As we swept backward, the surface wave activity subsided a bit, but it was clear that bad weather was moving in. On my next sweep around, I tilted the scope up to see the sky. It was dark and angry, and by the time I finished the sweep, I could see rain pelting the water.
In a dramatically short time I was heading three-one-five at fifteen knots. After slowing to six and a half knots five minutes later, I chose to dolphin down below the layer, and come back to periscope depth every fifteen minutes. The current was with us on this side of Ekarma, and much slower, spread out as it was across the much wider passage between Chirinkotan and Ekarma, instead of the scant four miles of Ekarma Strait.
An hour later, we had passed Chirinkotan and were headed toward the open water of the Sea of Okhotsk. Surface waves were a jumbled nasty fifteen feet and growing, so I informed the Skipper, and took her down to quieter water at five-hundred feet.
As I relaxed on the Control Station, I replayed the past four hours. We had slipped the noose once again. But these guys were playing hardball. I could not believe they had any inkling of our actual mission or the location where we would place the tap. They did know of at least one destination we were likely to visit — the missile splash zone. And that is where I suspected they would likely head.
What I didn't know was what they had in store for us.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Storms in the Sea of Okhotsk are never your average normal storms. Up here they start at ohmygosh and end up off the normal storm rating scale. The one above us as we crawled toward our destination was over the halfway mark toward off-the-scale. I came on watch to a gently rocking sub, just enough to make it pleasant — except for one thing. We were at 350 feet. For surface action to move us around at this depth would take monster waves. As I arrived at the Control Station, I glanced up at the surface wave monitor. Thirty-five to forty foot waves running in our direction.
Let me put this into perspective. If you were on the typical ocean-going yacht — forty-five to fifty feet long, and if you were sideways to these monsters, they would roll you over in a flash. If you did it right, you'd nearly be standing on your ass one minute, and nearly standing on your nose a minute later. You might survive it — but I wouldn't bet next month's paycheck.
These waves were moving us around at 350 feet, and we were that long and displaced 5,000 tons. What I'm saying is that these monsters were moving 5,000 tons of steel as if it were nothing. In this shit the Whiskey was down deep — for him — and getting the crap beaten out of him. He was either going home, or finding shelter in the lee of one of the Kurils. He was no longer a threat to us. For the time being anyway.
The Ognevoy and Gnevnyy could survive these waves, if their COs were any good, but it was survival time. They had lost all interest in us.
It was boring again, except for the potential of being sucked to the surface. The Skipper kept us heavy, so that we had to "fly" using our dive planes to keep us at depth. That meant that we had to be extra alert on watch, because if something went wrong, we would drop quickly if we didn't compensate by immediately pumping water out. But even that got boring as we plodded along at six knots plus a bit, heading for our rendezvous with destiny.
The storm stayed with us as we traversed past the end of Kamchatka Peninsula, and worked our way north to our rendezvous point. As the water shallowed up, the waves beat us up more, but a couple of days later the worst was over, and we began to breathe easier. Our unspoken worry had been that the Soviet trio would tag-team us, keeping us under intermittent surveillance, so that we really could not have approached our actual destination. We were even faced with the possibility that we would have to abort — but as it turned out, they were gone, with virtually no chance that they knew where we were.
I decided to put Whitey, Bill, Ski, Jer, and Harry in the Can. I wanted an extra man available for this task. The pod was 12,000 pounds of delicate equipment, and we wanted to put it in place and get the hell out of there quickly. For that I figured we could stand a bit of crowding in the Can.
I took myself off the watch list when Ham loaded the guys into the Can. Ham and Jack had already done a complete system check, twice over. We were ready to go.
It was always fun to watch the guys press down. As usual, Whitey, Ski, and Jer just yawned their way down. Bill didn't appear to do anything — he just pressed down as his ears equalized in real-time. And Harry, well Harry was always glad when we paused the descent so he could catch up with his nose-squeezing and blowing.
As the topside storm abated, we reached the general vicinity of the Soviet cable. Ham had the divers resting as much as possible, four in the rack and one on watch on a two-hour rotation. Josh had the Deck with Chief Barkley in Sonar, and King was hanging out just in case.
I was at the Control Station giving Josh a personal update on the divers' status when Sonar announced, "Conn, Sonar, we have the transponder, bearing zero-two-zero. It's about five miles away, Sir."
That was my signal. I hurried back to the Can and informed Ham that we were coming up on the set point. Ham held reveille on the guys, and got them ready for the big event.
We had decided to leave Harry in the Can, so the others were getting suited up as we approached the transponder.
The process was a piece of cake when compared with the last time we were here. Josh eased up to the transponder, and went into a hover about fifty feet above it. In the Bat Cave, Bobby Shanks launched the Basketball, and flew it to an observation position off the starboard bow. Using the thrusters and pumps, Josh eased the Halibut down and about fifty feet to the south of the transponder, and spun around so we were pointed toward the west. Then he gently settled the sub on the bottom, raising clouds of silt that blocked the Basketball camera's view.
As the current swept the clouds away, the Basketball flew lower, down to the forward skids. The bright shaft of light emanating from the Basketball cut a white swath through the murky water, but as I squinted at the monitor over the dive console, I could see the skid with increasing clarity as the cloud moved away on the current.
I knew that Josh was pumping an extra heavy load of water into the tanks to hold us firmly to the bottom. No rocking on anchor cables this time. With only a relatively small remaining swell from the storm, we probably were not at much risk, but it was good to know that we had this assurance.
Josh called me say the ship was ready for dive ops. It was our show again.
Since the guys were already suited up, there was little else to do but equalize the outer lock and put the divers into the water — all four of them this time. Bobby moved the Basketball into position off the starboard quarter a couple of feet from the Can hatch.
"Control, Red Diver, ready to open the hatch." It was Whitey.
"Control aye. Open the hatch." Jack was doing the communicating.
I watched the Basketball monitor as the hatch opened. A rim of light appeared, and then, as the hatch lifted into the lock, a white shaft illuminated the submarine deck just below the opening. The first umbilical snaked its way through the hatch and disappeared down the sub's flank, followed by a second. Then Whitey and Bill (Green Diver) dropped through the hatch and sidled toward the Basketball, floating alongside — I presumed, because I could no longer see them. Two more umbilicals tumbled through the hatch, followed by Jer and Ski, Blue and Yellow Divers, respectively. The breathing of four divers on the circuit created a significant background noise that made it a bit difficult to communicate.