In the control room every screen came alive with incoming data from the target. Each man was holding his breath. They were alone, no longer a so-called "instrument of national policy" but a state unto themselves in the open sea. In a matter of moments they might be infamous, or dead, or worse.
This time the Russians did not hesitate. The single ping from the target-seeking sonar meant the next thing they would hear would be a torpedo. Arkangel made an abrupt ninety-degree turn and suddenly the sea erupted with the roar of her machinery. She cut loose all her raw power, and in a matter of seconds she was heading due west at thirty knots, leaving Vallejo free to begin her patrol unmolested.
It happened so fast… no one had time to feel relief.
Fogarty's heart was banging his ribs hard enough to make his chest hurt. He could almost taste the adrenaline.
Sorensen was standing up, his face an inch from the screen. "That was close," he mumbled. "That was awfully goddamn close."
He sat down, with unsteady fingers lit a cigarette, took a long deep drag.
"Is it over?" Fogarty said.
"Yeah, it's over."
"She sure hauled ass, didn't she?"
"It was, you might say, the prudent thing to do, under the circumstances. She was outnumbered, after all." He grinned. "You sure put the fear of God into them, Fogarty. Shit, you put the fear of God into me."
Fogarty stood up and took off his earphones. He was flexing his hand muscles, snapping his fingers over and over from a fist into a straight edge. Sorensen saw the glint still flickering in his eyes. Maybe he had pushed the kid too hard. Fogarty's lifetime of self-control could blow up. He was like a volcano waiting to erupt…
Fogarty said, "I scared the shit out of myself."
"Take it easy, it's over."
Fogarty shook his head. "They'll come back, they'll always come back, and we'll chase 'em and—"
"And as long as we win the battles, we won't have to win the war."
"You've got a smart answer for everything, Sorensen. Well why don't we follow her, chase her all the way to the ice—?"
"Jesus, next you'll ask me why we didn't blow her to hell. What did you do, take an upside-down pill?"
"Listen, Sorensen, you told me to shape up and do my job. So I'm doing it. Okay?"
"Sure, okay, killer." He smiled when he said it. "But don't turn into another Davic. Stay cool."
"There's nothing cool about a target-seeking sonar. It's about as hot as you can get."
"It's sure as hot as I ever want to see it… Listen, Fogarty, you scared yourself, you scared me. It's okay, sooner or later we all scare ourselves down here. We all feel like killers sometimes. You just got to put the beast back in his cage and keep him there… You're tired, you've had a busy day. Go get yourself some sleep."
Fogarty reached for the door, smiled. "Okay, cowboy, I'll try to belay the beast. Whatever you say."
The quartermaster's voice came through the speakers just then. "Secure from general quarters. Secure from general quarters. Midrats are now being served in the mess. That is all."
Fogarty opened the door to find Pisaro about to move in from the control room.
"Pardon me, sir," Fogarty said as he stepped past.
Pisaro shut the door and sat down next to Sorensen.
"Pretty hairy, wouldn't you say, Ace?"
"I'd say, Commander."
"Did the kid do okay?"
"He's not ready to stand watch by himself. He got pretty excited, but he'll get used to it, as much as anybody ever does. This kind of thing can make you grow old quick."
"Look, Ace, are you positive that was Arkangel?"
"Yes, sir. That was old dirty Ivan, in person, polluting the Atlantic. Must be a new crew. They're probably using the old one to light up Leningrad."
"No more dirty tricks?"
"I don't think so, sir. Not this time."
"All right. We're going to run a rear guard for Vallejo until she clears the Strait. You're relieved. Davic is on his way in here. Go get yourself some grub."
22
The longitude and latitude readouts on the navigation console stopped flickering and came to a rest. Barracuda hovered six hundred feet deep at the edge of the Atlantic. Above her, dozens of ships passed through one of the busiest waterways of the world, oblivious to her presence.
"Attention all hands, this is the captain. We are now on-station four miles west of the Strait of Gibraltar. Our orders are to monitor all westbound submarine traffic passing from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic. We might be here quite some time waiting for the Alpha. When she emerges, our orders are to track her into the Atlantic. Be advised that three more Soviet subs have been detected in the eastern North Atlantic. One of them is certainly Arkangel. Twelve hours ago they were reported approximately three hundred miles northeast of Rota. Prepare for combat drills. That is all."
Some two hundred surface ships and several submarines passed through the Strait of Gibraltar every day, giving the crew plenty of targets for combat drills. At the moment twelve ships were on the sonar screens, eleven surface ships and a Turkish Navy relic from World War Two making a submerged passage east-bound through the Strait.
Willie Joe was practicing for his qualifying exam for first class. While Davic and Fogarty watched, Willie Joe sat with Sorensen, tracking the old sub. They listened to the fixed arrays on the bottom ping off the Turkish hull. The sub was so old the computer had no record of her signature. Always thorough, Sorensen recorded her machinery and logged it into the signature program.
Willie Joe tracked the sub through the Strait, a difficult task because of the heavy surface traffic. At the extreme edge of his range, when he was about to lose it, the new sonars picked up another submerged contact. A sub was hovering near the eastern entrance to the Strait.
Willie Joe shouted, "Sweet Jesus, it's a nuke. It's the Russkie—" He immediately punched the button on the console that turned on his intercom mike, but before he could speak, Sorensen stabbed at the keyboard and turned it off.
"Take it easy, Willie Joe. Check it out. Listen up, she's not going anywhere. Get a positive ID."
Sorensen snapped on the overhead speakers. The sub was extremely quiet, but they could hear the freshwater still operating. "If that was a Russian boat, they'd shut everything down, including their still. Anyone, identification?"
Fogarty replied instantly, "HMS Valiant."
"Correct. One brownie point for Fogarty. The Brits are on the job."
"Dirty limeys," said Davic, the all all-American.
Sorensen didn't bother to respond. What was the point? Their newest ethnic was the biggest bigot. Apparently he thought it made him more American to hate all non-Americans. Fuck him.
For two days Springfield ran the crew through repeated combat drills, using the endless stream of ships as simulated targets. As the third day began, Willie Joe was spending his watch tracking a giant container ship and feeding data to Hoek, who was sitting at the weapons console. Hoek thought he'd died and gone to weapons officers' heaven. In two days he had pretended to sink more tonnage than was sunk in all the wars of the twentieth century.
The container ship passed a mile away, the cavitation of her giant screws and the whoosh of her bow wave obliterating every other sound for ten minutes. Hoek simulated her destruction, sending tens of thousands of Japanese televisions to the bottom.
The rest of the sonar gang were in the mess for dinner. They filed through the chow line, carried trays of roast chicken, giblet gravy, peas and mashed potatoes to one of the tables and squeezed in next to the torpedomen.