“Well. Another little mystery.”
“But . . . But it’s so unnatural, Tom!”
“Yeah, it’s that and more.”
We wound our way towards the harbor through an industrial section. Here suddenly the parks ended, and what wasn’t built of concrete was made of steel. Huge blocks of grey buildings surrounded us, identified only by large, painted numbers. Thinking about it, except in old town, where garish signs were part of the decor, there had been very few signs, and those few were small and discreet.
These were factories with very little noise, and no smoke or dirt at all. There were trucks here, and Hysters scurrying between buildings. Our nautical garb and horses were more out of place than ever.
The harbor was more of the same. A fair-sized tanker was being pumped out, a huge container ship was being unloaded and a second was steaming into the bay. There were a hundred small pleasure craft coming and going, and three sleek racing yachts were tied to a dock. But what caught my eye were two very deadly looking gun boats. They were small, as naval vessels go, maybe a hundred fifty feet long and thirty wide. They had big flat areas that told of phase-array radar antennas, and each sported a dozen gun turrets. There was some sort of covered torpedo tube high on the bow, above the water line.
“Tom, that unloading platform . . . It looks like the hoists are somehow sticking to the ceiling of the bodacious thing. . . . Would you mind if we delayed the race for an hour or so? I mean, they’re so damn fast and efficient. . . .”
“Yeah, sure. Only I want to check out the gun boats.”
My crowd automatically split off to join me for my naval tour. Both of the cowgirls (alias French maid and bath girl. I recognized them.) stayed on the dock to take the horses back to wherever they came from, while the rest of us took an “impromptu” tour of the gunboat Hotspur.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Gunboats and Yatchs
There were about fifty people working on deck, and we eventually found another fifty doing maintenance below.
The boat’s skipper, Leftenant Fitzsimmon, spoke with a crisp British accent that he probably got out of a World War II English propaganda film. His mannerisms followed suit, with much flashing of eyes and a tendency to strike heroic poses. He was a decent enough looking fellow, yet somehow he lacked the beefy smoothness of most of the other men I’d seen on the island.
“Right, sir. Shall we start at the bottom and work up?”
I don’t know much about boats, but I know when to be impressed by good machinery. That little ship carried at least four inches of armor on all of her external surfaces, and twice that in some places. Her hull was a single, huge alloy casting, and her streamlined deck and upper works was a second single piece. There were no portholes, no windows except on the bridge, and two massive powered doors provided the only entrances.
“Hey, wouldn’t that make it hard if you had to get out in a hurry?”
“Not a very likely circumstance, sir. Oh, I suppose that if more than three of her water tights were badly holed, she’d sink. But even then I think I’d rather go down with her than put to sea in a rubber raft.”
Seeing me stare, he continued, “Oh, no heroics, sir. It’s just that she’s as strong as any submarine and just as watertight. If she sank, likely someone would be along directly to pull the old girl up.”
So they did the “get it when you want it” routine with themselves as well as with us. It figured.
Much of the interior space was taken up by four huge Rolls-Royce gas turbine engines.
“She’ll cruise at fifty knots, and hit sixty in a pinch. Planing hull, don’t you know. She draws eighteen feet in harbor, but at cruise she’ll raise up to six.”
“Yeah, but those engines look hungry.”
“Quite right, sir, and I suppose you’d say that’s her weak point. She can only cruise for twelve hours without refueling. Yet in a left-handed way, it increases our security. We could defend San Sebastian fairly adequately, I expect, but we simply don’t have the range to attack anyone. It makes us a safe neighbor, don’t you think?”
Fire control was just forward of the engines and below the bridge. Judging by the heavily padded chairs and the seat belts, the Hotspur had a pretty rough ride.
“Twelve turret control stations here, sir. One for each of the deck turrets. We have eight machine gun turrets and four missile launchers. This station is for the fire control chief and that forward is for the Exocet operator.”
“Exocet?”
“It’s a French surface-to-surface missile, sir, with enough of a punch to take out just about any modern warship. Not an old battle wagon like the Missouri, of course. At least not with one shot, but we carry four aboard. Our Monday punch, as it were. Launched from the bow tube you doubtless noticed.”
“Oh, I thought that was for torpedoes.”
“No, no torpedoes, I’m afraid. We carry a dozen homing depth charges though, which are fairly similar. They pop out the back.”
Leftenant Fitzsimmon’s accent sort of came and went depending on whether he was thinking about it.
The auxiliary bridge was forward of gun control. Most of the electronic equipment was down here, with repeaters going up to the “main” bridge. One odd fitting turned out to be a periscope.
“It eliminates the need of having lookouts up in a crow’s nest, sir. It has a pair of gyro stabilized lends’ a hundred feet or so above the deck, and doesn’t retract like the periscopes used on subs. Also, it doubles as a range finder, in case our radar goes west.”
The story below was taken up with fuel and ammunition storage.
“That’s about it down here, sir. Shall we go up to the main bridge?”
“That’s it? Don’t you have any crew’s quarters or a galley?”
“No sir. With only twelve hours of fuel, our usual patrol is eight hours. There’s a coffee pot on the bridge, and we brown bag it for lunch.”
Barb and the others followed us up a ladder to the bridge. They’d been quiet, probably bored, having seen it all before.
The machine gun turrets were hemispherical, reminiscent of a belly gun on an old bomber. Four of them hung over the side of the deck so as to be able to defend against boarders. They could actually shoot straight downward. The other four were mounted more conventionally. Repairmen had the covering of one of them removed, exposing a Vulcan 20mm Gatling gun with a smaller thirty-caliber “mini” beside it. Above the two sat a telescope with a TV camera attached. There was a third, empty mounting on the servo platform between the two guns.
“Hey, what normally goes here?”
“Well, nothing, sir. Presently that is, but you never can tell what the designers will come up with.” I noticed that he was trying not to stare enviously at the “sword” clipped to my belt.
“Right. I don’t see how you operate these guns. Where does the man sit?”
“Below, sir, in gun control. I showed you.”
“What, nobody up here at all?”
“At full speed, this deck is a dangerous place in peacetime and in daylight. Fighting from it would be absurd. Between the radar and a TV camera on each turret, the operator can see everything he needs to. Loading is automatic, of course.”
“Well then, what do you need with all these people? There must be a hundred aboard.”
“This isn’t my crew, sir. Maintenance comes under the Harbor Master. The Hotspur’s compliment is twenty-four. They’ll be along directly. We’re due to go out in a half hour to relieve the Nonesuch.”
“So, there are more ships than just these two?”
“Six, sir. The other four are on patrol.”
“Oh. Is that usual? Two in and four out?”
“It’s typical, sir, although we try not to be too regular in our movements.”
I did some quick calculations. “I see. I gather then that you have multiple crews, like some of the U. S. Navy submarines.”
“Oh no, sir. I wouldn’t want to share the Hotspur with another skipper.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Barb turning red, shading to purple.
“Hey, but you’ve told me that this ship averages two eight-hour patrols a day, every day, with no facilities for sleeping or eating. If you’re the only captain, that’s an absolutely killing schedule.”
“Hardly that, sir. In fact, we’re just coming off a two-week holiday.”
Barb looked like she was ready to explode.
“So, who was driving the boat when you were away?”
“Why, we were! One doubles back and that sort of thing. Surely you understand that the Hotspur represents a considerable capital investment, and it would be foolish to let her sit idle.”