“Admiral Pacino, are you finished?”
“Yes.”
Pacino would be damned if he’d call Wadsworth “sir.”
“This is a direct order. You’re relieved as commander Pacific forces. You are to withdraw your forces immediately, return to base and stand by for—”
Pacino clicked twice on the phone handset to the control room. In control, Paully White heard the double click in his headset, snapped the periscope grips up, lowered the periscope and shouted, “Emergency deep!”
“Emergency deep, aye, sir!” from the diving officer. The helmsman took the bowplanes to full dive and put a ten-degree down-bubble on the ship, rang up all ahead standard while the stern planesman put his planes on full dive. The chief of the watch at the ballast-control panel flooded depth-control one, making the ship hundreds of tons heavier in a half-second. He stabbed a toggle switch, lowering the BIGMOUTH radio antenna and at the same time reached up to the circuit-one microphone.
“EMERGENCY DEEP! EMERGENCY DEEP!” The depth indicator unwound. The speed increase, taking the down angle and flooding depth control to make the ship heavier had all combined to take the ship from periscope depth to deep at 200 feet in a few seconds, the maneuver intended to save the ship in the event the conning officer saw a close surface ship bearing down on them when they were at periscope depth.
“All ahead full,” White ordered. “Dive, make your depth six hundred fifty feet. Helm, right two degrees rudder, steady course zero three zero.”
Soon Porter came back to the conn, looking shaken.
In Kane’s stateroom Wadsworth had been talking so fast his mouth was a blur on the screen when the sound of the circuit one rang throughout the ship sounding EMERGENCY DEEP and Wadsworth’s eyes grew large just before his image winked out for good. They had left the surface, where their periscope and radio antenna had them plugged into the world of the Pentagon and the Oval Office, and now Barracuda was deep, the radio waves gone, on her own. For the moment, anyway.
“Maybe we should call President Warner,” Kane said as Paully White came back in.
“You can bet that Wadsworth has already taken care of that,” White said.
“So we can assume we’re on our own now,” Kane said.
“I think that’s safe to say,” Pacino muttered.
“So what now. Admiral?”
“Now we put Barracuda on the case. We’ll go north into the Oparea here and see what luck we have against the Destiny class, using a Seawolf class and some Mark 50 torpedoes.”
“Admiral, those were the same weapons used by the 688s we lost.”
“We don’t know if they bagged any Destinys though.”
“What about Piranha? She could be a big help to us.”
“She’ll be coming in from the northern tip of the Oparea. We’re here just to the east of Tokyo Bay. I say we sweep north until we link up with Piranha. She’ll come south and shoot her way toward us.”
“Maybe we should radio the Piranha so Brucey Phillips knows what to do,” Paully put in.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Kane said. “After the collision with that fishing boat at periscope depth the antennae are out of commission.”
“What collision?” Paully was mystified until Pacino spoke up.
“The one that made you do the emergency deep, of course. Paully here has had so little sleep that he forgets colliding with that fishing boat…”
Paully smiled, catching on.
“So how will Piranha know what the deal is?”
“Bruce Phillips will know,” Pacino said. “Believe me, he’ll know.”
“Sir,” Kane said, doubt in his voice, “I’m not so sure I’m okay with disobeying an order, even one from the Wadsworthless.”
“Kane, listen to me. Wadsworth knows me. He knows I’ll disregard that order. If we can put some Japanese subs on the bottom, between us and Bruce Phillips, two Seawolf-class ships, Wadsworth will forget about this order.”
Kane said nothing. What the hell could you say to an admiral willing to cut his own throat?
“Okay,” Pacino said, clapping his hands. “Now, let’s get this bucket of bolts positioned in the Oparea and go to work.”
“Any activity?” Pacino asked Kane in the control room.
Kane was looking up at the sonar display above the pos-two console.
“Nothing.”
“They’ll turn up.”
“Hope so.”
“How are the weapons?”
“I’ve got all eight loaded with Mark 50s. All eight tubes have outer doors open, and the upper four have torpedo power applied. I can get four out within thirty seconds of contact.”
“I’d think about warming up at least two more,” Pacino said. “If the gyro temps get too high you can always shut them down, but—”
He realized he was interfering, doing what he swore to Paully he wouldn’t do. “I’ll be in my stateroom,” he said. Kane watched him leave, then looked over at the officer of the deck, Lt. David Voorheese.
“Warm up the fish in five and six,” Kane ordered quietly, looking aft toward Pacino’s commandeered stateroom.
CHAPTER 34
Comdr. Bruce Phillips walked into control wearing a multicolored cotton poncho, a dusty Hat-brimmed leather cowboy hat, faded tight jeans, cracked and dirty cowhide cowboy boots and a leather gunbelt with two pearl-handled Smith & Wesson revolvers protruding from the poncho. A hand-rolled cigar was clamped between his teeth, the dirt of a week smeared on his hands and unshaved face.
“Sir,” Peter Meritson said, looking up at Phillips as he mounted the periscope stand, “your boots are violating the rig for ultraquiet. They’re clumping all over the place.”
Phillips stopped his pacing and glared down at Meritson, the sonar officer crisply turned out in his pressed blue coveralls, flag patches on the sleeves, his hair perfect, his face a pleasant triangle that the girls went crazy for, his silver double bars and gold dolphin pin gleaming in the light of the control room, his shoes new black cross-trainers.
For a full thirty seconds Phillips stared down hard at the younger man, then blew a smoke ring in Meritson’s face. He looked around the control room, the displays humming, the fans muted, the section-tracking team members murmuring to each other softly. He clumped into the sonar room, the sonar chief set up in the second control seat of the four-console row. He leaned over the chiefs shoulder. Master Chief Salvatore Gambini sat at the display, his full headset on, his bifocals poised on the end of his nose.
Phillips clapped his hands on Gambini’s shoulder. Gambini was an older Sicilian, a full head of gray hair combed back on his scalp, his face open and fatherly, wrinkling into smile lines, his dark eyes the kind that penetrated. If he liked what he saw, his smile lines crinkled. If he didn’t, his face might as well have been embalmed.
“How you doin’ today, Sal?” Phillips asked. He was not one to call a chief, or an officer for that matter, by his first name, but he had made a connection with Gambini that went beyond any professional relationship. Gambini’s file had been rich with detail, perhaps too rich, much of it entered by Admiral Donchez himself. Gambini was too old for the submarine business, having served in attack submarines for a long and distinguished career.