Nick opened the door to leave. “I do, Captain.” Then he exited.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
More Waiting
Josh couldn’t figure out what was causing ODIS to blink. The screen did it every second. He’d have a clear view, and then it would fritz for a second and back. “ODIS, you seem to have the hiccups.”
O’Neil had been watching and offered some help. “We could take a look at it again, Cap. If you like.”
“Might as well. It’s not like I’m going to be able to find a fucking thing anyway.”
It was fifteen minutes before O’Neil began scratching his head. “Sir, all I can figure out is that you are receiving interference. Something that your gear can’t unscramble.”
“Unless it is not.”
O’Neil wrinkled his brow. “A radio signal?”
“ODIS can’t relate to unscrambled signals that run naked through the air. He always puts it through the decoder first, unless I tell him not to. If the signal is original, then the decoder fucks it up, and I get this. That’s why ODIS operates at the end of the bandwidth that accommodates very little radio traffic.”
O’Neil didn’t want to sound stupid or show up a superior officer. He hesitated when he spoke. “Sir, I thought that your radio waves couldn’t reach this deep?”
“They can’t…” Josh caught the question. “Wait. Mine can’t. Can yours?”
O’Neil shook his head. “Not this deep. Not in this part of the world.”
“Then where?”
O’Neil dialed his set down to the lower band of frequencies on his radio. Slowly he moved from channel to channel, listening for the repeating signal. On his next-to-last channel, he found the sound. “Shit! Here it is!”
Josh punched the intercom. “Conn. We’ve got something.”
Jim was there in seconds. Mikhail was his shadow. “What is it, Josh?”
“Sir, we’ve got an open channel coming across communications.”
“Bullshit,” returned Jim. “I’m too deep. We have no source that can punch them down here.”
“Sir,” O’Neil spoke up. “Sir, I don’t believe that the source is far away. I think it’s coming from the Russian sub.”
Mikhail laughed and slapped Jim on the shoulder. “Nicholas! He wants us to find him now. He wants to make sure that we are nearby.” Mikhail was elated because it signaled that Nick was not only on the sub, but that he was alive. Mikhail had a feeling that Nicholas was all right; he just wasn’t sure how far he had gotten. It took a great deal of concern off his shoulders. Now if he could be sure that Nick could get off the sub.
“Can we be positive?” Jim asked.
“Yeah, we could triangulate it off the sonar. The radio gives us a definite lock. We could even program our torpedoes with the frequency.” Jim didn’t need anything else to tell him that it was the Saratov. It had to be the only explanation.
Levi didn’t like being called an idiot, especially in front of the president. He felt his grip on the director’s office begin to fade and go the way of Dan Archer. This was unacceptable, intolerable. He had to do something. The situation in Russia was out of everyone’s hands now. The president didn’t trust him, which surely meant that he wouldn’t be receiving the appointment. He had to change the rules of the game. It was time to cross the line. He picked up the phone and dialed Beth. “Hi, honey.”
She had remained home all day after Sharon left. She had stayed in bed and only got up to pull more food from the kitchen. The covers were a mess, and she was physically ill. Now Levi was on the phone. Could my day get worse? “Not now, Levi,” she responded glumly.
“Beth, what happened? Is everything all right with you?”
“No, Levi, it’s not.” She began to cry again.
“What happened?”
She didn’t want to say, but Levi was the only one asking. “She left, Levi. Sharon left me today.”
He didn’t know how to respond. His daughter had lost her lover, and she was acting like it was the end of the world. Levi couldn’t understand it. It was the state of mind he was hoping for, though. “I’m sorry Beth, honey. I know you were fond of her.” He paused. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Yeah,” she said, sniffling. “Get rid of Dan Archer for me.”
“It was Dan. How interesting.”
“Of course it was Dan, Levi. Who the fuck else would it be? Get the little fuck out of the company.”
The sinister wheels began to turn in his head. Beth was going to help him out. “Honey, you know that I can’t do that now. I told you that before. He and I are competing for the same job. I can’t do anything to get him out of your life. If you want Sharon back, you have to think of something on your own.”
“I do want her back.”
“Would she still be with you if Dan was somewhere else?” Levi was ready to lead her down the trail.
“Of course. She had no reason to leave. If she came back, I’d forgive her.”
“Then I think that there is no reason why she wouldn’t return once Dan Archer is out of the picture.” There was a long silence over the phone. Levi could almost hear her weigh the option in her mind of how that was to be accomplished. He could hear it always come back to the single solution. The only absolute solution. “That is, she would come back to you until he returned, possibly.”
Beth would do anything to get Sharon back. Levi’s last statement emphasized the point that if Sharon returned she wouldn’t want her to leave again. It left her resolute. “I know what you are suggesting.”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” he said. “I want you to think out your options.”
Beth could read between the lines. “Will you be there for me?” She wanted assurance. The same assurance she got when she had killed her abusive husband, Scott, in revenge. Levi said he would handle the investigation, and he did.
“Haven’t I always been there for you?” He knew all too well how he would handle Beth putting a bullet in Dan Archer. She’d be run to the police station, in the front door and out the back. He’d find some poor crack addict woman to fill her spot. A woman whose mind was so erased by drugs she wouldn’t know if she was coming or going. “I am always there if you get into trouble. This time, though, you’d be doing both of us a favor. It’s what family do for one another.”
Beth was too engrossed in her thoughts to hear anything else Levi had to say. She lay the receiver back down and began to plan what had to take place. She couldn’t just kill Dan Archer. She had to make sure Sharon understood why and how much she was loved. Sharon was the key. Sharon had to understand that she was missed. Sharon would have to be there. That would be the only way.
After the meeting with the president, Dan tried to corner Sukudo, but he was gone. He had left moments before the president dismissed them. He got up and walked out without waiting.
Dan had spent most of the day on the phone trying to track him down. That fucker has to explain himself. I can’t believe that he didn’t support the idea to stop this problem now.
In his head he knew that Kenneth had to have some reason for his statement. He wanted to hear it, though. Everything had gotten way out of hand. There was a man who wasn’t officially an agent on a Russian sub. The sub itself was running all over the Arctic, launching nuclear missiles. Another sub that couldn’t get the order to stop it. Superiors who couldn’t make a decision and a bucket full of other problems. Everything was going to collapse. And where was Bluebird? Dan wondered if he had even made it to the Saratov.