Hatteras Blue (2 page)

If this was a U-boat, it had no business at sea. After six years of war Europe was quiet, a smoldering heap of bomb-stirred ash. The Soviets and the Americans had met at Torgau two weeks before, cutting Germany in half. Russian troops were mopping up in Berlin. The Fiihrer and the rest of the high command were rumored dead in the flames of the greatest city of the Reich. It had been a close war. Twice—at Stalingrad, and in the Atlantic—it trembled in the balance. But the Russians held. And at sea, though Admiral Doenitz's
Unterseeboote
sank twenty-three million tons of shipping, the Allies had won at last. Quickly built ships, radar, air patrols, and the convoy system had cut die knot of the Nazi noose.

Now Galloway thought rapidly, hands thrust into his leather foul-weather jacket.

The day before, a U-boat had been reported by an Army B-25 on patrol out of Lakehurst, New Jersey. The bomber pilot had come in from astern, recognizing the plume of white water for what it was: a snorkeling submarine, running just below the surface. He had attacked, but misjudged the target's speed. Both depth bombs exploded astern of the sub, which promptly went deep. He reported its position and its southward course, and the Atlantic Antisubmarine Warfare Command scrambled a hunter-killer group of planes and ships east of Cape Henlopen. They had not yet found the U-boat. Had it escaped them? Was this it?

Galloway's fingers encountered a folded wad in the pocket of his jacket. Moving to one of the radio remotes, he reread the message by the faint glow of the pilot light. The comm officer had handed it to him the day before. It was from Admiral Ingram, CincLantFleet.

SECRET

THOUGH LAND WAR IN EUROPE DRAWING SWIFTLY TO CLOSE ... MORALE AND MATERIEL OF U-BOAT ARM OF KREIGSMARINE STILL STRONG. UNITS NOW AT SEA, THOUGHT TO NUMBER APPROXIMATELY FIFTY, HAVE BEEN ORDERED BY GRAND ADMIRAL DOENITZ TO SURFACE AND SURRENDER. IT WILL TAKE SEVERAL DAYS FOR WORD TO REACH ALL SUBMERGED UNITS. THE MORE FANATICAL MAY NOT GIVE THEMSELVES UP.

ENEMY UNITS FAILING TO SURFACE, FOR WHATEVER REASON, WILL BE DEALT WITH SUMMARILY BEFORE UNNECESSARY ALLIED CASUALTIES RESULT....

Galloway stuffed the paper back in his pocket. He bent over a glass-topped table on which a light traced the motion of the ship. "Datum?" he said.

"Contact bears two-three-zero, twelve," the ra-darman reported. "Estimated course and speed, one-seven-zero, speed—fifteen knots!"

"Here," muttered an ensign. He drew a diamond on the tracing paper, south of the destroyer.

"Fifteen?" said Galloway to the radarman's back. "You sure about that?" "Checked it twice, Cap'n." "Jesus, that's fast."

"Sonar reports nothing yet," said another rating. "Tell them just to listen, not to ping. I want to take this bird by surprise, if we can." "Shouldn't we tell the Navy, sir?"

"They're fifty miles north of us," said Galloway slowly. "But I guess I ought to."

"Recommend course one-niner-zero at twenty-one knots to intercept."

"Roger. Bridge, this is the captain speaking. Come right to one-niner-zero and kick us up to flank speed."

"Bridge, aye."

The ensign set down the radio handset. "Norfolk says to go after them. They're detaching a destroyer from the hunter-killer group to help. Coast Guard has tactical command—hey, that's us!"

"Good," said Galloway, surprised and pleased at the unaccustomed courtesy. He did a rough calculation in his head. Thirty minutes to intercept the racing submarine—if it was one.

For a U-boat did not belong here. Not now.

It hadn't been like that three years earlier. In 1942 the sea off North Carolina was the front line of the war. The U-boats had left Germany a month after Pearl Harbor. When they arrived in the U.S. shipping lanes it was sudden slaughter. They struck on the surface, at night, not even bothering to dive. Their favorite hunting ground stretched from New York to Charleston. Armed with deck guns and torpedoes, they lay in wait at night, silhouetting passing coasters against the lights of More-head City or Virginia Beach. Ship after ship went down. Oil and debris washed up on the beaches, and beach dwellers found bodies where they had sunned in summers of peace.

Galloway had seen it. He was from Hatteras. On Good Friday of 1942 he had stood on the beach near Buxton with his bride, their moonlight walk forgotten, and watched the night sky flame as a tanker burned on the horizon. He'd cut his leave short and gone back to the ship the next day.

But since then the threat had receded, sucked back toward Europe as Germany weakened. A U-boat here, off the East Coast, at the end of the war... ?

He dismissed it for the present. Already he could feel the old four-piper's deckplates begin to vibrate as she came up to maximum speed. This might be it, he thought. The ensign looked at him. He reached for the intercom again. "Bridge, Captain. Sound general quarters."

The crew, honed after years of war at sea, had felt the heel and the sudden increase in speed. They were already rolling from their bunks when the alarm began to bong. Men shoved into the already crowded compartment. One sailor, eyes not yet adapted to darkness, muttered to Galloway, "Christ, what now. I thought this friggin' war was over."

"Not yet, Sam," said the captain dryly. The sailor peered, then seemed to melt away as the gold braid on Galloway's cap glinted in the dimness.

Pushing the darken-ship curtains aside, he stepped out onto the bridge again. It was even darker there and he stood still for a moment. His fingers found the strap of his binoculars. The portholes were open and a warm breeze fanned his cheek. The officer of the deck, a big reserve jaygee from Philadelphia, was taking the reports.

"Mount thirty-one manned and ready." The forward three-inch gun.

"Sonar manned and ready."

"Hedgehog manned and ready." The weapon that had turned the war at sea around. Fired by the dozens, its projectiles detonated only when they hit the steel of a U-boat's hull.

"K-guns, manned and ready." The depth-charge throwers to port and starboard.

"After mount manned and ready."

The lieutenant turned. "Captain, we're ready for action. We're making nineteen knots now, with twenty-one rung up."

"Feather still there?"

"I just checked the scope. They haven't spotted us yet."

He wondered whether he should slow. A sub could hear a destroyer at flank speed from miles away. But if he slowed it would take forever to catch up. Till long past dawn. And at sunrise the Navy would be overhead with the new air-launched torpedoes to take credit for the last kill of the war.

He smiled tightly in the darkness. That wasn't the way it was going to be. Galloways had been famous in the Coast Guard for more than sixty years, since his great-grandfather Otinus Randall Galloway had rowed into the worst northeaster in memory to rescue the passengers of the doomed schooner
Floridian.
It would be sweet indeed if here, off the coast of home, he could carry on that tradition by destroying a killer more dangerous than that legendary storm of 1878.

Minutes ticked by. Seen from the sea, the destroyer would be only a patch of darker black in a moonless night, with only the phosphorescence at her bow to betray her to a periscope.

Struck by a thought, he bent over a chart of the patrol area. The navigator's dead reckoning estimate showed them some forty miles at sea. To the west Cape Hatteras jutted seaward, its stylized wrecks and dotted lines of shoal fretting the coastline. Galloway chewed his lip. The water shoaled gradually. Still only two or three hundred feet this far offshore. If he could catch the U-boat here it would be unable to go deep.

It was so pat that he felt again that touch of suspicion, indecision, unwonted caution that had dogged him since the first radar contact. "That thing still on the scope?" he grunted.

"Minute he dives we'll let you know, sir."

Twenty-two minutes yet. He went out on the bridge wing to get a grip on himself.

The wind was warm and strong. He curled his fingers around the binoculars and leaned into it. The only light came from the stars. Immense, glowing, the Milky Way arched over the sea. He leaned over the coaming. like reflected constellations, luminescent organisms sparked and swirled as the bow dipped and lifted, knifing through the chop with a vicious, eager hiss.

The jaygee came out of the pilothouse. "Fifteen minutes to intercept."

''Very well. What speed we making?"

"Twenty-two knots, Captain."

"Good." He grinned; the World War I four-stackers the Navy had palmed off on the Coast Guard could only make twenty-one officially. The engineers knew something was up. Well, time to scotch the rumors. He went back inside. A moment later his voice boomed through the ship, calm, enormous, metallic.

"This is Captain Galloway speaking. We've picked up what looks like a U-boat and are heading to intercept. The war with Germany is officially over, but this guy obviously didn't get the word. Or he may not feel like giving up. So we're not taking any chances. If he doesn't surface as soon as he knows we're around I'm going to attack. That's all."

Galloway hung up the mike then and stood fidgeting with the glasses. He did not look at the radar screen, though he wanted to. Its brilliance would ruin his night vision, and it might be important shortly for him to be able to see.

"Ten minutes, sir."

He ran up the ladder to the signal bridge, into open air. The starlight showed pointer and trainer below him, crouched to the sights of the forward gun mount, the loaders cradling shells. Beside him the searchlight operator was swinging his big lamp around, and from the port side metal clanged as a gunner's mate charged the fifty-caliber machine gun.

The sub was making fifteen knots and
Russell
twenty-two. Ignore the slow power of the Gulf Stream, sweeping past Hatteras like an invisible river in the sea;

it was carrying them all along at an equal rate. That made closing speed seven knots. Ten minutes at seven knots was 2300 yards. Should be able to see
something.
He raised the big night glasses and steadied them very carefully just to starboard of the bow.

A faint glow wavered in the center of his vision. A plume. The U-boat was still snorkeling, oblivious of his presence. Suddenly he realized why. At fifteen knots its wake was so turbulent that
Russell
had been able to run up its tail without being heard. Luck. But also as dangerous as picking up a loaded rifle by the barrel. U-boats carried torpedo tubes in their sterns as well as in the bow.

Closer. The plume shimmered against darkness, visible now without the glasses. The faces of the gunners turned toward him. But he held, held, till he could make out the dark jut of the snorkel. Now to give the Nazi commander the chance he hoped he wouldn't take. "Illuminate!" he shouted into the wind. "Ten degrees to starboard! Sonar, start pinging."

With a sputtering hiss, the searchlights ignited. The twin eighteen-inch beams caught the plume dead center, lit it against dark ocean like a concentration camp prisoner caught on wire. At that moment, belatedly, the phone talker beside Galloway spoke up. "Sir, sonar reports a submarine contact, bearing one-two-zero, five thousand yards."

"One-two-zero? No, no, that'd put him way off to our left," said Galloway, watching the vee of foam. Odd that the sonarman would get a screwy bearing like that. Surely, he thought, this guy knows we're here by now, with the sonar pinging directly through his hull. "Hey, what's wrong with my weapons?"

"All guns forward on target," said the jaygee hastily from beside him. "Hedgehog on target. Depth charges set at sixty feet—"

The plume suddenly shrank. "She's diving," said Galloway. "Stand by to fire." He leaned forward, gauging the range to the searchlight-illuminated swirl of foam by eye.

"Sonar reports another contact, on starboard bow, range very close."

"That's our boy. Going in for attack. Count me down on range, and tell me if she starts to turn."

"They say that'll be hard, sir, a lot of bubbles in her wake."

"Right. Are the other cans on the screen yet?"

"They have one pip may be
Arnold\
eight miles astern of us, closing fast."

"Hell," muttered Galloway.

"Six hundred."

"Better get them on this first run, sir."

"Five hundred yards. Nearing hedgehog range."

"Sonar to Captain. Target slowing. Turning right."

"Hedgehogs, stand by to fire," he said.

"Right five degrees rudder," said the OOD, without being told.

"Good ... there, steady as she goes."

"Three hundred."

"Starboard hedgehog, fire," said Galloway. Beside him the jaygee seized the firing handle.

RusselV
s forecastle blazed as twenty-four thirty-pound projectiles leaped off her deck a tenth of a second apart. They disappeared into the night sky. He envisioned them arching upward, hanging above the sea for a moment, then plunging downward in a circle a hundred feet across. He counted the seconds as they sank. Right on time, a dull thud came from far below.

"Have them reload right away," he shouted, already sliding down the ladder.