Barracuda- Final Bearing

by Michael Dimercurio

  And Japan is going to get a very nasty oil slick.”

  “You’d better tell the captain of the supertanker that.

  What about the men aboard?”

  “Don’t worry about that. Patch. There’s no way that supertanker is going to run that blockade. No way.”

  “Admiral, I’ve told you this before, but we need surface ships. We need a cruiser to fire shots over the guy’s bow and pull up alongside with deck guns pointed at the bridge and board the ship, physically take the helm if you have to and turn that ship around. Otherwise the whole crew is going to buy it.”

  “Patch, he’ll turn around.”

  “Admiral, god damnit, you’re not listening to me.”

  Mac Donner’s tone was icy as he stared at Pacino.

  “I’m listening, Admiral. Now what the hell do you want to say?”

  “If that supertanker doesn’t turn around, we have to shoot him. If we let him through the blockade fails. So you put my men in the position of firing torpedoes at a civilian ship. My men will want to surface and rescue survivors.”

  “No. That would give away their position. The satellites will see that and lead the Japanese submarines there.”

  “First, Admiral, we should have blown those god damned satellites away days ago. Second, if that supertanker gets torpedoed, every ship in the Pacific will know where at least one submarine is, it’s where the supertanker went down. Third, I don’t want my men killing civilians.”

  “Get off it. Patch. They have lifeboats. The Japanese can rescue them. Now quit being an old lady and—”

  “I still say a destroyer or cruiser with guns is the way to do this. Let this god damned tanker in. Admiral. When we have some surface ships over there, we’ll stop the next merchant ship.”

  “No. My orders are specific. The blockade begins now.

  Don’t make me request to relieve you. Admiral Pacino.”

  Pacino took a breath and let it out. “Aye, aye, sir. I’ll send the order. On your command, if the tanker doesn’t turn around, we’ll shoot it. And no rescue of the survivors.”

  “Very well.”

  “I don’t think so. Sir.”

  atlantic ocean USS Piranha Bruce Phillips stood smoking his cigar while standing on the conn looking down on the diving-control station. The control room was rigged for black, all lights out, only the glow of the instruments at the ship-control panel illuminated. The screens of the firecontrol consoles of the attack center were dark, the rig for reduced electrical not allowing them to be powered up. The ship rolled gently in the waves, still at periscope depth at the mouth of Block Island Sound, now legitimately in the Atlantic, the sea beneath them still perilously shallow. Behind him Peter Meritson was dancing with the fat lady, rotating the periscope through endless circles, searching for the lights of close surface ships, fishing boats, anything that could collide with them.

  The ship had no power to get deep if something came by, some ferry ship or misdirected container ship, and not only was there no power, there was nowhere to go; there was barely enough water beneath their keel to allow them to be submerged. They were in sixty fathoms of water, and if Phillips had gone by the book he would not have submerged until he had a minimum of 600 fathoms.

  But then, submerging without a reactor up and running, snorkeling on the diesel, with only bare steerage way for power, was in gross violation of the standard operating procedures as well.

  “Offsa’deck, you hear anything from the Eng?”

  “Sir,” Meritson said, his voice muffled by the periscope module, “his last report was four minutes ago. He had turbines warmed and was shifting the electric plant.”

  “conn, maneuvering,” Walt Hornick’s voice blasted from a speaker in the overhead, “electric plant is in A NORMAL FULL POWER LINEUP. RECOMMEND COOLING THE DIESEL.” “Maneuvering, Conn,” Meritson said into his boom microphone, still rotating the periscope through his surface search, “cool the diesel.”

  “COOL THE DIESEL, CONN, MANEUVERING, AYE. ESTIMATE MAIN PROPULSION CAPABILITY IN TWO MINUTES.”

  “Maneuvering, Conn, aye.” “Let’s go, Eng,” Phillips said. “Hey, O.O.D, let’s pull the plug on cooling the diesel. I don’t want that damned satellite upstairs seeing the exhaust.”

  “Aye, Captain. Maneuvering, Conn, from the Captain, we are going to secure snorkeling.” Meritson turned the periscope so he could shout at the chief of the watch, up at the ballastcontrol panel in the forward port side of the room. “Chief of the Watch, secure snorkeling!”

  “Secure snorkeling, aye, sir.” The COW picked up a microphone to the circuit-one public address system, his voice booming throughout the ship.

  “SECURE SNORKELING! RECIRCULATE.”

  Walt Hornick’s voice replied on his speaker: “secure SNORKELING, RECIRCULATE, CONN, MANUEVERING AYE.”

  Phillips waited impatiently, walking to the aft rail of the conn and peering down on the navigation display, a horizontal widescreen display that projected the chart where they were on a glass surface. The depth beneath them would stay shallow for some time. Usually a sub departing from Groton would be steaming at twenty knots on the surface for twelve hours before reaching the continental shelf, where the water depth fell to thousands of feet beneath the keel. Phillips would be steaming at twenty knots with less water under his keel than a full hull diameter. But that was nothing compared to what would happen when they got under ice.

  Hornick’s voice squawked on the speaker again, this time his voice sounding almost cocky.

  “CONN, MANEUVERING, MAIN ENGINES ARE WARM, READY TO SHIFT PROPULSION TO THE MAIN ENGINES.”

  Meritson did not wait for further orders—Phillips had already made his orders for this moment.

  “Helm, all stop,” Meritson called. “Maneuvering, Conn, shift propulsion to the main engines.”

  The orders were acknowledged and for a moment a lull came in the room.

  “CONN, MANEUVERING, PROPULSION SHIFTED TO THE MAIN ENGINES, READY TO ANSWER ALL BELLS, ANSWERING ALL STOP.”

  “Conn, aye. Helm, all ahead standard.”

  “Ahead standard, Helm aye,” the kid at the diving station’s helmsman’s wheel called. “Maneuvering answers all ahead standard, sir.”

  “Lowering number two scope,” Meritson said, retracting the instrument. “Mark sounding!”

  “Nine zero fathoms, sir.”

  “Dive, make your depth one five zero feet.”

  Even with several hundred feet beneath the keel, the bottom was uneven, rising up to ten fathoms in places, many of the humps uncharted. Phillips continued looking at the chart, then glanced at his watch. Within a few hours they would be steaming in the open deep Atlantic.

  Then all he had to worry about was the polar icecap and the Japanese.

  northwest pacific USS Ronald Reagan Pacino left the bridge and headed for ASW Operations.

  Comdr. Paully White looked up from the intelligence plot on a large area Writepad, startled to see Pacino.

  “Boss,” White said in his Kensington and Allegheny accent. “What brings you here? I thought you were up with Admiral Donuts up there.”

  Paully White was in his late forties, his hair dark and thick, his frame trim. He was something of a comic, a frustrated stand-up comedian, in a place that had no humor, at least none directed toward him. Paully White got very little respect aboard the Ronald Reagan. Neither the surface sailors nor the pilots had good words for the submarine officer. They were happy that the battle group had two escort 688class submarines there, and they knew that someone had to coordinate them, but the surface-group officers, when they saw Paully, had to face the fact that there were enemy submarines out there, that the battle group was vulnerable to them, and that only Paully’s submarines could keep them clean, in spite of the billions spent on surface ship antisubmarine warfare—the destroyers and frigates with their multiple sonars, their ASW standoff weapons, their Mark 51 torpedoes, the S-2 twin-jet Vikings that patrolled the sea for submarines with their
blue-laser detectors, magnetic anomaly detectors, sonar buoy detectors and Mark 52 torpedoes, the LAMPS III Sea-hawk helicopters with their dipping sonars and their Mark 52 Mod Alpha torpedoes—all of it was an attempt to combat enemy submarines from above, and it was an attempt that fell short. Because in the end the only thing that could counter a quiet and stealthy hostile submarine was a quiet and stealthy friendly submarine. So many men in the surface battle group had devoted their lives and their careers to trying to prove otherwise and had failed, that when Paully White walked their passageways with his gold dolphin pins gleaming over his left breast pocket he was silenced, ignored. At the wardroom table he could tell a joke, a good one, and he would hear nothing but the clink of silverware on china. Paully, in fact, was the most unpopular man aboard, and desperately looked forward to going back to sea on board a fast attack submarine. “Hi, Paully,” Pacino said heavily. “Admiral Donner is kicking off the blockade. It looks like we’re carrying the ball on the first play.” Pacino described the basics of the operation and directed White to get some messages out to the Cheyenne and the Pasadena.

  “Cheyenne’s here, Pasadena’s here. They’ve both been lurking off the major shipping channels. I’ll have to move Pasadena but that still puts her here when the operation goes down.” Pacino tried to stay focused, but the way this blockade was happening was foreign to him. One thing that never showed up on a submariner’s report card was “works well with others.” In spite of all the exercises favoring joint-operations, there was something about the Silent Service that developed independence.

  Having the operation managed by someone who barely understood submarines was damn frustrating. The room reverberated with the earsplitting roar of a catapult launch of an F-14, the engines of the fighter roaring in full afterburners as it cleared the deck. The sooner this operation was over, the better, Pacino thought.

  There was still light left, the sun just going down into the sea, as Comdr. Joe Galvin waited on the deck of the Ronald Reagan.

  He was the last of the four F-14 pilots to get to the catapult. The other three for this mission had just been launched. He had watched them sail down the cats, float uncertainly over the sea for a second before deciding to fly up and away from the carrier. That moment when the deck ended and the sky began was always the worst, with the exception of crashing back down on the carrier’s deck. His turn was coming up. He went through the prelaunch checklist, rotating his control surfaces, checking his switch lineup, radio comm circuits, cabin oxygen, hydraulics, health of the engines. The deck officer put up the aft blast shield and signaled for Galvin to throttle up. Galvin applied his brakes and brought the throttle keys to the forward stops, hearing and feeling the turbines spool up to full thrust, the roaring power of them electric. He could never experience that sound and that feel without an excitement almost sexual. The turbines were steady at full thrust, temperatures and pressures normal, fuel flow in limits. Galvin took the keys to the right, passing the full thrust detents, and took the throttles all the way to the firewall. Aft, the diffusers at the jet engines’ exhaust were clamping down, the gas velocity out the nozzles increasing while raw jet fuel was injected into the hot exhaust, reigniting and doubling the engines’ thrust. Full afterburners. The roar of the jets grew louder, the engines now half-jet, half-rocket, the F-14 trembling on the deck of the windward-bound aircraft carrier, the carrier’s own speed at forty knots designed to help him keep flying once he cleared the deck. The deck officer and catapult officer were waiting on him. He looked up from his panel and gave the deck officer a salute.

  In return, a gesture to the pilot and a signal to the cat operator, the deck officer leaned forward, his legs far apart, until he crouched forward, while taking his orange wand and swinging it through a giant overhead arc as if throwing a tomahawk in slow motion. His wand came all the way down to the deck, then came back up pointing forward, the gesture graceful and exhilarating, a combination statement of “good luck up there, sir,” and “hit the catapult, cat operator.” The catapult kicked in, the highpressure steam driving a trolley that pulled on Galvin’s nose-wheel. Galvin was thrown far back in his seat from the acceleration, the world around him dissolving into a blurred tunnel of gray and blue. In an instant the jet was shot like a bullet off the deck, the catapult trolley disconnecting, the acceleration gone, the jet hanging in space trying to fly but almost hesitating as if confused, the jets still shrieking on full afterburners, the ocean waiting below to swallow him up, but finally the aircraft won and the ocean lost, the jet accelerating again, Galvin swinging the wings to a port roll as he turned out of the carrier’s path. Beneath him the USS Reagan sailed on, majestically plowing through the sea, her stern kicking up a wake that trailed her for five miles. Galvin climbed to 8000 feet in slow spirals, catching up with his flight of F14s, then falling into formation as the flight leader, taking the jets to the northwest, diving down low as they approached the Japanese coastline. The mission profile called for them to fly in the grass, taking the shortcut over the island itself to get to the Sea of Japan on the other side. Galvin wondered if they would be met by Firestar fighters. The land came closer, the F-14s now at MacH 1.8, the wings swept back, altitude eighty feet, the supersonic jets kicking up a huge rooster tail wake. The Japanese were about to see the US Navy in action, Galvin thought. Soon they were feet-dry over Japanese soil, the ridges and valleys flying at him as they sailed in at treetop level, the occasional rice paddy and collection of houses flashing by, their inhabitants standing outside, children pointing up at them. Now the coastline approached, the west coast of Honshu Island, and again they were feet-wet over the Sea of Japan. Another twenty minutes of flying low over the sea and the ship, the target, was in sight. The supertanker was huge, as long as the Reagan, so full of oil that its waterline was almost all the way up to the gunwales, its bow wave plying back far into the twilight. There was just enough light to make out the name on the bow—the block letters spelling petersburg. For the first time during the mission Galvin broke radio silence and spoke into the microphone, his radio selected to the bridge-to-bridge VHF frequency.

  “VLCC Petersburg, this is the flight leader of the US Navy aircraft formation circling your bridge. I say again, this is the flight leader of the US Navy aircraft formation circling your bridge. Do you read me, over?”

  sea OF japan USS Cheyenne Comdr. Gregory Keebes wore a blue poopysuit that was faded and old, the pants legs too high over his black socks and faded canvas loafers. He had a crewcut and sported horn-rimmed black glasses. He stood now leaning on the railing of the periscope stand and replaced the phone in its cradle. The radio chief had just told him the orders that had come in.

  “Officer of the Deck,” Keebes called, “man battlestations.”

  “Man battlestations, aye, sir.” The O.O.D was Lt.

  Frank Becker, former right tackle for Navy’s varsity squad, a hulking youth with a good head, though in Keebes’s opinion something of a whiner. “Chief of the Watch, man battlestations.”

  “Man battlestations, aye, sir.” The COW, a young slick-haired, wire-rimmed-glasses-wearing youth in a blue poopysuit, reached for a coiled microphone and clicked it on. His voice poured from the circuit-one speakers throughout the ship. “man battlestations.”

  He unclicked the mike and partially stood to get to the general alarm, a small lever in a panel in the overhead, found it and rotated it clockwise. The blaring BONG BONG BONG of the alarm rang throughout the ship.

  He clicked the circuit-one microphone one more time.

  “MAN … BATTLESTATIONS.”

  Keebes clicked a stopwatch on his neck and waited for the crowd to arrive in the control room. He leaned over the chart table and saw the flashing dot where they were presently located, the ship channel pulsing in yellow, the position of the target, a VLCC supertanker called the Petersburg, there in the shipping channel some twenty miles to the northwest, approaching the boundary of the exclusion zone, the edge of the Japan Oparea.

  �
�Off’sa’deck, take her deep and flank it at heading three one zero. Once you’re down lay out a course to the target.”

  “Aye, sir. Dive,” Becker called to the diving officer! “make your depth five three zero feet. Helm, all ahead standard.”

  “Five three zero feet, aye, sir.”

  “All ahead standard. Helm aye, maneuvering answers all ahead standard, sir.”

  “Five degrees dive on the sternplanes,” the diving officer ordered, his seat set up between the control seats of the flight-deck arrangement, the man in the left seat the sternplanesman, the man in the right seat controlling the rudder and the bowplanes and responsible for the ship’s angle. “Five degrees down bubble, bowplanes down ten degrees.”

  O.O.D Becker’s view out the periscope grew closer to the waves. Keebes looked up into the overhead at the television repeater, wondered if the approach of nightfall would make the blockade that much more difficult. How hard would it be to shoot the target at night, with darken-ship rules, he wondered. Still, it was hard to believe the tanker would really try to run the blockade, though the threat of submarine attack might or might not work. The view from the scope, displayed on the repeater monitor in the control room overhead grew so close to the waves that the sea splashed up on the view, the white foam obscuring vision, then the crosshaired reticle focused up on the underside of the waves, bits of seaweed floating by the view.

  “Lowering number-two scope,” Becker called, aligning the view directly forward and retracting the instrument with a rotation of the hydraulic control ring set into the overhead. The module vanished into the scope well, the smooth stainless-steel pole coming down afterward, riding all the way down into the well until the scope was fully retracted.

  Keebes looked up from the chart as Becker leaned over the table with him, the two men calculating the course and speed while the ship dived for the depths.

  The deck leveled out.

  “Sir, ship’s depth five three zero feet.”