Seawolf End Game (34 page)

Both men sat quietly. Neither had expected the Americans to try and force their way into the Persian Gulf so soon. In fact, the general belief had been that the Western powers would eventually come around to the new order in the Gulf and accept Iran’s hegemony in the region. But now battle had been joined; a very secret, and as of yet undeclared, war was being fought below the waves out of sight of the news media.

The world might never know what really happened.

USS Seawolf

“K
ris,” she heard him call to her.

The
Seawolf
was out of immediate danger. The Islamic Republic had launched a rescue effort consisting of some surface craft to try and recover any survivors from their lost submarines and frigate.

“Kris,” he called again.

The Republic had also commenced a rather haphazard sonar search in the vicinity using two dated helicopters employing dipping sonar.

“Lieutenant,” she heard Brodie say to her and felt him nudge her gently.

Kristen opened her eyes, pulling herself out of the sweetest of dreams. He was there… he was with her…they were together…

“Lieutenant,” she heard the familiar voice and struggled to extricate herself from the blissful slumber.

Kristen shook her head and looked up to see, instead of Brodie speaking to her gently, Fabrini nudging her awake. She’d fallen asleep against the rear bulkhead of the sonar shack.

“What is it?” she asked as she struggled to wake up. “Is it another
Akula?”

“No, ma’am,” he assured her. “I’m sorry as hell to wake you, but the skipper just called and needs to see you in the control center.”

Kristen allowed Fabrini to help her to her feet. She shook her head to clear out the last vestiges of sleep, then rubbed her eyes and glanced at the digital clock on the wall. “How long was I out?” she asked as she ran a hand over her hair, feeling the perfectly prepared braids coming loose. She was certain she had to look like hell.

“Almost an hour.”

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“The Iranians are looking for us, but they haven’t come too close, yet.”

“Any contacts?” she asked as she straightened her crumpled uniform.

“Quite a few,” he admitted with a yawn. “But they’re all on the surface, and we suspect they’re still collecting survivors from the frigate.”

Kristen would have liked nothing more than to take a shower and get a fresh uniform on before reporting to the captain, but there was no time for that. She thanked Fabrini and stepped out of the shack and into the control room.

The
Seawolf
was as quiet as a tomb. In the control room, she saw that the navigation and tracking parties were resting. Three men were snoring where they’d gone to sleep at their stations during the extended lull of quiet since the furious exchange several hours earlier. Brodie, looking through a stack of radio messages, was seated on the fold-down seat reserved for him on the periscope platform. Kristen approached, pausing just short of the platform. “Sir?” she whispered so as not to disturb the cat-napping men.

He looked up from his messages and stifled a yawn as he stood and stretched.

“I was told you wanted to see me, Captain.”

“It would appear, Miss Whitaker,” he told her whimsically as he handed a message to her, “we’re dead.”

“Sir?” Kristen asked as she took the message. It was an intercepted broadcast from Iranian State run radio translated into English. The message reported a “great sea battle” had been fought in the Gulf of Oman in which surface and subsurface forces of the Islamic Republic’s Navy had beaten back an attack by “Zionist powers,” inflicting heavy losses on the attackers. Kristen shook her head in disgust at the stupidity of it all before handing it back to Brodie.

“You look surprisingly wide awake for a dead man, sir,” she offered. He was awake, but just barely. He had what looked like two days’ worth of beard on his face, and, as tired as she felt, he looked to be feeling worse.

“Thanks.” He leaned against the railing and then explained why he summoned her, “The drones are almost back.”

“Let’s hope they’re on time,” she added, knowing the longer the
Seawolf
stayed where it was the risk of detection increased.

“How’re you holding up?”

She felt his eyes on her, but didn’t allow herself to make eye contact. Not three minutes earlier she’d been dreaming of him and couldn’t trust herself to look at him now and not relive the recent fantasy. “A bit tired,” Kristen admitted, knowing she couldn’t hide anything from him anyway.

“Let me know if there’s any problem with the recovery.”

“Aye, sir,” she replied.

The drones returned on time and the recovery went off without any problem. Once they were unloaded from the tubes, Kristen removed the memory chips while MK48 torpedoes were loaded into the empty tubes. Once she’d retrieved the two chips, she went up to the wardroom where Martin was waiting to help download the data.

“How’s it going back in engineering?” Kristen asked him as she handed over the two data chips.

Martin shook his head miserably. “We still haven’t been able to stop all the leaks,” he told her and then added, “The reactor nearly scrammed from the shock of the first torpedo and…” His hands were shaking.

Kristen understood how he felt. The powerful grief she felt for Gibbs still lingered just below the surface. “Just try not to think about it, Danny,” Kristen offered him, feeling the same anxiety at how close they’d come to death. “We need to find a path through the minefield and get on with the mission. Thinking about what happened can come later, but for now we have to focus on the here and now, okay?”

“Two pipes burst,” he continued, ignoring her advice. “Tons of seawater poured in,” he added apparently finding it necessary to tell someone what happened. “Chief O’Rourke and Ski led two damage control teams into the rush of water and managed to seal the leaks for the most part, but three men were nearly killed. One has a fractured skull…”

“Danny,” Kristen chided gently. “Stop talking about it. I need you to focus.” She was trying to be understanding, but firm. She couldn’t let emotion control her or him at the moment.

“I didn’t sign up for this,” he whispered.

“That’s enough, Danny,” Kristen said in exasperation, having had enough of his bellyaching for the moment. “Just download the information.”

He did as she ordered, but Kristen could see he was on the very ragged edge of losing it. While the information was downloaded, she had a moment to consider her own condition. She needed to get some sleep. Even a few minutes would help, but she had no idea when she would get a chance.

“That’s it,” Martin offered as the download was complete, and a map of the minefield was projected onto the SMART Board.

Kristen turned to study the display and saw, despite the haphazard method of creating it, the minefield looked fairly solid. For thirty minutes they analyzed their data, searching for a path, but they found no direct line through the field. If Brodie decided to risk it, they would have to enter the field and make several sharp turns to get through safely.

“This is insane,” Martin whispered as the other officers began arriving for her briefing.

“Shh,” she whispered. “Just sit quiet and let me handle it.

“Kristen,” Martin responded with a forced whisper, “if COMSUBPAC knew what we were doing, they’d relieve Brodie in a heartbeat.”

Kristen turned on him and although she didn’t know just how sharp a look she gave him, it must have been pretty brutal because Martin wilted like a flower in the hot sun. “Not another word,” she said with a dangerous edge in her voice. It was only then she realized she’d grabbed him by the wrist and was holding it tightly. She released his arm immediately. He retracted it and began rubbing his wrist as he watched her carefully.

Brodie entered a few seconds later, skipping the usual pleasantries. Everyone was too tired and worked up for anything other than business. He moved to the SMART Board where he could get a good view of the minefield. Ryan Walcott—the navigator—was there along with the XO as Brodie turned to Kristen. “Whatcha got, Lieutenant?”

“Good and bad news I’m afraid, sir,” she admitted. “As you suspected, it is a mixed pattern, non-standard field with numerous gaps,” she answered politely, trying to keep her own mixture of emotions out of her voice. She was tired, nervous, and a bit afraid—none of which would help them at the moment. “But there isn’t a single gap in the field that’ll allow us to slip through to the other side without some fairly difficult maneuvering.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want it to be too easy,” he replied showing no hint of being deterred.

“No, of course not,” Graves said with a hint of sarcasm. “Perish the thought.”

“Ninety percent of the mines are nothing more than fifty-five gallon drums with magnetic detonators,” Kristen explained. “We could probably bump into one without it exploding. But I wouldn’t want to try it.”

“Agreed,” Brodie’s voice showed a hint of amusement. He sounded irritatingly fresh, despite the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. “What about the other ten percent?”

“They’re a combination of contact mines moored to the sea floor, plus a handful of torpedo mines which could cause us some grief,” she explained.

“What about those PMK homing mines we saw off the coast of Korea?” Graves asked her. “The ones that hide on the sea floor?”

Kristen shook her head. “We haven’t seen any,” she replied as she removed her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose, adding, “But they’re hard to spot, and we can’t rule out the possibility.”

Walcott studied the maps before offering several possible routes, all of which Kristen had already considered. None of the routes would be easy. But they slowly shortened the list to a path near the southern end of the Strait.

“It’ll require careful maneuvering in some confined waters, Skipper” Graves warned, clearly aware of the dangers in Brodie’s plan. “There’re some areas where we’ll be threading the needle.”

“But just a few tight spots,” Brodie said positively, “and Ryan’s navigation team should be able to get us through them.”

Walcott didn’t look too certain, at least not as confident as Brodie, who looked quite convinced of the viability of the plan. “Any questions?” Brodie asked the assembled officers.

Kristen shot a warning glance at Martin who was still standing quietly to the side, but he said nothing.

“How certain are you there aren’t any mines floating free and drifting into the lanes?” Walcott asked her.

Kristen was leaning against the table, feeling the full weight of responsibility for all their lives, not to mention the three billion dollar boat, on her shoulders. She swiped a wayward lock of hair from her eyes and shook her head. “The drones didn’t detect any, but…” she wanted to sound more positive, but the reality was she couldn’t be certain.

“We go,” Brodie said simply, ending the discussion. She felt a tingling sensation course through her body as he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Good work, Lieutenant,” he said simply and patted her on the shoulder. She’d seen him do this to several men since coming on board. It was his way of rewarding good work, and she knew it should mean nothing more to her than that. He removed his hand. “All right, let’s get to it.”

The decision having been made, the officers headed for the doorway leading out of the wardroom. Kristen watched them file out, feeling almost numb with fatigue and emotionally spent. She slipped her glasses into a pocket as she watched Brodie walk toward the door, wishing she had the courage to stop him. Within an hour they would be in the minefield, and then—if they were only slightly off course—their small steel world would be crushed with a single blast. Martin, although panicky and possibly losing what little self-control he had left, was right. What Brodie was planning was dangerous and could, quite possibly, kill them all.

Brief thoughts of Gibbs and Miller entered her mind, followed by the words Patricia had said to her. Kristen had sacrificed everything to reach this point, and the possibility that it hadn’t been worth the sacrifice was haunting her. Additionally, physical and mental fatigue were taking their toll, preventing her usually disciplined mind from keeping her wayward thoughts in check.

“Captain?” Kristen heard herself call to him and immediately regretted it as he turned toward her. He paused just inside the wardroom. The other officers continued on.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” he asked, his eyes not quite as hard as they’d been a few moments earlier when he made the decision on the path through the minefield.

She stared at him dumbly, her mind racing with contradictory thoughts and conflicting feelings. She had to tell him. She wanted to tell him. But this was hardly the time or the place.

But if not now, when? He himself had told them there were no more tomorrows.

She stood on her trembling knees but just shook her head. “Nothing, sir. It’s nothing.”

But he didn’t walk off. He didn’t turn and walk away, leaving her alone to curse her weakness. Instead, he asked, “Are you all right, Kris?”