“Any word on Romanov, XO?” Dankleff asked.
Quinnivan shook his head solemnly. “So far, the news isn’t good. But maybe she’ll pull through, yeah?”
Pacino pulled his safety harness on over his foul-weather gear. He must have gotten his sea legs, he thought, since he barely noticed the rocking and rolling of the ship through the waves. He stood at the navigation chart next to Elvis Lewinsky.
“How far to the dive point, Nav?” Pacino asked, reluctant to touch the display or alter the scale when Lewinsky was using it.
“Twenty miles to the hundred fathom curve, another mile to Point Delta,” Lewinsky said in his booming baritone voice. Pacino wondered if news of the midrats conversation about him and Redhead had reached his ears.
“Then on to Point Echo on course zero seven zero? Another fifty miles out. What happens then?”
“Then we switch to the top-secret chart.”
Short Hull Cooper arrived then, struggling with his safety harness.
“And where are we going, Nav?” Pacino asked. “XO mentioned an intermediate destination. AUTEC, maybe?”
“What’s AUTEC?” Short Hull asked.
“AUTEC is the Navy’s secret submarine test range,” Pacino explained. “Off Andros Island, Bahamas.”
“Andros is the wrong direction from our course,” Lewinsky said. “Anyway, XO wants to keep things hushed up until we can have an op brief tomorrow. Until then, I’m just going to plot one navigation waypoint ahead of PIM.”
Cooper looked at the chart. “What’s ‘PIM?’” he asked.
“Point of intended motion,” Pacino said. “It’s a moving point in the sea where the bosses want us. It’s set up that way so if a friendly gets a detect on a submarine, they can be made aware that it’s us, not a bad guy.”
“Yeah, unless a bad guy is trailing us,” Lewinsky said.
“So, Short Hull, let’s go check out the contact situation.” He motioned Cooper to the command console, where Supply Officer Gangbanger Ganghadharan stood behind a large flatpanel display, studying it and training its aim with a hand-held device that resembled a video game controller. “Gangbanger here is contact coordinator. He’ll look out for any surface ships that might present trouble. A collision at sea can ruin your entire day. What’s it look like, Gang?”
“Three surface ships, gents,” Ganghadharan said. “This one here is Visual Twenty.” He trained the scope to a view of distant lights, one red, two others white. “Bearing zero four one, angle-on-the-bow port ninety-five, range, let’s see,” he said as he turned to put his face into the radar scope. Evidently they’d abandoned the yacht radar and energized the ship’s BPS-16 radar set. “Range, eight thousand yards, beyond closest point of approach and opening.” He trained the scope view to the south. There was a white light and a green light visible. “Visual Seventeen, range seventeen thousand yards, also opening. And over here,” again he trained the scope view to look behind them. “Visual Sixteen, a sailboat, meandering toward Nantucket. Other than that, we’re clear.”
“Did you check infrared?” Pacino asked.
“Yes, but all we have are the three contacts. Visual, radar and infrared all agree. We’re pretty much alone out here, off the shipping lanes to Boston, Portsmouth and Halifax.”
“Good. Any questions, Mr. Cooper?” Pacino asked Short Hull.
“Can I look?” Gang handed the scope controller to Cooper, who rotated the scope through a slow circle around them. He gave back the device and put his face to the radar scope. Satisfied, he nodded at Pacino.
“Okay, let’s lay to the bridge,” Pacino said, pulling Cooper over to the pilot’s station. “Pilot, to the bridge, relieving watch to the bridge.”
The pilot was the chief of the boat, or COB, Master Chief Machinist Mate “Q-Ball” Quartane, the senior enlisted man aboard.
“Wait one,” Quartane said. He spoke into his boom microphone. “Bridge, Pilot, oncoming watch relief requests to lay to the bridge.”
“Pilot, Bridge,” Boozy Varney’s voice rasped in the overhead of the pilot’s station. “Send them up.”
“Let’s go,” Pacino said, leading Cooper to the ladder to the upper level and to the bridge access tunnel. He climbed the ladder, his safety harness’ lanyard over his shoulder. At the top, the officer of the deck had pulled up the grating. “Request to lay to the bridge,” Pacino said formally.
“Come up,” Varney said.
Pacino climbed up through the grating, stepping aside so Cooper could join them. It was crowded in the cockpit with the four of them there, with Varney standing beside his under-instruction, Long Hull Cooper. Once in the bridge cockpit, the noise from the howling wind and the sea breaking on either side of the sail was deafening. Despite the windshield, Pacino was immediately wet from spray. Up this high, the rocking of the boat seemed severe, the hull rolling far to starboard, hanging up there, then finally rolling to port and pausing there, all the while pitching slowly forward, then pitching back up in the long swells. The deck grating seemed to amplify the vibrations from the propulsor at full power, blasting them through the sea state. The seas were dimly red on the port side and green on the starboard, the ship’s running lights trying to shine out through the spray. Ahead of the cockpit windscreen, the radar antenna rotated slowly high over their heads, making a revolution every two seconds.
“JOOD,” Varney shouted to Long Hull over the roar of the wind and the bow wave, “Give Mr. Pacino and Mr. Cooper a watch turnover.”
“Um,” Long Hull said haltingly. “Ship is at all ahead flank on the surface, heading zero seven zero. Three surface contacts.” He repeated the information they’d already gotten from Gangbanger. “Approximately eighteen nautical miles to the dive point.”
“What’s the sounding?” Short Hull asked. Long Hull gulped and grabbed the 7MC mike.
“Pilot, Bridge, report sounding,” Long Hull ordered on the microphone.
“Bridge, Pilot, aye… sounding is … six five fathoms.”
“Anything else?” Pacino asked.
“Captain has secured the command duty officer watch. He should be in his stateroom,” Varney said.
“Got it,” Pacino said. He looked at Short Hull. “Coop? You ready to relieve?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Cooper, I relieve you as junior officer of the deck.”
Pacino addressed Varney. “Mr. Varney, I relieve you as officer of the deck.”
“We’ll snarf down midrats and relieve you from control in half an hour,” Varney shouted.
“Very well,” Pacino said formally. “Don’t let XO engage you in any bullshit entertaining discussions. Don’t be late.”
Varney and Long Hull Cooper pulled up the grating and lowered themselves down the bridge access trunk.
“Report our relief to the captain,” Pacino ordered Cooper.
Cooper picked up the 7MC and selected the captain’s stateroom. “Captain, Junior Officer of the Deck, sir.”
“Captain,” Seagraves voice responded immediately.
Cooper reported their having assumed the watch. Seagraves sounded bored as he acknowledged.
“Check out the visual contacts with your binoculars,” Pacino shouted to Cooper, his voice loud to overcome the hurricane wind of their passage. “Verify where they are and look for any new contacts that the contact coordinator may not have detected. You should have a mental model of the seaway like the radar screen, updating it from time to time from the contact coordinator’s reports, verified with your own observation. Radar and sonar both are shit in this sea state, and there might be a trawler ahead that has lights that are out of commission. At this speed, we’d run him over almost before we could react.”