He had only hesitated this long because he’d hoped she might detect something. The other operators had shown themselves incapable of hearing what she could, and so he’d believed she was their best chance for success. But her task was made significantly harder by the amount of manmade noise in the Persian Gulf. Thousands of oil rigs were emanating sound into the water, and the Seawolf’s sensors vacuumed it all up. This cacophony of sound had to be filtered out before she could have any chance of finding the Borei.
Fabrini stepped up beside her, seeing her head droop. He thought she was asleep. Her eyes were closed and her glasses far down on her nose. He was about to shake her awake when he saw the slightest movement of her right hand on the joystick. Her eyes opened, and she turned toward him. She looked awful.
“I’ve got something,” she whispered. “Plant noises, I think. Very faint.”
Fabrini snapped his fingers toward the other operators and checked the bearing she was listening to, but he saw absolutely no hint of anything on her waterfall display. “Bearing two-nine-eight,” Fabrini told the others as he grabbed the microphone.
“Conn, sonar. We have a possible submerged contact bearing two-nine-eight. Very faint, but it could be a nuclear submarine.”
Fabrini ordered the other operators to focus on the bearing in hopes of finding whatever it was and classifying it. Greenberg heard nothing, but beside him on the classification stack, Hicks suddenly nodded his head. “It isn’t much, but it is definitely manmade.” Unfortunately, there were thousands of manmade noises around them at the moment.
“What is it?” Fabrini heard the captain ask as he entered the shack. Brodie looked even worse than Kristen.
“Possible submerged submarine, Skipper,” Fabrini reported promptly.
“Who picked it up?” Brodie asked, not looking very impressed. There’d been well over two dozen false alarms in the last two hours. There was just too much clutter in the water for the operators to separate the important sounds from all the background chaff.
Fabrini nodded toward Kristen. “Hicks thinks he heard it too, sir.”
Brodie shook his head in exhaustion and possible annoyance. “All this equipment doesn’t seem to be doing us much good, Mister Fabrini.” He slipped behind Kristen and leaned down over her slightly. “Whatcha got, Lieutenant?”
“It’s faint and intermittent. But I would have sworn it was plant noise, sir,” she replied without looking up.
“When was the last time you slept?”
She shook her head in reply, removed her glasses and rubbed her tired eyes. “I’m not sure any more.”
Brodie glanced at Fabrini with a questioning eye, but Fabrini could only shrug, not certain when she’d last slept.
“Well, that’s good enough for me,” Brodie concluded, willing to accept that she’d heard what she claimed. He patted her shoulder then grabbed the microphone to speak with the control room.
“Con, this is Brodie. New course bearing three-one-five and bring the boat to general quarters.”
The Seawolf turned slowly while Kristen and the other sonar operators continued listening. Meanwhile the rest of the crew manned their battle stations, something they were now taking as routine instead of unusual. Fabrini stood by Brodie, and they each watched Kristen, knowing that if anyone would find the noise, it would be her. But after fifteen minutes of patiently waiting and watching the other sonar operators come up empty, they finally saw her lean back tiredly in her seat and remove her headphones. “It’s not there,” she reported in a tone of voice that hinted at more than just exhaustion affecting her. She sounded frustrated and, perhaps, a little embarrassed.
“Lieutenant?” Brodie asked calmly.
“I…I lost him,” she admitted but didn’t look up. She kept her eyes focused on the display in front of her. “I’m sorry, sir.”
Fabrini felt bad for her. She’d been killing herself hoping to find the elusive Borei, but she was clearly beyond being effective. She needed to come off the sonar and get some decent rest.
“Nothing to apologize for, Lieutenant,” Brodie replied as he patted her slender shoulder. “Take a break, get cleaned up, and I want you to hit the rack for at least six hours,” he ordered. “Killing yourself won’t help us.”
She stood slowly. Fabrini could see that her entire body was stiff from having been seated in the same position hovering over the spectrum analyzer for so long. He knew the feeling, but he’d never been at it nearly as long as she had. He couldn’t imagine how sore she had to be. The look on her face was testament enough that she’d done her best, but she was now dead on her feet. Slowly, as if already dreaming, she stumbled out of the shack.
Brodie watched her leave, and Fabrini could see the concern in the captain’s eyes. “How long has she been in here?” Brodie asked once she was gone.
“Other than a couple of short breaks to get rid of coffee, she’s been in here for the better part of thirty-six hours, sir,” he admitted.
Brodie exhaled in a bit of frustration. “If she comes back in here before she gets at least six hours of sleep, I want to know about it.”
“Aye, sir,” Fabrini replied feeling guilty he’d let her go for so long.
Kristen felt like she was in a fog as she made it to the bathroom, her body going almost on autopilot as she headed for the shower. Fatigued physically and mentally more than she could have ever imagined, she sat down on the commode for just a brief moment to rest and was instantly asleep.
Almost immediately she was dreaming. The vision was far more pleasurable than reality. She was once again in Brodie’s cabin and in his arms. Just like in the previous dream, the two of them surrendered to their secret desires and traded their duty for passion.
She awoke abruptly as her body sagged, and she nearly fell over. Kristen shook her head and forced herself to stand. She plunged her head into a sink of ice-cold water then stripped out of her soiled uniform before climbing into the shower. After several minutes of letting the icy water refresh her as much as possible, she turned off the water. She then realized that in her mental fog, she’d forgotten a towel.
Forced to use the only towel available, she picked up Brodie’s that was hanging — as usual — from a metal peg on the bulkhead. She was almost too tired to care, but then, as she towel dried her hair, she caught a hint of his scent on the towel. She buried her face in the soft cotton and inhaled deeply. The aroma was almost hypnotic to her, and for several seconds she held the towel to her face breathing in and out. She finally returned the moist towel to its proper place and dressed before stepping back out into his cabin.
Tiredly, she leaned against the bulkhead. The same bulkhead in her dream she’d fallen back against, pulling him to her. In her exhaustion, she now all but wilted against it, her head sagging slightly. She was too drained to force the errant thoughts aside. She was almost asleep on her feet. She opened her eyes, wishing for the dream to become reality, but knew she would never tell him how she felt. Despite Patricia’s voice haunting her, despite her burning desire to let him know, she couldn’t do it.
Kristen pushed herself back to an upright position. But as she did, she noticed something on the bottom of the bulkhead by the floor. Her first thought was that she’d dropped something and she bent down to pick it up. But then froze as she saw, along the bottom of the wall, several scuff marks made by the heel of a boot.
Brodie’s cabin had never had so much as a hair out of place. Not even once. But the heel marks now stared back at her accusingly. No one wore boots on the Seawolf except her; everyone else wore soft-soled tennis shoes. She’d discarded her gore-stained tennis shoes weeks earlier following Vance’s suicide.