Deep Sound Channel - Страница 5

Доступ к книге ограничен фрагменом по требованию правообладателя.

The two-seat Tomcats both did barrel rolls in greeting, their engine noises deafening, little trails of vapor forming spirals off their airfoils. Jeffrey and Meltzer waved. The pilots pulled back on their sticks, their afterburners brilliant in the daylight. Each riding 56,000 pounds of thrust, the aviators swept back their wings and disappeared into the clouds.

Jeffrey glanced up at Challenger's American flag, now shifted to a gaff behind the cockpit. He listened to it snapping briskly, and had to smile. Then he gripped the edge of the cockpit with both hands, facing into the relative wind off the port bow. He was way too tired to feel much emotion, just a kind of numbness and a sense of purpose.

"Challenger's first war patrol," he said aloud. God knows when I'll get some sleep. God knows if I'll be alive this time tomorrow.

"It's exciting, sir," Meltzer said. "Now we get to do our part." Then Jeffrey thought about what Ilse Reebeck had said.

He had a flashback, not his first the last few weeks. The concussion of grenades, the crackle of small-arms fire. The screams, the smells, the blood mixing with seawater. He shook his head to clear his thoughts.

It didn't work. He saw his old fiancee in his mind, looking down at him in traction, pity and revulsion in her eyes. He remembered the final time, struggling in his walker, when she just gave up and left.

Jeffrey chided himself angrily. "Duty, Meltzer," he said by way of cover. "Keep your mind on duty."

"Absolutely, sir."

"You can just make out the sea state reduction system," Jeffrey said, pointing southsouthwest. "Use your binoculars, you'll get a better view." The young man took a look.

"Disc-shaped barges," Jeffrey said, "anchored to the bottom. They knock down big waves caused by storms, or ones made artificially by the enemy."

"That's a euphemism, sir," Meltzer said.

"Damn straight," Jeffrey said. "What I really meant is the tsunami from a nuclear explosion. Diego Garcia's average elevation's just four feet over mean high water."

A few minutes later Jeffrey tapped the bridge fathometer. "You been watching soundings?"

"Yes, sir," Meltzer said. "We went from fifty feet to fifteen hundred pretty quick."

"The bottom drops off fast here. It's already twenty-five hundred plus." Jeffrey thought of Ranger, and of the airfield left behind him now. He thought of the 4, 000 people on the base. Targets, he told himself. They're all juicy, sitting targets for nuclear warheads.

That PROBSUB was getting closer by the minute. It was time for Challenger to dive.

"Clear the bridge!" Jeffrey ordered. The port lookout snapped the flag gaff off its mounting. The lookouts and bridge messenger went below, then the JOOD. Jeffrey inspected the hatch and followed last. He dogged the hatch, climbed down the ladder through the sail, and checked the next hatch. A petty officer sealed the second hatch after Jeffrey confirmed the bridge was clear.

Jeffrey took the ladder to the next deck down, walked past some computer banks, and strode into the Command and Control Center, the CACC. As was standard procedure when Challenger got ready to submerge, Jeffrey as officer of the deck became the diving officer now. Wilson had the conn.

Jeffrey sat down at the two-man desk-high Q-70 command workstation, to Wilson's right. In front of Jeffrey against the forward bulkhead was the ship control station, another part of Lockheed Martin's AN/UYQ-70 control room console suite. In its left position sat COB, as chief of the watch. To COB's right sat David Meltzer, still JOOD, now acting as the helmsman. Between them was the engine order telegraph, a four-inch dial. Jeffrey buckled his seat belt.

COB was busy with the ballast and the trim. His console had valve manifold and vent and pump and moisture trap controls, air and water pressure gauges, fill-level meters, and status enunciators. One of his screens showed a flow diagram of the entire pump and tankage system, and the ship's hydraulics.

On his own active matrix LCD Jeffrey called up a copy of the digitized ship status board. He studied it very carefully. Everything that was supposed to be open was open, and everything to be closed was closed. Reports from all compartments confirmed there were no leaks, fires, or critical equipment casualties, and all checklists for submerging were complete.

"Captain," Jeffrey said, "ship is ready for dive in all respects."

"Very well," Wilson said. "Make turns for eight knots." Jeffrey picked up the 7MC microphone, a dedicated line to the men in charge back behind the reactor. "Maneuvering, Control. Make turns for eight knots." Maneuvering acknowledged. "Maneuvering acknowledges turns for eight knots," Jeffrey said.

"Dive the ship," Wilson said. "Dive, dive. Make your depth seven zero feet."

"Dive the ship, aye," Jeffrey said. "Make my depth seven zero feet, aye." Jeffrey hit the dive alarm, and an electronic tone sounded twice in the CACC. "Chief of the Watch, dive the ship." Jeffrey missed the loud Klaxon they'd used in the old diesel boats.

"Dive the ship, aye," COB said. He made the announcement on the 1MC.

"Helm," Jeffrey said, "make your depth seven zero feet." He knew seventy feet at the keel was Challenger's periscope depth.

"Make my depth seven zero feet, aye," Meltzer said.

Jeffrey watched COB flood first fore and then aft ballast tanks. Meltzer used his splityoke control wheel to put two degrees down angle on the bowplanes, helping get Challenger's nose beneath the waves.

Jeffrey set a window on his main console screen to show imagery from one of the two non-hull-penetrating photonics masts. Starting with the fast-attack sub USS Virginia, ordered in 1998 and commissioned in '04, these took the place of traditional periscopes with their awkward straight-line optical paths.

On-screen Jeffrey saw Challenger blow spray just like a spouting whale as air rushed from the ballast tanks through big vents in the hull. Gradually she left that unnatural upper world where all stood naked, descending into the other world for which she had been made. A world of silent darkness, yet one that teemed with life and evanescent light.

"Bow's under," Jeffrey announced, then used the little joy stick to look aft. "Stern's under. Helm, make four degrees down bubble."

"Four degrees down bubble, aye," Meltzer said. In older boats — like the Los Angeles — class USS Alexandria, where Jeffrey did his own first tour — a pair of junior enlisted men worked the rudder and the dive controls: sternplanes for depth, bowplanes at low speeds for bank and angle of attack. These days, though the navy still used two-man piloting, those roles were combined with ballast/trim control in two more-senior jobs. As Challenger's propulsor, now well submerged, drove the boat down more quickly, Jeffrey saw their rate of descent increase on his display. "Chief of the Watch," he said, " blow negative to the mark."

COB fed high-pressure air back into the negative tank, emptying it to the point, the mark, he estimated would restore neutral buoyancy — the tank was flooded when the ship first rigged for dive, to get her down fast when the time came. Skillfully COB and Meltzer leveled Challenger off at seventy feet.

Next Jeffrey oversaw as COB altered trim so the boat would hold zero bubble, stay level. Then COB pumped seawater between auxiliaries one and two amidships so there was no list port or starboard. Jeffrey knew he'd made a first cut when they got under way, based on fore and aft ship draft measurements and weight calculations at the tender. It helped that the local seas were calm — the master chief was done in record time, and Jeffrey reported to Wilson.

Wilson took control of the photonics mast, scanning for surface visual contacts on wide angle, then high power. Jeffrey backed him up on his own monitor — a deep draft Military Sealift Command auxiliary could do fatal harm in a collision. Jeffrey confirmed there was nothing to be seen now, even on passive infrared, except for clouds and a KC130T transport aircraft wearing Marine Corps camouflage.

"Make turns for four knots," Wilson said.

Jeffrey relayed the order to Maneuvering, then passed their acknowledgment back to the captain. The lower speed was to let COB fine-tune the trim and buoyancy.

"Navigator," Jeffrey heard Wilson say, "how's our GPS?"

"Way off, sir," the navigator said. "Bad guys still playing with the signals."

"Inertial navigation and gravimeter?"

"Ring laser gyrocompasses are all in order. No discrepancies or drift on ship's ESGN accelerometers. Tight agreement with seafloor gradiometry and the dead-reckoning plot."

"Soundings?" Wilson said.

"Two seven three five feet, sir, and increasing," the navigator said.

"Sonar," Wilson said, "any nearby contacts?" With increased automation and distributed data fusion, Sonar no longer had a separate room.

"Negative, sir," the sonar officer said, confirming what he'd sent to Jeffrey's screen.

"Very well, Sonar," Wilson said. "XO, I want to head due south, take that incoming PROBSUB from the Flank. Make your course one eight zero."

"Make your course one eight zero," Jeffrey formally relayed to the helmsman, who sat just feet away.

"Make my course one eight zero, aye, sir," Meltzer said. "Steering one eight zero, sir," he broke in thirty seconds later.

"Steering one eight zero, sir," Jeffrey repeated to the captain, continuing the age-old rituals of the sea, almost religious incantations. In ancient times, Jeffrey knew, they kept the idols on the quarterdeck.