8

Wednesday, May 11

In the flank sprint to the Caribbean, there had only been one excursion to periscope depth, at the Tropic of Cancer southeast of Nassau, Bahamas, to collapse the “fix error circle” of the ship’s inertial navigation system, what Romanov called an “overgrown fucking gyro.” Once Romanov knew exactly where they were, she could be confident in her navigation past the island approach to the entrance to the Windward Passage between the eastern tip of Cuba and the northwestern point of Haiti. The ship slowed down to standard speed, 15 knots, to navigate from the windward islands through the Cuba-Haiti shipping lanes and past Jamaica at “Point Whiskey,” where the ship sped back up to flank speed and headed south.

From Pacino’s glances at the navigation chart console before his copilot watches, and a few days later, pilot watches, they had diverged from a course toward the Panama Canal, so they were headed elsewhere. Obviously, they wouldn’t go through the canal and they wouldn’t be waiting to ambush someone exiting the canal, so what possible mission was this? Pacino asked at least once a watch, but still Romanov would divulge nothing about their destination. She’d stand next to Pacino and make sure there was one navigation point and only one entered beyond their immediate sailing point.

“Nav,” Pacino said, glancing at his watch before assuming the pilot console seat, “where are we going? What are we doing? What’s the mission?”

It had almost become their inside joke. He’d ask and Silky Romanov would give him a mysterious, teasing smile, her eyes bright, and say in a false Southern accent, “ain’t sayin.’” But today she looked at him seriously and said, “after evening meal, Mr. Pacino, at nineteen hundred, there will be an op brief for the officers and SEALs. And I promise, all your eager non-qual questions shall be answered in full.”

Pacino had nodded and taken a briefing from the off-going pilot of the watch, Chief Cruz, the jocular and friendly storekeeper chief.

The watch dragged on, the ship ramming through the Caribbean Sea at flank speed at five hundred feet below the waves, with nothing happening. After watch relief, Pacino went to the wardroom and studied for his qualifications, but couldn’t concentrate, so he opened up the assigned NewsFiles his boss, the weapons officer, had assigned him to read, both open-source and classified, although none were higher than secret level. Pacino searched for context. There had to be a reason Spichovich would send these, but like the first batch from the XO, these seemed unrelated and random. Another update on the Russian Republic’s Status-6 Poseidon / Kanyon nuclear powered, nuclear-tipped autonomous torpedo. An update on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and desire to build the sixth modification of their SLBM submarine-launched ballistic missile and test it from a modified diesel-electric submarine. Great, Pacino thought, the hostile North Korean regime arguably run by a madwoman builds a nuclear-powered ballistic missile sub, a “boomer,” with unlimited range and duration. She’d be tempted to shower down doom on the U.S. west coast.

A second Iranian update about them attempting to design a nuclear reactor for a submarine, with apparent failure on that score up to the present, but there were ominous signs that the Russians were equipping an old Iranian Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine with a radical, new design of a liquid metal reactor, using the Iranians to test it. Apparently, according to the intel, it was too dangerous for the Russians to test in their vast boondocks, and they had gotten the Iranians to agree to take it to the Indian Ocean for a test run. If it worked, it would be the Iranians to own, but odds were, the unit would explode with the yield of half of Hiroshima’s energy release. But the Iranians didn’t seem to care, so intense were their desires to enter the nuclear submarine club.

With all that going on in the world, Pacino thought, why would a “project boat” like Vermont be ordered on this oddball flank run toward the South American coastline? With a task force of SEAL commandos on board?

Eventually the table was set for dinner, which would be Chinese food with sesame chicken or spicy beef, brown rice, eggrolls and the supply officer’s favorite, fortune cookies with custom-made fortunes he had written especially for the crew. Gangbanger’s strange sense of humor was evident in some of the outrageous fortunes. Chinese night was tremendously popular with the crew, but Pacino would have been happier with a steak and potatoes. The officers at dinner were subdued and quiet, none of the usual banter going on, all of them waiting impatiently for the op brief.

Finally, after the cutlery was removed and the table cleared, the officers produced their handhelds on the table’s leather-covered surface. The captain, XO and navigator got up and followed the captain forward through the door by the supply officer. Engineer Elvis Lewinsky passed a large carafe of coffee to Weapons Officer Sprocket Spichovich, who filled up and passed it to Torpedo Officer Li No, who shook his head, his cup already filled with his eclectic tea brew, the pot then passing to Communicator Easy Eisenhart, who freshened his half-full cup and passed the pot to Pacino. Pacino filled his cup and handed the pot to the SEAL XO, Grip Aquatong. Aquatong was already drinking from a large energy drink can and passed the pot to Supply Officer Gangbanger Ganghadharan, who set it on the center of the table.

The middle level of the forward compartment started at frame 87, the bulkhead between the massive reactor compartment amidships and the forward compartment’s crew’s mess, which was the largest open space aboard, spanning the width of the boat, with café seating style tables that could seat a group of forty, more if they crowded three to a bench seat. The messroom ended forward with a door to storage on the port side, a steep centerline staircase—called a “ladder”—going up to the upper level, and the galley on the starboard side with its long cafeteria-style tray-slider for food service to the crew. Opposite the galley along the centerline passageway was the wardroom, a combined officer’s messroom, conference room and office, where the officers and SEALs officers were waiting for the operation brief.

Forward of the wardroom, there was a small room for the chief yeoman’s office, adjoining the executive officer’s stateroom, with a pass-through opening that the XO could open so he could talk to the yeoman—his administrative aide—without getting up and leaving his stateroom. Farther forward was the head between the XO’s stateroom and the roomier captain’s cabin. To starboard along the central passageway was officers’ country, the three main staterooms of the department heads and the junior officers who reported to them, with their own narrow passageway leading to their staterooms and the two-hole unisex toilet and shower. Forward of officers’ country and the captain’s sea cabin was the control room. The layout considered that a sudden call to battlestations could empty all the officers into control in seconds without them having to dash up or down the steep staircases.

The captain held court in his stateroom with the XO seated at the aft seat of the pull-out table and navigator on the outboard seat by the door, the captain’s high-backed leather command chair rolled up to the table at the forward end so he could see them both at the same time.

“So, Nav,” Seagraves said, looking down at his coffee cup, then refilling it from a carafe on the table. “What are you going to tell Spichovich when he asks about the written op order? You know you don’t have much of a poker face.”

Romanov frowned, a slight color coming to her cheeks. “I’ll tell him the truth. He’s not cleared for it.”

“How’s that make any sense?” Quinnivan snorted. “He’s cleared high enough to execute the order. How can he not be cleared to read it? You do know his other nickname, right? ‘4-Wall’? Fooker doesn’t just roll around on his little girly bicycle. He plays handball at an almost semi-pro level. He earned the name from beating people using all four walls—and the ceiling and floor too. I’m thinking he won’t buy your bullshit.”

“I’ll tell him it’s a multi-mission operation order and he’s only got the need to know for the first mission.”

Seagraves nodded at Quinnivan. “Sounds credible, XO. Still, there is no written op order. And we only have this one mission assigned.”

“But there is an op order, Captain,” Romanov said quickly. “It’s just not aboard this ship. Or with any of us. For reasons I gather have to do with the very slight chance of us getting caught being naughty and a hostile power going through our paper and electronic business.”

Seagraves nodded approvingly again at Quinnivan, obviously liking what he was hearing.

“And we were briefed by ComSubCom himself.”

Vice Admiral Catardi had personally brought them into his SCIF adjoining his headquarters office inside the Commander Submarine Command complex, their briefing held with him and the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations himself and three of his direct reports.

“So, just like there’s no written contract for a wedding or a marriage, it’s a verbal thing witnessed by, well, witnesses.”

“She makes another good point, XO,” Seagraves said, but Quinnivan still shook his head.

“I don’t know, Captain, I’m not sure I’ve ever sailed into anything remotely like this without orders. The last mission, we had a detailed op order. And the one before that.”

“We have orders. You heard the admiral.”

Seagraves nodded and downed the rest of his coffee and stood. “Well, Nav, it’s showtime. Let’s do this,” he said. He led the way aft down the passageway, the exec following.

The officers stood when the captain entered. He waved them to seats and he and the XO sat down. Navigator Romanov hurried into the room and grabbed a remote control from the table, standing at the large flat panel screen over the supply officer’s head. She clicked the remote and a large screen became filled with a chart of the Caribbean Sea.

Quinnivan spoke up. “Navigator, everyone in here cleared for this briefing?”

“Yes, XO,” she said.

“Go ahead, Nav,” Seagraves said, leaning back in his chair.

Romanov’s pointer hovered over a spot in the sea labeled Colombian Basin. “Good afternoon, officers,” she began. “We’re here,” she said, operating the screen, a red dot flashing at their position, “One hundred and seventy nautical miles north of our arrival at our destination, Point X-Ray, which we should reach early in the mid-watch, zero one hundred local time, Thursday the twelfth.” The dot labeled “X” was north-northeast of a small city on the Colombian coast labeled Santa Marta. “Once at X-Ray, we’ll be commencing a slow speed bow-tie barrier search pattern here, from Point X-Ray due west to Point Yankee, here.” Yankee was north-northwest of Santa Marta. “The width of the bow tie pattern is twenty nautical miles. When the ship reaches Yankee, we’ll turn back east and proceed at bare steerageway back to Point X-Ray.”

“And what are we searching for, exactly?” Spichovich asked, his chair turned so he was directly facing the navigator, his arms crossed, a frown wrinkling his forehead. Pacino glanced at his boss, the weapons officer, whose voice had taken on an unfamiliar edge. In Pacino’s short dealings with his boss, Lieutenant Commander Spichovich had been a complete gentleman, a friendly and sensitive superior, asking Pacino what he could do to speed along Pacino’s qualifications, sitting with Pacino, Eisenhart and the sonar chief, Albanese, as they “turned over” command of the sonar division from Eisenhart to Pacino, the turnover completing last night as Eisenhart, Pacino and Spichovich had visited the captain and XO in the captain’s stateroom to report the turnover. As of last night, Pacino was officially the sonar officer and Eisenhart was officially the communications officer, or “communicator.”

Romanov turned from the screen to address the room. “Gentlemen, welcome to Operation Bigfoot. That’s what we’re searching for. ‘Bigfoot’ because like the monster of myth, everyone has heard about it, but no one has ever actually seen it. Until now.” She clicked the remote and the next slide came up. The wardroom’s officers immediately began talking and pointing.

“Quiet down, everyone. The photograph you’re looking at is from 1916. This is the submarine L-4, a diesel-electric submarine designed by our good friends at Electric Boat, about 90 years before they were acquired by DynaCorp, and built by their shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts.” Romanov clicked the remote, the next slide showing the L-class submarine in profile and in plan, the drawing showing the interior compartments. Below the schematic diagram, a blur of statistics were displayed.

“Let’s review some things about this submarine—a miraculous ocean-going American submarine—built well over a century ago. 457 tons surfaced, 557 tons submerged. 167 feet length overall. Seventeen-and-a-half feet in beam. Two NELSECO diesels, 1300 horsepower total. Two Electro Dynamic main motors, 800 horsepower total. Two bays of 60-cell batteries. Speed, 14 knots surfaced, ten-and-a-half submerged. Range, 4300 nautical miles surfaced at seven knots, 150 nautical miles submerged at five knots, which, officers, is a submerged endurance of thirty hours. From a boat designed in the year of our Lord nineteen fourteen.”

Spichovich spoke again, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “So, Nav, we’re going back in time to fight Diesel Boat Eddie in his 1914 L-class diesel submarine? A World War I diesel sub named,” he coughed sarcastically, “‘Bigfoot’?”

“Not exactly,” Romanov said, her cheeks reddening slightly. “This is a narcotics smuggling submarine. The narco-subs have progressed tremendously, but they’ve mostly just been speed boats with the topside flattened out. Ten years ago, the Medellin cartel built a small diesel-electric submarine with a snorkel mast and a diesel that could smuggle ten tons of cocaine, but it had trouble in the open seas, balance trouble, and it had problems trying to submerge, even more trying to surface. It sank a few times, each time killing the four-man crew. They kept resurrecting it, but eventually it sank in deep water, killing the crew, and three hundred million dollars’ worth of product was lost. Designing a submarine is not for the inexperienced. We think the Colombian Barranquilla cartel tried their hand and started off with a blank sheet of paper and started designing a special purpose submarine, but like their competitors, their prototypes were ridiculously underpowered, or heavy, or unbalanced. Or they simply sank. The cartel finally realized that reinventing the wheel made no sense. So they took a look at past designs, designs they could get their hands on from open sources. Their shipbuilders found the detailed plans for the L-4 and visited the actual submarine, rusting away in a Massachusetts coast museum. They had just enough unclassified data from dusty old Navy archives and DynaCorp file rooms to be able to build a new one.

“For secrecy, they assembled it in the hold of a cargo freighter lying-to in Port Saint Marta. They’ve fitted it out with modern Edison battery Giga-Packs, with battery power density four times what the 1914 versions had, with half the weight and less than half the volume, and modern diesel engines, with twice the fuel efficiency, so they could maintain the same range with half the volume of fuel. Which makes for even more space available for cocaine. With a ten-ton load of coke, the most anyone’s been able to smuggle in a narco-sub, you make upwards of three hundred million dollars. This ship can transport over fifty tons, perhaps even sixty. That’s over one point six billion dollars. And no depth control or instability problems with this boat—it was a success over a hundred years ago, and they have the detailed specs. They just copied it. We’ve been looking for it ever since our good friends in the intelligence services got wind of it. But no one has ever even gotten close to this thing. We think this ship has made at least half a dozen successful smuggling runs already, and with that load of coke, the cartel will corner the market.”

“Wait, we’re doing drug interdiction,” Spichovich asked, incredulously. “You sent us down here at flank speed to, what, intercept and sink a fucking narco-sub?”

“No,” Romanov said dryly. “We were sent down here at flank speed to steal it.”

The wardroom burst into loud crosstalk. Pacino looked over at Tiny Tim Fishman and Grip Aquatong, who were smiling in pleasure. Grip reached out and fist-bumped Fishman.

“Quiet, people,” Quinnivan said from the aft end of the room.

“This makes no sense,” Spichovich said, acid in his voice, “why would they replicate a World War I sub where there are a thousand more advanced subs they could copy? A late-flight World War II German U-boat, for one.”

“The L-class is perfect for them,” Romanov said, staying calm, only her slight blush a sign that Spichovich’s harassing questions were bothering her. “The World War II subs could be twice this size or even triple the size. Too cumbersome, too difficult to hide, too long to build and too expensive. This one could well be called ‘Goldilocks’ instead of ‘Bigfoot.’ It’s not too big, not too small, but just right. Small enough to be assembled in the hold of the cargo mother ship, which was modified to have under-hull opening doors and a crane mechanism to lower the sub into the water unnoticed. So for now, gentlemen, this is the state of the art narcotics smuggling submarine. It has a test depth of 200 feet, deep enough to avoid any Coast Guard activity. And you guys will enjoy this. The boat has fully functional torpedo tubes—not to attack with weapons, but to offload the drugs. They have neutrally buoyant torpedo shaped cargo containers holding the coke, and when they get to the Florida coast, they rendezvous with the coastal boats and shoot the cargo out the tubes, which the receiving boats catch in nets. The L-class stays submerged the entire time, then sneaks back to Santa Marta, Colombia, for another load. We think that her maiden voyage paid for the submarine’s construction ten times over. Multiple trips? That, gentlemen, is a business plan. Questions?”

“So,” Quinnivan said, “tell us more about stealing this sub. How do we do it? I’m assuming this is the reason the SEALs are embarked.”

Seagraves broke in. “Let’s ask our newest non-qual junior officer, who will be the approach officer for this op so that he can fulfill the requirements of his qual card. Mr. Pacino, knowing what you know now, and seeing that we have our SEAL friends here, how do we hijack a diesel-electric sub?”

Pacino shook his head, feeling warmth come to his cheeks. “I’d have to say, force it to the surface. Sneak up under it, blow ballast, bang into her undersides and bring her up to the surface. Then the SEALs open a hatch, toss down a nerve gas grenade and make off with the sub.”

Fishman laughed and smiled. “That’s actually not half bad, Captain. Not very subtle, but not bad.”

The other officers were rolling their eyes, shaking their heads or making dismissive noises.

“No, Mr. Pacino,” Seagraves said. “Do you want to try again?”

Pacino shrugged. “I’ve got nothing, Cap’n.”

“What about you, Weapons Officer?” Seagraves looked over at Spichovich. “You have a better plan?”

Spichovich nodded. “Gentlemen and Navigator, back during the Cold War, one of our attack submarines was trailing a Soviet Akula nuclear attack sub that had arrived on a top-secret patrol in the western Atlantic, right off our shores, coming to see if he could himself shadow a missile sub leaving Kings Bay or one of our attack subs leaving Norfolk or Groton. The incident is still highly classified, but the basics are that our boat managed to get too close to the Russian at an odd angle and got his towed array sonar completely wrapped around the Russian’s screw. With his screw fouled, the Rooskie came to a stop, then surfaced to see what happened. There he is, on a super-secret hush-hush covert mission off American shores, and he surfaces in broad daylight, and a dozen members of his crew—probably a bunch of smelly A-Gangers,” he said, shooting a smirk at Dankleff, the head of the auxiliary mechanics, “come out of the hatch and stare dumbly aft trying to see what happened. Eventually divers got equipped and went over the side.”

The towed array was a thick cable a shiplength long towed by a steel wire rope that could be a mile long, intended to process high frequency narrowband sonar signals, the cable length intended to get the array far away from the noise generated by the sub streaming the array. The cable of it wrapping around a ship’s screw would completely immobilize it, as would the thick diameter array itself.

“So without propulsion,” Spichovich continued, “a submarine would have to have perfect trim and a fantastic hovering system to avoid sinking or popping to the surface. There is no standard operating procedure for a fouled screw, just common sense to use the engines at maximum revs to try to break whatever is fouling the screw, and if that doesn’t work, come to the surface and send over divers to get rid of the fisherman’s net or whatever it was that got wrapped around the screw.”

“Nicely done, Weps,” Seagraves said. “So, Mr. Pacino, what do you think now?”

“Sir,” Pacino began, “I’d come up beside the L-class when she’s steaming submerged, lock out the commandos, and get them to wrap a net of some type around the L-class’ screw.”

“Hopefully without getting ourselves wrapped around the screw,” Fishman said.

Pacino continued. “That’s going to be tough at five knots, though.”

Aquatong put his hands behind his head and grinned. “That’s what we do for a living, Patch. That’s why we get the big bucks.”

“So then what?” Seagraves asked Romanov.

“Well,” Romanov said. “The sub surfaces. A hatch pops open and one or more crewmen come out. The SEALs use non-lethal weapons to take out the crewmen and take over the submarine, or in the worst case, use lethal force. We augment them with a crew of two of our qualified officers so they can operate the boat and steam it to Andros Island, Bahamas, at the Navy/DynaCorp AUTEC test range, where the CIA will be waiting to study the boat.”

Pacino raised his hand self-consciously, wondering if he’d be ridiculed for acting like he was a second-grader trying to get the teacher’s attention.

Romanov smiled warmly at him. “Yes, you in the back, Mr. Pacino, you have a question?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Pacino said. “This target is diesel-electric. We’ll hear him when he’s on his diesels—assuming he can snorkel—but when he’s submerged on his batteries, he’s going to disappear into the ocean background noise.”

“Spoken like the sonar officer he is,” Spichovich said harshly, his annoyance again directed at the navigator. Pacino glanced at the weapons officer. Obviously, there was some beef between the two department heads.

“He’ll come out of port in the belly of this freighter,” Romanov said, clicking to the next slide, showing a photograph of a fairly large container ship, the slide after that showing the ship in a schematic drawing in profile view. The hold below the waterline had a submarine stowed in it, dotted lines marking underwater panels of the ship’s hull that could be removed to allow the submarine to submerge under the freighter. “This design partially replicates the CIA-commissioned Howard Hughes’ ship Glomar Explorer, which was built in the 1970s to recover a Soviet submarine off the seafloor and pull its hull into the hold of the ship, but in this case, the submarine is assembled and constructed inside the freighter, and when it is ready to launch, leaves the freighter’s hold and disappears for the Florida coast. When this happens, there will be a thousand transients as divers open up the under-hold panels to allow the sub to leave—”

“Divers?” Spichovich asked. “Divers in this crystal-clear Caribbean seawater? Do you understand that if we’re close enough, they’ll see us visually? What happens to this mission then?”

Romanov inclined her head, her jaw clamped. “We’ll stay a clear distance from the freighter when he’s preparing to launch the L-class, for that exact reason. Once the L-class clears the freighter and makes his way north, we believe he will be submerged and snorkeling to charge his batteries. Once the operation has progressed to the point that the L-class is under the control of the SEALs, we’ll lock out the two officers who will take the boat back to AUTEC. Narco-sub submerges and heads north. We submerge and clear datum. The entire incident? It never happened. We were never there. Any other questions?”

Spichovich waved his hand. “Can we see the op order?” The navigator opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Spichovich put his palm out and said, “You know what—I don’t even want to know. But tell me this—why wouldn’t the L-class leave the freighter’s hull with a full battery charge, then just steam silently away?”

“Intelligence on the L-class says it can get shorepower when its mother ship is tied up at the pier but not once the freighter puts to sea. It’s a short sail to the hundred-fathom curve, but still, unrigging the bracing inside the hold takes time, there could be problems or issues getting the hold doors open, and that entire time, the sub is on internal power on her batteries, and she isn’t rigged to snorkel inside the hold. That would be like warming up your car in the garage with the garage door closed. I know,” she said, as Spichovich raised his hand, “that would be easy to fix with a ventilation system or an exhaust plenum to get the diesel exhaust out of the hold, or a shorepower connection inside the freighter, but things are not yet that sophisticated. There’s obviously plenty of money to make ship alterations, but maybe the profits from the previous trips are paying for production expansions. Plus, if it works—if it ain’t broke—don’t fix it.”

The engineer spoke up then. “What about the crew of the Bigfoot? What do we do with them?”

“Commander Fishman?” Romanov asked.

The SEAL commander shrugged. “Hostages create trouble. There’s the risk of them escaping their restraints and thwarting the mission and killing us or sinking the boat. And hostages consume manhours. Someone has to keep an eye on them, allow them to use the bathroom, give them food, water. You need one person on our team for every three hostages to be safe. That’s a 24-hour thing, so three men standing one eight-hour watch a day or two four-hour watches a day. We don’t have six extra people for this mission. So we either kill them or leave them.”

“Leave them?” Lewinsky asked.

“Put them in a raft with some rations and water and leave them to be rescued. Or apprehended and arrested.”

“Any other questions?”

Every officer in the room had a question, it seemed, until they reached the limits of what was known about the L-class. Seagraves stood, thanked the navigator, and he and the XO left the room. Romanov gathered up her tablet and shot a glare at Spichovich, shook her ponytail off her shoulder and stormed out of the room. Pacino looked at Spichovich, who shrugged as if there were no explanation for his issues with the navigator.

“My advice, Mr. Pacino? We’ll be on a barrier search. This could go on for days. When we eventually detect this guy, we could be at battlestations rigged for ultra-quiet for hours, even days, with no sleep and the only food a plate of peanut butter sandwiches with coffee cups of bug juice to wash it down. So, while we search and wait, I suggest you get as much sleep as you can.”

Pacino nodded and left, taking the steep stairs to the upper level and around two passageway corners to his stateroom. He hung up his coveralls and climbed into the bunk and tried to sleep, but his mind wouldn’t stop spinning about the operation and his part in it. Approach officer. Every eye in the control room would be on him, from the captain on down.

After an hour of anxiety, he finally sank into sleep and a dream about carrying a hunter’s rifle into thick woods, searching for something that never appeared.