At first he had not been able to believe that CV’s behavior was anything but some kind of dumb mistake, but now he was beginning to see the matter differently. This was not an aid-to-civilians mission, like ferrying Roosevelt’s dog home from Yalta during World War II; he was fighting a naval engagement against an opponent who was making a jackass out of him.
The problem was that he couldn’t land a copter on CV’s deck, because every time he tried, the damn thing submerged. With helicopter reconnaissance, he could locate it every time it surfaced, but he couldn’t fire a shot, couldn’t drop depth charges, couldn’t do anything that might injure civilians; and if the copter approached, down it went again.
There had to be a solution. There was; Markey had found it, and he felt pleased with himself.
For the time being, Bliss had decided, the best thing would be to run partly submerged at night, when the chances of being sighted were almost nil, and surface in daylight. There was no way to escape the carrier except by running fully submerged indefinitely, and he couldn’t do that because the air-purifying chemicals wouldn’t hold out forever. Food was going to be a problem, too; their supplies were meant to last only until they reached Manila.
When he entered the Control Center at oh-eight-hundred on Thursday, the sun was well up in a partly overcast sky. He said good morning to Ferguson and Stuart, looked at the log, then the barometer. “No sign of our friends yet?” he asked.
“Not yet. Woop, excuse me, I think I see them.”
In the foretop monitor, a dark shape was rising and dipping near the horizon. “Yes, there they are,” said Bliss. “Everything secured?”
“Yes, sir, as you ordered.”
“Any complaints from the passengers?”
“Oh, yes."
The four frogmen were mustering on the flight deck. In the bridge monitors, Markey watched them climb into the copter carrying their gear. The door closed.
“Charlie Hatrack Four Niner, you are cleared for takeoff.” said the speaker.
“Roger.”
After a moment the two sets of blades began to turn; the ungainly machine rose from the deck, hovered, swiveled in midair, and tilted off toward Sea Venture.
“Down to plus ten, Mr. Ferguson.”
“Yes, sir.”
The water rose over one deck after another. The copter made a pass overhead, swung back; then a series of dark shapes dropped from it into the water.
“What was that?” said Bliss sharply.
“Frogmen, sir. Four of them.”
“No, I meant that other thing—what was it, a raft?”
“Looked like one, sir.”
“What are they up to?” Bliss muttered, and gnawed a thumbnail. “Raft—they’ll tie onto us— Oh, God! Surface, Mr. Ferguson, smartly!”
“Sir? Yes, sir.” Ferguson touched the controls. In the lookout screen they saw the water receding; then the Signal Deck broke the surface, and as the lenses cleared they could see white water boiling across the deck. Four struggling figures were washed over the side.
“Plus ten, Mr. Ferguson. Where’s the copter?”
“There, sir.” The helicopter swooped overhead, descended to port, came back again.
In the screens now they could see the raft, and four dark heads bobbing in the swell a few yards off the port quarter. The frogmen and their raft were slowly falling astern. The copter circled again. Presently it hovered and lowered a sling. They watched as one frogman after another was hoisted into the copter. They left the raft behind. The copter drifted away toward the carrier.
Ferguson was clearly puzzled. “Chief, if you don’t mind my asking—”
“They were going to tie onto us with a long line. We’d tow them, wherever we went. Then the next time we surfaced, they’d be there. That would be the end.”
“Yes, sir.” Ferguson’s eyes were bright.
Bliss turned away. He was not proud of himself, and the admiring looks of his deputies merely made him feel like an imposter. This was not his line at all, this Homblower kind of daredevilry. Something Hartman had said, talking of Nelson, had put it into his head—Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen, putting the spyglass to his blind eye and remarking that he couldn’t read the signals. That was all right for Nelson, but not for him. Nelson had been made a viscount afterward; he was simply going to lose his job, and perhaps his life.
When the copter returned with its crestfallen crew, Markey said to his executive officer, “Goddamn it, who is that guy, anyway?”
“Civilian, I think. Maybe he was in the merchant marine before.”
“Well, where did he get that cocked hat?” Markey sat down at the chart table. “Do you realize I’ve got to signal CINCAF and tell them we’ve blown it again?”
“They can’t get away with this forever.”
“Well, what’s going to stop them?” Markey looked gloomily at the table. “Get San Francisco on the phone. Tell them I want a complete set of plans for Sea Venture, right down to the nuts and bolts. This is going to be a dirtier job than I thought.”
49
After a delay of twenty-four hours, the Sea Venture plans began scrolling out of the fax machine. They made a stack more than a foot high. Markey turned them over to his engineering officer, Ed Jensen, and said, “Find something.”
After dinner Jensen came to him with a printout in his hand.
“Here’s what we want. We know one of their lifeboats is gone—that means there’s an empty launching tube.” He pointed to the diagram. “This passage is closed by the door of the lifeboat itself when it’s in the tube. Back here is a watertight door. Get in there, wedge that door open, and then they can’t submerge. If we take them by surprise, we walk into the bridge, what they call the Control Center, and that’s all she wrote.”
“Pretty slick,” said Markey. “Yes, that might just work.”
Lieutenant Avery N. Hamling, Jr., was forty-seven years old. and still the strongest diver in his group. His father, a Navy Commander and a fine swimmer, had taught him from the age of four how to push himself to his limits, and the Special Underwater Section had given him the opportunity to do so. Hamling kept himself fit, and kept his men fit, ready at any time for the most hazardous and demanding duty in the Navy.
He found Markey, Pugliese, and Jensen in the conference room. “You sent for me. Captain?"
“That’s right. Sit down, Hamling, and I’ll fill you in. Show him those printouts, Ed.”
Jensen passed a sheaf of papers across the table. “Here’s a plan and elevation of one of Sea Venture’s lifeboat tubes. As you can see, it’s a cylinder fourteen and a half feet across by thirty-one and a half deep. Here’s the passenger entrance, twenty feet back from the mouth of the tube. It leads to a passage eight feet long with a watertight door at the end. That’s where we want you to go in.”
Hamling studied the diagram. “The door can be opened manually from the tube side?”
“Yes.” Jensen passed him another diagram. Hamling glanced at it, then returned his attention to the tube plan. “Where’s the waterline?” he asked.
"Here, right at the bottom of the tube.”
“And there are no handholds—nothing to grip?”
“Not in the tube. We think there are handrails in the passage. Unfortunately they don’t show on these plans. They’ve got to be there, but we can’t tell you how close they run to the doorway.”