“Yeah, you’d better get up there,” Betts said, taking a gasping breath between each word.
By then Daminski’s fist was almost at the vertical again.
“On the count of three, let go.”
“Okay.” “One,” Daminski said, eyes closed, still struggling against Betts’s bulk. The ship’s deck took on an angle again as the submarine left the danger of the surface and returned to the arms of the deep, beneath the thermal layer, where only an extraordinarily lucky warship would be able to detect them.
“Two,” Daminski wheezed, his fist now cocking against Betts’s, driving the huge arm downward toward the rack.
Betts’s face was red, his eyes clamped shut, his teeth biting into his lip. Daminski’s arm began to move Betts’s down.
Betts began to give out a groaning sound. Daminski took one final breath and forced his arm toward the rack. Betts’s hand shook. After a final moment, Betts let go and Daminski drove the huge fist down to the rack. Betts slipped off the bench box, holding his arm and gasping.
Daminski stood. “Three. You okay, Terry?”
“Screw you,” Betts said from the deck as four torpedomen tried to pull him upright. “Sir.”
Daminski laughed, fingered the rip in his uniform and headed for the stairs to the middle level.
“Next time for sure, right. Senior?”
Betts got to his feet and stared at Daminski. “You won’t survive the next time. Skipper.”
Daminski waved at Betts and moved up the stairs, taking the second flight to the upper level, turning the corner and heading aft to the control room, amazed at how much better he felt, Myra’s letter almost forgotten. Almost.
Officer of the deck Lt. Kevin Skinnard stood on the raised periscope stand, a slim man in his late twenties with traces of acne on his cheeks below his deep-set eyes. His face looked haunted by lack of sleep as he held out a metal clipboard to Daminski, the radio messages printed out from their trip to periscope depth.
Daminski opened the clipboard cover and read the message.
261157ZDEC
FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH PLASH FLASH
FM CINCNAVFORCEMED
TO USS AUGUSTA SSN763
SUBJ RETASKING
SCI/TOP SECRET — EARLY RETIREMENT PERSONAL FOR COMMANDING OFFICER/PERSONAL FOR COMMANDING OFFICER
//BT//
1. MISSION RETASKING FOLLOWS EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.
2. USS AUGUSTA ORDERED TO INTERCEPT AND SINK UNITED ISLAMIC FRONT DESTINY CLASS TYPE TWO NUCLEAR SUBMARINE UNIT ONE AT FIRST DETECTION.
3. SUBJECT UIF SUBMARINE UNIT SURFACED BRIEFLY AT 0635 LOCAL AT LATITUDE NOVEMBER THREE FIVE LONGITUDE ECHO ZERO THREE ZERO. UNIT PICKED UP DOWNED PILOTS, PROCEEDED EAST AND SUBMERGED.
4. INTENT OF UIF SUBMARINE UNKNOWN. DESTINATION/ MISSION ALSO INDETERMINATE. HOWEVER, ANALYSTS BELIEVE GENERAL SIHOUD MAY BE ABOARD AS A RIDER.
5. P-3 PATROL AIRCRAFT FROM SIGONELLA WILL BE PATROLLING IN SEARCH OF UIF SUBMARINE. ANY DETECTION WILL BE PUT ON COMMSAT TRAFFIC WITH ELF CALL TO PERISCOPE DEPTH.
6. USS AUGUSTA ORDERED TO TRANSMIT SITREP TO CINCNAVPORCEMED IMMEDIATELY ON CONFIRMED DETECTION OF UIF SUBMARINE. AFTER SITREP TRANSMISSION AUGUSTA AUTHORIZED WEAPON RELEASE FOR SINKING OF UIP UNIT.
7. AFTER UIF SUBMARINE CONFIRMED SUNK USS AUGUSTA ORDERED TO PROCEED TO NAPLES ITALY FOR PATROL REPORT DEBRIEFING TO COMMEDPLEET.
8. GOOD LUCK TO YOU AND YOUR CREW, RON. GOOD HUNTING.
9. ADMIRAL J. TRAEPS SENDS.
//BT//
Daminski smiled, signed the message, glanced at the chronometer and jotted down the time. He handed the message board to O.O.D Skinnard and moved down to the chart table, shuffled down in the locker portion for a new chart of the Mediterranean and marked the spot of the Destiny-class’s surfacing with a blue pencil dot. He grabbed a time-distance circular slide rule and spun the wheel several times, then drew a circle in the sea with the compass center on the blue dot. Skinnard checked his calculation and nodded. Daminski pointed to the chart.
“Course two eight five at flank until we’re here, then slow to ten knots and do a large sector search. Notify the ops boss to do his homework on the Destiny-class and tell him we’ll be briefing the officers at 1400.”
“Dive, make your depth eight five four feet. Helm, all ahead flank, right two degrees rudder, steady course two eight five,” Skinnard ordered.
Daminski frowned at Skinnard for a moment. The youth was the sonar officer, and Daminski was about to see how good he was.
“Skinnard, you got a sonar-search plan for the Destiny-class?”
The lieutenant didn’t blink. “I reviewed it myself two days ago. Captain. It’s current. My sonarmen will have it loaded in five minutes. If that sucker’s out there, we’ll snap him up.”
Daminski’s frown didn’t ease but inside he was smiling. The kid had given the right answer, and it was because he was trained right — Daminski-trained.
“I know you will,” Daminski said, his face close to Skinnard’s. He turned and walked to his stateroom, whistling tunelessly. A lousy day had turned out pretty fine, after all.
He rubbed his right shoulder and biceps and grimaced. At least he could shoot the Destiny submarine without it ripping his arm out of the socket. Damned Betts. Next time he’d lift a few weights before challenging his beefy torpedoman.
Chapter 6
Thursday, 26 December
The door to sonar smashed open. The sonar chief turned and stared at Captain Daminski, his hair drawn back, red wraparound glasses shading his round eyes. Chief Bruce Hillsworth, Royal Navy, was on an exchange program, his usual assignment to the HMS Triumph, an attack submarine of the Trafalgar class. After going to BSY-1 BATEARS sonar school in San Diego, Hillsworth had reported aboard Augusta for the temporary assignment to assist the regular sonar supervisor. But the irreverent Brit had proved so adept at his job that, at Daminski’s insistence, the Navy had approved his top-secret clearance and proposed to the British Admiralty that he be allowed to complete a three-year tour.
Daminski slammed shut the door to the sonar shack, violating the rig for patrol quiet that required doors to be shut gently. Hillsworth ripped off his earphones and glared at the captain, then spoke, his South London accent oddly exotic in a navy dominated by descendents of early twentieth-century immigrants and great-grandsons of the Confederacy.
“Sir, if you insist on slamming the door I shall be obliged to ask you to leave my sonar compartment.”
Daminski clapped Hillsworth on the shoulder. “Aw, your queen wears combat boots.”
Hillsworth’s nose tilted toward the overhead. “Is there anything in particular I might be able to help you with, sir?”
Daminski looked around the room and took it in, as if he were seeing it for the first time, or perhaps the last. The space was quiet, the sonar display consoles humming, ventilation ducts purring, the room dimly lit by blue fluorescent lights and the green of the console video screens. A wall speaker played the sound of the selected beam of the spherical sonar array, the volume turned low enough to make the ears strain to hear the sound of the merchant ship’s propeller off in the distance. The faraway whooshing of the screw blades sounded lonely, mournful.
“I want to see the sonar search-plan for the Destiny-class.”
Hillsworth nodded, took off the headphones and led Daminski to the computer in the forward corner of the cramped space. Daminski paged through the software, looking at the expected tonal frequencies predicted from the Japanese-constructed ship. Little was known about her sound signature. When the ship had left the Mitsubishi shipyard in Yokosuka the Improved-Los Angeles-class submarine Louisville had trailed her out, doing an “underhull,” a periscope surveillance of the new ship as it ran on the surface.