“Sonar conn, coming left to continue to close range.”
“Conn sonar aye.”
Danny gauged their closing speed in his mind. “Left five degrees rudder, steady course zero-zero-zero.”
“A thousand yards,” said Michaels. “That’s what we are shooting for.”
“A thousand yards, aye sir.”
They watched the estimate of the sub’s distance decrease, and the growing brightness of the signal in front of them.
Danny counted off the range in his head, using the three minute rule. If they were closing at three knots, they would close at 300 yards every three minutes. One hundred yards every minute. That meant on current course it would take roughly… nine minutes to close to nine hundred yards.
It seemed like forever.
They stayed the course, watching as the signal grew stronger and clearer on their screen. Finally Michaels stood up straight and shouted out to the crowded control room.
“Everybody ready?!” He turned to the XO who now held the stopwatch in his hand.
“Go, Danny.”
Danny looked up to microphone above his head. “Fire water slug from tube one!”
The torpedo room acknowledged the order and instantly Danny felt the force of the shot in his feet, and his ears popped with the change in pressure.
The XO clicked his stop watch and waited. “Ten seconds!”
“Fire water slug from tube two,” said Danny. Again the order was instantly acknowledged and carried out.
“Ten seconds!” said the XO again after a brief wait. Danny picked up the microphone for the underwater telephone and read from the laminated sheet in his hand.
“Boise this is Louisville do you read? Boise this is Louisville do you read?”
Several seconds passed before they heard the garbled message return to them, a sound like a drowning man. “Louisville this is range control. All clear, return to station.”
“That’s what we’ve been waiting for!” shouted the captain, and the control room cheered.
The captain looked at Danny. “Good job, Danny.”
“Thank you sir.”
“I guess that completes our training phase.”
The XO had made his way toward them. “Just in time — they only gave us twenty-four hours. We should get our final orders when we get to periscope depth.
“Then away we go,” said the captain. “Let’s the three of us go debrief in the wardroom,”
Danny poured himself a cup of coffee and watched the XO fidget with his stopwatch.
“Well that was fun, wasn’t it?” said the Captain.
“Yes sir.”
“Nice work up there Danny. XO, did we miss anything?”
He nodded. “No sir. I’m sure Subpac will have some critique for us in this transmission. But to me it looks like we acquired the drone and then followed the special procedure perfectly.”
“It just took us three tries,” said the captain with a sigh. “And it’s only going to get harder.”
“How so?” said Danny.
The captain shrugged. “Well for one thing we had a very limited area to search out here on the range. We have no idea where the Boise is, really. And I don’t give a shit what those guys say, a real 688 doesn’t make that much noise. Especially at five knots.”
“We’ll have to track her on transients,” said the XO. “If they don’t know they’re being tracked, maybe they’ll be noisy.”
“Let’s hope they’re really fucking noisy.”
Danny wandered back up to control where the OOD was turning slowly on the periscope, and the ship bobbed almost imperceptibly near the surface of the calm Hawaiian waters. V-12 appeared at his side.
“Nice work, sir!” he said.
“Just following the script.”
“Well the two OODs before you couldn’t seem to get it done.”
“Just lucky,” said Danny. “What are you doing up here?”
“I’m communicator, remember? Waiting for the message from Subpac. It’s coming off-line encrypted, the captain told me to bring it personally to him.”
Danny and V-12 stared at each other for a second, V-12 waiting for him to offer something. “Why do you think that is?”
“Why what is?” said Danny.
“Why offline? Why would they send exercise notes to be personally decrypted by the Captain?”
“Who knows?” said Danny. “That’s why they send it offline. It’s a secret.”
V-12 kept smiling. “And why aren’t we using exercise names on the underwater telephone? Isn’t that weird, to call out our real names, in the middle of the Pacific, in the blind?”
“If you say so,” said Danny, shrugging.
V-12 saw he wasn’t going to get any new information, and ambled off to radio, the quizzical smile still on his face.
Danny sighed. It was a nuclear submarine, filled with smart men. He wondered again how long they would be able to keep their mission secret. He wondered how long they should.
Part Two
Lieutenant Ray McCutcheon poured himself a cup of coffee in the wardroom of the USS Boise, SSN 764. The pot had cooked down throughout the day into a sour potency: just the way he liked it. He was savoring the first sip when the Maxon radio on his belt crackled to life. It was the Petty Officer of the Deck, topside.
“Dunham is back.”
“I’ll be right up,” he replied. The Engineering Duty Officer, his good friend, looked up from the pile of red safety tags he was reviewing as he snapped the radio back on to his belt clip.
“The prodigal son has returned.”
“Indeed.”
He walked to the ladder and climbed upward, into a gorgeous Hawaiian evening, the sun an orange ball just above the horizon. The Boise would soon depart: McCutcheon had a million things to do other than supervise the return of an AWOL sailor. Topside, as promised, Petty Officer Dunham awaited his fate, wearing a wrinkled uniform and a nervous grin.
“Petty Officer Dunham.”
He dropped his sea bag and saluted. “Sir.”
“Where’ve you been?” he asked as he returned the salute.
“With my girl.”
“Hm.” McCutcheon removed his Boise baseball cap, and ran his fingers through his hair. AWOLs were rare on submarines. In part this was because the men were screened so well, only the best of the best, hand-chosen by the submarine force even before they left for bootcamp. In addition, submarines were at sea so much, and in port so little, that it made desertion very difficult even for those few who might be inclined. It was a unique enough situation that they’d conducted wardroom training on the matter when Dunham flew the coop, and every duty officer had reviewed the protocols for what to do when he returned from his unauthorized vacation. Technically, they could have called shore patrol and had him dragged in cuffs to the brig. McCutcheon sensed that Dunham half expected this. But Captain Jefferies had been clear: he wanted to take care of it himself. Both because he was an inherently merciful man, and because they needed Dunham on the watchbill. He was the best of the four men on the boat qualified to operate the diesel.
“Do you know what’s next, Dunham?”
“No sir.”
“Well, we’ll do a piss test, make sure you haven’t been smoking any of that fine Maui weed during your sabbatical.”