Jeffrey asked about his former lover Ilse Reebeck, and the status of the Axis mole. The president said that Lieutenant Reebeck had been known all along to be innocent; her arrest over a month ago was a ruse to help catch the mole. She’d just returned to her native Johannesburg, and was serving on a reconstruction and reconciliation commission under UN auspices. The real traitor had been identified, and confessed in return for the death penalty being commuted to life without parole. Jeffrey didn’t need to know who the mole was, except it wasn’t a senior official after all. It was a secretary who did it for the money.
Jeffrey’s parents waited elsewhere in the White House, as did Dashiyn Nyurba and his parents, and Captains Bell and Harley and their parents and wives and kids, and Sergey Kurzin’s parents. For security, Secret Service agents made sure that no one saw them. None of the relatives had any idea what their sons, husbands, or fathers had done to earn a meeting with the President, or how two of them were injured or killed — if secrecy held up as it needed to, they’d never find out, either.
“I think this sets a record,” the President said. “Four Medals of Honor in one day. The toughest part for me is always giving one posthumously.”
“I never got to know Colonel Kurzin, sir, but what I did see impressed me.”
“Too bad you can’t tell that to his folks.”
“Yes, sir. I know.” He looked at his hands, confused by mixed emotions. Jeffrey himself was receiving his second Defense Distinguished Service Medal, unclassified, for his superb management of a complicated mission that involved as much diplomacy as combat tactics, some of it public knowledge already.
Someone knocked on the door. “Come!” the President yelled.
It was the White House Chief of Staff. “Sir, the Russian Ambassador is here.”
“Show him in.” The President and Jeffrey stood.
Jeffrey had never met the Russian ambassador before. The man was short and fat and jolly. Some of that good mood, Jeffrey assumed, came from the suddenly improved relations between the United States and Russia. Some of it, though, seemed the man’s natural personality.
The ambassador held a small velvet case in one hand.
“May I?” the ambassador asked the President.
“Please.”
Jeffrey got the impression that the two had already talked about this, and something was being stage-managed here. An official White House photographer entered the room, followed by Jeffrey’s parents, who walked over and stood next to him. They both were beaming. Jeffrey’s father elbowed him proudly in the ribs.
“Captain Jeffrey Fuller,” the ambassador said very formally, “it is my great privilege, in the name of the grateful people of my country, to award you this highest recognition that the Motherland has to give, the Gold Star Medal of the Hero of the Russian Federation.”
Glossary
Acoustic intercept: A passive (listening-only) sonar specifically designed to give warning when the submarine is “pinged” by an enemy active sonar.
Active out-of-phase emissions: A way to weaken the echo that an enemy sonar receives from a submarine’s hull, by actively emitting sound waves of the same frequency as the ping but exactly out of phase. The out-of-phase sound waves mix with and cancel those of the echoing ping.
ADCAP: Mark 48 Advanced Capability torpedo. A heavyweight, wire guided torpedo used by American nuclear submarines. The Improved ADCAP has even longer range and an enhanced (and extremely capable) target homing sonar and software logic package.
AIP: Air Independent Propulsion. Refers to modern diesel submarines that have an additional power source besides the standard diesel generator and electric storage batteries. The AIP system allows quiet and long-endurance submerged cruising, without the need to snorkel for air, because oxygen and fuel are carried aboard the vessel in special tanks. For example, the German Class 212A design uses fuel cells for achieving AIP.
Ambient sonar: A form of active sonar that uses, instead of a submarine’s pinging, the ambient noise of the surrounding ocean to catch reflections off a target. Noise sources can include surface wave-action sounds, the propulsion plants of other vessels (such as passing neutral merchant shipping), or biologics (sea life). Ambient sonar gives the advantages of actively pinging but without betraying a submarine’s own presence. Advanced signal processing algorithms and powerful onboard computers are needed to exploit ambient sonar effectively.
Auxiliary maneuvering units: Small propulsors at the bow and stern of a nuclear submarine, used to greatly enhance the vessel’s maneuverability. First ordered for the USS Jimmy Carter, the third and last of the Seawolf-class SSNs (nuclear fast-attack submarines) to be constructed.
Ceramic composite: A multilayered composite foam matrix made from ceramic and metallic ingredients. Alumina casing, an extremely strong submarine hull material significantly less dense than steel, was declassified by the U.S. Navy after the Cold War.
ELF: Extremely Low Frequency. Radio capable of penetrating deep seawater, used to communicate (one-way only) from a huge shore transmitter installation to submerged submarines. A disadvantage is ELF’s very slow data rate, only a few bits per minute.
EMCON: Emissions Control. Radio silence. Also applies to radar, sonar, or other emissions that could reveal a vessel’s presence.
EMP: Electromagnetic pulse. A sudden, strong electrical current induced by a nuclear explosion. This will destroy unshielded electrical and electronic equipment and also temporarily ruin radio reception. There are two forms of EMP, one caused by very-high-altitude nuclear explosions (“HANEs”), the other by ones at low altitude. (Mid-altitude bursts do not create an EMP.) The area on the ground affected by an EMP is called the “pancake.” EMPs in outer space (“exoatmospheric” EMPs) will also cause damage to unhardened satellites in orbit.
Frequency-agile: A means of avoiding enemy interception and jamming, by very rapidly varying the frequency used by a transmitter and receiver. May apply to radio, or to underwater acoustic communications (see gertrude below).
Gertrude: Underwater telephone. Original systems simply transmitted voice directly with the aid of transducers (active sonar emitters, i.e., underwater loudspeakers), and were notorious for short range and poor intelligibility. Modern undersea acoustic communication systems translate the message into digital high-frequency active sonar pulses, which can be frequency-agile for security (see above). Data rates well over 1,000 bits per second, over ranges up to thirty nautical miles, can be achieved.
Hole-in-ocean sonar: A form of passive (listening-only) sonar that detects a target by how it blocks ambient ocean sounds from further off. In effect, hole-in-ocean sonar uses an enemy submarine’s own quieting against it.
Instant ranging: A capability of the new wide-aperture array sonar systems (see below). Because each wide-aperture array is mounted rigidly along one side of the submarine’s hull, sophisticated signal processing can be performed to “focus” the hydrophones at different ranges from the ship. The target needs to lie somewhere on the beam of the ship (i.e., to either side).
Kampfschwimmer: German Navy “frogman” combat swimmers. The equivalent of U.S. Navy SEALs and the Royal Navy’s Special Boat Squadron commandos. (In the German language, the word Kampfschwimmer is both singular and plural.)