Each man looked at the other silently, seemingly embarrassed that there was nothing definitive any of them could say.
“Whose?” Nelson inquired softly.
Delaney looked apologetic as he reached for a doughnut. “Can’t tell yet. Too far away, I’d say. We’ve been experiencing some odd temperature gradients out there for one thing, and I don’t think our contact is burning up the ocean either. That’s why whatever we pick up keeps drifting in and out. We’ve got to have a steadier sound for a while before we can analyze it properly. Or we’ve got to find some spot out here where water temperatures are constant and he lights up for us like a neon sign.”
“I suppose we’re going to have to wait to get any target-motion analysis.” Jimmy Cross spread his hands on the table, palms up.
“All we can be sure of is that it’s off the port bow now,” Mundy responded. “Could be doing anything.”
Nelson ran the back of his hand across the stubble on his chin. “And we’ve got nothing of ours operating nearby?” he asked the XO again.
“Not unless there’s been some drastic changes in op areas that they didn’t give us before we got under way,” Cross answered.
“Then it’s Soviet.” Buck Nelson shrugged and spread his hands. “No one else is running submarines out here.”
There was no response from any of the others.
“So, my friend,” Nelson said to Mundy. “No more sleep for you, I’m afraid.” He grinned at Delaney. “You see, there are ways of getting even, Chief. Until we know better, your contact is assumed to be unfriendly. I want you to do everything you possibly can — and then some — to identify it and track it. We’ll keep the rest of the crew on regular watch until we have something. We’re going to turn to a southerly leg shortly, and that’ll bring your contact to the starboard bow, maybe close it a bit.”
“Suggestion,” Cross said.
“Shoot.”
“I’d like to have the OOD’s exaggerate their base course maneuvering, try some more radical depth and course changes. If sound conditions are as difficult as the chief claims, we might as well cover ourselves as much as possible … make it equally difficult if they’re looking for us.”
“Go ahead, Mr. Sones has been looking forward to something to kill the boredom. That ought to make him happy.”
No more than a couple of weeks had been necessary for COMSUBPAC’s flag lieutenant to become comfortable around admirals. His job required that he work closely with one daily, and he had lost track of the number he had met since he was ordered to Neil Arrow. At first, totaling up the number of stars he came in contact with had been a game — one for a fresh-caught flag officer, two for a rear admiral, three for a vice admiral, and four for a full admiral. But he lost track when he passed one hundred thirty, so he decided to break off his count at the end of each week. He was also getting tired of all those stars. Admirals had become a dime a dozen.
It was quite different, though, when the CNO and the three most senior submariners in the Navy gathered in one room. The stars totaled fourteen, although it came to eighteen whenever PACFLEET joined them. That was the very highest end of the scale, if his averages included stars in a single room at one time. And not only were they an imposing group, these men were also family — on a first-name basis and well aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. One man’s thoughts could easily be verbalized by another.
“Right there,” Neil Arrow tapped the spot on the northern Pacific with a pointer. “Last-known position. They were closing on that Soviet intelligence vessel.”
“I thought they were scheduled for refueling,” said Admiral Larsen.
Arrow nodded. “They already had rendezvous instructions. The pilot rogered them — so he had to have received them properly — then he continued with something else that was garbled. Weather stinks up there. Must be three or four fronts trying to pass through all at the same time. Communications were limited at best.”
“But they’d found something out, your flag lieutenant said?” Larsen inquired.
“I’m not sure what. That’s the message, or whatever we could put together from it.” He nodded at the flag lieutenant. “Give Admiral Larsen a copy of that, please. You see, Ray,” he continued, “it just came to me about fifteen minutes ago, and it was so nebulous I couldn’t see dragging you out of the head to read it, since you were going to be in here in a few minutes anyway. All we can figure is that the pilot was closing that Soviet intelligence ship because he apparently thought he had something. He probably figured the weather was screwing everything up and it was worth a shot to come in on top of them.”
Mark Bennett’s eyes had never left the spot where the pointer had been. Christ, what a godforsaken place! South of the Aleutians — where elephants went to die. There wouldn’t be a trace of that plane by the time the weather cleared, and sometimes it was like that for weeks on end. “What a hell of a way to go. I hope they were dead before they hit the water.” He was aware of some of the grisly sights rescue craft found after men had struggled to survive in those waters. “They deserved better than they got.”
“We don’t know for certain—” Newman began.
“No, we don’t, Robbie. I guess that’s the least of our concerns, isn’t it? No backup for them?”
“Weather closed in worse than when we sent them out,” Arrow answered. “We were advised to wait a couple of hours to see if it would lighten up. It’s not going to.”
Bennett stared at the aircraft’s last position. “When they do send a new crew out, tell that pilot to stay away from that Russian ship.”
“I figure that’s what got ‘em, too,” Larsen agreed, “but we’ll probably never know.” He pointed a finger at Mark Bennett and waved it in a circle. “You were going to locate that attack sub of yours … Pasadena,” he recalled.
“Nothing. No response during normal communications periods. We’ve had some aircraft in her operations area the past few hours searching, planting sonobuoys … everything. Not a sound. My boats don’t operate that way—” Bennett stopped in midsentence and stared back at the CNO, then waggled a finger back at him. “Now, damn it, Ray, stop pointing that thing at me. You really piss me off sometimes. I’ve got enough to think about without having to convince myself not to take a swipe at the Chief of Naval Operations — and believe me, I’ve thought about it the past twenty-four hours. So.…” He couldn’t think of another thing to say.
Larsen’s face expanded into a huge grin. His normally penetrating blue eyes twinkled. He turned the finger that was still pointing in Bennett’s direction around and stared at it. “Looks like a regular, run-of-the-mill index finger to me.” He raised his eyebrows. “Never shot anyone with it yet.” Then he uttered a short, sharp sound that was intended to be a laugh. “So I was intimidating you with it.” He looked at the anger. “I often wondered if it was working that well, but I never had the guts to ask anyone.” He glanced over at Neil Arrow. “Does it piss you off, too?”
“You’re damn right it does, Ray. We’re not a bunch of telephone commanders trying to act important, it irritates the hell out of me.” There, he’d made his own point.
“Well, all you’ve got to do is say something,” Larsen said, pleased with himself. “It’s just a bad habit, I guess.” But just as quickly he wheeled around and pointed it at Arrow’s flag lieutenant, whose mouth had dropped slightly at the shift in conversation. “If I ever hear a story about this conversation, I’ll know exactly where it came from, young man.”
“My lips are sealed, Admiral.” Once again the young officer was the picture of perfect naval decorum.