How many men had he just killed? The images of the sinking supertanker would not fade. He shut his eyes for a moment, never aware that if he had opened them, if he had been able to see through the bulkhead of his stateroom, through the hull of the ship and through seven miles of ocean, he would be staring at an incoming Nagasaki torpedo bearing down on him.
“Nagasaki in tube one is away. Captain. Lining up to fire unit two.”
“Wait one, Mr. First,” Tanaka said. “Let’s see what the American does.”
The control room crew sat in their control chairs watching the Second Captain displays, waiting for the indication that the torpedo was detecting its target.
“Detect and homing on the target, sir.”
“Very well, Mr. First.” Tanaka scowled. The force should have been ordered to attack days before, not now that the aircraft-carrier force was within spitting distance of the Home Islands. As soon as the American submarine was put on the bottom, he would run at maximum speed to intercept the aircraft carrier. He wanted that carrier.
“Any detection of our weapon by the target?” “Not yet. Captain,” Mazdai said. “He hasn’t changed speed or course.”
“Very good.”
The crew waited, the second Nagasaki ready for employment.
Keebes yawned, drying off his face. It was only a little after 1900 local time but he was tired. He considered going to the wardroom to screen a movie with the off watch officers but decided to hit the rack.
He was half-asleep when the circuit-one blasted over his head.
“TORPEDO IN THE WATER; TORPEDO IN THE WATER! MAN BATTLESTATIONS!”
Keebes ran to control.
“Sir, incoming torpedo bearing north, I’ve got it in the edge of the starboard baffles, running at flank speed.”
“Set up to counterfire down the bearing line, Mr. Becker,” Keebes said, staring hard at Becker, seeing his panic right below the surface. “Come on, line-of-sight mode on Pos Two, bearing north, set the range at five miles. That’s it.” Keebes stepped up on the periscope platform. “Attention in control, snapshot tube three, assumed target bearing north. Ready, Mr. Becker?”
Jensen arrived in control barefoot and in boxer shorts, putting on his wire-rimmed glasses, his contact lenses obviously out for the night.
“Ready, Captain.”
“Snapshot tube three!”
Becker fired the tube-three torpedo at the phantom target, the one Keebes had guessed, at least to get a torpedo out there. The torpedo launch transient didn’t seem as loud this time, perhaps because it caught Keebes by surprise.
“Set up tube four for another snapshot!”
Keebes intended to keep pumping them out. He could always get a reload, but if he got hit by a Japanese torpedo his own weapons would be useless on the bottom of the sea. And if he kept shooting torpedoes, the crew would be distracted by the activity, since the only thing he could do as a torpedo closed in on him was run from it, as Becker already had done.
Either the torpedo ran out of fuel, or they died. There was nothing more he could do.
“Snapshot tube four,” Keebes ordered. The second counterfired torpedo was fired. “XO, get a SLOT buoy loaded, put a message in the disk that we’re being fired on and get it out to Fleet command.”
The sound of the torpedo’s sonar came through the hull then. The high pitched squeal of it was horrible to hear. And if the torpedo was so close that he could hear its pinging… He tried to keep his face impassive, but what he was thinking was that he was not ready to die.
They had been right in the fleet briefings. There was no running from a Nagasaki torpedo.
The sound of the torpedo sonar changed from a high pitched ping to a siren sound, no longer transmitting and listening, just transmitting. It had to be extremely close.
Keebes glanced at his watch. It told the date as well as the time. Christmas was only four days away, his kids’ toys would be opened without him…
“Set up for a snapshot, tube one,” he ordered.
But the explosion came then, the deck of the Cheyenne ripping open, the lights going out, the blast wave bending Keebes, head first, into the steel of the overhead.
