The control room was packed as
Kolnikov turned and glared at the crowd. 'Have you never been on a submarine before? Check for leaks. Everyone should be at his post wearing sound-powered phones. Find 'em and fix 'em. Check every compartment.' The control room emptied, leaving only Eck, Boldt, Rothberg, Turchak on the helm, and Kolnikov. And Hey-drich, who sat in the back at an unused sonar console doing and saying nothing.
Two thousand feet was three hundred feet below her certified depth, and everyone in the room seemed to be holding his breath. When the boat's hull creaked and groaned a bit from the stupendous pressure passing eighteen hundred feet, Kolnikov said, 'That's deep enough. Take it back up to seventeen hundred and let's get the giggles and bangs out of it.' When she stabilized at seventeen hundred feet, her certified depth, the noises stopped. Boldt reported that the boat had leaks here and there, but the crew was working on them.
'This isn't a dinner boat on the Seine,' Kolnikov growled. Leaks were the bane of a submariner's life. They could develop at any moment.
'We'll not go lower than this unless we have to,' Kolnikov said aloud, to no one in particular. 'We must stay as silent as possible, or believe me, the Americans will find us.' Kolnikov had not streamed the towed array. He planned to drift with no way on, so the array would end up hanging straight down on its half mile of cable, of little or no use.
At a nod from Kolnikov, Turchak let the submarine drift slowly to a stop. About two minutes passed before the inertial readout stopped going slower. The final speed was half a knot, which was probably the speed of the current at this depth.
The pumps that kept her trimmed seemed to work fine. She lay motionless in the sea, steady as a rock. Kolnikov put his head against the metal of the bulkhead to listen, then checked the computer screen that analyzed the ship for noise. Almost nothing. The ship was as silent as the sea itself.
'Just in case,' Kolnikov said to Boldt, 'while we are alone, have everyone make a head call, then secure the head until further notice. And let's flood tubes one and two and open the outer doors.'
Turchak, at the helm, was also wearing a sound-powered telephone headset. He concentrated on monitoring the trim of the boat. He would ease the power lever forward for a few turns to establish steerageway — and plane effectiveness — if that became necessary. Eck and Boldt were busy with the computers, with Rothberg supervising, running from one to another, looking over shoulders, offering little explanations. Kolnikov stood mesmerized by the large, flat bulkhead-mounted sonar displays. Once again the impression that the displays were mere windows in the hull and he was actually looking at the ocean struck Kolnikov powerfully.
The screens were dark just now, for the sea at this depth was very quiet. Yet the darkness was not total — there were gleams of light here and there from the grunts and calls of sea creatures, fish and whales and dolphins, very faint and far away. The muted symphony also gave them tantalizing hints of hull and machinery noises, no doubt from distant ships and planes. And every now and then they were teased by low-frequency rumbling noises, perhaps from earthquakes or landslides, maybe deep-sea volcanoes.
He reluctantly left the sonar displays and was looking over Boldt's shoulder, studying the navigation data displayed there, when out of the corner of his eye he saw Eck press his earpieces tightly against his head. After a bit Eck held up a hand and said in almost a whisper, 'I think I hear screw noises. Low-frequency beats.' He removed the sonar audio from the control room loudspeaker so it wouldn't be returned to the sea.
Kolnikov donned the headset and listened. Meanwhile Eck was typing on his keyboard, initiating a track, labeling it. A symbol appeared on the horizontal tactical display and on one of the bulkhead screens. The men stared mesmerized at the symbol, which almost obscured a faint gleam of light hiding amid the darkness.
Turchak, wearing the sound-powered headset, told Kolnikov, 'Tubes one and two flooded, outer doors open.'
Kolnikov climbed onto the captain's stool and lit a cigarette. He was staring at the dim gleam that Eck said was the noise of a submarine when a tiny light flashed on the surface in the other direction some distance away, perhaps six or seven miles.
Five seconds passed before Eck said softly, 'Sonobuoy. We have a P-3 overhead.'
There were eight sonobuoys in the water when Eck gestured toward the submarine symbol on the panel display. 'That isn't where it is. There's a thermal layer distorting the sound.'
'Can you identify it?'
'We need a little more noise. He's closing, that's certain.'
Three minutes later Eck said,
'Which one?'
'Still working on that.'
A half minute later he said,
'Jesus fucking Christ,' Leon Rothberg said bitterly and sagged into an empty chair.
Toad Tarkington was at his desk in the Crystal City SuperAegis liaison office when the intercom buzzed. The unexpected sound made Toad jump. Without telephones ringing, the office was abnormally quiet, pleasantly so. The security officer in the lobby was calling. 'Sir, there is a Mr. Carmellini down here asking for Admiral Grafton.'
'Carmellini?' Toad drew a blank for several seconds, then he remembered. Oh yeah, the CIA guy from Cuba. 'I'll be down to escort him,' Toad told the guard. Carmellini. He was in Hong Kong with Admiral Grafton last year, Toad remembered, when the revolutionaries kidnapped Callie.
The building elevators were still out of service, so Toad took the stairs to the lobby. He recognized Carmellini and shook hands. 'The admiral isn't here, but come on up,' Toad said and led the way to the stairs. 'Anything you'd tell him he'd refer to me, so you might as well eliminate the middleman.'
'What floor are you fellows on?' Carmellini asked.
'Eight. I'm in training for the Boston marathon.'
When they reached the office, Toad sank gratefully into the chair behind his desk and tried not to look bedraggled. He eyed Carmellini without enthusiasm. Several inches over six feet, with wide shoulders, impossibly narrow hips, and hard, callused hands, the guy looked to be in terrific physical shape. The eight-story climb hadn't made him draw a deep breath. His forehead wasn't even damp.
'Bet you don't get a lot of visitors up here with the elevator out,' Carmellini said conversationally.
'You got that right. When most people drop by, I tell them to come back when the Redskins win their next home game. I hadn't been up the stairs in over an hour, so I made an exception in your case. To what miracle do we owe the honor of your presence?'
'I was in London. After the FAA grounded all the planes arriving on the East Coast, I was stuck. Flew to Montreal and rented a car, just got in.'
'You came straight here?'
'Yeah. I have a story to tell the admiral, but since you're sorta his alter ego, I'll tell it to you, just in case my former employer figures I'm here and sends someone looking for me before he gets back.'
'I'll let that alter ego crap go by if you'll tell me why the agency might be looking for you,' Toad said.
'Let's put it like this. The folks at Langley don't know where I am and may or may not be in a sweat about that. I resigned Monday before I went to England, effective in a couple weeks, then I decided to quit early.'
'I hope the bank doesn't repossess your car,' Toad said, eyeing Carmellini skeptically. It was almost as if the man were too glib, too smooth. One half expected him to pull three walnut shells and a pea from a jacket pocket and ask if you wanted to make a friendly wager.
Tommy Carmellini casually glanced around to see who might be in earshot — there was no one — then began. 'Antoine Jouany. The company sent me to England to raid his computer.' He went on, telling Toad about it.
Captain Rebecca Allison's F-16 was pushing against Mach one when she dropped out of the overcast over the southern beach of Long
Island. Try as she might, she couldn't get her radar to pick the Tomahawk out of ground return. She shallowed her dive and began scanning ahead and below for a glimpse of the small missile.
The thick haze under the clouds limited visibility to about three miles. Finding out a tiny cruise missile was going to be extremely difficult, she thought, and wondered if she had already missed it and flown by.
