Henry Martin
Deep Whisper
“Captain,” said a voice in the darkness. “Captain, are you awake, sir?”
The world came back to Commander Mark Castillo like a slap, his heart racing, sucking up air in sharp, shallow breaths, his mouth coated with something bitter and metallic. He sat up in his rack, propped up on his hands. A blurry sliver of light cleaved the darkness in two, the messenger of the watch a shadowy silhouette against the cracked-open hatch.
This couldn’t be his regular wake-up. It felt like he’d only just shut his eyes. His gaze flickered to the little digital clock perched on the bracket that ran alongside his rack. Red numbers glowed in the darkness: 2217. He’d only been asleep for fifty minutes.
For a moment he felt nothing but the painful thud of his heart. If the OOD was waking him up early it had to be bad news. And he took no comfort from the absence of alarms. There were plenty of things that could kill a submarine slow and quiet before a deck officer realized the full extent of the danger.
Still sleep-addled, Castillo fumbled for a name. “What is it. . Fireman Anderson?”
“Sir, the Officer of the Deck sends his respects and reports that he has found Kirishima. She bears zero nine seven at 43,000 yards.”
Kirishima!
Castillo was suddenly wide awake, all thought of sleep banished from his mind.
“Thanks, Anderson. Would you mind hitting the light on your way out?”
“Yessir.”
There was a click and horrible, burning light filled Castillo’s stateroom, stinging his eyes. He stood up, thinking hard, and shrugged into the dark blue coveralls that submariners called “poopie suits.” Then he bent down and reached for the sound-powered phone set mounted on the bulkhead by his rack and gave the phone’s crank a quarter-turn, generating a little mechanical whoop.
The officer of the deck, Bob Glazer, must have been waiting for his call, because he picked up at once. “Yes, Captain?”
“All stop,” said Castillo.
“All stop, aye aye, sir” said Glazer. Castillo heard him turn away from the phone and say, “All stop.” He came back on the line. “Maneuvering answers all stop, Captain.”
“She hear us yet, Bob?”
“Don’t think so, Captain. Sonar said she just sort of popped up. Busfield says she has a one-third bell on. I think she was drifting and then came up in speed to move to the next grid in her search pattern. I’d bet good money she has a Seahawk up.”
“At least,” said Castillo, thinking hard. The pair of Japanese destroyers they were dueling were being supported by U.S. Navy P-3 Orions out of Kadena. The destroyers’ embarked helos were dangerous enough, but if there was a P-3 out there laying sonobuoys, Pasadena might already be caught. He could come up to pee dee and use his ESM mast to lock down the air picture.
Or…
“OOD, pass the word by messenger, Battlestations Torpedo.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Castillo hung up the phone and thought, Kirishima. A grim smile curled across his dark, handsome face.
At last.
Main Control was a submerged boat’s nerve center and by fast attack standards Pasadena’s was spacious.
It didn’t feel that way.
Compared to a surface ship’s bridge, Control felt cramped and uncomfortable. Harsh blue-white light cast hard-edged shadows. The air was dry and oily and tasted of ozone. The periscope stand dominated the space’s center, the Ship Control Station sat port forward, the chart tables aft, and a series of tactical consoles ran along the starboard bulkhead. Even the overhead was cluttered with pipes and valves, conduit and EAB manifolds.
Mark Castillo loved it, every inch of it.
He stepped into Control and was greeted by near perfect silence. It was the kind of silence you might encounter in an old cemetery on a bitter February morning when even the hardiest of mourners wouldn’t venture out and the trees’ bare branches robbed the wind of its voice, stealing away even the faint whisper of rustling leaves. It was a silence that was cold. Menacing.
Determined.
Not a man, not a single man, made a sound.
Castillo kept his face impassive, but inside he felt a fierce pride. These were his people and he had trained them to be quiet in exactly this way.
In submarine warfare, the difference between life and death could actually be measured in decibels. On Pasadena, quiet was a deadly serious business and it wasn’t just about securing ventilation fans or trading out the 1MC announcing circuit for sound-powered phones.
No, it was about crewmen remembering not to slam the door when they finished up in the head and cooks tying down and pots and pans so they didn’t rattle in their cabinets. On a vessel where the clank of a dropped wrench on a deck plate could conceivably bring a torpedo racing in, no crewman could be excused from the duty of stealth.
So Castillo was gratified to step into Control and hear nothing but the electronic hum of equipment.
Lieutenant, j.g. Glazer was standing just in front of the periscope stand. He nodded at Castillo. “Battlestations Torpedo is set, Captain,” murmured Glazer. The boy stepped over to a chart table that showed a northern slice of the Sea of Japan. “Kirishima’s right about here,” Glazer said, pointing at a pencil mark east of the Korean peninsula, southwest of Vladivostok, and north of the Yamato ridge. “I’m going to need a turn to firm up her course, but I think she’s moving west.”
West. Castillo thought Glazer was right about that. He looked at the OOD. Glazer was just a kid, 24, but among Castillo’s JO’s he was the best tactician. He had come out of MIT and he looked it: thick glasses, mousy brown hair that was just barely on the legal side of regulation, and it looked like the kid loved that good submarine chow. He’d put on an extra ten pounds since the beginning of deployment. But when it came to hunting ships and submarines, the kid had ice water in his veins.
“What would you recommend?” asked Castillo, using the situation as a training opportunity.
“Come up to one-third,” said Glazer at once. “Turn quickly. If she is sprinting into position, she’s going to cut her engines soon and I want to nail down her course before that happens. If she is coming west, we do a quick excursion to pee dee to get the air picture, then dive beneath the layer and wait for her to come to us.”
It was a sound recommendation. In fact, it was textbook.
But it was not what Castillo was going to do.
He pointed at the deep blue color of the chart. “We’re over the Japan Basin. We have better than 9,000 feet of clear water below us.”
To his credit, Glazer saw it right away. “You’re going to dive below the deep layer and run up on her.”
“If we wait here, Kirishima can marshal her air assets to hunt us down. If we run in, we’re more likely to catch them out of position. Besides,” Castillo smiled, “I’m not a big fan of waiting around to see what happens.”
Chagrined, Glazer nodded.
“Officer of the Deck, make your depth eight hundred feet,” said Castillo. “When we reach depth, we’ll come to new course zero nine six and put on a flank bell for two zero minutes.”
“Make my depth eight hundred feet, aye aye, sir,” said Glazer. “Diving Officer, make your depth eight hundred feet.”
For a moment, Control was noisy as the diving officer, Senior Chief Ezekiel Washington, issued orders and his charges repeated them back.
Castillo grabbed an EAB manifold in the overhead to anchor himself as his boat took on a distinct down angle.