“Bridge, Navigator, JOOD 1JV.” The navigator wanted to speak to him privately on the 1JV phone. Pacino hoisted the phone to his ears, plugging the other ear against the noise.
“Junior Officer of the Deck.”
“JOOD, Navigator,” Romanov said. “Speed limit in the channel is fifteen knots. You’re going twenty-one.”
Pacino glanced up at the captain. “Navigator,” he said slowly, “We’re in a hurry.”
“Navigator, aye,” she snapped and hung up.
In what seemed no time, the Bay Bridge Tunnel was behind them and the submarine was in open water. Romanov had them turn south after Fort Story, paralleling the Virginia Beach coast, until the resort hotels had faded astern, then turned them due east into the traffic separation scheme. Twenty minutes later, they were officially out of Norfolk Harbor and into the Atlantic Ocean.
“Secure the maneuvering watch,” Quinnivan’s voice boomed on the 1MC shipwide announcing circuit. “Station underway watch section one.”
Captain Seagraves climbed down from the flying bridge. “Disassemble the flying bridge, gentlemen,” he said, addressing both Pacino and Lomax. “I’ll be in my stateroom.” With that, he vanished into the vertical tunnel to the upper level.
“Control, Bridge,” Pacino called, “Captain has left the bridge.”
Pacino took a deep breath, looked aft at the fading beachfront of Virginia Beach, and scanned the horizon with his binoculars. The ocean was empty except for them. The sun rose higher in the sky as the radar rotated, the flags flapped, the wind blew and the bow wave roared, and for a long moment, Anthony Pacino realized something — that here, in this moment, he was actually happy. The sea had seemed to have infected him. All the heavy weight of losing Carrie Alameda and the Piranha seemed much lighter now. He smiled as he scanned the horizon again.
7
Pacino found a seat at the wardroom table, the same one he’d used at officers’ call, for the mid-day meal. It was starting to feel like an assigned seat. Watch relief had gone down at noon, but the “turnover” from Pacino and Lomax to Lieutenant Eisenhart had taken a quarter hour, so that by the time they were relieved, it was almost 1220 hours, almost an hour after the meal started for the oncoming watch section.
Pacino had walked into the wardroom and found the captain finished with his plate, as were the engineer and XO, all of them lingering with coffee after the meal. On behalf of himself and Lomax, as off-going junior officer of the deck, it fell to him to give the watch relief briefing to the captain. Pacino had taken a deep breath and said, “Captain, off-going JOOD, sir, Mr. Lomax and I have been properly relieved by Lieutenant Eisenhart of the deck and the conn, sir, steaming on the surface as before, course zero-nine-five, all ahead flank. Last fix on our watch was noon by GPS satellite and concurs with SINS inertial nav to within ten yards. Sounding is three zero fathoms and correlates to charted depth. Time to the Point Delta dive point at the hundred fathom curve is seven hours. Electric plant is in a normal full-power lineup, main coolant pumps one, two, five and six running in fast speed. Forecast calls for us hitting a squall line in the next hour. From what we could tell, sir, it looks like we’re going to be in for it — it’s going to be wet and rough out there.”
Captain Seagraves had nodded up at Pacino. “Very well, Mr. Pacino. I just wanted to say, you and Mr. Lomax did a somewhat adequate job today.”
Lomax smiled in pleasure. Apparently, doling out weak praise was a running joke for the captain. “Why, thank you, sir,” Lomax said, taking his seat.
The captain, XO and engineer finished and left the room. There was no sign of the weapons officer or navigator, and after a moment the room was empty but for Li No, Lomax and Pacino.
Soon Pacino’s plate was taken up by sliders — hamburgers so greasy they virtually sailed down one’s throat — and fries. As he washed it down with a searingly sugary bright red colored “bug juice,” he considered how good this would have tasted with a beer. But no doubt, he’d have to watch his intake, because inhaling chow like this four times a day would make anyone pack on pounds.
After the meal, Pacino grabbed coffee in a USS Vermont mug and opened his handheld and scanned the news files. As the ship steamed through the rising sea state, the room and deck started to sway and roll in the waves, his coffee threatening to spill out of his cup. He concentrated on his display screen. There were multiple alerts sent to him by the XO, the navigator and the weapons officer, things that were required reading. They were odd, seemingly unconnected articles.
The first was an article about China’s Peoples’ Liberation Army Navy, or “PLAN,” which was commissioning their fifth gigantic supercarrier. A second, an editorial about how nations hostile to America were planning to send their naval forces to conduct operations in the Western Hemisphere — Iran and North Korea and China, all seeking blue water naval status by sailing in Atlantic waters, a traditional lake of the western powers of the USA, the UK and the European Union. That one gave Pacino pause — imagine a Chinese carrier battle group in the damned Atlantic, steaming off Norfolk.
There was a third secret-classified article about the Iranian and North Korean submarine programs, with the North Koreans concentrating on putting a sub-launched ballistic missile into a quiet diesel-electric submarine while the Iranians had aspirations to put a nuclear reactor into a retrofitted old Kilo Russian-built diesel-electric attack sub.
A fourth article about the Taiwanese building submarines intent on deterring China from invading them. A fifth about experimental new tactics of nuclear attack submarines versus diesel boats, since operating on batteries alone, diesel boats could be between three and nine decibels quieter on broadband sonar than a nuclear boat. It boiled down to some complicated acoustic physics of narrowband tuning to seek out low frequency bell tones — tonals — put out by large electrical motors. And a sixth about the new amphibious Chinese PLAN helicopter carriers.
The seventh was about drug smuggling by the Medellin cartel, and how they were building and using narco-subs to ferry cocaine from Medellin, Colombia, their submarines becoming progressively more sophisticated, and that their competitors, the Barranquilla cartel, had secretly succeeded in putting in service a much larger submarine, rumors persisting that the operational Barranquilla narco-sub was a replica of an old World War I American design, sailing out of Santa Marta, Colombia, but no one in the open sources or the top secret intelligence community had yet seen it. It was elusive. It was a ghost.
The eighth article covered what was known about the capabilities of China’s new antisubmarine warfare maritime patrol aircraft and the heavy antisubmarine weapons they carried, including a hypersonic nuclear-tipped weapon that dropped a hundred kiloton bomb in a depth charge.
The ninth and final article was classified top secret, higher than the others, and laid out the schematic plans of the Russian Status-6 Poseidon / Kanyon nuclear powered, hundred megaton torpedo, meant to loiter off the coastal cities of an enemy — the EU or America — or even lay dormant on the bottom for months, and when triggered, detonate a cobalt-laced dirty bomb powerful enough to kill tens of millions and make an area inside of fifty miles uninhabitable for three hundred years. And the last paragraph was the most chilling, that to date, there was no effective countermeasure to this nuclear-powered death machine.