When she reached the other side of the street, something flicked past her left ear. An insect? A rifle bullet? Liv honestly didn’t know. If it was a slug, she hadn’t heard the muzzle report.
She ducked between two houses and zigged left, using the additional cover to (hopefully) stay out of the shooter’s field of vision.
A block later, she felt like she had enough distance and enough intervening concealment to pick up the pace. Her walk became a trot, and then a jog, and then an all-out run.
The few locals stirring in the streets stared at this crazy Yuma, sprinting blindly through their town, tears streaming down her cheeks.
She didn’t slow as twilight continued to fall, her heart pounding like a jackhammer, hoping that she hadn’t gotten turned around somewhere. No longer completely certain that she could find her way back to the boat.
And inside her head, a single line kept repeating itself over and over again. “Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be Jarheads…”
Cassy stuck her face into the cabin. “Jonnie? Better get up here. A boat’s coming, and it’s not the dinghy.”
Jon turned down the burner under the pot of simmering soup. He was on deck in a few seconds, Roxy at his heels.
Evening was giving way to night, and the stars were really starting to show themselves. The incoming boat was not easy to spot in the gathering gloom. It was dark in color and running without lights. Somehow he knew that neither was an accident.
From what he could see, the boat was a rigid-hulled inflatable. Something like a Zodiac Hurricane, but with the helm console near the stern. Decades newer than anything likely to be found in a jerkwater coastal town, and the outboard — now that Jon could hear it — was putting out a steady and healthy drone.
This was high-end equipment: the kind of stuff that Guarda Frontera and the local harbor cops only dreamed of.
Military? Could be. If so, it wouldn’t be the local boys. The regular Cuban grunts would be making due with clapped-out Russian or Chinese handoffs, not the real tactical stuff.
Heavy customers, then. Bad news.
This evening was shaping up to be a real winner. First, the Marines hadn’t come back on schedule, and now these guys.
Without realizing that he was doing so, Jon did a neck roll and began loosening up his shoulders. “Cass, grab Roxy and get below.”
“But I—”
“Now!” Jon said. “No questions. Just do it.”
Cassy grabbed Roxy’s collar and led the dog down the companionway and into the cabin. A second later, the interior lights went out.
Jon smiled to himself. Good girl.
The boat was getting close now. He could see two forms crouched in the bow, and a third seated in the stern.
Three men, then. All dressed in black utility uniforms and assault helmets.
Bad news, alright. Major bad news.
CHAPTER 63
The Sonar Supervisor motioned for Master Chief Pooler’s attention. “Hey, COB. Looks like our North Korean buddy is back.”
Ernie lowered his coffee cup and turned to examine the lower screen of the BQQ-10. The new sonar contact, designated as Sierra One-Four, was faint but it showed several of the acoustic tonals associated with Han class boats.
He nodded. “That’s our boy, alright. Call it away.”
The Sonar Supe keyed his microphone to make the report. When he was finished, he grinned and rubbed his palms together. “Your ass is mine now, Mr. Supercav. You’ve gone and fucked with the wrong people.”
“Easy there, Shipmate,” said Ernie. “We’re not allowed to shoot this guy, remember? We’re just going to tag him for the skimmers.”
“You’re serious? I thought you guys were joking about that.”
“No joke,” said Ernie. “We keep our distance and forward our contact data to USS Bowie.”
“A surface puke against an attack sub? What mega-genius came up with that idea?”
“The order came from the top of the food chain,” Ernie said. “We don’t have to agree with it. We just have to follow it.”
“COB, this is bullshit! The best way to kill a submarine is with another submarine. Even my brain-dead cousin knows that, and he could lose a battle of wits with a bowl of oatmeal.”
“Your cousin doesn’t make the Rules of Engagement,” said Ernie. “So enough with your bitching and moaning. If we have to be a bird dog, we’re gonna be the best goddamned bird dog in the history of the Atlantic Fleet.”
“If you say so, COB.”
“I do say so,” growled Ernie. “Now, suck it up and do your job!”
“Sonar — USWE. Anything to report?” It was the third time in as many minutes that he’d asked the same question.
STG1 Wyatt keyed his headset. “USWE — Sonar. Negative, sir. Still no contact.”
He released the mike button. “Jesus, does he think we’re gonna keep it a secret?”
STG2 Denisha Jenkins was back in her favorite spot: the operator station for the aft towed array. “Cut the man some slack,” she said. “He’s an ensign. It always takes them a little while to get their heads out of their asses.”
Wyatt said something in reply, but Denisha ignored it. Her mind was on the A-BAB display.
The colored dots were churning and mutating in their usual Brownian swarm. Never following a recognizable pattern, but never quite random either. Sending cryptic messages to the processing centers of Denisha’s subconscious on a carrier wave that might have made sense to Jackson Pollock.
It wasn’t there yet. The subtle and indefinable whatever it was that sometimes caught Denisha’s notice. With A-BAB, she never really knew what her mind was reacting to. For the moment though, that unknowable something was absent.
She shifted to her lower screen and began paging through the aft beams of the array. There were plenty of contacts out there — fishing boats, small craft, merchant shipping, the oil rig off to the northeast — and all of their acoustic signatures showed up in the narrowband display. The frequency pattern of the North Korean submarine was not among them.
The hostile sub was definitely somewhere to the south. That much they knew, because the Bowie was receiving lines of bearing from USS Albany. But so far, the thing had stubbornly refused to make an appearance on any of the Bowie’s sonar screens.
Denisha reached the broadside beam and turned her focus back to the upper display. A-BAB was still doing its nonsensical pixel dance. The rhythmless shuffle of colored dots continued unabated. Still nothing. The something wasn’t there.
She resumed paging through the beams, working from aft to forward as required by doctrine and training. Below her breath, she chanted in a singsong voice, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty…”
Nothing again. Just the usual surface contacts. No sign of the acoustic fingerprint that so closely mimicked the old Han class boats.
She shifted back to A-BAB and found more of the same. Abstract pseudo-randomness, with nothing worth…
Wait a second…
Maybe there was something after all. Some faint and transitory kernel of pattern buried in the chaos. Denisha rolled her cursor over to the area that had piqued her interest, and examined the alphanumeric readout in the upper right corner of the display.