Larry Bond - Dangerous Ground

Bair reached over and turned on the light, ready to grab the idiot once he could see him. Davis, huddled up at the far end of the top bunk, her eyes wide with terror. In the bottom bunk was a man-sized, silver-colored suit hanging halfway out of the bunk with its empty arms outstretched toward Patterson. Immediately upon seeing her assailant, Patterson stopped bouncing and yelled indignantly. “What the hell is that thing?”

Hardy looked at Bair and both desperately tried to stifle their amusement; they failed. Within moments, both men were roaring with laughter. This only served to make Patterson angrier, which in turn caused the two to laugh even harder.

“Captain Hardy, this is outrageous!”

With tears welling in his eyes, Hardy could barely reply, “Yes, ma’am. You’re right. I’m sorry.” Bair nearly doubled over with his Captain’s response, and the two laughed until they were gasping for air.

“Are the two of you quite finished enjoying yourselves at my expense?” demanded Patterson, still quite peeved.

“Almost,” answered Hardy honestly. And after a little more chuckling he said, “Oh God! I needed that.”

Bair, finally managing to get a hold of himself, turned toward control, and shouted, “Auxiliaryman of the Watch, report to Dr. Patterson’s stateroom.”

Within a few seconds, a balding petty officer appeared at the door. “Auxiliaryman of the Watch, reporting as ordered, sir.”

“Petty Officer Johnson, please return the training steam suit to his quarters in the crew’s mess,” ordered Bair.

“Aye, aye, sir.” Johnson quickly walked into the stateroom, grabbed the steam suit by the arms, and began to pull it down the passageway. As he made his way to the ladder, they could hear him berating the steam suit. “Bad George! Who said you could leave your locker? Now the DCA will have to confine you to quarters for the rest of this run.”

With the steam suit thumping its way down the ladder, Bair and Hardy returned their attention to Patterson, who was now standing with her fists on her hips, her right foot tapping the deck. Her expression was more of annoyance than anger, but it was clear that she didn’t like being the butt of someone’s joke. “So, Captain, please don’t tell me that this is another example of the sick and twisted kind of humor the Navy condones?” While her expression was indignant, the effect was muted by her flowered pink pajamas.

Hardy paused for a moment and then replied, “Then I won’t tell you. Good night, ladies.”

Surprised by his response, Patterson watched as both Hardy and Bair left, the latter closing the stateroom door. Still annoyed, Patterson let out a growl as she turned out the lights and tumbled into her bunk. After she finally got comfortable, she thought about what had just happened and started to chuckle. Sighing, she turned over and muttered to herself, “Boys will be boys.”

May 23, 2005

Barents Sea, Southwest of Novaya Zemlya

The next morning Jerry had the six to twelve watch in control. He and Tom Holtzmann arrived punctually at 0545, after their pre-watch tour through the boat, to begin the turnover with Lenny Berg. The relieving process always took some time, so officers were expected to show up at least fifteen minutes before their appointed watch.

Unlike the surface navy, which had four-hour watches followed by eight hours off, the submarine force used a more abusive six hours on, twelve hours off watch rotation. After six straight hours on watch, the brain turns to Tapioca pudding and all one wants is to be relieved on time. Usually, Jerry was paired with another officer who was the same rank or senior to him. But due to his aggressive qualification schedule, Jerry sometimes found himself standing watch with Ensign Holtzmann. Although Tom was junior to him in rank, he had more experience, and was formally qualified to be an OOD.

This meant he controlled the sub’s movements and actions during routine operations, and was responsible for three-quarters of a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money and the 137 souls aboard. If the boat went to General Quarters or some other special evolution, then the Captain would take over. Even if the Captain walked into the control room, Holtzmann would continue to run things, as long as Hardy was satisfied that he was doing a good job.

As the Junior Officer of the Deck, Jerry was learning on the job, backing up his book studies with on-watch time and training under a qualified officer. Eventually, he’d go before a board of Memphis’ officers. They’d question him within an inch of his sanity, and if he satisfied them, he’d be a qualified OOD.

There was no Junior OOD on the earlier midnight to six watch, so Jerry listened as Tom relieved a very sleepy Lenny Berg. Lenny showed Holtzmann their progress on the chart, reviewed the status of the ship’s reactor and engineering plant, and warned him about anything coming up in the next six hours. Some of the information was repetitive, as they had just talked to the offgoing Engineer Officer of the Watch, but a little redundancy is preferred over ignorance. After a few brief questions, Tom relieved Lenny and announced the turnover formally to the new watch section.

Fifteen minutes into what Jerry had expected to be a quiet transit watch, the loudspeaker announced. “Conn, sonar. New contact bearing three zero zero. Designate new contact sierra seven six.”

“Sonar, conn aye,” replied Holtzmann as he and Jerry clustered around the sonar console in control. The console had only a single display, but it could repeat whatever was on the eight displays the sonarmen were looking at.

“Look,” said Tom Holtzmann. “Can you see what it is?” He stepped to one side.

Jerry studied the computer screen, called a “waterfall display” because the older information “fell” toward the bottom of the screen as new data showed up at the top. The video display showed the sounds picked up by Memphis’ passive sonars, some of the most sensitive acoustic instruments ever built. The main passive array was a fifteen-foot sphere mounted at the bow with over twelve hundred transducers. It could also transmit powerful pulses into the water when the sonar went active. Memphis also had groups of passive hydrophones mounted along the forward part of her hull, and the most sensitive of all were the two lines of hydrophones towed behind her at the end of half-mile-long cables.

All the sounds they picked up were collected and displayed as bright green lines or wide spots on a ten-inch by ten-inch video screen. Engineers had learned long ago that humans have a keener sense of sight than hearing and had modified sonar systems to take advantage of this natural fact. The louder the signal, the brighter the spot.

Holtzmann had selected a broadband display that was divided into three separate bands. The top one displayed only a couple of minutes’ worth of data, but it was updated much more rapidly than the other two that showed more information. Every few seconds, a new line of data was added at the top, pushing the older lines down.

A dim series of spots could be clearly seen on the topmost band, while it had just appeared on the middle one below. The displayed noise was fuzzy and wide, like the line left by a felt-tip pen on damp paper. A ship, especially a noisy one, would appear as a sharper, brighter set of lines because a ship has many different pieces of machinery, all making noise. This noise-maker was much more limited, weaker.

The next spot appeared on the left side of the display, now bearing three one zero degrees, to the northwest. That meant it lay to port and behind them. As Jerry watched, a new spot appeared, and seconds later, another. The spots didn’t change in brightness, but the line that they drew was angling sharply to the right. That was important. Whatever it was had a high bearing rate, which meant it was fast and close.