Gesny saluted and walked away, heading toward a group of officers and chiefs near the makeshift canteen.
Anton looked at the Whale. It was a fine boat. It was his first command. Many thought Admiral Gorshkov had handpicked him because of his Kremlin connections. Zotkin probably thought the same thing with Anton’s comment on the Kremlin. It was half true, but some explanations are best left unsaid. It looked as if both he and Zotkin kept veiled secrets.
SEVEN
Shipley shoved back the curtain to the wardroom. Lieutenant Logan sat nearest the entrance. Beside him Lieutenant Commander Arneau Benjamin sat beside him, both their cups about half empty. At the second table were his OPSO and his communications officer, Alex Weaver and George Olsson.
Intelligence Officer Logan stood as Shipley stepped into the wardroom. Olsson did the same, but then Olsson had been in the Navy only three years since graduating from the University of Minnesota. Olsson wasn’t a ring-knocking Naval Academy graduate like Benjamin, Weaver, and Shipley.
“Don’t get up,” Shipley said sharply, ignoring the raised eyebrows exchanged between Arneau and Weaver, who remained seated. Shipley stepped to the coffee urn.
“Skipper, you want my seat?” Olsson asked, the vapor of cold air coming from his mouth.
“No, George,” he answered, shoving the heavy Navy mug beneath the spout and filling it.
“Gentlemen,” Shipley said after taking a sip. He leaned back against the coffee table, careful not to bump the spigot. More than one officer had had hot coffee travel down his shirt. “I think after five days on board, all of you have had a chance to meet
Lieutenant Jeff Logan.” He saw the nods. Shipley took another sip, followed by a deep breath.
“I’d be careful of Crocky’s coffee this late in the afternoon, Skipper,” Arneau said, grinning.
“We could save it for removing paint topside,” Weaver added.
“Yah, in Minnesota we would use it to melt the ice for fishing,” Olsson added, his deep Swedish accent rolling the sentence to an end as if it were a question.
“What does that mean, George?” Weaver said, leaning over and slapping the young officer lightly upside the back of the head.
“I meant it—”
“Okay, can it,” Shipley said. “We’re here to discuss the mission. Where’s the navigator?”
“Van Ness said he had to swing by his office and pull different charts than the one he had.”
“Why didn’t he. .” Shipley started to ask, but stopped. “XO,” he pleaded.
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
Van Ness stuck his head inside the wardroom. “Sorry, Skipper, I’m here.” He stepped into the small space, two charts rolled beneath his arm. Quickly he unrolled one of them on the nearest table, Olsson and Logan holding the top down so it would stay unrolled. Then Van Ness unrolled the second and laid it down on top of the first.
“Are these what we need?” Shipley asked, his voice tight.
“Aye, Captain,” Van Ness answered without turning around.
“Cliff, why don’t you move to the right a little so you aren’t blocking the skipper’s view?” Arneau asked, reaching over and touching the navigator on his side.
Van Ness turned and looked at Shipley. “Sorry, sir,” he said as he scooted over a couple of steps.
Shipley stepped to the chart. It was a large-scale chart that showed the northeastern coastline of Norway, the small coastline of Finland that touched the Barents Sea, and then the next several hundred miles of the Soviet Union’s coastline. “Where are we?” he asked.
Van Ness scratched his head once, then reached forward and put his finger off the northwestern coast of Norway. “About here, Skipper. We are approximately one hundred nautical miles on a bearing of one three zero from where the borders of Norway and Finland merge.”
“How long until we reach our OP area?”
“At current speed of six knots, about seven more days.”
Logan raised his hand.
“Speak up, Lieutenant. This isn’t a classroom.”
“Sir, when I boarded, we estimated ten days to reach the mouth of Kola Bay. If we are adding another two days to our transit, then we run the risk of missing the event we have been sent to watch. Is there any way we can reach the mouth of Kola Bay sooner? We need to be there within five days, as originally estimated. Otherwise we. .” Logan stopped.
“ ‘We’ what?” Shipley asked. “Finish what you were saying.”
“We are two days off schedule, Captain,” Logan finished. “Lieutenant Logan, there are things about a diesel submarine it seems the intelligence community doesn’t understand,” Arneau interjected.
The right side of Shipley’s tight lips rose slightly as he straightened from the chart. “The XO is right, Lieutenant,” he added. “Unfortunately, when we are submerged, unlike the new nuclear-powered Nautilus, we are on battery power, and battery power limits our speed. Unless we want to take a chance on having to snorkel or surface.”
“That is a great idea, sir. If we use the snorkel or do the transit on the surface—”
Weaver whistled. “Wow! What do they feed you Intell officers ashore, Jeff? Razor blades for breakfast? The snorkel leaves a wake behind it that would expose Squallfish to the first airborne reconnaissance mission that flies by. Surfaced, they will even have an easier time of spotting us.”
Logan leaned forward, his eyes sweeping the officers in the wardroom, gazing upward at Shipley as the last one. “Sir, I understand the risks of us being detected if we snorkel, switch to diesels, and increase our speed, but could we do it at night and make up the time?”
Shipley looked at Van Ness. “Okay, Cliff, if we travel six knots while submerged like we are doing, and come up to sixteen knots if we stay surfaced during the night hours—”
“And here in the Arctic, the nights are longer,” Logan added. “Don’t interrupt the skipper,” Arneau said.
“Sorry, sir.”
“Plus, if we have to surface, Skipper, that means you and the XO will have to go port and starboard in manning the bridge. It’s colder than a witch’s—” Weaver added.
“You could be in the rotation,” Arneau offered.
Shipley looked at the OPSO and the XO, then directed his question at Van Ness. “When would we arrive off Kola Bay?”
“We could do it in five days,” Van Ness immediately answered. “I need to work out the navigational picture to give you a more exact answer.”
“Sir, we still run the risk of being detected the longer we are on the surface.”
“Tell me, Lieutenant Logan, are you willing to risk your life and the lives of every person on board the Squallfish to meet an arbitrary date- time?”
Logan sat back, nodding slightly. “Yes, sir.”
“Then I guess we’ll—”
Logan raised his hand slightly, and then brought it down. “Captain, there is more to our mission than waiting at the mouth of Kola Bay.”
Shipley’s eyes narrowed. “More that you haven’t told me?” Logan shrugged. “Well, we won’t know until tonight’s comms, but when I left, they expected the Soviet Union’s sea trials to start in five days. Unless something unexpected happens, if we continue submerged at this speed, we’ll arrive on station in the middle of a Soviet Navy force assigned to provide protection to the test we are suppose to observe, collect data on, and report about.”
“Which means we need to go deep, stay silent, and to hell with the arbitrary time on station,” Weaver said, slapping his hand on the table. The OPSO eased out of his seat at the table. “When were you going to share this with us?” Shipley asked. “I was told to wait until we arrived on station and they had more information.”