“How about trying out the computer?” Carol asked more than an hour later. “Let’s see if Caesar can compete with you.”
“I think I’ll let my officer of the deck handle that.”
Almost to himself, he added, “No need to let the computer know I’ve developed any trust. Mr. Lyford,” he called to a younger man sipping at a mug of coffee, “She’s all yours now. Give the computer control.”
After punching the identifying codes into the machine, Lyford settled before a console next to Snow’s diving station. The screen glowed green as a message appeared before him: “I have assumed control. Depth, four eight zero feet; speed, two eight knots; course, two niner two degrees true.”
“Take her up to four hundred feet, Mr. Lyford, and add three knots.”
The OOD poked at the keyboard before him, checking as his orders appeared on the screen. Satisfied, he waited.
“Sir!” A startled cry came from one of the men on the bow planes. “I’ve lost control. . .” He turned toward Snow, who simply shook his head.
It was hard. The planesman had retired from the navy, too. But now he put his hands in his pockets as he’d been taught in the fishbowl. The computer had control and was responding to the OOD’s orders, and the results came within the allotted time Snow would have given himself. Imperator reached the exact depth and speed indicated, with no sensation of change. It had simply happened as if Snow were still at the diving station. Propeller revolutions had increased just enough to bring the submarine up to thirty-one knots. The dials on the control console showed that the planes had been used. The trim pumps had activated. They were at four hundred feet, the pumps still adjusting for a perfect trim. And all with no human being involved. Imperator’s computer had reacted instantaneously to the orders of the OOD. A confirming report appeared on the screen before him when they had been carried out.
Training in the fishbowl had been exacting, and now, as the night turned to dawn above them, the crew adjusted to the consistency that had been simulated until that time. No flaws appeared in either the submarine or her people. When Hal Snow fell into his bunk fully clothed, he napped with a feeling of security. Everything had fallen into place—just as the consortium had intended.
Perhaps his senses reacted to someone’s presence, or it might have been the faint perfume, still so alien to a submarine. Snow came awake automatically. Without ever touching him, Carol Petersen drew her hand back in surprise. Snow rose instantly on an elbow, shading his eyes against the overhead light.
“I’m sorry.” She stepped back involuntarily. “I didn’t mean to startle you like that.”
“Old habits are tough to shake,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his eyes, then smoothing his hair. “What is it?”
“Nothing special. I noticed you had a call in for now . . .”
“What time is it?”
“A little after zero eight hundred. You’ve been sleeping for three hours.”
Snow sat on the edge of his bunk, blinking his eyes against the light. “I don’t usually do that at sea. Of course, I don’t ever remember a woman waking me up in a submarine before, either.”
There was no expression on his face and she stepped back another pace, involuntarily. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I hate to destroy habits.”
“Different boat, different service . . . what the hell. Might as well start something new at my age.” He sniffed the air like a rabbit. “How the hell am I going to maintain discipline when you run around the boat smelling so good? Pretty soon we’re going to have to have flowers in the wardroom.” Snow ran his tongue over his teeth and reached for his toothbrush.
“I’ll leave if you want me to.”
“Ever see a man brush his teeth in the morning?”
She nodded.
“Good. Stay. I haven’t had a woman who cared enough to watch me do it for a long time.” He snorted. Leaving the fishbowl behind brought a great sense of relief. And Imperator had performed perfectly all night, through every conceivable evolution . . . every one except weapons systems, and that could wait.
She could sense she’d made a mistake, and Snow wasn’t going to let her forget it.
“Can you handle me washing my face and combing my receding hair without stepping outside?” The attitude was unpleasant, the treatment subservient—the direct opposite of hours before.
“Haven’t seen anything that’s bothered me yet, Captain.”
“Good. This beats hell out of having some pimply-faced sailor barking at me to get up, I could get used to it.”
“First thing you know, everyone would want to be captain for a day,” she retorted.
“How about ordering me some scrambled eggs and whatever else they’re dishing out, and I’ll change and be up to the wardroom in about five minutes. Okay?”
“Consider it done, Captain,” she answered grimly, stepping back into the passageway.
“Oh, by the way,” Snow called before she’d taken more than a couple of steps, “did you tell anyone you were coming down here to get me up?”
“Just the messenger on watch.”
“Wonderful. It’s probably all over the ship.”
Snow pulled the curtain across the entrance to his cabin. Long ago, he’d convinced himself not to grade any female over thirty on the scale he’d devised for himself, but Carol Petersen was well above average in looks as far as Snow’s classification system worked. She must be late thirties, he surmised, maybe leaning pretty hard on forty. But she didn’t really look it. She still had a fine figure. He learned she’d never been married soon after she reported to the fishbowl. She managed to make coveralls look neat and seemed to fill them out, even the baggy ones.
Until this morning, he rarely considered her as anything else but a senior engineer, a vital one, but still a critical member of his crew. But being awakened by her—now he was even sure that perhaps it was the smell of the perfume that he’d noticed—set his imagination to running.
The continued success of Imperator’s first day at sea was marred only by a single message: SOVIET SUBMARINES MONITORED VICINITY 48N 146W MOVING IN GENERAL DIRECTION YOUR TRANSIT AREA. ANTICIPATE INTERCEPT. OUR HUK WILL ADVANCE TO BLOCK. PROGRAM THEIR UNITS 24 AND 41, OUR UNITS 19, 39 AND 72.
Snow ordered the sound-library tapes for the numbered Soviet and American submarines inserted into the computer for passive identification and tracking.
The remainder of the day was without incident.
Andy Reed loitered against the shiny chrome railing in the control center, patiently waiting his turn at the periscope. It was the captain’s responsibility to take the first look no matter how clear sonar reported the area. The periscope operated like a television camera, displaying exactly what appeared to the captain on remote screens. Glancing over his shoulder, Reed watched the scene shift on the unit mounted near the entrance to sonar. But it was not in color and Reed longed to see the Pacific as it actually was.
His thoughts drifted back a few short days to the moment they’d gotten underway from Pearl Harbor. It was so beautiful. Mornings like that were easily engraved in his memory forever after too much time behind a desk. Everything had been perfect that day: the water a deep blue to match the Hawaiian sky, wisps of cirrus on the horizon, a light breeze carrying the fresh aroma of flowers and mown grass. Diamond Head majestic to the east. As the picture came back clearly, he also remembered his good but failed intentions of immediately recording it in a letter to Lucy. But that had been forgotten as Houston exited the channel into the Pacific and the crew had made preparations to dive.
Caught up by the sensations of newfound freedom on the water, he had asked the captain’s permission to take the conn as OOD. Once again he was the confident junior officer conning an attack submarine from the top of the sail, ocean water majestically foaming against the black hull. As Houston rolled casually in the soft swells, crewmen secured the ship for that first day at sea. Reed watched with pleasure as the men scurried about the rounded deck att
ached to lifelines. Preparing for that first dive, sonar always searched for the slightest rattle. All fittings were double-checked, because there were no second chances once they dived. In less than twenty minutes, much too short a period from Reed’s vantage point high above the ocean, sonar pronounced the hull to be as secure from sound as possible.
Houston was ready to dive and Reed found himself the only man on the bridge, as command was shifted to the captain down in control. Reed prepared the sail against his own mental check-off list. The clamshells secured, he dropped down through the hatch and reported last man down. It was an exhilarating feeling to be back, yet momentarily disappointing to give up the sounds and smells of the open ocean. Yes, he had spent too long behind a desk.
He was brought back to the present by the captain. “Admiral, care to take a look for yourself?”
The view through the periscope was so different from the screen he’d been studying moments before, and he could control it. Slowly circling, glued to the eyepiece, he brought the vast beauty of the ocean swimming into perspective. In every direction, the sea was in constant motion, the horizon sharp in some places, setting off water and sky, in other places merged by the meeting of clouds at its edge. It was a singular beauty that he treasured. As soon as he finished, Reed promised himself to sit down and write Lucy—and include his recollections of the morning they’d gotten underway.
“Beautiful,” he whispered silently to himself, stepping back from the periscope. “Thanks for the look, Ross,” Reed remarked to the captain. “About the only time I ever see anything like that is when Lucy and I get away sailing for a day—but even then there’s always land in the distance,” he added wistfully.
Houston’s satellite antenna had been raised for daily message traffic while they peered through the periscope.
Now, like any submariner, her captain was anxious to dive again. “Do you want to send anything to Olympia or Helena before we pull the plug, Admiral?”
“I guess not, thanks. Nothing’s changed in the last twenty-four hours. We know where their submarines are in relation to Imperator and so do Olympia and Helena. I think I’ll just keep her on the same track. She knows pretty much what to do if we lost contact at all. Let’s keep radio silence and dive.”
Ten minutes later Houston leveled off, speeding toward the rendezvous point that would place them between Imperator and the Soviet submarines sent out to destroy her. There had been no doubt of the Russian intent even before Houston departed Pearl Harbor. Their message traffic had been thoroughly analyzed. Other Petropavlovsk-based submarines had been detached, with orders to stop Imperator before she got through the Bering Strait to dive under the ice. That was the main reason Reed was to use Houston as his flagship—just in case the fates won out. His orders were to provide a screen until Hal Snow was ready to fight her. Then Reed was to analyze the competition.
And Danilov was leading the pack. Abe Danilov—that crafty son of a bitch, Reed mused affectionately to himself. It hadn’t been so many years back that he’d first encountered the Russian when they were both commanding attack boats. It was all still so very clear in his mind. Intelligence had indicated before they departed New London that it was more than likely he might encounter Danilov among the Soviet boats operating off Greenland . . . and they’d been absolutely correct.
After his return, Reed had taken his sonar tapes to the library just to compare the sounds of that Russian against the others. There was no doubt about it. It had been Danilov. Everything he’d read seemed to indicate that it was the same man he’d met in that undersea dogfight over a three-day period.
The Russian had been the first to establish contact, a lesson Reed remembered. There seemed to be nothing nearby as he’d raced after that contact dead on their bow. About the same time that sonar identified it as a noise-maker, they also picked up the Soviet boat behind them. If they’d been at war, Andy Reed and his boat would have been at the bottom—with no warning at all until the whine of the torpedoes had been picked up.
Once the game had begun, Andy Reed confirmed what the navy had been claiming for so many years. The American boats were faster, quieter, more maneuverable, the Russians were noisier, slower, and they had to close their range more for accurate firing. But that didn’t account for experience. Danilov was wily—that was the word that had come to him. He read the intelligence reports confirming that Abe Danilov would now be commanding the Soviet hunter-killer group—like a fox—no, a ferret was a more apt term.
Reed understood that any man who looked forward to combat was crazy, unfit to command, but what a challenge Danilov presented. There was no other submariner in the world whom he respected more.
4
ABE DANILOV’S EYES flew open as the sound of footsteps halted outside his stateroom. When the messenger snapped on the overhead light, after knocking politely, he found the admiral’s eyes eerily fixed on his own. The sailor had been on the staff long enough to grow accustomed to such habits, yet this one continued to be disconcerting.
There was time for an automatic salute—but before the messenger could say a word, Danilov ordered, “Leave the message board with me. Please inform Captain Sergoff I will breakfast with him in fifteen minutes.” He dismissed the sailor with a wave of his hand.
Danilov stretched in the manner the doctor had ordered. First he pointed the toes of his right foot, tensing the muscles of his leg, then did the same with his left. Next he stretched his arms in front of him, balling his fists as he raised his arms above his head. Satisfied, he allowed himself the luxury of the kind of catlike stretch that any man enjoyed in the morning. Lying still, his eyes searched out the comfortable, familiar facets of the tiny stateroom. Though it normally belonged to Seratov’s commanding officer, it would be his for the duration of this operation.
Finally, again following the doctor’s instructions, he took three deep breaths, exhaling slowly before he sat up on the edge of the narrow bunk. It was maddening, this getting older, even though he felt perfectly fine, well rested with only two or three hours of sleep. Danilov admitted his body did not respond as it had when he was a fresh, young officer, but he was still disturbed on principle, if nothing else, that the young doctor’s orders were supported by higher authority. Admirals were not to bound out of bed—he could go along with that. Engage the senses one at a time; allow the aging body the privilege of waking and functioning properly—that wasn’t as bad as it sounded at first. Yet many of the habits that Danilov had enjoyed over the years had now been recategorized by official Moscow as abuses to the body—and only a fool, a simpering old fool, would allow someone to toss his beloved, bad habits out the window.
But Abe Danilov accommodated their purposes with good humor, even though there was one ailment his seniors could do nothing about—he was lonely. Danilov desperately wanted to be beside his Anna. She was much of the reason he had slept but a few hours that night. That first haunting letter of hers would not retreat to the back of his mind no matter how hard he willed it. He read it completely through three times the previous night and found that he understood his Anna so well that parts of it were almost automatically committed to his memory, while other sections brought tears to his eyes.
After pulling on his pants, he hung the message board to one side of the mirror, a routine Danilov followed every morning. While he brushed his teeth, washed, and shaved, he would study each message out of the comer of his eye, pulling them off the board one by one so that his routine never ceased. Danilov was uncomfortable without his habits.
The general messages intended “for flag officers only” related the movements of forces around the world over the last twenty-four hours. Some involved actual confrontation. others the day-to-day Cold War challenges of a bristling world. Each commander was made aware of the events that could affect his small part of Soviet national strategy. None of it really interested Danilov. If anything occurred that directly affected him, he knew he would be awakened by a messenger in the night.
But there was one noteworthy communication that caught his eye as he shaved—the hunter-killer unit dispatched a few days previously from the eastern submarine base of Petropavlovsk was approaching a sector on Imperator’s projected path. That would be interesting, he mused, just to be a fly on the wall. . . to watch what each of those units would do that day. He knew that Imperator would not be alone. The Americans would have their own submarines out in front while this massive new weapon experimented with itself. And what would they do with the Soviet submarines? Would they simply let them tag along recording each of Imperator’s capabilities? Danilov doubted that very much as he washed the shaving cream off his face. He expected that if they didn’t turn away at a reasonable point in time that they might find themselves going down a drain. . . much like the shaving cream that disappeared from the metal sink before his eyes.
As he finished knotting his tie—Danilov always wore a tie until they were well away from the piers—he studied the local weather message. No change—the same stinking spring weather that constantly swept across the Kola Peninsula from the Barents Sea—snow, sleet, gusty winds. It would be an unpleasant passage to their diving point. He would probably be ill. He usually was when they got underway from Polyarnyy, even in midsummer. Too much time ashore these days, he realized, and fervently hoped no one, not even Sergoff, would notice that now he could only enjoy a voyage below the surface where the water was calm and his stomach could return to normal. The doctor was right, in a way, about age. When he was younger, Danilov never dreaded those first couple of hours on the surface. He was tough then.
Silent Hunter Page 8
