He never went in the stores. It was more fun to lounge outside and watch the people, especially the girls in bikinis when they were near a beach. Sometimes he would stop at a fruit stand. Steel had a passion for fresh fruit, and that was always an important part of his trip. If his three females could wander the stores, then the only male in the family was allowed to indulge himself when the opportunity arose.
When they arrived at Makaha, the girls would go off by themselves since they intended to stroll the beach in their bikinis like all the others their age and they were sure their stern father wouldn’t approve. What they failed to understand was that their father only disapproved of their trolling for boys like that. Ben Steel’s favorite pastime at Makaha was no different than his daughters’, except that he was doing the looking. If ever he happened to see his girls out of the corner of his eye, he always pretended to be looking the other way. Connie would hold onto his arm as they meandered across the hot sand repeating every so often what a dirty old man she married.
Makaha was a wonderful way to spend a day. International surfers were the reason everyone gathered there, and it was all good-natured fun. The police made sure that the beer drinkers stayed under control, and the girls consistently went home with new phone numbers. It was always a superb day.
Steel opened his eyes and stared at the neutral-green bulkhead of the confining stateroom that surrounded him. It had been a lovely daydream for a few moments — he looked at his watch and noticed that this particular trip to Makaha had taken less than ten minutes. But now he was relaxed. There were times he often wondered if he really slept. Was it possible to order up a dream like that? Could it be so vivid if he were asleep?
Ben Steel stood up and stretched, then went over to the metal sink and splashed some cool water in his face. The figure that stared back from the mirror needed a fresh shirt, Why not indulge yourself, Steel? You may never need another.
Chapter Five
A cold wind, spawned in the bleak, frigid Laptev Sea, swept over the western Siberian mountain ranges, crossed the Kamchatka peninsula, then whipped down the Bering Sea across the Aleutians into the open ocean. There was nothing in the northern Pacific to stall its mounting fury. Wave heights increased dramatically. Ousting winds flattened the peaks of waves and blew the foam from the whitecaps horizontally until vision was five hundred yards at best. The ceiling was less than a thousand feet.
SSV-516 plowed through the heaving ocean on a course thirty degrees off the oncoming wind. Any number of ships longer and heavier could handle such a day with reasonable comfort, but hardly any could churn through such seas with the relative ease of SSV-516. She was a scientific research vessel, which was a charitable appellation for an intelligence collector. Her broad beam coupled with a full-load displacement of five thousand tons countered the tumbling seas effectively.
Her commanding officer, Captain Markov, remained in the pilothouse almost constantly in such weather. He had little concern for hull damage but worried constantly over the tremendous value of her electronic equipment. Just one slip by an inattentive watch stander and a series of heavy rolls would result in damage that could be both costly to repair and hazardous to her mission. Most of her sophisticated equipment was unavailable anywhere on the east coast of the USSR, and replacement parts would have to be flown in from the research centers west of the Urals. SSV-516’s captain had been selected over a host of talented naval officers for his seamanship, common sense, and caution in such weather; he would not have been selected to command a man-of-war.
The ship was plodding along at seven knots, her bow occasionally plowing deep into the sea. Even in the pilothouse one could feel the shudder run throughout the ship when she struggled to shake the tons of green water spilling from her broad bow to either side of her main deckhouse.
Her nose was buried in dark water when the phone next to the captain’s chair buzzed. “Yes.”
“Captain, this is Lieutenant Peshkov. The American aircraft are at two hundred kilometers, still closing on a direct line.”
“Have you learned if there are any of their aircraft carriers within range?”
“Negative. Definitely not carrier aircraft. We picked them up shortly after departure from their Air Force base in the Aleutians. I’d wager my next paycheck they’re recon aircraft. What little electronics they’re employing fit that ID.”
“How are they armed?” SSV-516 shook violently as her bow lifted out of the swell, flinging green water to either side.
“They aren’t. Purely intelligence gathering, the type that should normally stay about where they are now … just listen. That’s what I was anticipating even though they’re still closing the gap. It could be a standard intelligence mission … or they could be out here for a specific reason, maybe wondering if we have anything to do with those submarines of theirs.” Word seemed to be spreading on SSV-516.
“Let me know if they close to a hundred kilometers.” He cut off his radar officer and pushed the buzzer for his warrant-missile specialist. “I want your men on standby. A possible target is closing from the east.”
Captain Markov felt much better after replacing the phone in its cradle. This world of electronics was a comfortable one, a world in which the human eye was no longer necessary. But somehow he had been intimidated, almost frightened, by the cloak of invisibility that the clouds and blowing spray surrounded him with. His missiles became a comforting shield — even though their range was no more than ten kilometers. He suppressed the knowledge that any self-respecting pilot would already be aware of SSV-516’s defensive weaknesses and would find it easy to remain just beyond their reach.
It was an especially quiet watch in Florida’s control room. The watch section was exhausted from Buck Nelson’s intensive exercises, and the diving officer found it necessary to shift men at their positions more often than usual to keep them alert. It was also a boring watch, few contacts, smooth seas above. The OOD had little interest in maneuvering games. Their course was generally steady, speed and depth rarely changed, and sonar’s only contacts were distant sounds that would have no effect on the submarine.
“Thirty minutes to the wall,” the duty quartermaster announced in a bored monotone. He’d been replotting their position and reporting the time every five minutes to no one in particular — anyone who might listen — simply to keep himself alert. The internal navigational system’s positions were determined by the computer and accurate within feet. A typewriter in the control room printed out their longitude and latitude every six minutes. But he had chosen to plot their location by hand, just as quartermasters had done before the Omega system became more accurate than the individual who operated it. The old methods were those he’d learned first, and now they were a welcome crutch to stay awake.
Captain Nelson’s standing orders didn’t require notice of a base course change, only reason not to have done so, but no one in the darkened control room minded if the quartermaster had decided to keep them informed. Each instance after the time to maneuver was called out, one by one the others ambled over to the chart table to study their new location — a couple of additional miles covered on an imaginary line superimposed over a chart of a single sector in the Pacific Ocean. The background was entirely blue, no indication of anything they might identify with. Only the neat, black numbers indicating ocean depths revealed any type of relief, and that was the bottom, miles below.