Battle Stations: a novel of the Pacific War (Crash Dive Book 3) Page 14

  “Can you fix them?”

  “Sure.” Sandtiger had good machinists aboard. “But it’d take a few days. We might be able to replace the pin in the resolver easy enough. But the differentials require fine machine work. Without them, the TDC can’t add.”

  For a moment, Charlie missed John Braddock. He’d probably fix it in a jiffy, bitching while he did it. “What about you, Percy? Any luck with the radio?”

  Percy shook his head. “It’s broke-dick. I’ll keep working on it.”

  “Very well,” Charlie said. “The leaks are repaired, so we’re going to get moving. I’ll take the boat up for a look at the surface first.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Hey, Percy.”

  The communications officer stopped and smiled at him. Charlie wondered if he’d helped himself to more than a single shot of the medicinal brandy. “Yeah, Harrison?”

  “Why do you always wear those loud Aloha shirts?”

  The smile faded. “I bought one in Hawaii and was trying it on when the captain called battle stations. We sank a converted whale factory. I thought the Old Man would chew me out after. Instead, he told me I had to wear them all the time. He said it brought him luck.”

  Charlie nodded. “Carry on then. We’re going to need all the luck we can get.” He leaned toward the open hatch. “Control, take us up to periscope depth!”

  “Aye, aye, Exec!”

  Sandtiger had to surface soon. If she didn’t, she’d run out of air and power. She also needed to find a safe place to pump the water out of her bilges. The pumping created a visible slick on the surface.

  “Sound, do you hear anything up there?”

  “Light screws, bearing oh-nine-one. Range 3,000 yards. No pinging. Not sure what it is. Sounds like a PT boat.”

  Sandtiger leveled off at sixty-five feet.

  “We’ll take a quick look at him. Up scope!”

  He crouched and rose with the periscope shaft, slapping down the handles. The sea undulated in the wind. Cloudy skies. A pair of seaplanes, 4,000 feet elevation, far. A distant landmass, which was Hokkaido.

  He turned the view toward the ship the soundman detected.

  Charlie cried, “Battle stations, torpedo!”

  The battle stations alarm bonged through boat. The galvanized crew rushed to man their stations.

  “Down scope! Helm, swing us around! Steer to one-eight-oh!”

  “Aye, aye!”

  “What’s going on?” Liebold wondered.

  “Jack, get the Banjo!” He pulled down the 1MC microphone and said, “Mr. Nixon and Mr. Percy to the conn!”

  Percy arrived and took his station at the plotting table. “What did you find?”

  Nixon followed. “Here, Exec!”

  “I need you as assistant approach officer,” Charlie said.

  The engineering officer brightened. “Okay.”

  “Up scope!”

  He swung the periscope until he’d centered his crosshairs on his prey.

  She was the biggest submarine he’d ever seen.

  More than 300 feet long. KD type, from the distinctive faired metal sail that housed her conning tower. I-class. Dark gray with the upper parts of the sail painted black. No hull number.

  A banner had been attached to a frame on the sail. A red sun on a white field.

  “What did you find?” Percy repeated.

  “I’m looking at the submarine that sunk Redhorse and Warmouth. Right at her meatball.” He heard the man gasp. “Sound, keep those bearings coming!”

  “Oh-nine-two, oh-nine-two and a half, oh-nine-three—”

  No zigzagging.

  Dressed in white uniforms and Donald Duck caps, sailors lounged on the bridge and cigarette deck. Smoking, laughing. They were a proud and happy crew after destroying the American invaders. Mission accomplished, they headed to Otaru for a few weeks of liberty.

  “Give him twelve knots. What do you think, Sound?”

  “Two hundred RPM. Yeah, about twelve knots!”

  “Angle on the bow, port fifty! Down scope!”

  The officers gathered at the plotting table. Percy sketched it out for him.

  “He’ll cross our bow at 1,500 yards. We’ll have a straight bow shot.”

  Sometimes, you got lucky. Sometimes, you hit the jackpot.

  Charlie intended to exploit this break for all it was worth. But he needed to get closer and reduce the range. The only way to do that would be to increase speed. At nine knots, he could shorten the range to 1,100 yards.

  If he ordered flank speed, he’d drain what little battery power he had left. If he missed, the response would be fast and furious. He’d have to engage the submarine while being trimmed heavy. Ships and planes would arrive shortly after.

  And he wouldn’t be able to stay under much longer. In just a few hours, the air would run dangerously thin and the battery would start to flatline.

  The clock read 0515. Sunset in another twenty minutes. The safe move was to run for the strait. Get the hell out of here.

  “Helm,” he said, “how do we head?”

  “One-eight-oh, Mr. Harrison.”

  “Keep her so,” he said. “All ahead flank.”

  “Steady as she goes. Increase to flank, aye, Mr. Harrison.” The helmsman selected flank speed on the annunciator, which responded with a bell chime.

  Jack opened his mouth but closed it. He understood the risks but knew better than to say anything.

  “Forward room, make ready the tubes,” Charlie said. “Order of tubes is one, two, three. Set depth at four feet. High speed.”

  The forward torpedo room acknowledged. The soundman called out fresh bearings. The situation remained more or less static. The Japanese submarine cruised east at twelve knots. The American submarine moved south toward her.

  The torpedo outer doors thudded open.

  Charlie keyed the 1MC. “Attention. This is the exec. We spotted the Jap sub that sunk Redhorse and Warmouth. We’re on an intercept course. We’ll make a submerged attack. This one’s for our comrades. This one’s for Moreau.”

  It was time OPERATION PAYBACK earned its name.

  “Up scope!” There she was, blissfully ignorant she was being hunted. “Bearing, mark!”

  Nixon read the value on the bearing ring. “Oh-nine-four!”

  Liebold wheeled a disc on his slide rule. “Roger.”

  “Range, mark!”

  “Range, 2,000 yards!” Nixon said. “Speed, twelve knots!”

  “Roger.”

  “Angle on the bow is port sixty-five! Down scope!”

  Jack lowered the Banjo. “We’re looking good for that straight bow shot. If you shoot at the right time, she’ll run right into our fish.”

  “Forward room, torpedo angle is zero degrees,” he said. “Up scope! Final observation.”

  He centered the crosshairs on the submarine’s gray broadside. Right under the big meatball on her metal sail. “Stand by forward! Final bearing, mark!”

  Nixon: “Oh-nine-five!”

  “Range, mark!”

  “Eleven hundred yards!”

  “Angle on the bow is port ninety! Speed, twelve knots!”

  Liebold: “Shoot anytime!”

  Charlie hesitated. Something about this felt wrong. Those sailors out there were submariners. Men just like him.

  He actually pitied the Japanese skipper. The IJN hadn’t warned him about a third American submarine in the area. That or the skipper decided the Americans had left.

  You made one mistake, let your guard down once, and you were dead.

  The fortunes of war.

  “FIRE ONE!” he cried.

  Liebold pressed the plunger on the firing panel. Charlie felt the kick as the first fish left its tube and lunged toward the enemy submarine.

  After eight seconds: “FIRE TWO!”

  Compressed air pushed the second torpedo out of the boat. Its propellers cranked the warhead through the water at forty-six knots.

  “FIRE THREE
!”

  Even one hit would do the job. Submarines didn’t sink nice and slow like a big surface ship. The boats carried little reserve buoyancy. They sank like rocks.

  “All fish away!”

  “Down scope! Forward, secure the tubes. Stand by to dive. Sound, stay on our fish.”

  “All fish running hot, straight, and normal, Exec.”

  “Very well.”

  Nothing to do now but wait as the torpedoes sped toward the target. The conning tower fell into a tense hush.

  Sound: “Oh-nine-five, oh-nine-five, oh-nine-five and a half—”

  The enemy submarine held her course. The seconds ticked past.

  “How long?” Charlie asked.

  Liebold held the stopwatch. “Forty-five seconds.”

  Not long to go now. “Up scope.”

  The submarine cruised serenely toward Ishikari Bay. Sailors on the cigarette deck started as they spotted lines of bubbles reaching for their boat. Several pointed at the nearest wake. One cupped his hands and shouted something.

  “The first fish went right under her,” Charlie said with disgust.

  So did the second.

  The third nailed her amidships with a heart-stopping roar.

  “One solid hit!” the soundman said.

  “The detonation broke her clean in half!” Charlie told the excited crew. “She’s going down!”

  Smoke and dust hung in the air. The bow reared and sank vertically in a terrific fountain. The stern followed at an angle, consumed by the roiling foam.

  Sandtiger bucked as thunder rolled against her.

  Charlie waved Smokey over. “Here, take a look.”

  Smokey grinned at the view. “That’s for Captain Moreau, Jap bastards.”

  “I didn’t thank you, Smokey,” Charlie murmured. “If it weren’t for you, Tanaka would have shot me too.”

  “Sink a few more Japs, and you’ll have earned it, sir.”

  The quartermaster stepped aside. The officers took turns at the periscope to see the results of their work.

  When Charlie took the scope back, there was nothing but debris floating in an expanding oil slick. He circled three times to look to check again for threats. Clear water and skies. The sun bled into the horizon. Night was coming fast.

  “Down scope! Stand by to surface!” He took the mike from the 1MC. “Attention. This is the exec.” He smiled. “Scratch one Jap submarine.”

  Across the boat, the crew cheered. Charlie had given them vengeance for Redhorse and Warmouth. A victory to lift their spirits.

  Now it was time to make the run for home. They just had to make it through La Pérouse Strait.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  HOME RUN

  Sandtiger cruised thirty miles west on the surface.

  There, she pumped her bilges.

  Then she struck north, her radar sweeping the sea for threats.

  Ten miles out from La Pérouse Strait, blips appeared on the PPI.

  “Radar, contact!” the radarman called out, his face bathed in the green glow of his cathode tube screen. “Three ships, bearing one-five-oh. Range, 19,000 yards.”

  Charlie studied the screen over the man’s shoulder. “Destroyers?”

  The man turned, his face shining with sweat. “They sure look like it to me, Mr. Harrison.”

  “Are they using radar?”

  “Just their active sonar. Long-scale echo-ranging.”

  The green cursor line swept around the circular plot. Sakhalin to the north, Hokkaido to the south, the ships in between. Clustered near the edge of the screen, the blips jumped position as the plot updated. Then again.

  Sentries, guarding the strait. Weaving back and forth. They straddled a six-mile stretch of water that marked the channel through the minefields. Each jump brought the blips closer to the center of the screen as the range closed.

  Dartfish had shelled Matsuwa’s airfield at 0100, an hour ago. Whatever damage she’d done, it hadn’t been enough to budge these tin cans.

  Sandtiger was alone. Mauled. Trapped in a hostile sea.

  No choice now but to fight her way out.

  He said, “Clear the topsides. Rig to dive.”

  The diving alarm sounded.

  Charlie had wanted to command his own boat ever since he first set foot on the S-55. There, JR Kane had taught him patience. Think analytically about combat.

  Wait for the right move. Then strike with everything you had.

  Nixon shouted out the commands to seal up the boat and get her ready to dive. The engines cut out. The main induction banged shut.

  “Pressure in the boat, green board,” Nixon reported. “Ready to dive in all respects, Exec. The boat has 296 feet under the keel.”

  As the boat grew closer to the destroyers, the depth under the keel would steadily shrink to 200 feet. She wouldn’t be able to go deep to evade depth charges. She’d have fewer thermal layers in which to hide.

  “Very well,” he said. “Dive.”

  On Sabertooth, Charlie had gotten a taste of command. A boat full of refugees, a deliciously distracting Army nurse, and one hell of an opportunity to sink a heavy carrier that attacked Pearl.

  On that boat, he’d served under Bob Hunter, who’d taught him the role luck played in combat. That the most successful commanders made their own luck.

  Now he held the reins of command again, and he didn’t want them.

  So tired, he just wanted to let somebody else make the decisions.

  What was the best move here? How could he improve his luck?

  “Flood safety!” Nixon barked. “Flood negative!”

  Sandtiger slid into the sea.

  The destroyers blocked La Pérouse, Sandtiger’s only way out. She needed to cross the strait on the surface or else perish in the minefields.

  She could strike west and evade the Japanese for another month before her fuel began to run out. The IJN would bottle up the straits, but after things settled down, perhaps they’d send the ships elsewhere.

  No guarantees on that, though. The IJN knew a third American submarine prowled their private sea. They wouldn’t rest until they sank her. They might send more ships into the sea searching for her.

  Things looked bad now, but he knew they’d only get worse.

  “Control, take us to periscope death,” Charlie said.

  Another option was to simply glide through the sentries, surface, and make a run for it. Hope to lose the destroyers in the pea-soup fog in the strait. In the fog, radar would give Sandtiger a decisive advantage.

  She’d have to make the run across miles of water with no fish left in the after room and three fast-moving tin cans on her tail. A no-go.

  The only option was to attack. Fight her way through the blockade.

  Three destroyers, nine torpedoes. He had to make that add up.

  It added up, all right. It added up to Sandtiger’s annihilation.

  He’d always known that the odds were on this being a one-way trip. Still, there was a chance at survival, however slim.

  “A submarine attack is a lot like high-stakes poker,” Moreau said. “You start with a stack of chips. Concealment, surprise, torpedoes, battery power, air. Your very lives. You gamble them one at a time to win.”

  “Helm,” he said. His voice sound stretched and thin. He cleared his throat.

  The helmsman stared at him. “Sir?”

  Whatever fears he had, he couldn’t let them show in front of the men.

  “Some men fold early. Others, if the pot is big enough, they gamble it all.”

  Charlie said in a firm voice, “Call the men to general quarters.”

  Battle stations, torpedo!

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  ALL OR NOTHING

  Battle stations manned. Rigged for silent running. Six torpedoes loaded in the bow tubes. Sandtiger glided through the depths at three knots.

  Six shots, three tin cans.

  Every fish has to count, Charlie thought.

  The math was s
imple.

  Three of the six have to hit, or we’re dead.

  Even with a TDC, fire control remained an inexact science, which was why commanders fired a spread at their targets.

  Right. We don’t have the fish to deliver a good spread per target.

  Sandtiger also didn’t have a working TDC.

  Destroyers are damned hard to hit, he added bitterly.

  If he missed, the destroyers would react with devastating force. They’d push her under. Then they’d smash her to pieces in the shallow waters.

  He shook his head. Enough of that. It was do or die. They had no choice. “Rig for depth charge. Up scope!”

  Charlie crouched, pulled down the handles, and rose as the periscope extended from its well to break the water above. Hugging the scope, he circled twice.

  He spotted the sleek destroyers in the dark. Brought the nearest ship into view, an Asashio-class destroyer. Very likely one of the tin cans that gave Sandtiger a pounding off Otaru. “Acquiring target, Asashio. Bearing, mark!”

  “One-seven-five!” Nixon said from the other side of the periscope.

  “Range, mark!”

  “Fifteen hundred yards!”

  “Angle on the bow is starboard seventy. Speed, twenty knots. Down scope!”

  The periscope whirred back into its well in the deck. Liebold turned the discs on the Banjo. “Set.”

  Sound continued to call out target bearings: “One-seventy-five, one-seventy-five, one-seventy-four and a half—”

  Charlie wiped sweat from his grimy, bearded face. “Nixon, you ready?”

  “Roger, Exec.”

  “Jack?”

  The torpedo officer fidgeted with the Banjo. “Ready.”

  “Stand by, forward! Up scope! Final observation!”

  Charlie centered the crosshairs under the Asashio’s center mast. In the darkness, he made out faint Japanese markings on the hull. The Rising Sun flag waved at his stern. His deadly twin five-inch bow and stern guns stood ready to fire.

  “Final bearing, mark! Range, mark! Angle on the bow, starboard seventy! Speed, twenty knots! Jack?”

  Liebold finished his firing solution. “Recommend spread of twenty and twenty-four degrees!”

  “Nixon?”

  The engineering officer tilted his head as he ran the numbers in his mind. “I concur, Exec.”