In brief, shouted phrases, she relayed how they had managed to pick him up out of the ocean, and filled him in on their earlier communications with the carrier. She saw comprehension dawn on his face, and one hand stole up involuntarily to cross himself. After she’d finished, the air crewman left them with the corpsman and made his way forward to talk to the pilot. She could see the pilot glance back at them, then pick up the microphone.
The air crewman came back to them. “Be a translator waiting for us when we land, ma’am.”
She nodded, vaguely irritated that the status of their passenger was of more interest to the aircraft carrier than the rescue of its two spies. Still, she could understand their concern.
As they settled onto the deck of the aircraft carrier and a crew of people came rushing out to meet them, Adele noticed a small boat tied to the stern of the carrier. It was smaller than Heaven Can Wait, but she had a foreboding feeling as she looked at it.
FIFTEEN
Renny shut his eyes and leaned back in his chair. He clamped his hands over the headset, pressing the foam surrounding the earpieces into the sides of his skull. There, almost at the edge of his hearing — no wait, it was gone again. He sighed, and looked over at Otter. “You got anything?” he asked, taking a look at the passive display as he asked the question.
Otter shook his head. “You’re hearing ghosts, man,” he said.
Renny started to argue, then froze as a familiar sound came peppering his ears through the earphones. “Helicopter,” he breathed, his voice almost a whisper.
“I got it, too.” Otter toggled the sound-powered phone on. “Conn, sonar. Hold incoming helicopter.”
“Classification?” the OOD asked.
“Not ours, that’s all I can tell you.” A seriously worried expression spread itself across Otter’s face. “I don’t like the feel of this at all, buddy,” he said softly to Renny. “Not one little bit.”
As they listened, the sound of the helicopter both in Renny’s ears and as translated on the passive acoustic display became louder and louder. The increase in frequency indicated that the aircraft was approaching them directly. Finally, the up Doppler stabilized, then began wavering up and down in frequency.
“It’s directly overhead,” Renny said, now whispering for certain. Around him, the rest of the crew were setting quiet ship stations, and he noted the red light flashing to indicate general quarters. “Right above us,” he whispered.
A small splot then, a second motion in the ocean, the noise that a drop of water falling into the bathtub makes. Renny came bolt upright in his chair. “Sonobuoys, I think,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Whatever it is, they’re tossing something in — ” A massive explosion rocked the water around the ship. Renny screamed, ripped the headphones off and bent over, moaning. The automatic gain control had managed to block out most of the noise, but still enough acoustic energy had made it into the headsets to feel like an arrow lancing straight through his skull.
The ship rolled hard to port and then back to starboard as the OOD fought to stabilize her. A down angle on the deck developed almost immediately. Renny felt the nauseating motion of the ship going into a hard lefthand turn while still unstable from the explosion, and diving at the same time.
“Depth charges,” he said, barely able to hear his own voice. Behind him, his chief tapped him on the shoulder and nudged him out of the chair. Renny’s earphones were already on the chief petty officer’s head. “Depth charges, goddammit, who the hell uses depth charges anymore?”
A second explosion answered that question quite handily.
The ship dove more rapidly now, but it was controlled movement from the ship seeking out a deeper layer of water rather than a submarine damaged by the blast. The further down they got, the further away from the helicopter overhead they’d be. Still, submerging held its own dangers. As the pressures increased, so did the potential consequences of even a small pinhole leak in any gear. Outside the submarine, the water pressure was increasing rapidly, bearing down on every square inch of the hull. Since water was thicker under pressure, it also served as a better medium for conducting acoustic energy. A blast at this depth would be amplified, not only in the amount of energy that hit the submarine but in the damage that any breach in hull integrity would pose.
“How the hell did they find us?” Otter demanded. His hands were dancing over the passive acoustic display, checking out different frequencies, searching frantically for any hint of a threat around them. They both knew the answer to his question.
“Nobody was active, and there were no sonobuoys in the water,” Renny said. “It was the other submarine — he must have heard us on his passive gear, then surfaced to radio in a position report.”
“But when? When!” Otter demanded. He scrolled back to the time on the display. “When was it that you heard something?”
Renny leaned over and pointed to a spot on the graph. “There. Right about then.”
“That was almost thirty minutes ago,” Otter said. “You certain about that?”
Renny shook his head. “Not entirely, but the time fits. He would have had to be fairly close to us to have heard anything at all, and you know he wouldn’t want to be anywhere around if they were going to drop depth charges. So he crept up, took a listen, then sneaked back out of area before he came shallow and radioed in a position report… By now he’s at least ten miles away, maybe more.”
“All hands, this is the captain,” Tran’s voice said over the loudspeaker. Every section of the submarine had been turned down to minimum volume, but the boat was so quiet that his voice was easily distinguishable. “It appears we have evaded the helicopter, and I’m going to be bringing the ship back to a shallower depth. Maintain silence about the decks, even after I secure you from general quarters. It looks like we had the bad luck to be directly under that helicopter while he was dumping garbage or something.”
Renny grinned, admiring Tran’s ability to stay so calm during a crisis. It had been exactly the right thing to say to the ship and crew.
“And I figure we got us a little score to settle with the submarine we left alive back behind us,” Tran’s voice continued, the slightest hint of a Southern drawl in it now. “So suck it up, stay quiet, and I promise you — we’ll get that bastard snitch before he pulls back into port again.”
There were no cheers, no applause, but everyone in the submarine could feel the invisible surge of enthusiasm that rallied through the crew. “We’ll move back into position on the Chinese aircraft carrier.”
As the ship maneuvered, a loud, clanging noise reverberated throughout the entire hull. It seemed to saw at Renny’s bones, sink through his flesh, and then fade away into nothingness. Without having to ask, he knew what it was. The ELF antenna wire that they had been trailing had been severed. Their submerged communications with the outside world had been cut off. Sure, they could still come to communications depth and receive and transmit messages, but that would mean giving up the cloak of invisibility that was the submarine’s primary defensive weapon.
The call came from the SEAL team just as Batman was mobilizing his forces to deal with the troop carriers headed for shore. Tombstone’s pickup team jumped as the speaker crackled to life.
“Bad news, sir,” the remarkably clear voice of the SEAL team leader said. “We found the weapon — but it’s inaccessible. The Chinese dumped it in the shallow water. I’ve got some plans for getting to it and disarming it, but it’s going to take a little while to set up. In the meanwhile, if your sub could keep the area clear around it, it might lessen the chances of detonation. Over.”