Brodie motioned for her and Graves to join him in the passageway as he exited, and she dutifully followed him. “How’s it going on the computer model?” Brodie asked, hiding any worry he felt. Instead, his face showed just raw determination.
“Not well, sir,” she admitted. Kristen tried not to think about the very real possibility they were now in a shooting war. “We don’t have enough information on the Borei or the Gagarin to complete the simulation. We’re now uploading the data for the German’s 212.”
Brodie’s face was a mask of concentration and bull headed determination. It sounded like the rapidly approaching war had suffered its latest series of casualties, and the Seawolf was racing right into the middle of a no-holds-barred fight. Alone in the passageway, he lowered his voice as he faced her. “What good’ll that do us?”
She then explained how she hoped to get at least some indication what an operational boat using a fuel cell drive might sound like. “Maybe it’ll give us an idea what we’re looking for.” She hesitated for a moment, a question on her lips.
“What?”
“Captain, is there any way I could get the sound recording the USS Albany made of the Borei before losing contact?”
He nodded. “I’ll have it for you in our next data dump from CENTCOM.”
They were standing in the passageway forward of the control room between the radio and sonar shacks. Kristen’s back was to a bulkhead with Brodie on one side and Graves on the other.
“How are the drills coming?” Brodie asked him.
“They’re sharper than I’ve ever seen a crew, Skipper,” Graves answered with a satisfied expression. “But tired and a bit on edge.”
Brodie leaned against the bulkhead next to her, his head slightly bowed, deep in thought. He nodded his head in satisfaction with their answers and looked back up at Graves. “All right, secure the drills. I want everyone in the rack. Cancel all training.” Brodie then added in a whisper, “As far as I’m concerned this boat is at war, and I want everyone rested when the fight starts.”
Graves nodded in agreement and then cut his eyes toward Kristen. “Everyone, Skipper?”
Brodie nodded in agreement as he glanced at Kristen. “Whatever you got cooking, I want you to secure it in six hours and then get some sleep.”
“Sir, I don’t think we’ll be finished in six hours,” Kristen protested softly.
“I don’t care,” he told her in the same calm, yet uncompromising tone she’d come to expect when he’d made up his mind about something. “In six hours shut it down and get some sleep. We’re gonna need everyone fresh when the time comes, especially the sonar personnel.”
Kristen hated not finishing something, but nodded her head in agreement. “Aye, sir.”
She went back to work, feverishly adjusting the program to fit the new profile. She knew Martin was at least as tired as she was, but he stuck with her, which she felt counted for something. After five more hours, they had the program ready to run and were still running it when they felt the Seawolf begin to slow and come shallow. It wasn’t uncommon for the boat to approach the surface periodically to receive message traffic, and Kristen hardly noticed it as she stood, unable to stay awake any more if she stayed in her seat. Martin was in his chair, and his head had fallen onto his chest. He snored softly as the program ran. She checked her watch, her brain having reached the point where she had to concentrate hard to figure out how long it had been since she’d last slept.
She saw the program concluding and donned a set of headphones to listen to the computer generated noise the program had developed. The program was designed to actually provide the other ambient noises in the sea while listening for a submarine. But she heard nothing but normal sounds associated with the ocean.
Kristen glanced at her wristwatch and saw she was out of time. Brodie had ordered her to get some sleep after six hours, and she’d passed her allotted time. She made a digital recording of the sound the program had created to analyze later and was just finishing when a radioman delivered a flash drive to her.
“The captain said you needed this, Miss,” he explained.
Kristen, her head feeling like it was in a fog, vaguely recalled her earlier conversation with Brodie where she requested the sound recording from the Albany. She downloaded everything she had to her MP3 player including the recordings from the Albany, planning on listening to it during her free time in the event she could discern something.
She got Martin up and began shuffling him out of the DPER prior to her crawling into her bunk and getting some much needed sleep. But, as she said goodnight to Martin, they heard the 1MC speaker on the bulkhead come to life.
“All hands, this is the captain.”
Kristen heard the ominous tone in Brodie’s voice and paused to listen.
“We just received word from COMSUBPAC that at approximately 0237 local time, the Beast Buoy for the USS Virginia began signaling, indicating she’s gone down.”
Kristen felt her legs weaken slightly, and she gripped the edge of the doorway to steady herself. The BST-1 Buoy or “Beast Buoy,” was an automatically launched distress beacon built into every American submarine. It automatically launched if the buoy’s internal timer wasn’t reset at least every ninety minutes; this way if a submarine had a catastrophic accident and every member of the crew was killed, the buoy would automatically launch, giving the downed submarine’s last location.
“Although we cannot be certain of the cause of her loss, we picked up several explosions coinciding with the time the buoy began transmitting, and it appears likely she was lost due to enemy action.
“I’m sure we all share the same sense of loss and a desire to see to it our fallen comrades did not die in vain and that the forces responsible for the Virginia’s demise aren’t allowed to simply walk away from this unchallenged. With this in mind, we’re currently enroute to the region and will hopefully have a chance to see those responsible for this disaster brought to task.”
Brodie was not the kind of man to make threats, and she felt her own smoldering desire to punish whoever was responsible for this catastrophe.
“That is all.”
Kristen looked at an ashen-faced Martin.
“Do you still think we can negotiate with these people?” she asked him bitterly.
Despite her exhaustion, Kristen had trouble sleeping. The loss of the Virginia weighed upon her as she considered what might happen next. Going ashore in Korea had been terrifying to say the least, but it had also been fast. She hadn’t had time to consider just what she was getting herself into. But now, as she lay tossing and turning in her bunk, she had lots of time to think. Too much, in fact, and she didn’t like where her wayward thoughts led her.
She was exactly where she had always wanted to be. She was on a submarine. She’d been accepted by the crew and felt her skills were appreciated. But now, with the loss of the Virginia fresh in her mind and the Persian Gulf looming large, she found herself second guessing her entire life.
Kristen recalled the words Patricia said to her when they’d parted in Sasebo, reminding her she needed to begin enjoying her life. Kristen had lived her entire life sacrificing everyday pleasures so she might have the future she wanted. Now she had that future; she was on the Seawolf. But now that she had it, all of the sacrifice seemed folly. Patricia had always warned her that she would regret the time spent immersed in books, and Kristen feared her friend’s prediction was proving true.