Wardroom
USS Washington, SSN 787, “The Blackfish”
North Atlantic
Friday, April 12
0048 local time (The Midwatch)
Sorry, Juice,” Knepper said to Lieutenant Junior Grade Mike Majewski, his voice ripe with sarcastic pity, “this is going to sting—I gotta seven, two eights, and a nine, so with the six on the flip that’s fifteen-two, fifteen-four, fifteen-six, double long runs for eight more, and a pair for two, which makes sixteen points. And the crib is mine . . . So let’s take a look. Ooh, what do we have here: two sixes, a nine, and a jack—that’s fifteen two, fifteen four, a pair for six and nobs makes seven, aaaaaand with the six on the cut I’ve got trips for six more for a total of thirteen. Ouch, that’s gotta sting.”
With a victorious smirk, Knepper jumped his trailing peg on the cribbage board sixteen, then leapfrogged the other peg another thirteen, moving way around the bend and leaving Juice in the dust. Two sevens instead of two eights would have given him a bonus three points as a “blackfish” under the house rules, a nod to their hull number of seven-eight-seven. But he’d take the big win without it.
“Bastard,” Juice muttered as he scooped up the cards to deal the next hand. “But I mean that with all due respect, sir.”
“I’m trying to think, Juice, have you ever beaten me at cribbage?” Knepper said and took a sip of coffee from the Blackfish mug with XO printed on the back.
“Uh, yes, sir, I skunked you last underway,” the JO said as he dealt them each six new cards.
“It wasn’t a skunk. I would definitely remember that.”
“Oh, it was definitely a skunk. In fact, it was almost a double skunk.”
“If it was a skunk, I would have had to sign the back of the board,” Knepper said, trying not to laugh. “And since I didn’t sign, it didn’t happen.”
“No, sir. Remember I graciously exempted you from having to sign the board to spare you the embarrassment in front of the rest of the wardroom?”
“You know, Mike, I have control over the watch bill . . .”
“I think that was the same threat you used last time, sir, which is why I let you off the hook.”
At this, both men burst into laughter, which was promptly interrupted by Knepper’s MOMCOM, aka his Man on the Move underway personal radio, which rang against his chest, where he wore it clipped to his coveralls.
“CDO,” he said, taking the call.
“CDO, Conn, the officer of the deck requests you come to the conn,” the voice said.
“On my way.” He scooted his chair back from the wardroom table and looked at Juice. “If you stack the deck while I’m gone, I’ll know.”
“No self-respecting submariner stacks the cribbage deck. That’s sacrilege.”
“Damn right it is. I knew there was a reason we gave you your dolphins,” Knepper said and gave the big JO’s back a pat on the way out.
Everybody on the Blackfish liked Juice, and for good reason—the guy was both competent and had a helluva sense of humor—which were the two currencies necessary for surviving and thriving in the submarine force. Knepper liked to think that he also possessed both attributes, which was why he’d advanced successfully through the ranks and screened for XO. But as the ship’s executive officer, he’d had to modify his style from the persona he’d developed as a JO and department head. As the ship’s XO, he didn’t have the luxury of being everybody’s buddy. He was responsible for maintaining order and discipline, and sometimes that meant playing bad cop so the CO didn’t have to. True leadership wasn’t about being liked. And it wasn’t about being feared.
True leaders are respected.
Because even commanding officers needed sleep, the Navy created a position known as the command duty officer, or CDO. During the midwatch, which lasted from midnight to 0800, Knepper stood CDO, a period during which he acted in the captain’s stead, only waking the CO in case of emergency or a tactical development of consequence. Knepper’s goal for the deployment was to have none of the former and hopefully lots of the latter. Not because he secretly delighted in sleep-depriving his boss, but because the Blackfish was deployed as a tip of the spear asset and that meant sneaking its way into the enemy’s business as aggressively as possible. They had high hopes for this deployment that they’d locate and track foreign submarines and that meant working the problem twenty-four seven.
And with the Belgorod out there somewhere, that mission was more important than perhaps any in his entire career.
“CDO in control,” the messenger announced when Knepper stepped onto the conn.
“What have you got, OOD?” he said as Juggernaut—who was standing midwatch officer of the deck—met him at the OOD workstation.
She gestured with her head to the port side of the control room, where ST1 Boone was holding up a pair of headphones. “Boone picked up something. It’s worth taking a listen to.”
“What do you think it is?”
“We don’t want to bias you,” she said. “Would rather you take a listen and then discuss.”
“Sure,” Knepper said and made his way over to the row of sonar terminals where Boone was waiting. “Let me guess—you’ve got some whales getting busy? A little humpback action going on, huh?”
“No ocean porn tonight, sir,” Boone said with a grin and handed Knepper a headset. “Now, keep in mind, we only heard it once, but I’ve got the recording on a loop so you can hear it several times.”
“Gotcha,” he said and slipped on the cushy over-the-ear headphones.
Boone tapped a button on the keyboard and the recording played—static followed by a distinct clank, then static again. Knepper closed his eyes and listened to the event three more times before opening his lids and taking off the headphones. “Definitely metallic and mechanical. That’s no fish.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Boone said.
“And you say it only happened once?”
“Yes, sir,” the sonar supervisor said.
“Bearing?”
Boone sniffed. “Bearing two-five-four.”
Knepper glanced at the ship’s heading displayed on the upper right corner of the sonar terminal screen that read two-eight-four. He turned to Juggernaut. “Is this the course you were on when you heard it?”
“No, I was on one-eight-five. I turned to close, but I wanted to have some aspect for narrowband,” she said, referring to the Blackfish’s TB-29 thin line array, which was towed behind the boat and could not listen effectively in the three-three-zero to zero-three-zero relative bearing cone.
“Good call,” he said. “So the clank is all you’ve got—no broadband or narrowband?”
“Yup,” she said. “One ping . . . One ping only.”
He chuckled at the inside joke and was about to tell her to keep him posted, when a thought occurred to him and he whirled to face the nav plot. “Quartermaster, show me the original line of bearing from the ship’s position when we first detected the anomaly.”
“Sure thing, XO,” the quartermaster said, hovering over the horizontal digital workstation that functioned like an oversized Microsoft Surface.
Using a trackball, the sailor selected a point on the ship’s track that corresponded with the time of detection and extended a line of bearing to the east. Knepper leaned in and squinted, following the bearing line over the bathymetry curves and annotations on the digital chart. Not seeing what he was looking for, he said, “Where’s the mid-Atlantic DASH data node and cable? Shouldn’t it be on here?”
“Oh my God, I can’t believe I brain farted on that,” the quartermaster said as he clicked a drop-down menu. “It’s a top secret overlay, and this is the first time I’ve imported one. It times out every hour and you have to click ‘show layer’ and reenter your login and password for it to reappear. I’m so sorry.”
“That’s all right, that’s why we’re a watch section team,” Knepper said, “so we can back each other up.”
A heartbeat later the overlay was up and a mid-Atlantic DASH data node and cable appeared as a green square with a line snaking across the chart—the very system that the Russian surface ship the Finitor had been intercepted for loitering over. The black bearing line crossed the cable to the west.
“How far is that point?” Knepper asked, tapping the glass at the point of intersection.
The quartermaster used the trackball to measure the distance and said, “Nineteen thousand two hundred yards.”
Knepper turned to Juggernaut. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That we might’ve just caught somebody with their hand in the cookie jar?” she said.
“Precisely.” With a snarky smile, Knepper turned and headed for the command passageway to knock on the CO’s stateroom door.
Sorry, Skipper, looks like you don’t get your beauty rest tonight.