Seawolf End Game (27 page)

“Sir?” Graves asked when Brodie, who was methodically working his way through the food on his plate, glanced up.

Everyone assumed Brodie would say something regarding their mission, and every eye was once again on him. But instead of some comment on the crisis, the captain motioned toward Martin. “Mister Martin,” he swallowed down a mouthful of food, “could you pass the Tabasco Sauce, the eggs are a little bland this morning.”

Martin, nearly in a state of controlled panic at the possibility of a nuclear exchange, slowly, as if in a daze, reached out for the bottle of hot sauce and passed it down. The bottle passed silently from officer to officer, each man taking it in turn as they dealt with their own thoughts of what might be over the horizon. Despite the glum mood, Brodie’s sense of calm was infectious, and they watched as their captain steadily and methodically unscrewed the cap and doused his remaining food in a liberal soaking before screwing the cap back on and setting it in front of him.

“Thank you, Mister Martin.”

Brodie took another bite and chewed his food thoughtfully as if oblivious to the dark mood permeating the wardroom. Kristen saw several of the men fidget uncomfortably in the silence. With the exception of Ski, the XO, and Ryan Walcott, all the others looked nervous at best and scared at worst. She momentarily considered her own demeanor as well as her inner feelings, and she was pleased to realize she wasn’t scared. In fact, the more she thought about the loss of the
Virginia
, the madder she became.

“You know, Jason,” Brodie said as if musing in a bar somewhere, “I was just thinking.”

Everyone’s attention was firmly on him.

“I’ve been in quite a few scrapes in my life,” Brodie admitted.

Graves nodded, his eyes cold and angry.

“Quite a few,” Brodie repeated thoughtfully as he finally leaned away from his empty plate. “But,” he continued to ponder, “I don’t recall having ever started a fight afraid I might lose.”

An evident change came over the men who’d been seated around the table contemplating their own demise. Brodie’s words struck at the root of the problem with the simple analogy. The specter of defeat and fear had crept into many of the officers around the table, but with a brief sentence, Brodie had not only pointed out what was tormenting them but began the process of dispelling it.

“No, sir,” Graves replied, with a look not only of confidence but a smoldering desire to find the people responsible for the
Virginia
disaster and make them pay dearly. “I sure as hell don’t, either.”

Brodie looked from eye to eye, and Kristen saw no sympathy, no remorse, no compassion in his eyes, only cool confidence and steadfast determination. “Our orders are to enter the Persian Gulf, track, locate, and destroy the
Borei
before she can launch her missiles, whether she has any or not.”

It was a brief mission statement, hardly more than a fragment of the much larger order he’d probably received, but he’d summed up the enormity of their task in one sentence.

“That’s it,” Brodie said quietly. “No more drills. No more war games. No more practice torpedo attacks,” he added, his eyes moving from person to person, making eye contact with each of them as if to inject some of his own unshakeable confidence into each of their spirits. His eyes came to Kristen and she met his steel-eyed gaze with one of her own. Kristen was nervous, and couldn’t imagine anyone not being. But she realized as an officer, and supposedly someone people on board looked to as an example, it was vital she appear calm and resolute.

“The President is informing the international community that effective immediately, the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waterways are a war zone. If any of our ships in the region encounter an unidentified vessel we consider hostile, we’ll fire on them without warning. So, if we cross paths with some Russian skipper who decides to throw in with these Iranians and flex his muscles a bit, we’re gonna remind him why his side lost the Cold War.”

Kristen felt a small, confident smile which she quickly wiped off cross her face, but she could see Brodie’s words making a difference among those of her peers who’d been a bit shaky a few minutes earlier. Those around her were suddenly sitting up a little straighter, and she could see the look of confidence reappearing on many of their faces.

“And as for our Iranian friends,” he paused for effect, his tone reflecting the coldness in his eyes, “they gambled we wouldn’t have the stones to force the issue once they raised the nuclear threat.” His voice now had a hard edge in it. “They were mistaken. They kicked off this mess, now we’re going to show them what it means to play with the big boys.”

“And the big girls, sir,” Kristen interjected proudly and was rewarded with a self-assured smile by Brodie. His eyes settled on her, and they seemed to twinkle in the wardroom light as he looked at her.

“Indeed,” Graves agreed with her, offering her a reassuring nod.

“We’re lucky to have you with us, Lieutenant,” Brodie told her sincerely, and she felt the tension fade.

“Thank you, sir,” she replied and added without a hint of arrogance or over confidence, “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

Brodie’s self-assurance, his confidence in his crew and his boat was absolute and contagious. With the exception of Martin, who Kristen thought looked almost pitifully miserable, the other officers at the table looked much calmer, more relaxed than before, and the foreboding and deep-seated apprehension they’d all experienced was dispelled.

“Between us and the Persian Gulf is a hastily prepared minefield the Iranians have been seeding for nearly a week now. It is estimated they have laid over twenty-three hundred mines across the Strait of Hormuz, leaving a narrow channel for ships to pass, and we can bet they have everything they can put to sea in position to deny access to the channel.”

Despite their confidence, the officers still wanted to know how Brodie planned to break through the Strait where there was no room to maneuver in the shallow waterway. If they had to evade a torpedo attack, they would only be able to step on the gas and run for it and hope they were staying in the channel. Not to mention the fact the Iranians had three good
Kilo
class diesel electric boats ideally suited for sitting on the bottom in silence and waiting for an opponent to come too close. Additionally, they still had to worry about the very real probability the Russians were going to take an active hand in defending the Strait.

All of these concerns and more could not be dispelled by their captain’s confidence. But Brodie seemed to have given it some thought and asked Kristen, “Lieutenant Whitaker, what can you tell us about the
Borei
and the
Gagarin?”

Kristen had expected the question, and the same uneasiness she always felt when put on the spot returned. She glanced around the table, seeing the questioning and expectant looks, but saw no condescending eyes upon her. She was no longer an outsider. She was one of them. It was an unexpected but pleasant reminder of just how far she’d come since her first day on board.

“Lieutenant?” Brodie prompted her gently.

Kristen snapped her eyes back to him apologetically for allowing herself a moment of self-reflection. “Sorry, sir.” She cleared her throat and readjusted her glasses and began, “If these boats are dual drive as we suspect, then while they’re operating on their reactors, they’re no different than any other nuke. They have the usual reactor noises, cooling pumps, turbines, and so on. But once they switch to their hydrogen fuel cell, they can operate for up to three weeks virtually silently. No reduction gears, no coolant pumps, nothing to listen to at all. The fuel cell has zero moving parts because it’s making electricity from basically a chemical reaction.”

She assumed the men around the table had done well in college chemistry, so Kristen didn’t go into the details since they weren’t relevant. “Once running on their fuel cells, they’ll be quieter than us. Russian noise reduction technology is virtually the same as ours now thanks to the Walker spy ring, and they’ll have a distinct advantage in this regard.”

She paused for a moment to make certain no one had a question yet. There were none.

“But their acoustics aren’t nearly as good as ours, and even with their near silence while on their fuel cells, we can still detect them before they get the drop on us. But it must be remembered, these boats while on their hydrogen propulsion system become ideal for ambushing an unsuspecting opponent, and this is something we must be wary of. A distinct disadvantage they’ll experience while on their power cells is speed. They’ll be able to make no more than ten knots, and if engaged, our maneuverability advantage could prove the decisive factor. Finally, once engaged, if they decide to switch over to their reactor, they’ll have to go through a complete reactor start up process which could take over an hour, making them an easy target.”

Brodie nodded his thanks to her and then added, “Which means, if and when we run into these buggers, we can expect the action to be in close and personal. Like a knife fight in a dark closet. It’ll be fast and furious, so we need to stay on our toes.” Brodie glanced at Andrew Stahl. “Weps, your tracking parties are gonna have to be Johnny on the spot with their firing solutions. The Russians don’t—and certainly not the Iranians—have anything near our experience with this kind of stuff. If we can react faster, we should be able to hit them and move clear before they can respond.”

“Aye, Captain,” Stahl responded curtly.

“But, sir,” Charles Horner commented, “if they’re totally silent and waiting in ambush for us, we could drive right over top of them. They could have two or three fish in the water before we know where they’re coming from.”

Everyone was thinking similar thoughts, but Brodie answered coolly, “Then we’ll just have to come at them from a direction they don’t expect.”

This was, as the officers around the table knew, easier said than done. The Strait of Hormuz was narrow to begin with, and entrance into it was limited and had been made even more so by the introduction of the Iranian minefield. In addition, the Persian Gulf in general and the Strait of Hormuz in particular were shallow waters for the
Seawolf,
which was truly at home in the ocean depths. None of this would be easy.

“Sir,” Terry asked, “the channel through the minefield is barely a mile wide. How do you propose to get through undetected and surprise anyone?”

Kristen was considering the options herself when Brodie looked back down the table at her and Martin. He fixed her eyes with hers and said simply, “We’ll go through the minefield.”

His tone was so calm, almost flippant in fact, that he caught the assembled officers off guard. No submarine or surface ship would intentionally enter a minefield, which of course, was the essence of his plan. The Iranians and the Russians wouldn’t think it necessary to guard these minefields and would instead focus entirely on the narrow approaches to the channel to deny access to the Gulf.

“Lieutenant,” Brodie asked, looking directly at Kristen, “you and Ensign Martin handled the LMRS drones once before, do you think you can again?”

Kristen knew the answer without any thought. “Yes sir, absolutely.”

Martin nodded halfheartedly in agreement.

Satisfied, Brodie laid out his plan. “The Iranians have extended their minefield across the Strait and naturally believe it will act as a deterrent. But, if our drones can find us a route through, then we can enter the Gulf undetected. It’ll require a stealth approach through a potential cordon of enemy patrols, and then several hours hovering in one place for the drones to complete their mission where we’ll be under constant threat of detection. But if successful, we could put rumors of this potential nuclear threat to bed for good.”

“Sir,” Ryan Walcott pointed out calmly, “it could take our two drones multiple search profiles and over a week to search the entire Strait. We don’t have that kind of time.” It was one of many problems they had to overcome.

“The Iranian minefield is big,” Brodie admitted. “But it’s also a hasty affair with no apparent coordination in its preparation. This means there must be gaps in it, probably quite a few, in fact. My hope is to deploy the drones on the edge of the field on a narrow search pattern lasting no more than a few hours and then recover them. With luck, they’ll reveal a path we might be able to take.”

“It’s awful shallow in there, Captain,” Terry pointed out, a bit edgy about the
Seawolf
possibly getting boxed in where her ability to hit hard from a great distance was negated.

“And any path through the minefield’s going to be awful narrow, Skipper,” Ryan added.

“It only means they have less water to hide in,” Brodie said with unshakeable confidence. “It should make the hunting easier.”

Brodie looked around the room, and Kristen realized that despite the confidence he’d renewed in many of them, there was still apprehension. What he was proposing could end in disaster. Even the cheapest mine with a few hundred pounds of explosive and a thirty cent trigger could destroy the three billion dollar
Seawolf
in an instant.

She studied Ski and Graves, the two next senior officers who sat on each side of the captain. The three of them looked as resolved and serious as she’d ever seen them, and she hoped she too gave off such quiet confidence. Although, she feared she might look as nervous as Martin.

“This is it,” Brodie concluded his tone calm and confident, the fire in his eyes adding emphasis to each word he spoke. “We have the finest boat with the best crew ever to go into the fight. No one has ever been better prepared than we are.”

Kristen felt a tingling of excitement in her lower abdomen slowly spreading throughout her as he seemed to be almost speaking to her and her alone. Despite the enormity of the situation and the loss of the
Virginia,
she felt her own confidence growing with each well-chosen word.

“We’ve trained all of our lives for this moment. We have spent years preparing for it.” The gaze roamed the room, as if searching for anyone who didn’t believe what he was saying. Then his eyes settled on Kristen. Hard like steel, his eyes were locked on her, and then he spoke, “There are no more tomorrows, no more yesterdays…”