Harry Turtledove: The Grapple

“Insides not turning inside out?” Sam had rounded the Horn more than once. Those were the only seas he knew that put the North Atlantic to shame. He hadn’t been seasick. He might sunburn in anything this side of a cloudburst, but he had no trouble keeping his grub down.

Pat Cooley was a good sailor. The North Atlantic seemed intent on showing good sailors they weren’t as good as they thought. Here, though, the exec shook his head. “Not giving me any trouble right this minute,” he said: a precise man’s cautious answer.

“Skipper?” That was a very young, very junior lieutenant, junior grade, named Thad Walters: the officer responsible for the care and feeding of the Y-ranging gear. He looked up from the green blips on his oscilloscope screens. “I’ve got something showing.”

“A ship?” Sam asked. Even troubled by the weather, the Y-ranging set was more likely to pick up limeys trying to run the U.S. gauntlet than lookouts were.

But the j.g. shook his head. “No, sir. It’s an airplane. Have we got a carrier in the neighborhood?”

“If we do, nobody told me, that’s for damn sure,” Sam answered. Nobody’d warned him a British carrier was operating in the neighborhood, either. That could be very bad news. A beat slower than he might have, he heard exactly what Walters said. “Wait a second. An airplane?”

“Yes, sir. Y-ranging gear sees one. Speed two hundred. Bearing 085. Range…Range is twenty-five miles and closing-he’s heading our way.”

“Just one, though?” Sam persisted. “Not a bunch of them?”

Walters shook his head. “Sure doesn’t look like it. The set could pick them out at that range.”

“All right.” Carsten turned to the exec. “Call the men to general quarters, Mr. Cooley. If he finds us in this slop, we’ll have to try to shoot him down.” He’d been attacked from the air before, even back in the Great War. He didn’t enjoy it, not even a little bit.

“General quarters. Aye aye, sir,” Cooley said. Klaxons hooted. Sailors started running like men possessed. They dashed into the turrets that held the Josephus Daniels’ two 4.5-inch guns. And they manned all her twin 40mm antiaircraft guns and the.50-caliber machine guns that supplemented them. The unknown airplane would get a warm reception, anyhow.

As soon as Sam heard the snarl of an airplane engine off in the distance, he said, “Evasive action, Mr. Cooley.”

“Evasive action-aye aye, sir.” Cooley was a better shiphandler than Sam was. Sam had never had his hands on a wheel till he took over the Josephus Daniels. He was a lot better now than he had been then, but the exec was better still. “All ahead full!” Cooley called down to the engine room, and the throb of the destroyer escort’s own engines picked up.

Cooley started zigzagging the ship across the ocean, lurching now to port, now to starboard, at random times and angles. But the Josephus Daniels was only a destroyer escort, not a full-fledged destroyer. She had a smaller crew, a smaller hull, and a smaller powerplant than a destroyer proper. She couldn’t come within several knots of a real destroyer’s speed. One of these days, that would hurt her. Sam felt it in his bones. He hoped today wasn’t the day.

The airplane with the blue-white-red British roundel broke through the clouds. “All guns open fire!” Sam shouted. They did. The racket was impressive. Even the popguns that were the Josephus Daniels’ main armament could fire antiaircraft shells. Black puffs of smoke appeared around the British aircraft.

Sam nodded to himself in more than a little satisfaction. He was still no great shakes as a shiphandler, no. But gunnery aboard the Josephus Daniels was far better than it had been when he took over the ship. He’d been part of a five-inch gun crew before becoming an officer; he knew what was what there.

That airplane jinked and dodged like the destroyer escort, though much faster. It had a bomb slung under its belly. It also had floats under the belly and each wing. Despite its maneuvers, it bored in on the Josephus Daniels. The bomb fell free. The airplane raced away. Cursing, Pat Cooley swung the ship hard to starboard.

With a roar and a great gout of water hurled into the sky, the bomb burst about a hundred yards to port. The airplane vanished into the clouds. For all the shells the gunners threw at it, Sam didn’t think they’d hit it. He hoped no splinters from the bomb casing had sliced into his crew.

“Nice job, Pat,” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” the exec answered. “Every so often, this looks like work, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe a little,” Carsten answered. They smiled at each other, both glad to be alive. Sam went on, “Well, we don’t have to worry about a limey carrier, anyway.”

“Sir?” Cooley said.

“Oh. I guess you were kind of occupied.” Sam chuckled under his breath. “Son of a bitch was a floatplane. A freighter could catapult-launch it, let it scout around, and then haul it out of the drink with a crane.”

“Damn. My hat’s off to the pilot,” Cooley said. “I sure as hell wouldn’t want to try putting a plane down on the water in seas like this.”

“Good point.” Sam hadn’t thought of that, but he nodded. “When I was on the Remembrance, we wouldn’t launch or land aircraft from the flight deck in this, let alone try to get down on the sea. But that’s not my worry… Mr. Walters!”

“Sir?” the Y-range operator said.

“You still have that airplane on your screen? What’s his course?”

“Flying out at 085, sir-going out on the reciprocal of the vector he came at us on.”

“All right.” Sam turned back to the exec. “Mr. Cooley, bring our course to 080. Let’s see if we can follow him back more or less down his trail and find the ship that sent him out.”

“Changing course to 080, sir.” Cooley’s smile was predatory. “You’d make a good duck hunter.”

“Thanks. You’ve got to lead them a little,” Sam said. “The limey’ll still be heading west. If we get close, the Y-ranger will spot him.”

“Here’s hoping, anyway,” Walters said.

“You’ve done it before,” Sam said. “If we do find the ship, let’s just hope she’s not loaded for bear like the last one we met.”

“We’ll be ready this time, anyhow,” Pat Cooley said. Sam nodded. The British had taken to mounting guns on some of their freighters. The Josephus Daniels got a nasty surprise the first time she ran into one of those. She’d outfought the Karlskrona, but Sam still shuddered thinking about what might have happened if one of those big shells had hit his ship.

He wondered how far that floatplane had come from. If it was a hundred miles, the destroyer escort would never find the ship that had launched it. He wouldn’t have wanted to try to find the ship after flying a hundred miles each way through this kind of weather. He’d seen the limey pilot had guts. But wasn’t there a difference between having guts and being out of your skull?

He’d sailed east and a little north for about an hour when Lieutenant Walters stirred at his set. “Something?” Sam asked hopefully. The Josephus Daniels was up at the crest of a swell, which let the Y-ranging gear see a little farther.

“I-think so, sir,” the j.g. answered, and then grimaced. “Gone now.” They’d slid into the trough. He waited till the ocean carried the ship higher again, then nodded. “Yes, sir. Range, eight miles. Bearing 075.”

“Nice navigating, sir,” Cooley said.

“Thanks. Change course to 075,” Sam answered. In good weather, he would have seen the stranger’s smoke before he got within eight miles. But the weather wasn’t good, and wouldn’t be for weeks.