Terminal Run

“It won’t be a small boat,” she said. “You’ll put on scuba gear and go out the escape trunk. We clear datum while you wait on the surface, and once we’re gone a chopper will pick you up.”

Pacino nodded, cursing mentally. He would be missing the action of attacking the Snare, and he was a few days away from his OOD quals. But the worst would be leaving Carrie Alameda. Since their time in the DSV, she’d been as businesslike with him as she’d been when he arrived aboard. He kept trying to catch her eye, but it was as if she’d forced the event from her memory. It was a damned shame, he thought. He missed her, even though he stood watch with her every day and slept in her stateroom every sleeping period. Losing her and losing Piranha was too heavy to process, but ignoring the loss seemed impossible. He remembered Toasty O’Neal’s question from what seemed a year ago: So, you going subs? He knew the answer now, and wondered how his mother would deal with him wearing dolphins, and what his father would think deep down, despite his insistence that he didn’t want his son endangered onboard a nuclear submarine.

Four feet away, Lieutenant Carrie Alameda watched the midshipman leaning over the chart table. She longed for him, but knew the realities of the fleet. She’d been wrong to make a move on him.; but her emotions had overwhelmed her. It was just as well that he’d been ordered off the ship. Maybe when he was safe, back at Annapolis, she could write him and tell him how she felt. Even then, the idea of a relationship that bridged the distance between them and the gulf of their age and rank seemed absurd. But she knew she couldn’t let go of the idea of him. Another of life’s grand jokes, she thought, that she’d given up on the hope of finding someone, then found the one for her wearing a midshipman’s uniform on his first class cruise.

16

“I’m back, One.” Krivak had taken off the interface helmet to sleep.

Krivak. I am glad you returned. It seemed like you were shut down a long time.

“I am better now. Are there any developments?” He would have to get One Oh Seven to take the ship to periscope depth. What could he tell the computer that would make it seem logical to go up when it would have nothing to do with official message traffic coming from squadron?

This unit is investigating a noise on broadband at bearing east. This unit has a narrowband processor on the trace. It is definitely not biologies. There are no transients from the noise. And no screw count. This unit is getting slight tonal spikes at harmonics of fifty-eight hertz, also, a slight wavering flow noise. It could be a reactor recirculation pump.

“Tonals and pump flow noise with no screw count. That does not make sense. Unless … unless it is a submarine with a ducted propulsor instead of a screw. Check your memory to see if it correlates to any European submarines.”

It is not French, German, or British. It is not Russian or Chinese. It does have a correlation at a confidence interval of ninety-six percent of a U.S. Seawolf-class.

“Let me see.” For the next ten minutes Krivak compared the sounds out of the east with the catalog of tonals from the Sea wolf-class loaded into the processor by squadron. It looked convincing. Furthermore, the noise correlated to a particular Seawolf-class, the only one left afloat.

It is the USS Piranha. Seawolf-class, but a stretched hull.

“Good. She is probably slower than a regular Seawolf. We need to maneuver to get her range and course and speed.”

Coming across the line-of-sight now.

Krivak waited. It seemed to take hours, but soon the trace to the east was nailed down by the firecontrol processor as being at a distance of thirty-eight miles, going course southeast, at a speed of forty-five knots. Krivak did a mental double take. The Piranha was driving full out. And it was odd because there was nothing on the chart that she could be headed to-here off the coast of Senegal, Africa. Krivak felt a flash of fear, the intuition coming to him that the Piranha was attempting to intercept him, and had probably only not detected him because she was going too fast. God alone knew who would have the acoustic advantage when the Piranha slowed down. The takeover of the ship at Pico Island must not have been as stealthy as he had hoped. The matter now was to decide to evade and run without being detected or to attack preemptively and put the intruder down. He knew he should probably attack the ship, but he had a sudden premonition that he’d lose an engagement against the American submarine. The more prudent course might be to evade.

“One, turn to the west at speed fifteen knots.”

Warm up the torpedoes in the ready rack, Krivak?