“Apparently you do, sir”. Stepping into the cubicle she pulled closed the door behind herself and with one hand on his chest pressed him back against the far wall of the shower and looking him in the eyes with a smouldering look. In an equally firm voice she said.
“I have never gone to a hotel room with a man without our both having at least three orgasms before I left it, and I don’t aim to start dropping my standards … so I am now going to do to you, what young Jubi thought I was going to do to him.”
She knelt before him in the shower but her eyes remained looking upwards into his as she took his erection deep into her mouth and cupped his balls in her left hand whilst the thumb and index finger of the right encircled him and began an up and down motion. Less than a minute later the Russian air force surrendered totally to a mere naked civilian in a two star hotel in Hampshire.
The north Pacific has very little in common with the south Pacific other than co-ownership of half a title. There are no warm, gold sanded beaches or semi-clad beauties with natural tans evident anywhere.
Currently moving at 15 knots, 600ft below the surface the Los Angeles class attack submarine USS Commanche was electronically sniffing away for a scent of their quarry. Diverted from her mission to boldly map the cold-water currents where no one had mapped before, along the east coast of the American continent. Actually it had been done several times before and until their president honoured the Kyoto agreement, the world began to educate itself, pull in the reins on all forms of pollution, and then it would be done again and again as global warming altered the way of things. At least that was the opinion of Dr David Bowman, who was not at this moment a happy man. The oceanographic survey on which he was working was on a tight schedule. The skipper, Captain Joe Hart, had assured him that the detour they were making would still leave them with plenty of time to return and complete the job. However, five hours’ later a message was received and they had gone to DefCon 2. They were still heading for the area the detour directed them at but no explanation from the Navy ashore as to why they were on an increased alert state that was last implemented during the Cuban missile crisis. It would have helped had the skipper told him what was at the end, what was so important as to pull them off the task he had been contracted to perform.
Joe Hart on the other hand was more than happy to be doing anything but skulking along with a thermometer sticking out the window checking if water molecules were running a temperature. The target was a carrier, believed to be Chinese with a nuclear power plant. His original orders were to find and evaluate. That had now changed to all of the above … plus, shadow. That was more like real sailor man work. He ordered the boat to slow to five knots and come up to 70 feet in order to stream the floating antennae. He expected a general sitrep to follow behind the issuance of the DefCon step-up; no one liked being kept in the dark.
Two other submarines were also involved with the carrier group. HMS Hood, a Trafalgar class submarine had cut short its visit to Taipei and was heading northwards on a bearing of 070’. The other was an Akula class Hunter Killer. The Gegarin had orders not to let anyone near its charge, the carrier. She was heading 180’ and rather closer to the Commanche than she was to the Mao.
There were also some fairly un-warlike looking vessels too, seventeen deep sea trawlers of the People’s Republic sporting items acquired by means of espionage over the recent years. One gadget masked the ships sound by blowing bubbles into the sea to mask the propeller noise by an appreciable extent. The second was the ATA, Advanced Towed Array, essentially a highly sophisticated microphone trailing behind the ship to a distance where the degradation of its performance by the ships noise was greatly reduced.
The Hood and the Commanche also possessed the ATA but not the Prairie Masker system.
It was a bit of a game of one-upmanship, staying ahead of the opposition by research and innovation, with a little help from skulduggery when the opportunity arrived.
For a time in the early 80’s the Warsaw Pact submarine fleet held that tactical advantage with a new towed array which was a big improvement for them and it was more than a match for the West’s towed array of the time.
In 1982, following a very publicised conventional role of her part in the Falklands War, the Royal Navy nuclear powered Hunter Killer submarine HMS Conqueror re-entered port flying the white ensign of course, and also the skull and cross bones, denoting she had sunk an enemy warship (the cruiser Belgrano). That flag also carried a small dagger in one corner which most took to mean she had been actively engaged in a Special Forces operation, landing Special Boat Service and Special Air Service troops on an enemy coast. However this is not quite correct as she had been way up north at the time Argentina invaded, and picking pockets like the Artful Dodger in Russian waters. Fitted with an ingenious contraption of US design the British vessel had stalked a Russian spy ship, carefully clamping a robot arm of some description to its towed array before cutting through the tow and stealing off into the night with her prize. The US device had been designed to sever the tow in such a way as to leave the Russian’s believing another vessel passing over it had cut it by accident, or that it had snagged on a wreck somehow.
Great lengths are taken, at great expense, to be too quiet to be heard by the other guy whilst being able to hear him.
USS Commanche and HMS Hood’s propellers cost considerably more than fishing boats and the top secret method of their construction had once put those years ahead of the Soviet Union in terms of quieting the ship. However, one day in the 1980’s a German traitor had sold that secret to the opposition. The west though had still managed to stay ahead with other innovations. The noise from the pumps on their power plants for instance, were mere whispers compared with Russian and Chinese boats.
The two western submarines were generating noise but remarkably little considering their complex makeup of machine parts and size as they moved through the water. Rubber panels assisted in muffling the noise of their operation, and depth helped too. The Russian Akula however could dive much deeper than its opposite numbers, yet had not mastered the art of near silence.
Three weeks before at the Gold crew’s pre cruise party. Captain Hart had been almost affable to Dave Bowman. It had been the first time he had met the captain and the crew he would spend the next six months with. As a last minute replacement for a colleague with appendicitis he had been introduced and then abandoned by someone from the Admirals staff. When the youngster’s antics had got too boisterous for the old folks, everyone over twenty-six had gravitated outside beside the hotel pool and away from the too loud music. Although Dave Bowman owed his living to the sea he knew little of submariners or their expensive charges.
Joe Hart had chatted away to him about the subject that had fascinated him ever since he had seen a rerun of Voyage to the bottom of the sea in the first grade. The stealth of his vessel was a matter of intense pride to the captain.
“The secret of successful naval warfare was once to have the best radar to see over the horizon and sonar to see below the waves.” He had told Dave.
“Man is fiendish in his counter-weapon inventiveness. He has learnt to go beyond merely finding a defence against his enemy’s weapons; he can now kill him with them.” They had sat in comfy sun loungers staring across to the water beyond the lights of the city below.