Seas of Crisis

Harley’s Navy Cross was second only to the Medal of Honor as a naval combat decoration.

Jeffrey barely knew Harley, and wondered what leading him into renewed battle might be like. Would he flinch, after the prior setback, as some did? Would Harley overcompensate and become too reckless? Jeffrey caught himself staring into his coffee mug. He took another sip before addressing Nyurba.

“Why aren’t you on Carter now?”

“My team had to go for extra training stateside. The rest of the squadron was training too, on an island in northern Canada, pretending to be a science research expedition.”

“An ice station?”

“Except on land, not a drifting floe. They were brought south, scattered, then made their way to New London in small groups to not draw attention from Axis spies working in the U.S. It was more secure to fly us five in the SERT cadre to Pearl. It also allowed me to meet you sooner, to perform indoctrination.”

“Who’s in command of your special ops company?” Jeffrey’s orders said the commandos reported to him as strike group boss, but further details rested in that still-sealed inner pouch.

“An Air Force lieutenant colonel, Sergey Kurzin. You’ll meet him when we rendezvous with Carter. And although we’re called a special operations squadron, we are in fact organized for this mission like an infantry company.”

Jeffrey couldn’t hide his surprise. “Why Air Force?”

Nyurba frowned. “I probably said too much…. But I do need to emphasize something, to you and your key officers, before another hour goes by. You must have this thoroughly clear before we even begin to approach the strait, because it will affect all decisions you make from here on.”

Jeffrey wondered how much Nyurba knew and wasn’t allowed to let on yet. He was a senior officer, with the same rank that Jeffrey had held until this evening. At Nyurba’s level, he could have been leading a conventional Seabee brigade, over two thousand men. Whatever he was really up to had to be extremely unconventional. “Go ahead, Commander.”

“For purposes of this mission, for this mission to succeed, it is imperative that Carter remain undetected.”

Jeffrey tried to not sound condescending. “I admire your loyalty to Captain Harley’s crew and Colonel Kurzin’s people, but that’s true of every submarine on every mission, Commander.”

“Commodore, you don’t understand. Perhaps the wording in the orders you’ve read seemed too routine. My own orders are clear cut. I’m to convey to you in no uncertain terms that this is not in the least routine. Carter’s invisibility throughout is paramount. Her having ever been where she will be must remain unsuspected from now until after our mission goals are achieved, and for decades beyond. Decades. If necessary to preserve Carter’s total stealth, should it come to that, Challenger and all aboard, from this moment forth, are expendable.”

Chapter 3

Thirty-six hours later, at 0900 local time, Jeffrey held a planning huddle with Bell, Sessions, and David Meltzer around the digital navigation table toward the rear of Challenger’s control room. The Bering Strait choke point was coming up fast, and critical decisions were needed on routing and tactics.

Lieutenant Meltzer, as brand-new ship’s navigator and part-time commodore’s executive assistant, was handling himself with commendable professionalism. A Naval Academy graduate like Bell, Meltzer spoke with a Bronx accent that got thicker under combat stress. He always walked, in the ship or ashore, with a strut on the cocky side, chest puffed out, as if daring the Navy — or life in general — to keep giving him more difficult things to do. Jeffrey, who’d grown up in St. Louis and done Navy ROTC at Purdue, liked this attitude; Meltzer was popular and admired among the junior officers as well, and respected without reservations by the chiefs and other enlisted people. More visibly ambitious than Sessions, and more socially poised and outgoing, he took being made a department head in stride.

To Jeffrey’s practiced eyes, there was no sign of jealousy among the men who’d remain for a while yet as lieutenants, junior grade. If anything, the feeling shipwide was one of a group bond renewed, and strongly validated, by their shared Presidential Unit Citation. Jeffrey could sense this in the busy control room, packed with two dozen people sitting at consoles or standing in the aisles, each doing some specialized task, or helping or teaching or learning.

The tactical plot was updated for the umpteenth time. The surface wind came from the south, at force four — about fifteen knots — strong enough to cause whitecaps. The same wind created enough noise that Challenger’s advanced passive sonars could use ambient ocean sounds, instead of telltale active pinging, to detect any silent collision threat — even an errant mine — in time to avoid it, if people stayed on their toes. With prevailing currents coming from southeast, across a fetch of open water whose temperature in early summer was well above freezing, the risk of encountering an iceberg soon was minimal; the Bering Sea only froze during winter. Jeffrey knew this would change, menacingly, once they got above the Arctic Circle — near the summertime reach of the polar ice cap, and closer to massive coastal glaciers from which the biggest icebergs calved.

Jeffrey had an unobstructed line of sight to the big displays on the bulkheads at the front of the control room, because Challenger possessed no old-fashioned periscopes. Instead, data from photonics masts, which retracted into the sail — conning tower — when not in use, would electronically feed imagery to full- color, high-definition plasma screens that many crewmen could observe simultaneously.

“The photonics mast control console,” Jeffrey said to Bell.

“Commodore?”

“I don’t think you’ll be needing it anytime soon. I’d like to take it over, while I’m in Control, as a place to sit and command my strike group.”

The console was on the aft bulkhead of Control, its screens dark now, the seat unoccupied. The console was also near the doors to the radio room and the electronic support measures room. The radio room contained the ship’s top-secret encryption equipment. The electronic support measures room contained the equally classified signals-intercept eavesdropping gear. Both doors had security warnings posted on the outside, and were protected by combination locks.

Jeffrey pointed toward the doors. “They’ll be handy in case I need either one, and I can reconfigure the console to show me the data I’ll want, and I’ll also be out of your way but still in easy speaking distance.”

“Certainly, Commodore.”

That console also happened to be the one closest to Jeffrey’s stateroom that he shared with Sessions and used as an office. He could move back and forth quickly and unobtrusively. On a submarine there’s no formality like someone shouting Commodore in Control or Captain off the Bridge or crap like that.

“New passive sonar contact on the starboard wide-aperture array,” the sonar supervisor of the watch, a senior chief, called out. “Bearing zero-six-five, range twenty thousand yards.” East-northeast, ten nautical miles. The northern Bering Sea’s bottom was shallow and silty. Sound emanations bounced repeatedly between the surface and the sea floor, and signal strength was lost with every bounce, so detection ranges were short. “Surface contact, designate Sierra Eight-Four.”

“Contact identification?” the officer of the deck asked.

“Three-bladed shaft, dead-slow blade rate. Auxiliary machinery broadband, with intermittent transients…. Assess as American fishing trawler.” A factory ship. Salmon, pollack, and herring were plentiful here, unblemished by radioactivity because the war to date had spared the Pacific.

“Very well, Sonar.” The OOD for this six-hour watch, a junior officer from Engineering, also had the conn, in charge of the course, speed, and depth of the ship.

“Conn,” the leader of the contact tracking party called out, “Sierra Eight-Four appears to be making bare steerageway, conjecture to hold position against the half-knot current. Our projected closest point of approach crosses within five miles of possible deployed trawling net.” Too close for comfort.

Bell glanced forward in concern.