Counter Poised

by John Spikenard

  “All stop,” ordered the captain.

  The bow of the Louisiana was just passing the westernmost edge of the rig. The captain would let the momentum of the Louisiana carry her under the rig and into final position.

  Once in position, the captain ordered, “All back slow.”

  “All back slow, aye, sir.”

  The captain momentarily reversed the direction of the Louisiana’s large screw to stop all forward motion and bring the submarine to rest exactly in position under the rig.

  “All stop.”

  “All stop, aye, sir.”

  The north-to-south current pushed the Louisiana gently against the rubber bumpers mounted on the inside surfaces of the rig’s southern legs.

  “Surface the boat.”

  “Surface, aye, sir.”

  The chief of the boat grabbed the intercom microphone and announced, “Surface! Surface! Surface!” throughout the submarine.

  The Louisiana surfaced beneath the platform, with the conning tower coming into position about eight feet below the bottom of the rig’s main deck. The stern of the Louisiana extended only slightly beyond the end of the platform. It was an overcast day, which shielded them from surveillance satellites.

  “If the sky starts to clear,” the captain ordered, we’re going to submerge until nightfall.”

  Fire-escape type stairs were lowered from the main deck of the rig to the conning tower, making it a short climb to the topside living and working areas. As George emerged from the hatch, he spotted Dwight at the top end of the stairs.

  “Hello, Dwight.”

  “Nice drivin’, George. I’m glad you didn’t knock down my rig!”

  “Not me,” said George with a sly grin. “I’m a safe driver. You know I’m not one to take risks.”

  “That’s a good one. Just let me tell you, you guys are extremely hot. Everybody’s lookin’ for MAD Adams, even the Chinese. It’s all in the papers. They’re all lookin’ around Africa, though. They seem to think you’re headed for the Indian Ocean to wipe out the Muslims.”

  “And how are you, too, Dwight?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just a little excited, and I was worried they might find you before you had a chance to get the fighters…and our special guest,” Dwight said with a note of exasperation.

  “I take it Petty Officer Harris is enjoying her leave?”

  “Yep, she got here the day before yesterday and has been drivin’ me crazy ever since! Every ten minutes, “When are they going to get here? How much longer? Are they here yet?” Man! It’s been like driving cross-country with little kids!”

  George laughed. “Her reports have been extremely valuable, so you better cut her a little slack!”

  “I’m tryin’, but it’s difficult! Anyway, come on up and get some coffee. Let’s talk about the work schedule. And by the way, nice beard!”

  Knowing that his picture would be published worldwide, George had grown a fairly decent beard over the two weeks since the disappearance of the Louisiana. Much to his chagrin, it only contained a little bit of red; the rest of it was gray!

  “Thanks. I’m not particularly proud of it. I’ll be up in a minute, but the first thing we have to do is start getting these reentry vehicles dismounted from the missile nose cones, and get the warheads out of them. We can’t stay here long, so let’s get that started, and then we can sit down and chat.”

  Dwight pointed up to the rafters over the submarine. “See that rectangular section just over your deck? That’s the lift we installed to raise and lower the fighters. We’ll also use it to pull the nose cones and reentry vehicles. We can lower the air tugger basket and use it to bring up people, warheads, whatever you want to offload. If you’ll be so kind as to pop the lid on one of those launch tubes, we’ll get started!”

  “That’s great. Is John here?”

  “John’s here and raring to go!”

  George and Dwight had recruited John Ellis, a civilian nuclear weapons expert, who had previously worked for the Department of Energy (DOE) at national laboratories in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Los Alamos, New Mexico. Most recently he had worked on top-secret weapons programs at Sandia Corporation in Albuquerque. Navy personnel were trained only in the operation of the missiles and in procedures for arming and disarming the nuclear warheads after the warheads were mounted in the missiles. They did not receive training, however, on the details of how the nuclear warheads were actually constructed. John’s specialized knowledge, training, and skills were needed in that regard.

  Each of the twenty-four D-5 missiles carried by the Louisiana was designed to be launched from below the surface of the sea, climb to suborbital altitude above the atmosphere, and, at a programmed point in its trajectory, release its five independently targeted reentry vehicles, each of which contained a DOE-supplied package, otherwise known as a nuclear warhead. Each reentry vehicle weighed hundreds of pounds because it included not only the warhead, but also the electronics needed to control the vehicle and direct it to its programmed target, as well as the heat shield, which enabled the warhead to survive the intense heat generated when the vehicle reentered the atmosphere.

  John had been recruited to supervise the removal of the reentry vehicles from the missiles and the subsequent removal of the DOE-supplied weapons packages from the reentry vehicles. He would also train the crew, divided into two-man teams, to manually arm and disarm the warheads, which John called “peanuts” because of their peanut-like shape.

  “You’ll have to keep someone at the controls of that sub to move it fore and aft,” instructed Dwight. “We don’t have much lateral or longitudinal maneuverability on that lift. It’s basically an up-and-down setup, so when we’re ready to unload the next nose cone, you’ll have to maneuver the sub to put the next launch tube under the lift. Later on, we’ll weld the brackets and access flanges for the fighters onto your deck next to the escape hatches. When we lower each fighter, you’ll have to maneuver the sub so that the brackets line up under it.”

  “That’s fine, we can handle that. These fighters are going to be great. By the way, how did the testing go on the locking mechanism?”

  “Just fine. We built a mock-up of a section of the Louisiana’s deck with an escape hatch and tested the whole configuration. We welded a flange over the hatch and brackets on each side of it and set the prototype, SF-1, on top. There’s a locking bar inside the fighter that’s used by the sonar operator to clamp the fighter onto the deck. We put it on his side because we figured the pilot would be busy flying the fighter into position.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Anyway, the locking bar connects to a cam, which controls a couple of steel hooks. When the sonar operator pushes the locking bar about halfway down, the hooks extend under the fighter and grab the brackets welded to the deck. When he pushes the locking bar the rest of the way down, the cam takes over and pulls up on the hooks. As a result, the fighter is tightly clamped to the deck. I can tell you for sure, when that locking bar is down, that fighter is going nowhere!”

  “That’s good, because after all this development, I’d sure hate to lose one!”

  “Ain’t gonna happen, Cousin.”

  “What about the watertight seal? We need a watertight seal between the fighter and the access flange so we can open both the hatch on the bottom of the fighter and the hatch on the Louisiana’s deck. That way the pilot and sensor operator can move freely between the Louisiana and the fighter while submerged. We can also rig electrical cables so we can recharge the fighter’s batteries from the Louisiana whenever the fighter is docked.”

  “No problem. We pressure-tested the mock-up to the equivalent of eleven hundred feet without any leakage.”

  “All right, so no problems or concerns at all?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t push it on the upper limit of the launch speed if I was you. If you get over ten knots, there could be enough drag on the fighter that your sonar operator can’t raise the locking bar. If that happens, you’ll have
to slow down.”

  “You’ve done a great job with the fighters and with Platform Alpha, Dwight. After ten years of development, I’m sorry we couldn’t see our plan through to go into business together. I’m sure that if we had had the opportunity, we could have made millions of dollars selling sub-fighters to the navy. Unfortunately, the attack on DC changed all that, at least for me.”

  “What do you mean, at least for you? Are you suggestin’ I could still sell them myself?”

  “Sure, why not? As long as you can distance yourself from me—”

  “No way, Cousin. There’s no way I could excise you from all the records. Besides, I think we have a higher callin’ for how to use these fighters now. What’s money anyway? When all is said and done, we have to live with ourselves and know we did what we could for our fellow man. I don’t regret makin’ this decision.”

  “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”

  “Thanks,” Dwight said looking around at the rig. “You know when you guys are gone, I’ll probably have to scuttle this thing.”

  “When we leave, I think the cover story we came up with to cover your butt is still the best…deep-six it, and claim it was weakened in the storm and just couldn’t be rebuilt.”

  Just then, at the top of the stairs next to Dwight, Leona appeared. “Welcome to Platform Alpha…whoa!…Captain!” she announced. “You look different!”

  “Well, hello there, Leo—I mean Petty Office Harris! It’s good to see you!”

  “Good to see you, too, sir!” Leona’s hand involuntarily went to her throat as if surprised. “What’s with the beard?”

  “Just a little bit of insurance…in case we run into someone who might recognize me.”

  “Good idea—you’re pretty famous.”

  George wanted desperately to jump onto the stairs and rush to the top to give her a big hug and a kiss! And he could tell she felt the same way. But for the moment, they had to keep up appearances.

  “I want to thank you for your support during our brief deployment. You should know that your daily summaries of ships’ positions were extremely valuable to us. We probably wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for you.”

  “Thank you, Captain. It was my pleasure.”

  “Since you’ll be joining the crew here, come on down and I’ll have someone show you to your berthing area.”

  “Thanks, Captain. I’ll grab my things and be right back!”

  Dwight interrupted. “So come on up, George, and let’s get that coffee now. Chicory—just the way you like it!”

  “Okay, I’ll be right up! Oh, by the way, I almost forgot—we have a couple of extra crew members we didn’t count on before. A couple of marines—Sergeant Ramirez and Corporal Williams.”

  “Marines! What happened?”

  “It’s okay. I’ve interviewed them at length, and they’re good men—a valuable addition to the team. I actually should have thought about it before.”

  “Thought about what? What are you gonna do with them?”

  “Security. If anything unexpected ever happens, it will be good to have some marines on our side. For right now, I’ll send them up to stand watch. Give them each a pair of binoculars and a post on opposite sides of Platform Alpha. We’ll have them keep watch for any small craft that might wander into the area but not show up on your surface search radar.”

  “Okay,” Dwight agreed. “You’re right, it sounds like a good idea.”

  “Oh, and Dwight…either find them each a post that’s covered, or get them some coveralls like the rest of your crew. If this overcast sky clears up, I don’t want any surveillance satellite spotting marines walking around on what is supposed to be an out-of-commission civilian oil rig. It wouldn’t look good, if you know what I mean.”

  “Absolutely. We’ll keep them out of sight of Big Brother’s probing eyes.”

  Chapter 28

  Platform Alpha

  Pappy gave George a confused look. “What the heck’s a sub-fighter?”

  “Oh, a little project I’ve been working on for ten years or so—mostly with my own time and money, and a little help from Dwight,” George answered nonchalantly. “You’d be surprised what you can do on a shoestring budget when you have a cousin in the manufacturing business!”

  “Okay, but what is this thing, and what makes it a fighter?”

  “Well, let’s compare aircraft and submarines. They’re similar because they both move through a fluid medium—one through air and one through water. So when you look at the shape of a submarine and the size of its control surfaces, what does it remind you of in terms of aircraft?”

  “A blimp or dirigible.”

  “Right. And how fast and maneuverable were the old lighter-than-air dirigibles compared to later heavier-than-air airplanes?”

  “They sucked.”

  “Exactly. And how is it that a submarine maintains its depth when it’s sitting still?”

  “Ballast tanks,” replied Pappy. “We flood some of the ballast tanks to dive and pump air into them to surface. To maintain a depth, we flood or pump until we achieve neutral buoyancy.”

  “That’s right. So effectively, a submarine hovering under water is like a blimp hovering in the air. And it’s just about as maneuverable. In your words, it sucks.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t see how you can do anything about it. I mean, without using ballast tanks we could drive the boat up to the surface using the dive plane, if we had enough headway, but if we slowed down any, we would sink. We would have to blow the ballast tanks to stay on the surface.”

  “That’s great in-the-box thinking, Pappy. I would have expected more from you! I think we’ll send you back to World War One—you’ll fit in perfectly!”

  “All right, all right—quit giving me grief, Captain. Just tell me what the heck these things are!”

  “OK, they’re two-man submarines. They’re heavier than water with no ballast tanks. So they have to maintain headway to maintain depth. Just think of them as the sharks of the submarine community—they have to keep moving or they die. They’re sleek, hydrodynamic, with very little drag. They have wings. Not quite like an airplane, but relative to their size, their wings are much larger than the little excuses for control planes that submarines currently have. With larger wings and control surfaces, they have tremendous maneuverability, and the lift produced by those wings greatly reduces the amount of headway needed to maintain depth. In fact, they can maintain depth, fully loaded, at less than five knots.”

  “That’s nice to know, but they still need propulsion even to maintain that slow speed, don’t they?”

  “True enough. For propulsion, they have a unique system I designed in cooperation with a marine biologist. Compared to the noise we have to make in order to turn that screw back there on the Louisiana, these little guys are silent. They make the “silent service” seem like a drag strip! Ever been to a drag strip?”

  “Yeah, don’t go without ear plugs!”

  “That’s right, but hey, I have a better comparison. Ever been on the deck of an aircraft carrier during a launch and recovery?”

  “Yeah, I was on a carrier for one of my midshipmen cruises at the Academy,” replied Pappy. “After hearing the incredible level of noise on the flight deck, it seemed to me the carrier was a sitting duck. All the enemy had to do was listen. I bet you could hear that thing with the naked ear from twenty miles away! It’s funny, because at one point, I thought I might want to be a fighter pilot!”

  “Well don’t give up yet. You still might get your chance—only just a little different from how you pictured it as a midshipman!”

  “Tell me more, Captain. Now you have my attention!”

  “The hydrodynamic design of these fighters enables the electric propulsion system to push them along at over fifty knots, totally silent. In a way, they’re kind of a throwback to the old World War Two diesel-electric boats, which used electric motors for propulsion when submerged. Those old boats didn’t have today’s battery
technology, though, which meant they had to surface a lot or snorkel to run their diesels and recharge their batteries. But any submariner who has ever been in an exercise against a diesel-electric boat knows they were extremely quiet when submerged—and extremely difficult to detect. Well believe me, our sub-fighters make those guys sound like the drag strip!”

  “I’m going to have to study these things, Captain, to see how you did it.”

  “You’re welcome to do that, but since it’s overcast today and Big Brother can’t watch us from above, let’s launch one instead. You can experience a sub-fighter for yourself, firsthand. I’ll get Dwight to demonstrate, and you can get your first familiarization flight, FAM-1, at the same time.”

  “Really? You mean…I can get checked out in a sub-fighter? Now?”

  “I’m going to be relying on you to be my lead pilot, Pappy. You and two of the lieutenants will rotate flying duties, so you’re going to have to get checked out sooner or later. And there’s no time like the present. Let’s go see Dwight.”

  The captain and XO made their way up the stairway from the conning tower to the main deck of Platform Alpha. The XO, who had never been on an offshore oil rig, looked around in amazement. It was huge, with ladders and machines everywhere.

  “This reminds me of being on an aircraft carrier,” he said.

  “There are a lot of similarities. This place is like a city at sea. The kitchen and mess hall are on this deck along with the laundry room, the head, the showers, the bunkrooms, and the rec room where the crew can play pool or watch TV. That machinery over there is a desalinization plant for making fresh water from seawater. Up above are the working spaces. We can take this ladder right here up to Dwight’s office.”