Stonemeyer again walked silently alongside him.
Andrew would have expected nothing less.
After a couple of minutes, Stonemeyer said, “I think you may be more extreme in your views than we six who get together every night.” He poked his chest. “I’m Catholic. We have a couple of Southern Baptists.…”
Catholic! Popery, as his father intoned at every meeting. Popery heretics who have stolen God’s words for man’s gold. Popery where a single man determines God’s word on earth. He shuddered at the idea of being in the vicinity of a pagan. No wonder Stonemeyer could bestow God’s love on… what did the demon call her, Mad Mary? He looked at the edge of the deck ahead of them and thought of how many heretics filled the decks of Sea Base.
“And I think Damon is Methodist. So, there you have it. With you, there will be six Protestants and me — the lone Catholic fighting to show you Protestants the right way to God’s salvation.” Stonemeyer’s laugh was cut short when he saw the expression on Andrew’s face.
“You know, Al Jolson, you make me nervous,” he said quietly.
“You have seemed nervous since I met you.”
Stonemeyer nodded, then tripped over one of the raised tiedowns on the deck. He quickly recovered. “Not only am I the nervous sort, but I’m sort of clumsy also,” he said with a nervous laugh.
“What are those?” Andrew asked, pointing at the tie-down.
At equal distances across the expanse of the Sea Base canopy, small holes in the deck crisscrossed by two stout metal rods covered the deck.
“Oh, those,” Stonemeyer said with enthusiasm over being able to show his knowledge. “They are used to tie down stuff such as aircraft, equipment — you know? Keeps the wind from blowing them away and holds them in place until we need them.”
Stonemeyer pointed toward the quarterdeck area that had been roped off by the boatswain mates. Less than thirty minutes ago, they had been standing in formation in that area. “Petty Officer Showdernitzel and Jaime are coming.”
Andrew grunted in acknowledgment. In that moment, he understood the danger of Sea Base to God’s Army. A microcosm of what America had become where equality existed across all diversities and sexes. Completely counter to what the Bible demanded in God’s word. He understood better than his father why this floating island was one more of man’s follies delaying Armageddon.
Agazzi put the telephone down. “Combat says when the helicopters reach the search area, they are going to deploy a sonobuoy barrier along the line of bearings.”
Bernardo reached up and pressed an icon above the console. “The sonobuoy receiver is still active, Senior Chief. When they deploy them, we should receive the signals and the SQR-25 will integrate them into the rainfall display.”
Sonobuoys were small, long devices dropped from antisubmarine helicopters and aircraft and designed to pick up the passive noise of a submarine. With sufficient sonobuoys deployed in a pattern, the detections can triangulate a contact and provide the information back to a system such as the AN/SQR-25 manned by Bernardo. The system would take the noise signals, their signal strength, and the lines of bearings from the sonobuoys to identify the location of the submarine. And all of this was done most times without the submarine ever knowing they were being targeted.
When the SH-36 LAMPS helicopters worked in pairs, one usually carried a torpedo. After locating the submarines, the armed helicopter could scoot ahead to where the contact was located. Once there, it could launch its Mark-45 torpedo immediately, or most likely, it would dip its own sonar from the helicopter to beneath the waves to confirm the location of the submarine.
Two tactics were available for the launching helicopter. It could launch based on the passive information, or it could turn on its active sonar and ping the submarine. The ping gave the exact location. The ping also told the submarine it had been detected, and like most submarines, it would go into a dive, maneuvering, changing speeds in a race to lose contact.
The SH-36 and the P-3C Orion ASW patrol aircraft were two of the most powerful antisubmarine assets in the United States Navy. They were also two of the oldest and with no replacements in sight, eventually they would reach an age where they too would join the aircraft graveyard at Davis Monthan Air Force Base just outside Tucson, Arizona. China, following the path of history for new wannabe superpowers, had turned to submarines as the first phase of developing an oceangoing Navy: a world-class fleet capable of projecting its power anywhere in the world.
“I’m getting their signals,” Bernardo said.
“Flip the screen,” Agazzi said to MacPherson.
“I can’t, Senior Chief. I’m trying to control two UUVs right now.” He turned in his seat. “How about Calvins? He can remote the screen to one of the screens at maintenance.”
“Seaman Calvins,” Agazzi said. “How about rigging up one of your spares so we can see the Naval Tactical Data System display?”
The young man smiled. “Sure thing, Senior Chief. I can do that.” He reached up to remove the sound-powered telephone helmet.
“Keep that on,” Keyland said. “You can do it without having to take that off. Just pull your cord with you.”
“Sure thing, LPO.”
A couple of minutes later, one of the screens arrayed on top of the maintenance desk showed the remote picture of the NTDS. On a bearing of 240, small blinking icons representing sonobuoys flashed.
“They’re bearing 240,” Agazzi said.
“Roger; bearing 240. They also have a contact, Senior Chief. How far out are they?”
“About twenty-five nautical miles.”
“The submarine is bearing 220 from sonobuoy number one and 190 degrees from number five,” Bernardo said, his voice trailing off. A moment later, he shouted, “Contact is bearing 240; range thirty-two nautical miles. Wow! I love it when a plan comes together.”
“Calvins!” Keyland shouted. “Pass that to Combat.”
At the maintenance desk, Agazzi listened as Calvins passed the information along to Combat. At the AN/SQR-25, Bernardo was passing the computations directly into the NTDS database. The information reached the U.S. units first. Fractions of a second later, the same data was flashing on the British version of NTDS. Two nations; two Navies; one fighting force.
“Senior Chief,” Calvins said. “Captain wants to know if we have any refinement on what we think the submarines are doing.”
Agazzi looked around at the team, all of whom were staring at him. “Well, team. Do you think they are going to fire or flee?”
“I think if we fire on them, we are going to have one hell of an exciting five minutes until their torpedoes reach Sea Base, followed by pants-filling screams as we go down,” Bernardo offered.
“If they fired torpedoes earlier, Senior Chief, those torpedoes never reached us. I think they are just watching us, gathering intelligence,” MacPherson said. He looked at Gentron. “Okay, Brain; what do you think?”
Gentron’s face turned darker in the blue-lighted space. “I think you’re right. I also think they want us to know they’re out there. Otherwise, why would they fake a torpedo attack against us?”
“Who said it was fake?” Bernardo snarled. “It could have been one they screwed up.”
“That’s enough, Pope,” Keyland ordered. “If you can’t contribute something positive, stay quiet.”
“They’re just showing us they can do it,” Gentron finished. “They can do it,” Agazzi repeated.
“Sometimes, we like to do things just to show people we can do it,” Gentron expounded. “That’s what they’re doing. Maybe this whole military thing is nothing more than China showing the world they can do it.”