“You’d better tell the captain of the supertanker that. What about the men aboard?”
“Don’t worry about that. Patch. There’s no way that supertanker is going to run that blockade. No way.”
“Admiral, I’ve told you this before, but we need surface ships. We need a cruiser to fire shots over the guy’s bow and pull up alongside with deck guns pointed at the bridge and board the ship, physically take the helm if you have to and turn that ship around. Otherwise the whole crew is going to buy it.”
“Patch, he’ll turn around.”
“Admiral, god damnit, you’re not listening to me.”
Mac Donner’s tone was icy as he stared at Pacino.
“I’m listening, Admiral. Now what the hell do you want to say?”
“If that supertanker doesn’t turn around, we have to shoot him. If we let him through the blockade fails. So you put my men in the position of firing torpedoes at a civilian ship. My men will want to surface and rescue survivors.”
“No. That would give away their position. The satellites will see that and lead the Japanese submarines there.”
“First, Admiral, we should have blown those god damned satellites away days ago. Second, if that supertanker gets torpedoed, every ship in the Pacific will know where at least one submarine is, it’s where the supertanker went down. Third, I don’t want my men killing civilians.”
“Get off it. Patch. They have lifeboats. The Japanese can rescue them. Now quit being an old lady and—”
“I still say a destroyer or cruiser with guns is the way to do this. Let this god damned tanker in. Admiral. When we have some surface ships over there, we’ll stop the next merchant ship.”
“No. My orders are specific. The blockade begins now. Don’t make me request to relieve you. Admiral Pacino.”
Pacino took a breath and let it out. “Aye, aye, sir. I’ll send the order. On your command, if the tanker doesn’t turn around, we’ll shoot it. And no rescue of the survivors.”
“Very well.”
“I don’t think so. Sir.”
Bruce Phillips stood smoking his cigar while standing on the conn looking down on the diving-control station. The control room was rigged for black, all lights out, only the glow of the instruments at the ship-control panel illuminated. The screens of the firecontrol consoles of the attack center were dark, the rig for reduced electrical not allowing them to be powered up. The ship rolled gently in the waves, still at periscope depth at the mouth of Block Island Sound, now legitimately in the Atlantic, the sea beneath them still perilously shallow. Behind him Peter Meritson was dancing with the fat lady, rotating the periscope through endless circles, searching for the lights of close surface ships, fishing boats, anything that could collide with them.
The ship had no power to get deep if something came by, some ferry ship or misdirected container ship, and not only was there no power, there was nowhere to go; there was barely enough water beneath their keel to allow them to be submerged. They were in sixty fathoms of water, and if Phillips had gone by the book he would not have submerged until he had a minimum of 600 fathoms.
But then, submerging without a reactor up and running, snorkeling on the diesel, with only bare steerage way for power, was in gross violation of the standard operating procedures as well.
“Offsa’deck, you hear anything from the Eng?”
“Sir,” Meritson said, his voice muffled by the periscope module, “his last report was four minutes ago. He had turbines warmed and was shifting the electric plant.”
“CONN, MANEUVERING,” Walt Hornick’s voice blasted from a speaker in the overhead, “ELECTRIC PLANT IS IN A NORMAL FULL POWER LINEUP. RECOMMEND COOLING THE DIESEL.”
“Maneuvering, Conn,” Meritson said into his boom microphone, still rotating the periscope through his surface search, “cool the diesel.”
“COOL THE DIESEL, CONN, MANEUVERING, AYE. ESTIMATE MAIN PROPULSION CAPABILITY IN TWO MINUTES.”
“Maneuvering, Conn, aye.”
“Let’s go, Eng,” Phillips said. “Hey, O.O.D, let’s pull the plug on cooling the diesel. I don’t want that damned satellite upstairs seeing the exhaust.”
“Aye, Captain. Maneuvering, Conn, from the Captain, we are going to secure snorkeling.”
Meritson turned the periscope so he could shout at the chief of the watch, up at the ballast-control panel in the forward port side of the room. “Chief of the Watch, secure snorkeling!”
“Secure snorkeling, aye, sir.” The COW picked up a microphone to the circuit-one public address system, his voice booming throughout the ship.
“SECURE SNORKELING! RECIRCULATE.”
Walt Hornick’s voice replied on his speaker: “SECURE SNORKELING, RECIRCULATE, CONN, MANUEVERING AYE.”
Phillips waited impatiently, walking to the aft rail of the conn and peering down on the navigation display, a horizontal widescreen display that projected the chart where they were on a glass surface. The depth beneath them would stay shallow for some time. Usually a sub departing from Groton would be steaming at twenty knots on the surface for twelve hours before reaching the continental shelf, where the water depth fell to thousands of feet beneath the keel. Phillips would be steaming at twenty knots with less water under his keel than a full hull diameter. But that was nothing compared to what would happen when they got under ice.
Hornick’s voice squawked on the speaker again, this time his voice sounding almost cocky.
“CONN, MANEUVERING, MAIN ENGINES ARE WARM, READY TO SHIFT PROPULSION TO THE MAIN ENGINES.”
Meritson did not wait for further orders — Phillips had already made his orders for this moment.
“Helm, all stop,” Meritson called. “Maneuvering, Conn, shift propulsion to the main engines.”
The orders were acknowledged and for a moment a lull came in the room.
“CONN, MANEUVERING, PROPULSION SHIFTED TO THE MAIN ENGINES, READY TO ANSWER ALL BELLS, ANSWERING ALL STOP.”
“Conn, aye. Helm, all ahead standard.”
“Ahead standard, Helm aye,” the kid at the diving station’s helmsman’s wheel called. “Maneuvering answers all ahead standard, sir.”
“Lowering number two scope,” Meritson said, retracting the instrument. “Mark sounding!”
“Nine zero fathoms, sir.”
“Dive, make your depth one five zero feet.”
Even with several hundred feet beneath the keel, the bottom was uneven, rising up to ten fathoms in places, many of the humps uncharted. Phillips continued looking at the chart, then glanced at his watch. Within a few hours they would be steaming in the open deep Atlantic.
Then all he had to worry about was the polar icecap and the Japanese.
Pacino left the bridge and headed for ASW Operations.
Comdr. Paully White looked up from the intelligence plot on a large area Writepad, startled to see Pacino.
“Boss,” White said in his Kensington and Allegheny accent. “What brings you here? I thought you were up with Admiral Donuts up there.”
Paully White was in his late forties, his hair dark and thick, his frame trim. He was something of a comic, a frustrated stand-up comedian, in a place that had no humor, at least none directed toward him. Paully White got very little respect aboard the Ronald Reagan. Neither the surface sailors nor the pilots had good words for the submarine officer. They were happy that the battle group had two escort 688-class submarines there, and they knew that someone had to coordinate them, but the surface-group officers, when they saw Paully, had to face the fact that there were enemy submarines out there, that the battle group was vulnerable to them, and that only Paully’s submarines could keep them clean, in spite of the billions spent on surface ship antisubmarine warfare — the destroyers and frigates with their multiple sonars, their ASW standoff weapons, their Mark 51 torpedoes, the S-2 twin-jet Vikings that patrolled the sea for submarines with their blue-laser detectors, magnetic anomaly detectors, sonar buoy detectors and Mark 52 torpedoes, the LAMPS III Sea-hawk helicopters with their dipping sonars and their Mark 52 Mod Alpha torpedoes — all of it was an attempt to combat enemy submarines from above, and it was an attempt that fell short. Because in the end the only thing that could counter a quiet and stealthy hostile submarine was a quiet and stealthy friendly submarine. So many men in the surface battle group had devoted their lives and their careers to trying to prove otherwise and had failed, that when Paully White walked their passageways with his gold dolphin pins gleaming over his left breast pocket he was silenced, ignored. At the wardroom table he could tell a joke, a good one, and he would hear nothing but the clink of silverware on china. Paully, in fact, was the most unpopular man aboard, and desperately looked forward to going back to sea on board a fast attack submarine.