“Those explosions can only mean one thing,” Pacino said.
“Yeah. The Yasen-M chasing us just exploded and sank.”
“You know what that means, right?” Pacino asked.
“Yeah, time to turn south and head home.”
“No,” Pacino said. “It means this just changed from a search-and-destroy mission to a search-and-rescue mission.”
“What? No, Patch.”
“There could be survivors, U-Boat. We’ve got to help them. Under international law, we’re obligated to render aid.”
“Leave that to other ships,” Dankleff said. “Someone will rescue them, if there are survivors.”
“We’re so far from the shipping lanes, a raft could be out here for weeks. We have to at least check, U-Boat. We see no one out the periscope, then and only then do we turn south and go home.”
Dankleff sighed. “Lieutenant Lomax — Lobabes — would have been a great AOIC. Did I ever mention that?”
Pacino laughed. “Let’s go to the chart and see how long it’ll take to get to the sinking site.” In the navigation room, Pacino plotted a course from the inertial navigation position to the estimated sinking site. “Three point five hours. A short detour. Then home.”
Dankleff nodded. The very word home seemed to fill his soul with warmth.
AOIC Anthony Pacino snapped down the grips of the number two periscope’s optic module as it rose out of the periscope well. Panther rose swiftly out of the inky blackness and sailed for the warm thermal layer at fifty meters. Pacino trained his view upward and made two complete circles making sure there was nothing above them. The blackness yielded to the bright afternoon sunshine from up above.
“I have a shadow, small, close, but we’re heading away from it.” Pacino looked at the underside of whatever this boxy shape was, only worried about avoiding colliding with it. “Keep taking us to twenty-one meters.”
“Forty meters,” Grip Aquatong said. “Thirty-five.”
OIC Dieter Dankleff stood behind Pacino, frowning in frustration. He’d just plotted their position. They’d lose precious transit time doing this, he thought, and that presumed no one would come to chase them or drop munitions on their head. Which reminded him, if they were being chased by Russia’s finest attack submarine, why didn’t the Russians just send in maritime patrol aircraft? Or destroyers with helicopters? God knows, they could cover the entire Arabian Sea with twenty MPA aircraft and half a dozen destroyers. A dipping sonar detection and a torpedo dropped from an aircraft, and all this would have been over. Which meant this was urgent. They needed to check off this box, that they did what they could to make sure there were no survivors, and only then had cleared datum and run home.
“Thirty meters.”
“Get us up, Grip,” Pacino said, his voice muffled by the periscope’s optic module.
“Twenty-eight. Twenty-five. Twenty-three.”
“Scope’s awash,” Pacino said, still making search circles. “Scope’s awash, you’re hanging up, Grip. More bowplanes.”
“I’m at full rise.”
“You’re heavy,” Dankleff said, stepping over to the forward starboard ship control station, pos two. “I’ll pump from central depth control. Lipstick, suggest you order up all ahead two thirds.” Dankleff found a fixed function button and mashed it, watching a gauge indicating the tank level in the central depth control tank.
“Grip, all ahead two thirds!” Pacino ordered.
Grip spun the engine order telegraph.
“Scope’s still hung up,” Pacino said. “Dammit.”
Finally the submarine seemed to come shallow and the scope broke through a wave trough, then foamed up as the crest hit the view, then cleared again.
“Scope’s clear,” Pacino announced. He spun the scope in three rapid circles, then stopped with the scope facing forward. “One close contact, bearing mark! Grip, all stop! Hover at present depth.”
“All stop and hover, aye.”
Dankleff looked up at his console’s vertical section. “Your contact bearing is zero-nine-one. What is it? What’s its range?”
“Hitting it with the laser. Range mark.”
“One-fifty meters,” Dankleff said. “What is it?”
“Looks like a large chunk of a submarine conning tower. It’s a, wait.” Pacino snapped his left grip to increase magnification. “It’s some kind of escape pod, originally faired into the sail, but now it’s floating on the sea. I show survivors on its upper surface. They’re moving. One of them is standing. Now he’s pointing at the periscope. He’s waving his hands over his arms. Now both people topside are waving at us.”
“Let me see,” Dankleff said.
“Low power, bearing zero-nine-one, on the contact,” Pacino said, turning the scope over to Dankleff. Dankleff increased the magnification, then increased it again.
“I’ll be dipped in shit,” Dankleff said. “Survivors.”
“Let’s get them aboard.” Pacino grabbed the phone on pos two and pushed the button for the wardroom. Fishman answered.
“Wait a minute,” Dankleff said. “Not so fast.”
“Send Captain Ahmadi to central command,” Pacino said into the phone.
Ahmadi appeared with Fishman in tow. Pacino looked at the Iranian. “Prepare to surface.”
“No, Ahmadi, wait,” Dankleff ordered. He abandoned the periscope and turned to face Pacino. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Pacino looked at him. “Rescuing survivors, U-Boat. Just like they’d do for us.”
“Goddammit, Patch, they’re Russian military. On a mission to kill us.”
“Not anymore they aren’t. As of now, they’re shipwrecked submariners. Submariners, U-Boat, just like we are. We have to save them.”
“You can’t just bring dozens of Russian military onboard. There could be sixty or seventy of them, maybe more. They can’t come aboard.”
“Why not?” Pacino asked. “We have the room. We can’t load them on Vermont—she doesn’t have the room. Plus, Vermont’s a classified project boat. We can’t put Russian sailors on her. So, by default, we load them up here and hope the good doctor Scooter Tucker-Santos has enough medical supplies to treat them. Nothing particularly classified here. They already know about our mission and the fast reactor is theirs anyway. And they built this boat, so it has no secrets for them, except the crypto and radio junk we lugged onboard, but that’s behind a sturdy lock and they couldn’t make sense of it anyway.”
Dankleff checked his watch and shook his head. “Say we did take survivors aboard. Who’s to say they won’t try to take over the ship? And return it to Iran? And kill us all in the process?”
“That’s why we have SEALs. And us. We’ll all arm back up before we take on the survivors. Anyone becomes a threat, Scooter injects them with Propofol, lights out, zip ties and duct tape.”
“Oh, my God,” Dankleff groaned. “What about Russian satellites? Or drones? Aren’t you worried that if we surface, we’ll attract attention? What’s to stop the Iranians from vectoring in an Ilyushin Il-38 ASW plane, or a few destroyers, or the Russians from flying in a couple Il-114 maritime patrol planes full up with torpedoes?
“That won’t happen,” Pacino said. “Two nuclear explosions, an exploding nuclear submarine, a gigantic escape pod surfaces, and not a trace of a Russian surface or air asset. And besides, what if Russian surveillance does see us? We’ll have their guys. Once the Russians are aboard, the Russian Navy would be crazy to sink us. In their minds, we have hostages. Prisoners of war, so to speak.”