Cold is the Sea (29 page)

“Forty-six feet.” Jim, answering instantly. He must have been watching the depth gauge. “Zero bubble. Forty-six-and-a-half—now it's forty-seven feet. Four feet to go!” Good man. He knew what Keith needed to know. The
Cushing
went completely under at keel depth fifty-four feet. Allowing for snow buildup on top of the ice, her sail would be out of sight when her keel had reached about fifty-one. “Forty-eight feet,” said Hanson's voice, speaking directly into Keith's right ear.

The plane was close, now. A two-engine, propeller-driven, high-wing monoplane with fixed landing gear, rigged with skis for Arctic operations. Its presence in the Arctic could not have been
spur-of-the-moment! Quickly he announced the description to Jim. “No insignia visible at this angle,” he concluded. It must be only a couple of miles away.

“Forty-nine feet,” said Jim quietly. The plane was clearly not a modern attack or combat plane. The apparently nonretractable landing gear—with skis, to boot—marked it as an aircraft configured for supply missions over icy terrain. But what had brought it and its two mates to the middle of the Arctic Ocean just at this moment? The idea that the Russians had been able to mount a rescue effort for their own submarine in the very short time since the accident simply could not wash. Perhaps it was a coincidence, some operation, already planned, now doubtless diverted. Perhaps—the idea struck suddenly home—the three aircraft and the submarine which had done the damage were part of a combined operation. Perhaps their presence, and the collision, were not accidental!

The plane was closer, perhaps a mile. “Forty-nine-a-half,” said Jim. Its underside was more clearly visible. Keith's hand fell to the motorcycle-type elevation control, but there was no immediate necessity to elevate the periscope optics. The plane was not yet coming overhead. More of the underside was visible because it had suddenly assumed a climbing attitude. Now his angle of sight was distinctly below it. There were no insignia on the underside of the wing. A small object detached itself from the belly of the plane, between the skis, separated rapidly from it, grew swiftly in size as the plane zoomed upward.

“Sound the collision alarm!” Keith spoke rapidly. “He's dropped something! Looks like a bomb!” He turned the handle rapidly, keeping the plane in sight as the scream of the collision alarm and the deep thuds of watertight doors slamming throughout the ship reverberated in his ears. When he reached the limiting elevation he watched the plane go
out of sight overhead, then spun the periscope completely around. “Put me on the reciprocal!” Jim Hanson's hands were over his on the periscope controls, shoved the 'scope to the right bearing. “Passing fifty feet,” Jim said. The plane had abruptly increased altitude as it dropped its bomb, but there had been no discernible course change. It would pass over the submarine in one or two seconds and he would pick it up as it again came within his field of view.

“Fifty-one feet,” said Jim as he waited. The sail must be nearly out of sight now; at least, buried in the snow and little pile of broken ice created when it pushed through. The bomb—if that was what it was—would be landing at any moment, no doubt before the plane reappeared in the periscope view. Perhaps he should have kept his eye on the bomb in its trajectory, instead of on the plane. Perhaps he should have lowered the periscope. He had consciously decided to risk leaving it up: if the bomb struck the sail, there was as much possibility of damage to the periscope whether up or down. If it missed, the 'scope was safe anyway, except for the extremely unlikely chance that the elevated portion might take a direct hit from an otherwise near miss.

BLAM
! The explosion came with shocking suddenness. A cloud of white—flying snow and ice, and the smoke of the explosive charge—filled the periscope view. The rubber eyepiece vibrated against Keith's forehead, the ridge of his nose and his cheekbone. The plane had not yet come into view. Now it would be impossible to see anything for a few moments. On releasing its bomb the plane obviously had been climbing for altitude. A bomb dropped from a low-flying aircraft was often as hazardous to the bomber as to the target, because the bomb “flew” the same course and speed as the plane while dropping away from it. Its shock wave on detonation inevitably encompassed the space directly above, where, unless there were room and time to maneuver, the plane that had dropped it would be. This was why the plane had swooped upward. It had been flying too near the ice to risk the radical course change which was the normal postrelease tactic.

“Fifty-three feet.” The reverberations of the explosion had died away, although to Keith's hypersensitivity their vibrations, and the sympathetic tonal response of the submarine's huge cylindrical hull, resounded in a lengthy continuum overshadowing his exec's forced calm.
Cushing
was dropping faster, now. He had missed the fifty-two-foot mark. Most likely, despite his preternatural self-possession, Jim had missed announcing it as well.

Thirteen feet of periscope still out of water. Perhaps ten feet of it still projected high enough to be useful, above the blocks of ice thrown aside a few hours ago when the sail crunched up from below. But he could not allow the Arctic Ocean slowly to close over its extended tip, as if his ship were in an ice-free sea. There
might be some tiny amount of current down below, a slow-moving, imponderable shifting of the water beneath the ice cover, enough to cause the helpless
Cushing
's great bulk to move as she descended into it. It need not be much; just enough to bring the fragile periscope tube into contact with the solid ice rimming the hole. Even though far thinner than the regular ice floes covering the area, the three-foot thickness of ice in the frozen-over lead could bend or snap off the periscope with ease. He must lower it soon, within seconds at most.

Another thought impacted into Keith's brain: barring the most extraordinary good luck in drifting under another lead, or polynya, once submerged there was no way he could get
Cushing
back to the surface again. From now on they were trapped, unable even to communicate.

“Fifty-four feet.” Still impossible to see anything, although perhaps vision was very slightly improving. He dared not wait longer. Keith snapped up the periscope handles to signal for it to be lowered but he kept his face to the eye guard, his hands to the folded handles. His knees bent slightly, preparatory to riding the 'scope down until it dropped below the floor plates. Understanding, Hanson pulled the hydraulic control handle gently, sent the periscope down at half speed. Just before he had to pull his head clear, Keith thought he saw the plane, barely visible through the thinning smoke and debris still in the air.

Afterward he could not be sure, but there was something different about it, something suddenly askew, not balanced as it should have been, something horribly wrong. On his haunches, he was forced to crane his head to the side and rear to allow the periscope yoke to pass between his legs and descend into the well, thus did not see the wounded wing spar give way, the wing collapse and fold back upon the plane's fuselage.

Aboard the
William B. Cushing
, only the audio frequency sonar watch-stander heard the muffled crash as the disabled plane shattered itself on the ice a quarter of a mile away. The ice was twenty feet thick, solid with the iron rigidity of a century of existence and covered with a two-foot patina of blizzard-derived snow. The sound, transmitted first through the unyielding ice and then through water, resembled nothing the sonarman had ever heard. He listened carefully for a repetition, heard none, and gradually relaxed. It was a much less frightening noise than the
explosion which had blasted into his eardrums only moments before. Nevertheless, the ship's standing orders for sonar watch-standers required him to write a description in his log of what he had heard, immediately following his notation regarding the bomb explosion. But the bomb explosion itself, preceded by the frighteningly unexpected collision alarm and the resulting activity, had happened too recently. He had not yet even reached for the ball-point pen with which he made his entries.

There was no further underwater noise to note, and after a few minutes the sonarman took up his log book. It had all happened at the same time, 0612 according to the ship's clock on the bulkhead. He began to compose a single laborious entry encompassing all the events of that confusing and scary instant.

Not until the next day, in the insulated quiet of the frigid Arctic under its sheet of solid ice cover, as the submarine hovered powerless, unable to move, did the sonarman call his superior's attention to the strange crunching noise—as he had described it—which he heard just as the reverberations of the bomb explosion finally died away.

12

V
ice Admiral Murphy, ComSubLant, talking long distance from his headquarters in Norfolk, sounded at the moment like anything but the stodgy individual he was so well known to be. “Yes, they just brought me the message, Rich. I was about to pick up the phone to call you.” The note of uneasiness in his voice was unusual. “This will have to go to CNO right away, and he'll probably take it to the Joint Chiefs this morning. The National Security Council and the President will have it this afternoon!”

Keith's message was obviously of major importance and Murphy's disquietude therefore understandable, but the idea that the very highest authority would directly and immediately become involved produced shock waves in Richardson's mind. Seconds later he was grateful for the indoctrination which had kept him silent. “How long has Leone been gone?” The admiral answered his own question immediately. “A little more than three weeks. He's been up there a week.”

Rich paused a moment. Keith would have reported any
deviation from the detailed operation order. “He's been in the operating area just nine days, sir.”

“Right. Umm—that's right. Maybe we should have turned him around before he got there.”

“How's that?” Rich realized his own voice had risen too. It had never occurred to him to question the decision to send Keith to the Arctic.

“Probably we should have told you. This whole business has gotten a lot hotter than we thought it would. Somehow the Russians got word of Leone's mission, and they protested even before he entered the area—are you there, Rich? So, when the Joint Chiefs heard about the collision, the flap got a lot worse. That was yesterday. This second message will put them in orbit.” Murphy put a characteristically drooping note to his final sentence.

“I see, sir,” Richardson replied after a moment. He paused, thinking how to phrase what he wanted to say, then went on. “We had Leone on single side-band for about a minute, three hours ago.” He told of the attempt at voice communication and its sudden termination. “He was right there, on the line himself, and then something happened. He had to break off, and we've heard nothing since.”

“How long ago was this?” There was now a tone of acerbity and a rising inflection. “Why didn't you report it?”

“We hadn't broken the second message yet, and since we intercepted it direct, we knew your coding board couldn't have either. I figured you'd be getting it about now. The rest of the time we've been checking up on the
Manta
.” Richardson spoke carefully, sensing that in Murphy's obviously agitated frame of mind it would be characteristic of him to find fault with something relatively minor.

“Um—we didn't mind your fooling around with the towing contraption, even though we thought you were wasting your time, but you should have asked me before trying that voice caper.”

“There wasn't time, Admiral! The only way to be sure to get to him with the old wolfpack code was to break right in on the CW circuit! He'd have been gone in a minute, back under the ice or anyway shut down. Besides, it's standard operating procedure to use voice when you can. The only thing out of the ordinary was
the distance.” Rich saw Buck's eyes narrow. He was speaking swiftly now, still trying to think ahead carefully. “It's that towing rig I want to report on. It will work. We've tested it. I'm recommending we send the
Manta
to snake the
Cushing
out. She'll be ready to get underway tomorrow!”

Admiral Murphy was anything but mercurial in temperament, but the third change in his attitude was instantly obvious over the telephone. “Do you really think it will do the job? How do you know? How are you going to rig the towline?”

“We've been testing it for a couple of weeks. It works, all right. We get him to lower his anchor. He can do this from inside the torpedo room, you know. The
Manta
passes beneath, snags the anchor chain, and off they go.”

“What if your rig doesn't make contact?”

“She circles around and makes another pass.”

“What if it parts under the strain of towing?”

“The catenary drag of the chain will help take up the initial shock, and she'll be keeping a close watch on the strain gauge, so it ought not to break. That's part of what the training exercises were for. Anyway, we have two rigs, one for each stern tube. So there'll be a second chance if she does break one.”

“You say you've tested this thing, Rich?”

“Yes, sir. It takes some practice doing it right, but we're pretty sure we've got the bugs out of it and know how to handle it. We've worked it on the
Tringa
and the
Besugo
both. The
Besugo
was submerged, and that made her a lot easier to tow than the
Tringa
, once the hookup was made. Of course, the
Cushing
is a much heavier ship. . . .”