Sorensen noticed that Zapata was ignoring him. "Listen up, bug. I'm talking to you. I've done my job, this kid Fogarty has talent, let him be the new Sorensen, ace of the fleet. The next ten years can be his. I don't need any more Cowboys and Cossacks. You and me, Zapata, we're going to fade into the goddamn sunset…"
Sorensen closed his eyes and for the first time in years slept without nightmares. Zapata basked silently in the light, observing him.
27
Eight hours later Sorensen and Fogarty mustered in the sonar room for their next watch. Sorensen had slept too long under the sunlamps and had a sunburn.
As Willie Joe was logging out, Sorensen asked, "You ready for your qualifying exam, Willie Joe?"
"The Lieutenant says I've got Fire Control down pat."
"You're gonna make it, no sweat."
"Thanks, Ace."
"You got plans for the thirty day leave, Willie Joe?"
"Sure do. Me and the old lady are takin' the kids to Baton Rouge. That's where her folks are. They got a nice place, a big back porch all screened in. Keeps the bugs out."
"You going to buy that new Bonneville?"
"You said it. Gonna get me some high-class Detroit steel and cruise on down to Louisiana. You never went for cars, did you, Ace?"
"Never had much time to drive 'em."
"You ain't got an old lady. Them bitches, all they wanna do is show off in the parking lot at the supermarket. I don't give a shit. If that's what she wants, well, it beats her banging the whole fleet while I'm on patrol."
Sorensen nodded, keeping a straight face, and Willie Joe opened the door. "I'm outta here. Maybe you'll get lucky and catch a Russian."
Barracuda was running slow and quiet. Two more messages had been received from Norfolk. Dherzinski continued on the same course, but between the first and second messages the Alpha had disappeared five hundred miles southwest of the Azores.
Figuring the Alpha was waiting at the rendezvous point for Dherzinski, Springfield maintained a course five miles south and parallel to the projected track of Dherzinski. He knew it wouldn't be long before they intercepted the huge missile sub which he calculated was less than fifty miles away.
Between watches, Fogarty had spent four hours listening to tapes of Soviet FBMs. The tape of Dherzinski, collected as she entered Havana harbor, was clear and distinct, and he had listened to it several times.
"Say, Ace, how long has this boat been making patrols out of Cuba?"
"A year."
"How did she get in there in the first place?"
"She must have crossed the Pacific from Vladivostok, passed around Cape Horn and come up through the South Atlantic. A British sub, Conqueror, picked her up off the Faulklands and followed her all the way to Havana. The Russians never knew Conqueror was there, and they still think we don't know anything about Dherzinski."
"I'm surprised the Brits or somebody didn't get crazy and blow her away."
"Maybe they should have, but of course we've been trying to find a way to get her out of the Caribbean for good without firing a shot. Sinking a boomer under any circumstances is bad news. I'll tell you one thing, I bet her skipper is unhappy right now. I bet he'd like to put a fish into the Alpha himself for making him risk exposure."
For three hours they listened and drank coffee. They heard a lone whale sing a mournful song, but no surface ships and no submarines. Fogarty listened to the tape of Dherzinski several more times.
Sorensen yawned and stretched.
"You sound tired. Ace."
"Shit, Fogarty. They want to promote me to chief and put me on a new boat in the Pacific."
"Congratulations. A lifer like you, what more could you ask for?"
"I'm going to turn it down."
Fogarty was stunned. "I don't believe it. Not you, not the great Sorensen."
"Yeah, well. I'm going to be the former great." He pointed to the speakers, which were churning out the signature of Dherzinski. "I don't want to hear one of those things ever again."
"What do you mean? This is what it's all about, isn't it?"
"It sure is, but this is it for me. I'm not going aboard Guitarro, you are. I talked to Pisaro about it. He's going to be the CO. Willie Joe is going too. You can look after the Russians, you're going to be the hotshot."
"Me? Come on, Ace."
"Look, Fogarty, number one, you're good enough. You've got it. Number two, you're hooked. You want to do it, whether you know it or not. Number three, you don't want a war but number four, you've come a long way, now you'll fight if you have to. You're gonna be bad, dude."
Fogarty was embarrassed, partly for being pleased at Sorensen's words.
"Am I right or am I right?"
"We'll see… but what about you, Sorensen? If you're not going onto Guitarro what are you going to do?"
"Sorensen Sound Effects, three hundred an hour… But first we're going fishing for a big fish, and hope we don't get hooked."
They were almost at the end of their watch when Fogarty saw the streak flash across his screen. He recognized it the instant he heard it.
"Contact, bearing two eight eight, range fourteen thousand yards, course zero seven six, speed eighteen knots, identification, Soviet Hotel class FBM, Dherzinski."
Sorensen barely glanced at the screen. "Okay, champ, feed it to the skipper."
"Don't you want to check it?"
"Nope."
"Sonar to control," said Fogarty, and repeated the data over the intercom.
"All stop. Quiet in the boat," ordered Springfield.
The sonar screens immediately cleared as Barracuda glided to a stop. Fogarty closed his eyes and listened to the rumble of machinery gliding through the ocean. Dherzinski's missiles, like Vallejo's, represented Fogarty's worst nightmare. And it popped into his head that one way to get rid of them would be to sink Dherzinski right now — and that thought made him sweat. What was happening to him?…
Sorensen lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the air conditioner.
"Does she know we're here?" Fogarty asked him.
"I don't think so. We're too quiet. If she hears us, her commander will take evasive action, or threaten us."
"What are we going to do?"
"Follow her. She'll lead us to the Alpha. In a few hours we're going to be on top of the two most secret ships in the Soviet Navy. Dherzinski must need something from the Alpha. Or vice-versa. Otherwise they'd never pull her off-station. I figure the last thing the Russians expect is for us to show up. If we're lucky we'll catch them together on the surface."
"What will they do?"
"I don't read minds, kid. But I do know Springfield will do his job, which won't win us the Order of Lenin—"
"Control to sonar."
"Sonar, aye."
"We're going to play tag. Let's keep our range between ten thousand and twelve thousand yards."
"Sonar to control, aye aye."
Barracuda fell in behind Dherzinski and began to follow the huge missile sub at a distance of six miles. Steaming on an easterly course, Dherzinski rolled through the sea like Leviathan, her computers continuously tracking targets on the east coast of the United States fourteen hundred miles away. The noise from the boomer's engines was so loud that her sonar operators never heard the American sub.