The G sharp sounded again.
“Man battle stations! Man battle stations!”
CHAPTER SIX
Heading out fast from the Coast Guard station at the end of Ediz Hook in Port Angeles into the fogbound darkness of the fifteen-mile-wide, seventy-mile-long strait, the five-man, thirty-foot rigid hull inflatable Bruiser bucked its way northwest toward the dark, brooding mass of Vancouver Island. Six miles out, the coxswain of the Bruiser began a wide left turn, setting a westward course just south of the “line”—the maritime boundary that divided the west to east strait between the U.S. and Canada.
The twin diesels’ “Jacuzzi” propulsion system now at full throttle, the Bruiser headed into the swells that came funneling in from the Pacific, the breakers’ first landfall Tatoosh Island off Cape Flattery. The coxswain and his observer, though seated behind the steering console’s protective windscreen, were as drenched in spray as the diving-cum-medical/mechanical technician and the two other divers, Rafe Albinski and Peter Dixon. Aft of the platform, they held their air tanks and other equipment while clutching the grab rail against the sea’s incessant pounding. Though almost opaque with salt particles, their fall masks nevertheless afforded some protection against the biting wind. There was little conversation, the effort required to be heard above wind, sea, and the RIB’s body- bashing progress against the swells at thirty miles per hour being conserved for the dive, which was always a tricky proposition, given the often heavy maritime traffic, the state of the sea, and the strong currents in the strait. Fortunately, Admiral Jensen’s request had come at the tide’s ebb, giving Albinski and Dixon reasonably stable underwater conditions before the incoming tide made conditions above and below hazardous for both RIB and divers alike.
The coxswain, his observer, and the technician strained to pick up any sign of shipping. Despite the strait being the conduit to Seattle to the south, Vancouver to the north, and much of the Pacific Northwest in between, it was notoriously difficult to pick up the pinpoints of starboard and portside navigation lights, given the sprinkling of shore lights on the U.S. Olympic peninsula or on the equally sparsely populated west coast of Vancouver Island. Besides, in the predawn fog the RIB would be virtually impossible to see by shipping traffic, despite the light the coxswain had rigged atop the boat’s air-filter-shaped radar dome seven feet above the stern. On a reasonably calm sea, day or night, the radar’s sweep would pick up oncoming traffic, but in this kind of chop, the radar’s outgoing signals were often bounced back by high swells and covered the radar screen with “ground pepper” sea clutter. The men’s biggest fear was the presence of an oil tanker coming through the strait, en route to Washington’s Cherry Point refinery. The quarter-million-ton behemoths, pushing an enormous bow wave before them, were incapable of stopping in under seven miles, despite using full reverse thrusts and their props, and thus obliterating anything and anybody in their path.
Twenty-six-year-old SEAL Peter Dixon, one hand on the grab rail, edged toward the coxswain, asking loudly, “How long?”
“Longer than yours!” yelled the coxswain, grinning in the faint glow of the instrument panel. Dixon’s response: a short, loud obscenity.
“A half hour,” the technician answered.
“My kidneys are rupturing!” put in Rafe Albinski, Dixon’s diving buddy.
“You shouldn’t have any by now!” joshed Dixon, a reference to the thirty-five-year-old Albinski’s long list of gut-jarring missions, one of the most dangerous being during Desert Storm when Albinski, Dixon, and other SEALs, inserted by low silhouette fast boats, had sneaked ashore, planting timer-equipped explosives and assorted machine gun and small arms noisemakers. When these went off, the Iraqis panicked. Believing that the U.S. Marines in the hovercrafts and other vessels offshore were about to land troops, they called for reinforcements— 52,000 of them. The SEAL’s colossal feint had thus diverted four Iraqi divisions away from the real Allied offensive.
It had been a tough, exhausting mission, but the truth was, Albinski would have preferred to be on another such covert op than here in the strait. The thirty-foot Bruiser was more than living up to its name, the craft’s lower fiberglass hull and nylon neoprene upper hull taking the kind of punishment en route to Darkstar’s anomaly site unknown to most surface sailors, even to the old-timers of World War II’s Corvette navy, most of them Canadian. They would have recalled the constant battering of the sea against their small ships during the bitter do-or-die Battle of the Atlantic against German U-boats. At sustained periods from thirty to forty miles per hour, the punishment taken by the human body was so severe that more often than not men came back from the high-speed, cold, numbing missions literally bruised black and blue, to say nothing of the long-term effects on their internal organs. Ironically, Dixon and Albinski were relatively warm, the quarter-inch foam beneath their neoprene wet suits having trapped any water entering the suit, their body heat then warming this to create an insulated layer.
Twenty minutes later, as dawn’s light suffused the fog and began burning off the mist, the coxswain turned to the two divers, shouting, “Making good time! Be there in five minutes!” Double-checking his console’s GPS, he told the technician, “Make ready marker buoy,” checked that the RIB’s diving light array was working, and quickly switched it off — all lights working as they should. The next time he turned them on, they’d be on station. Dixon reached forward for his black attack board, the size of a child’s flotation board, only heavier, embedded with a depth gauge, shockproof digital watch and compass, a four-inch-diameter handgrip slot cut on either side of the board. Counting each kick while watching the dials, Dixon and Albinski would be able to estimate how far they were going on their search pattern of the anomaly grid. As Dixon grabbed for the board, the Bruiser was punched hard midships in a cross swell, flinging him against the grab rail, the attack board clattering onto the platform.
“That’ll help it,” said Albinski wryly.
Abruptly, the motors died to slow/idle, the RIB’s diving lights on.
“After all this,” said Dixon, adjusting his face mask, “I hope we find something.”
The RIB technician was busy helping the divers with their tanks, weight belts, and the rest, and the coxswain maneuvered the boat to provide as stable a platform as possible against the incoming tide. But once the divers were over, he knew there’d be nothing to do but sit. And wait. For the mechanic, the pitch and yaw of the boat by the marker buoy on station was much more likely to make him feel queasy than the bruising run out from Port Angeles.
In the next minute both divers checked their flashlights and spat on the inside of their face masks, rubbing the spittle about as a condensation preventative, ready to go over the starboard side. Dixon would lead with the attack board.
The crew of the
“I wasn’t frightened.”
He seemed not to hear, continuing, “Repairs to the sub’s diving planes changed the Canadians’ sound signature as it egressed from Esquimalt. That’s Vancouver Island’s southeastern harbor.”
She knew where it was. It was a big Canadian naval base, full of obsolete warships. “Shouldn’t that have been in your listening mike SOSUS computers?” she asked. “I mean, shouldn’t the microphones have picked up the sub’s new signature?”
“Murphy’s Law,” he answered.
“On the most sophisticated WP in the world?” she countered with mock severity, her use of WP for “weapons platform” telling him she knew more than he might think.
“Yes,” he answered quietly, defensively. It was the first time Alicia had seen
“Perhaps they did?” Why was she doing this? she asked herself, her tone with him becoming almost accusatory when what she really wanted to do was endear herself to him. Was it her professional curiosity overriding her amorous intent? Or was it some latent feminist aggressive streak in her that had driven her to the top of her field in a world still overwhelmingly dominated by men? But she didn’t like feminists. In her opinion, they were pushy and shrill.
