She reached the next level easily and continued forward as fast as she could, heading for the side door to the Pathfinder’s bridge. She pulled it open and scanned the room with her eyes, first seeing First Officer Harris. Captain Emerson was standing beside him.
The echoes of Borger’s laboring steps could be heard as she stepped inside, a sound of panic in her voice.
“Captain!” she panted. “There’s a submarine! In the water! Just over there!” She pointed out the large window, not far from the red lights of the oil rig.
“What?!”
“A submarine, sir! Right out there. Submerged.”
With wide eyes, both Emerson and Harris looked forward at their sonar officer who immediately turned back around to his instruments.
“I want a full scan right now!”
“Yes, sir!”
The others turned to see a hyperventilating Will Borger open the door and step inside behind Neely.
“How do you know, Commander?”
Neely motioned back the way she came. “The dolphins… all of them began freaking out. We didn’t know why. So Alison went to investigate. She just saw it… the submarine. Just now!”
“How sure is she?”
“Very!”
Emerson looked to Borger who nodded in agreement, while still sucking in air.
“Sir,” Emerson’s sonar officer said aloud. “I’m not picking up anything. Nothing at all.”
“Then do an active scan! If there’s someone out there, they damn sure already know where we are!”
“Yes, sir!”
Neely suddenly gasped. “Oh my God!” she said with her hands over her mouth.
“What, Commander?”
“The sonar array! Earlier today it detected something, and we thought it was a false alarm. But it wasn’t! Oh God!”
“Sir! Nothing on active either.” The sonar officer turned around in his chair. “We’re not seeing anything.”
Emerson turned to Neely. “Commander, get your team on the line right now! If this system of yours detected something, then find out what.”
“Yes, sir!” Neely and Borger nodded before immediately running back out the door.
“Mister Harris, sound general quarters. Prepare to repel boarders!”
“Yes, sir.”
Emerson raced to the tall windows and looked down upon the bow of the ship. On the front, sitting quietly, was a Sea King attack helicopter.
Emerson raised his voice loud for Harris to hear. “And get that chopper in the air right now. And I mean RIGHT NOW!”
“Yes, sir!”
Emerson kept his eyes focused on the Sea King. It was the same anti-submarine helicopter that was aboard the Bowditch, stationed intentionally as a defensive tactic only to be destroyed along with the rest of the ship. If there was a sub out there, they were sure as hell not going to make the same mistake twice!
85
Captain Zhirov was watching from the sub’s camera, perched just above the waterline. Suddenly, the Pathfinder turned on all its exterior lights, bathing the entire area in an almost painful sphere of bright white. Seconds later, came the siren.
“Shit!” He turned to his own first officer. “Are we making noise?”
“No, sir. Nothing.”
Zhirov motioned to the monitor. “Then explain that!”
His first officer could only shake his head. “I don’t know, sir. We came in quiet.”
“Well, obviously not quiet enough. They know we’re here. How?!”
The first officer stammered. He had no answer.
“Go! Stop anything that’s moving, NOW!”
“Aye, sir!”
“And stand by to open torpedo bay doors. On my mark.”
“Aye!”
With that, his first officer disappeared, leaving Zhirov standing in the control room before the monitor. He crossed his arms and continued watching the ship. God only knew how, but the mission had just been compromised.
It was the same conclusion Sergeant Popov had just come to, now less than a hundred meters from the stern of the Pathfinder. Taking a ship was fraught with problems, but now the bright lights from the vessel would leave them virtually no cover at all. Of all the scenarios they had planned for, this was the one they could do the least about.
There was no turning back. The best the Spetsnaz team could do now would be to re-submerge and surface at the last possible moment. The Pathfinder’s greatest weakness to attack was its abnormally low stern, designed specifically for its research hardware — a known weakness that the Americans would no doubt be ready to defend.
Which meant that all Popov and his men could do was to board as quickly as possible and immediately open fire.
86
Neely reached her lab first and ran to the far corner. There, she pulled a large satellite phone off a shelf and placed it heavily onto the metal table in front of her.
Borger arrived to see her remove the handset from the cradle and start thumbing through the numbers in the phone’s memory.
In less than ten seconds, the signal bounced off a low orbiting satellite and rang on the other end, aboard a ship positioned only a few hundred miles away.
“Hello?”
“Jeff! It’s Neely. I need your help! It’s urgent!”
“Neely? Yeah, sure. What do you need?”
“It’s the sonar array. It picked something up earlier today — a false positive in our area. But it wasn’t a false positive. It was real!”
“Jesus! Are you serious?”
“Jeff, listen to me. I need a full signature scan. I need to know exactly what it picked up on. Immediately.”
“Right. Okay, you got it. I’ll send you a copy, right now!”
“Thanks. Next, bring everyone in. Everyone. We need every set of eyes we can get, looking for anything that may have been missed. And more importantly, turn on a full-spectrum scan. Every frequency and every database. And don’t stop.”
“You got it, Neely. Anything else?”
“Yes. Hurry!”
Neely hung up and looked at Borger. “What else?”
“We need to warn Tay and his men.”
Neither Tay, nor any of the others, needed another warning. Like everyone else, they saw the lights of the Pathfinder the moment they were lit. Even from a distance.
But they had yet to understand what was wrong.
“Tay. Are you there?” called Borger’s voice.
“Yes. What the hell is going on?”
“There’s a sub in the water. Not far from where you are.”
“Holy shit!”
Borger continued. “We’re on full alert. I recommend you guys stay where you are.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Probably. But you’re safer down there. For the moment.”
“But how long of a moment?”
Borger checked his watch. “You’re not that deep. You should be good for at least another thirty minutes.”
Listening quietly, both Corbin and Beene looked at each other. Their expressions were easily visible through their face masks. This was no precaution. The captain would not have lit the ship up like a Roman candle unless he believed a threat was imminent. And if correct, remaining on the bottom for thirty minutes was not a viable option.
But Tay conceded, still floating on the other side of the drill. “We’ll wait.”
“Okay,” Borger’s voice was clearly nervous. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.” Just when Borger was about to let go of the mike, all four men heard something in the background.