“I was just going to say that this is interesting.” Mercer’s grease pencil circled a graph that was the data from the athwartships towed array beam. There was a slender peak forming at 50.2 Hertz.
“Yeah, big deal, fifty cycles,” Varney said dismissively. “Half the ships out here are running fifty Hertz electrics.”
“And if the Panther is on batteries, that’s all we’re going to hear from him. That and maybe a LOFAR detect on his low freq main motor.”
“You got a low freq hit?” Varney asked, leaning far over Mercer’s console.
“No.”
“Fuck,” Varney said, turning away again to go back to the command console.
“But I do have an acoustic daylight detect on something submerged on the same bearing the athwartships beam is looking.”
Varney bounced back again. He leaned in to stare at the top console’s display. To the uninitiated, it would be like staring at the white noise of a broken television, but Varney had qualified under the tutelage of Sonarman Chief Tom “Whale” Albanese, Vermont’s revered top sonar operator, reportedly the best in the Atlantic Fleet, and The Whale had taught Varney the mysteries of the acoustic daylight array. It was mostly noise, but a repeating series of black vertical bars kept recurring off to the side. Mercer rolled his cursor ball over to the there-one-second-gone-the-next black spots, the bearing 310. Then he selected the time-frequency graph in the middle display and rolled his cursor to the bearing spread of the beam, which was from bearings 300 to 325. Then he rolled his cursor to bearing 310 on the broadband waterfall display, which showed a slight trace at 312, which was not unusual, because that was the direction to the shipping lanes.
“You’re sure the acoustic daylight array’s not picking up a surface ship?”
“It’s screening out everything above the thermal layer. I’m only looking deep with it. If the Panther is sailing the way I think he is, he’s at keel depth one hundred meters, and the thermal layer is at fifty.”
“So Petty Officer Mercer, you’re saying—”
Mercer straightened up in his seat and turned to face Varney. “I’m calling it, sir. We’ve snapped him up.” In a louder voice, he announced formally to the entire room, “Officer of the Deck, new sonar contact, designate Sierra Fifty-Seven, bearing three one zero, held on narrowband, broadband and acoustic daylight imaging, possible submerged warship.”
“Hot diggity fuckin’ dawg, and about time,” Varney said, lunging for the phone at the command console. “Good job, Petty Officer Mercer. Don’t fucking lose him. Designate Sierra Five Seven as Master One.” Varney dialed the XO’s stateroom.
“Command Duty Officer,” Quinnivan’s voice came over the circuit. During the midnight watch, Quinnivan relieved Captain Seagraves of most of his command responsibilities so the captain could get some uninterrupted sleep. While stationed, the command duty officer had the same authority as the captain.
“Officer of the Deck, sir,” Varney said breathlessly, his heart pounding. “We fucking got him! I’m calling silent battlestations, sir.”
“I’ll wake the captain,” Quinnivan said, a jolly tone in his voice.
The gathered officers waited silently in the wardroom, counting off the last minutes before stationing the watch to get underway.
“Still no word of what the mission is, Captain?” the navigator and operations officer, Misha Dobryvnik, asked.
Orlov shook his head. “Nothing, just the original orders to make all haste to the terminus point at the entrance to the Gulf of Oman. Safe to assume that once we report that we’re on-station, we’ll get a new op-order.”
The aft wardroom door opened and a sweaty Chernobrovin came in. “Repair crew signed off the work package, Captain,” he said, pouring a cup of water for himself from the credenza. “The electric plant has all ship’s loads and we’re divorced from shorepower, removing cables now. Propulsion turbines are warm and loaded by the load bank, and the main motor is ready.”
“Very good, Mr. Engineer,” Orlov said, standing. “Mr. First, set the maneuvering stations watch.” It would be damned good to get back to sea, he thought.
The announcing circuit clicked and Vlasenko’s hard-as-steel voice came over. “Attention all hands. Set the maneuvering stations watch for getting underway.”
Orlov returned to his stateroom and grabbed his binoculars and his VHF radio. In the central command post, people rushed to their stations and donned headsets. He walked to the forward door of the room, to the ladder and tunnel leading vertically to the conning tower interior. He waited for one of the lookouts to get all the way up, then took the ladder upward, the dim fluorescent lights of the ship giving way to the bright sunshine of the morning. He took the four steps up to the conning station on top of the conning tower, the area featuring two leather seats for the conning officer and assistant conning officer, the seats positioned behind an open space where the officers could stand behind the windscreen. As he stepped into the conning station, the communications officer, Captain Lieutenant Mikhail TK Sukolov was connecting and testing the conning tower’s communication box, a device the size of a toaster oven that bolted to a post aft of the windscreen and was connected electrically by a large cable with multiple connectors. He stood, saluted and smiled at Orlov.
“Conning station communications tested, Captain. All is in order.”
“Very well, Mr. Communicator,” Orlov said formally, returning the salute. Sukolov had been inport duty officer last night, so evidently no hangover for him this morning.
“Excuse me sir,” he said, and passed by Orlov on his way to the control room. He passed Vlasenko and saluted the first officer as he was on his way up from the tower interior to the conning station.
“Lines are singled up, Captain. Pier crew is ready to lift the gangway.”
“Lose the gangway, Mr. First. Did you decide to drive us out yourself?”
“Yes, Captain. I can use the sea air and maybe a little sunshine.”
Orlov nodded, smiling at Vlasenko. “We could all use some sea air and sunshine. Probably our last for a long time.”
The pier crane rumbled as it pulled off the gangway. Vlasenko stood on the port side of the conning station, leaning over the coaming to look down at the pier. He reached for a megaphone and projected his voice down to the linehandlers below. “Pier crew, stand ready to toss over all lines!”
He looked over at Orlov. “Permission to take in lines and get underway, sir?”
“By all means, Mr. First, take in all lines and get underway.” It was high time they got the hell out of here.
Ten minutes later, the Pacific Fleet’s submarine K-573 Novosibirsk plowed through the small waves at maximum surfaced speed, headed northeast for water deep enough to dive.
The command console of the USS Vermont was crowded as Captain Seagraves leaned over the periscope display from the inboard side. Lieutenant Anthony Pacino stood aft of the display and held the controller to the scope in his hands. To his left he could feel the fabric of the navigator’s coveralls against the bare skin of his forearm, having rolled up his sleeves in the warm control room. To Navigator Romanov’s right, the executive officer — the battlestations firecontrol coordinator — stood, alternating his gaze between the large flatscreen periscope display repeaters on the forward bulkhead, one showing Pacino’s, the other showing Lieutenant Varney’s Pos One’s scope, and the firecontrol “dot stack,” representing the best solution to the target, Master One. The Panther. This close to the target, the data source had been shifted from narrowband to broadband, and the dot stack had become sloppy, the phenomenon called “near-field effect.” With a half shiplength between the two submarines, there was wide range of bearings to the target. The approach had been shifted to visual, first on periscope infrared, and now to normal optics.