By Dawn's Early Light by David Hagberg Page A

room.
    Dillon raised the search periscope and made a quick three-sixty sweep, and then a second, much slower sweep. There was a jumble of lights to the southeast, and another off to the northwest. White lights stacked up in vertical columns, and red and green lights on either side. They were fishing boats working the waters west of the Hawaiian islands. He could not make out the lights of the container ship, which was still well below the horizon, and there were no other lights in any direction except for those of Oahu, now far to the east, but the Russians were somewhere out there. He could almost smell them.
    He wanted a little time before they made contact. If he couldn’t make an end run to avoid the Akula, he wanted at least twenty-four hours to get his crew acclimated. It took that long even for the best to be transformed from a shore-based mob to a smoothly operating team of fighting men.
    â€œAll compartments report ready for sea in all respects, skipper,” Alvarez reported.
    Dillon lowered the periscope, and turned to his control room crew. Bateman and Alvarez were looking at him, waiting for their next orders.
    Everyone else was busy at their assigned tasks of keeping the Seawolf straight and level at precisely sixty feet. It was a task much like trying to balance an inherently unstable whale on a knife edge while moving through a fluid that was in a constant state of change. Salinity, temperature, and subsea currents all had serious effects on a submarine’s trim. The distribution of supplies, food, potable water, sewage, garbage—and even personnel—also had their effects. Their speed through the water and the boat’s attitude made a difference. At some combinations the Seawolf ’s hull form was almost impossible to keep under control. Each time they fired a torpedo, or a tube-launched missile, the boat’s trim went through the gyrations of the damned.
    Sailing a submarine submerged was like flying a helicopter through Jell-O; it was definitely a full-time job, and definitely not a hands-off experience.
    â€œMake your course two-seven-zero. Increase speed to flank. Make your depth six hundred feet.”
    â€œAye, sir. Make my course two-seven-zero degrees, increase my speed to flank, and dive to six-zero-zero feet.”
    Dillon reached up and braced himself. Bateman did the same at the periscope rail. Everyone else not strapped into their bucket seats braced themselves against something.
    Within seconds Seawolf heeled sharply to starboard, her bows angled downward at twenty degrees, and she accelerated as if she were a fox with a hot poker suddenly stuck up her ass.
    Alvarez was ginning ear-to-ear; he was back in the hood cruisin’ chicks in his lowrider, only this was a billion times more cool.
    His normally unflappable, mild-mannered XO, Charlie Bateman, who wanted his own boat so that he could hurry up and retire to teach high school math and physics, looked like a kid in a Toys “R” Us store. His eyes were bright, his hair was slicked back like an Irish muskrat’s, and he leaned as nonchalantly as he could against the periscope platform rail. “All right,” he said softly.
    Anyone who had ever experienced the Seawolf putting the pedal to the metal while turning and diving, couldn’t help from feeling like they had strapped on an F/A-18 Hornet and were being catapulted off the deck of a carrier. The accelerations were awesome.
    They hadn’t gotten to their angles and dangles first time out before they’d been recalled to Pearl, so this would have to suffice. So far Dillon hadn’t heard anything serious crashing inside his boat, though he suspected that there’d be loose clothing, maybe a few books or CDs and a few odds and ends breaking loose here and there. But by the time the next watch came on duty everything would be properly stowed.
    His chiefs would see to that.
    â€œPassing one hundred feet,” Alvarez said.