He walked into the control room and walked up to the midwatch officer of the deck, Lieutenant Varney, at the command console. The messenger of the watch, the same petty officer who’d awakened Pacino, arrived with a large tray of coffee cups. Pacino took one gratefully, the brew hot enough to burn his tongue. For the next five minutes, Varney walked Pacino through the initial contact with Master Two, the cargo ship. The main target, the L-class submarine, would be designated “Master One” when it emerged out of the belly of the cargo ship. The cargo ship was making loud transients, and it was considered likely this was the beginning of the operation to launch the narco-submarine, but the cargo ship was still steaming slowly northward out of Port Santa Marta and hadn’t slowed yet, and they all believed it would need to stop to be able to launch the submarine.
Romanov asked a few quiet questions. She would be battlestations officer of the deck while Pacino would be the junior officer of the deck and the “approach officer.” During battlestations, the XO would take up a roving position behind the battlecontrol and weapon control consoles, his job to get the magical, mystical holy grail of information called “the solution,” which was the distance to their main target and his heading and speed. If one knew the solution, one could easily put a salvo of torpedoes right on top of where he’d be in the near future — assuming the target didn’t suddenly change course or speed — a very bad event known as a “zig.” The XO’s position was called the “firecontrol coordinator” or simply “coordinator.”
The “approach officer” was usually the captain, who rode herd over the firecontrol coordinator, the weapons officer and the officer of the deck. That holy trinity always spoke up just before a weapon launch, the coordinator responsible for the solution, the weapons officer for the health and settings of the weapons to be employed and the officer of the deck for the behavior of the ship in the moments prior to launch. For Pacino to be acting as approach officer seemed insane, but this was how this was done in the force, he knew. Thrust the maximum amount of responsibility and demands on the non-qual and harden him to be qualified and “heavy,” the submariner’s term for knowledgeable. He consoled himself that the captain would be right behind him, as would the navigator, in the event he made a critical mistake.
Pacino nodded at Varney. “I relieve you, sir,” he said.
Varney faced Captain Seagraves. “Captain, I’ve been properly relieved of the officer of the deck watch by Lieutenant Commander Romanov and Lieutenant junior grade Pacino.”
“Very well,” Seagraves said quietly.
Varney hurried to the starboard side attack center console nearest Quinnivan, “pos one,” where the officer most adept at tracking contacts sat and, dancing with the computer and the sonar data, originated his best guess at the solution to the target. Lieutenant Lomax at pos two would compete with Varney, coming up with his own suggestion of the solution. Lieutenant Eisenhart joined them at pos three, his console usually selected to the geographic plot, which showed the contrasting solutions of pos one and pos two so the captain and XO could see which made more sense. Absent an active sonar pulse, using passive listen-only sonar required some intuitive guessing about what the contact was doing, but emitting active sonar gave away their position and intent, and was not stealthy. It contradicted Vermont’s battle cry of It never happened, we were never there.
Pacino took up his position at the command console, its large flat panel screen tuned to the navigation chart display, since the periscope was retracted and switched off. He reached down with two fingers and blew up the scale of their position shown in blue, north of Santa Marta, with the exiting freighter’s position blinking in blood red.
“Your headset, Approach Officer,” Romanov said from over his shoulder. He gave her a look of gratitude and strapped on the headset, only one ear covered to monitor the phone circuits, the other open to the sounds of the room around him. “Better darken the room so we can see the displays.”
“Pilot,” Pacino called to Lieutenant Dankleff at the ship control console, “rig control for black!”
The lights went out in the control room, the room lit only by the sonar display consoles on the port side, the firecontrol and weapon control consoles to starboard, the command and navigation console displays and the large screen periscope monitors forward port and starboard.
The navigation electronics technician suddenly piped up from the aft port corner of control. “Approach Officer, mark sunrise!”
“Very well, Nav ET,” Pacino said. With the seascape brightening, it meant a greater chance any divers helping the cargo ship launch the narco-sub might see them.
“Approach Officer,” Romanov said, “make sure battlestations are fully manned.”
“Coordinator,” Pacino barked at the XO. “Are we manned?”
Quinnivan spun to face him, coming to attention as if Pacino were the captain himself, and said formally, “Approach Officer, battlestations are manned.”
“Very well, Coordinator,” Pacino said, trying to force his voice to be deep, loud and commanding, hopefully not wavering from his intense nervousness, a hint of absurdity occurring to him that his boss’ boss was treating him like a superior officer.
“Ready for your speech?” Romanov asked. He nodded, trying to remember all the tactics drilled into him by the navigator, hoping he looked cooler than he felt. He cleared his throat self-consciously.
“Attention in the firecontrol party,” Pacino announced to the crowd in the room and the phone circuits, “my intention is to parallel the slow course of the freighter, designated Master Two, who is on course north, speed four knots, range, one thousand yards, maintaining our present depth at one two zero feet. We will hold station with Master Two as he slows, stops and prepares to open his hold and lower and release the target diesel submarine, Master One. We are at risk at that moment of being seen by divers in this clear water from any floodlights inside the cargo ship and the early morning sunlight, if the divers exit the freighter’s hold, so we’ll hang back, more deeply submerged so we won’t be counterdetected, but hovering close to Master Two, with both scopes raised. I will be controlling number one scope while the Coordinator and pos one will control the number two scope. Number one will display on the forward starboard display, number two on the forward port.
“Once the noise of the hold doors opening fades, we will come shallow and trail Master One until he’s clear of the freighter. We don’t want the freighter to see the Bigfoot surfacing and having trouble, or else it would heave-to and render aid. We’ll need to commence the operation to force the sub to the surface as soon as the freighter is over the horizon.
“Before Master One secures snorkeling on his diesels and goes deep, we’ll match his speed and take station slightly ahead of him at periscope depth so we can fine-tune our position. Being ahead of him gives the SEALs the advantage of the current moving them toward the Bigfoot hull. At my call the SEAL force will lock out with their propulsor units and drive to the hull of Master One. We will continue steaming beside the target but fading slightly astern of him in case there’s a failure and one or more SEALs need to return to own-ship. The SEALs will deploy the net to stop Master One’s screw. Expectations are that Master One will go dead in the water and surface. SEALs will conduct tactical steps to overcome the crew and take command of Master One on the surface. We will enter phase two of the op at that time. Are there any questions?”