Panic Switch полностью

“Down scope! Pilot, make your depth one two five feet smartly,” Pacino ordered, his voice louder than normal. The noise of the Omega’s screws was louder now, almost the volume of conversation.

“One two five feet, aye, sir, and my depth is one two five feet.”

Pacino glanced at Navigator Romanov, giving her a half head shake, as if to say, that was a close one. She returned his gaze, responding with a half nod.

“Raising number two scope,” Pacino called, muttering under his breath, “let’s try this again.”

The scope came out of the well and the display lit up a second time. Pacino trained the unit to look straight up and saw the massive hull of the Omega submarine passing slowly overhead. It kept steaming by, the noise of the screws getting louder now. He’d have to yell to be heard over the din of it.

“Master One is passing overhead,” Pacino said, although it was more for entering the news into the record of the “conn open mike,” a sort of blackbox video and audio recording system set up in the control room to preserve the actions of the crew for later examination. “Nav, what course do you recommend to maintain center of channel?”

Romanov looked at her chart display. “Course zero two eight, sir.”

“Pilot, make your depth one two zero feet, all ahead one third, turns for eight knots, steer course zero two eight,” Pacino ordered.

Dankleff acknowledged. They were putting on turns to match the Omega’s speed, but it would take time to accelerate up to eight knots, and by then Master One’s twin screws would pass overhead of the scope optics, at least they would if Pacino timed this right. Pacino trained his view flatter to look aft along the Omega’s hull. The Russian submarine’s hull began to narrow, the bottom of it becoming shallower. As it tapered at the rudder, the wide-diameter double screws could be seen, both of them churning up bubbles and foam from the power of their revolutions.

“Pilot, mark speed.”

“OOD, speed seven knots.”

“Pilot, make turns for nine.” Pacino would need to speed up or the Omega would vanish down the channel. He must be going faster than their calculated eight knots, or he’d sped up.

The churning screws got closer but were still a bit too distant. Vermont’s speed seemed matched to that of the Russian.

“Pilot, add five turns,” Pacino ordered. “Come up to one one five feet.”

The view of the screws grew closer. Pacino stared hard at them, trying to see if he could tell the number of blades. At least the first data the op-brief had wanted was in — the Omega was not using ducted pump-jet propulsors, but conventional brass screws, the blades in a scimitar shape, but counting blades was tough at their present speed.

“Sonar, you have a turn count and a blade count?”

“OOD, Master One is making six zero RPM on two seven-bladed screws.”

“Very well.” Pacino would leave the visual blade-counting to the people who later would examine the high-def video frame-by-frame. It was time to move the view forward. “Pilot, add two turns, make your depth one two zero feet.”

The view slowly moved along the hull until two structures came into the optics, both on the starboard side, a similar set on the port side. They looked like jet engines, but angled downward by forty-five degrees. “I have the cold water injection scoops,” Pacino reported. “Dear God, those are huge. You could drive a car into those scoops and not touch the sides.”

The view moved farther forward. Pacino turned his view aft as Vermont sped forward relative to the hull of the Belgorod, trying to get a view down the throats of the scoops, then trained the view forward again. Forward of the quadruple scoops would be the flat hull until the mechanism for docking the deep-diving submarine appeared. The view was moving forward until Pacino could just barely see a dark opening in the hull. It looked rectangular, its long axis along the centerline of the hull. Inside the opening it was too dark to make out anything. Pacino was just starting to think about activating the sail’s underice lights to illuminate the Omega hull opening when a breathless voice suddenly crackled over the shipwide phone circuit.

“Fire, fire, fire! Fire in forward compartment middle level! We’ve got a bad fire—” The transmission continued, but became unintelligible, then went ominously quiet.

Without conscious thought, Pacino clicked into the shipwide phone circuit and shouted into it, reminding himself to speak slowly and clearly despite the adrenalin slamming into his system.

“Fire in forward compartment middle level, fire in forward compartment middle level, casualty assistance team muster in the torpedo room! All hands, don EABs!”