“We’ll be abeam in five minutes, TDC,” said Deedee Brown. “Checking right in there, about thirty-five yards on her starboard beam.”
“Come left one degree,” said Buck to his helmsman. “Steer one-two-seven.”
“One-two-seven, aye aye” said the helmsman from his post a few feet forward of the raised conning station. His movement of the wheel was barely perceptible. An instant later he announced, “Steering one-two-seven, sir!” He had not taken his eyes off the gyro compass repeater in front of him.
“Mark your depth!” said Buck.
“Five hundred feet. On the nose!” This was from Tom Clancy.
Buck picked up the general announcing mike, waited, looking at the clock mounted nearby. “All hands,” he said finally, speaking deliberately into it, “we should start feeling it five minutes from now! Mark your clocks!”
Richardson glanced at his wristwatch. It was an involuntary movement, one he had made at precisely this point during each of the drill exercises. But his mind hardly registered the positions of the hands on its dial.
“One minute until abeam, TDC,” said Brown. “Thirty yards.”
“That’s about what I wanted, Skipper,” Buck said quietly. “She’s a fat ship and I want to be sure there’s plenty of overlap across her chain.”
Rich, sitting on the stool which had automatically been his station since the beginning of the drills, nodded his agreement.
“Two minutes till we might feel the chain!” Buck announced over the mike, looking at the bulkhead-mounted clock. To Clancy he said, “Remember, Tom, the chain will begin by pulling us up by the stern. Keep a zero bubble and let her seek her own depth. But when she starts taking on the weight of Cushing’s anchor gear back there, you’re going to have to pump out a lot more water than for the Tringa or Besugo. Don’t let her get an up angle, and don’t let the depth increase.”
“Roger,” said Tom Clancy, wondering why it seemed necessary to repeat these already well-rehearsed matters.
“Abeam to port! Twenty-eight yards!” announced Deedee Brown. “That checks with sonar,” he added.
Buck grabbed the mike, announced immediately, “We’re abeam! We’ll begin to feel the chain one minute from now!” Speaking quietly to Richardson he said, “Do you suppose there’s any chance Keith won’t realize he’ll have to flood forward trim when we take the chain, and that we want the Cushing to increase depth some?”
“That’s all in that long dispatch we wrote for ComSubLant to send. Anyway, he’ll know what to do while his ship is being towed. The Cushing’s not going to tow quite like the Besugo, you know. Setting up steady-state conditions will have to wait until we’ve got him hooked and underway.”
There was a tight grin on Buck’s face. “I know all that, and I’m damn sure Keith knows how to handle his ship. I guess I’m getting wound up a bit.”
“I know. It wouldn’t be natural if you weren’t.”
“One minute since abeam,” said Jerry Abbott.
“Silence throughout the ship!” ordered Buck on the speaker system. To the helmsman he said, “Stand by!”
The silence reminded Rich of a submarine during the war rigged for silent running and expecting the initial salvo of depth charges. In a way, it was an apt comparison, for the tenseness of the moment was equally great.
“Mark! A minute thirty seconds since abeam,” said Abbott, nearly whispering.
Rich knew that the first faint rubbing contact might be felt anytime after the one-minute mark, depending on the accuracy of the estimated distance to the anchor when passed, but most likely not until nearly two full minutes had passed. Indeed, the first contact, when the nylon cable would be merely rubbing against Cushing’s chain, might not be felt at all. More pronounced, though for a very short period, would be the links of the two chains rattling against each other; most noticeable of all would be when the hook had engaged the anchor chain and was beginning to pick it up. By careful calculation and actual experience, this must happen exactly two minutes thirty-six seconds after the anchor was passed abeam, although there might be a few seconds more before it was noticed. But if the hook did not engage the chain at that point, it would pass it, necessitating another try.
Buck, trying to look confident, was succeeding much better than his slight, taciturn exec, Rich noticed. It might not have been the height of wisdom on the part of BuPers to put two such similar nervous-energy types in the same sub — but then no one had ever accused Buck of being taciturn, and he did have a sense of humor which Rich had not yet noticed in Jerry. He wondered how well he was concealing his own nervousness.
“Two minutes!” whispered Jerry, holding up the same number of fingers.
Sitting on the stool, Rich tried to keep his emotions contained. This was, of course, the moment of truth, but as had happened occasionally, something might have gone wrong. Well, if so, they would try again, passing nearer to the anchor, and there was always the other rig, unused, in number-seven tube. Perhaps, because of the ever melting layer of ice on its surface, the Arctic Ocean salinity was less than that off New London, even if Tom Clancy hadn’t noticed it, and therefore the paravane might have less than the calculated buoyancy. But Tom would have noticed the difference in Manta’s own trim. In fact, come to think of it, he had reported the need to pump out several tons of water from the trimming tanks, but no one had felt it was a really significant amount… Still, if the paravane floated noticeably lower, the nylon hawser could conceivably pass under the anchor… But this was absurd. It could not be that much lower. The nylon itself floated. If anything it would bulge upward, instead of down.
“Two minutes thirty!” Jerry whispered, with a look of doom. Buck, Rich noted, was again eyeing his own stopwatch. Good man! At the thirty-six-second point he intended to stop, as planned, regardless of whether the chain had been engaged or not.
But all of Richardson’s worries were forgotten at that instant, when sonar reported on the speaker, “JT hears the chains!”
“All stop!” barked Buck. The helmsman twisted his annunciators to Stop, watched the follower pointers from the engineroom match him.
“All stop, answered!” he said.
Again, the wait, but now it was for realization of, and reaction to, the next step. The hook would begin to drag the chain, in the process initially seeming to lift the Manta, and then at some point, having led the chain forward of the Cushing, the hook would begin to slip down toward the anchor. The noise of this would be very clearly heard, even though it would be happening in the sonar baffles dead astern. Somewhere in this process, perhaps not until the hook had engaged the anchor itself, Manta would begin to feel the weight of Cushing’s anchor. Cushing, at the same time, would feel the loss of weight. Keith must, nevertheless, permit his ship to drop down to approximately Manta’s depth, whatever that turned out to be, and Manta must be allowed to rise even as she picked up the added weight.