The Cardinal of the Kremlin - Tom Clancy [249]
It took a total of four minutes. The top of Dallas' black sail broached the surface, pointing directly at the nearest Soviet radar to minimize its radar cross-section. It was more than tricky to hold depth. "Clark, go!"
"Right."
With all the drifting ice on the water, the screen for that radar should be heavily cluttered, Mancuso thought. He watched the indicator light for the hatch change from a dash, meaning closed, to a circle, meaning open.
The bridge trunk ended on a platform a few feet below the bridge itself. Clark wrenched open the hatch and climbed up. Next he hauled out his raft with the help of the seaman below on the ladder. Alone now in the submarine's tiny bridge-the control station atop the sail-he set the thing athwart the top of the sail and pulled the rope that inflated it. The high-pitched rasp of the rushing air seemed to scream into the night, and Clark winced to hear it. As soon as the rubberized fabric became taut, he called to the sailor to close the trunk hatch, then grabbed the bridge phone. "All ready here. The hatch is closed. See you in a couple of hours."
"Right. Good luck," Mancuso said again.
Aloft, Clark climbed smoothly into the raft as the submarine sank beneath him, and started the electric motor, Below, the bottom hatch of the bridge tube was opened only long enough for the sailor to leap down, then he and the Captain levered it shut.
"Straight board shut, we are rigged for dive," the Cob reported when the last indicator light changed back to a dash. "That's it," Mancuso noted. "Mr. Goodman, you have the conn, and you know what to do."
"I have the conn," the OOD replied as the Captain went forward to the sonar room. Lieutenant Goodman immediately dived the boat, heading her for the bottom.
It was like old times, Mancuso thought, with Jones as lead sonarman. The submarine came right, pointing her bow-mounted sonar array at the path that Clark was taking. Ramius arrived a minute later to observe.
"How come you didn't want to use the "scope?" Mancuso asked.
"A hard thing to see one's home and know that one cannot-"
"There he goes." Jones tapped his ringer on the video display. "Doing turns for eighteen knots. Pretty quiet for an outboard. Electric, eh?"
"Right."
"I sure hope he's got good batteries, skipper."
"Rotating-anode lithium. I asked."
"Cute." Jones grunted. He tapped a cigarette out of his pack and offered one to the Captain, who forgot for the moment that he'd quit, again. Jones lit it and took on a contemplative expression.
"You know, sir, now I remember why I retired " His voice trailed off as Jonesy watched the sonar trail stretch off in the distance. Aft, the fire-control party updated the range, just to have something to do. Jones craned his neck and listened. Dallas was about as quiet as she ever got, and the tension filled the air far more thickly than cigarette smoke ever could.
Clark lay nearly flat in the boat. Made of rubberized nylon, its color scheme was green and gray stripes, not very different from the sea. They'd thought of some white patches because of the ice to be found in the area in winter, but then it was realized that the channel here was always tended by an icebreaker, and a rapidly moving white spot on a dark surface might not be a terribly good idea. Mainly Clark was concerned about radar. The submarine's sail might not have been picked up through all the clutter, but if the Russian radar sets had a moving-target-indicator setting, the simple computer that monitored the returning signals might well lock in on something traveling at twenty miles per hour. The boat itself was only a foot out of the water, the motor a foot higher than that and coated with radar-absorbing material. Clark kept his head level with the motor and wondered again if the half-dozen metal fragments that decorated his anatomy were large enough to be seen. He knew that this was irrational-they didn't even set off an airport metal-detector-but lonely men in dangerous places tended to develop