Seawolf End Game (39 page)

“Conn, sonar. We have a possible submerged contact bearing two-nine-eight. Very faint, but it could be a nuclear submarine.”

Fabrini ordered the other operators to focus on the bearing in hopes of finding whatever it was and classifying it. Greenberg heard nothing, but beside him on the classification stack, Hicks suddenly nodded his head. “It isn’t much, but it is definitely manmade.” Unfortunately, there were thousands of manmade noises around them at the moment.

“What is it?” Fabrini heard the captain ask as he entered the shack. Brodie looked even worse than Kristen.

“Possible submerged submarine, Skipper,” Fabrini reported promptly.

“Who picked it up?” Brodie asked, not looking very impressed. There’d been well over two dozen false alarms in the last two hours. There was just too much clutter in the water for the operators to separate the important sounds from all the background chaff.

Fabrini nodded toward Kristen. “Hicks thinks he heard it too, sir.”

Brodie shook his head in exhaustion and possible annoyance. “All this equipment doesn’t seem to be doing us much good, Mister Fabrini.” He slipped behind Kristen and leaned down over her slightly. “Whatcha got, Lieutenant?”

“It’s faint and intermittent. But I would have sworn it was plant noise, sir,” she replied without looking up.

“When was the last time you slept?”

She shook her head in reply, removed her glasses and rubbed her tired eyes. “I’m not sure any more.”

Brodie glanced at Fabrini with a questioning eye, but Fabrini could only shrug, not certain when she’d last slept.

“Well, that’s good enough for me,” Brodie concluded, willing to accept that she’d heard what she claimed. He patted her shoulder then grabbed the microphone to speak with the control room.

“Con, this is Brodie. New course bearing three-one-five and bring the boat to general quarters.”

The
Seawolf
turned slowly while Kristen and the other sonar operators continued listening. Meanwhile the rest of the crew manned their battle stations, something they were now taking as routine instead of unusual. Fabrini stood by Brodie, and they each watched Kristen, knowing that if anyone would find the noise, it would be her. But after fifteen minutes of patiently waiting and watching the other sonar operators come up empty, they finally saw her lean back tiredly in her seat and remove her headphones. “It’s not there,” she reported in a tone of voice that hinted at more than just exhaustion affecting her. She sounded frustrated and, perhaps, a little embarrassed.

“Lieutenant?” Brodie asked calmly.

“I…I lost him,” she admitted but didn’t look up. She kept her eyes focused on the display in front of her. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Fabrini felt bad for her. She’d been killing herself hoping to find the elusive
Borei,
but she was clearly beyond being effective. She needed to come off the sonar and get some decent rest.

“Nothing to apologize for, Lieutenant,” Brodie replied as he patted her slender shoulder. “Take a break, get cleaned up, and I want you to hit the rack for at least six hours,” he ordered. “Killing yourself won’t help us.”

She stood slowly. Fabrini could see that her entire body was stiff from having been seated in the same position hovering over the spectrum analyzer for so long. He knew the feeling, but he’d never been at it nearly as long as she had. He couldn’t imagine how sore she had to be. The look on her face was testament enough that she’d done her best, but she was now dead on her feet. Slowly, as if already dreaming, she stumbled out of the shack.

Brodie watched her leave, and Fabrini could see the concern in the captain’s eyes. “How long has she been in here?” Brodie asked once she was gone.

“Other than a couple of short breaks to get rid of coffee, she’s been in here for the better part of thirty-six hours, sir,” he admitted.

Brodie exhaled in a bit of frustration. “If she comes back in here before she gets at least six hours of sleep, I want to know about it.”

“Aye, sir,” Fabrini replied feeling guilty he’d let her go for so long.

Kristen felt like she was in a fog as she made it to the bathroom, her body going almost on autopilot as she headed for the shower. Fatigued physically and mentally more than she could have ever imagined, she sat down on the commode for just a brief moment to rest and was instantly asleep.

Almost immediately she was dreaming. The vision was far more pleasurable than reality. She was once again in Brodie’s cabin and in his arms. Just like in the previous dream, the two of them surrendered to their secret desires and traded their duty for passion.

She awoke abruptly as her body sagged, and she nearly fell over. Kristen shook her head and forced herself to stand. She plunged her head into a sink of ice-cold water then stripped out of her soiled uniform before climbing into the shower. After several minutes of letting the icy water refresh her as much as possible, she turned off the water. She then realized that in her mental fog, she’d forgotten a towel.

Forced to use the only towel available, she picked up Brodie’s that was hanging—as usual—from a metal peg on the bulkhead. She was almost too tired to care, but then, as she towel dried her hair, she caught a hint of his scent on the towel. She buried her face in the soft cotton and inhaled deeply. The aroma was almost hypnotic to her, and for several seconds she held the towel to her face breathing in and out. She finally returned the moist towel to its proper place and dressed before stepping back out into his cabin.

Tiredly, she leaned against the bulkhead. The same bulkhead in her dream she’d fallen back against, pulling him to her. In her exhaustion, she now all but wilted against it, her head sagging slightly. She was too drained to force the errant thoughts aside. She was almost asleep on her feet. She opened her eyes, wishing for the dream to become reality, but knew she would never tell him how she felt. Despite Patricia’s voice haunting her, despite her burning desire to let him know, she couldn’t do it.

Kristen pushed herself back to an upright position. But as she did, she noticed something on the bottom of the bulkhead by the floor. Her first thought was that she’d dropped something and she bent down to pick it up. But then froze as she saw, along the bottom of the wall, several scuff marks made by the heel of a boot.

Brodie’s cabin had never had so much as a hair out of place. Not even once. But the heel marks now stared back at her accusingly. No one wore boots on the
Seawolf
except her; everyone else wore soft-soled tennis shoes. She’d discarded her gore-stained tennis shoes weeks earlier following Vance’s suicide.

Her thoughts of the dream came rolling back to her. Kristen stood, the exhaustion momentarily forgotten, her thoughts clear for the first time in hours.

It had been real!

She hadn’t dreamed it at all. Nor had she imagined it.

Just like she hadn’t imagined what she was now certain she’d heard in the sonar shack just before being relieved from duty to get some sleep.

Kristen rushed from the cabin and back to the sonar shack. She entered the stuffy, stench-filled space and saw Fabrini supervising the others. He immediately turned on her, and she could see he was surprised to see her. “I hadn’t expected you back so soon, Lieutenant,” he offered as he stood in front of her.

“I wasn’t imagining it,” Kristen told him as she slipped by him to the broadband stack. “Hicks, can I?” she asked, prodding Hicks to surrender his seat.

 Hicks did so grudgingly as Fabrini stepped in behind her. “Ma’am, I thought the captain wanted you to get some sleep?” he asked delicately.

Kristen had regained—for a brief time she was certain—some semblance of alertness, and she frantically began searching the depths for the sound she now knew she hadn’t imagined.

“What course are we on?” she asked Fabrini, trying to maintain her recent surge of energy long enough to locate the contact she’d heard.

“We’re back on the base course, heading north,” Fabrini offered.

“No,” she said out loud, shaking her head to keep herself awake. “No, that’s wrong,” she insisted. “He’s behind us. We need to turn around.”

Normally the control room listened to course suggestions from the sonar room when they were working a target, but Fabrini hesitated. “Lieutenant, maybe you should get some sleep.”

Kristen shook her head forcefully. “Mister Fabrini, the
Borei
is dead astern of us right now. If we don’t turn around, we may never find her again.”

“How can you be so certain?” he asked. “The waters there were filled with noises, and you’re—”

“Trust me,” Kristen insisted trying to ward off the onset of physical collapse from exhaustion just a few minutes longer. “It was them.”

Fabrini hesitated, but then reached up and pulled down the microphone. “Con, sonar.”

“Whatcha got, Mister Fabrini?”
Kristen heard Brodie’s voice.

“Sir, Lieutenant Whitaker requests we execute a one-eighty and double back on our course,” Fabrini explained. Kristen could hear the combination of skepticism and concern in his voice.

“I’m on my way.”

She knew Fabrini and the others thought she was losing it. This recognition caused her to get angry, which helped keep her alert as she waited for Brodie who appeared a few moments later.

He came in, looking as haggard as before. For a brief moment she feared he would join the others in their skepticism. Instead, he simply asked, “What is it, Lieutenant?”

“Sir, I know what I was hearing,” she explained. “I wasn’t imagining it. It was plant noise.”

Brodie didn’t argue with her. “Yes, but we couldn’t reacquire them.”

“True, but there was something else; something within the other noise; something I missed.” Kristen’s encyclopedic memory was pulling the sounds she’d heard and replaying them over and over again in her head. “Please, Captain, you have to trust me,” she nearly pleaded. “Just once more.”

He paused for a moment and glanced at Fabrini, who clearly thought she could no longer be counted on because of her fatigue. Despite this, he nodded his head. “Okay, Lieutenant,” Brodie replied and leaned against the stack, gripping a handhold to steady himself. Brodie pulled down the microphone and ordered the one-hundred-eighty degree turn about as Kristen had requested.

The
Seawolf
came around slowly, turning her powerful bow mounted sonar array on the waters behind them. As they turned, Kristen worked her controls, closing her eyes and searching for the noise she was certain was there. She’d heard it. She hadn’t been mistaken; just like she wasn’t mistaken about their encounter in his cabin. A momentary encounter interrupted by a call from the communications shack about an incoming message for him. Her fatigue had caused it all to blend together, but she’d managed to push the weariness away once more.

Behind her, she could feel him watching. The fact he believed her, the fact he’d changed course meant more to her than any words he could ever say. But now she had to justify his confidence. She had to once more prove to everyone she was right.

Her hand trembled slightly as she adjusted the fine tuning on the broadband system. She focused the incredible sound vacuuming power of the thousands of hydrophones in the bow sonar array to bring in the one noise she was looking for. She listened intently, certain she would hear it if she were patient enough.

It seemed to take forever for the
Seawolf
to turn. Her fingers constantly adjusted her controls. Then she heard it, and with a hint of triumph she flipped a switch on the panel, and the sound was now audible over her speakers. “Bearing zero-two-three,” she reported, leaning back tiredly but with eminent satisfaction.

“What’s that?” Brodie asked anyone who cared to answer.

Fabrini response was simply, “Jesus.” The other sonar operators heard it too and looked at her incredulously, not believing it. “Crab, sir,” Fabrini explained. “Snow Crab.” He then spoke to her, “How did you know? How did you pick it up?”

Kristen told them how she’d heard regular plant noises originally, but the noises had faded. In her exhaustion, she’d failed to consider what might occur if the
Borei
shut down its reactor and turned over to its fuel cell. “If they did it, then the plant noises would be replaced by something similar to what we heard earlier when we encountered the
Gagarin,
” she explained.

“Snow Crab,” Brodie concluded as the
Seawolf
once more had a target.

Kristen stayed on the broadband stack as Brodie ordered three course changes over a twenty minute period. This was sufficient to provide a trio of new bearings for the tracking party to begin estimating a firing solution. Meanwhile, the
Seawolf
slipped silently through the water.

“Keep your ears open in other directions,” Brodie ordered the sonar operators. “Standard Russian submarine doctrine,” he explained. “No Boomer travels alone, so I doubt the
Borei
is flying solo.”

Kristen stuck to the
Borei
as the others continued searching in the event a fast-attack boat was close at hand.

“He’s loitering, Captain,” she whispered. “There’s hardly any propeller noise.”

The squawk box overhead came to life with Andrew Stahl’s voice,
“Skipper, we’ve got a pretty good firing solution, on
Sierra Twelve.”

“Roger,” Brodie replied. “Program the information into tubes five and eight. Be ready for a snapshot on tubes three and seven. We’ve got a fast-attack boat out there somewhere.”

Kristen didn’t doubt him, but had no idea how he could be so sure. The
Gagarin
might have been the
Borei’s
escort.

“Look sharp, people,” Brodie whispered.

“Sir,”
she again heard Stahl,
“ADCAPs in five and eight have firing date entered. Should we flood tubes and open outer doors?”
This evolution would put sound energy into the water and possibly alert any nearby fast-attack boat.

“Roger,” Brodie ordered, “flood tubes three and seven as well. Once we launch on the
Borei,
our hidden friend will show himself.”

He turned his attention back to Kristen. “Anything?”