Jefferson, steaming toward them with helicopters and aircraft arrayed overhead like an honor escort. “I told you.”
“Dammit, set up for the feed.”
She moved in front of him, positioning for the sun and the favorable angle while still making sure that the camera could catch the shape of the aircraft carrier in the background.
“I don’t like this, Tombstone. I don’t like it one little bit.”
Batman stared out at the calm, glassy water as the massive carrier plowed through the smooth seas. “Constrained waters?that’s no place for an aircraft carrier.”
“I agree. You know I do.”
Tombstone stared off in the sky, looking for the martial stack of aircraft orbiting. “That’s one of the reasons we’ve got so much in the air right now.”
“A hell of a lot it’s going to do in these waters. And still don’t see any justification for putting us at risk by pulling into port in Ukraine. Hell, we can make do with two cats?that’s why we’ve got three.”
Stoney sighed. The order from the Department of Defense had been ambiguous at best, downright unclear at worst. Jefferson had been directed to sail into the Black Sea for possible repair in Ukraine “pending further determination.”
How many strings had Tiltfelt pulled?
Enough, evidently. From what he’d heard on CNN and the other networks, Congress was slavering over the possibility of having a stronghold at Russia’s back door.
“Let’s look at the bright side,” Tombstone said finally. “At least we’re not ordered to make port there. I think Uncle Thomas is going to be playing this close to the chest?get us in theater, within striking range of Turkey, and wait to see what falls out from this little incident on board. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”
His uncle, Tombstone knew, would be irrevocably opposed to pulling Jefferson into any foreign port right now. The prospect of making a transit through the Strait of Bosphorus and being confined to the Black Sea was not much better, but at least the Black Sea offered some elbow room. Once they were through the Strait, he’d feel better anyway.
“What I really don’t understand,” Batman said, pointing to mainland Turkey just starting to come into view off their starboard bow, “is why we’re so convinced Turkey will let us through here. Isn’t this whole area mined?”
“Of course it is. It’s sort of a test, I suppose. Turkey is still claiming that they weren’t behind the EMP attack, and the thinking is that if they let us sail through the Strait unmolested, then they probably weren’t. Or at least possibly weren’t. Or at least?oh, hell, I don’t know. I don’t like it any better than you do.”
Both of the Naval aviators stared out at the calm waves, waiting for the first sign of trouble.
“How fast can this tug go?” Pamela demanded. “Forty knots?”
The owner of the boat shrugged, and pointed at the sea. “Maybe twenty. As calm as the seas are today, we won’t have the swells to contend with. But why the worry about speed?”
Pamela took two steps closer, bringing herself well within his personal range. She could feel his interest in her grow, see the sudden hungry look in his eyes. “I’ve got a plan. I need to borrow your boat?rent it, really. Could use you along, if you’re interested.”
She let an alluring smile play across her face.
The man reached out one hand and laid it on her shoulder, stroking gently. “I might be.”
“Work first.”
Pamela explained her plan to him. The man’s face went through a cycle from lust to surprise to childish glee. He started nodding vigorously. “Come on. Let’s see how fast I can get her going.”
“Man, I’m hungry,” AWI Harness moaned. “Come on, guys?didn’t anybody bring something to eat?”
Rabies and his copilot exchanged a snide, knowing look. Harness could be the best antisubmarine technician in the Navy?neither of them had any doubt that he was?but he could be a real pain in the ass on a mission.
“Didn’t you eat before you left home?” Rabies inquired innocently. “I know I told you to.”
“After last time, sir, I thought it might be better to go light on lunch,” Harness replied stiffly. “You know, just in case you wanted to start down and take another real close look at those waves again.”
Rabies burst out laughing. “Harness, you’re such a pussy.”
“I resent that remark,” the TACCO said from the backseat. “Last time I checked, he wasn’t allowed in our heads.”
Lieutenant Sara Andrews was one of the first female TACCOs to fly in an S-3 Viking. “Besides, even if he were?he’d still get hungry.”
“Thanks?-I think,” Harness muttered. “Come on, what happened to the team concept here?”
“Oh, all right.”
Rabies fumbled around in a flight suit pocket and drew out a candy bar. “Here.”
“Thanks, sir.”
Rabies could hear Harness peeling off the paper, the muffling little noises barely audible over the ICS.
Wait for it, wait for it?now. “Oh, by the way, Harness,” Rabies said casually. “It doesn’t bother you that I keep that in the same package I have your full piddle pack, does it? I don’t know why the hell I forgot to take it out after the last mission?it’s been, what?three days?”
The copilot and TACCO howled. Rabies burst into song. He could hear just what he’d expected to hear from the backseat?Harness gagging.
The S-3 Viking was flying lazy, low-level circles around the aircraft carrier as she approached the Strait. Once Jefferson commenced her transit, the Viking would dart ahead to the Black Sea and orbit there, waiting for the ship to arrive. The technicalities of maneuvering by aircraft over international waterways were complicated, and Rabies wasn’t sure exactly why the rules were the way they were. All he knew was how the mission had been briefed by Intel, with a JAG officer sitting right next to him.
“Look! To starboard.”
Rabies glanced over as the copilot craned his head back to see. “I don’t believe it.”
Rabies threw the S-3 into a hard, starboard turn, descending rapidly to two thousand feet. From that altitude, the sight that had so intrigued the copilot was readily visible. The clear, calm waters of the Mediterranean were a massive barrier of odd acoustics and soggy bottom. Detection by sonar, including sonobuoys, was problematic at best. On the worst day, S-3 could virtually hit a submarine with a sonobuoy and not hear it acoustically.
There was, however, one advantage to the shallow waters on a calm day?visibility was excellent. As more than one Mediterranean sailor could testify, being submerged wasn’t a blanket of invisibility in the Mediterranean, not on a day like this.
Living proof of that theory was making a slow transit through the water below them.
Sara whistled softly. “He must be fifty feet down,” she said, quiet wonder in her voice. “I’d heard the stories?but it sure is something to see it yourself. Wait, I can almost?what about it, Rabies, can you see what type it is?”
“Let’s get a little closer and see if we can figure it out.”
Rabies tipped the S-3’s blunt nose down and executed a steep descent toward the waves. The dark shadow under the water abruptly started to turn to port.
“He hears us?I’m sure of it,” Rabies said over the ICS.
“But what kind of submarine?”
Rabies and the copilot studied the sleek underwater form, trying to make out the class identifiers. Both had done several tours in the Mediterranean, and the variety of diesel submarines located in its shallow waters were familiar to them. Both were expecting to see a Turkish Kilo, or perhaps one of the myriad German varieties that populated these waters.
Either one of them would have been cause for worry, the Turkish Kilo particularly. With the current state of
