“Is that right, Morrissey?” said the XO.
“Yes sir.”
“So what’s this cavitation that Kincaid is so worried about?”
“The noise made by collapsing bubbles of water vapor in the low pressure area behind the ship’s propeller,” said Morrissey.
“Good job. At that speed we need to run pretty deep so that we don’t pop out of the water in an accident, and so that we don’t cavitate and make a lot of fucking noise so the bad guys know we’re coming.” He paused. “Which brings us to the second reason we are here. Danny, dim the lights.”
Suddenly intrigued, Jabo leaned back in his chair to hit the switch. The XO clicked a few keys on his laptop and projected a grainy image onto the movie screen pulled down at the front of the room. It was a black and white satellite photo of a two submarines at a pier, tied along side each other, head to tail. He instantly recognized it as a Soviet design, the long, blunt conning tower being distinctively Russian. It took him just a moment longer to identify the specific class.
“Anybody know what these are?” he asked.
“Russian,” said Jabo. “Kilo Class.” There was a murmur of admiration among the other JOs at Jabo’s acumen. The short squat body of the enemy boats and the somewhat blocky lines of the hull made them look at the same time primitive and yet seaworthy, as indeed they were. Kilos were one of oldest and largest classes of submarines made by the Russians and the Soviets before them.
“You’re sorta right, smart ass. They’re Soviet Kilos, but these particular boats belong to our friends the Red Chinese. Our friends in intel tell us that these are a particular version of the Kilo called a Project 636 boat. Jabo, do you know what that means?”
“They call it the ‘black hole,’” said Jabo. “Because it disappears from sonar.”
“Correct again. Running on its battery, it’s one of the quietest submarines in the world. We’ll have training on it tomorrow night in the wardroom after dinner. Danny, I think you just volunteered to give it. So study up tonight while you’re on the midwatch. Teach us what we need to know: max speed, sound signatures, armament, etcetera. Got it?”
“Aye, aye sir.”
The XO cleared his throat and turned to the captain. All were silent, waiting to hear why they suddenly needed to understand the specs of this particular Russian submarine.
“On the broadcast, about an hour ago, we received a message from SUBPAC saying that these two boats have departed the Chinese submarine base at Ning-bo. Heading for the open seas. Anybody want to guess what they’re doing?”
No one said anything.
“Me neither,” said the Captain. “But we’ve been reminded by SUBPAC, who has been reminded by the national command authority, about how important our mission is. And we’ve also been reminded that China considers the seas we are entering to be their sovereign, territorial waters. So if they were to identify an unknown submerged contact in those waters…let’s just say we’re not going to let that happen.”
For a moment they all just stared at the screen, absorbing the fact that the boats depicted in the grainy, aerial image were now their adversaries.
The captain continued. “We have to get to Suao in time, and we have to get there undetected. This is the mission we’ve been handed, and I intend to complete it successfully. So follow the navigator’s track, and memorize every angle of the submerged operating envelope. If we stay inside it then the best minds in the Navy assure us that we’ll remain undetected and safe. Be smart. Any questions?”
“No sir,” they all said in unison. Jabo glanced at the navigator, the only other man not staring at the movie screen, perhaps lost, he thought, in a mental calculation of how far they’d come, and how far they had yet to go.
Every junior officer on his first tour had two major duties: he was both a watch officer and a division officer. As a watch officer, he would routinely stand six hour watches, either as Officer of the Deck or the Engineering Officer of the Watch. The OOD, in control, was the captain’s direct proxy, responsible for everything that happened to the ship during that period. Approximately three hundred feet aft of control, in the small sealed cube inside the engine room that was Maneuvering, resided the EOOW. He reported to the OOD, and was responsible for the numerous complex systems and procedures inside the nuclear propulsion plant. His mission, it was often summarized, was to keep, “the lights burning and the screw turning.”
The division officer role was in a sense the junior officer’s “day job.” He was in charge of a division of enlisted men with specialized training responsible for some specific area of the ship’s operations. While officers on the boat were generalists, expected to know everything, enlisted men were specialists. There was a division of men responsible for the sonar system, another for the missiles, yet another for cooking all the crew’s meals. These divisions each had a chief or first class petty officer with many years of experience who really ran things. But he reported to a junior officer who generally signed the forms, approved leave, assigned responsibilities, and, when necessary, administered discipline.
Jabo’s division was Radio; his title was Communications Officer. He reported to his department head, who happened to be the navigator, one of three department heads. The other two were the engineer and the weapons officer. Department heads, on their second sea tours, would occasionally stand watch, but their lives largely revolved around the department that they ran. Communicator on a Trident Submarine was an especially sensitive role on a normal patrol, because of the strict requirements that the sub had for staying in constant communication while on alert — ready within seconds to receive authorization and launch nuclear missiles should the order be issued.
In one sense, the extraordinary nature of their patrol made Jabo’s job as communicator easier: he no longer had the unending stress of worrying about the depth of floating antennas, the vagaries of sunspots on low frequency radio waves, and the fear that a few seconds of lost communications would make for a black mark on an entire patrol. But now, the ship had to download its entire day’s message traffic in a single burst, with each trip to periscope depth, so Jabo had to process a great many messages at once, drinking in two giant gulps what he used to drink all day long in sips. As communicator he was expected to read every single message, and then decide who else should read each one. Anything of particular sensitivity would be sent to the captain immediately. The ship had been at periscope depth at midnight when he took over the watch from Hein. As soon as radio reported that the entire broadcast was onboard, Jabo lowered the scope, went deep, and turned the lights back on in control.
“Ahead full,” he ordered.
“Ahead full,” repeated the helm, and the dinging of the engine order telegraph indicated that maneuvering also acknowledged the order. Jabo watched the ship’s speed rise.
“How long were we up there?” he asked the quartermaster.
“Twenty-three minutes,” he said, looking at a stop watch. “We’re getting better at this. Like an attack boat.”
Jabo nodded; it was good. A few weeks ago a thirty minute trip to PD would have been extraordinary; now it was routine. It was also a necessity if they were to get to Taiwan in time. Jabo rubbed his eyes and let them adjust to the lights in control. He wandered over the short distance to Flather and the chart.
“We’re right here,” said Flather. They’d also gotten a GPS fix while at PD, and Jabo was interested to see two pieces of information revealed by the fix. One, their dead reckoning, even at high speed, had been pretty accurate. The fix was just a few hundred feet off the last triangle that indicated their DR position. Flather had dutifully adjusted the DR track to account for the new fix. Secondly, they were right on track, right on schedule.