“Is there trouble?”
Again his father paused. “It’s a bad situation, Anthony. It’s very important I go up there with my submarine.”
Anthony drilled his eyes into his father’s. “It’s the Omega, isn’t it? Omega unit one?”
Commander Michael Pacino drew back in surprise. “What do you know about that? And ‘unit one’—there’s only one. The Russians named it the Omega because it’s the ultimate submarine. There’s no unit two.”
Anthony nodded. “You’re going to sink it, aren’t you?”
“I should go,” the older man said.
“It has those torpedoes, doesn’t it? Nuclear-tipped? One megaton warhead? A meter in diameter, can go sixty knots for an hour, right?”
Michael Pacino stood, crossing his arms over his chest, and Anthony also stood, still looking into his father’s eyes.
“We call them ‘Magnum’ torpedoes,” Commander Pacino said haltingly.
“The Russians call them Gigantskiys,” Anthony said.
“How do you know what the Russians call them?”
“Perestroika,” the younger Pacino said. “Means ‘openness’ in Russian. We don’t have to use NATO code names anymore.”
“I have to go,” Michael Pacino said again.
“Be careful, Daddy. And good hunting.”
Michael Pacino stared at his son for a long moment, a look of shock on his face before he withdrew through the door. Again there were footsteps on the stairs, getting fainter. The front door of the house opened and shut. Daddy started the engine of his old Corvette and the engine roared and the tires shrieked as he drove off.
Anthony Pacino stood at the door and slowly opened it. But on the other side of the door, it wasn’t the upstairs hallway with the gallery view of the beach house’s main level, but the control room of a submarine. Anthony looked down at himself. He was still wearing his favorite pajamas, the ones with the dolphins swimming together. His feet were bare. No one in the room seemed to think it odd that a bare-footed six-year-old in pajamas stood in their control room.
Rachel Romanov noticed him standing beside her and wordlessly passed him a cordless, one-eared headset. He put it on and immediately heard the voice.
“Fire, fire, fire! Fire in forward compartment middle level! We’ve got a bad fire—”
“I’m going below to take charge at the scene,” Romanov said to him, pulling on her emergency air breathing mask.
“No, Rachel, don’t go!” Anthony said. But by then she was gone.
As the room filled with thick smoke, he heard himself — as if from a distance — bark words into his boom microphone. “Maneuvering, Conn, report your status!”
As if answering him, he heard the sound of a bunk curtain being jerked aside.
“Why, the reactor is in natural circulation and the electric plant’s in a normal full-power lineup,” River Styxx’s voice said, her face close to his, but it was in shadow in the dim light of the stateroom. “Bad dream, Patch? Again?”
Pacino groaned as he climbed out of his rack. “Oh, damn, I’m so tired.”
“Complaints get you nowhere on a submarine,” Styxx said. “Now put on your game face. We’re manning battlestations. The BUFF is underway. Captain’s about to initiate trail ops.”
The rigged-for-ultraquiet control room was lit by dim red lights and the green glow from the BSY-1 battlecontrol attack center on the starboard side, the sonar stacks on the port side and the array of flatpanels at the pilot and copilot ship control station. Short Hull Cooper stood at the starboard side of the command console and handed Pacino a headset. Forward of the command console, Executive Officer Quinnivan stood, looking over the attack center consoles. To Pacino’s left, between the command console and the navigation plot, Captain Seagraves paced between the sonar consoles and the attack center. He saw Pacino and gave him a slight nod. Lieutenant Varney, the off-going officer of the deck, approached and stood between the command console and the captain, facing Pacino.
“Master One, the Omega,” Varney said to Pacino, “bears one eight zero and is proceeding north toward our position. Sonar thinks it’s being towed by two tugs and thinks its screws are shut down.”
“Range to the BUFF?” Pacino asked, looking down at the navigation display that was selected on the command console.
“Mr. Pacino,” Quinnivan said over his shoulder. “Refer to the contact as Master One, if you don’t mind.”
“Sorry, XO,” Pacino muttered, rubbing his eyes, still feeling half asleep. The dream had left him like a vapor blown away by the wind, but he remembered screaming out about the status of the propulsion plant before Styxx woke him.
“Fifteen hundred yards, give or take,” Varney said. “We don’t have a good TMA solution on him, but the channel is only so big, so the contact’s bearing and time since the turn led to that estimated range.”
“Maneuvering’s status?”
“Reactor’s in nat circ, normal full-power lineup,” Varney said. “Answering bells on both propulsion turbine generators. Main motor is warm.”
“Ship status?”
“Hovering at two hundred feet. Both thrusters rigged out to allow us to point south to the contact.”
“Our intentions?”
“Let the Omega drive toward us and pass overhead,” Varney said. “Once it’s out a few hundred yards, put on turns to follow it out of the fjord. Once the tugs are clear, we’ll get her sound signature.”
“Are there plans to do an underhull?” Pacino asked.
“Captain will decide in a few minutes.”
“Weapon status?”
“Tubes one and two powered up, outer doors open. Just waiting for us to send them target information. So, you got the picture?”
“I’ve got it. I relieve you, sir,” Pacino replied.
“I stand relieved,” Varney said, then looked at the captain. “Sir, I’ve been properly relieved as officer of the deck by Mr. Pacino.” He stepped over to the Pos Two seat at the attack center and climbed into its seat, his battlestations assignment to determine the magical package of information about the Omega, her range, course, and speed, the data called the solution. With a solution of medium quality, they could fire a torpedo at her and be assured of a fairly high probability of a kill. With a good solution, they could count on putting her on the bottom.
Pacino looked at Captain Seagraves and reported, “Captain, I’ve relieved Mr. Varney as officer of the deck.” He looked at Quinnivan, whose battle station was firecontrol coordinator, or just coordinator. “Coordinator, are battlestations manned?”
Quinnivan spun to look at Pacino and bowed. “Officer of the Deck, battlestations are manned.”
The sounds came through the hull then, the pulsing whoosh of the tugboat screws and the thrumming of their powerful engines, the noise building up in intensity, getting closer every second. Pacino waited with the battlestations control room crew, holding his breath. The noise reached its peak, moving from dead ahead to directly overhead as the tugs and the colossal submarine sailed over them and continued northward in the channel, now beginning to fade astern.
“Pilot,” Pacino said to Dankleff in the ship control station, “take charge of your thrusters and rotate the ship to heading north.”
Dankleff acknowledged, reporting a few seconds later, “Officer of the Deck, ship’s heading is zero zero zero.”
“Pilot, rig in both thrusters. All ahead one third, maintain depth two hundred.”
Dankleff acknowledged again. The sounds of the tug screws and engines were diminishing ahead of them.