“Dive, dive!”
She reached into the overhead and hit an alarm lever, and a loud screeching “OOOOOO-GAAAAAAAH” blasted out of the speakers. She spoke on the 1MC again.
“Dive, dive!”
“Copilot, open forward main ballast tank vents,” she ordered. The copilot, the torpedoman chief, Nygard, repeated the order and selected the “open” selector and the confirmation button on his touch screen for the forward ballast tank vents.
Pacino stood behind the command console, his eyes on the periscope screen. He trained the view to the bow, the venting coming out of the forward ballast tank vents barely perceptible above the rolling swells.
“Venting forward,” he called.
“Going to ten degree down bubble,” the pilot announced. The deck, with all its rocking and rolling, started to tilt forward.
“Copilot, open aft main ballast tank vents,” Goreliki ordered, and Nygard operated the touch screen buttons.
“Aft MBT vents open,” he called.
Pacino trained the periscope view to dead astern. In the waves and wind, he could see vertical spray coming out of the aft vents.
“Venting aft,” he said.
The deck plunged into a steeper tilt. Pacino was still holding on to the command console’s safety hand-hold bar.
“Six five feet,” Goreliki called.
The waves and spray had grown closer to the view.
“Sail’s under,” Pacino said.
“Seven zero feet, seven two.”
“Scope’s awash,” Pacino said. “Scope’s awash.”
“Seven five feet.”
“Scope’s under,” Pacino said, reaching for the selector on the console that would lower the periscope.
BOOK 2:
MODERN PIRATES
WEAR AT-SEA COVERALLS
8
In the flank sprint to the Caribbean, there had only been one excursion to periscope depth, at the Tropic of Cancer southeast of Nassau, Bahamas, to collapse the “fix error circle” of the ship’s inertial navigation system, what Romanov called an “overgrown fucking gyro.” Once Romanov knew exactly where they were, she could be confident in her navigation past the island approach to the entrance to the Windward Passage between the eastern tip of Cuba and the northwestern point of Haiti. The ship slowed down to standard speed, 15 knots, to navigate from the windward islands through the Cuba-Haiti shipping lanes and past Jamaica at “Point Whiskey,” where the ship sped back up to flank speed and headed south.
From Pacino’s glances at the navigation chart console before his copilot watches, and a few days later, pilot watches, they had diverged from a course toward the Panama Canal, so they were headed elsewhere. Obviously, they wouldn’t go through the canal and they wouldn’t be waiting to ambush someone exiting the canal, so what possible mission was this? Pacino asked at least once a watch, but still Romanov would divulge nothing about their destination. She’d stand next to Pacino and make sure there was one navigation point and only one entered beyond their immediate sailing point.
“Nav,” Pacino said, glancing at his watch before assuming the pilot console seat, “where are we going? What are we doing? What’s the mission?”
It had almost become their inside joke. He’d ask and Silky Romanov would give him a mysterious, teasing smile, her eyes bright, and say in a false Southern accent, “ain’t sayin.’” But today she looked at him seriously and said, “after evening meal, Mr. Pacino, at nineteen hundred, there will be an op brief for the officers and SEALs. And I promise, all your eager non-qual questions shall be answered in full.”
Pacino had nodded and taken a briefing from the off-going pilot of the watch, Chief Cruz, the jocular and friendly storekeeper chief.
The watch dragged on, the ship ramming through the Caribbean Sea at flank speed at five hundred feet below the waves, with nothing happening. After watch relief, Pacino went to the wardroom and studied for his qualifications, but couldn’t concentrate, so he opened up the assigned NewsFiles his boss, the weapons officer, had assigned him to read, both open-source and classified, although none were higher than secret level. Pacino searched for context. There had to be a reason Spichovich would send these, but like the first batch from the XO, these seemed unrelated and random. Another update on the Russian Republic’s Status-6 Poseidon / Kanyon nuclear powered, nuclear-tipped autonomous torpedo. An update on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and desire to build the sixth modification of their SLBM submarine-launched ballistic missile and test it from a modified diesel-electric submarine. Great, Pacino thought, the hostile North Korean regime arguably run by a madwoman builds a nuclear-powered ballistic missile sub, a “boomer,” with unlimited range and duration. She’d be tempted to shower down doom on the U.S. west coast.
A second Iranian update about them attempting to design a nuclear reactor for a submarine, with apparent failure on that score up to the present, but there were ominous signs that the Russians were equipping an old Iranian Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine with a radical, new design of a liquid metal reactor, using the Iranians to test it. Apparently, according to the intel, it was too dangerous for the Russians to test in their vast boondocks, and they had gotten the Iranians to agree to take it to the Indian Ocean for a test run. If it worked, it would be the Iranians to own, but odds were, the unit would explode with the yield of half of Hiroshima’s energy release. But the Iranians didn’t seem to care, so intense were their desires to enter the nuclear submarine club.
With all that going on in the world, Pacino thought, why would a “project boat” like Vermont be ordered on this oddball flank run toward the South American coastline? With a task force of SEAL commandos on board?
Eventually the table was set for dinner, which would be Chinese food with sesame chicken or spicy beef, brown rice, eggrolls and the supply officer’s favorite, fortune cookies with custom-made fortunes he had written especially for the crew. Gangbanger’s strange sense of humor was evident in some of the outrageous fortunes. Chinese night was tremendously popular with the crew, but Pacino would have been happier with a steak and potatoes. The officers at dinner were subdued and quiet, none of the usual banter going on, all of them waiting impatiently for the op brief.
Finally, after the cutlery was removed and the table cleared, the officers produced their handhelds on the table’s leather-covered surface. The captain, XO and navigator got up and followed the captain forward through the door by the supply officer. Engineer Elvis Lewinsky passed a large carafe of coffee to Weapons Officer Sprocket Spichovich, who filled up and passed it to Torpedo Officer Li No, who shook his head, his cup already filled with his eclectic tea brew, the pot then passing to Communicator Easy Eisenhart, who freshened his half-full cup and passed the pot to Pacino. Pacino filled his cup and handed the pot to the SEAL XO, Grip Aquatong. Aquatong was already drinking from a large energy drink can and passed the pot to Supply Officer Gangbanger Ganghadharan, who set it on the center of the table.
The middle level of the forward compartment started at frame 87, the bulkhead between the massive reactor compartment amidships and the forward compartment’s crew’s mess, which was the largest open space aboard, spanning the width of the boat, with café seating style tables that could seat a group of forty, more if they crowded three to a bench seat. The messroom ended forward with a door to storage on the port side, a steep centerline staircase — called a “ladder”—going up to the upper level, and the galley on the starboard side with its long cafeteria-style tray-slider for food service to the crew. Opposite the galley along the centerline passageway was the wardroom, a combined officer’s messroom, conference room and office, where the officers and SEALs officers were waiting for the operation brief.