“I guess not. I just imagined a Russian reactor technician would be wearing a different color set of coveralls.”
“Or a lab jacket,” Taylor said.
“What’s the count?”
“Thirty-five,” Catardi said.
“Still seems light,” Pacino said.
“Russians are big into automation, Patch,” Catardi said. “They run with half the number of officers and enlisted we sail with.”
“Maybe so,” Pacino said, but he had his doubts. The intel files he’d seen on the original Kilo class showed minimal automation. The improved Kilo, by contrast, had a modern AI system, a “second captain,” as the Russians called it, the system considered a glorified autopilot, but rumor had it that their front-line AI systems could actually operate the ship in combat, and in some case “fight the ship” better than their human counterparts. After all, AI didn’t get nervous or tired. It didn’t have to recover from a fight with the spouse. It didn’t get hungover. It didn’t hesitate or take into account the morality of sinking another ship filled with human beings. It just fought the enemy. But this hull was the older, original Kilo, built from the technology of World War II German U-boats. The Russians had operated a sub the West called the Foxtrot well into the 1970s, and the Foxtrot was just a Nazi Type XXI U-boat. No automation, just valves jammed everywhere with rudimentary sonar and firecontrol. Pacino imagined that’s why the Russians put their effort into smart torpedoes, which could be fired by even a dumb U-boat, since they were truly fire-and-forget weapons that didn’t need much programming by the launching ship other than the bearing to the target.
Suddenly a large geyser of water and foam sprayed out of the bow of the submarine, then a similar gusher of foam from the rear.
“Ballast tank vents opening,” Pacino said to himself.
The submarine began to settle into the water, and as the foredeck sank low enough that it became awash with the surrounding waves, the raft floated free, the submarine sinking under it. Soon only the conning tower was visible, and then it too got lower in the water until only its top surface was visible, waves breaking over it, until it too sank into the ocean, only the periscope visible extending from the conning tower, and eventually that too vanished, and there was only the raft and the Iranians — and maybe Russians.
A vertical dive, Pacino thought. Submerging vertically took skill. Ideally, it took automation to keep the boat level. Vertical diving an ancient Kilo like this? With a boarding party unfamiliar with the boat? They had to have help from the original Kilo’s crew, Pacino thought. Maybe the captain or some cooperative junior officers or chiefs. Someone who knew what he was doing.
That was both good and bad, Pacino considered. Good because someone from the original Iranian crew could help them operate the stolen submarine, avoiding the thousands of disasters that could befall an uneducated crew from the hazards of the ruthless ocean itself. But bad because having original crewmembers risked retaliation. Sabotage. The Panther, now that she was submerged, could simply vanish into the deep from a crewmember intent on her destruction from within. And if the SEALs were busy standing watches around the clock to drive the ship, they wouldn’t be paying enough attention to whomever Lieutenant Varney had recruited to help them.
In any case, there was nothing to do now but wait for status reports from the USS Vermont, which was ordered to communicate with coded, preformatted SLOT buoys.
“Did Vermont send a status report?” Pacino asked Catardi.
“She popped a SLOT a few minutes after you got here. A simple ‘code one’ with a latitude and longitude. Means success in hijacking the Panther at that position. I doubt we’ll hear much more from her unless there’s trouble.”
“This is going to be a long trip, right?” Pacino asked.
“Mr. President, can you show the intended track of Panther and Vermont back to AUTEC?”
Carlucci operated the screen remote, pulling up a view of earth from high above the Indian Ocean. Twin tracks, one in blue, the other red, extended from the point of capture of the Panther in the mouth of the Gulf of Oman, heading south-southeast, hugging the west coast of India, then proceeding due south to Antarctica and hugging its coast until the point due south of the Atlantic between Africa and South America, then north to a point west of Western Sahara and Morocco — the approximate latitude of their destination — then west to the Bahamas.
“A trip like this, at battery optimization cruising speed, six to ten knots, that could take six weeks, maybe more.”
“Seventeen thousand miles,” Catardi said, “With an average point-of-intended motion speed of seven knots, well, that’s a hundred days. Panther won’t arrive at AUTEC until mid-September. We’ve programmed in refueling operations and re-provisioning four, maybe five times, along the voyage.”
That seemed a weak point of the operation, Pacino thought. Surfacing to load food and fuel would leave them vulnerable to an opposition force. Satellites would photograph them. Enemy submarines could lie in wait knowing their location at a certain time. Even if the harebrained scheme to load them up while submerged and hovering worked, there was still vulnerability if they’d been trailed there by an opposition submarine.
“Did they load on rations?”
“They loaded a lot of stuff, Patch,” Catardi said. “Some of it was equipment. Radio, SatNav. Some clothes. But the rest of the load-out was food. Enough to get to the first refueling point. They’ll be okay. The Vermont will be with her the entire way, making sure she’s safe.”
“Goddamned long wait for this mission to be over,” Pacino said.
“Well, I guess we can enjoy the rest of the weekend here,” Carlucci said. “Nothing more to see. Patch, if you and the admirals need to go, no problem. Go spend the weekend at home. I’ll catch up with you Monday afternoon.”
“Thank you, sir,” Pacino said.
Outside Birch Cabin, at Catardi’s golf cart, Catardi asked Pacino if he were headed back to Annapolis.
“You need a ride, Robby?”
“I’m a little afraid of that thing you call a car, Patch.”
“I’ll drive gently. Interstates, even.”
“I’ll call Styxx. She can get a Gulfstream for me at Andrews. It’s on your way, right?”
“That it is, Robby.”
Admiral Gennady Zhigunov sat down in the sparsely furnished secure conference room at Northern Fleet Headquarters. The room was empty except for him, the metal table, four chairs, a large flatscreen and the camera mounted on top of the screen. He poured half a glass of water from a pitcher on the table, opened a notebook and switched on his pad computer while he waited for the secure link to come up with the Admiralty building in St. Petersburg. This meeting would be the kind that took half a liter of vodka to get over, he knew, because the Kindly Old Gentleman, as they sarcastically called the volatile Admiral Anatoly Stanislav behind his back, had called for the video conference with him from the Northern Fleet and his counterpart and bitter rival from the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Aleksander Andreyushkin. Stanislav was the Chief Commander of the Navy, and Zhigunov had only met him once, and the diminutive, older, gray-haired man had shouted so loud he’d rattled the windows of his office about that regrettable nuclear incident at the Polyarny base. That had to be four or five years ago, but Zhigunov had never forgotten.