by David Poyer
18
The Gulf of Oman
Mangum shook his hand for a long while, at the bottom of the ladder in the engine room, then gripped his shoulder too, as if unwilling to let him go. “Take care of yourself, roomie.”
“Just be here when we get back, Andy.”
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Where else would we be?” His classmate slapped his shoulder and abruptly faced away. “Turns for one knot,” he said to a talker, who repeated the order into his set.
Dan stuffed the fear into his belly and clambered up the ladder. With difficulty: He was burdened by nearly a hundred pounds of weapons, ammunition, knife, rebreather, and weights. It was a painful pull with his left arm, which he’d burned the shit out of one black night in the Arctic Sea. He reached the top and wriggled slowly through and up, into the transfer trunk.
A single bulb behind thick glass lit the white-painted sphere. Oberg and Kaulukukui sat bent over on the little circular shelf seat. The big Hawaiian looked even more enormous curled into the minuscule space.
Oberg leaned forward and tugged at Dan’s Draeger. The LAR-V was a chest-worn black-plastic-coated oblong with a green oxygen tank the size of a sixteen-ounce Coke tucked under it. Inside were a breathing bag, an air scrubber canister, and a first-stage regulator. There was a pressure gauge for the tank on top, where you could look down and read it; it measured from zero to three hundred. A recessed manual oxygen-add button on the front. Two corrugated rubber breathing tubes led to the second-stage regulator in the mouthpiece. The tank dug into his diaphragm as Oberg jerked on the cylinder straps, twisted the valve closed, open again. “Just a little buddy check, okay? We good to go, Commander?” he said, looking deep into Dan’s eyes.
Dan cleared his throat, trying not to look as nervous as he felt. He had a lot of hours underwater, but sport diving and penetrating a hostile harbor by night were orders of magnitude apart. “Let’s do it,” he said. He bit the mouthpiece into place and took a hit. Rubber and stale-tasting gas and a faint sting of alcohol.
“Only easy day was yesterday,” Kaulukukui joked. “Right?”
“Sure, Sumo Man.”
“It’s gonna be just like on SCUBA, only there won’t be any bubbles, and believe me, you won’t miss them. Remember that bailout bottle on your leg. No reason to get hinky. You need more oxygen, hit the button. The bag collapses, suck in, you’ll get more. This is a diverproof unit, long as you stay shallow. Always plenty of air.” Beside him Oberg was going on his Draeger, too. His hand hovered over a big push switch on the bulkhead, giving him one last chance to back out, Dan supposed; then thumped it like a faith healer invoking the Spirit.
Water gushed in. It swirled around their feet, rising quickly. It felt cold at first, as it flooded down his booties and up into his wet suit bottom, then warmed. He sealed his mask, tongued the mouthpiece, and flexed his arms, trying to relax. Deep slow breaths.
The water came up over his chest, then over his face. Deep slow breaths. The two SEALs were watching him like hawks.
He breathed out, then blinked, surprised. No bubbles. It did feel weird.
Teddy watched Lenson’s eyes as the water came up. He looked tense, but the pupils weren’t blasted wide, the eyeballs weren’t jerking around the way they did when a diver was fighting the Monster. The last bubbles came up out of their wet suits and gear. They drifted between them, wavering upward, then vanished, sucked into the overhead vent. Up on the surface there’d be a seething slick, just for a few seconds; then it would drift apart, vanish in the chop. That was okay. A moonless night, forty miles off the coast, there’d be no one to see. Which a cautious periscope sweep had already made sure of.
He spun the wheel on the hatch. It swung out, into the hangar. Kaulukukui was closer, so he bowed, made a courtly gesture: You first. And got a lifted finger in return.
By the time Henrickson pushed himself through the hatch, gulping as he sucked on the mouthpiece of his Draeger, most of the others had exited. He kept breathing shallow no matter how hard he tried not to. This thing on his chest was supposed to take the carbon dioxide out. Hydroxide to carbonate reaction. But he had a headache already. He felt for the oxygen add button, then forced his finger away. He shouldn’t need more this soon, should he?
Blackness, so dense and enormous he lost which way was up. They’d told him not to stop, that it was “just like getting on the bus.” But which way? He hovered, lungs pumping faster. Shit. Shit!
A hand grabbed him out of the dark. A hovering figure pointed him and shoved. Motioned to keep going. Instead he hovered, sculling slowly, oriented now, taking it in.
The lights were shielded, so they wouldn’t glare upward. The effect was eerie, illuminating everything but only from above. Hoses drifted across where divers were herding a black flattened shape like a torpedo sat on from above. Another beckoned impatiently from the barely lit circle of the hangar opening.
Whoever was behind him—Im, he thought—bumped him. He gulped and swallowed and made himself let go the edge of the hatch. He swam down the empty hangar and out into the open night sea, toward the looming shape that slewed slowly out to the side.
Turbulence jostled him. They were underway, slowly, and the current was pushing him aft. Toward a slowly rotating shadow he realized with a squeeze of his heart was the sub’s massive screw. He shrank instinctively. But he couldn’t back down. The rest of the team was behind him, Lenson was in front of him.
No, he couldn’t back out now. . . .
Hanging in the dark sea, watching the lights creep here and there, Teddy felt heavy, which wasn’t good. The Draeger wouldn’t burn off gas like an open circuit rig. But you always felt heavy going in. It was all the gear. And all the straps, and slings, and hoses, and shit.
Some guys got all jocked up for a mission. He preferred to keep it light. He didn’t carry a pistol, for example. Just another thing to hang up. He took an extra HK mag instead. Less weight, and you got thirty rounds instead of fourteen, or whatever you felt comfortable with in your handgun.
He was carrying the standard SEAL close quarters weapon, an ugly little Heckler & Koch nine-millimeter just barely controllable on auto. They had special trigger groups for a three-shot burst setting and waterproofing and lugged barrels for suppressors and the waterproof Surefire flashes with the lithium batteries.
His free hand roved, touching each item as he checked it off in his head. The rest of his first-line gear: compass, watch, his Glock knife, a Maglite with red and IR lenses. A wad of dummy cord. Bailout bottle, in case his scrubber canister broke through, or he took a bullet through it—it had happened, on an Iraqi oil platform, though he hadn’t been in the water at the time. Grenades—all frags, he wasn’t taking any flash-bangs on this mission. Five thirty-round magazines. A liter of water. His med kit. A claymore, in case things got really ugly. No night vision or bone radios this time, they were supposed to be waterproof but tended not to be reliable after you spent a couple of hours at pressure, but Kaulukukui had the UHF SatCom in case things went totally to shit. And batteries for everything that needed them. They were all wearing unmarked three-color BDUs under the wet suits, in case it came to cross-country work. Though he couldn’t see how this mission could turn into that. If they had to cross more than a couple hundred yards of Iran, they’d be already dead, their boots sticking out of the back of a truck.
Lenson was already aboard. Next up in the shadows was a small figure. Teddy still wasn’t sure why they had a North Korean on the team, but Im kept his mouth shut and obeyed orders. He caught a flash of dark questioning eyes and pointed to the open door. Im grabbed the edge and hauled himself inside, his fins a flick of black flame.
Henrickson. The little guy moved slowly, but he kept going.
And Carpenter. When he was boarded Oberg stuck his head in to make sure they were taking the right seats. He wanted Sumo and himself nearest the door. They’d be first out, he didn’t want some goatfuck developing where these guys got hung up on each other. They w
eren’t Team guys and he wasn’t sure how much dark-and-underwater they were rated for.
When it came to the door-kicking, he and his swim buddy would do that themselves.
Dan oriented himself inside the vehicle. He’d expected cramped, expected dark, but this was darker and more cramped even than he’d feared, and it didn’t help that they were all packaged in gill to gill under water. At least his breathing gear seemed to work okay. He was used to open circuit SCUBA, but swimming with the rebreather was different. The gas was warmer and more comfortable to breathe. When he exhaled the bag swelled against his chest. Though the rebreathers produced no bubbles, they had downsides, too: they couldn’t go as deep, and overexertion could produce carbon dioxide faster than the system could scrub it out—which could have nasty consequences.
Still, they shouldn’t have to swim that far, or fast, on this mission. If everything went as planned, they’d only have a few yards to cover on the rebreathers. Into the SDV, then up to the Juliet; back to the vehicle, and the return to San Francisco.
If.
A red interior light snapped on, and Kaulukukui mimed taking the regulator on its hose off the overhead clip, securing the mouthpiece on his Draeger, and replacing it with the onboard supply. Dan got the one above him and thumbed the purge valve to make sure it had air. He took deep breaths, flushing his lungs, then twisted the valve on his second stage and switched off mouthpieces to the onboard system, sucking in the familiar harsh dry cold of tanked air. He helped Wenck, sitting across from him, who seemed awkward with it. He patted the data systems technician’s knee, then gave a thumbs-up to the Hawaiian.
A beam came on. It flicked from face to face as Kaulukukui searched each man’s expression, waited till he got a thumbs-up from each. It went out, and a moment later a chuk-chuk-chuk came through the water and Dan felt the acceleration.
He leaned back, tilting his watch to the scarlet light. So far, on schedule. And a short ride in to objective—only three hours. Piece of cake.
If only this team held together.
Donnie peeked at his watch, then closed his eyes. Three hours! How was he going to keep it together for three hours? Underwater? He wished he had a Game Boy. Anything to take his mind off it. The SEALs didn’t mind. They liked riding in undersea vehicles. And, yeah, it was cool. But he felt like he couldn’t breathe.
Okay, he’d better start thinking over what he was going to have to do when they got there.
Which mainly was, download and suss out anything novel he could find in the combat system, the idea being to vacuum up anything that would relate to the Shkval-K’s still-only-rumored guidance capability.
Which he had his own opinions on, but whatever. According to what limited intel the team had been able to get their hands on, the Juliets had the Russian MGK-400 sonar and an Uzel MVU-119 fire control system.
What he wanted would most likely be in the Uzel, a 70sera digital computer based on the UM-2, a homegrown Russian computer more or less comparable with something like a DEC PDP-8, Univac 1219, or the old Navy Mark 152. An 18-bit machine that ran the inputs and outputs for the torpedoes and the cruise missiles through a digital-to-analog box, with a magnetic core memory of around 256K and a clock speed around 25 kilohertz.
Like most microcomputers of its era, the UM-2 had its read-only memory at the bottom of its addressable memory, with the interpreter, core functions, input matrix, and a little bit of mapped video—just enough to drive a little screen. The dinky memory and snail speed meant it wasn’t going to do a lot, but on the other hand you could program it fast and run it with grade school grads. The Uzel could run three attack solutions at once. So, maybe, three Shkval routines too, unless they had two computers. Which might be possible.
Anyway, he wasn’t that interested in the computer. What he wanted was the programming. It would probably be in a Russian version of ALGOL called ALGAMS, which wouldn’t be hard to compile once he got it into a can. In fact he’d downloaded a compiler that would emulate a PDP-8 in C on his notebook, and thought he had a good shot at making it run an Uzel too.
So he didn’t think running the software was going to be a problem, but nobody was sure what media it was going to be in. If the system update for the Shkval had kept the original input devices, they’d load the programs on mag tape, or even paper. He hoped it wasn’t paper, because it’d be impossible to copy. They’d just have to steal it, and if he got it wet, he’d end up with papier-mâché. But he couldn’t see them putting new programming on punched tape. Maybe those big old computer cassette tapes. Or an eight-inch disk. Then it’d be easy, audio output to line in on the little recorder he carried in the waterproof case. If they’d transitioned to a PC add-on, he’d tap into the serial port and download into his PalmPilot; he had connectors and jumpers. Or it was just possible the whole thing was hard-wired in as an add-on, a separate computer that reformatted the Uzel’s targeting output for the missile’s brain. Whichever, fire control programs were generally pretty small. They dealt with straightforward calculations and data. Unless there was something no one had anticipated.
If the program was in ALGAMS he could write an interpreter to let the Palm run it statement by statement, like with the old BASIC language systems. This was slower than compiled operation but it should be easy. Worst case would be if he had to modify the downloaded compiler. He hoped it didn’t have any bugs, taking him back to his “finish the project the night before the final exam” college days.
Donnie Wenck sat motionless, bursts of bubbles coming up around his face, watery pale eyes focused far away through the mask.
Oberg sat with palms braced on the instrument panel, comfortable as he could make himself. Lenson had browbeat the TEC into letting Obie fly copilot. Which meant they only had one body along from the SDV team, a dude named Vaught that his teammates called “V-Dag,” Teddy hadn’t asked why. Bus drivers, the SEALs called the SDV guys. The steady cluck of the prop, the whine of the motor vibrated through the hull. Bubbles roared in his ears. He kept listening for the ping of a sonar, the rumble of distant ships. There was a port above his head, but he didn’t bother looking. He’d see nothing, or at most the phosphorescent flare of drifting organisms, flashing blue or green at the bump of the pressure wave.
Instead he studied the forward-looking sonar, which unrolled a multicolored tapestry of the rippled, gradually shallowing bottom ahead. Here and there metal objects glowed bright blue: trash, jetsam, iron from old wrecks. Numbers flickered, giving distance to the surface and to the bottom. The needle of a magnetic compass wavered.
Next to him, Vaught was fastened to a screen with a point centered on a green-outlined lane. The pilot had his hands off the joystick at the moment, which meant the autopilot was on. He and Teddy examined each other’s eyes; then his mask turned back to its study.
When they entered the harbor, they’d switch to inertial navigation. It gave off no signal for harbor security. The rest of the instruments were mainly comms. They had encrypted VHF, Team Charlie’s portable SatCom, and modulated ultrasound to communicate with San Francisco; but strict silence was the rule during a mission. Especially in the approach phase, when the slightest emission could alert the enemy.
They ran in for an hour. At one point a noise spoke flickered on one of the displays. He lifted his hood off his ear, and caught the faint thin whine of distant propellers. The pilot angled away, put the spoke on their stern, and it faded.
He craned back into the passenger compartment. The only light now was a dim glow near the overhead, more to keep guys oriented than actually let them see. Lenson and Sumo sat hunched, motionless save for every-few-seconds gouts of used air. Carpenter and Henrickson were playing rock, paper, scissors, with the attitudes of gamblers in over their heads. Wenck seemed to be in a trance, sprawled back, mask tilted, looking at the overhead. Im sat like a coiled spring.
Obie wondered again about the little Korean.
Another hour and a half went by with nothing changing, except for the s
ea bottom rising on the display, the numbers gradually dropping on the readout. Then Vaught nudged him. He pointed and Teddy switched to the selection screen and went to low power.
The display shrank as the screw-beat slowed. The pilot took the wheel and altered course, oiling it around. Two black bars took form on the sonar. The ends of the breakwaters.
Teddy toggled back to the command screen and hesitated, finger on the button, until Vaught nodded. His bubbles were coming faster. Teddy pointed to his mouthpiece with his other hand. The pilot nodded and his cheeks hollowed as he sucked air. He punched the autopilot back on for a couple seconds as he got his Draeger fired up. Teddy leaned so the guys in back could see him, thumped the bulkhead, and gesticulated to change to closed circuit. Sumo would take it from there, make sure they all swapped over.
Okay, let’s get this fucking thing into the harbor. They weren’t riding alone. All the other frogmen who’d swam and ridden into enemy harbors rode with them. The Italians had done it for the first time, way back when. Penetrated Austrian and British harbors astraddle torpedoes they called “pigs,” slapped limpet mines on battleships, escaped or died, but had not turned back. Whoever thought Italians didn’t have balls had never looked into the Decima Flottiglia MAS.
For the next few minutes he was too busy to think about anything other than his instruments. They were inside the breakwaters, but running blind. It was too dark for visuals, and they couldn’t use the sonar or even a fathometer now because some late-at-night operator on one of the ships might pick up a strange signal. They were running on inertial navigation and a simple depth gauge checked against his own jotted dead reckoning on a slate, turn count against course and distance traveled. Every time they came up on a mark to turn the pilot would glance at him. Teddy would nod, then he’d put the helm over.
It seemed like forever before the last correction, in the middle of the eastern basin, that should take them right in to the submarine piers. He started getting concerned, but actually he trusted the inertial more than his own navigation. Finally the pilot brought it around. He lifted his left hand and flashed five fingers.
