Voyage of the Devilfish

“We need a decent fix. Captain,” Christman said. “The bottom’s been flat as a pancake for twelve hours.” The navigator drew a circle around the dot on the track corresponding to the Devilfish’s assumed present position. The circle was three inches in diameter. “That’s the fixerror circle. We could be anywhere within that. Right now it’s only forty miles across. But it’s getting bigger every minute without a fix. And going flank speed makes the circle get bigger that much faster. We need to come to periscope depth and get a GPS fix off the NAVSAT.” The Global Positioning System satellite network gave any owner of a receiver his position to within tens of feet, but going to periscope depth, Pacino was thinking, required going dead slow to avoid ripping off a delicate periscope mast or radio antenna. But since there were no submerged mountains in the area, the risk of a navigation error was acceptable given the overwhelming need to get north and rendezvous with the OMEGA — and Novskoyy — before it headed back to Severomorsk.

“Can’t do it, nav,” Pacino said, shaking his head. “Going to PD means slowing down, clearing baffles to make sure there’s no surface vessels on top, going four knots until the fix is onboard. That’s forty minutes lost right there. And radio will want to catch the broadcast at the quarter-hour. And the Supply Officer will want to dump the trash out the TDU. The engineer’ll want to blowdown the steam generators. It’ll just take too god damned long. We’d be seventy miles behind track. No way. We’re due under the ice in a few days. We’ll come up to PD before we transit under the ice. Until then we’ll just have to live with an expanded fixerror circle. Any chance we can collapse the error circle with SINS?” Christman shook his head. “The error curves on SINS are getting irregular. Northern latitude. We need an honest-to-God NAVSAT fix to settle out SINS.”

“Do the best you can, nav. This OP is urgent. We have to continue deep at flank. If we cut the hull open on a submerged mountain I’ll take the hit. You can put it in the ship’s log if it makes you feel better.” As Pacino shouldered by Christman he could feel the navigator’s look. It wasn’t like Pacino to take risks like that on navigation — the navy was unforgiving when it came to navigation errors. But for Pacino, Devilfish was late for an appointment, an appointment overdue for more than twenty years. The phone was buzzing as Pacino opened the door of his stateroom. It would be Stokes on the Conn. Instead of answering he turned around and walked back into the control room and stood next to the periscope stand. When he caught Stokes’ eye. Stokes put down the phone he’d been holding to his ear at the console aft of the periscopes.

“Cap’n, radio says we gotta come shallow. They’re getting an ELF call sign. Looks like ours. Request to slow and come up to 150 feet in preparation to go to PD.” Pacino shook his head. “No, off sa’deck. Keep flanking it north. I’ll be in radio looking at the ELF message.” Pacino walked out and aft down the centerline passageway past his stateroom and sonar. The door to radio had a combination lock. Pacino pushed the combination buttons and rotated the latch. The radio room was little more than an aisle between two tall rows of equipment racks. A small bench locker was the only seat. Beyond it a printer on a shelf rolled out from one of the racks, hummed, waiting for input. The radioman. Petty Officer Gerald, was older than Pacino, overweight, barely able to move in the space. Pacino had always liked him — he hustled and was a pro. He would have been a chief petty officer years before if not for a tendency to get drunk in port and throw the first punch. Gerald looked up. “Afternoon, sir. We’re picking up a call sign on ELF I’ve got two letters on board already, BRAVO and DELTA. One more to go.” Extremely-low-frequency radio waves were the only ones that could penetrate deep into the ocean. The cost was speed: It would take several minutes to receive a single letter with ELF. The transmitters out of Annapolis were mainly used to transmit a boat’s call sign as a signal for her to go shallow and get a burst communication from a satellite.

“What’s our call sign today?”

“BRAVO DELTA WHISKEY,” Gerald told him. “Here it comes now.” The printer spat out a row of W’s, the WHISKEY of the call sign.

“That’s us, sir. Someone sure wants to tell us something.”

CHAPTER 12

THURSDAY, 16 DECEMBER

ATLANTIC OCEAN

VIRGINIA CAPES SUBMARINE OPERATION AREA (VACAPES OPAREA)