activity.
“So where does this leave us?”
“Trondheim,” Juan replied.
“Excuse me?”
“Trondheim, Norway. I need to get to the Aral Sea as soon as possible. I assume Trondheim is the closest city with an airport. You can drop me off on the way to the North Sea, and eventually the Atlantic and Bermuda.”
Max took in Juan’s suggestion for a second, his jaw drooping. When he spoke, he chose his words very carefully. “Eerie boat. Aral Sea. Karl Petrovski.” He waited a beat. “You see a connection?”
“No. I don’t. But Yuri did.” Cabrillo wiped his mouth with his napkin and set it on the bar next to his mostly cleared plate. He crossed to his desk phone, checked his watch, and dialed an extension. He found Eric Stone in his cabin as he’d expected.
“What’s up, Chairman?” Stone was another Navy veteran, but an R and D guy, not a blue water sailor.
“Is Mark with you?” Stone and Mark Murphy were practically conjoined twins.
“Yeah, we’re moderating a debate on the Net between
Cabrillo was vaguely aware those were a series of books and movies but had no idea what they were about or how two of his crewmen could be involved in an online debate. Nor did he particularly care. But Eric added, “Mark got his masters with the studio wonk charged with Internet promotions.”
“You have my sympathies.”
“We need them. I had forgotten how catty teenage girls can be, and they use language that certainly makes this sailor blush.”
“I need you two to do some digging for me. First, though, I want you to book me the fastest flight from Trondheim to the airport closest to the Aral Sea.”
“That would be Uralsk Airport in Kazakhstan,” Eric interjected.
How Stone retained such arcane information was a mystery to Cabrillo, but it made him one of the best researchers in the business. “Next, I want you to dig up everything you can find on a Karl Petrovski.” Cabrillo spelled it out for him. “That name won’t be too uncommon, so concentrate on anyone connected to the Aral Sea, Admiral Pytor Kenin, or Nikola Tesla.”
“I get Kenin’s name thrown into the mix, he’s the guy behind Yuri Borodin’s arrest. But what does Tesla have to do with anything?”
“Haven’t a clue, but it was the last thing Yuri said before he died.”
Eric paused to absorb this information. “I’m sorry, Juan. Mark and I knew he’d been hit but we didn’t know he died.”
“You guys are off duty and couldn’t have known.”
“Just so you understand, with the sea state and all, I won’t have an ETA into Trondheim for at least twelve hours.”
“I know. Do your best.” Cabrillo hung up and rejoined Hanley at the bar. He accepted another shot of vodka.
“What’s your gut telling you?” Max asked.
“One, that if I do too many more of these,” he downed the drink, “I’m going to feel it in the morning.”
“And two?”
“The timing of Yuri’s jailing wasn’t coincidental. I think he discovered something about Admiral Kenin and that something has to do with Nikola Tesla and the Aral Sea.”
“But what?”
“Until Stoney and Murph come up with some information, I have no idea. But because Yuri died passing this on to me, I intend to find out.”
Those who knew Juan Cabrillo understood that when his mind was set on a task, there wasn’t much in the world that would stop him. And anyone who tried would come to understand the true nature of determination.
CHAPTER FIVE
The boat was rigged for ultraquiet. They were fifteen miles off California, and there was an American Coast Guard cutter cruising lazily on its way south to San Diego. The cutter was less than four miles away, and while the submarine wasn’t actively pinging with her sonar, her crew couldn’t afford being detected. Though they were in international waters, the presence of a diesel-powered attack submarine so close to the American coast would bring a swift and deadly response.
While the cutter herself didn’t have much in the way of armaments to take out the Tango-class submarine, they could dog the sub using their sonar until a strike aircraft could be called in from any number of naval air stations. They had come too far to blow it this late in the mission. If it meant an hour or two delay to lurk quietly under the surface until the cutter was out of range, so be it. Patience and silence were the two cardinal virtues of a submariner.
The trip north had taken them more than a week, most of that time spent well outside normal shipping routes and running at snorkel depth so the boat’s three diesel engines could draw air. Only when sonar reported a nearby ship, usually one headed inbound from Asia as they came abreast of ports along the U.S. and Mexican west coasts, would they retract the snorkel and dive out of sight.
While normally crewed by seventeen officers and sixty-one seamen, this particular sub had only two dozen men aboard, and the captain couldn’t have been prouder of them.
“Sonar, sit-rep,” he whispered. He was standing behind the man hunched over the antiquated passive sonar system.
The sailor slipped off the one headphone he’d had plastered to his right ear. “The cutter’s still moving away at eight knots. I put him at five miles distant.”
In relative terms, five miles was a tricky distance. It was only a five-minute drive by car or it was a two-hour walk. At sea, with sound able to travel so far through the vastness, five miles could be considered shouting distance.
“Any indication he’s towing an array of his own?”
“No, sir,” the sailor whispered back. “If he was, he’d cut his engines to drift. Otherwise, he couldn’t hear anything over his own propellers.”
The man suddenly tightened the headphone to his skull once again. It was as if speaking of it made it happen. “Captain! His screws just went silent. He’s drifting!”
The captain placed a restraining hand on the younger man’s shoulders. “Steady, son. He can’t hear us if we don’t make a sound.”
The boy looked sheepish. “Yes, sir.”
“We’re nothing but a three-hundred-foot-long quiet spot in the ocean. Nothing to hear here. Just move along.”
The captain looked across the confined conn. The low-ceilinged room was as claustrophobic as a crypt, and with the red battle lights glowing, the men appeared demonic. In the center of the space the periscope hung from the ceiling like a metallic stalactite. Around it were clustered the helm station, the engineering monitoring space, the captain’s chair, and several other workstations. The sub was so old that all its readouts were on analog displays and simple dials, not unlike those of a World War II — era boat. The air was somewhat chilly, and with the sub running off her batteries, amps weren’t squandered on extra heating. And yet several men still had sweat on their faces. The tension was palpable.
“The cutter is still drifting, Captain.”
“That’s okay, lad. Let him drift. He has no idea we’re here.”
They had been running ultraquiet for the better part of an hour since first detecting and identifying the cutter from a database of acoustic signals stored on magnetic tapes — another piece of antiquated technology that illustrated the Tango-class’s ’70s roots. So when an internal alarm sounded, it was especially shrill and
