Seawolf End Game (28 page)

His words struck an instant chord with her, as if he’d read her mind and knew what she needed to hear at that moment.

He continued, “…no more maybes, no more never wills, and maybe next years. This is why we were put on this earth. This moment, right now. The Russians have played us all for patsies long enough. The North Koreans are backpedaling. The Iranians have had their fifteen minutes of fame. Now it’s our turn.”

The message was meant for all of them, and she knew it. But in her heart his words were meant just for her, and he couldn’t have said anything more inspiring. At that moment, with the exception of maybe Martin, Kristen and the others would have followed him into the abyss itself.

USS Seawolf, The Gulf of Oman

K
risten paused at the hatchway leading into the control room before reporting to the sonar shack. The
Seawolf
had recently gone to ultra-quiet as they began their stealth approach to the Strait of Hormuz in hopes of reaching the area of the Iranian minefield undetected. Kristen knew of no one on board—except for maybe Ski—who was looking for a fight. Everyone else was hoping they’d be able to slip through undetected, but she wasn’t betting on it.

Kristen looked around the control room, hoping to see Brodie before she reported to the sonar shack. She had no deep foreboding of doom or any apprehension of their impending fate. Instead, she just wanted to see him. It was foolish perhaps, and her rational side chastised her for such emotional foolhardiness, but she was finished with ignoring her heart’s desires for the sake of her career. She’d spent years alone and wouldn’t be satisfied returning to that self-imposed isolation.

She saw COB, Graves, Andy Stahl, Ryan Walcott, and the rest of the control room crew at their stations, and the tracking parties looked busy already. But she saw no sign of Brodie. Disappointed, she lingered for a moment and was about to turn back toward the sonar shack when the door to the sound room opened and Brodie appeared, stepping into the passageway. She’d hoped to just see him briefly but now nearly ran into him.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said automatically as she stepped aside.

“Are the drones ready to go?” he asked as he paused in the passageway, facing her.

He was as flawless as ever, his crooked nose and undisciplined hair drawing her in irresistibly. Tensions were running high on board, yet he looked relaxed and confident. For herself, prior to seeing him, she’d felt calm and ready for what was to come, but now—in front of him—she was tongue tied.

“Yes, sir,” she managed. “I was just about to…” she motioned toward the sonar shack door on the other side of him.

“Yes, of course,” he answered but didn’t move aside. “Did you manage to get any rest?”

It was a foolish question. Kristen had managed a quick shower after preparing the drones and had just made it to the sonar shack. “I’m as rested as anyone else.”

He lingered thoughtfully.

“How far are we from the Strait?” she asked, not quite ready to part.

“We’re in the approaches with Oman maybe thirty miles to the port side and the Islamic Republic off the starboard bow,” he said. “I guess you’d better get in there,” he suggested and stepped aside.

“I guess I better had,” she replied wishing there wasn’t a vast chasm between them filled with protocol and regulations that prevented her from saying to him everything she’d told him a thousand times in her dreams.

“Good hunting, Lieutenant,” he said formally as he opened the door.

“You too, Captain.”

Kristen stepped into the sonar shack and once inside paused, she took several deep, cleansing breaths, exhaling slowly each time, physically trying to purge her thoughts of him. She would need to be on top of her game. The entire crew was counting on the sonar operators to help guide them safely through the expected line of patrol craft guarding the approaches to the Strait, and they deserved her at her very best and not preoccupied by quixotic thoughts.

Senior Chief Miller, an unlit cigarette in his mouth, stood behind the classification stack where Greenberg was working. Hicks was on the broadband and Martinez on the narrowband. Goodman was at the far end on the spectrum analyzer, and Fabrini stood beside Miller. Five other sonar operators were jammed into the claustrophobic space behind them, anxious to lend a hand.

Miller looked at her, sweat dripping from his brow, his ill-fitting uniform already stained with sweat. He mopped his brow with his ever-present rag and nudged Petty Officer Fabrini, who turned and saw her. Fabrini nodded a quiet greeting and in turn nudged Goodman, who looked up from his station. Upon seeing her, Goodman exhaled thankfully and without hesitation removed his headphones and stood, emptying the seat for her, looking somewhat relieved to have her take over. “We were beginning to think you weren’t going to make it, Lieutenant,” Goodman said. “We’ve been trying to lock down a contact for the last hour.”

The room was literally filled with flesh. The men between her and the spectrum analyzer pressed themselves back against the rear bulkhead, sucking in their guts to make room for Kristen to pass. Among the small group of sonar operators on the
Seawolf
, her reputation was now well established, and every man among them wanted her listening and searching for the threats lurking in the waters around them. Thoughts about her not being welcome because she was a woman were long forgotten. She was one of them now.

Kristen squeezed past everyone and took a seat. She buckled her seatbelt, forcing herself to relax and then pulled on her headphones. Her hands moved expertly over the controls as she moved through the various contacts. There were at least a dozen large surface contacts, but they were all making ten to fifteen knots and had already been classified as civilian ships fleeing the fight everyone knew was coming. They were tracking three other surface contacts, however, two of which had been classified as small patrol craft and another, larger surface contact, was still far away and had yet to be classified, but the men in the shack were leaning toward it being an Iranian frigate.

“Any submerged contacts yet?” Kristen asked, knowing the Iranian frigate would stand no chance against the
Seawolf
. They could dispatch the vessel at their leisure.

“Not yet,” Fabrini whispered. “But they’re out there.”

Kristen went through a full sweep in all directions, searching various wavelengths and becoming familiar with the sounds in the steadily narrowing waterway leading to the Strait. She didn’t worry about the surface contact, which was child’s play for the
Seawolf
, but instead searched the depths, knowing they weren’t the only hunters in these waters.

Also, in addition to potential enemies, the
HMS Audacious
was somewhere nearby. As was standard operating procedure for American and British boats, there’d been no attempt made for the two boats to coordinate their effort. Both the Americans and the British considered their fast-attack boats to be lone hunters, and their submarine warfare doctrine didn’t lend itself to hunting in packs as some navies did. But Kristen knew she would need to be extra careful about any classification until she could guarantee it wasn’t the
Audacious,
since a MK48 torpedo wouldn’t be so discriminating.

For three hours Kristen and the other sonar operators worked diligently, searching the water around them. A tremendous number of competing manmade sounds reached them through the waves. The Persian Gulf was a busy place with ships, drilling platforms, and construction equipment anchored to the sea floor and on barges all along the coastlines. All of this machinery radiated noise into the water, and these sound waves were picked up by the
Seawolf’s
elaborate sensory equipment. But these noises also caused “clutter” and could mask a more ominous noise such as a torpedo tube flooding or a propeller chopping through the sea.

So Kristen had to exert all of her energy into filtering out these other noises as she searched the sea around them. With the depth of the water growing ever shallower, the mile long towed sonar array was retracted to prevent it dragging along the bottom, and now the area behind the
Seawolf
was vulnerable even more than usual. Making matters worse, the channel narrowed as it became shallower, so the room to maneuver decreased, making it more difficult for the
Seawolf
to change course and clear her baffles.

To her left, the men were coming closer to identifying a faint contact. She could feel the anxiety growing when the boat went to general quarters as more and more contacts were identified. In the back of her mind she could see the tracking parties already working the contacts, preparing possible firing solutions. But she could not spend precious seconds thinking about anything other than what she was hearing. She’d been fooled several times already by some of the manmade transients around them but had failed to pick up any real threat so far.

Her fingertips moved gently over the controls, her eyes closed as she slowly swept the area, trying to tune out everything else around her as the men to her left classified a recent contact as a fast-attack submarine. They were still working the range to this potential threat when, as she was running her search sweep across the waves, her finger paused as she heard another faint sound ahead of them. Like the previous contact, it was weak and hidden in the clutter of noises coming out of the Gulf.

“I’ve got one, Chief,” she whispered. “Bearing zero-two-three. Possible submerged contact.” Kristen immediately narrowed her search and made a few fine adjustments. She heard Miller notify the control room while the men on the stacks began processing her new contact. She wanted to stay with this one, but Miller wanted her to keep searching. Meanwhile the computer recognized the telltale noise signature of the previous contact and designated it
Akula Four.

The
Seawolf
changed course slightly to the west in hopes of slipping silently between the two contacts while Kristen continued to work, feeling the sweat on her forehead and lower back. The captain, despite his orders allowing him to engage targets at will, was trying to get past the two submarines undetected in hopes of avoiding battle. Their orders were to find the
Borei
before she could launch, and if he could do so without firing on anyone else, that was what he intended to do.

As the
Seawolf
turned westward, Kristen shifted her search to the port side passive hull arrays, wanting to check as much of their baffles as possible in hopes of hearing anyone lurking behind the
Seawolf.
The others provided information on the
Akula
and the—as of yet—undetermined second submerged contact designated
Sierra Six
.

She found nothing at all trailing them but knew this didn’t mean no one was there; it only meant she hadn’t heard them. She turned her sweep back around, moving through the entire search fan of the
Seawolf’s
acoustical suite.

“Transients!” she heard Martinez announce in an excited whisper. “Sounds like a hatch slamming on contact
Sierra Six
, classify contact as definite submerged submarine.” At almost the same time they came up with range data on the first contact.

Miller reported everything to the control room as he received it. “Range to
Akula Four,
eleven thousand yards, course and speed undetermined,” he reported, suggesting the
Akula,
operating on a very low power level, might be hovering near the bottom and waiting to ambush someone. “Transients from
Sierra Six.
Verify contact as submerged contact now bearing zero-five-eight.”

Kristen knew the information they were feeding the control room was being used to create and update firing solutions that would then be fed into the weapons loaded in the eight torpedo tubes. It was almost surreal, like some high stakes video game. Except the weapons were real and the results deadly.

Kristen handed off the second contact to the other three for classification while she resumed searching for other potential threats. Other sonar crews were jammed into the room and multiple other operators were wearing headphones and offering advice, and all the noise was becoming a distraction. She tried to tune the men out but some were even arguing with one another over the proper classification of the latest contact, and it finally reached a point she turned in her chair to face them. “Shh!” Kristen ordered, putting a finger to her lips.

“Sorry, Miss,” Miller said, his hand playing with a lighter for his cigarette but having thus far managed to resist lighting it so as not to disturb her.

Kristen saw the others quiet down, properly cowed, and she turned back to her display. Almost immediately she heard something new. “Surface contact,” she whispered. “Bearing zero-three-six, twin screws turning at about eight knots. It’s faint and sounds far off.”

Miller reported the surface contact to the control room as she and the others continued searching. They also managed to classify the new submerged contact as a
Kilo
class diesel electric submarine.