page)

Little bits of information began to piece themselves together. Joan's seeming familiarity with the names of the submarine skippers, for one thing. She knew who was on patrol, and who had just returned. And she knew how well they'd done and what their problems had been, almost as though she, as well as Rich, had been reading the daily dispatches. Several times he had had the feeling that she was pretending ignorance simply in order not to appear too well informed. The last night before sailing, he was suddenly struck by the notion that she knew of Operation
ICEBERG
. It was intuition, nothing more, and he had been trying to think of a way to find out without violating the secrecy imposed by Admiral Small, when she interrupted him in the way she knew so well, which always led to other things far removed from submarines and the war.

Obviously, if these deductions were correct, Joan must know what submarines were assigned to the various patrol areas. Although this sort of information was considered top secret by the submarine force, she would know that at this very moment
Eel
was patrolling the East China
and Yellow seas, along with the
Whitefish
and
Chicolar
. She would know of the message about the convoy. It might even be she who had decoded it, or translated it. And she would be aware that it was sending
Eel
into combat and mortal danger. Now that they had been so close, that she knew Richardson so well, what would she think, or feel, about the risks she was subjecting him to? Would she worry about his safety? Or was it all part of the job? What about Jim Bledsoe and the
Walrus
? Through some tacit understanding, some regard for her privacy—and Jim's, though he was dead—he had refrained from bringing Jim up. She had told him what she felt she ought, and he had resolved to be satisfied with that.

Now it occurred to him to wonder whether Jim's last, fatal attack on Bungo Pete's decoy freighter could have resulted from a similar message. If so, it meant that it had been planted, and therefore that the enemy had finally realized their convoy routing code had been broken. If so, this convoy
Eel
was now pursuing might also be a decoy. If so, he and the other boats might be steering at full power into a gigantic trap!

But his mind refused to follow the train of thought. It could not be true. It was too far-fetched an idea. Admiral Small and the Fort Shafter people would have to be trusted not to be taken in. Anyway, it made no difference. No matter what his imagination concocted,
Eel
and the other two submarines had received an order for battle. They had been pointed toward the enemy, and they had been unleashed. From here on, ComSubPac did not exist. Joan did not exist. Nothing existed but the sea, and
Eel
's slender prow cutting it into halves as she sped through it. Only he existed, at the center of the universe, and even he did not exist. There was not even such a thing as the will to do what he was in the process of doing, what he had been trained for so many years to do. There was only the fact of doing it.

Time had been, years ago, when he worried whether he would be able to fire torpedoes set to kill; whether he would be able to nerve himself to see the effects; whether he could hold himself together, still function, disdain the terror of the inevitable counterblow. Before the war a perfect torpedo shot was a professional triumph. It had required meticulous preparation of equipment—the angle solvers, the tubes, the ancillary parts of the submarine which brought them to the firing point, the torpedoes themselves—and lengthy, boring, often lonely practice. Success was achieved when the target signaled the torpedoes had passed beneath her keel. A bull's-eye: accolades for all, qualifications, promotions, favorable comments in fitness reports, a conspicuous white E on the conning tower. What happened when
the bull's-eye produced instead a catastrophic explosion, a column of white water mixed with death and debris, a shattered hulk which a moment ago had been a fine ship—that was something he had thought of as happening in another world. It was imaginary, not real. It was not part of the prewar drill. He had, of course, known that ships would sink. But, before the war, he had never been able to visualize what it must actually be like.

Now he had seen it. Being the cause of it was easy, for in the process something had happened to him, too. He was split into two people, both of whom were present at the same time inside him, both able to react. But the two, the automaton and the spectator, were entirely different from each other. The automaton had been trained to be a nerveless perfectionist. The devastating result of the automaton's perfectionism was a clinical certainty it accepted with detachment. The automaton always shouldered the spectator aside, took over the periscope or the bridge TBTs at the start of any action. Beside it, inside it, stood the spectator, observing, marveling, saddened at the destruction and the loss of life. Once in action, the automaton could not be stopped, except by the interposition of some external superior force, and if the opportunity arose, it would inevitably respond with some deadly riposte of its own. It could coldly aim a torpedo that would rip the vitals out of a ship and send it reeling to the bottom of the sea. It would watch the carnage with cool concentration, ready to wrest instant advantage from whatever developments there were.

The spectator, seeing through the same eyes, would always see the dust left floating at the spot where a ship had sunk, would mourn the doomed round black spots—the heads of men—clustering around floating wreckage. The spectator could feel compassion, imagine himself among them, wish they had not, by appearing before his sights, wrought their own destruction. Yet the spectator also had his hardness. These were the enemy. They sought his death. Though the targets of the moment were merchant ships, they were part of the enemy's total war effort. They would not hesitate to try to bring about his own destruction with depth charges, bombs, any weapons they might happen to possess. They were not above breaking the rules of war. There had not even been a war with the United States on December 7, 1941.

They had killed Stocker Kane in the
Nerka
, and Jim Bledsoe in the
Walrus
at a moment of mercy while they were rescuing the crew of an old freighter. Its crew, part of Nakame's outfit, had desperately signaled for rescue. The torpedo from Nakame's carefully positioned sub struck just as Jim was bringing the life raft alongside.

What rules could there be in total war, if Stan Davenport and his
men had to die in
Oklahoma's
enginerooms even before that war existed? Stan's body was found at his station near the port throttle when the big old battlewagon finally was rolled upright. Japan had initiated the war by an unparalleled act of international treachery. She had thrown away the rule book. Surprise, shock, irresistible power: these were the only currency left between Japan and the United States. The reckoning for that brutally cynical act would be cut from similar cloth. No negotiations could stop it, for whom did Japan have who could be trusted as a negotiator? After Pearl Harbor, who in America would be willing to take a similar risk again?

The spectator could even talk with the automaton, but the conversations were always one-sided, always subject to the superior demands of combat. The night was clear and beautiful, the spectator might say. The sea air was clean; the salt dust blowing was refreshing. The Japanese were admirable seamen. They built fine ships, and they knew how to operate them. He could not say they were a fine, honorable people: not after what had happened at Pearl Harbor, and then later at Bataan and Corregidor; but they were industrious and hardworking. The automaton would grimace frigidly through the TBT or the periscope, call out the crucially important observations, maneuver the critical weapon, the
Eel
. It never answered the spectator's observations. It acted, with finality. Its actions were the only answers it ever gave.

Long ago, Richardson had learned that he was as much an instrument of his submarine and its torpedoes as they were of him. There was no room for emotion, no room for thinking. Yet he did think, and observe, in a strange, set-aside corner of his mind. During combat, there was only room for the trained reaction to do what had to be done quickly, effectively, and with precision. After it was over there would be again, as there had always been, a coalescence of personality. The spectator and the automaton would merge into one, and the stern compulsion would disappear. Afterward there might be a reaction to what he had seen and done. But only afterward.

A moderate breeze came over the top of the bridge windscreen, doubtless entirely the product of
Eel
's speed, for the air was as still as the sea. This time he had properly prepared himself for the cold, with boots and heavy trousers in addition to his heavy jacket. The air had a bite to its chill. He spread his mittened hands to cover as much of his face as he could, held the binoculars to his eyes, elbows resting on the little dashboard behind the windscreen, scanned the nothingness ahead. Beside him, Williams silently did the same.

Above the still figures on the bridge towered the two metal cones
which were the periscope supports. During daylight the four lookouts stood on little platforms high on the side of each cone. Now, swathed in foul-weather gear, they stood at the bridge level, protected by the bulwarks, binoculars still sweeping steadily.

Above them all, impervious to fog, darkness, or weather, the best lookout of all ceaselessly rotated, sending its invisible radar beams out over hundreds of square miles of ocean surface, to show by a pip on a dial in the conning tower any unusual phenomenon on the surface of the sea.

Rich had been on the bridge approximately half an hour when, from the slight bustle going on beneath the conning tower hatch, he knew that some sort of word was coming.

“Radar contact, Bridge!” Scott, relaying the word, no doubt from Quin. “Looks like land! Port and starboard. Twenty-five miles.”

“Bridge, aye aye,” from Williams. “Those are the islands we're expecting. Keep the information coming, but look carefully between them. We're looking for ships, Conn.”

“Conn, aye aye,” responded Scott. “Radar has the word.”

It was perhaps another ten minutes before anything new showed on radar.

“Radar contact!” Quin's voice, bellowing from his position at the console.

Instantly Buck pushed the bridge speaker button. “Where away, Radar? Range and bearing!”

“Zero-four-zero, Bridge. Fifteen miles! Looks like six ships, sir!”

Williams looked at his skipper. Richardson nodded. “Station the radar tracking party,” the OOD briskly called into the bridge speaker.

More bustle below decks. It could not have been more than twenty seconds before the bridge speaker blared once again.

“Radar tracking party manned and ready, Bridge.”

“Track target bearing zero-four-zero,” ordered Buck on the loud-speaking system. Then, pitching his voice to reach the helmsman down the hatch, “Steer zero-four-zero, helm. All ahead two-thirds!”

The roar of the engines eased.
Eel
's bow swung slightly to the right, steadied. Richardson nodded with approval.

Putting
Eel
's nose directly on the target would accentuate any discernible relative motion, enable the plotting party more quickly to determine in which direction the target was moving. Slowing down was routine—to avoid blundering prematurely into close range. Later, depending on which way the targets seemed to be moving, it might be necessary to turn around to put
Eel
's stern toward them.

The TDC in the conning tower was, of course, the heart of the plotting
effort. Normally Buck Williams would be operating it, but since for the time being he was occupied as Officer of the Deck, Keith would be running it for him.

Rich picked up the bridge hand-microphone which had been sent up when the radar tracking party was set. Rigged with a short extension cord, it permitted him to speak to the conning tower, control room, and maneuvering room without the necessity of fumbling for a button and leaning over to speak into the bridge speaker. Responses, of course, came as previously on the announcing system. He spoke into the mike: “Conn, this is bridge. I don't want to get closer than fifteen thousand yards.”

“Recommend you slow down even more, Bridge,” said Keith on the bridge speaker. “The range is closing rapidly.”

Williams had heard too. With a quick look at Richardson he gave the order. “All ahead one-third!”

Several minutes passed. The bridge speaker blared again. “Bridge, conn.” Keith's voice again, “We have six ships. Looks like three big ones and three little ones. The three big ones are in a column, and there's a little one ahead and on each flank. Estimated speed ten knots. Estimated course two-seven-oh. The range is now twenty thousand. The way we have them set up, they'll pass about ten thousand yards away at the closest point of approach.”

Blunt was on the bridge. Rich was conscious of his presence even though he had not voiced the customary request to come up.

“Buck,” said the skipper, “they're going to pass us too close aboard. Reverse course and put our stern on them.” Speaking into the microphone he continued, “Conn, this is the bridge. We're reversing course to put our stern to the target.”

“Conn, aye aye,” from Keith.

Buck, as was his right as OOD, gave the orders. Slowly
Eel
swung to the right, her port side diesels muttering a little louder than before in response to the small speed increase he had directed.