“Is it ours or foreign?” Dobryvnik yelled back.
“It’s Russian, sir,” Vasilev said.
Dobryvnik rushed to the sonar-and-sensor console to look over Vasilev’s display. He looked back at Vlasenko. “It’s Voronezh, Mr. First. We should respond. With a three-pulse narrow aperture high frequency active pulse, centered on the bearing to the Voronezh’s pulse.”
“Very well, respond with a three-pulse narrow aperture high freq active,” Vlasenko ordered. “And maintain your course and speed. Let Voronezh close the distance to us with our track staying predictable.” The last time two submarines tried to rendezvous together using active sonar, they’d collided, ruining careers. He pulled the console’s phone to his ear while dialing the captain’s cabin.
“Captain,” Captain First Rank Yuri Orlov answered. “I heard the pulse and your return pings. I’ll be right there.”
The town car pulled to a halt at the lobby entrance to the West Wing. National Security Advisor Michael Pacino had already had his biometric identification checked at the entrance and his briefcase scanned. At the lobby door he relinquished his cell phone to a Secret Service agent and walked through a whole-body scanner, his briefcase scanned a second time. CIA Director Margo Allende was waiting for him, her sleek auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail, dressed for business, as was Pacino himself, having donned a black suit and tie for the meeting with the president.
“I got here as fast as I could.” He glanced at his scratched, ancient Rolex Submariner watch. They’d wanted him here at 2230 and he was ten minutes late.
“You’re fine, Patch. The president decided to postpone the meeting until morning. Joint chiefs will be here at zero six hundred for breakfast and the president will be down at seven. The VP and Admiral Catardi will join by secure video conference. But I’m glad you’re here. I need to brief you on a late-breaking development.”
As they took the steps to the lower level and the entrance to the Situation Room, he had the thought that he missed Camp David and its rustic informality.
“You probably haven’t seen the message, I take it.”
“I haven’t. My pad computer said it wouldn’t load until I was in the Situation Room.”
“Well, you’re not gonna like it,” she said. “But I’ve got something for you that might ease the pain.”
“What am I not going to like?”
Margo Allende opened the door of the Situation Room — it was empty, unlike Pacino had expected. Even though the meeting with the president was postponed, the Situation Room was almost always partially occupied, but not tonight. “You want coffee? I’ll fetch you one from the wardroom while you read the message.”
“Yeah, that would be great. Black-and-bitter, please.” Pacino found the seat he’d taken the last time there was a Situation Room meeting, on the right side of the president’s end seat, three seats down, the other two seats between him and Carlucci taken by the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy. Pacino pulled his pad computer out and put it on the table next to a notebook and his pen, then opened the software, submitted to the retinal scan and read the message Allende had told him about.
At the line reading, ‘Panther change-of-command ceremony successful,’ he smiled to himself. That was excellent news, and a great way to summarize the op. But then paragraph three caught his eye.
(S) PANTHER CREW CONSISTS OF:
OIC LT. D. DANKLEFF, USN
AOIC LT. A. PACINO, USN
Pacino’s mouth dropped open — holy shit, he thought. Seagraves had actually assigned Anthony to the boarding party. How the hell could that make any sense at all? After all the kid had been through on Piranha, they were sending him out an airlock in scuba gear? On one of the most dangerous missions since the search-and-destroy mission for the renegade nuclear-powered drone sub? Pacino’s jaw tightened. When Vermont got back from this mission, he’d have a strong word with Commander Seagraves. If Vermont got back from this mission, he thought.
He’d reached the end of the message by the time Allende brought him a mug with the seal of the president on it, the hot steaming coffee’s aroma the only good thing about the evening. She looked at him, sat next to him and put her hand on his forearm.
“I know you’re upset about Little Patch, but he’s going to be okay.”
“Jesus, Margo, the most dangerous mission since we went after the drone submarine and my son’s on it. He’s not even qualified in submarines yet!”
“I know, but apparently his superior officers were impressed with his tactical ability. You have to imagine that with him being the son of the most storied fighting admiral since Halsey and Nimitz and fucking Horatio Nelson, some of your DNA would rub off on him and make him a tactical genius too. And I doubt anyone on that boarding party is a conscript, Patch, they’re all volunteers.”
Pacino smiled at that. He had to admit, he liked that expression—‘fighting admiral.’ “Well, then dammit, I’m going to have a strong word with my son when this is over.” He took a pull of the coffee. “You said you had something that might make this miserable situation better?”
“Yeah, there’s an update on Operation Blue Hardhat,” Allende said. “We have a small transmitter — more of a transponder, actually — placed on submarine periscopes. We managed to steal power for it from inside the periscope’s systems without being detected. If the periscope is dry, the transmitter radios us the submarine’s position. It’s useless, of course, if the sub is deep, but most submarines come up for navigation purposes and to get radio traffic passively every day or two, and when the subs with this transponder come up, they tell us who they are and where they are.”
“You have these on seven Yasen-M-class submarines?”
“We have them on the two Yasen-M boats that the Russian engineer said were inbound the Arabian Sea.”
Pacino’s face lit up. “Where?”
Allende projected her pad computer to a large display monitor opposite where they sat at the table. A projection of the Arabian Sea came up with the Saudi peninsula on the west side and the India coast on the right.
“One unit, Yasen Four, showed up in Port Aden in Oman. We believe he had maintenance trouble after traveling in from the Pacific fleet. The other unit, Yasen Six, was in the Med, at anchor waiting for the Suez Canal fiasco to get cleared up. Both units, by our analysts’ reckoning, were inbound the Gulf of Oman to escort out the Panther, but when they were both delayed, the Iranians decided to send the Panther to sea early.”
Pacino looked at Allende. “Did you put one of these transponders onto the periscope of the Panther?”
Allende looked back at him. Pacino could tell she was trying hard to control her facial expression.
“I can neither confirm nor deny, Patch. That’s a different program.”
Pacino considered — if there were a separate special compartmented information program on the Panther, maybe the CIA did know where it was. And what about Vermont? Would the Pentagon have outfitted it with a stealth-breaking transponder?