Ian Slater: Choke Point

The dust storm it created sent a gritty, eye-closing wind over the terrorists, who nevertheless kept firing, the Pave taking several hits, none fatal. The ramp machine gunner, shot in the right boot, was unaware of it until he felt the warmth of his foot, the boot filling with blood. Brentwood was dragged hard over the fuselage’s lip. The medic, though none of the crew realized it at the time, was dying from a massive hemorrhage in his brain.

As the five-man crew of one of the Port Angeles Bruisers — as the thirty-foot-long rigid hull inflatable boats were unofficially known — readied to put to sea, the crew of the Utah , seventy miles to the west of Juan de Fuca Strait, braced for the explosions they expected against the suspected hostile target nineteen miles or so farther west. The hand on Rorke’s watch reached zero. Knowing that noise raced through seawater at three to four times the speed of sound in air, depending on the ocean’s salinity, the crew were aware it would take twenty-five to thirty seconds for the detonations to reach them — plus a few more for tide and current interference and for torpedo counterevasive tactics, should the hostile have seen the Utah ’s torpedoes coming and tried to outmaneuver them. At zero plus twenty seconds, no one was worried. At zero plus thirty seconds, nothing. Forty …

“Damn!” said the weapons officer. “Looks like we’ve got a lem—”

Then they heard and felt the blast of the 650-pound high-explosive warheads, followed by the awful sound of bulkheads buckling and collapsing like the bones of some huge prehistoric animal in its death throes.

How many were dying?

Rorke could see the question written on the faces of his young crew, now that the excitement of the hit had passed.

“Relax, gentlemen,” he announced, smiling. “We didn’t deep six anyone. Just a rusty target hulk rigged to emit hostile acoustics. You did the Utah proud.” He turned to Lieutenant Commander Ray Peel, this watch’s OOD. “Officer of the deck, emergency blow.”

“Emergency blow, aye, sir.”

The ballast control operator activated the two “mushrooms”—ballast control valves — the rapid gush of air from the sub’s air banks to her ballast tanks so alarming that it made her crew tense again. Utah broke surface nose first in an enormous rush of foaming white phosphorescence before she trimmed, her belly coming down on the sea like a broaching whale. The phosphorescence quickly faded, men releasing their hand holds.

Alicia Mayne could see the men visibly relax. She felt it too. As one of the Navy’s preeminent torpedo researchers she’d known that at some point during Utah ’s exercise patrol — her first aboard one of the $1.6 billion Virginia-class subs — there’d be a “shoot” in order for her to study postfiring telemetry data. But she hadn’t been told when or where it would take place.

“Why couldn’t you have told me beforehand?” she asked Rorke pointedly, albeit with a smile.

“Thought you might alert the crew,” he replied. “Take the edge off them.”

Now she was offended, and Rorke knew it.

“No, no,” he said, “not tip them off verbally. It’s a person’s body language. Just like you’re telling me now how pissed you are at me. Besides,” he added cheekily, “I thought you might enjoy the suspense.”

“ Enjoy? Not knowing if we were going to be fired on?”

“I figured the experience would give you a greater appreciation of what a torpedo launch is like,” he said. “Telemetry is only one part of it. Your knowledge of the human factor could be just as valuable in improving the new Mark 50.” He paused. “You notice the strain on the men in combat control? In the weapons officer’s voice? When those boys — their average age is twenty-two — are sending out all that information through the wire, one slip, one nanosecond of lost focus, could mean our fish hits a hostile a second too late, giving the enemy time to launch. And that’d be the end of us.”

Alicia knew he was right. She had felt the gut-tightening “human factor” when the ADCAP had been fired. Seeing how it was done on the sub rather than watching a launch in the lab tank ashore could help enormously in the design, in upgrading the Mark 50. A minute change could buy you that vital nanosecond. “I agree,” she told him. “That’s why I came along.”

Rorke realized then why she was tops in her field. It wasn’t just because of her mastery of physics and ocean dynamics. She was quick to concede a point if she thought you were right, not pigheaded like some of her male colleagues. Though obviously proud to have been the first child of a “blue-collar family,” as the Navy Times had put it, to work her way through college — the “icing on the cake,” as her father said, a Ph.D. from MIT — it was clear that, unlike other aspiring postdoctoral students, she wouldn’t allow her pride to stand in the way of admitting to a better idea from colleagues. It was one of the reasons, Rorke concluded, that she had been appointed senior scientist in charge of upgrading the Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes and the Mark 50, the revolutionary ship and air -launchable nine-foot-four-inch-long by 12.75-inch-diameter torpedo, which was half the size of the ADCAP and less than a quarter its weight.

“Well, Captain,” she told Rorke, “when you start using the 50B, you can forget all about the problems of wire guidance. It’ll be strictly ’shoot and scoot.’ No hanging about.”

“Great, but don’t we already have that with the present Mark 50?”

“Yes, but the 50B’ll give you fifteen more knots.”

Which meant it would have twice the speed of the ADCAP.

He was obviously impressed, and ushered her into the wardroom, where a sonar operator had taken in the reams of the two fired torpedoes’ telemetry printout for her perusal.

“Like a coffee, Doctor?” Rorke asked. “Hot chocolate?”

Alicia declined. The excitement and anxiety of the launch was all the stimulus she needed to stay awake. “May I ask,” she ventured coyly, “where we are?” Before he could answer either way, she added, “I’m guessing on the Nanoose range?” She was referring to the testing range east of Vancouver Island loaned to the U.S. Navy by Canada for firing and retrieval of dummy warhead torpedoes.

“Nope!” he said good-naturedly. “The Nanoose range is so full of sh — er, crap, miles of used wire and other Navy debris. Bangor had to hire Oregon Oceanics to clean it up. We’re nowhere near it. We’re west of Cape Flattery.”

“That’s off Washington State, right?”

“Right.”

“Most northwesterly point of the continental U.S.”

He raised his coffee mug in salute. “Were you on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? ”

“Oh no,” she laughed. “No — I couldn’t stand the strain.”

“Ah, too bad.” He smiled. “I could have been your lifeline.” He said it jocularly but pointedly, sipping his coffee. Their eyes met. He saw her blush like a schoolgirl.

“Ah,” she stammered, “how long will it take to clean up Goose — I mean Nanoose — Island?”

He laughed; an open, breezy laugh. “Nanoose Bay .”

“What — oh yes, of course. Bay .”

Rorke shrugged. “Month or two. Hall, the guy who runs Oregon Oceanics, works pretty fast. Unlike most government contractors, he doesn’t soak the taxpayer. Ex-SEAL and SALERT. One of Freeman’s boys.”

Rorke could see Alicia hadn’t heard of either Freeman, the retired general, or Frank Hall, oceanographer extraordinaire. Or was she still trying to find her feet after his subtle but unmistakable pass?