“LEAVE IT ALONE!”
Edgeworth pushed his way through the throng of people as they intoned their new message and craned his turkey neck up toward Aaron.
“LEAVE IT ALONE!”
Aaron leaned down, gripping the rail of the pickup bed. “Curtis, San Diego just called. The Orion has left her port”
“I knew it! Brandeʼs involved. Was he aboard?”
“I don’t know. Becky was too far away to see much.”
“Go find Dawn. I think we’d better trail along on this party”
Edgeworth’s face showed his alarm. “I don’t know, Curtis. You think … uh, you think it’s safe?”
“Who knows, Donny, boy? But we’ve damned sure got a commitment — to ourselves, and to people like these here — to do what’s right. Get going.”
Aaron stood upright and used the bullhorn to reinforce the “Leave it alone!”
The mob voice regained strength, and he slipped over the side of the truck and walked away with that proud chant in his ears.
When he gave a thumbs-up to Mark Jacobs, Jacobs did not acknowledge it.
Mikhail Gurevenich had attempted to sleep for a couple of hours, but unsuccessfully. Illogically, he tried to attribute his restlessness to the fact that they had crossed eastward into a new time zone, but underneath, he knew that his anxiety about what he would find at the end of his journey was increasing steadily.
Also, he suspected that his inability to confide in anyone else — his second in command, even the asinine rookie officer, Lieutenant Kazakov — relative to his concerns and the terrible secret he carried heightened his unease. He kept wishing he had not decoded that second message, or that the message had not ordered him to maintain his silence.
Gurevenich gave up on his nap, rolled out of his narrow bunk, and dressed in a fresh uniform. Leaving his cabin, he prowled through the claustrophobic passageways of the submarine. It was mostly quiet. The high revolutions of the propeller shaft created an irritating whine and a slight vibration in the deck. Except for the crew members on watch, and two enlisted men playing chess in their mess, the men were in their bunks, snoring or dreaming or both. They had nothing to worry about, though certainly the various rumors regarding their high-speed transit would have rippled by now into a thousand even more various rumors.
The captain stopped outside the sonar compartment, then slipped through the light-trapping curtain into the red-lit space.
When the sonar man on duty, Paramanov, looked up, Gurevenich raised his hand to keep him in his seat.
“Have you heard anything of consequence?” he asked.
“It is difficult, Captain, when the Winter Storm is traveling at such speed, to hear much beyond the Winter Storm. An hour ago, I detected a surface vessel. I suspect it was a small freighter, headed east. Other than that, perhaps a whale or two.” Paramanov grinned at his own wit.
Gurevenich estimated they were still some sixteen hours and six hundred nautical miles from the target area.
“Soon, we will begin to encounter other vessels,” he said. “There may be many of them, and you must be careful to identify them.”
“Of course, Captain. There is the Russian submarine and the task forces.”
“I think that there will be others, as well, Paramanov. Take extreme care, for we do not want incidents of international importance.”
The sonarman nodded, but his expression revealed his puzzlement.
Gurevenich turned and left the compartment. Now was not the time for disgorging too much information and fueling the rumor mill that propagated itself aboard any vessel.
He would tell his crew as much as they needed to know, but not sooner than they needed to know it.
In point of fact, he would like to bare his mind, but he was not certain how his crew would react to the knowledge it contained.
Kim Otsuka, rising early from her bed, went forward to the communications compartment and used the ship-to-shore phone to call the Japanese Consulate. She asked for Mr. Sato.
When he came on the line minutes later, sounding sleepy, he greeted her in Japanese.
She replied in her native language. “Mr. Sato, I am calling from the Orion. We are at sea.”
“At sea. But I thought … ”
“I feel that my place is with those with whom I have learned to work, Mr. Sato. The chances for our success are much greater.”
After a short silence, Sato said, “The people at Hokkaido Marine Industries will be very disappointed.”
“I am sorry.”
“As will be your government. To disregard such an invitation…”
“Again, I am sorry. I do not wish to show disrespect, but my value is far greater here.”
Again, there was a short wait before he spoke. “Yes, perhaps you are correct. I will be talking to you again.”
Avery Hampstead had arrived at the headquarters of the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, in the middle of the night, but he was still wide awake.
He had slept for most of the overwater journey.
The others in the command center were in varying stages of wakefulness.
Adm. David Potter, CINCPAC, looked a trifle groggy. Cmdr. Harold Evans, the watch commander, did not appear much better, but Hampstead understood that he had been on duty for twelve hours or so.
The Third Fleet’s electronic plotting board had been cleared of inconsequential data, like the movement of potentially hostile capital warships. Instead, only the tracks of shipping aimed at 26 North, 176 East were shown. Next to each blip at the head of black lines were black, block letters identifying the ship. A frigate named the Bronstein and a patrol craft out of Midway were already on the scene. Kirov and the rocket cruiser Kynda were heading small task forces, plowing through the seas eastward at flank speed. Bartlett and Kane were headed west as a pair. Three thin orange lines indicated the tracks of the submarines Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Houston. Dotted lines projected forward from each blip intersected right at the target coordinates.
Technicians milled about in the command center, moving from one console to another, speaking on headsets, keying in new information for the display on their computer keyboards.
The room was completely enclosed. Hampstead did not even have a decent view of Pearl Harbor.
A new blip was suddenly displayed on the plotting board. It was a long, long way away, off the coast of California. It was identified as Orion.
“Hot damn,” Hampstead said. “The Orion checked in, Commander Evans?”
“Just a moment, Mr. Hampstead.” The officer picked up a phone from the table they were seated at, spoke to someone, somewhere for a moment, then said, “Yes sir. She’s en route to the target area.”
“As soon as you can, Hal,” Admiral Potter said, “Get in touch with the master. I’ll want to speak with Brande about my objectives.”
Good luck, Hampstead thought.
He checked his watch, decided it was almost ten o’clock in Washington, give or take an hour, and picked up one of the spare phones in front of him. He dialed his office.
“Angie, this is the boss.”
“What boss? I think they fire you when you don’t show up for work.”
“I’m working in Hawaii this week.”
“I’ll have my bags packed and be on the way in fifteen minutes,” she said.