Ghosts of Bungo Suido (20 page)

They came up fifteen minutes later. It was still pitch black and snowing outside. Another sweep of the radar revealed no surface contacts. Even the nearby islands were a little fuzzy on the scope. Don’t quit on me now, Gar prayed, looking at those indistinct images. If they lost radar, they’d be here forever.

The diesels lit off with a satisfactory roar, and they plowed south and east to find safer water. The exec stayed in the conning tower, while one officer and three lookouts went topside. The flow of cold, clean air was a welcome relief, as always. Mixed in it somewhere Gar thought he smelled frying chicken. Now that they were on the surface, the sonar had no contacts. He thought about taking a peek with the air-search radar, but the current conditions should make that moot. Should.

Gar wedged himself into a corner of the conning tower and closed his eyes. Once daylight came, he expected a full court press from the Japanese. They had to have detected the Dragon’s two HF radio transmissions. That meant they knew there was a U.S. submarine in the Inland Sea, and they wouldn’t rest until they found it. The Dragon might not have accomplished her mission of damaging that carrier, but she’d certainly embarrassed whatever admiral owned the Inland Sea. An American submarine torpedoing dry-dock caissons and moored destroyers right in front of one of their most important naval arsenals? Somebody would be on the hara-kiri list for that one.

He tried to project what he’d do next. Hide for a day in that hole, where the water was 600 feet deep. Then—what? They’d have to surface to recharge the batteries before attempting Bungo Suido again. They could, if they had to, stay down for thirty-six hours, after which the CO
2
levels would begin to overwhelm the scrubbers. If I were the Jap commander, he thought, I’d look hard at the chart of the Seto and then station four destroyers right above the Hoyo Strait. They could sit there at idle for a couple of weeks. The Dragon would either have to shoot her way out of there or die trying. They’d draw a line between the Moroshima Strait and Bungo Suido and just wait for their prey to make a move.

Okay, but there was another way out of the Seto. The Kii Suido. The northern exit. What if they laid low for as long as they could and then went back northeast
into
the Seto? They had food for four more weeks, and some torpedoes left. Maybe go back to Kure. Damned Japs would never expect that. The water here was shallow, only 165 feet in most places, but the winter was setting in, with its shitty weather, low visibility, snow squalls, short days, and ink black nights.

We could, he thought. We could retrace our steps back into Hiroshima Bay and do it all again. Then run for the
northern
exit from the Seto—Kii Suido. He tried to imagine what the exec would think of that and smiled. An image of Cob’s face rose in his mind. Don’t say it, he told his weary brain.

SIXTEEN

They got to the hole at daybreak, or what passed for daybreak. The snow was still flying, and the radar showed nobody operating within 20 miles of them. Gar stayed on the surface for as long as possible to max out the batteries; then they dived and leveled off at 350 feet, 50 feet deeper than a much more generous thermocline layer. They were finally down where they belonged, in the deep, black, cold embrace of the Seto.

Then they slept. Gar had the watch officers put a 2-degree port rudder on at 2 knots, and they commenced executing a continuous circle in the black depths of the sea. They set four-hour minimal-manning watches in Engineering and Control. The rest of the crew hit their racks or slept on station in corners, on top of torpedoes, in storage cubbyholes, on mess-deck benches, in the wardroom, wherever they could find 6 horizontal feet and some quiet. Everyone was exhausted. Besides, men sleeping burned up less oxygen and produced less CO
2
.

Gar got some chow, hit the head to pump personal bilges, and then lay down in his own rack for eight straight hours. Bliss.

Until that port shaft seal let go.

The sound-powered phone squealed.

“Captain.”

“Major flooding in two engine room, Cap’n,” the exec said. “We need to come up.”

Gar squinted at the depth gauge—350 feet.

“Any echo ranging?”

“None heard, sir.”

“I’ll be up.”

By the time he got to Control, the diving officer was having trouble keeping the trim on the boat. She was getting stern heavy, and they were urgently transferring water through the ballast system, trying to keep her on an even keel. Gar went back to Maneuvering, where the chief engineer was on the phone with the damage control team.

“Can we come up?” the engineer asked. “It’s pretty bad back there, and the pumps aren’t keeping up.”

“The layer’s at three hundred feet,” Gar said. “Above that, if they’re up there, they’ll hear us.”

“Even fifty feet would help, Skipper,” Billy said.

Gar called Control and told them to make their depth 300 feet. The diving officer said he’d try but was worried about the up-angle getting out of control. He said they’d pulled the people out of After Torpedo. The exec showed up in Maneuvering. He’d been back to the port shaft alley, and his khakis were soaked.

“We have to get up to periscope depth,” he said. “That seal is blowing like Yellowstone.”

“We might be walking into something worse,” Gar said.

He threw up his hands. “There’ll be seawater getting into After Battery very soon,” he said. “After that…”

After that, the electrolyte in the battery would begin generating chlorine gas, and that would be the end of them.

“Stay on things here,” Gar said. “I’m going to the conning tower.”

“As soon as we can, Cap’n,” he said. “They’re getting nowhere back there.”

Gar didn’t need reminding. The sub would get so heavy aft that she’d begin to stand on her hind end as they tried to get closer to the surface. With only one shaft operational, there was the distinct possibility that they’d start sliding backward into the depths. The deep water that had been protecting them would then consume them.

When Gar got to Control, he ordered all the watertight doors closed and the men to action stations torpedo. They’d be in a torpedo fight right away if they came up into a hornet’s nest of Jap escorts, and Gar’s best antidestroyer torpedoes, the slow but deadly electric homers, were all in After Torpedo.

Which had been evacuated.
Dammit!

“Come to periscope depth,” he ordered. “Power us up, but don’t blow unless you have to.”

“We’ll have to,” the diving officer said. “We’re too heavy to drive up on one shaft.”

Gar had to think fast. The batteries were depleted after a day at depth. He only had one propeller left. Ordinarily with a flooding situation, he’d have blown all ballast tanks and be driving the boat up with both screws going full bore, and even that would have been dicey.

“Do what you have to do,” Gar said. “A fight’s better than that really deep dive.”

He climbed up into the conning tower, where their trusty battle stations crew was already on station. The boat was pointed up at about a 10-degree angle, and they could all feel the throbbing of the starboard screw trying to drive them toward the surface. Then a ballast tank rumbled as it filled with compressed air. The depth gauge showed 265, but their ascent was perilously slow. The good news was that for every foot of depth they gained, the torrent of water pouring into their nether parts would be slowing down. The bad news was that they were making a hell of a lot of noise.

A second ballast tank rumbled, and the ascent angle eased off to 8 degrees. They were now passing through 245 feet.

“Sound, anything?”

“Ballast tanks,” Popeye said grimly. His gear was deaf until all that compressed air bubbling out of them got out of the way.

“Passing two hundred feet,” Control reported.

“Hold her at one hundred feet, if you can,” Gar replied, eyeing the Plexiglas status board that showed sunset happening at 1745 local time. The clock above the board showed 1730. Darkness was their friend; snow, sleet, hail, and fog would be even better.

“Passing one fifty feet.”

Gar called the exec in Maneuvering. “This helping?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, and now the pumps are effective.”

“Get people back into After Torpedo as soon as possible,” Gar said. He didn’t have to tell him why. He was glad torpedoes were waterproof.

“Leveling at one-ten feet,” Control reported. Gar didn’t say anything. The diving officer had his hands full trying to get a proper trim on the boat. They still were carrying a big slug of seawater aft. Gar could feel it. His big problem now was that they’d lost their protective layer and made far too much noise. He had no idea of what might be up there, waiting for them.

“Control, can you bring her to periscope depth without broaching?”

“Not yet, Cap’n. Trim’s way off, and the bubble is dancing.”

“When you’re stable, bring her up.”

Gar had taught all the officers who stood diving officer watch to be absolutely frank about the boat’s stability at any given moment. Trimming a submerged submarine is an art, and sometimes officers were unwilling to admit that they were having a hard time achieving trim. A submerged submarine is continuously fooling the ocean into not swallowing it whole. A diving officer had to have no illusions about how good he was. If the boat was out of trim, they were all at risk. Gar could hear the trim pumps working as the diving team worked to balance water loads in their tanks with their own buoyancy. It was a little like trying to hover a fixed-wing aircraft. He wondered who else could hear all that motor noise.

“Coming up to periscope depth now,” Control reported.

“Up scope,” Gar ordered, even though they weren’t quite there yet. He wanted to be on the eyepiece when the tip broached the surface. As soon as it broke, he did the circular duckwalk for a quick look. It appeared to be dark, with a stiff breeze blowing whitecaps soundlessly across the water. That was a good thing; whitecaps hid periscopes. Gar held the scope to just 1 foot above the water for the first look, then brought it up to 3 feet.

No company visible. Sound confirmed a quiet environment—no diesels, pinging, or aircraft sounds. Gar ordered the periscope down and the surface radar mast up for a single-sweep observation.

“Conn, Radar. I have no picture.”

“You mean no contacts, or no video on your scope?”

“No nothing, sir,” the operator said, disgustedly. “I think this goddamned thing’s broke-dick.”

Gar ordered the mast down immediately. This was a real problem. The radar techs were already tearing into the equipment cabinet. They
had
to have that radar. He couldn’t surface or even bring the diesels on the line without knowing what was lurking out there in the snowy darkness. For that matter, they couldn’t even get a navigation fix. After circling aimlessly all day at depth and subject to whatever currents had been at play down there, they really couldn’t know where they were other than by matching the observed water depths with the charted depth. That made for a pretty loose fix.

Gar went down the ladder from the conning tower to meet the chief engineer, who reported that the repair team needed to get back topside to pack that shaft seal from the outside, so that pressure at depth would squeeze the packing
in
instead of trying to push the inner seals out into the shaft alley. That, of course, meant they had to surface.

“The battery is at thirty percent,” Gar said. “Not to mention the air inside the boat becoming a diesel fog. We’ll have to surface any way we look at it. ETR on the radar?”

“They’re just getting into it,” called the exec from the conning tower. “Pray that we have the part.”

“XO, what do you recommend?”

“Battle surface guns,” he said promptly. “Go up there expecting trouble and ready to shoot. Keep the TDC team in place for a torpedo shot. If nobody shows up, light off a single diesel for battery charge and fix the seal. Anything after that is gravy.”

“I concur,” Gar said. “Make it so.”

Russ nodded and disappeared from the hatch to take charge. He was getting good at that, Gar realized, and he’d have to be once he got his own command. Gar’s reservations about him going to command had vanished. He reminded himself to tell Russ that.

Gar watched the periscope go back up as the exec took a look for himself. One of the radar techs came down the ladder with two vacuum tubes.

“Those the guilty bastards?” Gar asked.

The tech said he hoped so and went aft to one of the storerooms. Gar hoped they weren’t Easter-egging. He told Cob to get the word out that they were going to battle surface as a precaution and then fix the seal. Then he went to the wardroom. Normally for a battle-surface evolution Gar would be in the conning tower, or at least in Control, but he wanted the exec to run this one without his being right there, looking over his shoulder.

Gar could hear the bridge team assembling at the base of the ladder going topside, and the 5-inch gun team headed forward to their hatch. The Dragon’s crew was now a well-oiled machine, to the point where the GQ alarm really wasn’t necessary. Each man knew what he had to do to bring the boat up on the surface, man all the guns, get a diving team out onto the fantail and over the side with seal packing, light off the diesel engine, purge the foul air out of the boat, complete the trim pumping to lift the stern up so the divers had an easier job of it, set and maintain a tight visual watch all around, and, oh by the way, fix the damned radar. Gar was superfluous, for the moment. If a destroyer came barreling out of the dark,
then
he’d have a job.

“Surface! Surface! Man gun stations.”

The Dragon came up, still tail heavy and making more noise than Gar wanted to hear as the ballast tanks were emptied. Keep negative flooded, he thought, in case we need to get back down chop-chop.

“Flood negative
and
safety,” the exec ordered. Atta boy, Gar thought.

Mooky the cook came in with a tray of fried-egg sandwiches. Gar grabbed one and then told Control he’d be in his cabin. He knew they’d pass that word up to the exec, and he’d recognize it for the vote of confidence that it was. Gar felt the hatch open topside and waited for the blast of fresh air that was forthcoming. Oxygen was good stuff. He went forward.