Ghosts of Bungo Suido (19 page)

As they left the briefing room, Admiral Lockwood appeared on the stairway to the second deck. Forrester made introductions, and the admiral asked her how the
Hoshen Maru
case was shaping up. She told him what little she knew and ended by saying that Captain Forrester had just given her the
most
interesting tour of the operations center.

“Is that right,” Lockwood said, also seeming to suppress a grin. “I’m sure that was very interesting indeed. Keep me informed, will you? If Washington is going to get all spun up over this, I’d appreciate a heads-up.”

“I’ll pass any information we get on to Captain Forrester,” she replied. “As he requested.”

Lockwood gave Forrester a quick why-you-old-dog look and went into the operations center. Sharon smiled sweetly at the discomfited captain, then took her leave and the folder back to Makalapa.

The Inland Sea of Japan

One squeak on the phone brought Gar back awake. “Captain.”

“Cap’n, snipes say they gotta blow it. Primacord is set. Request permission to—”

“Tell them to blow it and get back inside as soon as possible. Anything on the radar?”

“No, sir. We’re clean. The strait’s dead ahead, and it’s still snowing to beat the band.”

“What’s the fathometer showing?” Gar looked at his watch. He’d been down for an hour. It felt like a big mistake. He needed another twelve or so to get even. Had to make sure the XO got some time down, too, he reminded himself. Gar needed that brain of his.

“Two hundred eighty feet.”

He heard the sharp bang of the Primacord going off back aft. They’d wrapped it around the tail shaft just forward of the propeller. If they’d done it right, the Primacord would have cut the entire screw off the tail shaft.

“I’ll be up.”

He sloshed some water on his fuzzy face and then went aft to the control room.

“How many people we got topside?” he asked.

“Ten,” the diving officer said. “Two in the water, eight tenders all around.”

“Who did the dive?”

“Billy Bangs and Cob,” he said.

Good man, he thought. I bet he didn’t have to ask Cob, either.

“Control, Maneuvering.”

“Control.

“They got it off. Diving party’s coming in.”

Gar nodded at the phone talker. “Captain says well done.”

He repeated Gar’s message, and then Gar climbed up into the conning tower. He’d finally come to realize that this was indeed where he needed to be, not on the bridge. Here lived the tactical picture. The nav chart, with a real-time depiction of where they were on that chart. The radar. The sonars. The TDC. This was the nerve center. What had that captain said the surface guys called it? CIC? The captain on the bridge was a tradition, but only if he could see.

“Gimme the bubble,” he said.

FIFTEEN

They submerged and started into the Moroshima Strait. They stayed shallow, running at 150 feet. Gar wanted the mine-hunting sonar to tell him if there were mines ahead, but he also needed to be able to get back up quickly and shine the radar for a sweep or two, in order to see where they were and where they were going.

He’d sent the exec below with orders to get an hour of sleep.

“Just one?” Russ had asked with a weak smile.

“We’ll call you,” Gar said. “Trust me on that.”

Russ went below. Gar told the team to take them on into Moroshima.

For five minutes they waited. Then:
Gong.

Fuck.

They began the dance, but this time with only one screw, which made the Dragon sluggish in tight spaces. Just to help things along, Maneuvering reported that the port stern tube was leaking, probably caused by the Primacord blast so close to the stern tube seal.

“All stop,” Gar ordered. All one engine, he thought.

“Popeye, what does the whiz-bang see?”

“Two ahead,” Popeye answered. “One to port, one to starboard. Can’t tell depth.”

The ops boss spoke up from the TDC. “The tide’s going out, so the chains oughta be straining southwest. The mines are probably deeper than they normally ride.”

Gar waited while Popeye analyzed the scope picture.

“Both have bearing drift. We can pass between them.”

Between those two, Gar thought—but what if there were a whole gaggle of the damned things down at, say 200 feet? This sonar looked
up
. On the other hand, he couldn’t just point down into the depths now. He realized that once they committed to a depth within a minefield, they were stuck there.

“Nothing above us?” he asked. He was conscious of the rest of the conning tower listening to this quiet conversation about 1,000-pound mines in the water all around them. He stood at his periscope observation stand, not to use it but to keep out of the way of all the plotters, phone talkers, and TDC operators jammed together in the conning tower.

“Not yet,” said Popeye helpfully. Good deal, Gar thought.

“All ahead one-third,” he ordered. If the sonar looked up at 5 degrees, then this was probably a surface field, aimed at ships not subs. Unless, of course, they’d planted two layers. He told the diving officer down in Control to see what the bottom looked like according to Hashimoto’s chart.

They crept ahead, navigating on a dead-reckoning track. There was a 5-knot current through there at maximum ebb tide, but they were two hours from the max ebb. Still, they were sweeping over the ground partly on their own power and partly in the grip of that current.

Gong.

“Two more, both to port. Should clear.”

Gar studied the chart on the DRT tabletop. The current streamed right through the strait on a course of 190, just to the right of due south. The water depth in the strait was 180 feet, but there was a hole just outside the strait where the water depth went to almost 400 feet, then back to 180 again. He told the fathometer operator to watch for that hole. They should cross right over it, and if they did, they’d know where they were without having to take a radar peek.

Gong. Gong.

“Two more dead ahead. Recommend we come right ten degrees.”

“Make it so, helmsman.”

The fathometer operator raised his hand. “Depth beneath the keel is two hundred. Two fifty. Three hundred. We’ve just crossed over a ledge. Four hundred feet.”

They were clear of the strait.

Gong.

Not clear of the goddamned minefield.

“Depth beneath the keel is now back to one eighty.”

Gar studied the chart again. To the left of their track was shallower water. Easier to moor mines over there.

“Come right to two one zero,” he ordered.

“Two one zero will clear the mine ahead,” Popeye said.

“Once we pass this one we’ll come to periscope depth and stop. Popeye, look hard as we come up.”

“Cap’n,” the ops officer called, “if we want to stop forward motion over the ground, we’ll have to back down.”

Gar nodded. He should have caught that. Backing down on one screw would probably not overcome the force of a 6-knot current. Except now that they were out of the strait, the current shouldn’t be quite that strong.

Gong.

Time to try.

The off-center pull of the single propeller began to fight the helm to the point where the helmsman couldn’t maintain directional control. That turned out to be a good thing. As the bow fell off to starboard, the gonging stopped.

“Starboard stop, starboard ahead two-thirds,” Gar ordered. He watched Popeye as he frantically scanned the screen. Then he watched the pit log, which finally came off the zero peg and showed forward motion. He slowed to one-third ahead and waited.

“Clear ahead,” Popeye said.

They waited some more. Gar wanted ten minutes of clear sailing before coming up for a radar fix. He looked at the clock on the forward bulkhead. It was 0440 local time. They had maybe an hour and a half until first light, at which point they’d have to submerge for the day.

Gar was very tired. They all were. The thought of going down to 350 feet somewhere out in the middle of the Seto and taking the rest of the day off was wonderful even if it did mean the end of fresh air.

While they waited, the radioman brought up some messages. He’d been copying the fleet broadcast the whole time they’d been tearing stuff up in Kure. Apparently, Pearl was very pleased that they’d managed to get into the Seto. Gar looked for a message acknowledging his second report—that they hadn’t been able to get at the carrier. Nothing there. Probably observing that old rule: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

“Conn, Sonar.”

“Go ahead.”

“I have a noise spoke, weak and intermittent, two seven zero. No classification.”

Gar grabbed the 1MC microphone. “Rig for silent running.”

The vent system shut down immediately, but it wasn’t so bad with that cold water outside the skin. “Start a plot. Open outer doors forward.”

A noise spoke could mean anything from a hunting destroyer to an enemy submarine to a fishing trawler.

“Bearing drift?”

“No bearing drift.”

That meant whatever it was, it was coming straight at them. Gar remembered the destroyers back in the Luzon Strait whose sonars they could not hear. The problem with a single sound bearing was that there was no way to know how far away he was, not without a few hours of fancy plotting.

“Say the fathometer.”

“Two five five beneath the keel.”

“How many fish we got forward?”

“Tubes one and two reloaded; three in progress. All steamers.”

“Control, make your depth two hundred feet. Three-degree down bubble. Popeye, keep watching. I don’t want to descend into another minefield.”

“Clear so far, Cap’n.”

“Say the layer.”

“No layer, so far.”

If there was going to be a protective layer, it was deeper than they were now. No layer, they were going to be fair game.

“Conn, Sonar, amplitude
in
creasing slightly. Still no classification. Bearing drifting slightly right.”

“Passing two hundred feet. Trimming up.”

Gar tried to think of something brilliant, then realized he was too fatigued to think.

“Call the XO,” he said. He’d had his hour, maybe even a little more. Gar knew he needed another brain up here.

“Steady at two hundred feet.”

“A thin five-degree layer at one ninety, sir.”

Not much protection. The larger the temperature differential between one layer of seawater and another, the more sonar waves bounced off, thus masking them. The noise spoke on the screen was at 270, drifting slightly right. They needed to come left, to increase that bearing drift and make the Jap pass astern of them, but not so far left that they reengaged the minefield. Plus, there was a pinnacle to the east of the Moroshima Strait’s southern exit. Nine feet of shoal water.

Gar’s plan had been to surface and get a radar fix, but now … well, now they didn’t know exactly where they were.

“Come left to one eight zero,” he said.

“One eight zero, aye.”

“Does the fathometer depth agree with the charted depth?”

“No, sir. Based on our dead-reckoning position, depth should be three hundred feet, but shoaling ahead to two forty.”

Gar’s ultimate objective was to get back to the safety of their wait-box, where the water depth had been 600 feet. The route to the wait-box was just not deep enough for them to be safe from a serious antisubmarine search, which would surely be coming in the morning.

There was nothing else they could do, he finally decided. They had to surface and run as fast as they could before daylight drove them down again.

“Popeye, anything?”

“No, sir. Clear on my scope.”

“Sonar?”

“Noise spoke is still there, Cap’n. Bearing two niner five now; passing astern. I make it out to be a diesel.”

Diesel. That could be anything, a fisherman, an I-boat on the surface. Coming from the southwest, headed home?

“Come to periscope depth,” Gar ordered. “Stand by for visual observation.”

They came up to periscope depth. Gar put up one of the periscopes, walked around the compass circle, and saw precisely nothing. He checked the depth meter to make sure his scope was indeed above the water. It was.

Still nothing.

“Down scope. Radar, get a fix.”

The surface-search radar mast went up for about one minute, then back down. The scope operators had drawn what they’d seen in yellow grease pencil on the scope: the edges of three islands. They then measured the ranges out to those edges and drew arcs on the chart. Their position on the chart was right where those arcs intersected. You hoped for a point intersection but usually got a small triangle. It was good enough to show Gar where they had to go to achieve a good hidey-hole out in deep water. The question now was, surface and go 12 or 13 knots, or submerge again to 100 feet and go 6? The daylight problem drove the answer. They simply had to surface if they wanted to be in deep water by the time the antisubmarine forces came out in force to hunt them down.

“See that noise spoke contact anywhere?” Gar asked the radar team.

“Negative, sir. No surface contacts.”

“Sonar, is that possible?”

“Yes, sir. There may be a sound channel. He could be close aboard or twenty miles away.”

Gar looked at his watch. Time to decide. His eyes burned, and he felt his sinuses contracting. The exec climbed up into the conning tower.

“Stand by to surface. Nav, plot us a course at fifteen knots to the deep hole. XO, here’s what we got.”

He briefed the exec on the situation and then asked him to take the conn.

Gar got the chief cook on the horn and told him to prepare a hot meal while they were running on the surface. They’d be down for ten hours once they went into hiding; the sub’s atmosphere would be bad enough without the smell of cooking food. He told Maneuvering to pack the battery tight over the next ninety minutes. They acknowledged and requested permission to work on that leaking shaft seal before they went deep again. Gar had forgotten all about that, but those guys who were looking it in the eye knew what would happen to a small leak once the sub headed for deep water: It would become a big leak.