“You don’t say. It’s an honor to make your acquaintance, Special Agent Kellogg. If there’s anything I can do to assist you these next couple of days, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Actually, there is one matter that you could help me with. Does the staff have any cooking or food storage facilities down here?”
Monica hesitated a moment before responding. “As a matter of fact, we do. It’s not much, but if you’ll accompany me into the office, I’ll show you.”
The facilities she was referring to turned out to be a small refrigerator and a microwave. As Vince checked the refrigerator’s contents of bottled water, Monica voiced her suspicions.
“I bet you’re trying to track down the source of the illness that sickened my coworkers.”
“You’ve got it, Ms. Chang.”
“Hey, that’s Monica to you,” she countered.
Vince doubted the bottled water was the culprit, and asked her bluntly, “Do you have any idea what sickened your associates?”
Monica shook her head. “Whatever it was, it sure didn’t come from here.
We only use this fridge for water, and the microwave for packaged snacks like popcorn.”
“Monica,” Max Kurtyka as he poked his head inside. “I’m packing up and hitting the rack. I will deal with that short in the morning.”
The actress acknowledged this remark with a nod, and stifled a yawn herself. Vince took this as his cue to leave.
“I’d appreciate any further thoughts you might have as to the source of that food poisoning, Monica,” said Vince.
“You’ve got it, Special Agent,” she retorted. “Don’t be a stranger.”
Vince excused himself and began the long climb up to One Deck. He was winded by the time he reached the proper landing, and was more than ready to call it a day by the time he unlocked his cabin door.
10
“Mark zero-three-two. Range eight thousand yards.”
Comdr. Benjamin Kram listened to his quartermaster while peering out the USS James K. Folk’s Mk18 search periscope. Kram was currently using this scope’s low-light operating mode to penetrate the moonless night sky and view the object of their search.
Clearly visible in the waters north of them was a single surface ship headed almost due east. Even at this great distance, Kram could tell that the brightly lit vessel was a huge one, well over 900 feet in length. Though he was positive that this was their target, he nevertheless confirmed the fact by picking up the intercom and speaking softly into the transmitter.
“Sonar, conn. Well, Mr. Bodzin, what can you tell me about Sierra Eleven?”
The high-pitched voice of the Folk’s senior sonar technician responded over the intercom’s speaker. “Conn, sonar. Sir, Sierra Eleven is really churning up a storm. Broad band’s picking up a wide-spectrum signature that could only belong to a group of sequenced turbocharged diesel engines, turning dual shafts, with a rev count indicating a good twenty-six knots. She’s the Queen, all right, and she’s heading to England with a bone in her teeth.”
Kram couldn’t help but grin as he considered the source of this unorthodox report. POle Brad Bodzin was one of the best sonar techs he had ever sailed with. The twenty seven-year-old Houston, Texas, native had demonstrated time and again the rare ability to successfully combine intuition and practical knowledge. As much an artist as a scientist, a good sonar operator often was the difference between a mission’s success or failure, and having Bodzin’s service on this patrol made Kram’s difficult job all the easier.
Kram backed away from the periscope and took a second to massage the cramped muscles at the back of his neck. At forty-five years old, he was easily the oldest member of his crew, and lately he was beginning to feel his age. Extended periods on the periscope had never bothered him before, yet the last couple of months such routine duty never failed to aggravate the muscles in his neck and upper back.
Another sign of his rapidly advancing years were the wire-rim bifocals that he had draped around his neck with a restraining strap. He had been wearing these glasses since Christmas, when his difficulty in reading the fine print pushed him to the extreme of mentioning this problem to his optometrist.
Bifocals and backaches were all signs that the USS Polk would be his last operational command. As Kram stared out at the thick black curtains that separated the cramped platform he stood on from the rest of the red-tinted control room, he allowed himself to think about the long career path that had brought him here.
A Vermont native, the son of a career surface-navy officer, Kram enrolled at the Maine Maritime Academy with the express purpose of preparing himself for naval service. NROTC brought him a commission as an ensign in 1972. The Vietnam War was in the process of winding down then, and Kram decided that his best career path would be in submarines.
As it turned out, this proved to be a wise choice, for during the Cold War decade that followed, the submarine was the front-line unit.
After graduating nuclear-power school at Orlando, Florida, and the submarine-officer basic course at New London, his first assignment was to the USS Tullibee. A Permit-class nuclear-powered attack sub, the Tullibee was designed to hunt down other submarines, relying not on high speed, but stealth and a sophisticated sonar suite.
The Tullibee proved the perfect platform for him to learn his new trade.
He remained aboard for two years before attending the submarine officer advanced course in preparation for his next assignment, as engineering officer aboard the USS Daniel Webster.
The Webster was a boomer, designed to launch ballistic missiles. Since this was the heyday of the Cold War, the six deterrent patrols that he completed were taken most seriously, and it was a definite letdown when the orders arrived directing him to shore duty at Submarine Squadron Two.
A year and a half later he was sent back to sea, this time as executive officer of the USS Hyman G. Rickover. Another attack sub, the Rickover served as the platform on which he’d prepare himself for command of his very own submarine.
This exciting event occurred two years ago. The USS James K. Polk was originally designed as a Lafayette-class ballisticmissile submarine.
Commissioned as a ship of the U. S. Navy on April 16, 1966, the Polk was to successfully complete sixty-six strategic deterrent patrols, armed with both the Polaris and Poseidon missiles, before being converted into her present unique configuration in 1994.
It took a nineteen-month shipyard stay to remove the Polk’s launching systems and outfit the sub for its current mission. One of only two such submarines in the U. S. Navy, the Polk was fitted with a dual dry-deck shelter. This cylindrical, hangar-shaped structure was fitted to the boat’s upper deck, abaft the fin, and was specially designed to support special-warfare operations.
Special Ops, as it was better known, was an important new mission for the current submarine force, and Kram knew that it was a great honor to get such a command. In addition to his sub’s normal complement of 130, he was responsible for the vessel’s other occupants, the two dozen members of SEAL Team Two.
To support these SEALs, the Polk was also carrying a Swimmer Delivery Vehicle, or SDV, inside the dry-deck shelter. The SDV was a battery-powered mini sub designed to hold up to eight operatives. Such submersibles were favored by the SEALs, who used these stealthy platforms to carry out a variety of clandestine operations.
It was because of the Polk’s unique configuration that Command picked them for their present mission. To emphasize the vital importance of this patrol, the chief of naval operations himself called Kram to the Pentagon for the initial briefing. This had taken place almost two months earlier, and shortly afterwards, the Polk proceeded to the waters off Andros Island to train for this mission with the help of a chartered cruise ship.