Brentwood turned back to the blueprints of the sub. “Enter it in the log, Pete.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Zeldman.
Brentwood stood up, ran his fingers through his hair, and, arms akimbo, rotated his torso to rid himself of the stiffness of having been hunched over the blueprints for so long. “Going aft to stretch my legs, Chief. You come up with anything, call me immediately.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
What Brentwood meant beneath the mundane exchange was that it was time to “walk through”—to see how each department on the four levels of the sub was holding up. As he passed the galley, he could smell hamburgers frying. “Sliders, Cook?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Suits me,” said Brentwood easily. Farther on, he saw two stewards coming toward him from Sherwood Forest laden down with bags of onions and potatoes that had been strung up from the maze of pipes that surrounded the six missile tubes. Next, he passed a man coining up from the stern ballast area and noticed the sailor’s yellow thermoluminescent dosimeter was missing from his belt. “Where’s your TD, sailor?”
The man looked down guiltily, “Sorry sir — loosened my belt on the off shift and—”
“Go get it,” said Brentwood, patting him on the shoulder and passing on into the cool, clean, polished smell of Sherwood Forest, the ventilators’ fans like a running stream. It made no sense to him but, compared to the rest of the sub, in Sherwood Forest, for all its electronic wizardry, he had the same feeling of tranquillity that he had experienced as a boy in the woods of Washington State and Oregon.
Standing close together against the missiles’ firing control panels were two technicians, the first checking the twenty-five rows of circuit indicator lights on one of the tall, blue-gray consoles, the other man checking the first man’s every move, verifying the sequence. Another pair were checking the missile tubes’ monitors, making sure the humidity and temperature in each of the six chocolate-brown missile tubes were within operational parameters.
As Robert walked down the starboard side, the big white numbers on the chocolate tubes indicating missiles one, three, and five passed him like slow tracer as he kept moving through the “forest” that took up a full third of the sub. His sense of frustration at not being able to get his men out of harm’s way, unable to maneuver except for the two paltry five-knot-maximum props set in the after-ballast tanks, while the six multiwarhead missiles were safe, grew until he had to caution himself to calm down. If only they could get to the surface, rising fast enough to smash through sonar-identified thinner ice, they might stand some chance. But unless the sub could rise, the hope of getting the men out, airlifted off the ice to Spitzberg or south to Iceland or even west to Greenland, was just a dream. Realistically, however, Robert Brentwood knew their only prospects now were that the sub would in fact go deeper if any more leaks occurred, and each inch she fell increased the “taffy”—the effect of increased water pressure over her entire hull.
After reaching the reactor room and satisfying himself that the steam leak was in fact minor, he passed on to the engine room, noting along the way that some of the green rubberized tile on the walkway had curled at the edges. It was down here that some of the worst leaks had occurred before the pumps had got them under control. “You boys enjoy the dip?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” answered a ginger-headed young auxiliary room mechanic who looked to Robert Brentwood as if he must be no more than nineteen or twenty — about the same age as Rosemary’s younger brother, whose bones now lay scattered somewhere on the bottom of the Atlantic. Brentwood saw the man’s dosimeter had exceeded the two-hundred-rad mark, and the young man saw him notice but smiled good-naturedly before turning away, busying himself with the oil pressure gauges.
Robert Brentwood was so moved by the young mechanic’s quiet bravery that as he headed back through Sherwood Forest, he took out a Kleenex, pretending to blow his nose, using the tissue as a cover for the overwhelming tears of pride and the sense of honor it gave him to command such men. Seeing another pair of missile technicians working the port-side monitors, he quipped lightheartedly, “Hope you boys aren’t getting bored down here.”
“No sir, Captain,” answered one. “These D-5s are more temperamental. Humidity’s—”
It came to him in a flash. He could have hugged the technician — name patch Sayers — except they would have labeled him as a Section-Eight. As it was, the two technicians saw Brentwood do something that no one had ever seen “Bing” do. He began running through the sub, the alternate numbers of the missiles on the port side — two, four, six, — flashing by him. Halfway along, he heard the soft gong: “Captain to Control. Captain to Control.”
“How’d he know they were gonna call him?” asked Sayers.
“Don’t ask me, man,” replied his checker. “Sixth sense. Sub captain’s got to have it, I hear.”
“Bullshit! No way he could’ve—”
“Hey, man — watch it. You missed a step. Back up in the sequence.”
As Brentwood entered Control, he was told by Zeldman they had a contact.
“Hostile?” asked Brentwood, catching his breath.
“Too far away as yet,” answered Zeldman. “The estimate is fifty-five thousand yards. About thirty miles.”
Brentwood had always made it a habit to be overly conservative when it came to estimates of contact distances, and decided to act as if the approaching submarine — as it certainly couldn’t be a surface vessel — was closer to them.
“What’s your guesstimate, Link?” Brentwood asked the other sonarman.
“Well, sir, it’s a bit fuzzy, but that may be because some of our sensors were ruptured during the Alfa attack. But it’s definitely coming towards—”
“He’s gone,” said Emerson. “Shut down his active.”
All eyes in Control were on the monitor panels. Brentwood seemed as alarmed now as he had been excited when he entered Control.
“Very well,” he said, the phrase, and his tone, gathering them all together. He gave orders for the emergency props to be extended from the belly of the sub. If they couldn’t rise, they could at least turn Roosevelt to face the last-known bearing of the sonar contact, and try to defend head-on, rather than sitting like a sunken log, offering their flank. Next, he ordered all torpedo tubes loaded, advising the torpedo officer to be ready for “snapshot two, one,” or informing him, as they were under possible attack, they might have to get a quick return shot away within forty seconds. During this time the torpedo crew would have to flood the tubes, open their caps, and maintain tandem communication with the Mark-118 firing control system.
“Either way, torpedo room,” Brentwood advised, “I want you to load one SA tube, one PA tube, with short-range contact fuse fish.”
“One tube starboard abaft with contact fish, one port abaft with contact fish,” came the confirmation. “Short-range fuse.”
“Man battle stations missile,” ordered Brentwood, standing by the raised podium of the control room’s attack center, his arms folded, the small of his back touching the brass rail that girded the search and the attack periscopes’ housing. “Set condition one SQ.” They were now on highest alert.
“Set condition one SQ. Aye aye, sir,” repeated Zeldman, and upon seeing the various departments punching in “ready,” he confirmed, “condition one SQ all set.”
“Very well,” answered Brentwood. “Neutral trim.”
“In neutral trim now, sir.”
“Very well. Prepare to spin.” Several men in Control looked across at each other in alarm. “Stand by to flood tubes two, three, and four,” ordered Brentwood, and they could hear the faint rushing of water filling the torpedo tubes. Tube one already contained the Mark-48 with contact fuse, the remaining three torpedoes now sliding forward from their rail-tracked dollies into the tubes, assuring that Roosevelt was now ready to fire at any enemy sub — if that’s what the contact had been — which might try to run interference with the missile launch.