“So they say, ma’am. But they could change their minds again tomorrow. We still have to go through primary testing and then integration to the Second Captain AI.”
“What are they saying about the Status-6 weapons?”
“This morning they said they’d be on their way by noon. They’re four hours late on that projection.”
Lebedev looked at the overcast sky. “You’re going to lose daylight.” It was late August, which meant they’d have over fifteen hours of daylight, but Sevmash’s delivery promises had fallen through three times in the past ten days.
Sobol checked her watch. “Sunset is at 2030 hours, ma’am. It’s only 1600 now.”
“The last four hours of daylight are dim at best. Sevmash might not get here for another two or three hours.”
“I could call for generators and halogen lights,” Sobol said.
Lebedev shook her head. “No. Loading a nuclear weapon in less than full daylight isn’t safe, I don’t care how many lumens you blast at the bow. Bright lights mean shadows. And hell, even at noon, loading weapons is the most dangerous thing we’ll do until we approach the icecap. Did I ever tell you about the torpedo loading accident from ten years ago?”
Sobol laughed. She’d heard the story at least a dozen times. Some idiot removed the safety bolts from a UGST torpedo during loading and the weapon engine started. It walked its way out of the tube, armed itself and flashed across the bay and hit a tugboat, about a tenth of its explosive charge detonating, blowing a hole in the tug the size of a turkey platter. The shipyard had had to scramble to save the tug, tying it off to a rail-mounted crane until pontoons could be mobilized and a patch fashioned that would last long enough to get it into a drydock, which had royally messed up the maintenance schedule of the shipyard. It was fortunate for all that the full power of the warhead hadn’t gone off, or else the entire pier, rail crane and tugboat would have been destroyed.
“Believe me, Madam First, we are absolutely doing this by the book.” She showed Lebedev the dogeared procedure manual, which was opened to the page where the steps were shown that the load crew were executing now.
“Good. Any sign of the captain?”
“No. He’s been at Northern Fleet HQ all day.”
“Well, let me know if you see him coming down the pier, and let me know when the Status-6 units arrive — if they do arrive. I’ll be advising Sevmash that if they’re not here by the time you’re done loading the Gigantskiy, they’ll be waiting until tomorrow for the Status-6 load.”
“Understood, ma’am. Can I ask you a question? I can’t get a feel for how urgent this mission is. How much of a hurry are we in?”
Lebedev grimaced and shook her head. “If we even make speed-over-ground of four or five knots on average to the Bering Strait, I’d be pleased. That could be a hundred days into the operation. So, another day to load weapons and test them out with the Second Captain won’t make a difference.”
Sobol nodded. The Gigantskiy was fully inserted into the tube. Now for the next step of shutting the muzzle door. After that, they’d open the breach door, connect the torpedo to the interface to the weapon control system, shut the breach door and flood the tube. With any luck, that wouldn’t short out the torpedo, which would force them to start all over again.
“Anyway, I think I’ll lay below to see how Michman Yegor is doing with the electronic checks,” Lebedev said.
“He should be well along with the tube four Gigantskiy,” Sobol said.
“Stay alert up here, Weapons Officer,” Lebedev said. “I’ll have hot tea sent up.”
“Thanks, ma’am.” Sobol saluted Lebedev and the first officer returned the salute, turned, and walked back in-hull.
Lieutenant Anthony Pacino leaned over the chart table and glanced at the chronometer in the red-lit control room of the project submarine USS New Jersey, which had deeply penetrated Russian territorial waters, which made them all outlaws. It was surreal being submerged in the Zapadnaya Litsa Fjord, barely a nautical mile from the Russian submarine base, not far from the spot that the Vermont had been simulated to be when the exercise had gone bad.
New Jersey had been loitering on-station for the past day-and-a-half, rigged for ultraquiet and hovering with one side of the engineroom shut down for sound quieting. The flank run to Faslane had ended a week ago, and their weapon load-out had been done by dark of night in a covered structure they’d been winched into. As expected, the Virginia Payload modules had been loaded with fourteen Tomahawk cruise missiles, twelve of them carrying conventional antisubmarine warfare depth charges, two of them loaded with 250 kiloton nuclear depth charges. Usually, the nukes would be useless, since nuclear release authority had to come from the president himself, and obviously the White House would be out of communication when they would be under ice, but perhaps anticipating the need, the ship had sailed from Faslane with advance nuclear release authority, granting to the captain the decision if and when to deploy nukes, which was a chilling development. Someone in the Pentagon had had a nightmare that New Jersey would need to employ nukes. And yet nuclear cruise missiles? They were useless under ice. Big Navy and the upper levels at the Pentagon, Pacino thought, were clueless.
The torpedo room had been filled up with twenty-one ADCAP Mark 48 Mod 9 torpedoes, two SLMM Mark 67 submarine launched mobile mines, and two of the newer swimmer-delivered Mark 80 mines. The dry-deck shelter had been mated to the top of the hull in the same barn, lowered from a bridge crane. Pacino had supervised the shelter being mated to the plug trunk hatch, noting that its height was half the height of the sail. If, when under the ice, they were called on to break through the ice, the vertical surfacing could crush the shelter. They’d been assigned the unit that didn’t have the upper surface hardened for ice collisions. Typical Big Navy, Pacino thought, never thinking ahead to contingencies.
The boat had been towed to another building, where the stores load had been accomplished. The 140-day food loadout had been an all-hands evolution, bringing on and storing what fresh food they could — which would run out in two weeks — and canned food and frozen stores. Like they had before the Panther run, they’d loaded so many twelve-inch diameter cans of food that they were placed on all walkways forward of the engineering spaces, with plywood laid on top, making the headroom of occupied spaces restricted. More than one sailor had banged his head on a valve, unused to the overhead being closer by a foot. As time went by, the crew would eat their way down to the bare deck plates.
Perhaps most interesting items of the loadout, though, were the arctic supplies, all of them coming down the plug trunk hatch in large cylindrical modules with labels. ”Personnel shelter / arctic.” ”Snowmobile.” “Heavy weather gear / arctic.” ”Diesel heater / arctic.” ”Diesel generator / arctic.” Lewinsky had remarked that they would be ready for anything, but Pacino had doubts. After all, in the South Atlantic, Vermont had run out of torpedoes and it had almost proved their downfall.
The crew had been disappointed that there hadn’t been time to take in the sights of Scotland or experience the pubs — or the female companionship. They’d been in Faslane less than 24 hours and it was around-the-clock work. By the time they’d shoved off and headed north, the crew was exhausted. Hell of a way to start a mission.
And oddly, the SEALs hadn’t arrived until the very last minute, just before Pacino and Short Hull Cooper were ready to remove the gangway. And the SEAL officers had yet to eat a single meal in the wardroom. Wondering why they were so elusive, Pacino had sought out his friends, Commander “Tiny Tim” Fishman and Lieutenant (junior grade) “Grip” Aquatong, who were hiding out in the SEAL accommodations aft of the torpedo room. The SEAL area was self-contained, with a small galley, frozen and refrigerated stores, a conference room that doubled as a movie screening room, and a two-hole head with a shower. With this arrangement, the SEALs could isolate themselves in the thought that a top secret mission would preserve its secrets all the better if they didn’t mix with the rest of the crew, but it was a flawed idea, since the SEALs spent hours a day working out in the torpedo room where they rubbed elbows with the crew. That is, until the rig for ultraquiet was imposed, shutting down hot food from the galley and the makeshift torpedo room gym.