“I’m not interested in going backwards,” Alexeyev said, a tone of annoyance in his voice. “Besides, if we radio Northern Fleet HQ, maybe they’ve got new orders for us.” Maybe, he thought, they might have called off this fool’s errand.
“Master One is shut down again, Officer of the Deck,” Mercer reported from the number one sonar stack. “Turn count zero.”
“All stop,” Vevera ordered. “Now what the hell is he doing? Sonar, do you have thruster noises again?”
“No, sir, but he’s stopped. He’s dead in the water. Wait. Wait. Officer of the Deck, I have blowing noises. He’s blowing variable ballast or even main ballast. I’m showing D/E getting higher.” D/E was deflection / elevation, the angle to the contact. Mercer was seeing the Omega rising out of the sea. “I’ve got a loud collision noise. Master One has hit the ice overhead.”
“He’s surfacing,” Seagraves said, glancing at the periscope view. “We’re under thin ice. Mr. Vevera, close Master One slowly. Mind your periscope. See if you can drive us underneath him, but take us down to three hundred.” He looked at Quinnivan. “This is it, XO. Mobilize Mr. Fishman and the Panther team and prepare to place the mines on the hull of the Omega. Officer of the Deck, man silent battlestations.”
Lieutenant Anthony Pacino climbed into the dry-deck shelter, waiting to put on his mask over his drysuit hood. The Mark 16 Draeger closed circuit mixed gas rebreather was heavy, heavier than the twin-80 bottles he’d used to invade the Panther. He glanced at U-Boat Dankleff, who shot him a thumbs-up gesture. This was the worst part, Pacino thought, remembering his panic attack when the Vermont’s escape trunk was flooded before that mission. This time, he intended to keep his eyes clamped shut when the flooding started. Once he’d been completely under water last time, four or five breaths in, he’d been fine.
The shelter was crowded with all four of them inside with the Mark 76 propulsion units, which were also a lot fatter and longer than the ones they’d used on Panther, and reduced the space inside available for human occupation. Pacino’s earpiece crackled with Dankleff’s voice.
“Let’s gear up, Patch. Time to flood. Your favorite part of the dive.”
Pacino nodded and put on his mask over his drysuit hood, then clamped his double-fed regulator into his mouth and took an experimental breath. The air was dry, but not as dry as the conventional SCUBA air he’d breathed before. Or like the emergency air mask during the Vermont fire, he thought. His mind drifted momentarily to Rachel, and he wondered how she was. Maybe the captain would pop up the comms mast at the thin ice after the Omega dived again, and they could get an update on her. He bit his lip and commanded himself to get his head into the mission. This would not be an easy dive.
“Commencing flooding,” Dankleff said. For the dive, Pacino and Dankleff were teamed up. Fishman would be diving with Muhammad Varney as his partner. Each team had a communication wire between them, but not between the separate teams. It would have been better if all four of them could be on the same comm circuit. Pacino and Dankleff were amateurs.
The water level rose past Pacino’s waist. Even in the drysuit, he could feel the coldness of the water. When the water came up to Pacino’s chest, he turned away from Dankleff and clamped his eyes shut. The vision of water rising over his mask was too frightening to bear. But he could feel through his gloved hand that the water level was over his head, and he opened his eyes and turned back to Dankleff and shot him a thumbs-up.
“Opening the shelter door now,” Dankleff said. Pacino nodded.
The shelter door opened, the door the diameter of the shelter, almost twelve feet wide. Fishman grabbed his Mark 76 and motored out of the shelter, Varney holding on to a handhold bar on its flank. Pacino clipped his safety harness to the Mark 76 and tested it. No sense falling off the damned thing at depth. Dankleff started their Mark 76 and Pacino grabbed onto the passenger handhold.
As they maneuvered out of the shelter, Pacino looked up to see if the target were visible. The water was much clearer than he’d expected, and as he looked up he could see the dark underside of the Omega, and it was simply enormous.
“Dear God,” he said aloud involuntarily.
“Yeah. Big, ugly and fat,” Dankleff said. “Fishman’s headed to the port side. I’m driving us to starboard. Watch for the torpedo tube door opening.”
As Dankleff drove them down the New Jersey hull, its curvature changing from horizontal to vertical, Pacino looked down, but below the hull of the New Jersey, the water was black. He looked up again to see the ice above and the surfaced Omega. He could make out its bow and could see far back to its aft end, but the rudder, scoops and screws weren’t visible, vanishing in a blue blur.
The faint buzzing feeling of the Mark 76’s motor stopped as Dankleff piloted them to the New Jersey’s starboard side torpedo tube muzzle doors, the elliptical shape of them caused by the cylinder of the tube meeting the curving hull near the bow. Pacino touched the opening of the open upper tube, the steel of the hull cold to the touch. His job was to pull the Mark 80 mine out of the tube by its nose cable. He grabbed the cable with both gloved hands and pulled, using his flipper-clad feet for leverage. The mine moved smoothly and easily out of the tube, as if the torpedo room crew had greased it. Pacino attached the mine’s cable to the Mark 76 propulsion unit and continued to pull out the mine, until finally the mine was fully out of the tube. Pacino hurried to its operator panel, ready to adjust its buoyancy. He tested to see if it would sink or pop upward, but the mine was fairly trimmed to neutral buoyancy.
“I’ve got good trim on the mine,” Pacino said to Dankleff. “The mine is secured to the Mark 76. Let’s go.”
“We’ve got the BUFF’s starboard side,” Dankleff said. “Let’s get this thing next to the BUFF and get shallow. If we can see its sail, we mount the mine at a position of its trailing edge. If not, we’ll have to feel for the torpedo tube door and move aft by twenty feet or so.”
“Okay, let’s hurry.”
Dankleff piloted them upward to the flank of the Omega, perhaps eighty feet over their heads. As he approached the hull, Pacino could see the deep-diver submarine docked to the underside of the Omega’s hull. It was much bigger than in his imagination. It had to be over 250 feet long, he thought. He could see it had small but thick portholes in its bow. He hoped no one was in there peering out at them. No one had thought that could be a problem. Pacino kept his eyes on the Russian submarine’s exterior where it had curved to be vertical.
“Hey, U-Boat, I think I have the torpedo tube door, drive us aft.”
In the shallower water, with the pressure less on the mine, it had begun to get buoyant. Pacino hit the fixed function key on its operator panel to flood its variable ballast bladder until it behaved again. He wondered if there were some way to automate this, but the control system would add volume and weight — taking away payload for explosives. Still, it seemed a risk that the mine could get away from them.
“I don’t see it, Patch.”
“There, above you about five feet. There’s three of them. See them?”
“Oh, yeah, you’re right. Let me drive us about twenty or twenty-five feet farther aft.”
“Position us at the elevation of the middle tube.”
“We’re here. Now’s the hard part of the day. Open up the mine,” Dankleff said.
Pacino manipulated the operator panel’s fixed function key for opening up the mine, the software asking him if he were sure he wanted to do that. He hit the “YES” button and the mine slowly opened up so that its cylindrical shape became two half-cylinders. He maneuvered the mine to touch the rubbery coating of the hull, hoping it would be able to attach. While Pacino operated the mine, Dankleff’s job was to keep control of the propulsion unit. Pacino could hear the Mark 76 engine occasionally buzz as Dankleff kept it at their depth. Pacino touched the control panel’s “ATTACH” protocol section, and energized the “AUTO ATTACH” button. If the unit were able to cut through the rubber hull coating and weld itself to the hull, it would be an easy day.