1942

The Monkfish was a reasonably new boat. She had been completed in the latter half of 1939 and was one of the Sargo class of submarines. She displaced 1,425 tons and had a crew of sixty-two. For weapons, she had eight torpedo tubes, four each in the bow and in the stern, and a four-inch deck gun. A pair of 20 mm Oerlikon antiaircraft guns completed her armament.

Griddle squinted through the periscope and didn’t care for what he saw. Steaming insolently in front of him was a Kagero-class Japanese destroyer, one of the newest in their navy. She was traveling quickly through the water and in apparent ignorance of the existence of the Monk, which was gaining on her.

At first Griddle had been torn with indecision. His orders were to get to Pearl Harbor as quickly as possible, but how did one not attack an enemy warship? Besides, both he and his crew felt a compelling need to do something, anything, to strike back at the Japs. If he were to do nothing, he might also lose what little respect his crew had for him. Other forays had resulted in no attacks by the Monk, because no Japs had been sighted or because they’d been in shoal water, where a sub couldn’t go, or because the Jap ships had been too well protected. The Monk had not yet fired a shot in anger. Thus, they could not pass up an attack on a lone destroyer in deep water, and one where a converging course would put the destroyer in range within moments.

Yet another nagging possibility haunted Griddle and the crew. Was there something wrong with their torpedoes, or was it something else? No one knew, but one thing was certain-far too many torpedo attacks by other subs had been fruitless. Good, solid targets had been inexplicably missed, and often at great danger to the attacking subs.

While a few sinkings had been achieved, it was common knowledge that elite, well-trained crews with first-class subs were accomplishing far less than they should, and that left the torpedo as the reason for failure.

The torpedo in question was the brand-new Mark 14. That it could go more than two miles at forty-six knots was not an issue. What happened when it got to the target was. The Mark 14 was designed to focus on a target ship’s magnetic field, streak under the ship, and then explode, which, according to theory, would break the back of the target ship and sink it more efficiently than a normal, old-fashioned impact torpedo.

It was elegant in theory, but it didn’t seem to work out in practice, and this concerned Griddle. If they missed the Kagero-class destroyer, they’d have one pissed-off Jap warship to contend with. Not too much was known about the Kagero class, but Griddle’s periscope view confirmed that she had what appeared to be five-inch guns, torpedoes of her own, and a clustering of depth charges at her stern. A miss or a malfunction by a torpedo could become extremely uncomfortable.

It was now or never.

“Range?” Griddle asked.

“Two thousand yards” was the reply from Lieutenant Fargo.

Seconds later, four torpedoes were streaking toward the Kagero-class. The target was clear, and they could not miss, not all four of them.

Griddle ordered the Monk deeper. They would wait it out under periscope depth. Several stopwatches clicked off the seconds to impact. Now they could clearly hear the screws of the destroyer as she churned the water ever closer to them.

And then the watches were past impact time. Griddle paled. The torpedoes had missed. It was impossible! Not all four of them!

To their horror, they heard the destroyer coming even closer. She had seen the torpedo wakes and was following them to their source. Griddle didn’t have to see the destroyer to visualize her slicing through the waves toward them at more than thirty knots per hour.

Then the men of the Monkfish heard splashes. “Depth charges,” Griddle hollered, and the men prepared to hang on for their lives.

An explosion rocked the Monk, sending equipment and men flying in the narrow confines. There were screams of pain as men caromed off the pipes and deck. Another explosion, this time much closer, hurled Griddle against a bulkhead and then onto the floor. The lights flickered, went out, and returned.

Griddle had landed on something soft, and he felt his hand go into the mush of a crewman’s skull. The commander couldn’t see out of his left eye, and blood was pouring down his face. Waves of pain flowed over him, and he wondered if he could talk.

Another depth charge exploded, this one almost on top of the Monk. Griddle felt himself losing consciousness. As he slipped in and out, he wondered if he was going to die. He didn’t want to. There was so much to live for. For one thing, he wanted to kill the son of a bitch who’d invented the Mark 14 torpedo.