The Weapon (5 page)

Before he left, though, he punched in a Washington area code. Clarice, his wife's secretary, said she was on the phone, but if he'd hold she'd see if she could free up. He listened to Pentagon elevator music.

“Dan. They let you out?”

“Hi, hon. Yeah. Back in the Navy, and glad to be here.”

He was tempted to tell her about Schrade. She could give him chapter and verse about his backers, his contracts, but he didn't. The trouble with being married to an undersecretary of defense was that your wife was better plugged in than you were. Sometimes, even about things you thought you already knew. So much so that he found himself keeping things to himself. It wasn't that great for intimacy. But they'd managed to build a relationship, then a marriage, around not being together for long periods of time.

She sounded rushed, as usual. He checked his watch; she'd be there for two or three more hours. “You getting home anytime?” she asked.

“Uh, not really sure at this point. Just had a sit down with Mullaly. They might have something overseas for me.”

“Can you make it this weekend?”

“I'll see. He didn't say when departure date would be. Or where we were going.”

Her voice sharpened; he sensed the intense beam of her actual interest swinging his way for the first time in the conversation. “Something important?”

“Might be. I'll tell you about it if I can get back. How's everything going?”

“The bathroom's still a mess. The floor's gone, but I can't get a commitment from the tiling guys. You really think you might have to leave before this weekend?”

Her voice was softer now, as if it took a few minutes to melt her official persona. He knew the feeling, and suddenly missed her, and the quiet house in Arlington, and the new shelves he'd promised he'd build but hadn't gotten to yet. “Like I said, can't tell yet. But I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

“If I can get up even for a day, I'll be there.”

“I'm looking at travel, too, but maybe we could get away. Go up to the Blue Ridge.”

He jotted a note to himself to get the brakes checked on the Escort. Though if they went to the mountains they'd probably take her Lexus. She thought his car was too small to be safe. “That'd be nice. Oh, and Homecoming's coming up. Interested in that?”

“If I can go as your wife.”

She meant, so she didn't have to talk to generals and admirals. “Absolutely. In a veil.”

“That's more like it.”

After some sappy endearments he hung up. He thought about calling his daughter, and at last he did. But the phone rang and rang in Nan's room and she didn't answer. She had a cell, too, but he didn't know its number. He left a message.

 

He changed in the locker room at the back of the building, broke out new shoes and fresh socks, a USNA tee laundered so many times the blue lettering was a shadow against the gray, and headed out for a run. The stored sun-energy blazed up off the pavement. A breeze tossed the treetops behind Rodriguez Range. Marines doubletimed past, chanting in unison. God, had he ever been that fresh-faced, that unreflectingly confident? Yeah, maybe he had. Back when he was an ensign, aboard
Reynolds Ryan
 . . .

He jogged on, caught in memories that only after a time did he manage to wall off. He shook out his arms and shoulders, and picked up the pace.

When he slowed again, sweating in the heat, he was almost to the piers on the west bank of the inlet. He turned north, thinking to at least get a look—you couldn't jog down the piers anymore, a security fence cut them off from the rest of the base, but at least he could
look
at the ships—when a note caught his ear.

It was the slow tolling of braided wire clanging wind-driven against hollow aluminum. Masts loomed. He turned
off the road and jogged past trailered powerboats waiting for the ramp. Then slowed to a walk as he reached the base marina. He hesitated, then headed past the
OWNERS AND AUTHORIZED VISITORS ONLY
sign, out onto the salt-weathered planks.

He was admiring a green-and-white sloop when a gray head popped out of the companionway. “Looking for me?”

“Uh, not really, sir. Just taking a break.” He turned away.

“Just looking, eh? Come on aboard, then.”

The owner's name was Adridge. He was retired, to judge by a paunch that wouldn't have passed the current fat standards. A captain or master chief, retired on thirty, Dan guessed. But he put on no airs. He showed Dan around, through main cabin to forward cabin, quarter berth, galley, head.

It wasn't new, but there was no scent of mold or rot, which was the smell of a badly kept boat. The bilges were dry and sweet. When Adridge unshipped the housing, the engine looked new. Even the fire extinguishers had inked tags with current inspection dates.

“Put a lot of elbow grease into her over the years,” the owner mused, showing him the ball valves on the through-hulls. “All the electronics are up to date. But it's time to let somebody else enjoy her.”

“Putting her on the market?”

“Yup. Just tinkering today, getting her ready for the broker to take pictures. Have to admit, though, I like the idea of another Navy guy sailing her.”

Dan looked around the cabin again. He could change after work and jog to the marina. It wasn't an apartment, so he wouldn't be setting up separate housekeeping. And living on base meant that much added security, if Nick Niles was right and there really were people who'd just as soon keep him quiet.

“So . . . what're you asking?”

Adridge named a price. It was affordable; his car was paid off, his daughter's tuition was pretty much taken care of and she was even interning at a company in Springfield;
he could do 10 percent down from his checking account, and USAA would be happy to loan him the rest. He asked about slip rental. Adridge said the slips went with the boat, not the owner, and the monthly fee sounded doable even with power and water included. Dan said he'd need a survey. Adridge said he wouldn't buy a boat without a survey, either. “Do you live around here, Dan?”

“Staying at the Q, right now. Share a suite with a guy from ATGLANT.”

“Where you stationed? Aboard ship?”

“No, shore duty. Stationed over at—over at one of the tenant commands.”

Adridge looked at the sky, then the channel. The basin was choppy with the wind coming over the dunes. “Well, what do you say we fire her up, see whether she likes you?”

 

The diesel stroked on the first press of the button, kicking out a gossamer blue smoke that vanished as it warmed up. Adridge backed out with one hand on the wheel—not a negligible performance, with one screw and an adverse wind—and headed out past the massive gray cliffs of the landing ships. Sailors shaded their eyes from the decks. Once past the jetty and in the Chesapeake, Adridge turned over the wheel. Moving about the deck stiffly but with perfect balance, reaching from shroud to shroud like a seagoing chimpanzee, the older man hoisted the main and set a roller-furled jib, then came aft to kill the engine as they accelerated, tilting on a starboard tack.

They sailed to Lynnhaven Roads and back, tacking through a stiff northeast breeze. She came about in her own length and cut through three-foot swells fast and clean as a sharp chisel through poplar. By the time they picked up the lines again Dan was sold, having remembered he'd promised to teach Nan to sail when she came East for college. He made an offer, conditional on the survey. Adridge held out his hand. “There were a couple of things I was going to do. Have the injectors checked. Replace the fore and aft stays—
they've been up there a time. But if you wanted to take care of those, I could make your price.”

“Injectors. Stays. Anything else I should keep an eye on?”

“There's a maintenance log in the navigator's desk. Oil change schedule and all the repair records and guarantees and so forth.” Adridge looked up at the masthead. “We've had a lot of good times. Hope you have as much fun with her as we had, my wife and me.” His eyes went far and Dan knew she wasn't with them anymore, that he was saying good-bye to a lot of memories with her in them. He blinked and lowered his gaze. “'Course, it's your call. But I've heard it said, it's bad luck to change a boat's name.”

“
Naiad?
It's a fine name,” Dan said. “I'll keep it.”

Adridge's weathered lips creased. “Grab that line then. Cross the stern lines—yeah. Like that. That way, she'll ride out anything that comes her way.”

Dan had been homeported in Newport when he'd first joined the Navy. So he knew these dark forested hills, the twisting narrow roads and quaint villages turning more expensive-looking each time he'd been back. But he'd never been to NUWC, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, though every surface line officer knew of it. From the hilltop above the old pier complex its brick buildings looked like the campus of a technical college. They stared out over the gray bay that looked cold even in summertime, or maybe he just remembered the Narragansett that way from what had seemed like eternal winter when he'd been stationed here. A carrier lay alongside Pier Two, ghostly with the queer lifelessness of a mothballed and crewless ship. The bay was flat and leaden, and cloud-shadows hunted over it in the early morning light.

Dr. Chandra Chone had asked them to come in early. He said he got his best work done late in the evening, which showed where a deputation from TAG came in his priority list. Their rather long wait in the lobby, before a young staffer came out to get them, was another clue.

Building 106 was a late-1940s structure. Chone's office had a very high ceiling, strange liquid shapes of machined metal on top of gray file cabinets, Renoir's self-portrait, a
whiteboard, and a safe in one corner just big enough to contain Harry Houdini. The staffer sat Dan and Monty Henrickson at a four-person table with three chairs.

When Chone rolled in at last he extended his hand from a sleek graphite wheelchair. He was dark-complected, with a cottony-white goatee. The staffer took the third seat, introducing himself as Dr. Charles Pirrell. Both scientists were in slacks and short-sleeve shirts with ties.

As soon as the door was closed the lights dimmed. A screen glowed. The PowerPoint slide showed the NUWC logo and the motto
We are undersea warfare.
The second slide read,
The Naval Undersea Warfare Center is the Navy's full-spectrum research, development, test and evaluation, engineering and fleet support center for submarines, autonomous underwater systems, and offensive and defensive weapons systems associated with undersea warfare.

Dan twisted and cleared his throat. In the dim three pairs of eyes met his. “Uh, Doctor—this isn't the command brief, is it?”

“Yes, Commander, it is.”

“Could we skip it? We're familiar with NUWC's mission.”

Chone and Pirrell exchanged glances. The presentation froze, then flickered with incredible swiftness until it came to a blue screen and went out. Chone brought the room lights back up and set the remote aside. “You wanted to know about the VA-111. The so-called ‘Shkval.' ”

“Yessir.” Dan wondered why “so-called”—he'd been under the impression that was its Russian designation. “We'd like to understand the scientific basis—”

“You don't need to sir me, I don't hold military rank. I don't do much research, either. Most of what I do is sit in meetings.”

“Lot of that going around where we work, too,” Henrickson said.

“Uh-huh. Well. I hope you won't leave feeling you've wasted your time. You got the Patchell report?” They nodded. “Read it?”

“We read it,” Dan said, irritated. “We even understood it. We've both worked in program development.”

“How nice for you. Well, we're required to provide you support. Your CO's letter—Mullahy?”

“Mullaly.”

“OPNAV info'd me on the request. You wanted everything we've got on supercavitating vehicle technologies?”

Dan said that was right. Chone drummed his fingertips on the armrest and squinted at the Renoir. “That's a broad request. So I have to ask: Why do you want to know? To what level of detail should we tailor our briefing? Help me out, Commander.”

“Well, first, we'd like to hear about its propulsion. Then guidance. Then warhead. Then tactical employment. Then strategic effect.”

“Most of that's outside our purview,” Chone said. “But we'll do what we can. Charles? Why don't you address the propulsion angle.”

Pirrell pulled over a note pad. He drew a long torpedo shape, but with a rod extending from the blunt stern. He etched in rings of small dots around its circumference, and carefully pencilled something small at the nose that Dan couldn't clearly see from the far side of the table. Then leaned back and sighed. “Uh . . . I'd better start with the phenomenon of supercavitation.”

Dan was already familiar with cavitation, which occurred when something was dragged through a fluid at very high speed—for example, the rotating blade of a fast-moving prop, which was where the phenomenon had first been observed. The water pressure dropped behind the moving blade, and the water vaporized—boiled instantaneously—forming steam. He'd listened on sonar to submarine screws cavitating; as the vapor bubbles imploded they made a distinctive racket. They could erode or even crack metal blades.

Super
cavitation, Pirrell said, was deliberate sustained cavitation along the length of a moving vehicle, harnessing a phenomenon that up to now had been a nuisance. A supercavitating
nose was designed to “wedge” the water apart. When the vehicle got going fast enough, and the bubble was pumped up by injecting additional gas through bleed holes, this wedged-open area sheathed the entire projectile in a skin of vapor and hot gas, reducing hydrodynamic drag to near zero. It would never touch the water, but tear through it enveloped in a slippery bubble.