“It hasn’t even been a full day yet,” she said.
“See how good Iʼve been?”
Thomas shook her head from side to side. “I don’t know if this is going to work out.”
“Sure it will.”
“I mean, I don’t know if the company is going to survive, assuming the chief personnel survive this escapade. You’re risking all of the prime principals, you know?”
“I know, Rae. I know. If it looks like we won’t make it, I’ll pull out.”
She studied his face for a very long moment, then asked, “Promise?”
“Cross my heart.” He did, with his forefinger. “My grandma taught me that”
“I’d like to have met your grandma.”
“You’d have loved her”
“I’d have told her about some of the things she missed in rearing you.”
Brande smiled. “What things?”
“Another time, Dane. How much cash will we realize from Dawson?”
“Maybe a million-one.”
“I had hoped for more.”
“In this business, it’s hope that carries you forward, Rae. But you can’t hope for too much, either.”
She gave him a strange look. “Don’t preach, Dane. I’m well aware of that.”
The Los Angeles had been running at a depth of sixty feet, her antennas deployed, so she could exchange messages with CINCPAC and the Kane.
As she returned to a hundred feet of depth, Cmdr. Alfred Taylor left the control center and went aft to the sonar room, located on the starboard side of the submarine, off the electronic warfare room.
Neil Garrison, the executive officer, was conferring with the chief sonarman, CPO Jim Tsosie. The sonar expert was a full-blooded Navajo with hearing that could distinguish between a pin or a needle dropped on a linoleum floor, or close to it.
The sonar room was crammed with a sophisticated computer used to analyze sounds and frequencies picked up by the submarine’s sensors. The waterfall display, a video screen mounted on one bulkhead, provided visual evidence — bright lines and dots — of bearings to potential targets.
At the moment, the screen displayed six targets.
“What have we got, Chief?” Taylor asked.
“The Philadelphia is closest, Skipper. She’s running parallel to us at five thousand yards, and the blade count says she’s doing thirty-one knots.”
Taylor would never have inquired into Tsosie’s accuracy. If he did not recognize it, the computer’s data banks could match the distinctive propeller signatures of thousands of friendly and hostile craft.
“Farther to the north, and thirty nautical miles behind us, are the Kane and the Bartlett. With the speed these ships are making, Skipper, no one’s trying to hide a sound. It doesn’t make the reading a lot easier, of course, because of the noise we’re making ourselves.”
“What about the other three targets?”
“I have not identified them specifically, sir. To the south, that one has to be a supertanker. She’s on a heading for Japan. To the west, those are smaller boats, both twin props. They’re probably yachts of some kind, and they’re falling into our track”
“Thanks, Chief. Neil?”
“It looks as if we’re going to have a lot of company on-site, Captain.”
“CINCPAC says there’s some forty private vessels in the area or on the way to it. Chief, one of the first things you’ll need to do, once we get there, is identify the nonessential vessels, so you can squelch them out.”
“Aye aye, Skipper.”
“Also, Neil, the Kane will be the operation commander.”
“Do we know the captain?” Garrison asked.
“John Cartwright. His background is in oceanographic research, so he should be helpful.”
Taylor passed one of his messages to Garrison. “Then, it seems that CINCPAC is gathering a whole bunch of experts. This is the search grid they’ve laid out for us. I want you to plot it so we can get familiar with it.”
“Are the Philadelphia and the Houston getting the same stuff?”
“They’ll be getting similar instructions as they surface to receive them. At 2400 hours, we’re scheduled to make contact with them to establish coordination.”
Garrison grinned. “Did you ever try to coordinate an orgy, Skipper?”
Taylor grinned back. “It’s getting worse. There’s a CIS patrol ship with a submersible on the way, as well as a Japanese research vessel.”
The executive officer glanced at his watch. “Eighteen hours to go, Skipper. Then it gets confused.”
“The Russians will get there first,” Taylor said. “It may be all over in eighteen hours.”
“You a betting man?” Garrison asked.
“All stop,” Captain Mikhail Gurevenich said. He had decided to surface slowly by pumping out water ballast rather than driving up on the diving planes. There were too many surface vessels present.
“All stop,” echoed the seaman manning the engine room telegraph.
The captain felt the Winter Storm go sluggish as she lost headway. The silence seemed intense after so many hours at top speeds. When the speed log displayed five knots, he ordered, “Come to the surface, Lieutenant Mostovets.”
“Blowing ballast, Captain.”
The lines and tanks hissed as compressed air forced water from the ballast tanks, located between the pressure and outer hulls and in the bow.
“Control Center, Sonar.”
Gurevenich leaned toward the communications panel on the bulkhead next to him and depressed the intercom button. “Control Center.”
“I now have thirty-one contacts within five kilometers, all around us,” Sonarman Paramanov said, “The closest is fifty meters off the port bow.”
“Identifications?”
“I estimate that they are primarily civilian vessels, Captain. The U.S. naval frigate Bronstein has been computer-identified. It is at one-one-thousand meters, bearing one-three-seven. There is a gunboat of the Antelope class a thousand meters beyond the frigate.”
“Thank you.” Gurevenich released the button.
He wanted to bring up the periscope and scan the seas around him first, but that would only delay matters.
The deck took on a bow-up slant as the submarine rose toward the surface.
“Twenty meters depth and rising,” the planesman called out in a flat tone.
Gurevenich crossed to the conning tower ladder and began to climb it, Mostovets following behind him. The junior officer aboard, Lieutenant Kazakov, trailed along. He was earnest, but slow to learn, and he always seemed to be underfoot.
As he reached the hatch, the sail broke the surface, and through the twin skins of the submarine, he heard the seawater cascading from the tower, crashing to the sea and the emerging hull.
He waited a few moments, spun the wheel to undog the door, then pushed hard. The hatch swung open, and salty water spilled down, splashing his shoulders, leaving dark, wet patterns on his uniform blouse.
Scrambling up the final rungs of the ladder, Gurevenich emerged into the bridge area of the sail. He stood upright, his head above the sail, breathed deeply of the salty air, and made a full turn as he scanned the seas around him.
“Unbelievable,” Mostovets said as he climbed from the hull and joined the captain.
The skies were dark, with a towering cloud bank blotting out the stars to the northeast. The seas were relatively smooth, with two-to three-foot swells. Wavelets crashed whitely on the hull.