By Dawn's Early Light (4 page)

0830 LOCAL
OFF BARBERS POINT

The SSN21
Seawolf
nuclear-powered attack submarine surged away from the west coast of the island of Oahu as if she were impatient to rid herself of the Hawaiian island. An eighteen-foot bow wave curled over her low-slung deck.

She was covered in black anechoic tiles that made her look like an ominous, dark sea monster, which she was. With a full load of fifty Gould Mark-48 ADCAP torpedoes, and Tomahawk antiship and land-attack missiles, she had the capability under the right circumstances and with the National Nuclear Command release authorization to start and finish a world war all by herself.

A whole host of people hated the United States and everything she stood for, but there weren't many who doubted her raw power.

Standing on the cramped bridge atop the sail, Cmdr. Frank Dillon Jr., scanned the waters directly ahead of his boat through a pair of standard issue Steiners. The usual contingent of pleasure boats and inshore fishing vessels had come out to catch their departure.

It was a favorite sport amongst a certain contingent of semi-natives, a lot of them ex-navymen. Longer than a football field and capable of diving to depths of more than eighteen hundred feet, the
Seawolf
was a spectacular thing to see in the wild. Better than whales.

Dillon figured that this was going to be his last cruise as a submarine commanding officer before he was bumped upstairs to boss an entire squadron. At thirty-eight he was a little young for the responsibility that would come with his promotion to 06, but he had the experience.

He'd graduated number seven in the Annapolis class of '84, but he'd come out on top in every other navy school he'd attended. That included the submarine officers basic course (SOBC); submarine officers advanced course (SOAC); prospective executive officers course (PXO); and the top-gun school for submariners: the grueling six-month prospective command officers course (PCO).

He'd served as an engineering officer in the Sturgeon class
Flying Fish
; chief weapons officer in the LA class
Springfield
; exec aboard the
Key West
, which was another LA class nuclear attack submarine, and finally CO of the
Seawolf
.

At just under six feet, he had sandy hair, a thick mustache, a handsome face, and a lean, well-muscled body of a man who worked out a lot.

He also had an ego. Like just about every other submarine commander. There were less than one hundred nuclear submarines in the U.S. fleet. It was a very elite club. Every CO knew every other CO, and each of them
knew
that he was the best. Everybody on Dillon's boat knew it too. They were the dream team: the Miami Heat, Oakland Raiders, Green Bay Packers, and the New York Yankees all rolled into one.

The boat's motto was:
Hunt it, find it, kill it!
There wasn't a man aboard who doubted that they would be capable of handling whatever was thrown at them, by whoever and wherever.

Directly after Annapolis, when Dillon applied for submarine school, his first hurdle was the interview with the director of naval reactors (DNR), a four-star admiral who answered only to the joint chiefs and to God. Eighteen years ago the DNR was Adm. Mark Morgan, who after the interview told an aide that what most impressed him about young Ensign Dillon was the man's no-nonsense attitude and obvious sincerity.

“Look into that officer's eyes and you'll follow him wherever he leads, because you know that he's telling the rock-bottom truth.”

Admiral Morgan, now retired in Madison, Wisconsin, was Dillon's mentor and sometime Dutch uncle.

“Now,” Ensign Tony “Teflon” Alvarez said at his shoulder. Alvarez was the
Seawolf
's navigation officer. He was the only other man in the bridge with the captain and an enlisted lookout, CPO3 Bill Proctor, who was scanning the horizon with binoculars.

Dillon picked up the growler phone. “Conn, this is the captain. Have we crossed the one thousand fathom line?”

“Just now, skipper,” his executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Bateman, responded.

Dillon took a five-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to his nav officer, who was grinning ear-to-ear. Alvarez had figured their position by feel. “Not bad, Tony.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Dillon made one last three-sixty and then picked up the growler phone again. “Sonar, bridge. How's it look?”

“No current subsurface targets, sir. We're clear.”

“Very well. Conn, bridge. Prepare to dive.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Bateman responded.

“Clear the bridge,” Dillon ordered. He started his stopwatch.

The lookout was the first through the hatch down three stories to the control room level, followed by Alvarez.

Dillon remained on the bridge for a few moments. This was the start of a ninety-day patrol. They'd had their leave, now it was time to earn their pay. It would be a long time before they would see the light of day or taste the fresh salt air. He was a submariner to the depth of his soul, but he was leaving behind his twin teenaged daughters and his wife, Jill, whose uterine cancer was in remission, but she had to face it alone.

A snatch of something by Yeats came to mind. Something about getting smarter, but sadder with age. The man knew what he was talking about. He too had been there, done that. Jill had taught him that, along with a lot of other things.

Dillon dropped through the hatch and closed and dogged it, then slid the rest of the way down through the sail. At the bottom he stepped aft into the brightly lit, almost airy control room.

“My hatch is closed and secure,” he said. He made a quick sweep of his crew. Everyone was where he should be. Along the starboard side left of the periscope platform were the Lockheed Martin BSY-2 combat data systems consoles that were connected to a network of eighty-three Motorola 68030 processors; the Raytheon Mk. 2 fire control system consoles; and the plotting equipment storage racks.

Behind the Type 21 search periscope and the less powerful but more stealthy Type 5 attack scope were two manual plotting tables. Although the
Seawolf
, like all modern American submarines, was equipped with highly sophisticated inertial guidance systems, course plots were still kept by hand on actual paper charts, despite public announcements to the contrary. Weapons firing solutions were often worked out on paper too, as a backup to the Busy-2 system, and to allow the CO to better visualize what was happening in a four-dimensional world.

A maneuvering submarine, firing an even faster and more maneuverable torpedo at a second submarine that was trying to evade being killed, involved a solution that considered depth, range, bearing, and time to impact. Hard to visualize, even harder to pull off.

Along the port side bulkhead were the electronic navigation consoles and in the forward corner the boat's control station, which was manned by a helmsman and a planesman strapped into bucket seats. Alvarez, also working as diving officer, stood behind them. To his left, the chief of boat (COB), Master Chief Arthur Young, sat at the ballast control panel.

Dillon's XO, Charles Bateman, leaned nonchalantly against the periscope platform rail at the officer of the deck's (OOD's) position, a big grin on his freckled Irishman's face. This too was his last cruise before he was jumped to the PCO course, after which he would get his own boat. He wanted to make this cruise his best. And he'd had twenty bucks riding on Alvarez's navigational skills.

Dillon smiled inwardly, his shoreside problems already fading into that special place when he was underway and engaged in the business of his boat. It didn't get any better than this.

He took off his cap and stowed it in a rack with his binoculars and took Bateman's place.

“What's our status, Tony?” Dillon asked.

Alvarez studied the status board to his left, making sure it was green: All hatches and vents were sealed and all their air tanks were fully pressurized and operational.

“Sir, I have an all-green board,” Alvarez replied smartly. “Pressures are normal. We are ready in all respects for dive.”

“Very well,” Dillon said.

COB Art Young unlocked the controls for each of the ballast tanks.

“Dive the boat,” Dillon said. “Make your depth six zero feet.”

“Aye, dive the boat, make my depth sixty feet,” Alvarez said. He was a product of the Los Angeles barrios, and it was only because the congressman from his district was also a Latino and knew the family that Alvarez made it to the academy. He finished in the middle of his class, but no man wore the dolphins more proudly than he did. It was one thing to cruise a lowrider around the 'hood, it was a quantum leap to cruising a billion-dollar submarine around the ocean.

Dillon nodded to Bateman, who reached up and hit the dive warning. A klaxon sounded throughout the boat.

“Flood main ballast tanks. Ten degrees down angle on the planes,” Alvarez ordered.

COB Young opened the valves on the main ballast tanks, allowing water to enter from the sea, giving the boat a slight negative buoyancy. Combined with the forward motion of the boat and the down angle on the planes, the
Seawolf
began to settle. Slowly at first but with a steadily increasing speed.

On the surface the spectator fleet saw the tanks venting high pressure air like a pod of whales blowing their lungs on the surface. Boat horns and air whistles hooted across the water. People applauded. It was the best show in town.

Dillon glanced at the ship's chronometer. “Charlie, message Pearl that we're diving at eighteen-forty-one hours zulu. We're commencing robin redbreast patrol as ordered.”

Bateman got on the growler phone to the radio shack forward, and relayed the patrol underway message for transmission.

A red indicator light atop the periscope consoles winked red. “Mastheads are wet,” Dillon told his diving officer.

“Aye, sir.” Alvarez glanced at the indicator for a visual backup, then looked at his diving panel. “Passing five zero feet.”

“Message has been sent and acknowledged, skipper,” Bateman reported.

“Very well.”

COB Young backed down on the main ballast tanks and started procedures to selectively flood a series of trim tanks that would bring the boat steady and level at sixty feet.

“Ease your angle on the planes,” Alvarez ordered.

The planesman pulled back on the aircraft-style yoke and the boat slowed its descent, actually skidding precisely to a stop at a depth of sixty feet.

Dillon looked at his stopwatch and zeroed it. From the moment he'd given the order to prepare to dive until now it had taken six minutes and twenty-five seconds. Not bad for a nonemergency dive. “Good job, Mr. Alvarez,” he said. “Check all compartments and all machinery in all respects.”

“Aye, Captain.” Alvarez passed the order through the boat. All section heads reported back on the integrity to sea and machinery conditions in each of their compartments.

Alvarez turned back to the captain. “All compartments report ready for sea in all respects, sir.”

“Very well. Make your course two-seven-zero, increase speed to two-thirds. Prepare for emergency steep angle dive to five hundred feet.”

“Aye, sir,” Alvarez acknowledged the orders. Their original heading away from Pearl had been on a southeasterly course so as not to reveal to anyone on the surface, including satellites, where they were really going. The steep angle dive was part of a series of maneuvers called angles and dangles to find out if the boat would operate properly under extreme conditions, and that everything was in fact securely stowed.

Dillon turned toward the search periscope when a communications specialist came aft from the radio shack.

“Sir, you have flash traffic,” he said. “It came as we were diving.” He handed the message flimsy to Dillon.

Dillon's first thought was that something had happened to Jill and he was being recalled. But submarines were never turned back from patrols because a crew member's family got sick, not even for a captain. And if the Admiral Puckett who had sent the message was
the
Adm. Joseph Puckett Jr., a member of the joint chiefs, the problem wasn't with Jill.

Something had happened, or was about to happen. Something very important.

He looked up. “Belay that order, Mr. Alvarez,” he said. He handed the message flimsy to Bateman.

“Reduce speed to one-third, come right to course three-four-five.”

“Aye, reduce speed to one-third, turn right to new course three-four-five,” Alvarez repeated. He relayed the orders to the helmsman and dialed back the engine order telegraph for the new speed.

“Prepare to surface the boat.” Dillon raised the search periscope and did a quick three-sixty. Most of the specator fleet was starting back. When he popped up behind them they would be in for a big surprise.

The entire crew was momentarily taken aback, but not so much as an eyebrow rose as they complied with the new orders.

The CO was in command of the boat. He knew what he was doing. They trusted him.