Swaying at the end of his cable, Stevens wafted toward the deck until he was surrounded by men in heavy rain gear. They unhooked the quick release on the cable from the winch, then freed him from the safety line.
"Welcome aboard the Virginia," one of the men shouted in his ear. "This way, sir!" Bravo Five-one was already clawing for altitude, circling once more back toward the north for its return to the Roosevelt.
Stevens just hoped the damned submarine didn't start submerging before he was safely inside.
Clutching a safety line rigged along Virginia's aft hull, he made his way forward, toward the imposing bulk of the ASDS resting on the submarine's deck aft of the sail. A circular hatch was open in the deck just aft of the tail of the ASDS, and a crewman waved him on. They helped him step into the hatch and down the ladder.
By the time he was in a fluorescent-lit passageway walking forward, the deck was tilting beneath his feet, and Virginia was slipping once more into the ocean's dark embrace.
"Ahead flank," Garrett said.
"Ahead, flank speed," came the echoed response. "Aye aye, sir."
"Captain?"
Garrett turned in his chair. Jorgensen was stripping off his foul-weather slicker. Beside him was a muscular man looking just a bit like an alien in wetsuit, harness, and life jacket.
"Stevens," the man said.
"Welcome aboard, Mr. Stevens."
"It's good to finally be aboard, Captain. I was beginning to feel damned unwanted."
"You were the guy we had to leave in the drink this morning?"
"I was."
"I'm glad you're okay. I do regret the necessity that forced us to cast you off that way."
"Yeah, what the hell happened, anyway?"
"We were under attack. If we'd waited another thirty seconds, we would not have been able to fight clear."
"Jesus! Who attacked you?"
"Actually, I was hoping you had that information for us. That's why someone decided to drop you on us, isn't it? To fill us in on the latest hot shit in person?" Stevens started to reply, and Garrett waved him to silence. "Later. Mr. Jorgensen will take you to the torpedo room and get you bunked in with our SEALs. You can brief me after you get dry, warm, and settled in."
"Thank you, Captain." He glanced up at the big monitor on the control room's forward bulkhead. At the moment, it showed a normal-spectrum camera view of the surface, seen through the Photonics mast — gray clouds and rain, empty gray ocean, and the impression of great speed as the mast sliced through the ocean swell. "May I ask… where are we headed now?"
"Small Dragon Island, Mr. Stevens. Based on what you people have passed on to us so far, my guess is that the rogue sub may be operating out of that base with Chinese help. It is my intention to scout that base, and see if we can find any sign of either that submarine, or the yacht you people alerted us to… what was the name?"
"Al Qahir."
"Yes."
"We'll talk, Captain. We'll talk…."
Garrett watched as the XO led Stevens aft again, toward the ladder that would take him down to the torpedo room deck.
Micromanagement again. The armchair admirals weren't content with saddling Virginia with constant mission updates over the high-tech communications links, but had decided to send a human proxy. Garrett felt a great deal of resentment at this intrusion into his world, his mission. Yet he was also curious. He wondered what Stevens would have to say.
"My God, did you see the way the Old Man handled the boat? Poetry, man! Pure poetry!"
Chief Kurzweil had been waxing enthusiastic about the day's events ever since sitting down at the table with his tray. Mark Halstead and the other SEALs had taken over one of the long tables in the mess hall as their own preserve, but there was room for more, and three of the submarine's petty officers, Kurzweil, Chief Evans, and EM1 Kirkpatrick, had joined them.
The SEALs so far had managed to keep more or less to themselves, and preferred it that way. They felt a certain kinship with the submariners, true, but long habit and the isolation imposed by the nature of their work and training tended to put up barriers that others rarely challenged.
In the wake of the battle that morning, with its wild maneuvers and the smoke-choking events in the torpedo room, the barriers had begun to wear thin.
"I dunno," Kirkpatrick said. "What I want to know is how a hostile got the jump on us, huh?" He nudged
Evans in the side. "Why didn't you guys pick the turd up?"
Halstead ate in silence, but listened with careful interest. Supper that night was sliders — hamburger patties supposedly given that name because they slid around in their own grease. In fact, sliders and their close kin—"rollers," or hot dogs — took their names from a comparison with a more scatological source. Submariners, Halstead had noticed, seemed to delight in the disgusting… a tendency they shared with
SEALs.
"If he'd been making any noise, we would've," Evans replied. "Diesel boats are damned quiet when they're running on batteries."
"So? We're quieter."
"When we want to be," Kurzweil said. "But we're not silent running at thirty knots, or when we're banging around on the roof trying to fish a CIA spook out of the water."
"So what's your point, Kirkpatrick?" Evans asked. "Just because we're quiet doesn't mean we can hear them. My guess is that he happened to be laying low in the area and picked us up coming in to the rendezvous. He saw a chance to nail us with four fast fish and took it."
"Yeah," Kurzweil added. "And the bastard's probably still running, snatching a look over his shoulder now and again for fear we're right on his tail."
"What I want to know," Evans said, "is who the guy was."
"Chinese," Kurzweil said. "Definitely Chinese."
"Get fucked," Kirkpatrick said. "The Chinese wouldn't be playing terrorist and shooting down airliners."
"Yeah?" Evans said. "Then who was it?"
"Indonesia," Kirkpatrick said. "They have Kilo-class boats."
"Fuck," Kurzweil said. "Everyone has Kilo-class boats nowadays. They're Russia's numero-uno export!"
"Yeah," Evans said. "And why would Indonesia want to take us on?"
"They've got AQ cells in Indonesia, don't they?" Kirkpatrick asked. "Maybe some of them got hold of a submarine somehow and are using it for AQ terror missions."
Kurtzweil laughed. "Shit. There are al Qaeda cells in Malaysia, in the Philippines, in Borneo, in Thailand… what makes you so sure it was Indonesia?"
"It's an interesting idea, though," Evans said, thoughtful. He took a swig of coffee. "Al Qaeda couldn't build and operate a submarine themselves. They had to co-opt it from someone else."
"Yeah," Kurzweil said. "China."
"Why China?"
"They want to get back at us for what the Skipper did to 'em off Taiwan a couple years back."
Kirkpatrick laughed. "Shit, Kurz! You're saying this is personal?"
"It's sure as hell personal for the Old Man," Evans said. "You guys seen his face since we got the word about that airliner? I've never seen anyone so pissed."
"Just so he keeps drivin' this boat the way he did this morning!" Kurzweil said with a shake of his head. "Like I was sayin', pure poetry!"
Evans turned suddenly and addressed Halstead. "What do you guys say, Lieutenant? Who are we fighting?"