Panic Switch полностью

Lieutenant Anthony Pacino climbed into the dry-deck shelter, waiting to put on his mask over his drysuit hood. The Mark 16 Draeger closed circuit mixed gas rebreather was heavy, heavier than the twin-80 bottles he’d used to invade the Panther. He glanced at U-Boat Dankleff, who shot him a thumbs-up gesture. This was the worst part, Pacino thought, remembering his panic attack when the Vermont’s escape trunk was flooded before that mission. This time, he intended to keep his eyes clamped shut when the flooding started. Once he’d been completely under water last time, four or five breaths in, he’d been fine.

The shelter was crowded with all four of them inside with the Mark 76 propulsion units, which were also a lot fatter and longer than the ones they’d used on Panther, and reduced the space inside available for human occupation. Pacino’s earpiece crackled with Dankleff’s voice.

“Let’s gear up, Patch. Time to flood. Your favorite part of the dive.”

Pacino nodded and put on his mask over his drysuit hood, then clamped his double-fed regulator into his mouth and took an experimental breath. The air was dry, but not as dry as the conventional SCUBA air he’d breathed before. Or like the emergency air mask during the Vermont fire, he thought. His mind drifted momentarily to Rachel, and he wondered how she was. Maybe the captain would pop up the comms mast at the thin ice after the Omega dived again, and they could get an update on her. He bit his lip and commanded himself to get his head into the mission. This would not be an easy dive.

“Commencing flooding,” Dankleff said. For the dive, Pacino and Dankleff were teamed up. Fishman would be diving with Muhammad Varney as his partner. Each team had a communication wire between them, but not between the separate teams. It would have been better if all four of them could be on the same comm circuit. Pacino and Dankleff were amateurs.

The water level rose past Pacino’s waist. Even in the drysuit, he could feel the coldness of the water. When the water came up to Pacino’s chest, he turned away from Dankleff and clamped his eyes shut. The vision of water rising over his mask was too frightening to bear. But he could feel through his gloved hand that the water level was over his head, and he opened his eyes and turned back to Dankleff and shot him a thumbs-up.

“Opening the shelter door now,” Dankleff said. Pacino nodded.

The shelter door opened, the door the diameter of the shelter, almost twelve feet wide. Fishman grabbed his Mark 76 and motored out of the shelter, Varney holding on to a handhold bar on its flank. Pacino clipped his safety harness to the Mark 76 and tested it. No sense falling off the damned thing at depth. Dankleff started their Mark 76 and Pacino grabbed onto the passenger handhold.

As they maneuvered out of the shelter, Pacino looked up to see if the target were visible. The water was much clearer than he’d expected, and as he looked up he could see the dark underside of the Omega, and it was simply enormous.

“Dear God,” he said aloud involuntarily.

“Yeah. Big, ugly and fat,” Dankleff said. “Fishman’s headed to the port side. I’m driving us to starboard. Watch for the torpedo tube door opening.”

As Dankleff drove them down the New Jersey hull, its curvature changing from horizontal to vertical, Pacino looked down, but below the hull of the New Jersey, the water was black. He looked up again to see the ice above and the surfaced Omega. He could make out its bow and could see far back to its aft end, but the rudder, scoops and screws weren’t visible, vanishing in a blue blur.

The faint buzzing feeling of the Mark 76’s motor stopped as Dankleff piloted them to the New Jersey’s starboard side torpedo tube muzzle doors, the elliptical shape of them caused by the cylinder of the tube meeting the curving hull near the bow. Pacino touched the opening of the open upper tube, the steel of the hull cold to the touch. His job was to pull the Mark 80 mine out of the tube by its nose cable. He grabbed the cable with both gloved hands and pulled, using his flipper-clad feet for leverage. The mine moved smoothly and easily out of the tube, as if the torpedo room crew had greased it. Pacino attached the mine’s cable to the Mark 76 propulsion unit and continued to pull out the mine, until finally the mine was fully out of the tube. Pacino hurried to its operator panel, ready to adjust its buoyancy. He tested to see if it would sink or pop upward, but the mine was fairly trimmed to neutral buoyancy.

“I’ve got good trim on the mine,” Pacino said to Dankleff. “The mine is secured to the Mark 76. Let’s go.”

“We’ve got the BUFF’s starboard side,” Dankleff said. “Let’s get this thing next to the BUFF and get shallow. If we can see its sail, we mount the mine at a position of its trailing edge. If not, we’ll have to feel for the torpedo tube door and move aft by twenty feet or so.”

“Okay, let’s hurry.”