The sub drifted, listening. Sorensen heard a second propeller. Twin screws. A small ship was barely making way on the surface.
"It's your watch, Davic," Sorensen said. "What do you think it is?"
As Davic logged the contact into the computer he mumbled, "It could be anything, a coastal freighter, a fisherman."
Sorensen opened his eyes and began watching the screen, listening intently. NATO routes avoided commercial shipping lanes and fishing grounds. He had a hunch.
"Fee fie foe fum, I smell the blood of a Russian bum." He winked at Davic who stared wide-eyed at the screen, wondering what Sorensen heard that he didn't.
"Davic," Sorensen said, "that's a Soviet surveillance ship up there, a trawler, and he's got us pegged for sure."
"What makes you think so?"
"Tomorrow the Sixth Fleet is going to sail from Naples, right up this alley. Now, if I was your friend Admiral Gorshkov, I'd wait for Kitty Hawk right about here. Sonar to control. Is the repeater on line yet?"
Willie Joe's languid voice came back through the intercom. "Another minute, there, Ace. One more circuit."
Before Sorensen could reply, a streak flickered across the extreme edge of the sonar screen, a faint electronic shadow. Sorensen snapped to attention and began punching buttons on his console. The trawler had company.
Deftly, Sorensen locked his sonars on bearing one one seven and immediately heard the throb of a saltwater pump, the type of pump that circulated seawater around a steam condenser, the unmistakable signature of a nuclear reactor. A nuclear submarine was hovering under the trawler, listening to Barracuda. "Bingo," he said. "Sonar to control. We have another contact, bearing one one seven, range estimated ten thousand yards, speed zero zero. Contact is submerged. Repeat, contact is submerged."
"Control to sonar," said Pisaro's voice, "the repeater is coming on line now. We show nothing, sonar, nada." The XO paused for a moment. "Wait a minute, wait a minute. That's impossible. No goddamn Russkie sub has been reported in this sector of the Med. How in hell did he get in here?"
The faint streak returned at the same bearing. The contact was directly below the trawler. Pisaro swore. "The son of a bitch must have been listening to us for half an hour. Quartermaster, sound general quarters."
Throughout the ship loudspeakers drove one hundred men into furious but disciplined activity.
"General quarters, general quarters. All hands man battle stations. This is not a drill. This is not a drill. Man battle stations."
Davic stood up and took off his headset. His battle station was forward as part of a damage-control team. He opened a cabinet and pulled on a white asbestos suit. Inside the plexiglas faceplate he looked like a chubby astronaut. "I would prefer to remain in the sonar room," he said into the microphone inside his helmet.
"Look, Davic, I don't assign the stations. Lopez does that," Sorensen told him.
"That's my Russian, Sorensen," Davic shouted in his electronic voice.
"Sure, he's all yours. He's in your log. Don't worry, you'll get your chance to go toe to toe with him."
Davic muttered a Hungarian curse and went out.
Sorensen called after him, "What's the matter? Don't you ever go to the movies?"
A moment later Fogarty rushed in, sat down and put on his earphones. He heard a deep throb, an unnatural predatory growl, and suddenly he was very alert.
In sonar school Fogarty had listened with detached interest to tapes of Soviet submarines, but the tapes had been disembodied noises in a void. The tapes that Sorensen had played for him had been frightening, but still remote. The immediacy of the real thing came as a shock. His first Russian.
"What's he doing?" he asked Sorensen.
"Our friend Ivan is just sitting there listening to us with big fat smile on his face. The joke's on us."
Fogarty settled into his seat and watched the resolution of the streak improve as the range closed.
Invisible to the rest of the world, the two subs drifted five miles apart, listening warily for the slightest hint of a wrong move.
"Well," Sorensen said, "the game is on. Let's see if we can come out a respectable second best."
"What game?" Fogarty asked.
"The game. The only game in town. The game we play with the Russians. Cowboys and Cossacks."
Fogarty stared at him.
"Call it practice for World War Three."
Sorensen switched on the overhead speakers and took off his earphones.
"Listen to that dirty racket," he said with a smile. "His weapons control system is locked right on your beating heart."
"Control to sonar. Prepare to lock on weapons control."
"Sonar to control. Prepare to lock on weapons control, aye. Now we're going to return the favor," Sorensen said. He pushed a sequence of buttons on his console and the sonar signals were ready to be fed into the weapons-guidance systems.
When Fogarty had practiced this drill it always made him nervous. Now faced with an actual adversary, he was surprised to discover how calm he felt.
"Control to weapons. Lock on sonar."
Hock's voice came through the intercom. "Weapons to control. Lock on sonar, aye."
"Very well."
Hoek looked up from his weapons console to face the captain in the conning station, wondering if Springfield was going to give the order to load a torpedo. Rachets in hand, the torpedo room crew was standing by.
"Load tube number one, Mark thirty-seven, conventional warhead, wire-guided."
"Load tube number one, aye."
Barracuda dipped slightly forward as the weight of a torpedo was shifted into a tube. A trim tank automatacally compensated and the ship leveled.
Fogarty shook his head. "This is like playing with a loaded gun."
"Indeed it is. That's the spice that makes it so tasty."
"What if someone screws up?"
Sorensen shrugged and lit a cigarette. "Who? The skipper? No way. Ivan? He's the same as us. Nobody wants to start a war. Not today. So they say…"
"We could have a war down here and nobody would ever know it."
"You're a bright boy, Fogarty. You noticed there aren't any TV cameras down here."
Fogarty still felt strangely calm and clearheaded. A torpedo could not be fired until the tube was flooded, a provocative act that would be heard by the Russian sonar operators.
Looking at the pictures on the wall, he tried to imagine the Russian sub. He had seen film of Russian subs on the surface. They looked mean, warlike. As for the men inside, he had only the residue of a lifetime of propaganda that pictured them as an enemy… We will bury you, and so forth. He wasn't sure if he believed all of it, some of it, or none of it.
"Well," Sorensen said, "what class of sub do you think it is?"
"I don't know. Most of their attack subs are November class."
"She's starting to move. Sonar to control, contact is moving. He's showing himself to us."
"Control to sonar." Springfield's voice replaced Leo Pisaro's. "Try and get a signature."
"Aye aye."
"Okay, Leo," Springfield said to the XO, "let's take a look. All ahead slow."
The ship shuddered as the propeller revolutions increased. The instant Barracuda moved the Russian took off, making a great deal of noise as his speed increased. The streak on the screen resolved into a blip. Sorensen heard the unmistakable sounds of Soviet machinery, noisy reduction gears and coolant pumps, the swish of a prop, but it was not the classic signature of a November. He switched on the signature program that compared the sounds of the contact sub with the recorded sounds of known Soviet submarines stored in the program.
"It's a Viktor," he said, a good fifteen seconds before the computer verified his judgement.