Seawolf Mask of Command (25 page)

After about thirty minutes ashore, Lieutenant Stahl came back on board along with the captain, while the XO stayed on the pier. With her curiosity piqued, Kristen stayed on deck. Something unexpected was about to happen, she could feel it. She watched Lieutenant Stahl as he kept glancing at his wristwatch.

“Cold enough for you, Weps?” Kristen asked as she approached him. His men were all huddled alongside the massive sail, using it to block the wind.

“It’s gonna get a lot colder,” he replied. “Why aren’t you below getting warmed up?”

“Curiosity got the better of me,” she admitted. “Why aren’t we loading yet?”

Lieutenant Stahl, known simply as “Weps” to the crew, hesitated before answering. He then checked his watch again. “You know what they said about curiosity and the cat, don’t you?”

Kristen nodded her head. “We aren’t loading training torpedoes, are we?”

He shook his head but said no more.

A few minutes later Brodie shouted down from above, “All right Weps, we’re all clear, look sharp down there.”

Three minutes later her suspicions were confirmed when a second flatbed truck appeared and pulled up alongside the
Seawolf.
The tarps were removed to reveal more shipping containers. Except, as these were opened, Kristen recognized the contents as MK48 ADCAP torpedoes with live warheads.

“All right boys, let’s move with a purpose!” Stahl ordered his men. “We’ve got six hours and a whole lot to do between now and then!”

“Can I help?” Kristen asked, wanting to be useful.

He put her to work verifying serial numbers versus a manifest he had on a clipboard. Kristen was thankful for anything at the moment. Seeing the elaborate shell game the Navy was playing to fool Russian or Chinese spy satellites about what the
Seawolf
was really loading had caused her to consider just what they were heading into.

The weapons were brought aboard through the weapon’s loading hatch. Underneath the hatch, sections of decking were removed and used to create a ramp of sorts from the weapons hatch all the way down to the cavernous torpedo handling room deep within the submarine. One by one the weapons were hoisted by the crane on the pier, lowered through the loading hatch, and then winched down into the boat. As soon as the first flatbed was emptied, a second appeared, and then a third, followed by a fourth.

“I hope you didn’t have any plans for Christmas,” Weps whispered to her after she read off the latest serial number.

“Not anymore,” she replied, wondering what was going on.

They’d been loading torpedo after torpedo for nearly six hours when over her radio she heard the captain order a halt to the loading operation. No explanation was given, except Kristen saw that on the pier, the flatbed truck with the training torpedoes drove away along with the latest empty flatbed. Stahl checked his watch. “We have about twenty minutes,” he confided. “If you want to go below and get something to eat, now’s the time.”

Kristen shook her head, not wanting to go below despite the brutal cold. The wind had picked up, and the combination of wind and bitter cold had dropped the temperature to below zero. The result was ice forming along the hull where waves had pushed water up onto the sleek black deck.

“What are you doing up here, Lieutenant?”

She recognized Brodie’s voice and turned toward him. He was wearing his usual coveralls, a ball cap with the
Seawolf
logo on it, and an unzipped parka.

“Good evening, Captain,” she and Stahl said in greeting. She then added in reply to his question, “I was just learning the ropes, sir.”

The XO joined them from the docks where he’d been monitoring the operation. “Who ordered this weather?” Graves asked, his parka zipped up tight and his hands beating feeling back into his arms.

“Don’t you care for the brisk night air, XO?” Brodie teased his friend.

“We never had anything like this back in Memphis,” Graves admitted.

Brodie smiled, apparently unaffected by the brutal wind hitting them. “You’re the safety officer for the deck crew, right Lieutenant?” Brodie asked Kristen.

“I am, sir.”

“The temperature is expected to drop to nearly ten below before dawn. At that temperature, and with this wind, these decks are gonna ice over as soon as we get underway. What’s worse is in the dark you and your men won’t be able to spot the icy patches. So make certain everyone has been briefed to keep their lifelines on at all times.”

“Absolutely, Captain,” she replied automatically.

But Brodie persisted, reiterating his point. “If someone goes in the drink tonight, we’ll be unable to get them out before hypothermia sets in, so we can’t afford any accidents. Got it?”

“Got it, Captain,” Kristen replied but was now even more curious than she’d been. According to the training schedule, they weren’t supposed to leave Indian Island until the morning. “So, I guess we’re in a bit of a hurry, sir?”

“A bit,” he admitted but offered no other insight.

Exactly twenty minutes later, another flatbed appeared with more weapons. But, in addition to ADCAP torpedoes, she now saw a device she’d only read classified reports about. The Navy had been testing a new decoy meant to mimic the sounds of a submarine in all respects. Shaped generally like a torpedo, the decoys were codenamed “Aseslan.” The
Seawolf
loaded eight of these experimental submarine decoys.

Beside her, Kristen could almost feel Andrew Stahl’s tension growing as each new weapon came aboard. She’d already counted twenty-five ADCAP torpedoes, and with the eight decoys they were beginning to run out of room in the torpedo room.

“Looks like we’re going to fill her up, Weps,” she commented, having to nearly shout to be heard over the howling wind.

“And then some,” he admitted.

She didn’t know what this meant. The
Seawolf
had a maximum capacity of fifty weapons. This was by far the largest weapons capacity of any US submarine, but still more weapons arrived. The next flatbed was loaded with Tomahawk cruise missiles, including several of the anti-ship version of the reliable weapon.

Kristen counted a total of forty-five weapons already loaded and more still on the pier, when a new twist to the strange series of events was added. A second crane, a much larger one, powered up. In addition, she saw, appearing out of the darkness, two small patrol boats. The Coast Guard routinely patrolled these waters, but these two craft weren’t Coast Guard boats. Instead, they were haze grey Navy patrol boats, and Kristen saw a host of fully armed marines on each. Spotlights from these two craft began sweeping the waters around the
Seawolf
looking for any other vessel or possible danger.

“What’s going on, Weps?” Kristen asked, becoming suspicious.

He responded by pointing toward shore. “Trust me, you really don’t want to know,” he confided.

Kristen looked shoreward and saw, approaching the pier, was a convoy of vehicles. It was too dark to tell just what they were carrying, but she noticed blue and red flashing lights in the convoy. After the next Tomahawk cruise missile went below, Kristen took another look at the approaching convoy. As it came closer she identified a single flatbed truck in the middle of a five-vehicle convoy. The lead vehicle was a police cruiser with the lights flashing. It was followed by an armored car with a marine manning a machine gun in a turret. Then came the flatbed, with marines walking along each side of the slow moving vehicle. Then there was another armored car with a second police cruiser in the rear.

“Is that flatbed carrying what I think it is?” Kristen asked, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable about what lay ahead of them.

“I’m afraid so,” Weps admitted.

Kristen watched as the slow moving convoy reached the pier. The marines escorting the flatbed were armed to the teeth and dressed in body armor. The flatbed had a long tarp draped over what looked like two shipping crates. Kristen didn’t have to guess what they were. Marines were at Naval Weapons Stations for one reason, and it wasn’t to wear their dress blues and look nice for the visitors. The marines’ sole function on any naval facility was to guard nuclear weapons.

The last conventional cruise missile went below, and then there was a brief pause while some security coordination was made. Meanwhile, the larger shore crane moved into position. Kristen saw a pair of marines, one armed with a scoped rifle, climb up to the control booth of the crane. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up at the thought of a sniper sighting in on her. Guns had always made her nervous. She’d fired an M-16 and a service pistol at the Naval Academy once and had managed not to shoot herself.

Four marines came aboard and positioned themselves on the deck as the first nuclear-tipped cruise missile was freed from its armored storage case and hoisted aboard.

Kristen stood out of the way as the menacing looking weapon was carefully lowered onto the cradle over the loading hatch. She then stepped forward and with a flashlight found the identifying serial number. “One Tomahawk Land Attack Missile-Nuclear with one W-80 variable-yield nuclear warhead. Serial number 783561,” Kristen read off the serial number feeling a sick sense of foreboding. With the exception of ballistic missile submarines, there weren’t supposed to be nuclear weapons on naval vessels any more.

What the hell have you gotten yourself into?

Weps verified the serial number against his paperwork. Once signed for, it was lowered down through the weapons hatch and into the bowels of the submarine. Twenty minutes later the second TLAM-N was lowered beneath the deck. As soon as it disappeared, the marines left the submarine and the convoy moved away.

The
Seawolf
was supposed to leave with the late-morning tide. But no longer surprising anyone, the captain ordered the line handlers back on deck as a pair of tugboats appeared in the darkness. They were leaving, and they weren’t waiting for the dawn.

Kristen made certain each man understood the new conditions on the decks. Ice had already formed in many places, and the deck was treacherous. She personally made certain each man was secured to the topside runner before allowing them to get to work. Almost immediately this proved wise when one of her men lost his footing on a patch of ice and fell. Only the lifeline prevented him from sliding into the frigid water. Spotting Gameroz from the flying squad, and knowing she could count on him, she beckoned him over.

“Yes, ma’am?” the quick-fisted petty officer asked.

“I need your help keeping an eye on the boys tonight. Let someone else handle the lines. If anyone goes overboard in these conditions, they won’t last five minutes,” she explained knowing that if someone did fall overboard, there would be no chance the
Seawolf
could affect a rescue before severe hypothermia set in.

“You got it, ma’am,” Gameroz replied and went forward.

They cast off all lines without incident and after the tugboats helped them enter the channel, a Coast Guard cutter appeared and took up a position ahead of the
Seawolf
to escort her out and make certain no fishing boats or other civilian traffic interfered with the submarine’s safe transit.

But, as if the evening couldn’t become more bizarre, she saw, appearing out of the night and gliding across the dark water, the
USS Connecticut
. The
Seawolf’s
sister boat was supposed to be in dry dock, but was now moving toward the arming wharf where the
Seawolf
had previously been. Tugboats maneuvered the huge vessel, and, as they passed, Kristen saw that the
Connecticut’s
hull number had been changed to “21”, the
Seawolf’s
hull number. The Navy was clearly pulling out all stops to make certain no one realized the
Seawolf
was at sea.

As soon as they were clear, Kristen sent most of her crew below, keeping just those she needed to clean up the deck. The
Seawolf’s
steel hull was covered with anechoic tiles that were like hard rubber and designed to prevent enemy sonar picking up the submarine when underwater. But, along the hull, there were several reversible tiles where deck cleats were. Kristen and her crew now had to turn these reversible cleats back into the hull and then use rubber mallets to hammer the tiles back down in place to create a nice smooth surface. That way, once underwater, there would be no unnecessary projections on the hull to interfere with the water moving over the hull undisturbed.

This task was made significantly harder by the treacherous conditions on deck. These conditions grew exponentially worse once the submarine got underway. Water and sea spray washed over the bow and sent ice shards flying into the exposed skin of the deck crew. Ice instantly formed on any surface, including their parkas, gloves, and mallets, and Kristen heard the ice cracking on the exterior of her parka every time she moved. But, as she moved along the deck, another danger became apparent.

The
Seawolf
was at home in the ocean depths, lurking in the deep, dark waters in search of her prey. But in making her perfectly shaped for the deep, her designers had been forced to sacrifice her handling capabilities on the surface. So, as they entered Puget Sound, Kristen felt the deck pitch as the first wave hit.

Realizing the conditions were rapidly becoming intolerable, she sent all but three men below. She kept Gameroz and another man from the flying squad named Darby with her, plus the safety swimmer Hodges who’d positioned himself near the sail to get out of the wind. Kristen would have liked to send Hodges below too, but he was required to be on deck as long as she and her team were there. At least as a safety swimmer, he was dressed in a drysuit and could survive for a short time in these waters, but he also couldn’t wear a safety harness, which worried her.

“Hodges!” she shouted at him to be heard over the wind and the waves.

“Yeah?” he called back from where he was huddled for warmth in a parka.

“You stay right there!” she shouted. “I want to be able to see you at all times!”

He nodded his head and gave her a thumbs-up sign as he ducked back under the leeward side of the sail to get out of the wind. Kristen then moved with Darby and Gameroz. They’d managed to secure all the cleats and deck tiles, and now had to break down the runner. This was dangerous because as they broke it down they were without a lifeline for a brief period of time. Kristen ordered both men to get down on their hands and knees, wanting as much deck contact as possible.