“Consider it done.” Hardin smiled. “On the condition that you never screw up and get out of shape on flashing light like I did.”
ELEVEN
Jack kept up a constant scan of the water around them as he sat on hold, scribbled numbers down, and then redialed the cell phone, but it was Adele who saw it first. It was an odd streak of white water moving at a direction different from the whitecaps, and at first she couldn’t figure out what was causing it. A whale immediately below the surface? A reef that wasn’t on the charts?
Then it hit her, and she turned immediately to tug on Jack’s arm. “Look,” she said, pointing to the east. “That water.”
Before he could answer her, a thin black metal pipe poked up from the surface of the water, swiveled about, catching the sun in a quick flash as it faced them, and then disappeared. It was followed shortly by the entire upper deck of the submarine emerging from the water, then quickly disappearing. Jack’s mouth dropped open for a minute, then he resumed dialing even more desperately.
“Submarine,” Adele said, awed. It gave her a creepy feeling, knowing that it was cruising through the water below them, silent, deadly, and could surface underneath them at any moment. “Ours?” she asked.
“No. Not ours. And if they don’t know it’s here, they’ve got to be told immediately.” He snorted in frustration as he encountered another busy signal on the eleventh number he’d dialed. “If only I can find a way to get a message to them.”
As he continued dialing, Adele kept her gaze on the sea around them.
“Conn, Sonar, regain of contact on Sierra two,” Jacobs said. After an hour of slowly quartering the strip of ocean assigned to them, he’d finally caught the first hint of the other boat.
Captain Tran leaned over Jacob’s shoulder, studying the signature coursing down the waterfall display. The submarine had just executed a turn to starboard and was proceeding slowly back toward them.
“Clearing her baffles, I’d say,” the chief remarked. “Just making sure no one’s following her.”
“Always a good idea,” the captain said. “It just doesn’t work if the boat following you is a lot quieter than you are.”
“We might know more about her if she’d put some knots on,” Jacobs said. Even with the familiarity the crew and officers developed living in close quarters, he still was uneasy venturing his opinion. “If I could get a propeller count, maybe some main propulsion, it might refine the classification.”
The captain smiled, a faintly wolfish expression on his face. “When in doubt, take the offensive. One ping.”
Pencehaven toggled over to the active mode and considered his options. Ranging or targeting? The long, slow ping that they used for open area search, or the short, tight burst that would tell the other boat that someone was getting ready to shoot a torpedo up her ass? He glanced up at the captain.
“Targeting, I believe,” the captain said softly. “We want her to move, that’s the fastest way to get her attention.”
“One ping, targeting mode,” the sonarman said happily. He selected the mode then depressed the button that activated the transmitter. “Next thing we hear will be the crappers flushing as they start shitting their pants.”
A hard, short burst of acoustic energy rattled the speaker overhead. It was pure tone, as solid as slamming on the hull of the other boat with a two-by-four.
The reaction from the other boat was immediate and dramatic. A low frequency line snaked up the spectrum, evidence of the diesel’s increasing speed. A host of other lines appeared on the display as she started maneuvering, the up and down Dopplers gyrating wildly on the screen.
“Bet she dives,” the chief said. “Try to get the layer working against us.”
“Five bucks,” Pencehaven said promptly, his earlier reluctance gone completely. “She’s been down a long time. She’s headed for the surface to recharge her battery. She might take a little excursion descending, but she’s got to head for the surface real soon.”
The skipper nodded. “Let’s put the hurt on her for a while. Drop the tail down below the layer, but keep us shallow. I want to be waiting for her when she comes up to light off. We’ll take her out then.”
“What’s to keep her from taking a shot at us now?” the chief asked, already reaching for his wallet.
“Because she’s going to need targeting data on us,” the skipper said. He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think her skipper is going to risk going active, not now. Not low on batteries with a hostile on his tail. He’ll try to clear the area, get up to the surface and snorkel quickly, then come back after us.” He clapped the sonarman on the shoulder. “Good job. Now be ready for her when she comes shallow. They may have taken the first shot in this war, but as far as that boat’s concerned, we’re going to take the last.”
The chief tweaked up the volume on the speaker in the sonar shack. Underneath the sea noise, the discrete frequencies of the biologics and other ship, the random noise generated by undersea wave action and oil rigs, he could hear it. A faint rub-rub-rub sound, accompanied by a slight hiss. Classic propeller noises, moving higher in pitch and frequency as he listened, indicating that the contact was picking up speed.
“You’re certain it’s the sub?” the chief asked.
Jacobs nodded. “It’s got this
The look on the chief’s face confirmed the sonarman’s classification. He reached for his wallet and extracted a five-dollar bill. “Periscope rattling in the shaft,” he confirmed. “She’s getting ready to come shallow and take a look around.”
“Flood tubes,” the skipper said. “Let’s finish this now.”
Just then, a faint serpentine line traced its way down the screen. “Shit,” the sonarman said. “It’s aircraft — sir, I think the carrier’s somewhere nearby. That’s one of her SAR helos.”
“That’s what she’s after,” the skipper said, his voice deadly. “The carrier. And she’s just tracked out of our area. We can’t follow or we’ll risk bringing down one of the helos on us. OOD, come to communications depth. I’ll let the carrier know that they’ve got company.”
It took Jack Simpson another ten phone calls, but he finally extracted the telephone number he needed from a bored watch officer. He punched the numbers in and glanced over at Adele. “Hope they’re not tying up the line.” His eyes widened slightly as someone on the other end answered.
“Hi. This is Jack Simpson, skipper of the
“What the — how the hell did you get this number,” the voice on the other end asked.
“D.C. gave it to me,” Jack answered. “Ship-to-ship is clobbered, and I had to get in touch with you. I want to report a submarine sighting.”
“Listen, mister, I don’t know who you are and what you want, but we’re a little busy right now,” the voice continued, clearly exasperated. “Now get the hell off this line and — ”
“No, wait! You don’t understand! D.C. gave me the number — there’re no other comms right now, not secure. Listen, I saw a submarine out here. It’s headed for you.”
Silence from the carrier for a moment, then, “Hold on. Just — just hold on for a moment.” Static crackled across the line. A new voice said, “Hello? This is Commander Busby,
“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Simpson said.
