“Well, we ain’t goin’ anywhere till the SEALs free up the screw. So let’s hope whatever hovering system they’ve got keeps us level here. We sink a few feet and the induction mast goes under, if they don’t have a head valve or the head valve controller fails, that diesel engine could suck all the air out of the boat and kill us, like in that Chinese diesel-electric sub a few years ago. God knows if they have a vacuum switch interlock.”
“Or even if they have one, does it work?”
“Geek, can you read this panel?” Dankleff said, focusing the crypto tech on the middle console. “This ‘pos two,’ if you can call it that, seems to be a combined ballast control panel and electric plant control panel. We need the BCP part of it. Onur, there should be a switch or lever somewhere that says ‘main ballast tank blow,’ or two of them, with one of them for the forward group and the other for the aft group.”
Petty Officer Onur looked at the panel and shook his head. “OIC, it’s all abbreviations and knobology. There’s nothing a landlubber can figure out from this. I know technical terms in Farsi, but these abbreviations are all what you guys call ‘inside baseball.’”
“I was afraid of this,” Dankleff said. He looked around. “Nothing resembling emergency blow levers. Fucking designers built all the functions into this BCP slash EPCP.”
“Look for a SOP manual,” Pacino said.
“Yeah, Geek, look for a book, an instruction manual, procedure manual, something labeled ‘Standard Operating Procedures.’”
Petty Officer Onur pulled out an orange one-inch-thick plastic binder. “Says ‘Operating Procedures.’”
“Try to find something that says ‘surfacing.’ Or ‘emergency surfacing.’”
Petty Officer Onur studied the manual, frowning.
“This is taking too long,” Pacino said. “We need one of the Iranian crew.”
“The officers are all in the wardroom, or at least we thought they were officers,” Aquatong said. “But they’re all kind of tied up at the moment.”
“Not funny,” Pacino said. “Take me to them. U-Boat, you and Onur keep trying to figure out how to surface this bitch.”
“Hey, who’s in command here?” Dankleff said, but he was smiling.
Down the birch-paneled passageway, a side door opened into the wardroom. Pacino took it in at a glance. Fairly large for a wardroom, almost as big as Vermont’s, which was an odd contrast to the cramped design of the tiny control room. There were bookshelves along two walls, a seating area at the far end, and the long ends of the table each had four seats, with a larger one at the door end — for the captain — and a normal chair at the other end, with a door that opened into the galley, a pass-through in the wall for bringing in food.
There were teacups and plates on the table and a tea service that had gone cold, a serving tray of pastries and small sandwiches in the table’s center. Seated at the end seating area were three tied-up Iranian officers. The end chair and the six seats at the table were taken up with more immobilized Iranians. All of them were zip-tied to their chairs and had duct tape over their mouths. Pacino pulled Onur over.
“Which one is the captain?”
Onur read the name badges over the left breast pocket of their at-sea coveralls.
“There’s just names, sir, not rank or station.”
“For God’s sake, Geek, ask them.”
One of the Iranians started moving violently in the seat he was cable-tied to. Pacino walked up to him. He was maybe forty years old, with a well-groomed haircut, a full handlebar mustache, clean-shaven otherwise, slender, medium height. He looked a little too young for central casting to send in as the commanding officer, though. Pacino carefully pulled the duct tape off the man’s mouth.
He took a gasping breath. “I’m the captain,” he said in perfect, almost British, English, the stress of the moment making his voice a half-octave higher than Pacino imagined it normally was. “Commander Resa Ahmadi, commanding officer of Panther. And who in the name of Allah are you?”
“Anthony Pacino, Lieutenant, United States Navy,” Pacino said, his face close to the Iranian’s, looking into his eyes to try to read if the Iranian were truly the captain, and if he’d try to sabotage the mission, perhaps even sink them all intentionally. “Why do you speak English so well?”
“I went to high school in London. For college and grad school, I went to Harvard in America,” he said. “Double major — quantum physics and international relations.”
“Funny combination of studies for a submarine officer,” Pacino said, weighing the Iranian’s words, and noticing that the officer next to him, an older, thickly bearded and heavier man, was glaring at Ahmadi as if he wanted to kill him. “If you went to Harvard,” Pacino asked, “tell me this — there’s a restaurant just east of the Harvard Book Store, across the street from Lamont Library. What is it?”
Without hesitation, Ahmadi answered. “It’s the Grafton Street Pub and Grill when I was there, but there was talk about closing it down.”
“Really?” Pacino asked. It had been a favorite haunt of his and Carolyn Alameda’s when he’d been a grad student in Boston. “So what does it look like inside?”
“Lots of brick, old wood floor, dark wood tables, dim lighting. Atmosphere. And a rowdy crowd, Mr. Pacino.” Ahmadi looked up at him imploringly.
Pacino unholstered the Glock .45 ACP from its waterproof container at his belt that he’d been issued for this mission. He had no intention of using it, because God alone knew what a stray bullet would do to a submarine designed like this one, but it did a good job of intimidation. He pointed it at Ahmadi’s right eyeball.
“Okay, I believe you, Captain Ahmadi. Now, I need to trust you. I need you to come with me to the control room and surface the boat.”
“Control room? You mean the central command post?”
“Yeah, the goddamned central command post. You think you can do that without me having to put a hole in you big enough to toss an apple through?”
“Lieutenant, I don’t want to die any more than you do.”
“Geek, take my knife and cut Ahmadi’s zip ties.”
Petty Officer Onur took Pacino’s K-Bar knife from his shin sheath and cut the cable ties holding Ahmadi to the chair.
Just then the deck tilted downward and the air pressure in the room sank. Pacino’s ears popped with a BANG, and a second later the sound of the diesel engine cut off, the ensuing quiet boding ill, because if the snorkel mast had gone under, with the deck tilting and the diesel shutting down, it meant one thing.
They were sinking.
Sonarman First Class Mercer put his hand to his ear and raised the other hand to signal attention.
“Approach Officer, Sonar, Master One’s diesel has shut down.”
“Very well, Sonar,” Seagraves said calmly. “Officer of the Deck, what do you think that means?”
“Captain, I was hoping it meant the SEALs and Dankleff and Pacino were preparing to surface, but look!” Romanov gestured to the periscope display. The Panther was taking on a down angle, the angle increasing, and drifting vertically downward. “Dammit, sir, she’s sinking!”
“Mark the depth here, NavET,” Seagraves called to the navigation technician.
“One thousand six hundred seventy fathoms, Captain. Ten thousand feet.”
Seagraves shot a look at Romanov, and Quinnivan stepped over from the firecontrol’s attack center. “What’s crush depth for a Kilo, OOD?” Quinnivan asked.