Seawolf End Game (25 page)

“Miss Whitaker?” Goodman interrupted. “Sorry to disturb you, but…” he hesitated.

“What is it, Mister Goodman?” Kristen asked.

“Chief Miller wanted you to listen to something.”

“Listen to what?” she asked as she stood.

Martin saw Goodman fidget uncomfortably as he answered, “We aren’t sure.”

Kristen entered the sonar shack a few moments later, half expecting it to be some sort of joke. But upon entering, she saw Brodie, Graves, and COB along with Chief Miller. The sonar operators all looked her way as she entered, and her thoughts that it might be some sort of prank vanished when she saw the worried expressions on everyone’s face.

“Sir?” Kristen asked Brodie who looked to have been awakened to come to sonar. She’d seen him only twice outside the control room over the last two days.

Chief Miller handed her a set of headphones, and Brodie motioned for her to put them on. “We made a recording of something about twenty minutes ago,” Brodie told her, giving no hint what it might be, but, by the looks on everyone’s face, it couldn’t be good. “I wanted to hear what you thought.”

Kristen pulled on the headphones and slipped her glasses into her pocket as Miller played the recorded sound for her. She assumed it was something unusual and listened closely, hearing nothing but sea noises and the roar of the
Seawolf
charging through the ocean at nearly thirty-five knots. At such speed they were unlikely to hear an earthquake. She listened, but then heard something unexpected. It was distant, but the sound was unmistakable. She opened her eyes and saw everyone staring at her gravely. “It sounds like a pair of underwater explosions, Captain.” She added curiously, “It was far off, though.”

Brodie and Graves exchanged serious glances, and Miller lowered his head slightly and shook it gently as if in remorse.

“Sir?” Kristen asked. “What was it?”

Graves answered. “It was about four hundred miles away in the direction of the Strait of Hormuz.”

Kristen now understood the significance. An underwater explosion would have to be pretty large to have created a large enough signature to be heard four hundred miles away. “What was it?” she asked. “A pair of mines? Did a ship hit a couple of Iranian mines?”

Brodie shook his head grimly and nodded to Miller, who turned on the speaker above their heads and then played a second recording. “We picked this up about fifteen seconds after the first two explosions.”

Kristen removed her headphones and then heard, over the speaker, the sound of a far greater explosion. It was significantly more powerful than the previous two detonations. She looked back at Brodie. “What was that?”

“We estimate it was equivalent to about seven tons of high explosive,” Brodie told her and then glanced at Miller, who turned off the speaker.

Kristen looked at Miller. “What was it, Senior Chief?” The blast occurred underwater and was far larger than any mine or torpedo she’d ever heard of.

“Well,” he said as an unlit cigarette hung lifelessly in his mouth, “we were hoping you might have a theory we like better than the one I came up with.”

Kristen shook her head. “I can’t think of anything causing such an explosion underwater…” She paused and thought for a moment. Then her hand went in dismay to her mouth as she looked at Brodie. “Dear God.”

Brodie nodded in agreement, his face showing all due solemnity. “We think the first two explosions were either torpedoes or mines hitting a submerged vessel followed by a third, larger explosion, such as the detonation of multiple warheads in a torpedo room.”

Kristen felt her heart sink. Part of her had hoped this crisis, like the one in North Korea, might still blow over. But now she felt a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach. She glanced at Miller. As the chief sonar operator, he had the most experience and she hoped he had another idea.

The aging chief shook his head sadly. “I was in the sonar shack up in the Barents Sea back in 2000 monitoring Russian fleet exercises when I heard something similar,” Miller told her. “It wasn’t until later we learned it was the Russian submarine
Kursk’s
torpedo room blowing up.”

Kristen new at least two allied submarines were in the area, but there could potentially be countless Iranian and Russian boats. “Do we know who it is, Senior Chief?”

“The
Virginia
was in the area. During her last communications she reported shadowing a
Kilo
class diesel electric boat,” Graves told her, obviously worried.

Brodie motioned for her and Graves to join him in the passageway as he exited, and she dutifully followed him. “How’s it going on the computer model?” Brodie asked, hiding any worry he felt. Instead, his face showed just raw determination.

“Not well, sir,” she admitted. Kristen tried not to think about the very real possibility they were now in a shooting war. “We don’t have enough information on the
Borei
or the
Gagarin
to complete the simulation. We’re now uploading the data for the German’s
212
.”

Brodie’s face was a mask of concentration and bull headed determination. It sounded like the rapidly approaching war had suffered its latest series of casualties, and the
Seawolf
was racing right into the middle of a no-holds-barred fight. Alone in the passageway, he lowered his voice as he faced her. “What good’ll that do us?”

She then explained how she hoped to get at least some indication what an operational boat using a fuel cell drive might sound like. “Maybe it’ll give us an idea what we’re looking for.” She hesitated for a moment, a question on her lips.

“What?”

“Captain, is there any way I could get the sound recording the
USS Albany
made of the
Borei
before losing contact?”

He nodded. “I’ll have it for you in our next data dump from CENTCOM.”

They were standing in the passageway forward of the control room between the radio and sonar shacks. Kristen’s back was to a bulkhead with Brodie on one side and Graves on the other.

“How are the drills coming?” Brodie asked him.

“They’re sharper than I’ve ever seen a crew, Skipper,” Graves answered with a satisfied expression. “But tired and a bit on edge.”

Brodie leaned against the bulkhead next to her, his head slightly bowed, deep in thought. He nodded his head in satisfaction with their answers and looked back up at Graves. “All right, secure the drills. I want everyone in the rack. Cancel all training.” Brodie then added in a whisper, “As far as I’m concerned this boat is at war, and I want everyone rested when the fight starts.”

Graves nodded in agreement and then cut his eyes toward Kristen. “Everyone, Skipper?”

Brodie nodded in agreement as he glanced at Kristen. “Whatever you got cooking, I want you to secure it in six hours and then get some sleep.”

“Sir, I don’t think we’ll be finished in six hours,” Kristen protested softly.

“I don’t care,” he told her in the same calm, yet uncompromising tone she’d come to expect when he’d made up his mind about something. “In six hours shut it down and get some sleep. We’re gonna need everyone fresh when the time comes, especially the sonar personnel.”

Kristen hated not finishing something, but nodded her head in agreement. “Aye, sir.”

She went back to work, feverishly adjusting the program to fit the new profile. She knew Martin was at least as tired as she was, but he stuck with her, which she felt counted for something. After five more hours, they had the program ready to run and were still running it when they felt the
Seawolf
begin to slow and come shallow. It wasn’t uncommon for the boat to approach the surface periodically to receive message traffic, and Kristen hardly noticed it as she stood, unable to stay awake any more if she stayed in her seat. Martin was in his chair, and his head had fallen onto his chest. He snored softly as the program ran. She checked her watch, her brain having reached the point where she had to concentrate hard to figure out how long it had been since she’d last slept.

She saw the program concluding and donned a set of headphones to listen to the computer generated noise the program had developed. The program was designed to actually provide the other ambient noises in the sea while listening for a submarine. But she heard nothing but normal sounds associated with the ocean.

Kristen glanced at her wristwatch and saw she was out of time. Brodie had ordered her to get some sleep after six hours, and she’d passed her allotted time. She made a digital recording of the sound the program had created to analyze later and was just finishing when a radioman delivered a flash drive to her.

“The captain said you needed this, Miss,” he explained.

Kristen, her head feeling like it was in a fog, vaguely recalled her earlier conversation with Brodie where she requested the sound recording from the
Albany.
She downloaded everything she had to her MP3 player including the recordings from the
Albany,
planning on listening to it during her free time in the event she could discern something.

She got Martin up and began shuffling him out of the DPER prior to her crawling into her bunk and getting some much needed sleep. But, as she said goodnight to Martin, they heard the 1MC speaker on the bulkhead come to life.

“All hands, this is the captain.”

Kristen heard the ominous tone in Brodie’s voice and paused to listen.

“We just received word from COMSUBPAC that at approximately 0237 local time, the Beast Buoy for the
USS Virginia
began signaling, indicating she’s gone down.”

Kristen felt her legs weaken slightly, and she gripped the edge of the doorway to steady herself. The BST-1 Buoy or “Beast Buoy,” was an automatically launched distress beacon built into every American submarine. It automatically launched if the buoy’s internal timer wasn’t reset at least every ninety minutes; this way if a submarine had a catastrophic accident and every member of the crew was killed, the buoy would automatically launch, giving the downed submarine’s last location.

“Although we cannot be certain of the cause of her loss, we picked up several explosions coinciding with the time the buoy began transmitting, and it appears likely she was lost due to enemy action.

“I’m sure we all share the same sense of loss and a desire to see to it our fallen comrades did not die in vain and that the forces responsible for the
Virginia’s
demise aren’t allowed to simply walk away from this unchallenged. With this in mind, we’re currently enroute to the region and will hopefully have a chance to see those responsible for this disaster brought to task.”

Brodie was not the kind of man to make threats, and she felt her own smoldering desire to punish whoever was responsible for this catastrophe.

“That is all.”

Kristen looked at an ashen-faced Martin.

“Do you still think we can negotiate with these people?” she asked him bitterly.

Despite her exhaustion, Kristen had trouble sleeping. The loss of the
Virginia
weighed upon her as she considered what might happen next. Going ashore in Korea had been terrifying to say the least, but it had also been fast. She hadn’t had time to consider just what she was getting herself into. But now, as she lay tossing and turning in her bunk, she had lots of time to think. Too much, in fact, and she didn’t like where her wayward thoughts led her.

She was exactly where she had always wanted to be. She was on a submarine. She’d been accepted by the crew and felt her skills were appreciated. But now, with the loss of the
Virginia
fresh in her mind and the Persian Gulf looming large, she found herself second guessing her entire life.

Kristen recalled the words Patricia said to her when they’d parted in Sasebo, reminding her she needed to begin enjoying her life. Kristen had lived her entire life sacrificing everyday pleasures so she might have the future she wanted. Now she had that future; she was on the
Seawolf.
But now that she had it, all of the sacrifice seemed folly. Patricia had always warned her that she would regret the time spent immersed in books, and Kristen feared her friend’s prediction was proving true.

The
Seawolf
was racing toward an uncertain destiny. Charging toward a narrow, shallow speck of water where her designers had never envisioned the submarine battling for her life. The
Seawolf
was a deep-ocean killer, not a shallow-water knife fighter. Fighting in the littorals had been why the
Virginia
was designed. Yet the
Virginia
was gone, and her crew entombed in a watery grave.

Kristen was tired and knew exhaustion was contributing to her sense of uneasiness, but at the same time she couldn’t dismiss the reality staring her in the face. After so many years of sacrifice, the future she had dreamed of suddenly looked to be violent and very brief.

She drifted in and out of sleep, listening to the recording of the sound file the computer had given her as a possible match for the two Russian submarines plus the sound profile on the
Borei
taken by the
Albany.
Her dreams were a chaotic mixture of ocean sounds, self-recriminations, and brief visions of the life she now only fantasized about.