“How far to the dive point, Nav?” Pacino asked, reluctant to touch the display or alter the scale when Lewinsky was using it.
“Twenty miles to the hundred fathom curve, another mile to Point Delta,” Lewinsky said in his booming baritone voice. Pacino wondered if news of the midrats conversation about him and Redhead had reached his ears.
“Then on to Point Echo on course zero seven zero? Another fifty miles out. What happens then?”
“Then we switch to the top-secret chart.”
Short Hull Cooper arrived then, struggling with his safety harness.
“And where are we going, Nav?” Pacino asked. “XO mentioned an intermediate destination. AUTEC, maybe?”
“What’s AUTEC?” Short Hull asked.
“AUTEC is the Navy’s secret submarine test range,” Pacino explained. “Off Andros Island, Bahamas.”
“Andros is the wrong direction from our course,” Lewinsky said. “Anyway, XO wants to keep things hushed up until we can have an op brief tomorrow. Until then, I’m just going to plot one navigation waypoint ahead of PIM.”
Cooper looked at the chart. “What’s ‘PIM?’” he asked.
“Point of intended motion,” Pacino said. “It’s a moving point in the sea where the bosses want us. It’s set up that way so if a friendly gets a detect on a submarine, they can be made aware that it’s us, not a bad guy.”
“Yeah, unless a bad guy is trailing us,” Lewinsky said.
“So, Short Hull, let’s go check out the contact situation.” He motioned Cooper to the command console, where Supply Officer Gangbanger Ganghadharan stood behind a large flatpanel display, studying it and training its aim with a hand-held device that resembled a video game controller. “Gangbanger here is contact coordinator. He’ll look out for any surface ships that might present trouble. A collision at sea can ruin your entire day. What’s it look like, Gang?”
“Three surface ships, gents,” Ganghadharan said. “This one here is Visual Twenty.” He trained the scope to a view of distant lights, one red, two others white. “Bearing zero four one, angle-on-the-bow port ninety-five, range, let’s see,” he said as he turned to put his face into the radar scope. Evidently they’d abandoned the yacht radar and energized the ship’s BPS-16 radar set. “Range, eight thousand yards, beyond closest point of approach and opening.” He trained the scope view to the south. There was a white light and a green light visible. “Visual Seventeen, range seventeen thousand yards, also opening. And over here,” again he trained the scope view to look behind them. “Visual Sixteen, a sailboat, meandering toward Nantucket. Other than that, we’re clear.”
“Did you check infrared?” Pacino asked.
“Yes, but all we have are the three contacts. Visual, radar and infrared all agree. We’re pretty much alone out here, off the shipping lanes to Boston, Portsmouth and Halifax.”
“Good. Any questions, Mr. Cooper?” Pacino asked Short Hull.
“Can I look?” Gang handed the scope controller to Cooper, who rotated the scope through a slow circle around them. He gave back the device and put his face to the radar scope. Satisfied, he nodded at Pacino.
“Okay, let’s lay to the bridge,” Pacino said, pulling Cooper over to the pilot’s station. “Pilot, to the bridge, relieving watch to the bridge.”
The pilot was the chief of the boat, or COB, Master Chief Machinist Mate “Q-Ball” Quartane, the senior enlisted man aboard.
“Wait one,” Quartane said. He spoke into his boom microphone. “Bridge, Pilot, oncoming watch relief requests to lay to the bridge.”
“Pilot, Bridge,” Boozy Varney’s voice rasped in the overhead of the pilot’s station. “Send them up.”
“Let’s go,” Pacino said, leading Cooper to the ladder to the upper level and to the bridge access tunnel. He climbed the ladder, his safety harness’ lanyard over his shoulder. At the top, the officer of the deck had pulled up the grating. “Request to lay to the bridge,” Pacino said formally.
“Come up,” Varney said.
Pacino climbed up through the grating, stepping aside so Cooper could join them. It was crowded in the cockpit with the four of them there, with Varney standing beside his under-instruction, Long Hull Cooper. Once in the bridge cockpit, the noise from the howling wind and the sea breaking on either side of the sail was deafening. Despite the windshield, Pacino was immediately wet from spray. Up this high, the rocking of the boat seemed severe, the hull rolling far to starboard, hanging up there, then finally rolling to port and pausing there, all the while pitching slowly forward, then pitching back up in the long swells. The deck grating seemed to amplify the vibrations from the propulsor at full power, blasting them through the sea state. The seas were dimly red on the port side and green on the starboard, the ship’s running lights trying to shine out through the spray. Ahead of the cockpit windscreen, the radar antenna rotated slowly high over their heads, making a revolution every two seconds.
“JOOD,” Varney shouted to Long Hull over the roar of the wind and the bow wave, “Give Mr. Pacino and Mr. Cooper a watch turnover.”
