“Let’s get going,” Aquatong said.
Dankleff hit the flood valve handle again the sound of water flowing in restarted. Outside the air space, through a round porthole, Pacino could see the water level started rising again until it had risen all the way to the upper hatch. Dankleff shut the flood hull and backup valves, then looked at Pacino, his mask on the top of his head.
“You don’t have to do this, Patch.”
Pacino lifted his mask and dropped his regulator. “It was a momentary thing, boss. I swear I’m okay.” He drilled his eyes into Dankleff’s, hoping he sounded believable.
Dankleff exhaled and put in his regulator and nodded. Pacino pulled his mask down and clamped his teeth into the regulator and took a few breaths. Dankleff turned to hit the hydraulic lever for the upper hatch, then pulled Pacino under the water’s surface with him, the two of them emerging into the flooded lockout trunk.
Inside the trunk, Aquatong was already out the upper hatch, pulling Petty Officer Onur after him, then Dankleff, finally Pacino. As Pacino emerged into the clear water, he could see the entire hull of the black Vermont extending into the distance. He noticed a faint trace of green algae at the waterline, showing how the boat rested in the water when surfaced. Farther back and above them, the hull of the Kilo submarine was also visible, the sub stationary nearer the surface.
Aquatong had strapped a safety lanyard to Pacino’s belt, the lanyard attached to Dankleff and the crypto tech. Aquatong maneuvered his Mark 17 propulsion unit and started off for the Panther hull. Pacino stared at the hull of the Vermont, thinking, there, right there, that’s where the first torpedo hit the Piranha. He clamped his eyes shut and shook his head, forcing himself to be in the present. He saw Dankleff looking at him, giving him a “thumbs-up” sign, but it wasn’t a statement, it was a question. Are you okay? Pacino nodded and shot a thumbs-up back at him, and by that time Aquatong had maneuvered them over the forward hatch of the Panther.
The Panther was bigger than in Pacino’s imagination, but then, he thought, reality always is, and that thought made him think about Fishman’s ideas about the nature of reality. Could this, all this, really be just a simulation? “It’s only a movie,” he thought to himself as his fins went down into the hatch of Panther’s forward escape trunk.
20
Grip Aquatong pulled the upper hatch of the Panther’s escape trunk shut and spun the hatch-wheel to dog the hatch, then opened the vent and drain valves. The water in the tight space drained, and as the level sank below Pacino’s chest, he dropped his regulator, put his mask on the top of his head and pulled off his flippers. Dankleff was staring at him. Pacino grinned.
“I’m okay, Skipper,” he said.
“Better to be dry, eh, AOIC?”
Pacino nodded. Aquatong opened the lower hatch, the last drops of water falling down to the space below. He climbed into the hull, then Onur, Dankleff, then Pacino. Pacino emerged into a space crowded with weapon racks and torpedoes, lit by weak overhead fluorescent lamps. Valves and piping and panels choked the walls of the space, interspersed with a thousand runs of cable. At least one question he had was answered — they did have torpedoes, but what kind?
“Jesus, look at this,” Dankleff said, looking around. “It’s like 1950 in here.”
“Come on,” Aquatong said, “Hurry up.”
The four of them took off their diving equipment and put them into four separate piles — who knew if they’d have to use them again, so no sense mixing them up into a chaotic stack.
“Follow me,” Aquatong said, and walked quickly aft, where a circular hatch was set into the thick steel of the watertight bulkhead. They emerged into a narrow passageway, the walls of it done in a light birch paneling. The passageway extended far aft, but Aquatong only went thirty feet down it before arriving at an alcove where a steep stairway extended up in one direction and down in the other. Aquatong vaulted up a steep staircase to an upper level. Pacino followed Dankleff and pulled himself up by the stair’s stainless steel railing into a narrow area, boxed in in three directions, each wall of it filled with junction boxes, cables and piping, with an open space amidships of the stairway, the opposite area filled with what looked thousands of valves in piping, most with large, red, circular handles, a few of the larger ones high up in the overhead with bar-type handles, these valve handles engraved with large letters in Farsi.
Pacino stared at the valve manifold wall. “You weren’t kidding about it being 1950 in here. Maybe 1940. Look — there’s got to be a million valves in that rats’ nest of piping — it’s ‘The Million Valve Manifold.’”
“More like a World War I sub with that jumble of valves. No way we’re going to figure out how to operate this with just a translator.”
“With any luck, the Iranians are still alive,” Pacino said.
Aquatong kept going forward through a narrow space past the Million Valve Manifold into what had to be the control room, but it was barely twenty feet square. Unlike the U.S. Navy’s submarines with their drab gray paint, the predominant color of the room was a bright corn-on-the-cob yellow. Jammed into the center of the brightly lit room were two periscopes, the forward one slender and retracted, the smooth stainless steel of its pole extending downward into its well. The aft periscope was larger, possibly the navigation unit, and it was extended, the grips still horizontal, the eyepiece glowing with light from the surface.
To the port side of the scopes was a command seat shoehorned in by a bulkhead of more valves, junction boxes and cabling. Forward of the command seat was a panel in the port forward corner, with what looked like a radar repeater or sonar repeater, or maybe both, the console jammed with a hundred switches and annunciator lights. To the right, at about the centerline, was a console built to be stood behind, with a display at eye height, possibly an upward-looking sonar, reminding Pacino of an underice sonar, but what use would that be to a non-nuclear submarine? To starboard of that, in the forward starboard corner, was a small ship control console, with a horseshoe-shaped panel, a steering yoke in the center, joysticks on either side of it, one seat centered behind the yoke, the second jammed against the starboard bulkhead.
Immediately aft were three consoles built to be stations where watchstanders sat facing outboard to starboard, with fairly expansive table-like horizontal sections with keyboards and function keys set into them, communication circuit microphones, vertical sections jammed with rotary switches, gauges, more annunciator lights, toggle switches and buttons. Aft of the three sit-down consoles was the Million Valve Manifold bulkhead. Pacino looked around in wonder. He could fit this entire tiny control room into his father’s kitchen, he thought.
“Figure out how to surface this bitch before it sinks,” Aquatong urged.
“Geek, get over here, Petty Officer Onur,” Dankleff commanded.
“You hear that?” Pacino asked Dankleff.
“What?”
“Diesel engine,” Pacino said. “We’re snorkeling, and apparently hovering while we snorkel.”