Seawolf End Game (19 page)

Kristen didn’t have time to explain, feeling as if one of the Russian submarines haunting her dreams might be right behind them as they spoke. “Sir, I need to see the captain, right away.” Despite her attempt at calmness, she felt her tone might be a little shrill, and she struggled to stay calm as the enormity of what she’d realized continued to reverberate through her.

“What’s happened?” he asked sharply as he stood, his eyes flashing with a hint of anger. Kristen realized he probably thought someone might have sexually harassed her or some other trivial thing.

“Nothing like that, sir,” she assured him. “But it is extremely important that I see the captain at once.”

“Can you at least tell me what it’s about?” he asked, hesitant to disturb Brodie. Kristen knew why. More than anyone else on board, Brodie was pushing toward the brink of physical and mental collapse. They were all tired. It had been one hell of a patrol so far, but the exhaustion Kristen and her fellow crewmen were feeling was compounded in their captain. As the XO, Graves was trying to protect Brodie from being disturbed with trivial matters.

Kristen paused, forcing herself to at least appear calm as the enormity of what she now knew for certain weighed upon her. She glanced about the control room, thinking about how explosive her conclusions were and not certain the information she had should be disseminated to the crew. “I can’t talk about it in here,” she explained. “I’m sorry, sir. But I have to see him right now.”

Graves exhaled deeply, showing a hint of irritation as he did so. His dark eyes studied her sharply, and she understood that if she forced him to disturb the captain and it turned out to be nothing, she would pay a serious price.  “Okay, Lieutenant,” he told her skeptically. “I’ll take you to him, but it better be damn important because he’s supposed to be sacked out.”

Kristen followed the towering Graves aft to officers’ country and the captain’s cabin where Kristen hoped Brodie would still be awake. At the door, the XO hesitated a moment and glanced back at her. “Are you certain about this?” he asked seriously. “Because if you aren’t…”

Kristen nodded her assurance as she heard the clear sound of the captain exercising on his
Versaclimber
on the other side of the door. “At least he’s still awake,” she commented anxiously.

“I’d have preferred him sleeping rather than killing himself on that infernal machine,” Graves muttered as he knocked.

They heard the protesting machine slow down and come to a stop before hearing Brodie’s curt, “Enter.”

Graves opened the door and stuck his head in. “Sorry to trouble you, Skipper,” he apologized.

“No sweat, whatcha got, Jason?”

Graves opened the door the rest of the way and jerked a thumb toward Kristen who was still in the passageway. “Lieutenant Whitaker said it’s important.”

Brodie was covered in a thin film of sweat and breathing heavily. Assuming she was here about the incident in the bathroom, he said, “Lieutenant, if this is about what happened a little while ago in…”

Kristen shook her head. “No, sir, that’s nothing…” she said in a rush, wanting to assure him she wasn’t troubling his rest period over what had occurred in the shower. She then blurted out, “I need to see those photographs,” she told him. “The satellite images from the briefing,” she explained almost frantically. “It’s important.”

Graves’ eyes opened incredulously. “Lieutenant?”

However Brodie stopped him in mid-sentence with a calm wave of his hand. “It’s all right, Jason.” He exhaled deeply and asked her, “Why?”

Kristen was certain she was right, but needed the photographs before she could prove it to herself. She had to see with her own eyes again to make certain she hadn’t imagined it. She was literally trembling with nervous energy. “Captain, I can’t explain. You would never believe me.”

“I seriously doubt it.” Brodie shook his head in disagreement as he turned away from the door and stepped over to his wall safe.

Kristen stepped through the door, feeling the disapproving eye of Graves on her. He clearly thought this was a lark, and he didn’t like it.

“Have a seat,” Brodie offered and opened the safe.

She did as instructed and waited while he removed several files before removing a thick, codename-classified file with the name RED SPARROW on the jacket. He opened it and removed only the pictures from inside the file, leaving the rest of the contents undisclosed for the moment. He then set the photographs in front of her. There were at least forty in all.

“All right, what’s this all this about?” Brodie asked, looking down at her, his chest still heaving from the workout.

Kristen pulled her gold-rimmed glasses from her pocket, a bit self-conscious for some reason now as she pulled them on, having never before cared what anyone thought of her needing glasses. “I’ll find it in a minute, Captain,” she offered and began going through the photographs, glancing at each one. Some she stared at for only a brief second before tossing them onto a growing discard pile.

Graves sat backward in a chair, resting his arms on its back and exchanging curious looks with Brodie. Kristen did her best to ignore them and stopped on one photograph. Her eyes squinted tight as she studied it closely. Brodie opened a drawer containing some office supplies, pulled out a magnifying glass, and offered it to her. Kristen took it without saying a word and resumed studying the photographs. She continued discarding those she found of no value, carefully setting aside those she felt she could use to prove her case. Brodie took a seat across from her, leaned his head back against the bulkhead and said no more. It took nearly ten minutes for Kristen to find the necessary six photographs needed. Once ready, she looked up, but saw that Brodie was asleep, his head resting against the corner of the bulkhead.

She was excited now and anxious to explain but hesitated, glancing at Graves who still glared at her angrily. But Graves understood her hesitation to awaken their captain, so he spoke to Brodie, “Sean?”

Brodie’s eyes opened and he sat up, looking at Kristen. “All right, Lieutenant,” he replied calmly, but clearly with a slight edge in his voice. He was tired, bone tired and had no interest in playing games.

“Gentlemen, I’m sorry. But I couldn’t be a hundred percent certain until I saw the images again. Ever since the briefing you gave us two weeks ago, I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to piece this all together. But I think I’ve finally got it.”

“Cut to the chase, Kristen.” Graves ordered, his patience wearing a bit thin.

She hesitated, still not certain they would believe her but then stated, “The two new Russian boats, the
Borei
and the
Gagarin
,” she stated positively. “They’re using a hybrid nuclear and hydrogen fuel cell drive system.”

Graves looked at her blankly, not certain he heard correctly. Brodie was also looking at her with some skepticism. “Are you speculating here, Kris?” Brodie asked her in all seriousness, the mask of command slipping away and the man beneath coming to the surface.

“Well,” she admitted, “I could be wrong, but it’s the only thing that makes sense, and I think I can prove it.” She could see Graves thought she might be a bit off her rocker but was encouraged when Brodie nodded and motioned for her to proceed. “During my senior year at the Academy, I was part of the Trident Scholars program. My capstone project involved the possibility of combining the endurance and raw power of a nuclear reactor with the unmatched stealth of a hydrogen fuel cell plant in a single hull,” she explained. She decided not to mention the fact that when her final report was submitted, it was snatched up by Director of Naval Reactors, including her laptop’s hard drive, and all of her notes. Everything was locked away before her research mentor had even finished reading half the final paper.

Graves shook his head. “I’m not following.”

She turned to him and explained, “Sir, we’ve been able to eliminate virtually every noise on a submarine, or dampen them to the point they’re so slight they’re virtually undetectable. But no matter what we do, the nuclear reactor makes noise. The cooling pumps, the high-pressure steam rushing through miles of pipes, condensation plants dripping… we can’t make a nuke boat any quieter than we already have because these items must—
must
—always be running.”

“Okay, so what about the hydrogen fuel cell?” Graves asked.

“Hydrogen fuel cells have been used for years,” she explained. “I mean we went to the moon with them in our spacecraft because they’re so simple and incredibly reliable. There are no moving parts in a hydrogen fuel cell. Simply put, there is liquid hydrogen and oxygen, each stored in separate pressurized containment vessels. Each vessel discharges the liquid which turns into gas the second it’s released from the high-pressure environment. The hydrogen and oxygen gases then meet in the fuel cell which is just a series of slender electrochemical conversion devices, each with an anode side and a cathode side. The hydrogen acts as the fuel on the anode side, and the oxygen provides the oxidizing agent on the other. The result is electricity; clean and abundant energy with no moving parts. The electricity can then be used to power the submarine and run an extremely quiet electric motor to drive the boat.”

“Don’t the Germans have a boat using this?” Graves asked her.

“Their
Type 212
,” Brodie answered for her as he shook his head to force his fatigue aside while she continued.

“I had to study the German power plant as part of my project. They’re able to run on their fuel cells for three weeks submerged,” she explained. “And while using the fuel cells, they’re quieter than any boat we have. The only by product of a fuel cell is water and a small amount of heat contained within the boat to keep the crew warm.”

Brodie leaned back thoughtfully, then picked up his ship’s phone and called Charles Horner’s cabin. Meanwhile, Kristen continued talking to Graves. “I had this crazy idea of actually slipping a hydrogen fuel cell module into a regular nuke boat. The benefits being multiple as the sub could operate on the nearly inexhaustible plutonium pile for thirty years if necessary, running at high speed or whatever until they needed to disappear. Then they could switch over to the hydrogen cells.”

Brodie summoned the communications officer, and she felt the—now familiar—warmth associated with knowing he believed her and was supporting her. “When the submarine is on the fuel cell, everything else can shut down, and the reactor pile can go dormant. Once this happens, the submarine becomes less than a shadow in the water.”

“But you can only run on it for a few weeks, and then you have to make port to refuel before you can use the fuel cell again,” Graves reminded her about the biggest drawbacks to any non-nuclear submarine: their lack of endurance.

She shook her head anxiously at the beauty of the engineering. “No, not at all. Don’t you see?” she asked excitedly. “Once you run out of hydrogen and oxygen for the fuel cell, you just power up the reactor for a day or two and use its electricity to take ordinary seawater and crack it into hydrogen and oxygen atoms you can then use to refuel yourself while at sea.” The simple chemical and mechanical beauty of the idea seemed obvious to her. “A submarine like this could transcend anything we even have on the drawing boards.”

Brodie was now facing her, clearly believing her, but he tapped the photographs. “Okay, genius,” he said with no hint of ridicule or malice, “prove it.”

Graves dragged his chair next to the table, and Kristen laid out two photographs and began. “Here is a wide-angle shot of Polyarny taken twelve months ago before the
Borei
was completed and,” she said as she tapped the other photograph, “this is Polyarny two months ago.” She handed Brodie the magnifying glass and directed his attention to what appeared to be large, dome-like tanks. Each tank was separated from the other by over a mile.

Brodie nodded. “Okay, those might be liquid hydrogen and oxygen tanks,” he admitted, but she knew this in and of itself wasn’t enough to convince Washington.

“Look at the photo from a year earlier, sir,” she said to him. “There are no tanks.”

Brodie studied the pictures and then handed them to Graves so he could see what Kristen was talking about. She then laid out the next two. “Now, this is the Severodvinsk yard where the
Gagarin
was built.” She pointed to a spot on the photograph.

Brodie looked at it with the magnifying glass and then leaned back. “Two more storage tanks, each separated far enough apart to prevent a cataclysm should one of the tanks rupture,” Brodie said, clearly believing her now.

Kristen nodded. “Exactly.” She handed the photos to Graves, who was beginning to come around.

Brodie then tapped the last photo. “All right, Kris, impress me. Prove to me those boats are nuke/fuel-cell drives, and that those storage tanks you’ve noticed aren’t just for powering some new torpedo or whatever else the Russians might be playing with.”

Kristen had never liked being put on the spot intellectually by anyone. Normally such an occurrence was followed by people thinking of her as a freak of some kind. So, she’d always tried to avoid the kind of attention he was now showing her. But in this case she reveled in it. There was no chance of him looking down on her or ridiculing her when her back was turned. She’d no idea if he cared about her. She liked to fantasize he might, but she couldn’t prove it. But she could prove to him that what she was proposing was indeed a fact.

She showed him the close up of the
Gagarin
class submarine tied up along a wharf. “Sir, look at the trucks on the pier,” she said to him. “And the heavy duty hoses and pumping equipment needed to pump super-cooled liquid oxygen or hydrogen.” Brodie studied the images through the magnifying glass.

“The technicians are wearing protective gear,” Brodie offered.

Kristen nodded. “Yes, sir. They need the gear to protect them from an accidental liquid hydrogen spill. The liquid form of hydrogen is over four hundred twenty three degrees below zero.”

“Damn,” Graves said finally believing her.

Brodie however didn’t make it easy. “Those tankers could simply be performing some test.”