They’d arrived at the biometric check-in at the White House West Wing. Ten minutes after they’d been admitted, they were in the Situation Room. They grabbed their customary seats. Allende clicked into her pad computer, which was designed to only receive classified information when it was securely within a special compartmented information facility. She paired it the central flatpanel screen on the wall and brought up the view of the globe with the Arabian Sea in the center of the screen. Two dull red dots flashed to indicate the previous positions of the Russian submarine periscopes from earlier in the night. A new bright red dot had started flashing, this one perhaps seventy nautical miles farther west of the old position of the dots. Allende toggled the past and present. Dots traveling up the Indian coast slowly, then bang, one of them suddenly was a third of the way to the Panther. And the Vermont.
“Dammit, that’s not good,” Pacino said. “The Russian’s headed due west now. And look how far he’s gotten from where he was. He must be going flank with fast speed main coolant pumps. He’s making a beeline for the exact position of the Panther. Dammit, Margo, the Russians must have gotten a detect on a transient noise of the Panther or they just picked up her tonals when she was on reactor power. Or they intercepted Panther’s situation report radio transmission. This could be over in hours. We could lose this thing. Is this enough aggression to allow us to counterattack?”
Allende shook her head. “Carlucci’s rules of engagement state we can only attack at the distance of Vermont’s weapons range.”
“Weapons range is about the far limit of the ability to detect another submarine,” Pacino said, “for torpedoes, that is. Vermont could put a nuclear depth charge close enough to this Yasen-M to put it out of business. That’s inside weapons range.”
Allende shook her head. “You’d miss. This intel is an hour old. The Yasen-M could have turned since this was shot, or slowed down. Plus, it still doesn’t meet Carlucci’s rules of engagement.”
“Maybe we should wake the president and get special dispensation.”
Allende shook her head. “He won’t go for it.”
Pacino clenched his fist on the table. “If we give Vermont this intel, they could calculate the approximate time of the incoming sub to be inside their torpedo weapons range.”
“Vermont got the word. I don’t know what Seagraves and his crew are doing with the intel, but they know.”
Pacino exhaled, then had a thought. “What about the other submarine? No periscope detect on it?”
Allende shook her head. “Either he’s still submerged, or his transponder failed.”
Pacino found himself feeling something he hadn’t felt in years — the desire to be submerged and back in command. If he were the one in command of Vermont, he thought, he’d throw enough high explosives at that goddamned Yasen-M to cut it to ribbons. High explosives, hell, he scoffed to himself. They had nuclear release authority. Pacino would toss enough bomb-grade plutonium at that bastard to vaporize him.
Engineer Mario Elvis Lewinsky had been on the conn when their daily designated call sign had been received by the VLF loop antenna, receiving the two-letter sign transmitted from the ELF radio station in Al-Kharj in southern Saudi Arabia, outside of Riyadh. ELF, extremely low frequency, was the only radio frequency strong enough to penetrate the ocean depths, but it required massive transmitter power and gigantic antennae, and the data rate was slow, the two-letter call sign taking a full twelve minutes to be received. Lewinsky had picked up the command console phone to call the captain the moment the first letter was received, and at Seagraves’ concurrence, had brought Vermont to periscope depth.
Once the periscope dried, the intel update and radio broadcast were received into the buffer, and Lewinsky had taken the boat deep again, back on the southeast course she’d be pursuing for the next few minutes until a roll of the dice predicted a random turn time. Vermont had been zigzagging north of Panther, at a range of between four thousand and ten thousand yards, keeping a weather eye out for the Iranian Kilo submarine, shepherding her out of the Arabian Sea, and taking their navigation cue from Panther, staying on her base course, since there was no communication between the two submarines. So far, the seaway had been clear, only very few merchant ships detected here in the middle of the Arabian Sea, far from shipping lanes and great circle routes to the other continents. But obviously something was up, and the brass wanted them to know something new.
He felt his shoulder tapped by a yawning Lieutenant Don “Easy” Eisenhart, the communications officer. “I’m here to relieve you, Feng,” Eisenhart said. “Skipper and XO want you in the wardroom for an emergency op brief.”
“I figured,” Lewinsky said. “Own ship is on course one two zero, all ahead two thirds, rigged for natural circulation, rigged for ultra-quiet, turns for ten. No surface contacts. Panther bears two-zero-three, range forty-five hundred yards. Panther course is one-seven-seven, speed six knots, since she came down from her eighteen-knot sprint at zero five thirty. And obviously, no other submerged contacts. Snowman Mercer has the Q-10 stack, and if he says there’s no hostile submerged contacts, you’re safe in the sea.”
“I got the bubble, Feng,” Eisenhart said. “I relieve you, sir.”
“I stand relieved,” Lewinsky said to Eisenhart. “In control,” he said, his voice loud, crisp and formal, “Lieutenant Eisenhart has the deck and the conn!”
Lewinsky hurried to the wardroom, checking his thigh pocket for his pad computer. He was the last officer to join the crowd in the room. He found himself momentarily stunned at how empty the room looked, with the empty chairs a reminder that Dankleff, Varney and Pacino were no longer with them, and neither were the two SEAL officers. He took his seat opposite Commander Quinnivan. Romanov stepped over to lean across the table and handed Lewinsky a steaming cup of black coffee. He looked up at her gratefully, and she smiled at him, her perfect white teeth lit up like a movie star’s. Perhaps she was getting more human, he thought. Her cold war with Sprocket Spichovich had seemed to include him, since he and Sprocket were best friends. Perhaps she and Sprocket were slowly, finally, burying the hatchet. Or, worse, maybe Pacino’s departure had made the predatory navigatrix fix her sights back on Sprocket. Or worse than that, on him. But there would never be another woman for Mario Elvis Lewinsky, not after Bamanda the Redhead, he thought. Redhead had truly been the love of his life. He wondered, idly, if there would ever be any chance to win her back, his mind returning to his habitual and endless fantasies of running into her in a cozy pub where he could make a case to her to be his woman again.
“Nav, we have everyone?” Seagraves asked, jarring Lewinsky from his daydream.
“Sir, yes, sir,” Romanov said. She stood behind Quinnivan near the credenza’s coffee machines and hit the remote control to bring up the room’s large flatpanel display. A view from high earth orbit appeared, scrubbed of clouds, the Arabian Sea in the middle of the screen. “We got this intel some time ago.” Two red dots appeared on the screen. “These are periscope detects of the two Yasen-M-class Russian attack subs at approximately our own latitude, but three hundred nautical miles due east, hugging the Indian coastline. That was then. This is now.” Romanov clicked her computer display, and the red dots disappeared, replaced with one red dot, flashing at a spot much closer to them. “This submarine came to periscope depth at zero seven thirty-five Zulu time. Before that, he made a speed over ground of over thirty-five knots and covered eighty nautical miles, directly for our future position.” Romanov toggled the display — the past from eight hours ago, then the past from ninety minutes ago. Far away. Closer. Far away. Closer.