“Looks like something out of a sci-fi flick,” Pacino said, staring at the ship-control console.
“We still haven’t gone all the way to computer ship control — the planes and rudder and ballast systems are still controlled manually by the four-man ship-control team instead of by the computer,” Keebes said. “NAV SEA still isn’t comfortable with computers driving the boat. Their mentality is still in the 1940s. Why pay for all these computers if it still takes four men to take the ship from periscope depth to test depth? But one step at a time, I suppose.”
Keebes moved to the starboard side of the room, where a long row of firecontrol computer consoles were set up. Instead of three displays, there were five.
“The combat control system is the BSY-2/Mark II. A lot like the old CCS Mark I of the 688 and 637 classes, just more capabilities. Ties into the nav computers, so it automatically writes records of any combat encounters. The input from the hull, spherical, and towed arrays is integrated pretty well into this beast. Target acquisition and tracking are simplified. Weapons can be programmed from any of the panels. Works well.”
“Let’s get to the lower level,” Pacino said.
They went down the aft-stairs to the lower level.
“Aux Machinery,” Keebes said. “Emergency diesel lives here.”
Pacino tried not to look too impressed by the sheer size of the diesel engine. It dwarfed the engine he’d had on Devilfish.
“Torpedo room has space for fifty weapons. We’ve got eight torpedo tubes. Like earlier classes the tubes are amidships. These are canted outward ten degrees.”
Pacino followed Keebes through the torpedo room, walking the narrow aisle beside the tall racks of the weapons. He looked back at the room from the forward end, impressed by the huge size of the ship. The Mark 50 torpedoes and the Javelin cruise missiles were twenty-one inches in diameter and twenty-one feet long, graceful, sleek weapons.
“Want to see the engineering spaces, sir?”
Pacino looked at his watch, conscious that every moment that passed was another chance for Sean Murphy and his crew to die. Still, as commander of the rescue mission, he’d better have a mental picture of every aspect of the Seawolf, no matter how abbreviated.
“Let’s go.”
“Better put on your TLD, sir,” Keebes said, reaching into a pocket and producing a black plastic cylinder the size of a cigarette lighter. The thermoluminescent dosimeter would measure Pacino’s radiation dose from the reactor. As Pacino took the dosimeter he recalled the radiation sickness he had battled two years before, his strongest memory of that time being the hours he had spent vomiting and dry heaving. Pacino fastened it on his belt and gestured to Keebes to continue on.
Keebes led the way up the ladder to the middle level and aft, to a large watertight hatch that led through a long tunnel.
“Shielded tunnel, sir. This door here leads to the reactor compartment. Take a look through the lead window. We’re in the power range and steaming, natural circulation mode, normal full power lineup, divorced from shore power with the main engines warm.”
Pacino put his face next to the thick leaded glass of the reactor compartment viewing port while rotating the viewing mirror. That gave him a view into the compartment, to which entry was prohibited while the reactor was critical. The equipment was huge. No wonder the ship could produce such horsepower.
Keebes waited until Pacino was ready, then continued aft through the tunnel to another massive hatch and into the engine room
“Aft compartment. This ship is built with the mechanics in mind — we can rig out virtually any piece of equipment without cutting open the hull, with the exception of the turbines and reduction gear. The motor control room is forward with the reactor control electronics. Those forward turbines are the SSTGs and the aft ones are the main engines.”
The turbines were also big, but Pacino was getting used to the ship’s scale. Still, the main engines, their counterparts only five feet in diameter on Devilfish, were fully a deck-and-a half tall, and the reduction gear casing was even larger. The room was hot and humid from the steam plant but not nearly as humid as on Pacino’s previous boats.
Aft of the reduction gear was the enclosed maneuvering room. Pacino was interrogating Keebes on the procedure to shift from natural circulation to forced flow when the maneuvering phone rang. Keebes answered, listened, hung up.
“Admiral Donchez wants us in the wardroom, sir. Time for the change-of-command.”
Pacino nodded and followed Keebes forward, wondering how long it would take to get used to this new giant. And then, just for a moment, he felt dwarfed by her. Better get over that, he told himself.
CHAPTER 10
“Attention on deck!”
The officers and chief petty officers in the wardroom came to attention.
“At ease,” Pacino said, surprised at how confident his voice sounded. He had worried about this moment, wondering how the men would see him, and how he would see them … how he could take men he had never met or trained and take them covertly into enemy territory on a combat mission.
Keebes stopped in front of the first man near the door, a slightly overweight lieutenant commander with an intense expression on his face, dark bags under his eyes, the odor of cigarette smoke strong in the air around him. Pacino had the impression of a man on a collision course with a heart attack.
“This is the engineer, Captain, Lieutenant Commander Ray Linden. With us since we laid down the keel. He knows every valve, cable, pump, pipe and switch of the propulsion plant.”
“Hi, Eng. I hear you’ve got some serious horses under the hood back there.”
“Yes sir,” Linden said, squinting up into Pacino’s eyes, “and they’re ready to gallop.”
“Good. You’ll need to make sure they gallop damned quietly.”
“No problem, sir.”
Keebes led Pacino to the next man, a heavyset lieutenant commander with a tightly trimmed beard covering his fleshy jaw, an open expression set into the lines of his face.
“Lieutenant Commander Bill Feyley, our weapons and combat systems officer.”
“Weps,” Pacino said, shaking Feyley’s hand. “How did the load out go?”
“We did it in record time, given we started in the early hours of the morning with a burned-out weapons-loading crew. But we’ve got what you wanted.”
“Good. Sonar and firecontrol ready?”
“The best, sir.”
Pacino was about to move on, when something struck him as wrong.
“Weps, about the beard … maybe you should wait till we’re underway before you grow that thing.”
Keebes looked at Pacino.
“They changed that regulation two years ago. Captain Pacino,” Keebes said after a moment. “Submarine officers rate beards now.”
Pacino nodded quickly … He’d been away too long, he thought.
Pacino had memorized key portions of each man’s service jacket, along with a confidential briefing prepared by Donchez’s staff, including things that would never find their way into the official service records but items that Pacino would need to know in tight situations. Such as that Greg Keebes’s wife had recently left him for a neighbor down the street; that Bill Feyley, the ship’s gentleman bachelor, tended to drink and carouse, habitually waking up in port in the arms of nameless women; that Tim Turner, the sonar firecontrol officer, an amiable man with a fashionable haircut, had recently fought with his live-in girlfriend over spending too much time with the Seawolf and not enough with her. It seemed that in a white-hot moment Turner had taken the keys to the new Trans Am he had given her for her birthday and smashed the car into a dumpster, then tossed the keys back to her saying “Happy birthday, babe.” And there was Rick Brackovic, the reactor-controls officer, who had missed the birth of his second boy the week before, not having been granted emergency leave for it, after missing the birth of his first child just fifteen months earlier. His wife was nearly fed up and contemplating divorce. Each briefing sheet listed the pain these men had suffered on account of their commitment to the submarine force, leaving home for months at a time to take a steel pipe to the bottom of the ocean for reasons that often made no sense to their families. And many of the stories seemed familiar to Pacino, whose own personal life had suffered in his climb to command, at one point nearly forcing him to choose between his submarine and his family.