“Flood the aft ballast tanks, Commander Gesny.”
Anton turned to the signalman. “Pass the following to the Soznatelnyy.”
“Tell the engine room to bring three diesels online,” Shipley said, his hands gripping the handles of the periscope. “Report when ready.”
Weaver acknowledged the order, quickly hitting the intercom and passing the instructions to the maneuvering room.
Shipley looked aft, expecting to see the warship emerge from the fogbank at any time. He didn’t understand why they had yet to catch up with them. Maybe the skipper of the warship had more restrictions in the narrows than imagined. If a surface ship had restrictions, then there had to be such shallow water around the channeled area that if he tried to take evasive action, he could find himself running aground. Or worse, sunk.
He saw two back-to-back splashes aft of the Squallfish’s position to indicate that the warship was still firing at them. The rapid succession showed that the warship was picking up tempo. If more than one warship was out there, the firing would be constant.
“Three online,” Weaver reported.
It would slow the charging of the batteries in the forward battery compartment, but escape was more important now.
“Speed?”
“Twelve knots.”
“Give me eighteen knots.”
“We’ll have cavitation, sir. The enemy will know where we are.”
He leaned away from the periscope. “I think we can agree that the enemy already knows where we are.” He leaned toward the eyepiece, then pulled back. “We have to get out of the narrows. XO,” he continued, his voice calm. He leaned away from the periscope and looked at Arneau. “XO, ensure aft tubes are all loaded.”
He saw the shocked expression, as if the idea of firing torpedoes brought home the precariousness of their situation.
“Sir, we were ordered not to engage,” Lieutenant Logan said.
Shipley’s head snapped around, his eyes angry with the intelligence officer. “What would you suggest, Lieutenant? We surrender, or we die?”
Logan said nothing. The intelligence officer looked down at the canvas bag at his feet that held the camera from the periscope.
Arneau turned to the intelligence officer and in a soft voice added, “Lieutenant Logan, you should go below and make sure you and your men are prepared to destroy any classified material you may have with you.”
Logan nodded, grabbing the bag from the deck, thankful for a reason to leave the conning tower.
Shipley leaned forward to take another look just as a shell hit near the periscope and the snorkel. The boat shook, knocking Shipley and Weaver off their feet. For a split instance Shipley was back in World War II, undergoing depth charges.
Boohan grabbed an overhead pipe, his knees buckling, but he remained upright. Arneau fell across the plotting table, knocking Van Ness to the deck. Freezing Arctic water burst along the seams of the periscope, soaking Shipley to his senses. This was 1956, and that was naval gunfire.
A voice shouted from the intercom. It was Lieutenant Bleecker. “We got flooding around the snorkel!” he shouted.
“Take her up to twenty-five feet!” Shipley shouted as he pushed himself up from the deck.
The planesmen spun the wheels, and the deck tilted as the boat moved upward. The water stopped coming in around the periscope. Shipley buttoned his wet coat. At this depth the conning tower was above the waterline. The bulk of the boat remained submerged.
“Eighteen knots, Skipper,” Weaver said.
“Ask CHENG if the snorkel is still leaking and if it is functional.”
A few seconds passed before Shipley heard Bleecker answer that the leaking had stopped and he could still use the snorkel.
“Keep her at eighteen knots.” He turned to Arneau. “XO, get the damage control teams on these leaks. We’re going to have to submerge again in fifteen minutes.” Shipley estimated fifteen minutes. It could be sooner, but fifteen was the most he figured they could afford.
Shipley grabbed the periscope. The scope turned, but with a strain on the hydraulics. Water dripped on him with every turn of the scope. The lens had a crack in it. He hoped it was an inner lens. He aligned the periscope so he could see aft.
“Time to go topside again.”
“You’re soaked, Skipper. I can do it.”
“After the damage control teams are set, get a dry set of foul-weather gear on, XO, and then come relieve me.”
Without another word, Shipley climbed the ladder and spun the wheel, opening the main hatch.
“Topside watches, man your stations on the double,” Weaver said from behind him.
Once topside, Shipley lifted his binoculars and spun them aft, expecting to see who was firing at them. Wherever the warship was in this fog, if its radar suddenly reflected the Squallfish, it would know one of its shells had hit the sub.
Shipley leaned down to the hatch. Arneau was nowhere to be seen. “Lieutenant Weaver, prepare to fire aft tubes one and two.”
“Roger, sir; aft tubes one and two.”
He would only fire them if necessary. Survival was important. Regardless of his orders, bringing the Squallfish out of Soviet national waters was more important than holding fire and being sunk.
“Bearing, sir?” Weaver asked.
“Use sound bearing, Lieutenant. I have no visual on him yet.”
“Aye, sir.”
Belowdecks he heard the sonar technician passing bearings to the warship. He had not ordered the outer doors opened to the torpedo tubes yet. When he did, a good sound operator on the opposing warship would hear the noise. At eighteen knots, he knew the skipper of the ship firing on them would realize the Squallfish was running.
“Sir, bearing two zero zero; no range.”
“Make range at three thousand yards, officer of the deck.” Regardless of the lucky hit on Squallfish by the warship, these shells were small in comparison to his memory of some battles in the Pacific. Small shells meant smaller main armament, which most likely meant, as Boohan surmised, that they had a destroyer on their tail.
“Set shallow,” he ordered through the hatch, envisioning the sailors in the aft torpedo room using their mechanical key to change the default setting to ten feet. A long run at that shallow depth might throw the torpedo off, but if he had to fire, he doubted the target would be at long range. It would be a down-the-throat shot.
“Bearing two zero zero; angle on the stern twenty starboard!” came Weaver’s cry through the hatch. “Noise signature increasing. Skipper, sound says the enemy has increased his propeller revolutions.”
Shipley trained his binoculars along the bearing provided by sonar. So, the warship has decided to close and finish the job, he thought.
Two sailors scrambled up the ladder and took their positions as surface watches.
“One of you keep watch forward. Don’t want to run into a vessel coming toward us. You,” he said, pointing at the sailor on his left. “You watch the other directions. Our opponent is off our starboard stern area and approaching.”
The whistling sound of another shell passed overhead, to explode a couple of hundred feet off the port beam of the
Squallfish. Another ten minutes. Give me another ten minutes and in this fog I may be able to lose him. That’s all I ask, Lord.
“Sound increasing, same bearing, two zero zero. He’s closing us, sir!”
“I know, Lieutenant. Tell aft torpedo room to open outer tubes one and two.”
Belowdecks in the aft torpedo room, Petty Officer Darnell, the tube captain wearing the bulky sound-powered telephone, stood with legs spread between the two banks of torpedo tubes.