He closed the message board. “Not much we can do,” he said.
Joe Tucker had already finished the message MacDonald had handed him. The XO refolded it and traded it for the message board.
“We could do a lot if we had the political will and our people recognized that this is not the world of our fathers; it is a nuclear age where shifting of powers—” Joe Tucker stopped. “Sorry about that. Sometimes when I see a nation founded by the outcasts of the world, survivors of a Western civilization’s attempt to eradicate them, it makes me think that everyone in the world has a responsibility to see it succeed. Instead, everything points to America standing back and letting the Arabs do what the Germans failed to finish.”
There was silence on the bridge at the outburst. Joe Tucker was a man of strong opinions, so this was not unusual. The fact was no one really argued or debated with the XO. He usually won, and he had a way with words that left opponents mortally wounded and confused.
“You could be right, XO, but our job—right now—is on this side of the world with America’s other war.” Then he added somberly, “Let’s hope they let us win this one before we jump into another one.”
“Do we have any insight into ‘Beacon Torch’?” Joe Tucker asked.
MacDonald shook his head. “They have a meeting tomorrow morning at Subic Operations Center. Guess while you are seeing to the refueling and replenishing of the ship, I’ll be trying to keep my eyes open during a three-hour briefing.”
“I see from the distribution on the message, you’ll have plenty of company, to include Admiral Green.” Joe Tucker smiled. “Knowing the admiral, he will want to know why you lost the submarine after tracking it only for a couple of days.”
“That is his way of showering gratitude on his subordinates.”
“Then I would hate to see him upset with them.”
MacDonald chuckled. “It is not a pleasant sight.”
“Any special instructions for tomorrow?”
“After we tie up, let’s sit down and go over what we need to accomplish in the next few days while in-port Subic.”
“Aye, sir.”
Joe Tucker turned to go.
“Joe, will you check on the status of our LOGREQ again, please? I want that tugboat and pilot at the harbor when we arrive.”
Joe Tucker saluted and was soon off the bridge. MacDonald looked up at Goldstein and saw the man staring at him. During the discussion, he had forgotten that the OOD was Jewish and his connection with events in the Middle East was probably stronger than that of a man named MacDonald. After all, England had given up trying to push Scotland into the ocean.
Bocharkov had remained in the control room as the K-122 sonar team tracked the American destroyer closing on them. Sound, or noise as sonarmen preferred to call it, was a strange character. Unlike in the air where most times sound travels in a straight line, in the water it moves in two paths. Straight — as in the air — but over shorter distances; and also like an oscillating wave riding a series of hills and crests for longer distances. You could only hear the oscillating sound wave when you were on a hill or crest that made the sound seem to be a straight line. Made it hard to know if the contact generating the noise was only a few miles from you, or hundreds of miles, its sound riding the roller coaster of hills and crests created by the properties of water.
“It’s slowing again,” Lieutenant Kalugin, the antisubmarine weapons officer, reported before pressing the intercom box and asking, “Signal strength?”
Bocharkov waited. On his left stood Ignatova, his XO’s impatience nearly contagious. The K-122 had slowed to a crawl to reduce the chance of the Americans detecting him, but still the line of bearing remained constant. The increasing noise signature seemed to indicate a classic constant bearing, decreasing range situation. Everyone, including Bocharkov, was beginning to believe that something on the hull was giving away their position. He had gotten all the clappers, but what if the clappers were nothing more than a decoy from the real spy shit the Americans had put on the K-122?
“It is slowing down again, Captain,” Lieutenant Alexander Kalugin said.
The lieutenant was covered in sweat. His collar was matted to his neck. Beads ran from the man’s forehead. Bocharkov tried nonchalantly to touch his own forehead as if in a casual movement. No sweat on his brow. Sweat on a brow of a navy captain was a no-no.
He turned to Ignatova. “Status?”
Ignatova turned to Yakovitch. “Officer of the Deck — status?”
“Course zero-niner-zero, speed five knots. Depth one hundred meters.”
Ignatova looked at Bocharkov.
“Distance to shore?”
Yakovitch heard Bocharkov’s question and turned to the navigator sitting in the forward portion of the control room.
Uri Tverdokhleb raised his hand in acknowledgment before Yakovitch could ask him. He had heard the question through the unusual quiet of the compartment. Navigators were envied by their peers. Most ships had two of them. K-122 only had one. Navigators stood no duties other than their navigation watch, and they were excused from Party-political duties, which only increased the envy.
Tverdokhleb pushed his black-rim glasses off the tip of his nose and bent over the chart. He lifted a mechanical compass, placed it on the chart, and walked it out from what he calculated was the location of the K-122 to the nearest bit of shore jutting into the ocean. Only a few seconds passed before Tverdokhleb tossed the compass onto the chart and shouted, “Captain, we are thirty kilometers from shore. But we are less than ten kilometers from where the seabed starts to rise.”
Yakovitch — and most everyone else in the control room — glared at Tverdokhleb; they were under quieten ship orders and here the navigator was shouting.
“Very well,” Bocharkov replied.
Folks in the control room exchanged a few glances before returning to their work. If the captain was unconcerned, then they had no worries.
“How far out do you think the American is?” Bocharkov asked.
Kalugin shrugged. “I have no opinion, sir. I still believe we are picking up convergence noise.”
“But we have never lost the sound,” Ignatova said.
“I know, but the sound seems to have a rise-and-fall quality to it.”
“Let’s return to our base course. I want to be off the harbor entrance before dusk. Give us some time to do a little reconnoiter before we enter.”
Ignatova nodded sharply. “Aye, sir.”
“Oh, and, XO, keep us off the shoals and shallow waters as long as possible. I want the option of sprinting back into deep waters if we have to.”
“Aye, sir.” Ignatova turned and left the vicinity of the periscope, where the captain preferred to stand. Moments later the XO was talking with Yakovitch near the helmsman and planesman.
A few minutes later when Bocharkov looked forward, Uri Tverdokhleb had left his position — a cigarette dangling from his lip — and was talking with the XO and the OOD.
A moment of possession passed over Bocharkov. He wondered if American captains felt an ownership of their ships and submarines as he did right now—right this very moment—of the K-122.
Ignatova broke his thought. Standing beside his XO was Lieutenant Kalugin.
“Captain, we need to come to course zero-four-zero. For the most part, the remainder of the navigation leg will keep us within Philippine national waters. If we remain at five knots we will not arrive until after dark.”