Brodie nodded his thanks to her and then added, “Which means, if and when we run into these buggers, we can expect the action to be in close and personal. Like a knife fight in a dark closet. It’ll be fast and furious, so we need to stay on our toes.” Brodie glanced at Andrew Stahl. “Weps, your tracking parties are gonna have to be Johnny on the spot with their firing solutions. The Russians don’t — and certainly not the Iranians — have anything near our experience with this kind of stuff. If we can react faster, we should be able to hit them and move clear before they can respond.”
“Aye, Captain,” Stahl responded curtly.
“But, sir,” Charles Horner commented, “if they’re totally silent and waiting in ambush for us, we could drive right over top of them. They could have two or three fish in the water before we know where they’re coming from.”
Everyone was thinking similar thoughts, but Brodie answered coolly, “Then we’ll just have to come at them from a direction they don’t expect.”
This was, as the officers around the table knew, easier said than done. The Strait of Hormuz was narrow to begin with, and entrance into it was limited and had been made even more so by the introduction of the Iranian minefield. In addition, the Persian Gulf in general and the Strait of Hormuz in particular were shallow waters for the Seawolf, which was truly at home in the ocean depths. None of this would be easy.
“Sir,” Terry asked, “the channel through the minefield is barely a mile wide. How do you propose to get through undetected and surprise anyone?”
Kristen was considering the options herself when Brodie looked back down the table at her and Martin. He fixed her eyes with hers and said simply, “We’ll go through the minefield.”
His tone was so calm, almost flippant in fact, that he caught the assembled officers off guard. No submarine or surface ship would intentionally enter a minefield, which of course, was the essence of his plan. The Iranians and the Russians wouldn’t think it necessary to guard these minefields and would instead focus entirely on the narrow approaches to the channel to deny access to the Gulf.
“Lieutenant,” Brodie asked, looking directly at Kristen, “you and Ensign Martin handled the LMRS drones once before, do you think you can again?”
Kristen knew the answer without any thought. “Yes sir, absolutely.”
Martin nodded halfheartedly in agreement.
Satisfied, Brodie laid out his plan. “The Iranians have extended their minefield across the Strait and naturally believe it will act as a deterrent. But, if our drones can find us a route through, then we can enter the Gulf undetected. It’ll require a stealth approach through a potential cordon of enemy patrols, and then several hours hovering in one place for the drones to complete their mission where we’ll be under constant threat of detection. But if successful, we could put rumors of this potential nuclear threat to bed for good.”
“Sir,” Ryan Walcott pointed out calmly, “it could take our two drones multiple search profiles and over a week to search the entire Strait. We don’t have that kind of time.” It was one of many problems they had to overcome.
“The Iranian minefield is big,” Brodie admitted. “But it’s also a hasty affair with no apparent coordination in its preparation. This means there must be gaps in it, probably quite a few, in fact. My hope is to deploy the drones on the edge of the field on a narrow search pattern lasting no more than a few hours and then recover them. With luck, they’ll reveal a path we might be able to take.”
“It’s awful shallow in there, Captain,” Terry pointed out, a bit edgy about the Seawolf possibly getting boxed in where her ability to hit hard from a great distance was negated.
“And any path through the minefield’s going to be awful narrow, Skipper,” Ryan added.
“It only means they have less water to hide in,” Brodie said with unshakeable confidence. “It should make the hunting easier.”
Brodie looked around the room, and Kristen realized that despite the confidence he’d renewed in many of them, there was still apprehension. What he was proposing could end in disaster. Even the cheapest mine with a few hundred pounds of explosive and a thirty cent trigger could destroy the three billion dollar Seawolf in an instant.
She studied Ski and Graves, the two next senior officers who sat on each side of the captain. The three of them looked as resolved and serious as she’d ever seen them, and she hoped she too gave off such quiet confidence. Although, she feared she might look as nervous as Martin.
“This is it,” Brodie concluded his tone calm and confident, the fire in his eyes adding emphasis to each word he spoke. “We have the finest boat with the best crew ever to go into the fight. No one has ever been better prepared than we are.”
Kristen felt a tingling of excitement in her lower abdomen slowly spreading throughout her as he seemed to be almost speaking to her and her alone. Despite the enormity of the situation and the loss of the Virginia, she felt her own confidence growing with each well-chosen word.
“We’ve trained all of our lives for this moment. We have spent years preparing for it.” The gaze roamed the room, as if searching for anyone who didn’t believe what he was saying. Then his eyes settled on Kristen. Hard like steel, his eyes were locked on her, and then he spoke, “There are no more tomorrows, no more yesterdays…”
His words struck an instant chord with her, as if he’d read her mind and knew what she needed to hear at that moment.
He continued, “…no more maybes, no more never wills, and maybe next years. This is why we were put on this earth. This moment, right now. The Russians have played us all for patsies long enough. The North Koreans are backpedaling. The Iranians have had their fifteen minutes of fame. Now it’s our turn.”
The message was meant for all of them, and she knew it. But in her heart his words were meant just for her, and he couldn’t have said anything more inspiring. At that moment, with the exception of maybe Martin, Kristen and the others would have followed him into the abyss itself.
Chapter Twenty One
Kristen paused at the hatchway leading into the control room before reporting to the sonar shack. The Seawolf had recently gone to ultra-quiet as they began their stealth approach to the Strait of Hormuz in hopes of reaching the area of the Iranian minefield undetected. Kristen knew of no one on board — except for maybe Ski — who was looking for a fight. Everyone else was hoping they’d be able to slip through undetected, but she wasn’t betting on it.
Kristen looked around the control room, hoping to see Brodie before she reported to the sonar shack. She had no deep foreboding of doom or any apprehension of their impending fate. Instead, she just wanted to see him. It was foolish perhaps, and her rational side chastised her for such emotional foolhardiness, but she was finished with ignoring her heart’s desires for the sake of her career. She’d spent years alone and wouldn’t be satisfied returning to that self-imposed isolation.
She saw COB, Graves, Andy Stahl, Ryan Walcott, and the rest of the control room crew at their stations, and the tracking parties looked busy already. But she saw no sign of Brodie. Disappointed, she lingered for a moment and was about to turn back toward the sonar shack when the door to the sound room opened and Brodie appeared, stepping into the passageway. She’d hoped to just see him briefly but now nearly ran into him.