Four hundred and seventy miles north of Newfoundland, another convoy was attacked by ten Soviet Hunter/Killer subs. All but two of the nuclear subs were destroyed, but not before there had been a “run-under” torpedo assault by all ten subs, resulting in thirty-seven Allied ships, twenty-eight of these merchantmen, sunk. When the convoy had re-formed in a defensive diamond east of the sub, it found itself unwittingly driven, or “bloody well herded,” as one British frigate captain put it, into a minefield laid about them by six Backfire bombers. Three of the Backfires were shot down on their way into “egg laying,” but their deadly cargoes landed intact.
Here, once again, the Russian numbers pointed to only one conclusion — that if the Allies could not reduce the rate of loss, whatever supplies and men did arrive in Europe would be insufficient to replace the men and materiel already lost, let alone to reinforce NATO. In this case the unrelenting Soviet-Warsaw Pact land offense would decide the issue. A further complication for NATO was the fact that with so many towns and cities in the Russians’ path, the S-WP attacks sent millions of civilians fleeing westward, tying up the vitally needed West European road and rail systems.
By now the USS SN/BN Roosevelt was going up for its second attempt at receiving a VLF burst message. This time additional aerial was extruded from the stern, like some great worm from the belly of a whale.
“Start the count!” ordered Robert Brentwood.
“Counting… five minutes…”
At the three-minute mark Brentwood knew he was not going to get a message. “Okay,” he said evenly at the five-minute mark. “Reel her in.”
“Reeling in, sir.”
“Very well. Mr. Zeldman, resume zigzag pattern for Holy Loch. ETA?”
The first officer glanced at the computer as Brentwood on the periscope island ordered, “Up search scope.”
“Up search.”
There was a quiet hum as the oil-mirrored scope slid up inside the master sheath housing several other periscopes as well.
“ETA Holy Loch,” Zeldman reported, “six hours approximate.”
“Exactly, Ex.”
“Six hours, three minutes, forty seconds, sir.”
“Very well.”
Brentwood knew that if the Wisconsin aerial “farm” was out and TACAMO aircraft had failed to overlap sufficiently to contact the Roosevelt, then the United States would have notified U.K. control to beam out a VLF signal. If not, it meant the Soviets were jamming satellite bounce-off signals between the States and Britain, or the British aerials at Holy Loch were knocked out, or Holy Loch itself was in the hands of the Soviets. Brentwood knew he had only three choices: stay where he was; head for Holy Loch and risk a trap of acoustic/pressure mines at the entrance — some keyed to Roosevelt’s specific signature; or run for cover and head back to the United States.
He reversed his cap, eye glued to the scope. He flicked on the control room monitor relay so the men on watch could see the same infrared images he saw. Nothing but gray waves stacked all about them, creased with white lines of bioluminescence.
“MOSS in tubes one and two.”
“MOSS in tubes one and two, sir.”
“Very well. ETA Holy Loch?”
“ETA five hours, fifty-seven minutes.”
“Speed?”
“Thirty knots.”
“Increase to forty-five.”
“Increasing to forty-five.”
One of the planesmen glanced over from his steering column at the operator on trim, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Watch the dials, sailor,” said Zeldman sharply.
“Yes, sir.”
“Revised ETA Holy Loch?” asked Robert Brentwood.
“Four hours,” answered Zeldman. “Including corrections for currents plus or minus fifteen minutes.”
“Very well. No active sonar. Passive only.”
“Passive only.”
“Call me when we’re ten miles off.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Brentwood left the redded-out control center, Zeldman heard one of the sailors whisper to another. “What’s Bing up to?”
Zeldman let it go as if the scratchy noise of the ocean had drowned out the whisper.
“Don’t know,” answered another of the men on watch. “Probably wants to get his book.”
Zeldman still held off saying anything. Now and then you had to let the rein loose a tad — up too tight, they were as apt to make a mistake as they were when too relaxed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The midnight moon was bright, and a mile or so beyond the Bahama Queen, one of the bergs, a silver tower in the moon glow, split, its cracking sending hundreds of birds rising above it in panic like falling confetti, the wave running toward the hospital ship as the main berg and its calf righted themselves. For a moment, broadside to the moon, they looked dazzling white on the gunmetal sea.
“When will I know?” William Spence had asked her, and she had to wait until he had finished coughing before she replied, asking, “Know about what?” She knew what he meant but didn’t want him to worry unnecessarily.
“The X rays.”
“Oh — tomorrow morning, I guess.”
“I’m coming apart,” he said, the violent coughing starting up again, so that she got up and slipped the elastic about his head, placing the plastic mask over his nose and mouth, altering the rate of oxygen flow until the small, black plastic marble was unseated, jumping up and down inside the flow indicator.
Spence was perspiring so much, the sheet was clammy about his chest, and Lana could tell the other pain, from the amputations, was also tormenting him, the medication wearing off again, the pain boring into him again. But she knew she couldn’t give him any more morphine for half an hour. If it were up to her, she would have given it to him now — it wasn’t going to make much difference. The lungs in the X rays had been a diaphanous white. He was so weak that his so-called “walk” to the washroom had degenerated during the last twelve hours to nothing more than a shuffle. They had performed a miracle of modern surgery in keeping him alive after the trauma of the evacuation from the Peregrine, but now the killer of more shipwrecked sailors than torpedoes or shells, oil, had lain in wait in the lungs, threatening to drown him slowly. With only a cough to announce it, the lipid pneumonia had come upon him swiftly, the final quietude of pneumonic death in any hospital called “the old person’s friend.”
While holding his cough-wracked body, Lana recalled the X-ray technician as he had stood looking gloomily at the film, watching it rock to and fro with the action of the ship, the very motion somehow an obscene mockery of real life.
“There will,” Matron had told her matter-of-factly, “be moments of serenity, even reverie. In the end they’re quite content.”
“With a double amputation?” Lana had asked tartly.
“You’d be surprised, my dear,” Matron had replied.
No, thought Lana, you’ll be surprised. This boy is going to fight with everything he’s got.
“The X ray doesn’t tell us the whole story, nurse,” the MO had advised her in a more understanding tone. “Even so, I’m surprised the prednisone didn’t help — I’d thought there was definitely an allergic component that the prednisone would deal with. Well, all we can do now is watch him. Could be a turnaround before we reach Halifax.”
She had been with him eight hours straight, and now in the calm following the wracking coughs, every one of which she had felt like a blow to her own body, Lana leaned over him and with a cool, white facecloth, as white as the ice, he thought, she dabbed his body cool, gently patting him dry. She saw him smile, or rather his eyes moving suddenly, full of life, the rest of his face covered by the semitransparent green mask. “What are you grinning about, Mr. Spence?” she asked with playful severity.