The Hunt for Red October - Tom Clancy [68]
"Aye aye, sir," the lieutenant said, wondering if the skinny old bastard made decisions by flipping a coin when his back was turned.
The Dallas
Z090432ZDEC
T O P S E C R E T
PM: COMSUBLANT
TO: USS DALLAS
A. USS DALLAS Z090414ZDEC
B. COMSUBLANT INST 2000.5
OPAREA ASSIGNMENT //N04220//
1. REQUEST REF A GRANTED.
2. AREAS BRAVO ECHO GOLF REF B ASSIGNED FOR UNRESTRICTED OPS 090500Z TO 140001Z.
REPORT AS NECESSARY. VADM GALLERY SENDS.
"Hot damn!" Mancuso chuckled. That was one nice thing about Gallery. When you asked him a question, by God, you got an answer, yes or no, before you could rig your antenna in. Of course, he reflected, if it turned out that Jonesy was wrong and this was a wild-goose chase, he'd have some explaining to do. Gallery had handed more than one sub skipper his head in a bag and set him on the beach.
Which was where he was headed regardless, Mancuso knew. Since his first year at Annapolis all he had ever wanted was command of his own attack boat. He had that now, and he knew that the rest of his career would be downhill. In the rest of the navy your first command was just that, a first command. You could move up the ladder and command a fleet at sea eventually, if you were lucky and had the right stuff. Not submariners, though. Whether he did well with the Dallas or poorly, he'd lose her soon enough. He had this one and only chance. And afterwards, what? The best he could hope for was command of a missile boat. He'd served on those before and was sure that commanding one, even a new Ohio, was about as exciting as watching paint dry. The boomer's job was to stay hidden. Mancuso wanted to be the hunter, that was the exciting end of the business. And after commanding a missile boat? He could get a "major surface command," perhaps a nice oiler—it would be like switching mounts from Secretariat to Elsie the Cow. Or he could get a squadron command and sit in an office onboard a tender, pushing paper. At best in that position he'd go to sea once a month, his main purpose being to bother sub skippers who didn't want him there. Or he could get a desk job in the Pentagon—what fun! Mancuso understood why some of the astronauts had cracked up after coming back from the moon. He, too, had worked many years for this command, and in another year his boat would be gone. He'd have to give the Dallas to someone else. But he did have her now.
"Pat, let's lower all masts and take her down to twelve hundred feet."
"Aye aye, sir. Lower the masts," Mannion ordered. A petty officer pulled on the hydraulic control levers.
"ESM and UHF masts lowered, sir," the duty electrician reported.
"Very well. Diving officer, make your depth twelve hundred feet."
"Twelve hundred feet, aye," the diving officer responded. "Fifteen degrees down-angle on the planes."
"Fifteen degrees down, aye."
"Let's move her, Pat."
"Aye, Skipper. All ahead full."
"All ahead full, aye." The helmsman reached up to turn the annunciator.
Mancuso watched his crew at work. They did their jobs with mechanistic precision. But they were not machines. They were men. His.
In the reactor spaces aft, Lieutenant Butler had his engine-men acknowledge the command and gave the necessary orders. The reactor coolant pumps went to fast speed. An increased amount of hot, pressurized water entered the exchanger, where its heat was transferred to the steam on the outside loop. When the coolant returned to the reactor it was cooler than it had been and therefore denser. Being denser, it trapped more neutrons in the reactor pile, increasing the ferocity of the fission reaction and giving off yet more power. Farther aft, saturated steam in the "outside" or nonradioactive loop of the heat exchange system emerged through clusters of control valves to strike the blades of the high-pressure turbine. The Dallas' huge bronze screw began to turn more quickly, driving her forward and down.
The engineers went about their duties