Did he?
Half an hour into the exercise, at a precisely timed moment, both subs suddenly went quiet and drifted, their momentum carrying them in opposite directions.
Sorensen's fingers stabbed at his keyboard. In the abrupt silence that followed the shutdown of machinery he heard a faint mechanical rumble. An instant later, it stopped.
"Got her. That's it. Sonar to control. Contact bearing two three zero degrees. No range, but he's not too close. He's holding still, skipper. No identification yet."
In the control room the bearing of the Soviet sub appeared on the navigation and weapons screens.
"Bingo," said Lt. Hoek.
"Where is Vallejo?" Springfield asked.
"Right here, skipper," Pisaro answered, pointing to a blip on his chart.
Vallejo was making a wide turn to the right, away from Barracuda, and descending to one thousand feet.
Springfield spoke quietly into his microphone. "Attention all hands. Prepare for quiet running. Quiet in the boat."
In the sonar room the air conditioner stopped whirring. Sorensen switched off the overhead speakers and said quietly to Fogarty. "We're going to try to make this Ivan think we're Vallejo. We're going to go north. If the Russian takes the bait and follows us, then Vallejo is clear."
"And if she doesn't?"
"We'll have to wait and see."
Sorensen played the brief tape of the picket, backed it up and ran it through a series of filters that corrected the distortion and removed extraneous sound. Then he ran it through the signature program.
"Okay, Fogarty, what is it?"
"I'm not sure."
"Is it Soviet?"
"Yes."
"How do you know? That might be Her Majesty's Ship Valiant."
"He moved when we moved, and stopped when we stopped. He's hostile. He's up above four hundred feet trying to listen to us, trying to decide which one to follow, and his prop cavitated just so. November class, even the computer knows that. It's not the Alpha."
November was flashing on the screen.
"Very good, Fogarty. See, there's nothing so mysterious about these Russians and their noisy boats. Let's play the tape again. It could be the Alpha simulating a November."
While the tape was running, Sorensen stood up and looked at the chart of Soviet subs. He tapped the drawing of the November class attack subs. "Wait a minute, wait a minute, I recognize that boat. That's our old friend Arkangel. Jesus, they must've pulled that thing out of mothballs. Wow, we don't need sonars to pick up Arkangel. All we need is a Geiger counter."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, that is a hot boat. She's so radioactive I bet she glows in the dark. I sure wouldn't want to be on it. If you can feel sorry for any Russian sailors, think about that. Those suckers get more radiation in a month than we'll get in five hundred years. Just for them to come this far from Murmansk and then have to go back means every one of those guys has been zapped… Sonar to control, we have a signature. November class, it's Arkangel."
"Very well, sonar. Control to communications."
"Communications, aye."
"Prepare to send up a radio buoy on my order. Message as follows: Hostile contact thirty-six degrees thirty-four minutes north, six degrees forty-one minutes west. Priority one."
"Priority one, aye."
They waited in silence, drifting slowly in the slight current. Vallejo was three miles south, six hundred feet deeper, and also drifting. The Russian was eight miles west and making no noise.
Sorensen hunched over his console, quietly humming and beeping along with the faint sounds of marine life that came through his earphones. Every few minutes he looked casually at Fogarty, noting the exhaustion beginning to etch deep lines under the young sailor's eyes.
After two hours Sorensen was ready to have Fogarty relieved. He whispered, "You're through, kid. Hit the sack."
Fogarty shook his head
"That's an order. Get outta—"
"Attention all hands. General quarters, general quarters. Man battle stations. Man battle stations. Prepare for maneuvering."
On the screen they could see Vallejo already moving.
"Okay, Fogarty, I guess you're going to stay put. You awake?"
"Never felt better in my life."
"Control to navigation. Set course three three one."
"Course three three one, aye."
"All ahead slow."
"All ahead slow, aye."
The ship shuddered once and began to move. Vallejo was heading south and Barracuda north. The Russian hesitated, then moved toward Vallejo.
"Son of a bitch," Sorensen said. "She didn't take the bait. This stupid fucker is in for it now."
In the control room Springfield called communications. "Send up the buoy."
"Communications to control. Buoy away."
From the top of the sail a small float detached itself from the ship and rose to the surface. A small, powerful radio beamed an encoded, enciphered, compressed and scrambled message to Rota. Thirty seconds later an alarm sounded on the Spanish aircraft carrier Dédalo, and helicopter rotors started churning up the night.
"Control to weapons."
"Weapons, aye."
"Lieutenant, load tubes three and six. Conventional warheads, wire-guided."
Hoek could sense his blood pressure rising. He began to sweat. "Conventional warheads, wire-guided, aye. Weapons to torpedo room."
"Torpedo room, aye."
"Chief, load tubes three and six with Mark thirty-sevens, Mod three. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill."
Lopez pushed a button on his console and a red light began to blink in the torpedo room. The torpedo-men jumped to attention.
"Johnson," Lopez yelled across the room, "load three and six. This… is… not… a… drill."
The torpedomen unbolted two torpedoes from their bays and slipped them into tubes. When the inner doors were locked, the targeting computer began feeding data to the on-board computers behind the warheads.
"Control to weapons, lock on sonar."
"Lock on sonar, aye."
Hoek punched buttons on his console, and the signature of the November was fed into the torpedoes.
"Flood tubes."
"Flood tubes, aye."
Fogarty listened to the sound of seawater rushing into the torpedo tubes, thinking the war of nerves was about to become something else… "We can't sink her," he muttered, "she's in international waters—"
"There is no way in hell the skipper is going to let Arkangel or any other Russian sub put a tail on a boomer," Sorensen cut him off. "Not allowed. No way. We know it, and the captain of Arkangel knows it. An attack submarine like that one, or this one, is considered the most destabilizing military unit you can get. Suppose the Russians had a tail on every one of our boomers. They could sink all of them all at once. Result — no second strike, no deterrence. So we don't even give them a chance. Just like they wouldn't give us a chance—"
"Control to sonar. Echo range, maximum power, target-seeking frequency. Let him have it, Ace."
Sorensen nodded, and Fogarty took a deep breath. The Russian on his screen had become much more than a blip. In a fraction of a second Fogarty remembered his first sonar lashing, the collision and Sorensen's tape. He was ready. His onetime concern for the Russians was gone. They hadn't sunk anyway, just faked it… Deliberately he locked the echo ranger on the Russian sub, turned it up to maximum power, and pushed the button. The echo came back with a resounding ping.