Arabian Storm (The Hunter Killer Series Book 5) by George Wallace (different ereaders .txt) 📕

Halliday answered. “Put it in there myself. I remember that time off Colombia when you…”

Joe Glass stepped out of his stateroom and waved Doc on his way. The corpsman was one of the few who had been with Toledo for more than a few deployments. Then the skipper grabbed the ladder up to the bridge and called around the ship’s control station to the chief of the watch, “Captain to the bridge!”

With that, Glass began the long climb up the trunk to the bridge, some twenty-five feet above the deck. As he ascended, he could plainly hear Chief Dooley announce over the 7MC, “Captain to the bridge,” and then Bob Ronson’s higher-pitched response on the communicator, “Captain to the bridge, aye.”

Glass pulled himself through the upper bridge hatch and around the ship’s whistle, then emerged into blinding sunlight on the crowded bridge. In addition to LTjg Ronson, the officer of the deck under instruction, there was Lieutenant Commander Walt Smith, Toledo’s new engineer, standing the officer of the deck watch. With a lookout and a phone-talker as well, there was not enough room to stand. The phone-talker was relegated to sitting on the step, staring at a black steel wall. Glass squeezed past the team and slipped up to the “skipper’s playpen,” a small space on top of the submarine’s sail cordoned off by stanchions so that it was relatively safe for him to stand there.

After having spent more than two months submerged, the blazingly bright sunshine took a little getting used to. Diego Garcia’s low green growth was easily visible on the southeastern horizon. Glass estimated they were about six miles out. Simpson Point was easy to make out. Somewhere off to the east was West Island and then Middle Island beyond. The port guide said that they were low-lying, so Glass was not surprised that he could not see them. The entrance passage was located between the two spits of land, but so was the dangerous Spur Reef. The barely submerged coral ridge spanned most of the harbor’s entrance, standing by to ground anyone foolish enough to venture out of the narrow entrance channel.

“Bridge, XO,” the 7MC blared. “Hold a harbor tug, bearing one-six-two, range seven-five hundred yards. He’s waiting by buoy One Delta Golf to lead us down the channel. Tug is up on channel sixteen.”

“Bridge, aye,” Ronson answered.

Joe Glass trained his binoculars over to where he could see the tug bobbing easily in the gentle swell, waiting for them. He grabbed the bridge-to-bridge radio that was looped to the forward stanchion and keyed the microphone.

“Navy tug, Navy tug, this is inbound Navy unit.”

The reply was immediate. “Inbound Navy unit, this is tug Shawnee. Welcome to the tropical paradise of Diego Garcia. Understand it’s your first visit here. We’ll lead you down channel. You’ll be tying up to the Simon Lake, port side to.”

“Shawnee, inbound Navy unit, aye,” Glass answered. “Lead the way.”

Turning to his officer of the deck UI, Glass said, “Mr. Ronson, I suggest that you come around to the heading for the harbor buoy and kick the speed up a little bit or we’ll be out here getting sunburned all day.”

Flustered, the young officer turned to LCDR Smith, his mentor, who simply pointed to the chart display on the bridge box. Ronson nodded and swung the cursor on the screen around until it pointed at the buoy. Reading the text box, he ordered over the 7MC, “Helm, bridge, right full rudder. Steady course one-one-three. Ahead standard.”

As the big submarine swung around to the new course and picked up speed, Glass chuckled.

“You know you could have just sighted down that compass repeater right there in front of your face. Real simple and you don’t look down and lose the mental picture.” Glass squatted down so that it was easier to speak with Ronson. “Okay, Mr. Ronson, what’s your plan from here on? We’ve got a few minutes until we get to the channel and everything will get big-time busy there.”

“Well, sir,” the trainee answered nervously. “I’m going to head over to buoy One DG then swing in right behind the tug. Then I’ll follow him right on down to where the tender is tied up.” Ronson glanced down at the bridge box chart display. “First leg course is one-one-nine, then second leg is one-seven-one.”

Glass nodded approvingly. “Sounds good so far. But when did you plan to get line handlers topside? They need some time to get everything rigged and be ship-shape to enter port. You don’t want to wait too long, make the ship look bad and piss off the COB. Not on your first watch.”

Ronson frowned and thought for a bit. “Well, sir, I guess we could get them topside now.”

The engineer chimed in. “Let’s hold off just a bit on that. Wait until we steady up on the first leg and slow to two-thirds. The other thing you absolutely don’t want to do is get the COB wet. The bow wave at a standard bell is almost certainly going to do that. By the way, what are you going to do with the anchor?”

Ronson now looked very confused. “The anchor? I thought we were tying up to the tender. Nobody said anything about using the anchor.”

“Stop and think for a minute,” Smith told him. “Let’s say we get into the channel and the main engines trip off for some reason. Or the rudder fails. What you going to do to keep us from piling up high and dry on Spur Reef? That would be bad. Mess up the bottom of Captain Glass’s boat and all.”

A light seemingly went on in the young submariner’s head. “The anchor. We could drop the anchor to