He forced a yawn to pop his ears and discerned a rumbling noise. The Colorado tilled the sea with its bow and ground to a stop.
“We’re on the bottom,” Jake said. “We’re safe for the moment, but we’ve got to get out of here.”
He looked to Tiger, who offered an unreadable grin. Jake found the husky man’s apparent lack of fear disturbing, especially when he himself was terrified.
“We’re rising!” McKenzie said.
Jake felt the Colorado settle at a two-degree down angle.
“We’re light aft,” he said. “Pump from forward to after trim tanks. I don’t want our rudder exposed.”
McKenzie flipped switches that directed water between internal tanks. The downward angle leveled at minus half a degree.
“You have depth control?” Jake asked.
“I think so,” McKenzie said.
“Make your depth eighty-two feet,” Jake said.
“We’re dropping, but not too bad. I think I can level us off,” McKenzie said.
“Nice job,” Jake said. “I’m speeding us up to get out of here. We’ll make fifteen knots until we get ten feet of water under us, then we’ll punch it into high gear.”
Jake walked behind the periscopes and sank into a Naugahyde captain’s chair. Renard approached him.
“I know you’re tired,” Renard said, “but we should examine the speed to noise tradeoff.”
“Do I need to remind you about geometry?” Jake asked. “Every knot of speed increases the area of uncertainty geometrically for whoever’s looking for us. We need speed.”
“You know this ship well, but I would be wary of the flow noise at fifteen knots given the damage to our sail. We do not know how bad the damage is or how it will affect our flow noise.”
“Fifteen knots is optimal,” Jake said.
“How so?”
“With the damage to the sail, I’m making a judgment call. You have a better idea?”
“No, I do not, but I need a cigarette. Do you have my Marlboros?”
Jake laughed.
“Yeah, I’ll get them. And as long as I’m up, I’ll fire up sonar to see who’s in this ocean with us.”
As Major Layne flew back to Tyndall, a P-3 Orion, a high endurance aircraft, dropped its first sonobuoy three miles behind the Colorado.
The P-3 had been rushed into the sky from Naval Air Station Jacksonville. Double checks were skipped, and the aircraft was loaded with a quarter of its nominal sonobuoy and fuel load. The haste proved wise as the P-3 reached the Colorado just after it submerged.
Below the Orion, a cylinder cut through the waves and bobbed back to the surface. A radio antenna sent a signal to the Orion telling its crew that the sonobuoy had awoken.
The tethered hydrophone absorbed sound. It heard the crackle of a shrimp bed, the drone of the Orion’s propeller blades, and the ninety-five-point-three-hertz frequency tonal of the Colorado’s reactor coolant pumps.
CHAPTER 15
Lance Ryder sat among the Secretaries of State and Defense, the National Security Advisor, the Joint Chiefs, and the Director of Central Intelligence in the White House’s situation room. An outer circle of support personnel sat behind their leaders.
By six in the morning, security boats from Kings Bay had reached the Colorado’s survivors. Ryder understood that Lieutenant Jacob Slate was behind the ‘Colorado Incident’. Armed men of unknown origin had joined him, as had several missing Colorado crewmembers.
Ryder studied the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral James Mesher, a gaunt, leather-faced submariner.
“Admiral,” Ryder said, “the NORAD jets didn’t keep the Colorado from submerging sooner than the hour you told me it needed.”
“No, Mister President. The hijackers submerged in very shallow water. Based on the way they resurfaced before slipping under again, they probably hit bottom.”
“So maybe they took some damage?”
“Yes, sir, possible damage with that impact and damage from the NORAD assets. They’ll be loud, and I’m confident we can track them down.”
“I think that statement is a little cavalier, especially given that I’m the first president to lose control of functional nuclear weapons.”
Mesher opened his mouth but Ryder hushed him with a raised finger. He treated his Joint Chiefs harshly to command their attention, and he wouldn’t soften in this crisis.
“How many warheads, Admiral?”
“Twenty-four missiles of six warheads each equates to one hundred and forty-four warheads, Mister President.”
“And how big is each warhead?”
“Twenty times bigger than the one dropped on Nagasaki.”
“Marvelous. A naval vessel designed to be undetectable by even today’s technology, carrying almost three thousand times the destructive force of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, is in the hands of a twenty-six-year-old renegade American naval officer.”
Ryder glanced around the table to ensure that he held everyone’s interest. He turned back to the CNO.
“We’ve lost control of a Trident Missile submarine. We hardly chinked its armor, we’re tracking it with a solitary aircraft that’s running short on sonobuoys, and we’re still three and a half hours away from being able to hit the damn thing with a legitimate weapon. Is this correct, Admiral?”
“Yes, sir,” Mesher said.
“And can the Colorado launch its nuclear weapons?”
“No, sir,” Mesher said. “That’s impossible without access to launch codes assigned specifically to the Colorado’s launch system.”
“What other nuclear threat does this rogue submarine now pose?” Ryder asked.
“Sir, the most it can do is jettison dormant weapons. The missiles cannot fly and there is no way that a static detonation of a warhead can take place.”
“But could someone defeat the safeguards?”
“Impossible, sir. The detonator circuits are buried within the warheads, which are inaccessible from inside the ship. Even if they could access the circuitry, the hijackers would have to trick the circuits into believing they were in high-speed flight and at altitude. To do that, they’d need top-secret schematics that I’ve verified have not been compromised.”
Ryder glanced around the table.
“What other scenarios are we facing? What if this ship finds its way to a hostile party?”
Rick McAllistar, the Director of Central Intelligence, slid a report under Ryder’s nose. Ryder took note that a crisis of global implication appeared to be business as usual to him.
“Mister President, this is a list of the top twenty organizations that could be behind this. You’ll notice that five of the top ten, and nine of the top fifteen, are Middle Eastern nations or groups they support.”
“I can’t let the Middle East do this to us,” Ryder said.
David Rankin, the National Security Advisor, faced Ryder. The man reminded him of a Wall Street broker, but Ryder appreciated that Rankin was fearless in voicing his opinion.
“Sir, we can turn this to our advantage. Preliminary reports state that the mercenaries exposed swarthy skin through their ski masks. If we leak this, America will draw its own conclusion. It will build support for our military effort in the Middle East.”
“Christ! I was hoping to keep this from the media altogether,” Ryder said.
“Sir, there are more than thirty firsthand witnesses and many more working the rescue operation,” Rankin said.