“God almighty,” Hicks whispered in prayer as the Seawolf approached the narrow lane between the two minefields.
“Amen, brother,” Goodman added as he gripped a handhold beside the narrowband stack.
The sudden blaring of the collision alarm caused a petty officer from another sonar watch to start crying. The alarm startled Kristen, but she held firm, gritting her teeth. She watched the tactical display as the Seawolf moved toward the narrow channel like a cork entering a bottle. The channel didn’t look wide enough. If just one of the mines had come loose and was floating in their path there would be no going around it.
“This is insane,” Greenberg whispered, “I’m too short for this shit.”
“Shh,” Kristen whispered to him as the Seawolf squeezed between the two minefields. She bit her lip nervously and had to consciously stop herself before she drew blood.
The MIDAS alarm sounded like a train whistle.
Kristen called out the warning, “MIDAS alert, dead ahead. Zero-zero-two!”
“It’s right in front of us,” Fabrini added as he grabbed the back of a seat and tensed his whole body in anticipation of the metal-shredding blast.
There was nowhere for the Seawolf to go. They were in too narrow a channel to maneuver around the mine. Like Fabrini who literally cringed beside her, Kristen tensed her whole body. She shut her eyes reflexively, expecting disaster.
But instead of a terrible explosion, Kristen heard Brodie’s calm voice over the squawk box ordering a thirty degree down angle on both the fore and aft dive planes. Immediately the Seawolf dove deeper. With both sets of dive planes at the same angle, the submarine settled gently, lowering on an even keel while still moving forward. The result was the Seawolf didn’t go around the mine; it went under it.
Kristen heard someone whispering. She opened her eyes to see Hicks praying at his seat and beside him the irreverent Greenberg joining in. Meanwhile, Fabrini was white knuckling a couple of handholds. Everyone fully expected disaster. But the Seawolf moved on and passed the errant mine floating in the middle of the channel before Brodie brought the submarine back up.
Kristen turned her head slowly, her neck muscles so tight from nervous tension it hurt to turn her head. She watched as they cleared the narrow channel and commenced another slight turn, still at four knots, toward the next narrow section. Kristen closed her eyes, forcing herself to relax her muscles. Her left arm was cramping from holding on, and she willed her stiff fingers to release the pipe.
But the transit of the channel continued, every turn as harrowing as the last, and with each tick of the clock seeming like an eternity. The strain was too much for some, as two more men from another sonar watch slid to the floor and began trembling with fear in the rear of the shack. Throughout the four-hour transit, the only thing providing any relief from the terror of knowing they were in a minefield and could be killed at any second was the tranquil and steady voice they heard over the squawk box as Brodie issued orders to the helm. His voice never sounded excited or nervous. Even when the MIDAS alarm went off, his orders were direct, deliberate, and always unruffled.
Passing through the last of the minefield with a tremendous sigh of relief, Kristen heard her men welcome the relatively narrow Persian Gulf. For herself, she felt as if she’d just finished a marathon. She was a mental and physical wreck. Kristen, along with everyone one on board, had been awake now for the better part of two days. Much of the time they’d all been under great stress, magnifying everyone’s exhaustion tenfold.
But now that they were in the Persian Gulf, she liked to think the worst was behind them. Of course, somewhere, perhaps lurking close by, the Borei and — quite probably — the Gagarin were waiting, and Kristen had no idea how they were going to find them.
Chapter Twenty Six
The desire to just sit down on the cramped floor and get a few minutes of sleep was tempting. At the same time, the need to strip off her filthy, sweat-soaked uniform and take a shower proved stronger. Kristen stepped from the sonar shack and headed for her cabin. Brodie had relaxed their readiness posture to allow the crew to eat and move about the submarine, so Kristen was determined to at least wash up a bit before returning to the caveman-like existence of the sonar shack.
After a brief shower that did little to remove her bone-numbing fatigue, she dressed into a clean uniform. Then, with her hygiene needs satisfied, she was anxious to crawl into her bunk for any sleep that might come. She slipped from the head and paused, looking about the spartan cabin the captain maintained for himself.
Kristen again considered the barren walls. She closed her eyes momentarily, envisioning how they should have looked, with pictures of family framed and mounted to help him remember there was a purpose behind everything he did. But his walls were bleak, without so much as a fingerprint marring them. It occurred to her how lonely the life of any ship’s captain must be, and especially his. He had nothing. No family. No one waiting for him. Nothing.
There’d been a time when she’d envied such an existence. She’d actively pursued the life of a submariner despite firsthand knowledge of how hard it was on families. She’d foolishly dismissed the thoughts of how difficult it might be. But as she leaned back against the door to the head, staring at the empty cabin, the reality hit her, and she felt not only tired but utterly alone herself.
Chief Miller and Gibbs were dead, and she grieved, but they at least had someone back home who would miss them and mourn their passing. Kristen realized, like Brodie, she had no one. Her father’s parents were still alive and she was close with them, recalling their modest home in the San Diego area not far from the naval base where her grandfather had retired. They would mourn her loss, but they also understood the risks associated with being a submariner. Her mother — if sober enough — might shed a tear, but there would be no real grief from the woman whose only concern would likely be Kristen’s life insurance.
She realized wallowing in self-pity was due partly to her lack of sleep, but the recognition of her own loneliness was only exacerbated by the epiphany that all of the sacrifice and hard work hadn’t been worth it. She’d forfeited too much, given up far more than she should have. She could very well have been killed in the minefield, never having experienced any of the joys life had to offer. The fact that it had taken such a near death experience for her to understand this was sobering.
At that moment, the door to the passageway opened.
She turned and saw Brodie enter.
Whatever fatigue, whatever loneliness, whatever weight she felt pressing down upon her was echoed and multiplied in the captain’s shockingly fragile expression he revealed only when alone. She must have startled him, and he stiffened a bit and paused in the doorway. “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” he said automatically as the door lingered open behind him.
Kristen stepped to the side to allow him to pass in the cramped quarters.
“Not at all, sir,” she said, a bit startled at having him suddenly in front of her. “I was just leaving.”