"He's still holding it?" I asked.
Lab Rat nodded. "And from the looks of it, he's got so many sonobuoys in the water around it that we'll be able to track it just by the noise alone," he added. He tapped a few keys and the sonobuoy lines popped into being, a regularly spaced line of listening devices that would keep track of the submarine if it decided to pull the plug and go sinker.
"What's he doing on the surface anyway?" I asked.
"Maybe he's got those anti-air weapons on board," Lab Rat suggested.
A nasty prospect, but one that we had to consider. The new generations of submarines all had them, a small surface-to-air missile that could be extruded through an extension to the conning tower and fired at aircraft overhead. It was particularly effective against the smaller and less maneuverable helicopters, but I'd known one or two to take a shot at fixed-wing aircraft, as well. If anything, it would keep the S3 crew on guard. Rabies had personal experience with the weapons system, and I knew he wasn't eager for another encounter.
"I guess Rabies doesn't think so," Lab Rat said. "His altitude is three hundred feet."
"If he sees anything-" I began, and then broke off. Of course he'd be watching, and of course he'd get the hell out of the area if he saw anything suspicious unfolding from the conning tower. Like a missile launcher.
Lab Rat spoke up. "I haven't heard anything about them being back-fitted on the older submarines, and I'm not sure they have the power supply for it. Or the guidance systems." He looked thoughtful. Then he continued. "But I suppose it's possible. As miniaturized as some of these circuits are these days, the space wouldn't be a problem. It would just be a matter of tacking the missile assembly onto-"
"How far from the carrier?" I asked, interrupting his train of intelligence speculation and theorizing. All very interesting, but what mattered to me was whether or not the submarine was in a position to do damage to one of my ships.
"Well out of range, Admiral," Lab Rat assured me. "Almost twenty miles."
"Not to say he couldn't close that distance eventually," I said.
"Well, now that we know she's there, we can take some precautions."
The appearance of a submarine in our area worried me. Worried, hell ― it scared the shit out of me.
There's something particularly terrifying about submarines, at least to an aircraft carrier. For sailors everywhere, ships are more than just weapons platforms or floating airports. A ship is the one little space in the world that's home, at least for months at a time. It's where your stereo lives, your spare set of civilian clothes so you can go on liberty, and those few precious possessions that you can cram into the small lockers and staterooms assigned to you. In short, it's home.
Ever since their earliest days, submarines have been weapons of terror. Until the last couple of decades, we'd had no way of knowing where they were, no way of tracking them with any degree of certainty, other than by saturating the air around the ships and hoping the submarines came up to snorkel. But with the advent of the nuclear-powered submarine, snorkeling had become unnecessary. Besides that, the age of Hyman Rickover and the nuclear submarine had upped the tactical stakes in two ways. First, the nuclear submarines were fast as hell underwater, while their diesel brethren were limited to either slow speed or being submerged for a short time. Second, the weapons were far more deadly. Without even getting into the devastation that one ballistic-missile submarine can wreak, the nuclear-tipped torpedoes alone could crack the keel of any ship. Even a big ship like a carrier.
Submarines just seemed so damn sneaky. They were undetectable, slipping silently beneath the water. It seemed so fundamentally a terrorist act to deploy them. At least, that's how the British had classified it in several world wars. I was inclined to agree with them. And now that they could shoot at aircraft too, with these extruding missile launchers mounted in the sail, there was even more to worry about.
I was hoping our couple of bombing runs, along with some political pressure, might bring the Vietnamese to the bargaining table. It's not like we were out to invade them. All we wanted to know was whether or not they had a nuclear-weapons manufacturing plant, and if so, who they were selling the weapons to. Moreover, we wanted them to stop. Now.
Two major strikes against their airfield ought to get their attention, at least. I knew other things were going on as well, behind the scenes. Diplomatic conferences, exchanges of pointed remarks between envoys, and our own Ambassador Sarah Wexler was raising holy hell in the United Nations about nuclear proliferation, the unprovoked strike attack against our aircraft, and just about anything else that could be force-fed to her by her staff. Don't get me wrong, Ambassador Wexler is a hell of a lady. She's maybe Tomboy's size, a little on the slight side, but chunkier, older, if you know what I mean.
In the last several years, I'd seen her take on the Chinese toe-to-toe, and after that the Cubans. The way she'd thrashed them up one side of the table and down the other, I'd almost pitied them. She would have made a hell of a fighter pilot.
But so far, Ambassador Wexler wasn't getting too far. The Vietnamese kept pulling out of conferences in a huff, insisting we were the aggressors, that we'd conducted unprovoked bombing attacks against a hospital facility and a children's camp.
Yeah, right. Even Vietnamese children don't get SAM sites for recess breaks. The claims of the Vietnamese were so far from the truth as to be absolute lies, although of course Ambassador Wexler wasn't calling them that. She knew how to play tough, yet still give them some room to save face, and sometimes I thought my job on the carrier might be a hell of a lot easier than hers. We've got a saying ― kill them all and let God sort them out. Ambassador Wexler didn't have that luxury.
In addition to dealing with the Vietnamese delegation, she also had to soothe the worries of myriad other nations that felt threatened or beleaguered because of the conflict. Laos, Cambodia, even Japan ― all were in an uproar, desperately trying to decide which side of the fence to sit on.
Add to the mix the silent, ominous presence of China. They figured prominently in every conflict in that area, and I had no doubt that they had some delicate, hidden hand to play in this. Maybe they were the primary customers of the alleged nuclear plant, although I couldn't see how they'd need it. Or maybe this had something to do with trade, expanding China's backyard into a solid phalanx of political support against the United States. God knows they'd been flexing their muscles ever since they took over Hong Kong, becoming increasingly belligerent about everything from the Spratly Islands to the importation of rice into Japan.
Despite all the factors warring against it, eventually the overtures came. Not to me at first, although they eventually trickled down to my level. Instead, underlings at both State and the United Nations started agreeing with their Vietnamese counterparts that there should at least be a conference ― a discussion, if you will ― to sort out conflicting interests in the area. No mention was made of the attack on Jefferson, nor of the pilots and aircraft I'd lost.
For their part, the Vietnamese refrained from blustering about the air strikes. Diplomatic notes were exchanged, arrangements were made. Finally, the beginning of a consensus.
What it all boiled down to was that Jefferson was going to play host to a group of U.S. and Vietnamese officials. They'd argued for two days about whether the conference would take place inside or outside Vietnamese territorial waters, finally settling on giving me rudder orders to delicately patrol the exact twelve-mile limit off the coast. Thank God for the global positioning system ― GPS. It's the only way to get an accurate enough position to make mat sort of political statement.