Terminal Run

“Wang,” he called. “We have one hour. I want you to pack our things and wait with them underneath the access hatch. And put on a wet suit. I’ve decided not to surface the ship when we rendezvous with Amorn and Pedro. That way it may make it back to the Chinese.”

“What is this last thing you’re going to be doing before we meet Amorn?”

“Nothing. It is nothing.”

“I’d like to stay aboard and see if I can help One Oh Seven recover,” Wang said. “You can go ahead.”

Krivak considered the request, then nodded. “Fine. Just help me pack the things I brought, and get my wet suit ready.”

Wang smiled, happy as a child. “Right away, Victor.”

“Captain, battle stations are manned,” Jeff Vermeers reported.

Michael Pacino stood on the conn, wearing the wireless one-eared headset with a boom microphone, looking down on his untrained crew, most of them on the same wireless circuit with him.

“Very well. Weapons Officer, mark status of all tubes.”

“Sir, tubes one through four are dry-loaded with Tigershark Mark 98s, with processors loaded and sedated.”

“Very well. Navigator?”

“Sir,” the navigator replied, “ship is at the launch point of Tigershark unit one.”

“Very well. Attention in the firecontrol party,” Pacino said, amazed at how it felt to give the order. “Firing point procedures, tube one, Tigershark one.”

As the Cyclops system barked out the first Tigershark torpedo, Pacino called over the medical officer. “Sixty minutes before it wakes up, right?” he asked quietly.

“Yes sir. You have one hour to get away from it.”

“Let’s hope that sedative works. XO, status of the TESA system?”

“Still working on it, Skipper. We should know by the time the Snare comes.”

“XO, if I have to hit that TESA chicken switch, and it doesn’t work, I’m going to fucking strangle you, the weapons officer, and the engineer to death before the incoming torpedo gets us.”

Vermeers swallowed. “If I could be relieved as firecontrol coordinator, sir, I’ll see to the work on the TESA.”

“Excellent, XO. Navigator, relieve the XO as firecontrol coordinator.”

Pacino glanced down at the geographic plot display of the Cyclops system, showing them the deployment point of the first Tigershark.

“Sir,” the navigator said, “we’re at the firing point for Tiger shark two.”

Pacino nodded, and the weapons left the ship one by one as Devilfish withdrew to the west. After an hour of launching and withdrawing, there was nothing to do but shut down the ship and wait for Krivak and the Snare.

“Maneuvering, Captain,” Pacino said over his headset. “Insert a full reactor scram and rig ship for reduced electrical.”

As the air handlers wound down and the ship became stuffy, Pacino couldn’t help wondering if the ship would ever be started up again. He cautioned himself to remain positive, but it was damned hard to do with a minimally functional ship and crew going up against the best submarine in the world, while his only son lay in a deep coma and was not expected to live. Was that why Pacino was taking so many risks? he asked himself harshly. Was this a death wish?

No, his mind shouted. The only death he wanted was Alexi Novskoyy’s. And that of the USS Snare.

26

Michael Pacino stood on the conn of the Devilfish, his coveralls drenched in sweat in the steaming control room. The room was airless and stuffy, the enclosing of a high-temperature steam plant in the pipe of a submarine only a good idea in the presence of a massive and redundant air-conditioning plant. There was nothing to do but stand and sweat and wait for the first Tigersharks to wake up. If the situation did not go well, the units would begin circling in wider diameter circles until they detected the SSNX, and chased him. Or homed on the other Tigersharks. If the Snare showed up late, it would be a disaster — the Tigersharks would all have chased each other or run out of fuel and shut down, and the torpedo room of the Devilfish was completely empty. Not only was the SSNX defenseless, but among the deadly threats to her were her own weapons.

Pacino stared down on the geographic plot, the God’s-eye view of the sea showing the position of the launched Tiger sharks, their own position, and the track of the Snare. Come on, Pacino thought, get to your rendezvous position.

“Conn, Sonar,” Pacino’s headset crackled. Finally, he thought. “We have multiple transients to the east, sir.”

“Sonar, Captain, classify,” Pacino ordered.

“Conn. Sonar, torpedo engine startups.”

“Very well. Sonar. Do you correlate to the bearings of the Tigersharks?”

“Conn, Sonar, yes. Also, we have a distant diesel engine and twin four-bladed screws, from a light surface vessel.”

“Very well, Sonar.” Pacino looked over at Justin Westlake, the navigator, who had taken Vermeers’s function as Pacino’s number two while the XO supervised the repair of the TESA system. “Could be the rendezvous yacht,” Pacino said.

Westlake, a thirty-two-year-old, tall, soft-spoken black officer with wire-rimmed glasses and a nasal Chicago accent, nodded. “He’s late, Skipper.”