Charles Taylor - Boomer

A cold wind, spawned in the bleak, frigid Laptev Sea, swept over the western Siberian mountain ranges, crossed the Kamchatka peninsula, then whipped down the Bering Sea across the Aleutians into the open ocean. There was nothing in the northern Pacific to stall its mounting fury. Wave heights increased dramatically. Ousting winds flattened the peaks of waves and blew the foam from the whitecaps horizontally until vision was five hundred yards at best. The ceiling was less than a thousand feet.

SSV-516 plowed through the heaving ocean on a course thirty degrees off the oncoming wind. Any number of ships longer and heavier could handle such a day with reasonable comfort, but hardly any could churn through such seas with the relative ease of SSV-516. She was a scientific research vessel, which was a charitable appellation for an intelligence collector. Her broad beam coupled with a full-load displacement of five thousand tons countered the tumbling seas effectively.

Her commanding officer, Captain Markov, remained in the pilothouse almost constantly in such weather. He had little concern for hull damage but worried constantly over the tremendous value of her electronic equipment. Just one slip by an inattentive watch stander and a series of heavy rolls would result in damage that could be both costly to repair and hazardous to her mission. Most of her sophisticated equipment was unavailable anywhere on the east coast of the USSR, and replacement parts would have to be flown in from the research centers west of the Urals. SSV-516’s captain had been selected over a host of talented naval officers for his seamanship, common sense, and caution in such weather; he would not have been selected to command a man-of-war.

The ship was plodding along at seven knots, her bow occasionally plowing deep into the sea. Even in the pilothouse one could feel the shudder run throughout the ship when she struggled to shake the tons of green water spilling from her broad bow to either side of her main deckhouse.

Her nose was buried in dark water when the phone next to the captain’s chair buzzed. “Yes.”

“Captain, this is Lieutenant Peshkov. The American aircraft are at two hundred kilometers, still closing on a direct line.”

“Have you learned if there are any of their aircraft carriers within range?”

“Negative. Definitely not carrier aircraft. We picked them up shortly after departure from their Air Force base in the Aleutians. I’d wager my next paycheck they’re recon aircraft. What little electronics they’re employing fit that ID.”

“How are they armed?” SSV-516 shook violently as her bow lifted out of the swell, flinging green water to either side.

“They aren’t. Purely intelligence gathering, the type that should normally stay about where they are now … just listen. That’s what I was anticipating even though they’re still closing the gap. It could be a standard intelligence mission … or they could be out here for a specific reason, maybe wondering if we have anything to do with those submarines of theirs.” Word seemed to be spreading on SSV-516.

“Let me know if they close to a hundred kilometers.” He cut off his radar officer and pushed the buzzer for his warrant-missile specialist. “I want your men on standby. A possible target is closing from the east.”

Captain Markov felt much better after replacing the phone in its cradle. This world of electronics was a comfortable one, a world in which the human eye was no longer necessary. But somehow he had been intimidated, almost frightened, by the cloak of invisibility that the clouds and blowing spray surrounded him with. His missiles became a comforting shield — even though their range was no more than ten kilometers. He suppressed the knowledge that any self-respecting pilot would already be aware of SSV-516’s defensive weaknesses and would find it easy to remain just beyond their reach.

It was an especially quiet watch in Florida’ s control room. The watch section was exhausted from Buck Nelson’s intensive exercises, and the diving officer found it necessary to shift men at their positions more often than usual to keep them alert. It was also a boring watch, few contacts, smooth seas above. The OOD had little interest in maneuvering games. Their course was generally steady, speed and depth rarely changed, and sonar’s only contacts were distant sounds that would have no effect on the submarine.

“Thirty minutes to the wall,” the duty quartermaster announced in a bored monotone. He’d been replotting their position and reporting the time every five minutes to no one in particular — anyone who might listen — simply to keep himself alert. The internal navigational system’s positions were determined by the computer and accurate within feet. A typewriter in the control room printed out their longitude and latitude every six minutes. But he had chosen to plot their location by hand, just as quartermasters had done before the Omega system became more accurate than the individual who operated it. The old methods were those he’d learned first, and now they were a welcome crutch to stay awake.

Captain Nelson’s standing orders didn’t require notice of a base course change, only reason not to have done so, but no one in the darkened control room minded if the quartermaster had decided to keep them informed. Each instance after the time to maneuver was called out, one by one the others ambled over to the chart table to study their new location — a couple of additional miles covered on an imaginary line superimposed over a chart of a single sector in the Pacific Ocean. The background was entirely blue, no indication of anything they might identify with. Only the neat, black numbers indicating ocean depths revealed any type of relief, and that was the bottom, miles below.

The quartermaster’s line of advance and each position marked with a tiny X on the invisible sheet of plastic covering the chart were straight and efficient. His efforts were normal. All quartermasters tested themselves against the computers. The computers were always correct. The exact position of an SSBN was absolutely critical from one moment to the next since they might be ordered to fire a missile at any time. An incorrect position fed into that missile would mean a complete miss after traveling up to six thousand miles — and for all they knew, the single mistake could mean the end of their country. It was sensible to indulge the quartermasters, not to mention the technicians who maintained the navigational equipment.

So every five minutes the time to course change continued to be summarily announced, and in time visually noted by each member of the watch able to pass by the chart table. At precisely five minutes beforehand the OOD, without realizing why he did it, called the captain in his cabin to inform him of the maneuver.

Buck Nelson was stretched out in his narrow bunk, his pillow carefully folded in half under his head. His original intention had been commendable — to read until he was called to the control room. The light still burned over his head. Some of the handful of papers he’d been reading had slipped off his chest onto the deck when he fell asleep. For a moment the harsh buzzing of the phone became an integral part of a fitful, already forgotten dream, before it gradually dragged him from the oblivion of an exhausted sleep.

Nelson mumbled into the mouthpiece, “Captain here.” The remaining sheets of paper slid off his chest as he rose on one elbow out of habit. “Very well,” he responded, “come to your new course on schedule,” without wondering why he was called.

He hung up the phone and allowed his head to slump back on the pillow for a moment. Waking like that reminded him of the few times he’d been drunk. Buck Nelson accepted the reality of command — never sleeping more than two hours at a time at sea. It was a fact of life. But he would never come to terms with the disconcerting effect of that buzzing phone jarring him awake. That was another fact of life that had no doubt raised his blood pressure every time it jolted him like that. It was something you put up with. A standard course-change report could just as easily be an emergency call — a torpedo in the water! Silly to think about. Yes. But that buzzer sure as hell got your attention, no matter what the reason.