Phoenix Sub Zero

Pacino pulled out the drill and made two small holes in a bracket bolted into the bulkhead, then mounted two new brackets to the heavier steel bracket and bolted the new switch box to the bracket, the box now secured to the bulk head, where Pacino had reached for it from the other side of the hatch. It felt secure. The cable run came next as Pacino pulled the wiring up from the box into a cable run going up ward and into the overhead with a couple hundred other cables. The cable run would not be a problem. He ran the cable into the overhead and turned it forward toward the bulkhead to the ESM room, the electronics-filled room used for interception of radio and radar signals on the surface.

The space would be abandoned during the submerged run.

Pacino drilled a hole in the bulkhead where it met the over head and threaded the cable through it, a long job since there was a hundred feet of the cable. A few tie wraps to keep the cable in place with the other cables, and this part of the installation was done.

Pacino turned to examine his work. It looked professional but too new. He hadn’t thought about that. He reached up into the overhead and found several hard-to-reach places that hadn’t been well-cleaned by the crew after the dust and mess of the shipyard, and brought out a handful of grease and dust and dirt. He smeared it lightly on the cables, taking away their new shiny look, and put some on the sides of the switch box. Then some on the front, which he promptly wiped off with a cloth. The switch and box now looked like they’d been with the ship since the shipyard period. Pacino took a small yellow tag from the box and scribbled on it, then attached the tag to the switch. The tag said ooc, out of commission, the tag alerting the crew that the gear didn’t work so not to bother operating the switches. He stepped back and looked at it, dissatisfied. The yellow tag drew attention to the switch—better to leave it untagged. He re moved the tag and walked forward along the passageway to the door to ESM.

He listened at the door for a few moments, then entered the combination to the door lock and went in, the bag left in the passageway in case one of the electronics techs were there, but the room was deserted. Pacino pulled in the tool bag and shut the self-locking door behind him. The room was little more than a cubbyhole with two padded control seats and walls stacked with electronic equipment racks.

Pacino found the cable he’d fed in from the outside and pulled the cable across the room to the forward bulkhead, cut a hole in that wall and tie-wrapped the cable into the already cable-crowded overhead, then rubbed it with dirt as before. He decided to check the radio room before he fed the cable through; it was deserted as well. He fed in the cable, then looked around ESM for telltale signs of his trip.

Radio was a bigger version of ESM, not a space designed to look pretty or offer comfort. He duplicated his actions from ESM, but instead of running the cable forward, took the cable down to the deck at the forward outboard bulkhead, then drilled a hole in the deck. He fed the cable through the deck to the level below, checked his work again, then left and went to the lower level torpedo room, usually a room booming with activity but now silent since it was doubling as a bunking space. The lights were switched to red to dim the space’s usual glare, and the room resonated with snoring. No one was awake to confront him. He climbed onto the top of the outboard Vortex tube, the metal cold and hard, the space minimal between tube and overhead, and found the cable let down from the deck of the radio room. Slowly he fed the cable forward in the overhead, his back aching as he tied the cable up into the overhead with a thousand other cables, finally climbing back down onto the narrow deckplates at the forward part of the room, turning the cable toward the centerline until he had fed it above a long panel that ran athwartships. He opened the panel cover, reached up into the overhead and pulled the wire down into the interior of the panel. From the outside of the panel, no one could tell he had made this unauthorized alteration. Back inside the panel he found the circuit board he’d been looking for, traced the wiring to a relay panel and hoped the wiring was in accord with the technical manual. He grabbed the wire insulation remover and clipped a power wire going to relay R141 set into the aft wall of the panel, then tested the wire for voltage—it was dead. Pacino stripped the insulation off, crimped on terminals at either end and terminated each end on the screws of a small termination block he pulled out of the tool kit. He pulled the cable he’d wired in, screwing its terminations onto the new terminal block. The work was finished but for tie-wrapping the new cable so it was out of the way. He checked the wiring one last time, satisfied that it looked like it would work.