“That’s probably what the captain of the BUFF is thinking right now,” Pacino said. “Sonar, do you hold narrowband contact on the BUFF on the wide aperture hull arrays?”
“No, not yet, Officer of the Deck, and broadband is a complete acoustic shitshow with the tug engines and screws.”
“An
“Once the tugs bug out,” Albanese said, “and he’s under his own power, I’ll have his broadband trace called out as ‘Sierra One.’ When the underhull is complete, as long as he’s doing more than five knots, we can stream the towed array and I’ll get a wealth of tonals.”
“We can’t wait for the tugs to shove off before the underhull,” Pacino said. “Let’s hope he heads down the channel nice and slow so we can get this underhull done and back off.”
“We’re going to have to underhull him here in the fjord,” Romanov said. “Fortunately it’s deep enough that the BUFF could have just vertical dived right by the pier if he’d wanted to. I suspect that once he reaches the mouth of the fjord and the Barents Sea, he’ll dive and start hauling ass to wherever he’s headed.”
“That’ll be the easy part of the mission,” Pacino said quietly to Romanov, his hand covering his boom microphone. “Trailing him when he’s making flank turns will be cake. This underhull maneuver will be a bitch.”
Romanov nodded at him in understanding. “He’s in the center of channel now,” Romanov said, “and he’s casting off the tug lines. Looks like the tugs are escorting him out.”
“Attention in the section tracking party,” Pacino called to the room. “The BUFF is headed right for us. We’ll let him pass overhead, then put on turns to match his speed and add revolutions until we close the distance with the number two periscope up and get close to his screws to get a good video shot and a sound pressure level trace. Then we’ll maneuver farther under his hull and check out his cold water injection scoops and then forward until we can see his ventral docking bay and docking hatch. The op-brief wants a glance at his bow to look at the size and configuration of his torpedo tube doors, but by then he may already be ready to dive, and doing that would put us very close to his spherical sonar array in his nosecone, and getting counterdetected by the Omega would be bad for business. So we’ll see what happens. As you were.”
“Officer of the Deck,” Albanese called, “I have reliable broadband contact on the BUFF, bearing two one zero, designate contact Sierra One.”
“Sonar, designate Sierra One, the BUFF, as Master One. Firecontrol,” Pacino called to Vevera, “can you infer a range based on own-ship’s position and Master One’s position on the drone image?”
“OOD, it’s rough, but I show Master One’s range at one thousand yards.”
“Speed?”
“Also rough,” Vevera reported, “but it looks like he’s doing about eight knots. He’ll be on top of us in about four minutes.”
“Pilot, mark your depth,” Pacino called to Lieutenant U-Boat Dankleff who stood watch at the pilot’s station on the forward port side of the room.
“OOD, depth one hundred feet.”
“Pilot, take us down to one one five feet.”
“Make my depth one one five feet, Pilot, aye,” Dankleff acknowledged.
“Look-around number two scope,” Pacino called, awaiting Dankleff’s speed and depth report.
“Depth one one two feet, speed zero,” Dankleff reported.
“Up scope,” Pacino said, opening a switch cover and selecting the number two periscope’s switch to raise the optronic unit out of the sail. The ultrahigh definition widescreen display on the command console came alive, the view looking a dark blue. With the scope controller, a unit that looked like it had been stolen from a kid’s gaming setup, Pacino raised the optics to look almost straight up at the waves high above. From this depth, with the keel 115 feet beneath the surface, the periscope optics were forty feet deep. The surface above looked silvery, a wrinkled mirror, rays of sunlight streaming down here and there.
“Sonar, report bearing to Master One,” Pacino called.
“OOD, Master One bears two zero eight.”
Pacino trained the view to bearing 208, then rotated the view downward so he was looking up at a forty-five degree angle to the vertical, the deeper water darkening the view, the surface no longer visible at this angle.
It was then he heard the noises. The sound of the Omega’s screws could be heard faintly through the hull, the whooshing noise becoming louder every second. And then it came slowly out of the blue haze into view, the enormous bow of the
