We can’t screw up evening colors — we can’t. Just for a moment, Forsythe attempted to ignore the noise, to proceed on schedule. Nobody could fault him for doing that, could they? After all, he was supposed to observe evening colors. It was on the schedule. And if Lieutenant Commander Cowlings found out that he screwed this up, too, then…
But Lieutenant Commander Cowlings was below decks. He wouldn’t have heard the gunfire. He wasn’t present to make the decision.
More gunfire. Forsythe could hear it coming from different directions now. Then a loud siren broke out, one that took him a moment to identify. The chief, who was fifteen years older, recognized immediately.
“That’s an air-raid siren!”
“Chief, get the flag down! Now! Have the color guard standby to cast off all lines on my order.”
The deck of the submarine exploded into motion. The chief yelled, “Grab the axes,” and started hauling down colors himself as the rest broke from formation and headed for the mooring lines. The chief stood in the middle, directing them, roughly folding the flag but not taking time to do it precisely.
Forsythe ran to the forward hatch, slid down the ladder, and grabbed the microphone. “All hands, this is the Officer of the Deck. Make all preparations repel boarders. Engineers, disconnect us from shore power immediately and make all preparations for getting underway. Command Duty Officer, Control Room.”
Forsythe grabbed the getting-underway checklist and began going down it, monitoring reports from the chief over the radio. Five seconds later, Cowlings burst into the control room.
“Gunfire, sirens, and air-raid sirens. The chief has the flag and I have the color guard standing by to cast us off.”
Cowlings blinked twice, and some of the color drained out of his face. Then he nodded. “I’ll take that.” Forsythe handed him the checklist and the mike. “Get top side and sever the shore power lines and the mooring lines. Use the axes if you have to.”
“Already issued. On my way.” On his way out, Forsythe grabbed another of the portable radios, tuned it to the same channel, and ran out on the deck.
In theory at least, each duty section contained every necessary rating and necessary officer to get the ship underway in an emergency. Like every other requirement in the Navy, submariners took this one seriously. As Forsythe headed back up the ladder to the forward deck, he ran over the names on the watch section, mentally putting them in their underway duty stations. Yes, they could do it — but just barely. On paper, they had all the right qualifications. What they lacked was experience. Half of the enlisted sailors were just as junior and inexperienced as he was.
The chief had sailors staged next to each mooring line. Each one held a firefighting ax at the ready. The chief seemed to be everywhere at once, checking on the engineers, giving last minute instructions.
Amidships, engineers scrambled to disconnect the cables that provided hotel services, the potable water, sewer services, and compressed air to the ship while her own power plant was on standby. The connections had quick release fixtures, and one by one, the sailors snapped them off and tossed them back on the pier. The sewer return line, known as the CHT, dumped a couple of gallons of foul-smelling liquid into the ocean. Under normal circumstances, there would be serious civilian and military penalties for polluting the water.
Deal with that later. In fact, if we’re doing the right thing, no one will ever say a word about it.
The primary responsibility of the in-port duty section was to keep the ship safe. In this case, when it sounded like all hell was breaking loose ashore, that meant getting underway. There was nowhere in the world they were as safe as below the surface of the sea.
“Cast us off, Chief,” Forsythe shouted as he trotted up to them. “Can you turn things over to the boatswain’s mate here? We could use a hand below decks on the navigation plot.”
“Aye-aye, sir. Can do.” The chief passed the boatswains mate his radio and double-timed back to the forward access hatch.
Forsythe turned to the boatswain’s mate. “What am I forgetting?”
“Nothing, sir. Be nice if we had somebody on the pier to haul the rest of those lines so we make sure they don’t get tangled in the shafts. I’m pulling aboard the lines on this end, just for that reason.”
“Can you get someone down on the pier to do it all?”
The boatswains mate nodded. “But it’ll be tricky, sir. With a mooring lines detached, if you start the ship moving too fast, we’ll pull away from the gangway and leave him on the pier. And I don’t think any one of us wants that. All lines have been cut except for the two lines abeam, so we’re ready to go on short notice. I send one guy down to the pier and we’re disconnected from everything else.” The boatswains mate shrugged. “It’s as safe as we can make it here.”
“Do it,” Forsythe ordered. “Cast off the moment everyone is back on board.”
Things moved rather quickly from that point, and Forsythe stepped back out of the way, letting the boatswain’s mate run things. His radio crackled with a steady stream of orders as, below decks, Cowlings ran through the getting-underway checklist. For just a moment, he thought he felt the turbine come up to speed, and then sensation faded. Everything on board the submarine was shock mounted for maximum acoustic silence, and that included the main turbines.
The man on the pier hauled all the lines in out of the water, and then ran back on board. The final line was severed on board the ship, and, because of the tension it was under, it slashed back across the pier, narrowly missing the sailor. He jumped nimbly out of the way, then hauled the bitter end out of the water. The process was repeated at the forward spring line.
“Come on, Billy!” The boatswain’s mate shouted. “Move your ass!”
There was a low groan as the bolts holding the gangway to the ship took the whole stress. The submarine was not underway yet, but now it was subject to the currents and wind, and both were pushing it away from the pier.
The young sailor, a yeoman, darted up the gangway, leaping over the last six feet to land solidly on the deck.
“Now!” the boatswain’s mate said. Engineers snapped off the cotter pins and the gangway pulled away from the ship, screeching its way down the side and leaving marks on the antiechoic coating.
The boatswains mate pulled a whistle out of his pocket. He issued one sharp blast on it, then shouted, “Underway.” He repeated the announcement on his radio.
“Everybody below decks, Boats,” Forsythe heard Cowling say. “Ensign Forsythe, you take conning tower, but be ready to clear the decks on short notice. I don’t plan on staying surfaced any longer than I have to.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” Forsythe said. He watched as the sailors scuttled down the forward hatch, pulled it shut behind them and secured it. Forsythe then climbed into the conning tower and took his station. The distance between the submarine and the pier increased and water roiled around the bow as the propeller and the bow thrusters began to operate.
More gunfire, closer this time. At the land end of the pier, a cluster of men with automatic weapons were assembling.
“OOD, Conning Officer. I’m under fire.”
“Secure the watch and get your ass down here,” Cowling snapped. “Now.”
Forsythe ducked down into the lockout chamber in the sail, pulled the hatch down behind him and continued down the ladder a short distance. He spun the wheel behind him, securing the hatch, then made his way into the control room to stand behind the chief of the boat, his normal underway station as conning officer.