George Washington's Ghost

‘Torps’ was the Torpedo Officer, a fresh-faced boy who looked far too young to be out of school, let alone in charge of two dozen of the most advanced naval weapons on the planet. Actually, the fellow was in his mid-twenties, a graduate in marine mechanical engineering of the Southampton Institute of Technology who had been head-hunted for Project Poseidon in his last year at college over four years ago.

Most of the men on board the Surprise were unmarried, some many years younger than men holding similar ranks and discharging comparable burdens of responsibility in the rest of the fleet, like ‘Torps’ recruited directly into their specialisations, who had not been back to the British Isles or New England since signing on for Project Poseidon.

Both Abe and Ted had been briefed, in a cursory fashion about what it was to be ‘a Poseidon’, a club of which they were honorary members for the duration of ‘this patrol’. They had been cautioned in no uncertain terms, at no little length, exactly what the uniformly dire consequences of divulging anything – anything whatsoever – they had seen while aboard HMS Surprise to an unauthorised person (which was practically anybody in the world including the majority of the members of the current Government), would be for them.

Further, they had been warned that it was unlikely they would be ‘released back into general service as soon as the boat returns to base’ because ‘a suitable, credible cover story will have to be manufactured to explain how you survived the loss of the Achilles in the Battle of the Windward Passage and escaped back into Colonial hands.’

“It is the middle of the night topsides,” Ted explained, “and the other chap is probably on the surface re-charging his batteries. We’ve been tagging along several hundred feet down listening to his propellers to keep in touch. Apparently, the other boat, they think it’s a Cuban-built variant of the original three hundred-ton German Mark II coastal model, has got a noisy bearing on its starboard prop.”

“How on earth can they tell that?” Abe asked, regretting it immediately. “No, no, don’t tell me!”

His head was already so full of secrets already he hardly needed to know any more!

Abe’s wristband tingled.

“Here this! Here this! Attack Stations! Attack Stations!”

Nothing much seemed to happen except a few men tip-toed past the open bulkhead door.

Some twenty minutes later there was another electric tingling.

“Attacking! Attacking!”

It was all very unreal.

When Abe had dive bombed the former Kaiserliche Marine light cruiser Karlsruhe there had been fire, smoke, chaos. His Sea Fox had pulled up and flown through the fumes spewing from the warship’s funnel; he had seen the Achilles

’s other two aircraft shot to pieces, and the wreckage of one of them crash into the side of the Karlsruhe.

But the Surprise was fighting a distant, remote, antiseptic war that felt almost like cold-blooded murder; and it offended Abe’s hunter’s soul not to be literally, or even metaphorically, looking one’s foe in the eyes.

His wrist tingled.

“REMEMBER BRAVE ACHILLES!”

There was a short pause.

“FLUSH TUBE ONE!”

Neither man definitively recognised the moment the Mark XX semi-passive homing torpedo left its tube over two hundred feet away. That there was a very subtle tremor throughout the submarine was hydrodynamically undeniable; however, the injection of a small quantity of compressed air, instantly trapped by baffles at the mouth of the torpedo tube as the munition was launched, was to all intents, undetectable other than by a seismograph aft of the torpedo room bulkhead.

“This is really cold, Ted,” Abe said quietly.

Less than three weeks ago, the two men had gone to war in an obsolete biplane launched off an old ship, the last of her class, on her last commission. Achilles had been beaten into submission by two newer, bigger cruisers, and he and Ted had been shot down by modern high-performance aircraft; and that they had survived had been nothing short of a miracle.

But those men on that small, diesel-electric submarine in the Surprise’s sights were helpless, dead men walking.

The intercom circuit was live.

“FISH ZERO-ONE HAS ACQUIRED BANDIT ONE. TARGET LOCK CONFIRMED. BANDIT ONE CONSTANT BEARING. REPEAT CONSTANT BEARING.”

The deck beneath their feet inclined as the submarine turned to port, her bow dipping downward.

“TARGETTING TELEMETRY… NOMINAL. TIME TO IMPACT…”

“TEN SECONDS…”

“FIVE SECONDS… FOUR… THREE… TWO… ONE…”

“BINGO! CONFIRM BINGO!”

Abe and Ted Forest looked at each other.

Waiting.

The faraway rumbling was barely audible, unfelt.

And that was it.

“PLEASE BE AWARE. THE BOAT WILL RUN DEEP. THE BOAT WILL RUN DEEP. STAND DOWN FROM ATTACK STATIONS. ALL PERSONNEL TO CRUISING STATIONS. REPEAT. ALL PERSONNEL REPORT TO CRUISING STATIONS!”

“How many guys are there on a Type II boat?” Abe asked, dully.

“Twenty, maybe twenty-five.”