SSN - Tom Clancy [30]
One by one, Cheyenne launched her missiles, and then slipped deeper into the sea. She would now have to wait on word from naval intelligence to determine if her mission was a success.
"Diving Officer, make your depth five hundred feet. Let's get out of here before they know what-and who- hit them."
Mack was pleased. His crew had performed well, Cheyenne had carried out her mission, and now they were heading toward the Sulu Sea. McKee would be there waiting for her, and Cheyenne would get a mini-refit. Mack secured battle stations once more, hoping it would be the last time this trip.
Mack didn't know what his next orders would be, but he was sure Cheyenne was going to need all the weapons McKee could give her.
* * *
4. Dogfight
Mack walked through officer country on board the submarine tender McKee, accompanied by his combat systems and operations officers, his navigator and communicator, and his sonar officer. Cheyenne was just completing her mini-refit, and Mack and his officers were on their way to their final briefing. The refit had taken several days, and for each of those days the officers from Cheyenne had taken their meals in the vast wardroom on board McKee. This day, the final day of their refit, Mack had elected to take his breakfast with his own officers rather than in McKee'& flag mess.
Mack was pleased that the refit had gone smoothly. On the first day, his executive officer and his chief yeoman, along with the communicator and officer-in-charge (OIC) of the naval security group (NSG) detachment on board Cheyenne, had been responsible for transferring numerous boxes from Cheyenne to McKee. Those crates and boxes had contained the myriad logs, data sheets, and sonar and radio and ESM tapes that Cheyenne had amassed during the period of time from when she departed Pearl Harbor until she arrived in the Sulu Sea alongside McKee.
Among this, carefully stored in box 1, was the three hundred-page "Patrol Report of Cheyenne, Pearl Harbor to Sulu Sea," which Mack had signed earlier. This was a running narrative of events and tactics employed, along with a written guide to the rest of the items in the boxes. Mack always enjoyed looking back through this report. It was compiled four times a day by the off-going officer of the deck and his assistant, the junior officer of the deck. As soon as it was compiled, the ship's yeomen typed it up on the high-speed PCs in the ship's office. The color printer and color scanner made the patrol report an interesting novel, complete with color pictures of the tactical encounters experienced.
This report, with all the details of Cheyenne's first adventures, would remain on board McKee for some time. Eventually, couriers from Independence would transfer the materials from McKee to the carrier, and from there they would travel by C-2 aircraft to the Yoko-suka Naval Base.
The pilots of these C-2 Greyhounds, called "COD" for "carrier onboard delivery," were used to making 3,000-mile flights. They had already completed numerous deliveries to and from Independence and the island of Diego Garcia while Independence steamed south of the Arabian Sea.
Not that Cheyenne's successes were being kept secret. Interim reports had been submitted as required, and as soon as she had surfaced inside Mindoro Strait, Mack had released a long message containing a condensed version of the patro! report and a tabulation of the contents of the boxes to be shipped. This message was already in the hands of Cheyenne's superiors. Picked up and relayed by one of the numerous SSIXS satellites, this one perched high in its equatorial synchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean, the message had been printed out and copies had been distributed all the way to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington,