“But if war could be avoided…”
She again looked at him with a hint of confusion in her expression. “Danny, if we don’t do anything about it, and we let them get away with it, then we’ve basically set the precedent that the Strait of Hormuz belongs to them, and they can do whatever they want with it.”
Martin had considered this argument, but for him it was more important to prevent war than to make a political point. “But if they’re allowing the ships through anyway… what do we care who owns it?”
She paused her stretching and looked over at him. He could see she was a bit annoyed by his line of questioning, but he felt he had a point. “Danny, let’s say we do what you suggest and just smile and walk away,” she allowed. “What happens a year from now after they’ve strengthened their position and are no longer worried about a counterattack, so they decide to charge a fee for using the Strait?”
Martin had considered this. “The Panamanians charge for ships using the Panama Canal, what’s the difference?” he asked, pleased with his analogy.
“You aren’t thinking it through, Danny,” she replied, shaking her head as if his train of thought were ridiculous. “Let’s skip the whole point about the Panama Canal being a manmade waterway and the Persian Gulf being international waters. What happens after the Iranians charge us a fee and we give into it because it’s just a little concession? Then a year later, when they feel they’ve fortified the Strait to the point we could never wrestle it from them, they shut off the route to all ships, denying anyone access and demand we give them something we can’t. Like, say, renouncing the right of Israel to exist? Or perhaps we turn over weapons technology? Or they begin jacking the price of oil up to a point our economy goes in the toilet?”
Martin thought she was being ridiculous and shook his head, “That’s a bit of a stretch, Kristen.”
“Danny,” she gently shook his shoulder as if trying to wake him up, “they’ve already invaded another country. Their government actively supports terror networks around the globe. Their stated goal is to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. They suppress dissent among their own people through brute force. Just how honorable do you expect them to be? We can’t allow this to stand, and if it means going in there and bloodying some noses, then that’s what we have to do.” She sat back down and returned to her work before adding, “This mess happened on our watch, and I sure as hell don’t want to leave it for some other poor sap to clean up simply because we didn’t have the courage to take care of it ourselves.”
Martin decided he didn’t like arguing with her and let it drop. But he couldn’t help wishing she hadn’t sounded so certain about what would happen if they didn’t confront the aggression immediately. He nervously rubbed his nose, feeling like a kid who’d just been put in his place by his school teacher. But no sooner had they gone back to work, than Petty Officer Goodman from the sonar room appeared.
“Miss Whitaker?” Goodman interrupted. “Sorry to disturb you, but…” he hesitated.
“What is it, Mister Goodman?” Kristen asked.
“Chief Miller wanted you to listen to something.”
“Listen to what?” she asked as she stood.
Martin saw Goodman fidget uncomfortably as he answered, “We aren’t sure.”
Kristen entered the sonar shack a few moments later, half expecting it to be some sort of joke. But upon entering, she saw Brodie, Graves, and COB along with Chief Miller. The sonar operators all looked her way as she entered, and her thoughts that it might be some sort of prank vanished when she saw the worried expressions on everyone’s face.
“Sir?” Kristen asked Brodie who looked to have been awakened to come to sonar. She’d seen him only twice outside the control room over the last two days.
Chief Miller handed her a set of headphones, and Brodie motioned for her to put them on. “We made a recording of something about twenty minutes ago,” Brodie told her, giving no hint what it might be, but, by the looks on everyone’s face, it couldn’t be good. “I wanted to hear what you thought.”
Kristen pulled on the headphones and slipped her glasses into her pocket as Miller played the recorded sound for her. She assumed it was something unusual and listened closely, hearing nothing but sea noises and the roar of the Seawolf charging through the ocean at nearly thirty-five knots. At such speed they were unlikely to hear an earthquake. She listened, but then heard something unexpected. It was distant, but the sound was unmistakable. She opened her eyes and saw everyone staring at her gravely. “It sounds like a pair of underwater explosions, Captain.” She added curiously, “It was far off, though.”
Brodie and Graves exchanged serious glances, and Miller lowered his head slightly and shook it gently as if in remorse.
“Sir?” Kristen asked. “What was it?”
Graves answered. “It was about four hundred miles away in the direction of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Kristen now understood the significance. An underwater explosion would have to be pretty large to have created a large enough signature to be heard four hundred miles away. “What was it?” she asked. “A pair of mines? Did a ship hit a couple of Iranian mines?”
Brodie shook his head grimly and nodded to Miller, who turned on the speaker above their heads and then played a second recording. “We picked this up about fifteen seconds after the first two explosions.”
Kristen removed her headphones and then heard, over the speaker, the sound of a far greater explosion. It was significantly more powerful than the previous two detonations. She looked back at Brodie. “What was that?”
“We estimate it was equivalent to about seven tons of high explosive,” Brodie told her and then glanced at Miller, who turned off the speaker.
Kristen looked at Miller. “What was it, Senior Chief?” The blast occurred underwater and was far larger than any mine or torpedo she’d ever heard of.
“Well,” he said as an unlit cigarette hung lifelessly in his mouth, “we were hoping you might have a theory we like better than the one I came up with.”
Kristen shook her head. “I can’t think of anything causing such an explosion underwater…” She paused and thought for a moment. Then her hand went in dismay to her mouth as she looked at Brodie. “Dear God.”
Brodie nodded in agreement, his face showing all due solemnity. “We think the first two explosions were either torpedoes or mines hitting a submerged vessel followed by a third, larger explosion, such as the detonation of multiple warheads in a torpedo room.”
Kristen felt her heart sink. Part of her had hoped this crisis, like the one in North Korea, might still blow over. But now she felt a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach. She glanced at Miller. As the chief sonar operator, he had the most experience and she hoped he had another idea.
The aging chief shook his head sadly. “I was in the sonar shack up in the Barents Sea back in 2000 monitoring Russian fleet exercises when I heard something similar,” Miller told her. “It wasn’t until later we learned it was the Russian submarine Kursk’s torpedo room blowing up.”
Kristen new at least two allied submarines were in the area, but there could potentially be countless Iranian and Russian boats. “Do we know who it is, Senior Chief?”
“The Virginia was in the area. During her last communications she reported shadowing a Kilo class diesel electric boat,” Graves told her, obviously worried.