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

“Just so,” Smith agreed. “Make the anchor ready for letting go.” The engineer glanced at the harbor chart. “Set the snubbing scope for forty fathoms. That’s an old trick the skipper taught me. The snubbing scope is where you set the brake to allow some but not too much chain out. It’s the chain that really stops you, not so much the anchor. The trick is you set the scope for the same number of fathoms as the harbor bottom is in feet. The harbor is dredged to forty feet, so forty fathoms of chain.”

“A trick I learned first time I navigated into a harbor under instruction,” Glass added, his mind now on a time and place in his distant past as he quietly watched the island growing larger.

“Captain, Buoy One DG is abeam to starboard,” Ronson called out. “Coming around to channel course one-one-nine, slowing to ahead two-thirds. Shawnee is heading down channel. Permission for line handlers to lay topside.”

Glass shook himself out of his reverie. Daydreaming was out of character for him. He must be more fatigued than he thought.

“Very well,” he acknowledged. “Have line handlers lay topside.” He turned to Smith. “Eng, let’s test an astern bell before we enter the channel.”

One of the major differences between Toledo and her sisters was that her two main engines, massive reduction gear, propulsion shaft, and screw had been replaced by a pair of turbine generators and a huge axial flow pump. In essence, the submarine was now a massive jet boat. As quiet and effective as the system proved to be going ahead, the major drawback was in going astern, backing up. The design engineers had gotten around this issue by installing a pair of much smaller pumps that exhausted out of pop-out ports on either side of the stern tube. While looking good on paper, the complexity of the system had proven tricky.

“Yes, sir,” the Eng answered, “but suggest we rig out the outboard first. That port side door has been a pain in the rectal region. I’d like to have the outboard ready to control ship’s swing just in case.”

They would employ an outboard engine as a backup just in case the sophisticated methods developed by dozens of engineers and years of development work should somehow fail.

“Good idea. Rig out the outboard, test, and then shift to remote. Then we can test a stern bell.”

Glass was once again struck by his crew’s intelligence and skill, even if he barely knew their names yet. He smiled as he listened to the flurry of orders and responses and watched the island glide silently by. Just the slightest sea breeze now relieved the heat from the tropical sun. The deep cobalt-blue waters abruptly changed beneath the sub to a pale turquoise as the bottom abruptly rose from the abyssal deep to the coral-encrusted mountaintop that was the island of Diego Garcia.

Glass could see, over on the port side, that the pale turquoise water turned an even paler almost white color as Spur Reef poked up to within a couple feet of the surface. A twin line of buoys—red ones on the right and green ones on the left—stretched out before them, pointing out the path into the inner harbor. He could make out several ships swinging easily at anchor around the large lagoon.

“Skipper,” Lieutenant Commander Smith called out. “That damned port astern door refuses to open again. We don’t have any astern bell.”

Glass nodded, thought for a moment. “Well, I guess this little pit stop is going to be more than just us lying on the beach working on our suntans. Tell the XO to notify the tender. Then you two figure out how we are going to maneuver alongside the tender without a backing bell.”

Joe Glass suppressed a grin as he watched the men discuss how they might pull off the task with a malfunctioning propulsion system. Better these things happen surrounded by their own Navy and not ships of a foreign country. And best systems get vetted during practice than in the middle of the real thing.

The Real Thing.

Any hint of grin had left Joe Glass’s face now. He was savvy enough to know he and his boat were not way out here at the antipode of home port just to see how far and fast they could swim. And all this new equipment was not to find fish or monitor the sex lives of whales.

Besides that, the odd meanderings of the Chinese submarine they had tracked and the sudden intense interest of Naval Intelligence in their sonar tapes confirmed for him that something was up.

Now, he had to be damn sure his boat and crew were ready for whatever Real Thing might be waiting for them just over the shimmering horizon.

4

Jim Ward stared out over the bleak, empty desert. Nothing but rocks and sand for as far as he could see. And from where the SEAL lay, up there on the highest ridge around, that was a considerable distance. Somewhere far over there to the west, an actual paved road shot north past the tiny, dusty Sudanese village with some unpronounceable name. Ward and his team simply called it Toe Jam.

But from where Ward lay sprawled in the powdery dust, the nearest thing to a roadway—truthfully little more than a goat trail—wound a serpentine path through the broad wadi that spread out below the young SEAL lieutenant. A mile or so down the ravine, the trail crossed an even smaller, narrower path that disappeared over the next ridge to the northeast. And right this minute, both goat trails were deserted. Nothing stirred tonight, not even a scorpion or the slightest zephyr of gritty wind.

Ward looked around to make