“Captain,” a voice rang out from the passageway. “Captain?”
“He’s here,” Binghamton said. The phone talker in the passageway was holding a long cord coiled in his hand, his duty to relay communications from the middle level to control when rigged for ultraquiet so that the Circuit One PA speakers did not need to be used.
“Control’s calling sir. O.O.D wants you up there ASAP.”
“On the way.” Kane hurried up the stairs to the upper level, made control in a few strides. Control was stuffy and crowded, the O.O.D and junior officer of the deck standing at the attack-center consoles, plotters manning manual plots, conversations relayed in murmurs. Jensen had the conn, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep or from the wounds he’d taken during the grounding.
“Skipper, Target One just slowed. We’ve got him at thirteen knots. No sign of a counterdetection or a baffle-clear maneuver. And he’s just put out a whopper of a transient. Smoot’s on watch in sonar, said it sounded like venting a ballast tank.”
This was Kane’s chance to pop up to periscope depth and radio the contact report. It might be his only chance. Slowing and going to PD risked losing the contact, but it had to be done. With the Destiny at thirteen knots Kane could let him get ahead and still be able to catch up to him after lingering at PD. He told himself he’d give it twenty minutes at periscope depth, no more.
“Contact range?”
“Nine thousand yards.”
“Any change in Target One course?”
“No, sir, he’s going straighter than an arrow.”
“Increase speed to twenty knots, close the range to 5,000, then take her up to PD at seven knots, no baffle clear. I’ll. be in radio. Let’s go, take her up.”
Kane’s heart was beating in his throat by the time the ship leveled off at periscope depth, the maneuver done without pausing to clear baffles and check surface traffic at 150 feet.
Binghamton’s shaved scalp beaded up with sweat as he called for the bigmouth multifrequency antenna, a green light coming on when the telephone-pole-shaped mast was fully extended. The senior chief handed Kane a headset with a boom microphone while strapping on his own. The consoles in front of him beeped and buzzed as he adjusted frequencies and juggled a code book.
“Norfolk Navcom Center, this is Tango Two Foxtrot,” Binghamton called, the T2F the January 2 call sign for the Phoenix. He repeated the call several times, a whistling sound rising and falling from the transceiver, static blaring out over the speakers.
“Come on, come on,” Kane muttered, intensely aware that the Destiny was driving on ahead, opening the range.
“Norfolk Navcom Center, this is Tango Two Foxtrot, over.”
Static.
“Navcom, this is Tango Two Foxtrot with a Navy Blue message, over.”
Static, broken by a distorted voice, then more whistling on the speaker.
“Navcom, this is Tango Two Foxtrot with a flash Navy Blue, over.”
A hissing, interrupted briefly by a voice: “TWO FOX …”
“Come on, Senior,” Kane said, more to himself than Binghamton.
“Navcom, this is Tango Two Foxtrot with Navy Blue to follow. Do you copy, over?”
“TANG … OOH … OX … BED YOU FIVE BY … ANSMIT … OVER.”
“Is that the best we can do. Senior?”
“Let’s transmit and see if they can read back.”
Kane glanced at a message form he’d scratched out.
“Norfolk Navcom Center, this is Tango Two Foxtrot,” he said slowly and clearly. “Navy Blue message to follow, break.” Navy Blue meant the message was a flash transmission to go directly to Admiral Donchez in the Pentagon.
“Tango Two Foxtrot reports own position at latitude five two degrees four minutes twelve seconds November, longitude three three degrees seventeen minutes four zero seconds whiskey, break.” Kane had agonized over the next section of the message, knowing it was going out with no encryption, able to be heard by UIF receivers if they were listening.
“Our customer was met at the original point of contact and continued to present location with probable destination Labrador Sea, speed three five for the last twenty hours with recent slowing to speed one three. Tango Two Foxtrot damaged but recovered, but UHF radios out of commission, our garage has no more Matthew-Luke-and-John five zero vehicles.” A way of getting across that he was out of Mark 50 torpedoes. “Further updates to follow, break. Bravo tango. I say again, Navy Blue message to follow …”
Kane repeated the transmission and asked for a readback.
The speakers whistled and sputtered.
“ANGO … AVY BLUE … REPORT … OSITION LAT … FIVE TWO DE … NOVEMBER, LONG …
THREETH … SEVENTEEN MIN … WHISKEY …”
The rest of the readback continued that way. Kane looked at Binghamton. There was enough of the message coming back that it seemed safe to assume that they’d received it, if it was really the naval communications center they were talking to.
“TANGO TWO … NAVCOM … AUTHENTICATE GOLF … OVER.”
Binghamton took over. “Say again, Navcom, you are coming in garbled.”
“AUTHENTICATE GO … VICTOR THR …”
“Navcom, this is Tango Two Foxtrot, confirming, do you desire authenticate golf victor three?”
“TANGO … AFFIRMA …”
Binghamton grabbed the code book from the ledge, the black volume marked top SECRETCOMSEC, the designation for the highest communications security classification.
“Let’s see here,” the senior chief mumbled to himself, “today is the second of January, here’s golf, down to the victor column, to the three line. Golf victor three should authenticate as W3B. Do you concur, sir?”
Kane looked at the code book, the rows and columns meaningless numbers and letters. The Navcom center was trying to verify that they really were the Phoenix by asking them to decode an alphanumeric that could be decoded only by having a code book, and the new codebooks were printed for individual ships — only the Phoenix had this version of the code book. Anyone else out there would be unable to decipher GV3 as W3B. It would positively mark their message as authentic.
“Navcom, this is Tango Two Foxtrot, we authenticate as whiskey three bravo, repeat whiskey three bravo, over.” “… FOXTROT … ROGER YOUR … MESSAGE RE … NAVCOM … OUT.”
“I think they got it. Skipper.”
“Conn, radio, lower the bigmouth and go deep!” Kane shouted to the control-room speaker microphone. The deck plunged downward before he could get out of radio and back into control.
Now came the hard part. Could they find Target One again after all that?
It had been overcast with heavy featureless clouds when the sun had set. Donchez had taken the limo from the Pentagon to nearby Fort Meade, halfway between D.C. and Baltimore along the Baltimore-Washington Expressway. By the time the car approached the beltway the blizzard started, slowing them down. A half-hour later the Lincoln’s tires were buried in snow at the gate of Fort Meade. When Donchez got out at Building 427 the snow covered him, making his long black overcoat white in just twenty steps to the building entrance.
“I can see we’ll be sleeping here tonight,” Donchez told his aide Rummel. “Better grab us a couple rooms at the BOQ before we get too involved at the briefing.”
Donchez had asked for the briefing in his own SCIF, but the NSA had insisted that they brief him here. The NSA had won the early joint-operations turf battles for control of interception and decoding of foreign communications, competing successfully with the Combined Intelligence Agency’s crypto division. The Dole Act’s reorganization of the CIA, the DIA, and NSA had left the NSA not only whole but bigger, until CIA’s crypto personnel found themselves working for NSA at Fort Meade. Donchez conceded the NSA folks were professional and good, but also a strange breed.