He’d almost been broken, once, but god-damn he’d had the last laugh! Here he was in command of a carrier battle group again after twelve bitter years.
The one thing that could screw things up for him was failure. Vaughn had a thorough fear of failure, and it seemed to him
that whatever gods of the sea had granted him his wish of another CBG command were being capricious with him. Why dk) the new command have to be Jefferson, at the end of her deployment, her crew so worn down that disaster was an hour-to-hour possibility? It wasn’t fair,
“I’m going to want to tighten up the group, Captain,” he said, still studying the chart. “Bring those guys in closer. Hell, no one’s going to nuke us, for God’s sake. And the individual ships are goddamned sitting ducks scattered all over the ocean like that. Write up the orders. When we hit Turban Station tomorrow, we’ll tighten up.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Next We’d better start holding exercises. Sharpen up the men. I don’t like being this close to a shooting war with men who could fall asleep at their stations, hey?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And signal Biddle. I want that goddamned Foxtrot found, and fast. No excuses!”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“An aggressive posture, that’s the ticket, hey?” He studied the mark that showed Biddle*s last position. Where the hell was the Foxtrot now?
$& 1650 hours, 23 March
|& WSStotori, 100 mites west of Bombay
“There has been nothing for almost two hours, Captain.”
“It’s possible they’ve left us.” Captain Raju Khande(wa) braced himself with one hand against an overhead conduit. “Blow forward ballast”
“Blow forward ballast, aye.” There was a rumble, and the , thin shriek of compressed air forcing water from the subma-afine’s tanks. The deck shifted beneath Khandelwal’s feet. “Take us up, Shri Ramesh. Level at twenty meters.” “Twenty meters, yes, sir.” His Exec took his place behind 4he planesmen, reading the depth gauge over their heads. An
-ominous creak sounded through the boat as hull metal flexed.
-The Kalvari was not the most modern of submarines, nor the most silent. As she stirred and lifted from the bottom and her
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hull took up the full strain of the vessel once more, her framework creaked protest,
The sounds seemed especially loud. Kalvari had been resting on the bottom for almost five hours, ever since the sharp sonar pinging had warned mem that a ship was searching these shallow waters for them.
Now, though, me waters around the Indian sub were silent, had been silent for a long time. The intruder, whatever it was, had no doubt decided to move on.
if it had not, then it was certain to hear the submarine’s underwater groanings, but that could not be helped. Khandel-wal’s orders had been to leave Bombay Harbor submerged and to avoid detection by odier vessels until he reached his station fifty miles off the Pakistani port of Karachi. He was operating under a tight deadline and had to be in his assigned patrol area no later than noon tomorrow.
Kalvari’s mission was to interdict Pakistani shipping, including that of Pakistan’s allies. That was why secrecy was so important. India’s Moslem neighbor could not survive for long without help from the outside, but New Delhi feared mat world opinion would shift toward Pakistan once it was known that international shipping had been targeted by Indian submarines.
Who had the intruder been? Soviet, possibly . . . though an American task force was approaching the area. It was unlikely to have been Pakistani, not this far from Pakistan’s waters . . . but his orders had been explicit.
In any case, the exercise had been good for the men. He had a good crew, but none of them had combat experience. A taste of what awaited mem under relatively safe conditions would help get them into the spirit of the patrol.
The deck, slanting somewhat as the sub rose, began to level off. He would take the sub up to periscope depth for a quick look around, to make sure they were really alone, and men proceed with the mission.
The hull creaked once again.
ARMAGEDDON MODE
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1651 hours, 23 March Bridge, U.S.S. Btfdte