Panic Switch полностью

“And lose the son of the vice president in a storm?” Quinnivan said. “Or to radiation? Are you insane?”

“I could have kept him behind and sent Vevera and Dankleff.”

“Good luck with that, Skipper. Pacino would howl like a wolf with his paw cut off if you tried to keep him from a mission like that.”

Seagraves looked over at the damaged hull of the USS New Jersey. The sail had a large dent on the port side, as if a giant fist had hit it, and it was leaking hydraulic fluid, the hull below the sail covered with oil. The hull’s anechoic coating was blown off all over the deck and the towed array fairing was gone. The boat was settling into the water, its up-angle even more alarming than it was ten minutes before from the shaft seal flooding and the flooding from auxiliary seawater in the aft compartment.

“Do you think anyone heard our distress call or our situation report?” Seagraves asked.

“Doubtful, Captain,” Quinnivan replied. “The antennae are, to use the technical term, tits-up. Almost to the point of being, to use another technical term, broke-dick.”

“Yeah,” Seagraves said. “Any luck with the SLOT buoy encoder?” They’d salvaged half a dozen radio buoys, but the laptops used to encode messages into them were hopelessly out-of-commission.

“The encoders are even worse, Skipper. They’ve — to use another technical term — shit the bed.”

“I hate when that happens, XO.” Seagraves sniffed the air. The occasional breeze had picked up, a gentle wind blowing in from the south. “What about the emergency locater beacons?”

“We lit off all three at intervals,” Quinnivan said. “We can’t verify they worked. But they looked okay. Our hopes rest on them, at the moment.”

“Let’s get the strobe beacon going, XO,” Seagraves ordered. “Visible light and infrared, full azimuth and inclination. If the clouds get too thick for aircraft to see us, maybe a satellite can detect our position.”

“You want the strobe programmed to do ‘S.O.S.’ in Morse code?” Quinnivan asked.

Seagraves shook his head. “Do we know today’s call sign for the New Jersey? The two letter group for ELF radio signals?”

“I’ll bet the radio guys know, Skipper, although their chief, Gory Goreliki, didn’t make it. You want that programmed into the strobe?”

“Do this, XO. Have the strobe give off our call sign, then pause and transmit ‘S.O.S.,’ in case someone else can get a visual on us. Drones, satellites, or SAR aircraft.”

“Done, sir. I’ll see to it.”

Chief Torpedoman Fleshy Fleshman climbed out of the hull and approached Seagraves and Quinnivan, stepping carefully on the makeshift wooden gangplank. He froze for a moment, glancing at the smoke that had risen from the mushroom cloud to the west.

Fleshy’s callsign was a misnomer, as he was skinny as a prisoner on a hunger strike. Even in his thick arctic parka, he looked like a waif.

“Captain. XO,” Fleshman said, saluting the two men, who returned the gesture. Submariners rarely saluted when surfaced at the ice, but Fleshman was old school, having been raised by three proud generations of chief petty officers, all torpedomen, his great-grandfather serving on the original Nautilus, his grandfather on the Cold War boat Piranha and his father on the East China Sea War 688-class boat Olympia. “I’ve opened up two torpedo warheads and removed them for use as demolition charges. I’ve got one ready in the reactor compartment’s shielded tunnel and the second nestled in with the Mark 48s in the torpedo room. My guys are rigging up the wires and the detonation triggers now.”

“How is the battery?”

“It’s almost dead, Captain. Battery compartment hasn’t taken on water yet, but it’s just a matter of time. It won’t be long now, sir.”

“Chief, get your men out and bring those triggers. Get on the 1MC and order the ship evacuated, no exceptions.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Fleshman said, saluting again and turning to hurry into the doomed hull.

“The water will reach the plug trunk hatch soon,” Seagraves said sadly. “I’m going to be damned sad to see the great submarine USS New Jersey sink.”

“We didn’t have much time with this old girl,” Quinnivan said. “But in a few short months, the Vermont will be hammered back together. Or I guess I should say, the New England.”

“You think they’ll let us have her back?” Seagraves asked wistfully.

“After losing New Jersey? Probably not, Skipper.”

“Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.”

“There’s still time if you want to go back aboard and say good-bye, Captain. Just be quick about it.”

“No, XO. I’ll say good-bye from up here.”

“Prudent decision, sir. Sir, while we wait, perhaps you can read off the names of our dead to honor them.”

Seagraves nodded. “Attention all hands,” he called, his voice projecting out over the ice. “I want to take this moment to commemorate our dead friends and shipmates. Lieutenant Commander Alyssa Kelly. Lieutenant Commander Wanda Styxx. Lieutenant Don Eisenhart.”

Seagraves continued, until all twenty-four names of the dead were read off.