down the flag passageway from the admiral's quarters and battle stations. From the passageway, it looks like just another compartment, albeit a highly secure one with a window opening up onto a guard desk and a heavy steel cipher-locked door separating it from the rest of the world. Admiral Wayne makes jokes about the locks being designed to keep me and my herd of intelligence specialists in rather than the general public out, and I don't always disagree with that. The enlisted technicians and intelligence officers that work for me in this nerve center of the carrier battle group can be a slightly odd bunch.
Odd ? but very, very good at what they do. Like now.
One of the electronic warfare technicians had buzzed me in my office and asked me to step into the signal evaluation center. It was just two doors down from my administrative spaces, and I didn't waste time asking him why he thought it was important. The EWs ? earthworms as they are familiarly called ? know when it's important to jump the chain of command and get right to the decision maker. I give them a lot of leeway on this.
Now I was standing in front of the tall rack of Navy gray equipment boxes, some of them covered with patch cords going in and out, others with LED displays. The earthworm, a bright, smart young kid from Omaha, Nebraska, with that corn-fed, scrubbed-face, blue-eyed look that you associate with Midwesterners, was pointing at the high- frequency end of the spectrum. 'There ? it did it again. You see it?' he asked excitedly.
I frowned, trying to turn the chatter of electronic signals into something that made sense to my eyes. It had been years since I'd stood watch in front of these very consoles, and developed an eye for what was normal and what wasn't in the electromagnetic spectrum. I was pretty good at it back then, but time and other responsibilities had kept me away from the equipment for a long time. Maybe too long, according to the look on the technician's face.
I glanced down at the hard copy chattering out from the printer, hoping that if I could see the same noise held still it would make more sense. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw it ? it did, indeed, make a lot of sense.
'Communications burst,' I hazarded, then glanced over at him to see if I was right.
He nodded, obviously pleased. 'Of course it is ? and not just once.
There ? it's going again.'
I nodded again, feeling my competence come back. 'Classification?' I asked.
The technician looked thoughtful. 'It sounds like ? feels like ? a routine communications data burst. But the frequency ? it could be ours, it could be theirs. It's probably theirs, in these waters. The intelligence summary says we don't have anything in the area.' He left unspoken the possibility that our own intelligence sources weren't telling us everything they knew about the disposition of U.S. forces in the area. When you've worked in the intelligence field for as long as both of us had, that was a given.
'But you do think it's a submarine?' I pressed.
He nodded. 'We can get pretty accurate on the location now,' he said, blithely assuming that I didn't know the critical equipment parameters of the gear now in front of me. 'That spot it's aimed at ? empty ocean. At least according to the radar. Now if we had an S-3 or something overhead, we might know for certain.' 'Anything from the undersea warfare commander?' I said, referring to the destroyer squadron, or DESRON, that occupied the 0–8 level of the aircraft carrier's tower. The recent changes in battle group organization had not left any of the traditional warfare commanders untouched. The DESRON, for decades called the Antisubmarine Warfare (ASW) commander, was now referred to as the Undersea Warfare (USW) Commander. He had charge of all the USW assets in the area, ranging from P-3s deployed from shore stations in support of the battle group, to the S-3 submarine-hunter killers that flew off our own flight deck, to the host of other national assets, including our own submarines.
This deployment, he didn't have that much to work with. Unlike most battle groups, we were traveling without a submarine. Given the sensitive nature of our deployment into Russia's northern waters, that seemed a politically sound decision. Additionally, we were out of range of most P-3 maritime patrol aircraft, which left us only with the organic helos and S-3s on the flight deck above me.
'Nothing from the DESRON,' Petty Officer Martin confirmed.
I studied the signal for a while longer. A few more brief repetitions at the same frequency, each one of which made Martin tense up and lean forward in his chair. The printer continued its chattering, spitting out hard copy of all the data. It had two options for printing, either a graphic representation of peaks and valleys of signal strength or a numeric display with rows and columns of dense, closely spaced numbers. A guy in practice, like Martin, usually preferred the numbers. Older and less trained eyes like the graphic representation.
'I'll wander up and see the DESRON,' I said finally. 'Keep an eye on it ? call me up there immediately if there's any change. Anything significant, anyway.'
Martin nodded. 'Go wake ' up, just in case they're napping, sir.' I smiled despite myself. EWs are convinced there's no rating on the ship that works as hard, or as smart, as they do. Sure, they admit that there's a certain glamour in flying aircraft off the ship, and working on the flight deck, and even in maintaining the USW pictures as the DESRON is supposed to do. However, they have a lingering distrust that everyone else isn't doing his job quite as well as the EWs are.
Part of it is based on fact. There are very few ratings onboard the aircraft carrier that have as many sailors that are as smart as EWs. Just to get in the program, they have to be in the top 2 percent of the Navy in intelligence, and in terms of sheer raw brainpower, many of the EWs are damned near brilliant. Most of them are a good deal smarter than the college graduate pilots and RIOs they brief and debrief every day.
Maintaining the properly respectful and military attitude toward their seniors is often quite difficult for them. In their minds, the facts are simply indisputable ? EWs are smarter, so the more senior people ought to pay attention to what they say.
Pilots, especially the very young or inexperienced, don't always see it that way. They are all too impressed with the insignia on their collars and the sheer fact that they are naval aviators. Sometimes they don't listen as well as they ought to. The EWs know that, and I've got them pretty well trained to come running to me when they have a collar count discrepancy problem. I let them rant and rave, wait until they calm down, and then either take care of the problem or placate them.
In this case, I knew what Martin was thinking. There might have been a little sniff of a submarine somewhere, something that an Aviation Antisubmarine Warfare Technician ? or AW for short ? hadn't taken a good look at. The other fellow might have dismissed it as noise, or maybe ? and I think this is what Martin privately suspected ? he was too busy shooting the shit with his buddy to do his job. When Martin had called up, he'd probably gotten an offhand, quick answer ? 'No, buddy, no submarines in this area. If there were, we'd know about it.' Something in the tone hadn't convinced Martin, and I could tell he was glad I was going up to take a look myself.
I clapped him on the shoulder and said, 'I'll look at the data myself, Martin. Good catch on the signal.'
Martin snorted. 'Wasn't much to catch, sir. If it were a snake, it would have bit me on the ass.'
I left him watching the scope and hustled up the six ladders leading to the 0–8 level, the home of the DESRON. They were located in the forward part of the tower, just behind the admiral's bridge. The admiral's bridge was normally vacant unless there was a reason for the admiral to have his own navigator and staff keeping a careful eye on the carrier commanding officer.
I stood for a second outside the DESRON spaces, catching my breath from the quick trip up the six ladders. It's a lot if you do it fast, even if you are in shape. I spend an hour a day on the Stairmaster, and I still manage to get winded when I'm in a hurry.
Finally, I stepped into the small compartment. In the back part of it, a paper-plotting table took up most of one corner, standing just barely out from the bulkhead so that sailors could move all around it. In the forward half of the compartment, a watch officer sat in a chair and stared at the status boards lining the bulkheads. Against one wall was a JOTS ? Joint Operation Terminal Set ? that displayed most of the data inputs from the other ships in the area, including commercial traffic. Some people claim that JOTS stands for Jeremy O. Tuttle, the renowned father of naval electronics who rammed through its implementation in the fleet by the force of his own personality.
'Good morning, Commander.' The lieutenant who was the watch officer stood, took his hands out of his flight jacket, and gestured toward the pilot. 'Anything we can do for you today? It's pretty slow out here ? no contacts of any sort.' 'Thanks, just up checking things out,' I said neutrally. 'I imagine it's pretty slow for you guys up here?'
The lieutenant nodded. 'Wish we had somebody to play with,' he said, his tone almost wistful. 'The S-3s are
