The captain decoded the next message. It was short, directed to the captain personally, and was not, repeat not, to be disseminated among the crew.
Gurevenich’s heart throbbed, his arteries suddenly clogged with foreign objects.
Nuclear reactor in meltdown.
Or just a possible meltdown.
It was a mild fear, never realized, with which nuclear submarine captains always lived.
And he was ordered into the furnace.
To what end?
Gurevenich doubted that his deep-tow sonars would find the debris. The waters were over 5,000 meters deep. The Winter Storm was stretching her capability at 700 meters of depth.
He dropped the second message into the shredder, stood up, and slipped out of his cabin into the narrow passageway. Making his way forward, he reached the control center and signaled Sr. Lt. Mostovets.
The lieutenant crossed the center and met him at the plotting table.
Gurevenich pointed out the X marked on the charted line of their projected course. “Is that the latest position, Lieutenant?”
“It is, Captain. About five minutes ago.”
Gurevenich calculated quickly. They had covered almost 536 nautical miles in fourteen hours. “Speed?” he asked.
“We have managed thirty-eight knots, Captain.”
“And the target area?”
“Nine hundred and fourteen nautical miles, Captain. If we maintain speed, we can achieve it in about twenty-four hours.”
The Winter Storm could make forty-three knots, but Gurevenich did not like to sustain that speed, despite the forced march requirement that he read into the message.
“We will maintain thirty-eight, Ivan Yosipovich. Notify the sonar operators that we may be hearing the Tashkent and the Kirov sometime within the next fourteen or fifteen hours. The Kirov will have three escorts. Later, the Kynda and her escorts will close on the area.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“And then stand down half of most watches. We will want everyone rested by the time we reach the target area.”
He saw the question marks in Mostovets’s eyes, but elected to not further enlighten the lieutenant.
“So, Hobin Rood and Tire Fruck,” had been the greeting from Miriam Baker, Brandeʼs favorite librarian at UCSD’s library, when the two of them approached the counter at four o’clock.
“Hi, Miriam,” Brande said.
Dokey leaned on the high counter and smiled at her.
“No,” she said.
“Damn,” Dokey said.
“Miriam,” Brande said, “the two of us want to become experts on nuclear power. Say, in about two hours.”
It took her all of fifteen seconds to think it over. “You,” she said to Brande, “go see Dr. Harold Provost. And you,” to Dokey, “come with me.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Dokey said.
Brande went across campus and had to wait twenty minutes before Provost was free. He spent an hour-and-a-half with the professor, and by the time he got back to the library, Dokey was stocked up with a thick sheaf of photocopies and fifteen books. Brande shared the load and they carried the books out to Brande’s Pontiac.
It was a 1957 Pontiac Bonneville convertible, somewhat on the rare side, finished in white with powder blue trim and a matching blue interior. Like its sisters on the short production run, it was fuel injected, and it spent about as much time in the shop, having the fuel injection fine-tuned, as it did on the road. Brande still liked it better than any other car he had owned.
Dokey was less nostalgic. He preferred cars that took advantage of the technology currently available. On the subject of Brandeʼs car, they had reached an accommodation. Dokey would not bad-mouth it, and Brande would not fire him.
They climbed in and slammed the heavy doors. Brande turned the ignition key, the V-8 engine fired, and purred. He felt a bit self-complacent about that.
“Let’s put the top down,” Dokey said.
“Let’s not.”
“Ah, come on.”
“I’m looking for a replacement hydraulic cylinder”
“It won’t go down?”
Brande pulled out onto Miramar Road without answering.
Dokey finally let it go by.
Brande drove slowly south through the campus, then turned east onto La Jolla Village Drive. Two blocks later, he slipped through the cloverleaf onto the San Diego Freeway south and slapped the accelerator down. The heavy car responded like a jackrabbit and soon he was holding the speedometer at seventy-five. Before their accommodation about automotive criticism had been reached, Dokey had likened the acceleration to that of an obese jackrabbit.
Mission Bay, with its complex of islands and parks, went by on the right. They sailed past the International Airport, curved through downtown San Diego, recurved past Balboa Park, skipped the turnoff onto the Coronado Bay Bridge, and exited the freeway on 28th Street.
The Pontiac had been issued a decal for the front bumper which gave it something of an exalted visitor status on the U.S. Naval Station. Brande drove straight to the headquarters building and found a parking space.
“We’re late,” Dokey noted.
“We’re normally late,” Brande said. “They’ve come to expect it.”
Avery Hampstead had arranged the briefing for them, and Brande and Dokey sat through a three-hour encapsulation of nuclear reactors presented to them by four different naval experts.
Afterward, starved, they had spent another forty-five minutes in a steak house, working on T-bones and rehashing what they had learned. By then, the news had broken on TV, and the few diners around them had a topic of conversation.
“I’m a little overwhelmed,” Brande admitted. “This isn’t a field I’ve ever had the slightest interest in.”
“It’s okay, Chief. I’ve got it down pat.”
“Do you really?”
“No. But give me a few days with all those books Miriam picked out for me.”
Brande had finally parked the Pontiac in the lot next to the office around eleven. They carried their supply of books upstairs and found the office populated by a dour group of MVU employees. A TV was going in one corner, with most of the crew of the Orion gathered around it.
Bob Mayberry was stretched out on two desktops, sound asleep, and he snored. No one paid any attention to him.
Svetlana Polodka and Valeri Dankelov were head-to-head at one side of the room, engaged in an intense discussion that required lots of hand gestures.
Kim Otsuka and Mel Sorenson were debating something with Ingrid Roskens and Larry Emry.
Rae Thomas was sitting at her desk, playing with her computer terminal. Her hands moved over the keyboard with some degree of force and anger, Brande thought.
They all looked up when Dokey shoved the door open. Brande dropped his load of books on the nearest desk.
Thomas rose from her chair and said, “Where have you two been?”
“Research, Rae. Important stuff. Everybody gather around, will you?”
Sorenson woke up Mayberry, and everyone moved to the center of the room, sitting on chairs and desks. All of the overhead fluorescents were on, and in the harsh glare, Brande realized they were all on the edge of fatigue. Their eyes were droopy. Their faces demonstrated their concern.
He had known most of them for many years, and they were as much his family as the line of his variously named ancestors back in Minnesota and Sweden. He leaned against a desk and looked at them with affection.
Bob Mayberry, long and lanky, and skinnier than should have been possible, had both hands cupped in front of his mouth, stifling yawns. His shock of corn-colored hair was in disarray. Mayberry was Director of Electronic Technology, and he had a special interest in sonar.