“Jesus Christ,” Quinnivan said. “They’re headed straight for us. Dammit, Skipper, they have our solution.”
Seagraves rubbed his chin. “If they had us nailed that accurately,” he said, “why didn’t they toss a rocket-propelled depth charge at us?”
The room grew silent, the officers in deep thought. “Maybe they’re guessing,” Lewinsky offered. “Maybe their AI analyzed a probability distribution. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that we intend to take the stolen Panther to the western hemisphere. We may not be following the great circle route, but we’re meandering southward nonetheless. A good AI system could nuke that out.”
“If that were true,” Quinnivan said, “they’d be going farther south of our future position and lie in wait for us. Or they’d head for the waters off Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, and execute a barrier search for us there.”
Seagraves spoke up. “Officers, we have to assume the Yasen-M-class boats have similar orders to our own. Weapons release permission granted. Nuclear release authority. Here in the big, wide Arabian Sea, far off the shipping lanes, who is going to notice a small tactical nuclear warhead detonation? Never mind that the Indian Ocean is ten times the size of the vast Arabian Sea. And if the Russians haven’t fired at us, they don’t have our solution nailed down. Mr. Lewinsky makes a point. Fine job, Engineer. Their artificial intelligence is playing the probabilities.”
“But, sir, we don’t know where the second Russian is,” Romanov said, frowning. “It’s entirely possible he went somewhat south of our track, and is setting us up into a pincher maneuver. One Yasen to the south, another to the north, and Captain, we’re fucked. ‘Fucked,’ as in the military term, not the legal term.”
Seagraves nodded. “A hell of a lot of unknowns here, people.”
“Sir,” Romanov said, “If I could make a recommendation?”
“Please,” Seagraves said.
“Sir, tubes eight and nine are loaded with encapsulated Tomahawk SubRocs. We could spin them up and toss them to the calculated position of this speeding submarine. One on the east side of his track, the other on the west side. It might kill him. At worst, it would send one hell of a message. For all we know, the Yasen-M submarines might clear datum and go home after that.”
“Navigator,” Seagraves said, “recite to me our rules of engagement. Read it to me verbatim. No paraphrasing.”
Romanov blushed as she pulled up her pad computer, finding the text she sought, then reading aloud. “Operation Panther rules of engagement. USS Vermont is hereby authorized conventional and nuclear weapon release authority against any aggressor force countering the extraction operation of the Panther. For the purpose of these rules, onboard sensors will be the primary detection method, but intelligence from offboard sensors may be used provided said use is sufficient to cause target destruction within a high probability with a high confidence interval. ‘Firing for effect’ is expressly prohibited. Use of nuclear weapons to cause a sonar blue-out or enhance the fog-of-war is also expressly prohibited. The intent of these ROE is that weapons, prior to being released, are targeted at real targets, not estimated positions of possible targets.”
“Well, officers,” Seagraves said, “I think the president said it best. Until we have a real target and not a ghost, we check fire and wait for a better solution to the target. Any comments?”
To a man — and a woman — the officers in the wardroom looked dejectedly at the table.
“There’s another issue,” Spichovich said. “Captain, we were only loaded with two Tomahawk SubRocs. Once we shoot those, we’re running with our pants around our ankles.”
“Good point, Weps. If we use these weapons, we damned well have to make them count. Anyone else? No? Okay, officers, dismissed. XO, I’d like to see you in my stateroom.”
“Come in and shut the door, XO,” Seagraves said, frowning. “And take a seat.”
“Aye, Captain,” Quinnivan said formally, his eyebrow raised, as if wondering if he were about to undergo a reprimand.
“XO, do you have any idea how fucked up it is to be in my position right now?”
“How so, Captain, I mean, the weight of command, yeah? But like any other day, ya know?” Quinnivan’s accent thickened when he was nervous, Seagraves noticed, and the man seemed to be playing dumb, perhaps an attempt to get Seagraves to open up. Maybe Seagraves’ ex-wife was right, he thought, when she’d accused him of living in silence, deep inside his own head. Funny, she’d loved the strong-silent-type when she’d married him, and five years later, she wanted a social butterfly, like the fruit loop she’d left him for.
“What I mean, XO, is that I’m sitting here in my command chair and facing a no-win situation. If I fire a Tomahawk nuke at the Russian, I could start a global conflict and ruin the reputation of the entire U.S. Navy. And that’s if I hit the bastard. If I miss? And then he comes furiously out of the billions of bubbles of the sonar blue-out and takes down Panther? And us? Then I’m double screwed. But if I don’t fire, and we miss an opportunity to make the kill, and he sneaks in here without being detected, and takes down Panther and us? Mission failure and massive loss of life. I should just turn in my dolphins right now. So that’s all, XO. Other than that, it’s like you said, it’s just another day.”
Quinnivan smiled, a strange confidence seeming to radiate from the Irishman.
“Captain, you remember when we were at AUTEC, drinking Admiral Catardi under the table and watching his aide make eyes at young Pacino?”
Seagraves smiled in spite of himself. That had been a good night, he thought.
“Well, that evening, I spent some time talking to Rob Catardi, and he downloaded some deep philosophical shit on me, sir. I thought, by your leave, I’d share it with you.”
“By all means,” Seagraves said, glancing quickly at the chronometer, its ticking second hand reminding him that the detect on the incoming Yasen-M submarine was growing stale. More stale by the minute.
“Catardi spoke of this new idea to him, almost as if he were a recruit to a new religion, a true believer, if you will. He called it ‘decision theory.’ Something passed on from the inner circles of business into the minds of the military. I guess there’s a reason it’s called the military-industrial complex. Anyway, decision theory starts by stating the obvious. That in life, in business, in combat, there are major critical decisions, and every damned one of them is fraught with unknowns. All flavors of them. The known unknowns. The nightmares of the unknown unknowns. And the devil himself, the quote, failure of imagination, unquote, unknowns. Some fragment of reality lurking out there that no one in his wildest imagination would think of. You know, after the terror attacks of six-sixteen, the Pentagon actually hired a group of fiction novelists, thriller writers, to come to work for them, to dream up scenarios the buttoned-down generals would have dismissed as being stupidly wild, yeah? Those generals started believing when some of the dreamed-up disasters actually happened. One novelist was actually detained, the intel community thinking that he must have known about it in advance to write about it so accurately. Hell, maybe he was just clairvoyant or plugged into some ethereal network of the universe, no one knows.