“Aye, sir.”
Larkin turned back to the railing and stared down the fjord. A shallow bend in the fjord wall blocked’ his view of the submarine less than three miles away. The sonar had picked up the submarine under an outthrust of the wall that did not extend more than a few feet below the water line. With the ship’s engines halted, the vicious rocking of the ship became more pronounced in the heavy chop. He watched the eastern wall, gauging to himself the speed at which they were being swept onto the knife-sharp ledges. It was faster than he expected. There was no possibility that they could maintain their position without running the engines. And if they did that, it would be only a matter of time before the submarine picked them up. Anchoring was out of the question. He needed mobility, instantaneous mobility. He could have that by standing outside the entrance and keeping an eye on what the submarine was doing.
For-the first time since taking command of the RFK, Larkin cursed the fact that she possessed no more than the 1.5-inch salute gun. With a four-inch cannon, or even an antiaircraft gun, he would have merely steamed around the curve, leveled the cannons, and called for a surrender. With the submarine facing away from them and riding on the surface, he could have blown her out of the water if she resisted. He almost hammered the railing in a measure of frustration. How in hell could he bring that damned submarine to terms? A boat party was out of the question… or was it? Ever since Teleman had been shot down, Larkin had been aching for a chance to take some kind of direct action. Five thousand yards. They could be on that damned submarine before they knew what was happening. If the hatches were closed, as they would be in this chop, a couple of charges of gelignite would take care of that. Lookouts could be dealt with. His mind raced furiously as he forced himself to remain calm. He would need the whaleboat, eight men, carbines, gelignite charges…
“Mr. Bridges, assemble an armed boat party.”
Ten minutes later Larkin sat in the stern sheets of the whaleboat with the tiller under his arm as they pulled away from the almost flush afterdeck. Feeling somewhat like Horatio Hornblower, he had buckled a revolver belt around his waist and stuck a flare pistol in his pocket. On his signal Bridges would bring the RFK around the headland and run down on the submarine. Unless a second flare was fired, his orders were to run the submarine under. Larkin and Bridges both knew that this was absolutely the last resort in case the armed attack by the nine men failed. The battle cruiser bows, cutting into the hull of the submarine, would crumple to the first main bulkhead if that happened. But in any event the submarine would be sitting on the bottom of the fjord. It would then be Bridges’ obligation to see that the same thing did not happen to the RFK. Behind him Larkin could hear the coughing of a second whaleboat starting up. Ten men were in that party and they would continue down the fjord to find Folsom’s party and render whatever assistance they could. It was probably a futile effort at best, but at least they had done everything they could. Larkin had sent a message direct to Virginia by satellite relay detailing his plans, but had not waited for a reply. Those short-sighted idiots would probably countermand his decisions.
Larkin took the whaleboat in as close to the narrow beach as he dared before turning parallel. The depth of the fjord made it possible for him to come within twenty yards of the rocky beach. Ahead, the jutting headland that screened the two ships from each other stood out boldly in the weak sunlight. Larkin could have wished for darkness, but he suspected that to wait for the remaining hour of daylight to pass could very well be too late. By the time they rounded the headland and came within a thousand yards of the ship, he judged that the sun would be dipping close enough to the horizon so that darkness would be almost complete within the fjord.
As the whaleboat puttered on with the muted roar of its muffled forty-horsepower engine, Larkin felt his own excitement reflecting back from the armed party. Each sat, staring forward, backs stiff with tension and hands firmly clasped around weapons. The gelignite charges were in two packs resting on the floorboards. One of the sailors had his foot resting on the top of the packs and a cord fastening both together looped around his wrist. Larkin reached down and picked his carbine up and ejected the clip, checked it, and then slammed it home. The sharp snap made the sailors jump. Larkin grinned at them and settled back against the thwart, portraying a relaxation he was far from feeling. He swung the tiller over, turning the bows to pass as close to the headland as possible, and looked back. The sunlight filtering down through the canyon was beginning to wane, but the bows-on silhouette of the RFK was sharply etched against the crack of blue-gray sky.
The boat ran on, cutting around the final curve of the rock out-thrust, and cautiously Larkin edged even closer to the rock wall. The noise of the engine was faint, but he wondered if the soft whoosh of the steady wind would be enough to conceal it from the lookouts that would surely be stationed on the sub’s bridge. Before they cleared the final jut of rock, Larkin idled the engine down and let the boat drift, slipping the gears into reverse but keeping the clutch depressed. The whaleboat continued under its own momentum, and there against the far shore was the sail of the submarine. The bows were pointing in toward the eastern side and she seemed to be anchored in the middle of the fjord, although Larkin knew that no skipper in his right mind would anchor under these conditions. Then he heard the muffled chugging of engines. She was using her engines to keep station. Larkin was flabbergasted. She was not nuclear powered. Those were diesel engines.
What a lucky break, he thought If they cut directly across the fjord and approached from the stern the chances of being spotted by the lookouts, who would be watching the eastern cliffs, were remote. And he could make speed. The noise of the submarine’s own engines would cover the whaleboat’s.
“Watch them very carefully. We’re going in.”
Larkin shifted back into forward and let the clutch out in one smooth motion. He pulled the throttle out and felt the reassuring feel of the boat as it leaped ahead. Five minutes. That’s all he needed. Five minutes.
He almost got it. They were fifty feet from the submarine’s stern when they were spotted. Larkin kept the throttle out until the last moment, as two sailors from the lookout stations came running aft to see who they were. One called out something questioning in Russian that sounded like Norski.
“Norski,” he shouted back, promptly exhausting his Norwegian vocabulary. He cut the engine and called softly to his men, — “When I yell go… do so. But no shooting unless you have to.”
As they pulled up to the stern a figure appeared on the bridge, took one look, and ducked back out of sight. Larkin could almost hear him frantically calling the bridge. A line was thrown to the two Russian sailors, who caught it and pulled in. While they were occupied with the rope, Larkin bellowed, “Go.” His own men poured out of the whaleboat and onto the sloping stern to the surprise of the two Russians, who dropped the rope and reached for their slung rifles. They never had a chance. It seemed that half a dozen carbine butts hit all at once. They dropped without a sound.
Larkin leaped onto the stern and immediately felt a vibration run through the ship as the beat of the engines deepened at the same time.
“Get those charges set!” From forward and the bridge simultaneously came the sound of hatches slamming shut.
“Peterson, you and Johnson take the aft hatch. Orlowski and Brone get a charge against that ballast tank, where it joins the hull five feet toward the hatch. Move!” As the men jumped onto the decking with the demolition charges, Larkin could feel the submarine begin to move. He knew that it would take less than thirty seconds to get up enough weigh and ballast to get the decks under water.