“All stop!” she ordered. “Rudder amidships!”
As her big ship coasted silently through the ocean, she closed her eyes and pictured the drone submarine to her north, and her prey somewhere to the south, an entire ocean to hide in.
Banach started to talk, but she stopped him with a finger to her lips, her eyes still shut.
Suddenly, a bright blip appeared on the sonar screen.
“Transient!” said Banach. “Bearing two-zero-zero.”
“Drive to it,” said Carlson, relief flooding through her even as she felt a slight sense of shame. Just as she told Banach, the Polaris had outsmarted them fair and square. The only reason they were able to find them again was because at this critical juncture they had a friend onboard. A friend who helpfully dropped a heavy wrench into a dry bilge, sending a pulse of sound into the sea that traveled for miles and miles.
“I think we did it!” said Moody.
The captain nodded grimly. “Ahead one-third,” he said. They were three miles away from the enemy boat, the farthest they’d been since they first spotted her. At this distance, they would be invisible, even at the slightly higher speed.
“Engine room answers ahead one-third,” said Pete.
Frank appeared in control. “Did it work?” he said.
“Maybe,” said the captain. He fought the urge to speed up even more, the desire to open distance faster balanced by the greater noise the ship would create.
“No sonar contacts!” said Moody as the enemy disappeared entirely from their screen. The captain checked his watch.
“The MOSS will die soon. Then they’ll know.”
They drove a few minutes more at five knots, seemingly alone according to the blank display in front of them. Then the enemy reappeared.
“She’s there!” said Moody. “And faster, by the look of it.”
“She figured it out,” said the captain, “when the MOSS died. Doesn’t surprise me. Sped up and backtracked. I would have done the same thing. She still doesn’t see us.”
“Speed up?”
“No,” said the captain. “Let’s just try to slip away.”
They watched the Typhon sub move on sonar, created a solution that showed her moving, just as the captain had predicted, right down her old track. Not pointing directly at them as she had for days. The bright dots stacked up neatly.
And then suddenly the enemy veered.
Moody sat down and quickly worked out a new solution.
“Target zig.” She looked up. “She’s turned toward us.”
“Dammit,” said the captain.
“Speed zig,” said Moody. “Speeding up.”
“Ahead two-thirds,” said the captain. “Make turns for eight knots.”
“Too late,” said Moody, fine-tuning her solution on the display. In minutes, the Typhon boat was again following them so closely and so tightly that on sonar it looked almost like they were towing her. “They’ve got us.”
“Goddammit!” shouted Frank. Pete winced. He realized they’d all been whispering everything since they went to battle stations.
“How?” said Moody. “How did that happen?”
Pete turned around to look. For the first time, he saw real resignation in the captain’s eyes. Moody stared at the captain, but Frank stared at Pete; everyone seemed to be accusing everyone else of giving the ship away.
Soon enough, Ramirez had made his way to control, and the conversation grew heated.
“Every time we start to get away,” said Moody, “they know right where to find us.”
“Exactly!” said Frank. The captain ignored him.
“Something is giving us away,” he mumbled, looking at the chart.
“Or someone,” said Moody. Her eyes were locked on the captain’s, bright and wary.
“What exactly are you saying, Commander Moody?”
“I’m saying that the Typhon boat seems to know our every move. We were completely silent back there, and she turned right toward us.”
The captain shook his head. “It has to be something…”
“Maybe a transient?” said Ramirez.
“Did you hear something?” snapped Moody.
“No,” said Ramirez. “But obviously they did.”
“Let’s look at the sonar recordings,” said Moody, already moving toward the screen and deftly changing the display. “Every individual hydrophone. We know when it happened — about thirty minutes ago.”
She moved the cursor backward in time, and they all stared over her shoulder at the picture the computer had rendered, turning noise into green waves of light and dark.
“There!” she said.
At first, Pete didn’t see it, but she changed the resolution and it came into view. A bright spike at precisely the time the Typhon boat had turned toward them.
“What the hell?” said the captain. “Something that loud would have traveled for miles!”
“We didn’t stand a chance,” said Frank.
Moody was still feverishly turning knobs on the central console. She threw a small switch and began playing the actual audio through the control room speakers.
It sounded like a whirring, the universal sound of the ocean, an ear to a seashell. Then suddenly, there was a bright spike of noise. It actually made Pete wince. It sounded like a hammer on a steel pipe.
She moved the cursor, turned up the volume, and played it again, this time staring at the captain.
And then she played it again.
“All right,” said McCallister. “Enough.”
She played it again.
“Knock it off, Moody!” he said.
“Why stop now?” she said. “I think we’re finally getting somewhere here. Let’s narrow it down by hydrophone.”
She clicked through a few more menus, and suddenly there was a small line graph for every one of the twenty-six hull-mounted hydrophones that lined the exterior of the ship. She pointed to the one where the spike was the biggest, twice as big as the adjacent sensor.
“There!” she said. She tapped the number beneath the graph. “Hydrophone twenty-three.”
“In the engine room,” said the captain. They all looked at Ramirez.
“What?” he said.
“Did you hear anything?” said the captain.
Moody let out an exasperated sigh.
“No… I was in maneuvering the entire time with the doors shut—”
“Captain, I demand you arrest this man,” said Moody.
“Fuck you!” said Ramirez. “I was back there keeping the ship running while you were developing your paranoid fantasies.”
She slapped the screen so hard, Pete thought she might break it. “Fantasy!” she screamed. “What is this?! Somebody is banging on the damn hull, giving us away, and you’re the only guy back there!”
She turned again to the captain, gathered herself, and stood up, almost at attention. When she spoke, her words had a formal steadiness to them. “Captain, I’ll ask you again: arrest this man for treason. For mutiny.”
Ramirez locked eyes with Pete. His defiance had faded now; he looked genuinely worried that the tide was turning against him. The word “mutiny” hung in the air almost as jarringly as the sound spike on the twenty-third hydrophone.
The captain stared Moody down. “I’m not arresting anyone.”
“Then I’m taking command of this ship and arresting you both,” she said.
Frank slowly pulled something from his pocket. Hamlin realized that they had planned this.
Ramirez suddenly bolted from the control room. McCallister started to follow, but Frank pointed his Taser at the captain’s chest.
Seconds later, alarms began wailing.
Moody and Pete jumped forward to the control panels and began cutting them out, announcing them out of habit.