Nimitz Class

“pulled the rods” in the vernacular. This a slow and methodical process, getting the power plant up to temperature and pressure, ready to provide all of the power requirements of the submarine — roughly the amount required for a small town in winter.

Lieutenant Commander O’Brien, an Annapolis graduate with a degree in nuclear sciences from MIT, was the busiest man in the ship. Commander Dunning had been down to see him a couple of times since lunch, but generally speaking he left the thoughtful Boston Irishman to his work. “He doesn’t need me looking over his shoulder,” he said to Lieutenant Wingate, “he needs peace. The guy’s got six children at home, five of ’em boys. He’s good under pressure.”

By 1830 the telegraph systems from the bridge to the control room had been tested for the final time. At 1850, Commander Dunning signaled to the engineers.

Out on the casing, the deck crew prepared to cast her off. The Officer of the Deck ordered, “Let go all the lines…pull off!” Commander Dunning, standing next to his navigator high on his bridge, said crisply, “The ship is underway…shift the colors.” Back astern, the Stars and Stripes was hauled down. Up for’ard, the Jack, the flag with just the field of blue and fifty stars, was also lowered.

As the tugs began to haul Columbia off the dock, the flag of the United States of America was raised high above the bridge. Forty feet out into the harbor, Commander Dunning ordered the tugs to let go, and put his telegraph to “Engines backing…one-third…okay…ahead two-thirds.”

The great jet-black hull began to move slowly through the harbor waters, now under her own power, a deeply sinister, menacing sight, no matter how bright the day.

This evening, the light was beginning to fade as Columbia cleared the Hampton Roads and headed out into the Atlantic. Commander Dunning remained on the bridge with Lieutenant Wingate. They made twelve knots through the outer reaches of the Norfolk approach, and down in the communications room they relayed back to shore the final adjustments to the next-of-kin list.

They set a course of one-three-zero, heading southeasterly out toward the Bermuda Rise, 500 miles out. But Boomer Dunning would dive the submarine, and swing onto a more southerly course long before that, as soon as the water was deep enough, due east of Cape Hatteras. Right now, running fair down the channel, Boomer ordered, “All ahead standard [fifteen knots].”

102200SEP02.

On board USS Fletcher, Aegean Sea, northeast of Athens.

Orders for Bill Baldridge had been received in the ship’s radio room — Athens-London-Miami — Puerto Rico, to meet Columbia en route to the South Atlantic.

He explained the situation to Admiral MacLean, who was wryly amused by the U.S. Navy’s total disregard for distance — planes, ships, no problem. They could get anyone anywhere, anytime.

When Bill informed him of the possible position of the Kilo on September 25, the retired submariner looked pensive. “Yes, she’s heading to South America, isn’t she?” he said. “I expect you chaps will try and get her south of the Falklands, hmm? May as well stick to the one piece of hard information you have. But it’s not that easy right there.”

“Can you give me the main problems?”

“Yes. Have you ever heard of a place called the Burdwood Bank?”

“No.”

“The Burdwood Bank is a pretty large area of fairly shallow water on the edge of the South American continental shelf. It runs two hundred miles from east to west, passing a hundred miles south of East Falkland. Right there it’s about sixty miles across, north to south.

“Now, further south, the Atlantic is two miles deep. But on the bank, the bottom rises to only a hundred and fifty feet below the surface. The shoals are quite well charted. But it’s a lethal place for a big nuclear submarine, which wants to be at two hundred feet to avoid leaving a wake on the surface.

“But that’s not really your problem with it. Because you do not have a surface ship enemy. Your problem is noise. And that bloody bank is one of the noisiest spots in the entire ocean. It’s full of fish, shrimp, whales, and God knows what else. It’s impossible to listen for an oncoming boat because of the general racket. Never mind one as quiet as that Kilo is going to be.”

“From what you say, sir, the Kilo is probably not going to cross the bank. He’s obviously coming from the coast of South Africa, with a course set nearly due west, to get around Cape Horn.”

“I agree, Bill. It’s worth remembering that the southernmost point of Africa is around seventeen degrees further north than Cape Horn. So he’s running west-southwest. I think he will deliberately avoid the Burdwood Bank, not only because it’s so shallow, but because it’s quite widely patrolled by British military aircraft. My guess is that your enemy will come at you from out of the east. And, Bill, you must get into position before he gets there.

“My advice is to get in fairly close to the bank, so your sonars are pointed in an arc, east and south out toward the much deeper water. That’s where he’s coming from. And out there it’s quiet. Actually, you’ll find it relatively silent in those waters — until Ben Adnam shows up. You’ll probably want to stay on passive sonar until the very last moment. So it is important to be aiming the beams across a wide zone which is as quiet as possible.”

“Right, sir. Do you think it’s dangerous?”

“Anytime you are dealing with an enemy as cunning and brilliant as Ben Adnam, it is going to be extremely dangerous. But you will be in a very superior submarine, with top-class people, and you will be waiting for him. I hope. His main strength is his stealth. He’s silent under five as we know. However, he will not be expecting you, which is a big advantage.

“But he’ll fight, if you give him the least opportunity. Have no doubt, Benjamin Adnam will fight, as he’s been trained to do…as, I am rather afraid, I taught him. The second you go active, he’ll open fire with one of those Russian torpedoes. Have your decoy men on top line at all times. Be ready every minute. It happens fast down there. And I don’t particularly want you to die. I suspect that may also apply to my daughter, but probably not so much to my wife, who thinks you were the cause of my little underwater holiday in Turkey.”

“Just between us, sir, I’m also hoping to give death a miss.”

130700SEP02. 18.22N, 65.38W.

USS Columbia.

Waiting off Roosevelt Roads, on the eastern most point of the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico.

Commander Boomer Dunning was in his shirt sleeves on the sunlit bridge, watching a U.S. Navy helicopter clatter across the bay from the north, bearing the lieutenant commander from Washington who would accompany them on their long journey south. The arriving officer had, he knew, been one of the prime instigators of this investigation since Day One. Commander Dunning had met his brother, Captain Jack Baldridge, who, he knew, had died on the Thomas Jefferson.

Bill Baldridge came out of the blue West Indies sky, and was lowered from the chopper onto the casing of the submarine. His bag came down on a separate line, and he disappeared down the hatch, where a young officer met him and showed him to his quarters.

The CO handed over control of the ship to his Executive Officer, Lieutenant Commander Mike Krause, another New Englander from Vermont, and went below to chat with the newly arrived official guest from the Pentagon.

As they talked, Lieutenant Commander Krause turned Columbia north, to make a wide easterly sweep around the Virgin Islands and Anguilla. By nightfall they would be out in deep Atlantic water, three and three-quarter miles below the keel, all through the Puerto Rican Trench, the submarine running swiftly four hundred feet under the surface.

Boomer Dunning and Bill Baldridge had much to discuss. They sat in the captain’s tiny cabin, where the submarine commander expressed misgivings about taking out an enemy nobody knew, or had even seen, far less found guilty of anything.

Bill Baldridge set Boomer straight on that one in short order. “Have no doubts, sir,” he said, agreeably recognizing the seniority of the commanding officer, despite the exalted circles he usually moved in these days. “We have spent weeks and weeks ensuring that there was only one submarine in all of this world which could have taken out the Thomas Jefferson. Every other underwater boat capable of moving forward, above, or below the surface was checked out, over and over.

“The carrier was sunk by Russian Kilo 630—even the head of Russian Naval Intelligence recognizes that. It