The control room was filled with the ebb and flow of low-voiced conversation. Campbell still sat next to me, offering no sign that he realized anyone but himself was in the compartment.
“Hey,” I said.
Nothing.
“Hey, Campbell,” I repeated.
He turned his head toward me, his fingers still scurrying around the surface of his rifle, stopping here and there to tighten a fixture or check a switch position. The dullness that enveloped his face took my breath away.
“What?” The word matched his expression.
“What’s the UQC?” I said, trying to ignore the vacuum of emotion in front of me.
“It’s the underwater telephone.” He jerked his head up and to his right, to the aft of the compartment. “You can use it to talk to other subs.” Then his head dipped again, concentrating on his weapon.
I looked in the direction he had indicated. Maybe that was it: what looked like a telephone handset buried in the readouts and pipes over the sonar station. At least I thought it was the sonar station.
Well, that was good to know. Assuming I was able to figure out how to operate it, I could use the device to call for help if the Serpent ate the rest of the SEALs. For some reason, the image made me giggle. I waited for one of them to turn around and glare at me, but it didn’t happen.
What I most needed, I thought, was to get Campbell poring over the Serpent’s documentation. As if it were an appliance or something that we just had to read the instructions for to figure out. But I was certain there was more useful information in those documents. The bulk of it would be academic, no doubt, of interest to scientists and our own country’s weapons researchers, but there had to be more on the thing’s capabilities. Its tendencies, perhaps. A weakness.
Reyes and the chief were standing, reading a piece of paper Reyes held between them. Reyes looked at the other SEAL and nodded, scratching the back of his buzzcut. They both moved to where Larsen and Matthews still were submerged in planning.
When the chief spoke, it broke through the hushed mood. This wasn’t a scheming, hypothetical murmur. It was clear, loud and factual.
“Sir.”
Larsen and Matthews both stopped talking and turned. Matthews remained leaning against the wall, hunched as always.
“We’ve finished looking over the nav and battery data. And there’s some good news.”
“Finally,” Reyes interjected, but none of them paid attention.
“If we allow no margin for error, we can increase our speed to 7.5 knots. More good news: the tide will be working with us, so we’ll make even more headway. Call it 8 knots-but that’s just an estimation.”
“Good thinking on the tide, Chief,” Matthews said.
“Reyes’s idea,” the chief said, cocking a thumb at the other SEAL, who shrugged and smiled. “We’re 16.6 nautical miles from port.”
“Two hours.” Larsen was the one jumping in this time.
“Two hours, four minutes and thirty seconds, actually,” the chief said, looking at the calculations on the sheet he was holding. “Assuming we won’t be doing any evading, accelerating or major course changes, that’s how long it’ll take us. If we’re not there yet, we’ll have to fire up the diesels again. Or the one that works, anyway.”
Larsen was nodding to himself, digesting the numbers. Then he spoke in his command voice, each syllable crisp and important.
“Chief, give the order. Adjust throttle for seven and a half knots. Ridder, steady as she goes.”
The SEAL at the steering workstation replied without looking away from his gauges. “Aye-aye, sir.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” the chief said, then hit the intercom button. “Electrical, conn. Make turns for seven and a half knots.”
After a moment: “Conn, electrical. Say again, seven and a half?”
“That’s right. Don’t go over that speed.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” came the crackling reply. And a few seconds later, we felt the infinitesimal surge of acceleration.
“The clock’s running out on this motherfucker,” Larsen said. I couldn’t tell whether he was referring to the Serpent or our situation in general. Campbell stood up next to me.
“Are we gonna go get this thing? I want a shot at it.” The resolve in his words was such a contrast to the expression I had seen on his face moments before. Even his posture seemed more aggressive.
“Don’t worry, Campbell,” Larsen said. “It’ll be sucking your rifle before this day is over. We have a plan, by God, and our enemy is not going to get away from this platoon.”
“What’s the plan?” I asked. I knew my question was unwelcome, but, as ten percent of the surviving force, I had a right to know.
“Well, Dr. Myers, I thought I’d wait and tell my men first. Is that OK with you? Or do you have some new, vital piece of evidence that can help us?” He wanted the second question to be as sarcastic as the first. But I could hear the need buried in it.
“It’s your ship,” I said.
“You’re goddamn right it is. Lieutenant, go brief the electrical department.” As Matthews walked away, Larsen continued to the four SEALs gathered around him: “We are going to contain this thing like a trapped animal. We don’t know how it thinks. But it doesn’t know how we think, either. It knows less about us than we do about it. And that’s our advantage.”
He was right, I thought. But I was surprised about where he took that conclusion.
“There will be two three-man teams — Charlie and Delta. One will be assigned to the two compartments aft of the engine room and the other to the three lower deck compartments. Another man will be stationed in the engine room once it is secured. The hatches to the engine room will be closed behind each team, and of course the hatch between the forward battery bay and the torpedo room is chained shut.
“The key here is containment. No matter which section the Serpent is in, it cannot leave. The only people that will be able to pass through those hatches without being killed are SEALs. We will utilize code phrases to make sure this is what happens.
“When the fire teams wish to re-enter the engine room or either of the control rooms, which they will do only after either eliminating the Serpent or establishing that their sector is clear, they will shout a phrase through the door. For this operation, the phrase is…” He paused, looking at a scrap of paper in his hand. “The phrase is: ‘Who’s in the Super Bowl?’ The correct response — the only correct response — is ‘The Bengals.’ And the only correct response to that is ‘They’re going all the way.’”
I had a hard time believing any of the soldiers could say that without laughing, but they all nodded, solemn.
“What if the Serpent is in the engine room?” I asked, again drawing a poisonous look from Larsen.
“It won’t be in the engine room because that’s the first place we’ll examine, and we’ll be doing it with both teams, so I don’t think it’s going to slip through. Do you approve?”
He didn’t care what I said, and I didn’t answer. But I understood why he was so confident of the plan’s success.
At the worst, three men would die. But if that happened, it would give away the location of the Serpent, telling us which section it was in. The hatches would be closed behind each team of SEALs, so if their quarry tried to get out without knowing the code phrase, it would be shot up when it was vulnerable, climbing through the hatchway.
At best, of course, one of the teams would locate and kill the Serpent. No matter what happened, the Serpent would be discovered and contained. Larsen wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
The tactics involved were sound and logical, at least to my inexpert mind. But in my gut, I felt only that we would see more blood spilled in the Dragon. Whose blood it was became clear soon enough.