“Good. How about the fit?” Jerry asked, looking at the group working on the UUV.
“No problem, sir. The target transponders are the same diameter as the positioning beacons the UUV is designed to use, but they’re just a bit longer. Each vehicle will carry six. We’re testing the entire sequence soon, from loading to deployment; if there’s any problems, we’ll know by this afternoon,” she announced confidently.
Jerry nodded approvingly. “That’s good. If we need anything else to make this work, it would be nice to know before we’re underway. I came looking for a manual, if you’ve got a spare.”
“Of course, sir,” she answered and walked past the two vehicles to a cabinet. She pulled out a loose-leaf binder and handed it to Jerry. “This one is up to date, Commodore.”
“Thanks. I can have it back to you this evening.”
“We have several, sir. Please keep it for as long as you need.”
Jerry nodded and headed back the way he came. He settled down in the wardroom to work, after grabbing a fresh cup of coffee. There were few places on a sub for quiet study, and with the civilian in his cabin, the wardroom between meals was an acceptable alternative. The mess stewards were setting up for lunch, so he sat at the side table.
It felt familiar to him, even comfortable. Not only was the wardroom’s layout almost identical to the one aboard his earlier boat Seawolf, it had the same sounds and even smells as all the other subs he’d ever been aboard. It was an environment he knew so well, and thrived in.
Jerry could never tell Emily how much he loved serving aboard subs. To do so would imply that he didn’t miss his family. He did miss them, especially at meals, and in the evening, before going to bed — the times when he wasn’t practicing his chosen craft. Even this, poring through a UUV manual for obscure facts, was rewarding, even enjoyable.
After lunch, Captain Weiss had scheduled a meeting to review preparations for the undocking that evening. Jerry debated not even showing up. He wasn’t technically part of the evolution, and didn’t want to be a distraction. But he wanted to watch Lou at work, and it wouldn’t be proper for him to pretend he didn’t care.
Counting the sixteen officers and eight chief petty officers crammed into the wardroom, Jerry didn’t so much watch Carter’s captain at work as listen to him, as well as the reports from the sub’s leadership. Weiss marched everyone through the timeline, with everything starting at exactly 2115, when the last Russian satellite disappeared below the horizon.
In dry dock, out of the water, the sub’s reactor was of course completely shut down. Weiss spent some time with LCDR Norris, the chief engineer, and LT Hilario, the main propulsion assistant, going over what could be done before they were floated out to shorten the startup process, but there wasn’t much they could do. “We’ve already begun warming up the primary system, but the fact is, we don’t have enough time to get us to the normal startup temperature. So, we’ll use the emergency diesel and the EPM to get us moving down the river while we finish heating up, and then bring the reactor critical.”
Jerry heard a few soft groans. The emergency propulsion motor wasn’t very powerful, and that meant slow slogging, but Weiss continued. “Yes, I’m aware this will be a slow egress. Three knots, max. We can’t go much faster than five knots down the river anyway, at first, and our top priority is to be well away from this dock by 0220, when the next Russian satellite makes its appearance. If we’re out of the dock by 2345 as planned, and the boat can answer a flank bell two hours later, that will put us over thirty miles away, counting the current. This gets us through the Block Island Sound and out into the Atlantic before the next imaging satellite gets a chance to take a peek.”
Jerry agreed with Weiss’s plan of action. It wasn’t the most auspicious way to start a patrol, but it would work.
In the end, Jerry didn’t say a word until the very end of the meeting, when Weiss asked him, “Commodore, would you like to join me on the bridge during the undocking?”
“That would be fine, Captain.”
Jerry stayed busy in his stateroom until just before it was time. He wanted to avoid joggling Lou Weiss’s elbow, and was sure that was the right thing to do, but he did feel a little out of touch.
A few minutes after 2100, Jerry left officer’s country and headed forward to control. It was fully manned now, although most of the workstations were dark. They would stay dark for a while, too, even after they were in the water and underway.
While in the dry dock, Carter’s electricity came from “shore power.” That cable would have to be disconnected once they started flooding the dock. Her reactor normally drove two steam-powered generators that provided all the electricity the sub needed, but until it was online, the emergency generator, a large diesel engine, would have to serve. It not only had to power the electric propulsion motor that would move the boat, but the control systems that steered her, cooling water for the diesel and the reactor plant monitoring circuits, as well as continuing to heat up the primary plant. Nonessential systems would stay secured until the reactor could take over.
Jerry went up a deck to the bridge access trunk and climbed up the ladder inside the sail. He was just near the hatch when Maneuvering passed the word over the intercom, “Bridge, Maneuvering. The electric plant is in a half-power lineup on the diesel.” Weiss acknowledged the report, and although he didn’t sound relieved, Jerry knew that a problem with the diesel generator right now would have shut down the entire evolution.
“Permission to come up?” Jerry asked.
Weiss answered “Granted” almost automatically, as the bridge intercom reported shore power had been secured and the cables were being removed. They would continue to receive cooling water from shore until the water level in the dock was deep enough to cover the auxiliary seawater suction ports. Carter’s captain was following a checklist even more detailed than Jerry would have used. A phone talker passed other reports, and a walkie-talkie buzzed and chirped with reports from the graving dock workers. Lou was fielding the information smoothly, and everything was going according to plan.
Maybe he really didn’t need to be here, Jerry thought, but that would be the best of all possible outcomes. He always tried to be ready for the worst.
A hundred feet below the bridge, the dry dock floor was already hidden by swirling white-frothed water. Floodlights illuminated the streams pouring into the basin from six-foot square sluice valves opened in the dock’s floating caisson gate. The level still hadn’t reached the keel. Carter sat on sturdy wooden blocks about six feet off the bottom of the dock, and it would take almost two hours for the sub to float off the blocks.
Normally after coming out of dry dock, a sub, still not much more than an inert mass of metal, would be towed to a nearby dock to finish lighting off its reactor. After that, it would prepare for sea, and leave a day or so later. This time, all the preparations for sea were being done at the same time as the undocking.
“Commodore, thank you again for these nifty PRC-148 secure radio hand sets,” exclaimed Weiss in between the stream of reports. “They’re much appreciated. Any way we can hang on to these for future use?”
“You’re welcome, Captain. But I’m afraid the radios are on loan from a SEAL team. I’m probably just overreacting, but if we’re striving to keep this departure as covert as possible, then we need to eliminate the possibility of someone listening in as you give orders to the tug. However, I will have to return them.”