WW III

now on his way up, expecting the seaman would trip at least once on the way. But so far it had not happened, leaving Carswell with what the ship’s company called an unbroken number of “FCDs”—full cups delivered. Several crew had already written inquiring whether Carswell’s feat qualified for mention in the Guiness Book of Records. They hoped a reply would be waiting for them when they returned to their home base at Plymouth.

The Peregrine leaned hard aport as a starboard wave struck her, the well deck awash athwartships, the bursting white cloud of spray enveloping the bridge with a sound like hail. It would soon be a force eight, the bollards already covered in foam, water rushing down the decks like a spring runoff, spilling out through the stern scuppers and swirling about the aft twin Sea Dart launcher, the flow broken but not stopped by the Limbo mortar before pouring back into the sea.

Visibility was now down to two miles, more whitecaps evident as R-1 continued to plow ahead.

“Only time I’d like being in a submarine,” Johnson said in the galley, he and Spence having left spreading the Marmite sandwiches till last. “All this bloody rockin’ and rollin’ is for the—”

“Action stations!” came the voice over the “Tannoy,” the PA system, and before Johnson could pick up another slice of bread, he, Spence, and the cook could hear the sound of running feet in the passageway outside the crew’s mess. Spence had expected a lot of shouting from petty officers and the like, but what struck him was the lack of any harshly shouted orders, the ship’s crew reacting more like a well-trained sports team than men at war.

On the bridge, the sonar operator calmly reported, “Contact, bearing two oh five degrees.”

“Half speed,” ordered the Peregrine’s captain, reducing the noise of his own ship’s prop.

To help avoid giving away Peregrine’s position, her sonar was on passive, and so no range could be registered. But the captain knew that a good operator, knowing his own set and ship, often developed a reasonably good guesstimate. “Can you give me a distance, Sonar?”

“I’d say five thousand yards, sir.”

Quickly Peregrine’s captain looked up at the computer board, comparing the vector plot of R-1’s course and his present position. It put the noise about two miles away, at a wide angle from where the convoy’s screen subs should be.

“Contact gone, sir.”

“Completely?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Odd,” the captain said, turning to his number one. “Damned odd. Any thoughts?” He looked about the bridge-it was no time for pride. “Anyone?”

“Wreck, sir — old oil drum or something moving? I mean, sir,” he continued, “something hitting it — you know, rock slide or something—”

“Could be, Chief.

“Contact bearing two six one.”

“Go active,” commanded the captain. “All round sweep.”

“Aye, sir. On active. All around sweep.” Now the inside of the Peregrine’s bow began to twang as its hull-seated transducer, in effect two metal plates buckling under electric charge, sent the distinctive sonar pinging noise into the ocean’s depths, the operator turning the echo onto the bridge’s Tannoy, the sonar sweeping from zero degrees to 360 every two minutes.

“Contact. Bearing two six one. Range eight hundred yards. Moving fast… Contact. Bearing two six oh. Range seven six oh yards. No props noise, sir. I’d say a mine.”

“Torpedo motor?”

“No, sir. No beat count.”

Without taking his eyes from the sonar screen, the captain waited for the two seconds as the computer digitized all incoming information, telling him that whatever it was, was coming at them at forty miles per hour. Impact in 4.71 minutes — on the starboard side — and countermeasures giving him the IAVS— impact avoidance vector and speed.

“Notify all ships. Steering by IAV.” Unhappily he knew that none of the merchantmen had IAV capability. “By voice to transports. Plain language.”

“Aye, sir. To transports in plain.”

“Follow the ship in front of them.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The computer IAVs were entered into the Peregrine’s memory and she swung hard aport, her type eight steam/gas-combination-driven prop driving her at twenty-four knots, her decks now constantly awash as she heeled sharply to avoid impact.

“Same contact. One one seven degrees. One thousand yards.”

“Identify?”

“Negative. But different from the other.”

By the time the new IAVs had been spat out by the computer, it was too late for the Peregrine, the captain realizing it was not an isolated mine coming for them but a series, probably combination pressure/noise, triggered by the active pulse the Peregrine had just sent out. Like a man trapped in an ever-shrinking room, the IAVs were now seemingly accessories to the fact, for wherever the ship moved, there was another ping. Carswell had just placed the coffee in the captain’s special gimbals-mounting cup holder when Peregrine was hit. The second mine she had picked up on sonar was the first to explode as she turned into its path, the mine homing in on the keel at the forward end of the engine room, the second blast cleaving her well below her waterline at the stern and buckling the prop, lifting the destroyer’s stern completely out of the water. As her bow rose high, then fell, a breaker came rolling down under her like a leaden gray wall. All main fuses gone, the ship was in total darkness for several seconds before the auxiliary battery lights kicked in. In the galley the plastic crates of sandwiches slid en masse, but none were lost, as the three men were thrown against the cold ovens and one of the huge, shining mixing bowls. As part of a standby fire team, William Spence and, more reluctantly, Johnson moved to their station aft by the hangar door, where the battery charge lights had ruptured in the stern explosion. They heard a noise coming from outside — an enormous gushing sound like so many fire hydrants turned on, crashing in a sustained crescendo against the bulkhead — and felt the ship jerking starboard, then port, and back to starboard, her motion so violent, it seemed nothing less in the dim passageway than the enraged effort of some great leviathan caught in an iron trap thrashing to be free.

“What the bloody hell—?” began Johnson.

“Shut your face!” ordered a CPO sternly.

Young William Spence, already putting on his asbestos suit and helmet with breathing apparatus, looked up at the CPO, a man he’d never seen before, and in that second the unfamiliarity of the man’s face and the noise were so disorientating that for Spence it momentarily took on the aspect of a nightmare.

“Get on your ‘casper’s’ pack like Spence here,” the CPO said to Johnson. “And follow me.” Spence was surprised the man knew his name until he remembered they all had their names on their shirts. “Come on, Johnson — between Spence and me. Move!”

“All right, all right,” moaned Johnson, pulling on the fire-retardant suit and tightening his head gear.

As the chief petty officer opened the hatch leading down to the engine room, they were enveloped in clouds of steam that instantly fogged their masks. They could hear men screaming and the rushing, bubbling sound of the water.

“We should abandon ship!” shouted Johnson, his voice nasal in his suit. “Bucket’s going to sink!”

“Shine your light over there!” the CPO ordered Spence. “Port side.”

One of the big gas turbines was still going, despite the captain ringing the telegraph to stop all engines, the torque on the prop enough to keep it turning, but jerking the ship, pushing and pulling it like an animal still moving though brain-dead. They couldn’t hear any more screaming, Johnson urging them to get out of it while they could. Then, just as suddenly as the explosion, the turbine stopped, telling the CPO that someone in the engine room had managed to reach the controls of the manual override after the automatic controls had been severed. Or perhaps the turbine had cut out of its own accord? Spence thought he heard a faint cry above the rushing water and the now creaking sound of the ship — but it was difficult to be certain when one wanted so much to help. Spence saw a