“More than aware, sir. He spent about an hour in there looking at the emergency cooling system. By the time he left, he knew more about it than I did.”
“Hey, Sam, thanks a lot. Come on down and have a drink next time I’m in New London.”
Admiral Mulligan picked up his secure line and dialed Kathy O’Brien’s number in Maryland. The admiral himself answered the way he always answered: “MORGAN, SPEAK.”
“Christ, Arnie, it’d be great if I’d been Kathy’s mother or someone. You call your daughter and some gorilla says, ‘MORGAN, SPEAK.’”
“Heh, heh, heh. Hiya, Joe. I’m happy to say that Kathy’s mother, like the President, has come to terms with most of my little ways. What’s hot?”
“Seawolf’s reactor, since you mention it.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“I just wanted to let you know…remember that conversation we had around a year ago, about fitting some device on the big nuclear boats that would cause them to self-destruct? I just wanted to let you know, there’s one on Seawolf.”
“That’s the trip on the isolating valve in the emergency system?”
“That’s it. Captain Crocker knows all about it…and you remember it won’t kill the ship by itself, should it fall into enemy hands. But it would enable us to damage the ship, knowing it would self-destruct completely as soon as the reactor went down.”
“It’s a kinda gloomy subject, Joe. But it’s important to know, and I’m grateful. I just hope to hell we never have to use it. By the way, how many of those goddamned political nuclear committees did you have to go through to get it done?”
“None.”
“Howd’ you fix that?”
“Simple. I never told anyone. But it’s there.”
“Heh, heh, heh. You’re a great man, Joe Mulligan.”
The night was stiflingly hot, windless above a calm sea, and USS Seawolf was ready. She lay moored alongside like a vast, black, captive undersea monster, which was precisely what she was. Except that she was bigger, faster, quieter, more aware, and more deadly than any other creature in all the world’s oceans.
Since the late afternoon, deep in the reactor room, the marine engineering officer, Lt. Commander Rich Thompson, and his team had been pulling the rods, the slow, painstaking procedure of bringing the nuclear power plant up to the required temperature and pressure to provide every ounce of energy Seawolf might need on her long voyage. You could run the whole of Honolulu off Rich Thompson’s nuclear reactor.
The signal to leave had arrived direct from SUBPAC shortly before lunch: “CO USS Seawolf: Proceed immediately to Yellow Sea as authorized in orders of 170900JUN06. Observation only. Do not, repeat not, be detected.”
Junior Petty Officer Jason Colson, Judd Crocker’s writer, had already transferred a full copy of the orders into the captain’s private ledger, and now he, in company with the CO; the XO; Lt. Shawn Pearson, the Navigation Officer; Cy Rothstein; and Rich Thompson were the only personnel privy to the hair-raising nature of their mission. It was not classified as “Black,” because that involved attack, possibly combat. But this was equally secret, equally highly classified, equally dangerous.
Down in the engineering area, outside the reactor room, Lt. Commander Schulz and Tony Fontana were busy, but still in the dark about the mission. Lt. Kyle Frank, the young sonar officer from New Hampshire, had not yet been briefed. Petty Officer Andy Cannizaro still thought they were going to Taiwan, but Master Chief Brad Stockton had been at it too long to make second guesses. He was seeing the CO later that morning, when he knew he would be informed.
For one o’clock in the morning, the jetty was relatively crowded. The departure of a nuclear submarine is always something of an event in any major naval base, and Pearl was no exception. Many of the engineers and even some of their wives had come down to watch Seawolf go. The squadron commander was there, the duty officer, and the line handlers. There was no reason for tension, but there always was a tautness in the atmosphere as deep inside the ship the men finalized their entries in the next-of-kin list, which detailed every member of the ship’s company and whom the Navy should contact should the submarine fail to return. Nicole Crocker’s name, and the address of the house on Point Loma, was right at the top of that list. There was little information about Lt. Commander Clarke, certainly nothing about his blood relatives.
At 0115, Captain Crocker came on the bridge, high above the dock. He was accompanied by the officer of the deck, Lt. Andy Warren, and the navigator, Pearson. All three men wore just summer shirts in the heat. The order to “Attend Bells” was issued at 0125, and a frisson of anticipation quivered through the ship. After all the months of preparation, those two words meant one thing: We’re going, right now.
Linus Clarke ordered all lines cast off, and Andy Warren leaned into the intercom. “All back one third.” Deep inside the ship, the massive turbines began to roll. The giant propeller, churning in reverse, caused a soft wash to roll up over the stern as Seawolf came off the jetty, moving quietly backward in the wide Pearl Harbor seaway. Fifteen seconds later she was stopped in the water, and then Judd Crocker called out, “Ahead one third.” And his 9,000-ton nuclear boat moved forward over the opening few yards of her 4,600-mile journey to the forbidden waters of the Yellow Sea.
The spectators beneath the dock lights waved as Seawolf stood down the moonlit seascape, running fair down the main southerly channel.
“All ahead standard,” called Lieutenant Warren, and everyone felt the sonorous increase in speed. A glance behind showed a white wake developing behind the stern.
“Course one-seven-five,” advised Shawn Pearson.
And Seawolf slid into her surface rhythm, the flat water cascading up over her bow and parting at the great upward curve of the sail, to form the two strange vortexes of swirling water on either side, behind the bridge, a condition common to all big underwater nuclear boats.
“We should hold this southerly course for three more miles after we fetch the harbor light, sir,” said the navigator. “Then we turn to the west, course two-seven-zero, for several thousand miles.”
Judd Crocker smiled in the dark and said quietly, “Thank you, Shawn.” Adding, “Around twenty-five miles on the surface?”
“Yessir. We got one hundred and twenty feet right after the light on Barbers Point off to starboard. But twenty miles after that it goes real deep. In this flat sea, I thought we may as well stay on the surface.”
“You might find it’s not so flat after Barbers Point, Lieutenant.”
“I suppose so, sir. But I’m not trying to interfere. I’m basically here to protect the innocent.”
Judd Crocker chuckled. He liked his young navigator, but on this ship he thought Shawn might be a bit short of customers to protect.
Seawolf eventually went deep in the area Pearson had suggested, and within 15 miles she had 12,000 feet of water beneath her keel. The CO increased her speed to 30 knots and she ran smoothly 800 feet below the surface, aiming at the steep undersea mountains of the Marcus-Necker Ridge, and then on toward the sloping Mid-Pacific Mountains, which rise up to bisect the Tropic of Cancer.
At this speed Seawolf would make 700 miles a day, which would put her at the gateway to the Yellow Sea in a little under a week. God knew how long it would take to locate her quarry.
The crew were, almost to a man, unaware of their destination. On a mission such as this it was strictly a need-to-know situation. And Tony Fontana had come around to Brad Stockton’s way of thinking that this ship would turn southwest in the near future and run south of the old East Indies, avoiding the busy, shallow Strait of Malacca, and then run north up to the Arabian Gulf.