So did Pat Cooley. “Well, sir, at least their Y-ranging operator isn’t asleep at the switch.”
“Swell,” Sam said. The exec smiled. So did Sam, wryly. He couldn’t win, and he knew it. If he said something like swell, he marked himself as an old-timer trying to sound up to the minute. But if he said something like bully, he marked himself as an old-timer not bothering to stay up to date, which had to be even worse.
U.S. fighters from the combat air patrol streaked toward the foreign airplane. If they let it keep coming, it would find the fleet and pass the word on to the enemy ships somewhere off to the east. If they shot it down before it found the U.S. ships, that would also tell the limeys and frogs something, but not so much. And if they made it try to run before they shot it down, they might be able to use its flight path to get an idea of where the enemy lay.
Sam watched the fighters till they vanished from sight, then went over to the Y-ranging screens and watched them there. He could tell just when the enemy aircraft spotted them: it broke off its advance and turned away as fast as it could go.
“What’s that bearing?” he asked Walters.
“Sir, the course is 105-a little south of east,” the Y-ranging officer answered.
“So somewhere along that line from where it started, that’s where the ship that sent it out is likely to be,” Carsten said.
“Well, we don’t know that for a fact, sir-that airplane could be bluffing, trying to throw us off,” Walters said. “But I think it’s a pretty good bet.”
“Me, too,” Sam said, and then, “Mr. Cooley, is the cruiser reporting that scout aircraft’s course?”
“No, sir.”
“Then signal it over there, if you please. Chances are they’re checking it themselves, but I don’t want to take even the smallest chance with something this important.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Cooley was faster with Morse than Sam was himself.
“Sir, we’ve got a hydrophone contact!” That was Chief Bevacqua. The CPO was the best man on the ship at making sense of what came back from the pings the underwater equivalent of Y-ranging sent out. “Bearing 165, range about half a mile. It’s shallow, sir, and the contact feels like a goddamn submersible.”
“Jesus Christ!” Ice shot up Sam’s back. A sub that close could sink the Josephus Daniels easy as you please. “Change course to 165-we’ll give it the smallest target we can. Man the ashcan flinger! Pat! Signal the cruiser that we’ve got the worst kind of company!”
“Aye aye, sir!” Cooley said again, but before he could finish the signal the submarine announced its own presence. It cared little for anything as small as the destroyer escort. The light cruiser made a much more tempting target. Two torpedoes slammed into her. As soon as she was hit, the submersible dove.
By then, though, the Josephus Daniels hovered over the sub. Depth charges splashed into the Atlantic. Down below, the submersible would be doing everything it could to get away, but its underwater electric motors were painfully slow. The skipper down there-British? French? Confederate?-would have heard the ashcans going into the water. Could he get away? Could he get deep enough to avoid and evade?
Even up on the surface, each burst from the spread felt like a kick in the teeth. Then Sam heard a noise like a slammed metal door-the pressure hull caving in from the explosions. “We got him,” he said soberly.
“He got us, too,” Cooley said-the cruiser was listing badly.
“Do they want us to take men off, or does their skipper think she’ll stay afloat?” Sam asked. Rage filled him, rage at himself. Destroyers and destroyer escorts sailed with the fleet to keep submarines away. He hadn’t done his job. Any enemy country would gladly trade a sub for a cruiser.
“For now, they think she’ll stay up,” Cooley answered. More flashing Morse came from the cruiser. “We get an ‘attaboy’ for sinking that submersible. They heard it cave in over there, too.”
“Hot damn,” Sam said bitterly. He spoke to the hydrophone operator: “Keep your ears open, Bevacqua.”
“Will do, sir,” the petty officer replied. “I feel like hell on account of that fucker suckered me. He must’ve snuck in under a warm layer or something. Even so-”
“Yeah. Even so,” Sam said. “Well, do your damnedest.” He didn’t look forward to the after-action report. He had to hope he lived to write one.
More airplanes came off the carriers’ flight decks, and more, and still more. They formed up into attacking squadrons above the U.S. fleet, then zoomed off to the east. “I think we’ve found the enemy fleet,” Cooley said.
“That’s what we came for.” Sam paused. “Of course, they came to find us. If they don’t already know where we’re at, seeing where our airplanes are coming from will kind of give them a hint.”
“I know the limeys have Y-ranging. From what I’ve heard, theirs may even be better than ours,” Cooley said. “I’m not so sure about the French.”
“Well, once they see the limeys launching airplanes, they won’t do a whole lot of waiting around after that,” Carsten said, and the exec nodded. Sailors wrestled more depth charges up on deck to replace the ones the Josephus Daniels used to sink the enemy submersible.
Half an hour went by. Then Thad Walters said, “We’ve got aircraft coming in from the east, sir. They’re not likely to be friendlies.”
“How far out are they?” Sam asked.
“Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“All right. Thanks.” It wasn’t, and Sam had no reason to be grateful, but he said the polite words anyway. Then he got on the PA system: “We’re going to have company in a little while. Chances are they’ll go after the airplane carriers and battleships ahead of us, but you never can tell. Any which way, our job is to get as many rounds in the air as we can. Some of them will do some good, I promise. We’ve put a lot of work in on our gunnery. This is where it pays off.”
“We’re a lot better than we were when you took over this ship, sir,” Cooley said.
“Thanks, Pat.” This time, Sam did mean it. But he went on, “Better doesn’t count. Are we good enough? Well, we’ll find out pretty damn quick.”
Some of the ships farther east, at the very forefront of the U.S. fleet, started firing. Black puffs of smoke fouled the blue sky. Peering between the puffs with a pair of field glasses, Sam spotted wings and fuselages glinting in the sun. His belly tightened. His balls wanted to crawl up from his scrotum. He’d been on a ship attacked from the air as early as 1917. He’d been on the Remembrance when the Japanese sank her. Good men were going to die here in the middle of the Atlantic. So would good ships. With luck, more of them would die a couple of hundred miles to the east, out over the curve of the world. Neither side’s ships would see the other’s today.
With a thunderous roar, the Josephus Daniels’ guns cut loose:.50-caliber machine guns, twin 40mm antiaircraft guns, and the 4.5-inch popguns that were her main armament. Those could reach higher and farther than the lighter weapons, but couldn’t fire nearly so fast. “Evasive action, Mr. Cooley,” Sam said. “All ahead flank speed!”
“Aye aye, sir!” The exec relayed the command to the engine room. He started zigzagging as the ship’s speed built up. It wouldn’t build up enough. Sam wished for the extra six or seven knots a real destroyer could give him. But then, how much difference would they make against an airplane?
A burning fighter slammed into the Atlantic before Sam could see which side it belonged to. A great black cloud of smoke rose from a stricken ship. He swore. He’d known it would happen, but that didn’t make it any easier to take.