Despite his youthful face, Steve Friedman was a master at operating the CCS Mark II fire control system. He had an uncanny ability to extract the most information out of the least input, sometimes seeing things in the scrawl of figures and cryptic symbols on the CRT that Ward swore couldn’t be represented there.
“Well, Skipper,” he began in his slow Alabama drawl, “Sierra four-five is the closest. He must be that merch y’all are looking at. Range four thousand. Speed ten. Course about zero-two-five. CPA in fifteen minutes at three thousand yards, bearing three-four-seven. I’m guessing he’s headed into Long Beach.”
CPA stood for “closest point of approach,” the closest the contact would get to Spadefish if all the analysis was correct. Sub skippers started to get awfully nervous when vessels came within a couple of thousand yards. There were too many collisions on record, caused when the ships got too close then unknowingly turned toward the submarine while the skipper was looking the other way.
And how many sugars is the merchant ship’s captain having in his cup of coffee? Ward thought. It wouldn’t have surprised him if the kid could tell him. He looked at the stick diagram that showed the computer’s opinion on the more important matter at hand though.
“Yeah, that looks about right. He might be a little broader in aspect. I could see across his main deck. The forward king posts were almost in line. That would bring his range in some and put him just about at CPA now.”
Friedman twiddled a bit more with the push stick controls, moving the sight diagram slightly.
“Yeah, Skipper. I can make that work. The other two are farther out. CPAs at about eight thousand.”
Ward let out a long breath and reluctantly turned to the senior captain who was standing quietly, observing from the back of the control room.
“Captain Hunsucker, we won’t be able to launch in the time window. Too much interfering traffic in the area. I’m drafting a message to Pearl now to tell them. I’m also requesting a new launch basket. Just too damn much going on up there.”
Mike Hunsucker appeared to be ignoring the captain as he studiously scribbled something in his steno pad, writing with such force his jowls bounded slightly. Now the scratching of his pen point on paper was the only sound in the room. Finally, the older man glanced up, looking at Ward over the top of his half glasses.
“Very well, Captain. Let’s meet in your stateroom in five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mike Hunsucker eased himself into the little fold-down settee in the captain’s stateroom. It had always been a running joke among submariners. The “stateroom” was hardly “stately,” and certainly not what the name might imply aboard, say, a luxury cruise ship. About the only nod to grandeur was the dark walnut-colored Formica that covered the bulkheads. It was, in actuality, small and Spartan. Jon Ward preferred to call it compact and utilitarian.
Barely the size of a small walk-in closest, the room contained everything that the captain needed in the way of a place to live and from which to command a nuclear attack submarine. The communications equipment next to the settee allowed him to talk with anyone throughout the sub. And, when he was patched to the sub’s radios, his voice could reach to anywhere on the planet. The small course, speed, and depth repeater on the forward bulkhead enabled him to keep track of the sub’s movements, too. Right now they told him that Spadefish was at periscope depth, and that they were heading slowly out to sea, farther away from the crowded California coast.
Hunsucker didn’t even take a sip of the coffee from the cup in front of him before he began.
“Jon, I’ll be direct. Your boat isn’t doing very well. This is supposed to be a Tactical Readiness Examination. So far we haven’t seen any tactics at all. My team is not impressed.”
Ward slumped back in his chair but he met the senior captain’s direct gaze.
“Mike, be fair for a moment. You just left command of Topeka a couple of months ago. You can’t have already forgotten what it’s like.”