Chapter Twenty-three

“What do those buoys indicate?” President Ryder asked.

“They’re launched from a Trident submarine to indicate that it has sunk. A sensor sets them off when the ship descends below crush depth,” Admiral Mesher said.

“You’re sure it’s the Colorado?”

“The buoys are submarine-specific.”

“It can’t be faked?”

“Impossible. The frequencies are top secret and scrambled.”

“I mean the sinking. Could that be faked?”

“Unlikely. The warhead explosion and the implosion of an airtight compartment indicate that the Colorado was destroyed. We’ll be running the acoustic tapes through the Johns Hopkins Oceanic Research labs, but all evidence indicates that the Colorado is on the bottom.”

“How long until we find the wreckage?”

“This was in the same depth of water as the Titanic,” Mesher said. “It could take months.”

“Okay, let’s assume for the moment that the Colorado was sunk. Who sank it and why?”

“It’s possible that Lieutenant Slate accidentally shot himself with his own torpedo,” Mesher said.

“Who the hell was he shooting at? Us?”

“Doubtful, sir. We would’ve heard him. I’m just offering theories.”

“Keep going.”

“It’s possible that a torpedo detonated in its tube.”

“How likely is that?”

“Unlikely.”

“You’re not building a good case.”

“There’s also the possibility that a foreign vessel penetrated our escort perimeter and sank the Colorado.”

“Admiral, the nation is breathing down my neck about that Trident. If you were in my shoes, would you say that the Colorado is on the bottom of the Atlantic?”

“I can’t speculate further until more evidence becomes available.”

“Give me your gut feel.”

“Mister President, this is like being blindfolded and shooting a shouting man. You don’t know if you’ve hit your target until you hear silence. Even then you may not be certain who you hit, if anyone. But based upon the data we have now, the Colorado was destroyed.”

 

*

In the privacy of his stateroom, John Brody swallowed his fourth shot of Jack Daniels. His mind danced with demons.

Carole Brody lay in bed. Her naked body invited the touch of a stranger. Her brow furrowed as she faced Brody.

“Failure!” she said.

The image disintegrated.

A new image crept into his head.

Towering over a group of officers, Slate’s commanding officer, Commander Thomas Henry, approached a podium. He accepted his appointment to admiral and spoke into a microphone.

“I accept this promotion as the token nigger admiral because John Brody was too stupid to sell out. Hey John, you didn’t even make captain, did you?”

“Fuck it,” Brody said. “After Jake stole your submarine, your career’s going down with mine.”

Next image.

Standing on the bridge of the USS Colorado, Jake studied the seas as wind blew his hair. He grinned.

“Hey, John. How are you doing?” he asked. “Were you the dip-shit I just outsmarted?”

“Fuck it,” Brody said and slammed a fifth shot. Another shot later, he was crying over a picture of his wife. Then he wiped his eyes and studied his face in the mirror. He saw nothing he respected.

Desperate to feel an iota of dignity, he grabbed his bottle of whiskey and emptied it into his toilet.

 

*

The next morning, Brody felt dehydrated and queasy as he addressed the Miami’s officers.

“I expect that in a few days, the Commodore will let us come home. I’m going to let Pete Parks run the show. I just wanted to thank you guys for being the best wardroom a skipper could have.”

While sad faces remained somber, the wardroom door opened. The short, stocky image of Senior Chief Schmidt, Brody’s sonar technician, scratched his grayish brown mustache while reporting in a gritty baritone.

“Captain, you told me to let you know if I found something.”

“Yeah?”

“I found something.”

Brody followed Schmidt up the stairs to the sonar room. Stinking of body odor and grime, the sonar technician huddled over an audio machine.

“I think you’re right about the Colorado, Captain.”

“I had a feeling this guy was too good to get sunk,” Brody said. “What do you have?”

“There’s no doubt a warhead exploded under where they found the Colorado’s buoys. What bothers me is the implosion of the hull.”

“Go on.”

“Well, sir. First of all, the Colorado has four compartments, if you count the reactor compartment. Most likely we’d have heard several compartments implode, but we only heard one.”

“The compartments could have equalized pressure on the way down.”

“That’s possible, but what I really don’t like is the timing. The Colorado’s sinking seemed fast, so I listened with a stopwatch. The hull imploded twenty-one seconds after the explosion. That’s too quick.”

“Maybe the Colorado was deep when it was struck.”

“Still, sir,” Schmidt said, “there’s one important thing missing - the creaking. I don’t have to tell you that high-yield steel puts up a good fight, but we had only twelve seconds of catastrophic creaking before the pop.”

“That doesn’t make sense, Senior.”

“That’s my point, sir. I already had two other guys check the timing and my logic. Something exploded and something sank, and the Colorado’s doomsday buoys were found on top of it all. But it doesn’t compute.”

“Okay, Senior. Let’s get the officers and sonar team together. We’re all going to listen to this tape.”

 

*

Jake popped Brussels sprouts into his mouth while he watched the Frenchman swivel the periscope.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“I just returned from the navigation center with a GPS fix,” Renard said. “Our gyroscopic navigators are tracking. Scott is raising the radio mast. You could save us time at periscope depth by handling the radio download for me.”

“No problem. Are we alone?”

“Nothing on sonar or visual,” Renard said. “No ESM. I never thought I would enjoy such isolation.”

Jake placed his microwaved bowl of canned sprouts on a counter and flipped switches to align the radio antenna.

He listened to the whir of a radio transceiver as it accepted a download. Then he walked from the module and lifted a microphone to his mouth.

“Mister Renard, I’ve got the transmission,” Jake said. “Lower the radio mast and take us deep.”

Jake popped the last sprout into his mouth as he ripped off the printout. Reading as he walked uphill against the ship’s diving angle, he returned to the control room.

“Sweet!” he said.

McKenzie, Renard, and Tiger turned to listen as Jake read aloud.

“At a press conference today, President Lance Ryder stated that the USS Colorado, underway under suspicious circumstances since May 11th, was sunk at sea two days ago. He will not confirm details of the situation, but sources state that a reactor accident-”

“Thank God. Now, no one will be chasing us,” McKenzie said.

“Congratulations, Jake,” Renard said. “Your maneuver with the Custom Venture worked perfectly. I cannot help but think that you’re charmed. However, we need to keep our wits about us. That statement by your president could be a deception in its own right.”

“Maybe, but I think it’s safe to speed up.”

“Agreed,” Renard said.

“I don’t know about this fairwater damage, though. What do you think about nine knots – at least until we’re under the ice?”

“Nine knots will add almost a week to our journey versus our planned speed of twelve,” Renard said.

“I planned leeway into the timing. I don’t think Taiwan will mind waiting,” Jake said.

“That may depend. How is the situation there?”

Jake scanned the news report. A blurb on the subject followed a story about a Middle East terrorist group bombing a London subway.

“China lost a destroyer during an exchange with an unnamed Taiwanese combatant in the Western Pacific, but the Taiwanese combatant had to be scuttled at sea,” Jake said. “Then there’s something about Chinese submarine attacks against oil tankers inbound to Taiwan and insurance companies refusing to cover Taiwanese commercial vessels.”

“It’s as I’d feared. The mainland stranglehold is in place, and even as it resists, the Taiwanese fleet is too small and can ill afford one-for-one exchanges. If this journey takes too long, Taiwan may not be around to receive the warheads.”

 

*

“Our doubts about the Colorado sinking reached the CNO,” Brody said. “He’s skeptical, but he’s sent the Boise and the Philly to look for the Colorado in the Gibraltar shipping lanes. The extra P-3’s are standing down - and so are we.”

“Forgive me sir,” Parks, his executive officer, said in a drawl, “but the Colorado was your battle, and you’re the one who discovered that it might be alive. Why do other people get to chase him? It isn’t right.”

“The Squadron Commodore did me a little favor, Pete. He got Sublant to let me stay out four extra weeks with any patrol area I request. We get any water we want outside of allied submarine patrol areas.”

“Really? What did you have in mind, sir?”

“If the Colorado is alive and going where we all thought it was, then Slate gets eaten alive before Gibraltar.”

“He wouldn’t have a chance in hell, sir.”

“So let’s assume that the Colorado is alive and heading someplace besides the Mediterranean. If Slate is sly enough to fake a Trident’s death, then he’s smart enough to change direction on us.”

“I follow you, sir, but the world is a big place.”

“I wouldn’t put it beyond him to think he can shoot between Greenland and Iceland, or between Iceland and the United Kingdom, without being heard.”

“At least six nations patrol the G-I-UK Gap, sir, and they have hydrophones strung across the ocean floor from Greenland to France.”

Parks inhaled through his nostrils, but Brody had masked his hangover breath with a mint. After dumping his whisky, Brody thought, it would be the last time on the Miami he’d have to worry about it.

“But if no one is looking,” Brody said, “then the G-I-UK Gap becomes possible for a Trident, don’t you think?”

“I’ll buy that, sir. But why the Gap? There’s no place to go up there, except NATO nations and Russia.”

“Unless he’s going for the polar ice cap.”

“It’s never been done by a Trident, sir.”

“Slate’s brilliant. Heck, he’s got us so turned around we don’t even know if he’s alive. I wouldn’t put an under-ice passage beyond him.”

 

*

As Grant Mercer stepped into a waterfront bar in Nome, Alaska, a heavyset native bartender eyed him.

“Where’re you from, son?” the man asked.

“I travel a lot,” Mercer said.

“You don’t look like a hunter or a tourist. What brings you here?”

“I need a boat,” Mercer said. “Something that can survive open ocean and hold supplies for four men for two weeks. Something that can make around twenty knots.”

“You’re asking a lot. What do you need it for?”

“I’m with the Natural Resources Defense Council,” Mercer said. “Three of my associates are going to join me with sonar equipment to spy on the U.S. Navy. They’re testing low frequency active sonar systems, but they’re breaking the law. And they’re deafening whales.”

“Deafening whales?”

Mercer never understood the fuss about dolphins and tuna in humanity’s effort to feed itself and struggled to feign indignation.

“It’s very serious. And it’s not just whales, but they get the worst of it. The Navy is bombarding marine life with noise levels millions of times stronger than rock concerts. Do you know what that does to whales? It kills them, that’s what it does. They stop eating, they stop mating, they stop migrating. That’s a tragedy I hope to prevent,” Mercer said.

“I had no idea.”

“Few people do. But my team’s going to catch the Navy in the act.”

“Last year’s fishing season was real bad,” the man said. “I know a few guys who are selling.”