The Newport officer-of-the-deck ordered the brow set in place and Dave went aboard.
What Dave considered an extremely young officer gave the order, “Attention on deck.”
A crisp salute from the younger man showed Dave at least some facets of his day had survived. Dave, caught off guard by the courtesy, removed his hands from his pockets and assumed a semblance of the military position, which had evaded him since completing active service. He returned the salute in the prescribed manner of a retired officer by standing at attention.
The submarine’s skipper said, “Good afternoon, Captain Zane. I’m Phil Reynolds, commanding officer. Welcome aboard Newport.”
Dave thought, commanding officer? He looks younger than my paperboy. “Well,” Dave hesitated, but for onlyan instant. “Welcome to our base, Captain. We don’t have much here yet, but seeing you’re our first customer, it’s all yours.”
Dave extended his hand and the submarine skipper took it with a firm grip and shook it.
Commander Reynolds said, “Please come below, sir.”
Both men proceeded to Newport’s wardroom where Dave accepted the customary offer of a cup of coffee.
Dave began, “Well how did you enjoy the bottom of our Sound?”
“Frankly, sir, I’ve only been in a few places I liked less.”
“Perfectly understandable. How did things go back there? You’re the first guys out. What can you tell us?”
Shaking his head, Reynolds said, “Not a nifty place to be. We heard the racket and just sat tight. That place is now as hot as a firecracker. Once in a while after the attack, we’d pop up at night and send monitors out to take background readings. The Reds used some pretty dirty stuff. Are you familiar with the term salted weapon?”
“Isn’t that when they capture neutrons in the material to be blown up? Spreads around a lot of contamination.”
“That’s right, sir.”
Dave felt uncomfortable with the respectful form of address. He’d rather be called by his first name but had to come to terms with being back in the Navy.
Reynolds continued, “From what we found, they used a cobalt sixty isotope. Its half-life is five years. It’s spread all over the southern part of Puget Sound. Even with leaching from heavy rainfall, we can’t get back into Bremerton for at least a year.”
“How’d they do that? The technique you described requires a pretty good-sized device. It couldn’t have been delivered by a ballistic missile.”
“That’s right, sir. I think we now know what the Soviets did off the Swedish coast a few years ago. A Foxtrot submarine ran aground there; and nearby, the Swedes found marks of a remotely piloted tracked vehicle on the seabed. Somehow, they got similar vehicles into Puget Sound undetected. They loaded them with the dirty stuff, drove them to desired burst points and programmed them to detonate concurrently with the missile attacks.”
It struck Dave that young Reynolds had gotten it all pretty well together. His tone level steady and he took no delight in using his observations to focus attention on himself. He didn’t need to. Dave liked the notion that his country still produced officers of this quality.
“What made you think they used RPVs?”
Reynolds smiled. “We bottomed near Hat Island. One evening after we surfaced an irate local approached us in his boat and raised hell. He wanted to know if we were responsible for destroying the clam beds. Actually, Captain Zane, we found this refreshing. Here we were, recovering from a nuclear attack, up to our buns in a full-fledged war, and this guy could still worry about clams. The small space occupied by Newport could not have wiped out his bed, so I asked if he would show us where they were. He did, and my divers uncovered the tracks. Ivan had been there.
“We figured the rest by deduction. But here’s the really funny part. The guy came back and let us have it again. He claimed he argued against bringing the carrier battle group into Everett, Washington in the first place. Had they listened to him, the Soviets wouldn’t have run their tracked vehicles in there and this reinforced his position. After the war, he’d go to Washington, DC and say as much. What a feisty guy.
“He’d been there two weeks when we saw him and he’s already a goner. It would’ve done no good to tell him that. We thought it best to let him live out what little time he had in a place he obviously loved.”
“You did the right thing.”
“From what we could tell, sir, Bremerton and Everett got hit hardest. Lucky the battle group left port a few days earlier. The Soviets likely intended to deny access to any port facility that we needed to conduct the war. I suspect there’s a bunch of other places in the Sound with wiped out clam beds too. Whoever directed the RPV movements reached station early with plenty of time to practice.”
“As far as your ship went, how did things go?”
“On the plus side, we performed our mission. We survived the attack and brought you a hull to repair. But in the yard before the attack, we lifted the reduction gear casings and found wiped bearings on the port low speed pinion and high-speed gear. We ordered replacement bearings but had to deploy before they arrived. Unless you got a line on some, I’m afraid we’re nothing but a spare parts bin.”
“How long have you been in command, Phil?”
“I relieved my predecessor two months ago in the yard.”
Dave paused for a moment. If he found the bearings, he had no one at the Pitstop capable of making repairs of this magnitude and did not wish to offer any false hope. During their short acquaintance, Dave developed a fondness for young Reynolds.
“Look, son … er, Captain. We’ve performed a kind of miracle here just getting this place set up. We just might have another one up our sleeve.”
Jack Olsen said, “An armed boarding party is our only option. We can’t hide by bottoming with only ten feet beneath the keel. Slipping past them undetected is out of the question, unless they’re deaf and blind.”
Captain Bostwick addressed his hastily assembled council of war, “What do we know about the target?”
A long-term submariner contention is: There are only two types of ships, submarines and targets.
Nodding, Jack addressed the weapons officer seated at the end of the wardroom table. “Brent?”
Brent continued to function well despite the captain’s now open hostility toward him. “Yevgenya class, sir. No more than ten aboard. Sonar got a make on her. A one-lunger diesel propulsion system. A couple of sweeps with a Don II Radar just before she anchored is consistent, although common, with a number of warships that size.”
Bostwick asked, “Brent, any chance she detected us?”
“None sir. We’re well inside the width of a Don II transmission pulse and no suspicious radio intercepts. Real problem is the damn radio. We intercepted her anchoring message and the power of the response signal indicated a transmitter’s fairly close. Maybe even on the island itself. We’ve got more reason than just the minesweeper for being out of here and submerged before daylight.”
Dan Patrick added, “If we get caught, we’ve had it. The Soviets have the hardware they need to keep us from reaching deepwater.”
Captain Bostwick agreed to let the boarding party go. “Okay. It’s our only chance. Who’ll lead this? Brent?”
Jack replied, “He wants to, Captain, but he’s too important to the success for the rest of our mission.”
The captain gritted his teeth as he asked, “Who then?”
“Woody, sir,” Dan replied. “He’s right out of the Academy and he’s the most recently trained in infantry tactics. He’s also in the best physical shape.”