A message arrived for Challenger, in a code that only Gerald Parker knew. Parker went and decrypted it on his laptop.
“Captain Fuller, contact has been made between Aardvark and Peapod. Your SEALs need to be briefed.”
Parker didn’t seem at all happy. This made Jeffrey uneasy, but he knew to hold his tongue for now. He decided to conduct the briefing on Ohio; it was high time to pay a visit to his task group’s other vessel, Parcelli’s ship. And if there’s trouble, let everyone hear it at once from our master spook himself.
The German minisub, still docked inside Challenger’s pressure-proof in-hull hangar, was overcrowded. Felix and his team alone made eight, which would be full capacity in the passenger compartment. The mini had an operating crew of two — standard doctrine had one man be a submariner and one be a qualified specialist SEAL. Jeffrey picked David Meltzer, Challenger’s battle-stations helmsman, as the submariner pilot. He’d driven the Swedish-built minisub, as well as the American ASDS version, on combat missions several times. Jeffrey wanted him to keep in practice for what was to come. One of Felix’s chiefs, Costa, a quiet and serious man, sat next to Meltzer in the tiny control compartment of the minisub as the SEAL copilot. But the mini also held Jeffrey and Gerald Parker, Gamal Salih, Lieutenants Milgrom and Sessions — plus Felix’s other chief, Porto, with his jocular temperament and always-lively eyes. Jeffrey squeezed into the control compartment behind Meltzer’s seat, and suggested Parker stand — or rather, stoop, with the low overhead — next to him behind Costa. Since there weren’t enough seats to go around, two of the enlisted SEALs crouched in the lock-out chamber.
The minisubs had crush depths comparable to a full-size steel-hulled submarine. Challenger had to carry hers in her pressure-proof hangar — otherwise, when diving to depths that were comfortable for Jeffrey’s ceramic-composite ship, the mini would implode. Not only would the horrible noise ruin the task group’s stealth, the German mini’s loss would cripple the mission to extract Klaus Mohr. This forced Jeffrey to bring Challenger up to near Ohio’s depth for the briefing-planning rendezvous. Jeffrey left Bell in charge as command duty officer — acting captain — on Challenger, and Lieutenant Willey had the deck and the conn in the sub’s control room.
Meltzer and his copilot finished going through their prerelease checklist; an intercom connection let them speak with COB. The control compartment’s front and side bulkheads were dominated by four large display screens. Switches, gauges, and indicator lights filled consoles wrapping tightly around the pilot and copilot. Main controls — the throttle and steering joystick — were mounted between their two seats. Behind Jeffrey was the heavy watertight hatch into the lock-out chamber. A similar hatch led aft from there to the passenger compartment.
“Green board, sir,” Chief Costa told Meltzer.
“Challenger, Minisub Charlie,” Meltzer said into his lip mike, giving his call sign. “Ready for pressure equalization and opening hangar-bay doors.”
Jeffrey had ordered Parcelli to hold Ohio ahead of Challenger, a few hundred yards off Challenger’s port bow, while Challenger pointed northeast and Ohio aimed herself southwest, toward Jeffrey’s ship. The plan was for each vessel to stay within the arc covered by the other’s wide- aperture array on their facing sides, to keep in acoustic-link contact, while not blocking each other’s arrays from hearing outward to both flanks. By pointing in opposite directions, each ship’s bow sphere covered the other’s baffles; with minisubs maneuvering about, Jeffrey wanted neither ship to trail a towed array. He’d ordered Parcelli to hold Ohio’s depth at 600 feet, 250 feet shallower than his own ship, to avoid any risk of collision.
To maintain proper formation in the currents that varied at different depths, both ships needed some speed so their rudders could bite. Three knots was fast enough, but this meant that to keep together, one ship had to move backward. Jeffrey had decided Challenger would be the one to do so. He’d ordered the task group to steer southwest, away from Gibraltar, to disguise their true base course and implied destination.
The mini’s bow nosed up as Meltzer worked his controls. He activated the photonic sensors, and images of the ocean outside appeared on some of the screens. Too far east to hide in the confusing sound-propagation eddies of the Gulf Stream, and too far north of the Sargasso Sea to hide under the layer of floating seaweed there, Meltzer had his work cut out for him as he approached Ohio. One of Parcelli’s minis had vacated its place so the German one could dock, but Ohio’s other ASDS still sat firmly attached, just to one side of where Meltzer needed to come in for a landing. For stealth, Meltzer dared not make any noise, and dared not use his floodlights. This meant he had neither active sonar nor good visual cues to guide his final approach.
Meltzer changed the outside displays to image-intensification mode. At first Jeffrey saw nothing new on the screens, then a school of small fish darted by. Then something huge came into view, a gigantic cylinder. As Meltzer worked his joystick and throttle, Jeffrey saw that this cylinder had a sail. Meltzer needed to dock right behind that sail, but instead of bow planes near the cylinder’s nose, Ohio had fair-water planes that jutted from her sail. Meltzer had to steer well clear, or the edge of a plane could tear a gash through the minisub’s hull.
“Permission granted to open our bottom hatch,” Meltzer reported.
Jeffrey, the most senior, climbed down Ohio’s air-lock ladder first, and walked out into the SSGN. He was now on the topmost deck of the missile compartment. The first two silos had been turned into lock-in/lock-out chambers; he’d just come through one of these. Altogether, two dozen massive silo tubes marched aft, twelve each along two side-by-side rows. Years ago, Jeffrey knew, all of them had held a Trident long-range ballistic missile, the ultimate strategic deterrent that worked — because it never once had to be used. Now these silos held SEAL equipment, or large-size undersea probe vehicles, or airborne recon drones that could be launched with Ohio submerged, or seven Tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles each, or a big clutch of Polyphems. The missile compartment was festooned with fire-fighting gear and protective suits, chemo sensors in case of toxic or flammable leaks — from weapon fuel and warheads, and stored SEAL explosive ordnance — plus radiation detectors.
Jeffrey glanced at the overhead; he could readily see the curve of Ohio’s pressure hull, wrapping downward to both sides. Outside the hull, up there, bathed by the ever-squeezing ocean, sat an ASDS and his German minisub.
As a small crowd of his people gathered behind him, he saw Captain Parcelli coming along the narrow passageway from forward, to offer greetings. Jeffrey was glad to see Parcelli smiling, and was pleasantly surprised that Parcelli wore a blue cotton jumpsuit — instead of his previously inevitable dress uniform.
“Welcome aboard, Captain,” Parcelli said. His handshake was firm but not bone crushing, and he held it long enough to show that the welcome was sincere.
“Thank you, Captain,” Jeffrey responded.
Parcelli nodded to those he already knew among Jeffrey’s group. Other introductions were made.
“Feels like a homecoming?” Jeffrey joked to Felix, since he’d served on Ohio before.
“I forgot how spacious she was,” Felix said under his breath.
Parcelli turned back to Jeffrey while they all walked forward. “Let’s head to the Special Operations Forces spaces, SEAL country as we Ohio Gold people call it. We can use the briefing facilities there.”
Jeffrey nodded. He still sensed Parker’s concern about something, and wanted to know right away what it was.
Ilse, alone in the small room with the workstation, had already spent several hours going over the available data on the Russian submarine that Hodgkiss’s aide had called a Snow Tiger.
She almost jumped out of her skin when Johansen shoved open the door and stalked into the room. He
