George Wallace - Hunter Killer [Movie Tie-In]

Jerry Perez, the navigator, occupied Brian Edwards’s customary chair to Glass’s right. Short, with a dark complexion and jet-black hair, Perez was showing the signs of a developing paunch. He talked and moved the same way he mauled his hamburger and fries: slowly, deliberately. He worked hard to develop the image of a cool and collected Southern California surfer, but it was also obvious to anyone who watched him work that he had a razor-sharp and insightful mind.

Doug O’Malley, the boat’s engineer, sat to Glass’s left, across the table from Perez. O’Malley was the exact opposite of Perez. He was tall and red-haired, his body athletic and chiseled. Hailing from the upper Midwest, O’Malley spoke directly and with machine-gun speed.

Despite their physical differences, O’Malley and Perez were close friends.

“Skipper, how you think we’re doing?” O’Malley asked as he gulped down the last quarter of his sandwich in one quick bite. “ Turbulent is damn good and that Spearfish torpedo is one smart bitch.”

Glass grunted as he bit into his own hamburger and held his answer a few seconds while he chewed. The burgers were dubbed “sliders” because they were so greasy they slid right down the gullet. This one still tasted delicious to a ravenous Joe Glass. “We got a ways to go. Your plotting team needs to work on the information flow. Too many details are getting lost in the shuffle.”

Perez glanced over at O’Malley and shook his head. He pointed a French fry at his friend as he spoke. “Trouble is, Eng, you spend too much time aft, speaking ‘nuke.’ You gotta learn to talk ‘submarine’ like the rest of us.”

He gobbled up the fry. “Hell, Jerry, you know I can—”

Joe Glass held up both hands. “I’ve been your skipper long enough to have grown weary of you two bickering like an old married couple,” he said, but with a smile. It was a sign that the rest of the crew was now comfortable enough with him and his command that they could banter like this in front of him. It had not been that way his first few weeks on board when everyone seemed to be walking on eggshells.

A buzzer interrupted their meal. Glass reached underneath the table, grabbed the JA phone handset, and pushed the TALK button. “Captain.”

“Captain, XO. We just received underwater comms from Turbulent . She says we need to come up for an urgent message.”

The other officers at the table could not help noticing the sudden frown that erased the smile on their skipper’s face.

“All right, XO. Ask Turbulent to come to safety course north and to stay at periscope depth. Put us on course north and come up to one-five-zero feet. I’ll be right up.”

With both subs on the same course, the “safety course,” they wouldn’t collide with each other while they were at the same depth.

Glass replaced the handset, pushed himself back from what was left of his meal, grabbed a cup of coffee, and headed out of the wardroom. When he entered the back door of the control room, he found an orderly bustle of activity under way. Edwards was watching the fire control computers, checking the positions of all the surface contacts. Pat Durand was flipping through the displays on the BQQ-10 sonar repeater, looking for contacts and attempting to get clear in his mind the way they might be moving.

Sam Wallich, the chief of the boat, sat in the diving officer’s chair, coaching the two most junior kids on board. The helmsman and the stern-planesman steered Toledo and kept her on the ordered depth. Their station looked like the cockpit of a large airliner, complete with control yokes and a wall of gauges and computer displays. The control yoke was turned to move the rudder, which in turn steered the sub. The other yoke was pushed and pulled to position the bow planes and stern planes to go up and down. There the similarity to an airplane ended. Unlike an airliner, there was no window to see where they were going or what might lie in their path.

Glass stopped beside Edwards. The two watched together for a moment as the computer screen displayed the best guess of where the ships on the surface were located.

“What’s happening, XO?” Glass asked.

Edwards pointed to the speck of light nearest Toledo . “ Turbulent is here, at PD on safety course. She reports no surface contacts. The only other contact we hold is sierra nine-two, bearing zero-seven-two, best range one-nine thousand yards, past CPA and opening. That’s probably the retriever.”

Glass nodded. No problems here. He turned to Pat Durand. “Mr. Durand, you ready to go to periscope depth?”

“Yes, sir. Ship is ready. Request permission to go to periscope depth.”

“Proceed to periscope depth,” Glass responded. He stepped up beside the sonar repeater to watch while the young lieutenant drove the sub up to the surface.

Durand reached above his head and rotated the red scope control ring and shouted out, “Number-two scope coming up!”

As the shining smooth metal of the scope barrel started to slide out of its well, Wallich called, “Speed seven knots!”

This safety check was to make sure the sub was traveling slow enough that the scope would not be damaged. Too many young officers over the years had raised periscopes while the sub was traveling fast enough that the force of the water bent it right over. Such a careless mistake would cost the taxpayers many thousands of dollars. More important, it could result in an aborted mission.

Durand slapped down the black handles, put his eye to the eyepiece, and started to walk a circle, looking upward to make sure they weren’t surfacing under a quiet, unnoticed ship. He saw nothing but the gray-blue of the North Atlantic water.

“Diving Officer, make your depth six-two feet,” he called out.

“Depth six-two feet, aye, sir,” Wallich responded. He leaned forward, placing his head between his two young charges, and spoke. “Okay, you two, let’s do this right. Don’t embarrass me in front of the skipper. Rudder amidships. Full rise on the bow planes. Seven-degree up angle with the stern planes.”

Toledo rose from the dark depths toward the light above. As Wallich called out the depth changes, there was no other sound in the control room. Every ear was strained to hear Durand’s call if he should see an unexpected shape. To a man, the crew was thinking what he needed to do to get Toledo back down to the safety of the deep if an obstacle appeared.

The periscope broke through the surface. Durand swung the scope around through two complete circles, looking for ships close enough to hit Toledo . Glass had moved over to watch the TV monitor, showing him what Durand was seeing.

The young lieutenant called out, “No close contacts.”

It was safe to breathe again.

Glass leaned over to Durand and said, “Raise the BRA-34 and download the broadcast. Let’s find out why the boss wants to talk to us so bad.”

The submarine had a pair of BRA-34 communications masts for both receiving and transmitting radio signals over a wide range of frequencies. They allowed the boat to stay safely hidden below the surface and yet still be in radio contact with ships and stations around the world.

Within minutes the radioman on watch was reporting over the 21MC circuit.

“All traffic on board and receipted for. Request captain come to radio.”

Glass stopped next to Edwards as he headed aft to the radio room. “XO, keep an eye on things out here while I see what radio wants. Let’s stay up at PD until we’ve taken a look at the traffic.”

He stepped out the back door to the control room, ducked around the ESGN inertial navigation gyros hanging down from the overhead, and punched the combination into the cypher lock on the door to the radio room. The door opened to a cramped world of electronic panels, humming communications gear, and red-painted crypto equipment. This was the most secure room on the boat, and for good reason.