“Aye, aye, sir.”
Pacino raised his cup, seeing the second hand approach twelve, only ten seconds left till midnight, “To the new year. May it bring Seawolf good luck and good hunting.”
Pacino stayed for a few more minutes after he finished his cup, then went back to his stateroom. He tried to sleep but tossed and turned. Finally he called the officer of the deck and asked for a tech manual and several electrical schematic drawings. When the firecontrol technician of the watch came in with the manual and drawings Pacino thanked and dismissed him, then stared at the circuits and began sketching on a notepad.
When the sketch was done he put it in the tech manual and returned to his bed, thinking that he still hoped his toast would come true, that Seawolf would indeed have good luck.
But if she didn’t, he had a backup plan, he hoped.
Chapter 26
Wednesday, 1 January
Kane took the conn for the trip to periscope depth, knowing it would be a most risky ascent. Sonar was in a deeply reduced status, firecontrol was still down hard, the Destiny was dangerously close, within 15,000 yards and still combatworthy and hostile. On top of that, any ascent to PD was filled with risk as the ship penetrated the thermal layer, the zone near the surface stirred by the waves and warmed by the sun, the deeper regions untouched by solar warmth and uniformly at a fraction of a degree above freezing. The warm-water-layer boundary reflected most surface sounds up and away from the deep region so that many surface noises were inaudible until the ship passed up through the boundary. The effect could make an incoming supertanker as quiet as a sailboat. Their position was within the shipping lanes on the way to the Mediterranean through Gibraltar, the war effort doubling cargo traffic. There would be a dozen surface ships that they probably wouldn’t hear until they came through the layer, and if there was a supertanker pointed at them, the massive oil tanks would further quiet its engines, its keel reaching down to a depth of over a hundred feet on some of the behemoths that transited the Atlantic. A collision with such a giant would put them on the bottom as surely as a Nagasaki torpedo. They would be coming up in the darkness, the view out the periscope their only warning of trouble.
“Mark the time,” Kane called, suddenly wondering, as the deck inclined to five degrees up, what time and what day it was. Would it be night or day on the surface?
The ship’s clocks had been set for zulu time, Greenwich mean time, since they had left Norfolk before Thanksgiving. That worked well in the western basin of the Med, but they were farther west now, a time zone from Greenwich. Kane had lost track of time since they had hit bottom and fought for the ship, the New Year rung in without being noticed aboard.
“Zero three forty zulu, sir,” Houser said, his voice showing the wear of going too long without sleep or food.
The view out the periscope was dark, a slight diffuse brightness filtering down from the moon or clouds above, but they were not yet close enough to the surface to make out the waves.
“Sonar, conn, contact status?” Houser said over the headset.
“Conn, sonar, no surface contacts.” Sanderson’s voice was harsh with annoyance or stress or both.
“Nine five feet, sir,” the diving officer called.
The waves above appeared, at first blurred by the depth, then focusing as they moved closer, their outlines defined by the phosphorescence of the whitecaps in the sea breeze.
Kane rotated the periscope through almost two revolutions per second, looking for the underside of hulls.
“Seven five feet, sir.”
“No shapes or shadows … no shapes or shadows …”
Kane’s announcement was meant for the ship-control team, which would need to take immediate action should a close hull be seen, the crew trained to take the sub down on Kane’s call of “emergency deep.”
“Seven zero feet, sir. Zero bubble, ten-degree rise on the fairwater planes. Six eight feet… five-degree rise fairwater planes … six five feet, one-degree rise.”
“Scope’s breaking … scope’s breaking …” There was no monitor view of the periscope view, since the light coming down the mast at night would be diminished by the light-hungry Perivis system, robbing Kane of his full vision. He was the only thing standing between safety and disaster. The waves and foam finally washed off Kane’s view, the outside world coming into sudden sharp focus, the clouds above formed into separate large banks of cotton, illuminated by the first-quarter moon, the surface at sea-state two, slightly choppy with sprinkles of light foam.
“Scope’s clear!” Kane spun the optic module in three quick circles, and made out no details except the water in the immediate vicinity of the ship, the shimmer of the moon on the water passing by his view.
Other than the dancing light on the surface from the moon, the sea was empty. “No close contacts!”
Kane began his surface search, a slow rotation covering all 360 degrees. Still no lights of ships or dark shadows of unlit hulls.
“Raise the bigmouth antenna,” Kane called out.
“Radio, Captain, Bigmouth coming up, prepare to transmit the contact message.”
“Radio, aye,” the earphones hissed.
Kane continued his search, watching the sea slowly approaching the periscope view when it was trained forward, slowly receding as he looked aft. The time seemed to be clicking by with no report from radio.
“Radio, conn, what’s the status?”
“Conn, radio … we’re …”
“Say again, radio.” Kane’s voice took on an edge. Every second at PD was another second the Destiny could be opening the range and getting away, soon getting out of sonar range or worse, circling below them preparing a torpedo attack that would be unheard until the torpedo came above the layer.
“Conn, radio, transmission problems,” Senior Chief Binghamton’s voice was on the circuit. “We need to troubleshoot. It might take a half-hour.”
“Why didn’t we do that deep. Senior?”
“It’s a bigmouth problem. Captain. We didn’t see it until the mast was dry.”
“I’m taking her deep,” Kane said. “We don’t have time for this. Sonar, conn, proceeding deep. Chief, lower the bigmouth. Dive, make your depth 500 feet, steep angle. Helm, all ahead two-thirds.”
Almost immediately the waves came up and splashed the periscope lens. Kane snapped the grips up and lowered the scope. The bigmouth and the number-two periscope clunked into their stowed positions a second apart. The deck inclined downward to a steep thirty-degree dive.
“Helm, ahead standard. Sonar, Captain, report status of Target One.”
“Conn, sonar, complete loss of Target One.”
“Houser, you have the deck and the conn.” Kane walked into sonar, where he found Sanderson glaring at the console screens. The senior chief glanced up at Kane, then went back to flipping through his displays, talking while he searched.
“Narrowband is coming up but I’m not sure what I’m looking for. And there’s no trace of him broadband.”
Kane moved back into control. “XO, based on Target One’s previous track, give me an intercept vector to his position.”
“Unlikely he stayed on course and speed. Captain.”
“Plot it like he did. We’ll drive out to where he’d be if he kept going like he was and see if we hear him. Once we do, sonar can get a narrowband signature on him and we can track him at the longer ranges. Get the calculation done, then have Mr. Houser get us there, fast.”