The Skipper stayed with him. And suddenly, the cable started slipping through the screw blades.
"Bingo! That's it! We did it!" Squeak or no, he definitely was excited. "Let's get the fuck outa here!"
Buck stayed with them until they reached the bottom of the Can. Then he headed back for the Aquarium.
Ten minutes later we could see Jimmy and Whitey emerging into the outer lock through the lower hatch. Bill had wrapped their umbilicals on the bulkhead hooks as they swam to the hatch, and now he pulled them into the lock. He unhooked the hatch and swung it closed. Whitey stooped to spin the locking wheel.
"Dive Control, Outer Lock, hatch secured."
"Dive Control, Aye."
"Conn, ROV Ops, we're secured and the hatch is shut." And that was it.
I gave the Skipper a thumbs-up, and he ordered the XO to secure the hover and get the ship underway. I headed back to the dive locker. The guys had been out for about an hour at a maximum depth of 250 feet on standard heliox. Ham or Jack would have already worked out the decompression schedule. I needed to check it, and then we could start bringing the guys back to the "surface."
It would take a while, but that's what we got paid for.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Officers Call! All officers to the Wardroom."
This is a rare occurrence on a submarine. In fact, I can't remember ever hearing it before. I had my suspicions why — we were almost a month underway now, so we had to be close to our secretive destination. I mentioned Kamchatka Peninsula earlier — well, now we were going to learn all about it, mostly.
So I high-tailed it to the Wardroom. My guys and I were the stars of the show, so it wouldn't do to be tardy. The junior officers were already present. Eng and Ops, Lieutenant Commander Dirk Philips and Lieutenant Commander Larry Jackson, were on their way. Special Operations Officer Lieutenant Commander Lonie Franken-Ester and Dr. Thomas Banks followed me into the crowded room. As I explained earlier, Lonie or "Batman" was in charge of the Bat Cave, the specially designed forward compartment that used to be the guided missile bay, and now was the control center for Special Operations. Regular crew needed permission to enter this space. The XO had the Deck and Conn, and Gunty had the Dive, so every ship's officer except the XO was present.
As I sat down opposite the Skipper, he put fire to one of his stogies. As he puffed the cigar to life, we all waited. It was his show, after all. He puffed quietly, looking around the table. His characteristic grin was not present.
"Gentlemen," the Skipper commenced, "in about two and a half hours we will enter the narrow strait between the southwestern tip of Kamchatka and the northern-most of the Kuril Islands, the small island of Shumshu. Shore to shore we're talking about six miles, maybe a bit less. The passage is five miles, give or take, and beyond lies the Sea of Okhotsk. We know very little about this water beyond depth and major currents. We have no information on surface traffic or monitoring." He paused for a puff. "Petropavlovsk Kamchatskiy is the largest Soviet naval facility in the Pacific, except for Vladivostok, and the home of their Pacific submarine fleet. We know the Soviets use an area in the northeastern part of Okhotsk as a test missile splash zone, the Gulf of Shelikhov." He paused again for a couple of puffs, letting the information sink in.
"Earlier this year," he continued, "three fast attacks entered the Gulf and attempted to track incoming cruise missiles. Their gear didn't work, but one of them, the Swordfish, was mounted with the same sidescan sonar we installed earlier this year. She got two sweeps of the channel, one going in and one going out, and swept much of the waters off the western slope of Kamchatka." He grinned for the first time. "So, we're not totally blind." The Skipper rolled a chart out on the Wardroom table.
"We're here." He pointed to a spot off the southwestern tip of Kamchatka, still well offshore of Petropavlovsk. Then he put his finger on the tip of the peninsula. "This is the channel."
It looked pretty narrow. On the scale of the chart he was using, his finger completely covered the gap between Kamchatka and Shumshu.
The Skipper moved his finger past the gap and up along the western coast of Kamchatka to an outcropping about halfway up. Across Okhotsk was another outcropping — the two formed the entrance to Shelikhov. "Shelikhov starts here, and the splash zone is about here." He stabbed the middle of the Gulf. "Water depth gets to about twelve hundred feet in the middle," he pointed to Shelikhov again, "and down to about thirteen thousand feet here." He pointed to the middle of Okhotsk. "This area," he swept his fingers offshore along the western coast of Kamchatka, "averages three fifty to four-hundred feet." He looked around the table. "During the late spring and early summer, fishing fleets from around the world ply these waters. They come from as far away as Poland. This means we will have to keep a sharp lookout for ships with nets." A chuckle passed around the table.
The Skipper stood up, but motioned the officers to remain seated. He leaned over the Wardroom table, his hands gripping the edges on either side. "This doesn't leave this room." He paused for a full five seconds. "Is that understood?"
"Yes Sir," from around the table.
"We're going to locate missile parts in this area," he pointed to the north-middle of Shelikhov, "and bring them home with us."
A murmur went around the table. The Skipper held up a hand. "Lonie will brief us on the details later. Following this meeting, I will announce this part of the operation to the crew. So far as they know, that is the extent of our operations here. We don't say exactly where, and we don't say what we got, but they need to understand something about what is going on."
Heads nodded around the table.
The Skipper sat back down and continued. "As important as that is, it's not the real reason for this mission." He held up his hand again at the resulting murmurs. "The Soviets' nearest launch facility is about twelve hundred fifty miles due west of here," he stabbed the middle of Shelikhov again. Then he pointed off the chart to the west, "Right here in Yasniy, about two-hundred fifty miles southwest of Yakutzk. We know they ran a comm Cable all the way to the town of Okhotsk," he indicated a spot on the northwestern coast of Okhotsk, "where it links to another cable from Vladivostok, and from there to Moscow. From Okhotsk to goes to Magadan, here," he pointed to another spot about 280 miles along the coast east of Okhotsk, "with its large port and shipyards, and then either directly into the water or else to somewhere along here," he pointed to the double peninsula that forms the northern gate to Shelikhov, "and then into the water." He moved his finger to the western coast of Kamchatka on the other side of the bay. "It exits the water somewhere along here, where it probably branches to Palana," he pointed to the northern-most part of western Kamchatka, "but the main section goes to the naval base at Petropavlovsk," he pointed to a spot near the southeastern tip of Kamchatka.
"We believe," he continued, "that the Soviets also have established a cruise launch facility somewhere on the Kamchatka Peninsula, but because we cannot yet track these new bastards, we don't know where the facility is. We also know that they launch them by air from around the region, but they are all aimed to splash down here." He pointed to Shelikhov again.
The Skipper took two long puffs from his cigar. Then he put his elbows on the table, folded his hands with the cigar protruding from his fingers. "Our main mission is to find that cable," he paused and looked around the table, "and place a tap on it."