The Circle (36 page)

“Evaluator, Sonar: Contact at one-one-zero is not a Soviet submarine sonar.”

“Shit fire,” said Packer. He snapped the lever down. “Orris, goddamn it—what the hell else can it be? Check it again! There's nobody out here but me and him.”

“I know my business, sir. It's a high-freq emission; could be a forward-looking underice rig … but the frequency's wrong, the pulse repetition rate.…” The sonar tech stopped.

“What is it? Is Reed there? Put him on, please.”

“Yes, Captain. I was checking a pub. It's definitely not a standard signature. Another possibility is that he's operating in wartime reserve mode. If so, we won't have it in the book. Because the Soviets have never used it before.”

Packer and Evlin looked at each other. Chief Pedersen glanced at Dan, showing his teeth in a visual
uh-oh.

The captain reached up. “Assume it's him, Aaron. Get us a line of sound and a Warren range. Give me a course to intercept.” He snapped off viciously and looked around. “Where's my fucking…”

“On top of the first-aid cabinet, sir.”

“I got to stop smoking so much. My throat feels raw as hell.” But his fingers were packing the pipe as he said it, as if they weren't listening, Dan thought.

Bearings started to come in, and a little later, ranges. The plotting team began to plot. Packer sucked flame, then stood over the table, arms folded, staring into space as he puffed. Dan eased away. He was getting a headache. He figured it as part fatigue, part tension, but some of it and the runny nose for sure was from all the smoke he was breathing.

“Evaluator, Sonar. Bearing one-zero-eight. Estimated range thirteen to seventeen thousand yards.”

“That's pretty broad-brush, Orris. Can't you get me a sharper range than that?”

“No sir, not with this technique. We can ping if you want an exact range.”

“Negative. I don't want to ping yet. Can you get me a target angle?”

“From doppler, if it's a forward-looker, estimate starboard one forty, one thirty.”

“Coming up in his baffles?” mused Evlin.

“Could be. Could be here's where we get lucky for a change. Tell the bridge, stay alert for ice. He's looking for it, we better, too. Is our fathometer on?”

“No, sir, it's been secured since we went to Condition One A.”

“Good job … okay, quiet ship. Make sure Ed gets the word in Main Control.”

“Want me to take it?” asked Cummings, beside him. Dan started. He'd been standing there with his mouth open, trying to sort out what was going on. As far as he could make out, the submarine was running southeast, and
Ryan,
delayed by the storm, was emerging from the warm- /cold-water front astern of it, where every ship or submarine, because of its own screw noise, was deaf. He'd forgotten his relief. Now he hesitated, torn between his body's lust for rest and his own excitement. After so many hopeless hours, he didn't want to leave just when they'd regained contact.

Packer took the choice away from him. “Mr. Lenson, I want you to stay on the weapons circuit. No offense, Tom? Get yourself some sleep and come back up around four.… Al, get a message off to CINCLANTFLT. Flash. Para one: ‘Have regained contact with track B forty-one.' Give our position, as near as you can figure. Para Two. ‘B forty-one emitting in war reserve mode. Sonar environment, scattered ice and confused propagation conditions. Cannot guarantee maintaining contact. Urgently need P-three assist. Urgently need guidance on engagement.' That's all. Send it right away.”

The intercom said, “CIC, Main Control: Quiet ship set in engineering spaces. Max speed available, fifteen knots.”

“Dan, can you get that? I'm writing this message—”

“Yessir.” He hit the button. “Evaluator, aye.”

He suddenly realized he ought to get busy, too. Over the sound-powered phone, he told underwater battery fire control and the after five-inch—the only operable gun now—to reman stations, conduct movement checks, and train fifteen degrees to starboard. Just in case Packer wanted one, he asked Stefanick for a status on the Asroc. It was still down. All they had were torpedoes, then, the six trainable tubes forward of the bridge. And the gun, if the sub surfaced.

It probably wouldn't come to that. But if it did, he was ready.

So when Packer turned to him suddenly and said, “Len-son, what have we got in the forward tubes?” he was able to say, “Sir, they're full, three Mark forty-three war shots in the starboard mount, one war shot and two practice torpedoes in the port mount.”

“Are they ready? Free of ice, firing circuits checked? If we need them, I don't want another repeat of yesterday.”

“Yes, sir, I've been having the men go out and chip the ice off the muzzle doors every couple of hours.”

“Good thinking.”

They told you at the Academy never to say thanks when you were complimented. But that didn't mean the captain's offhand remark didn't make him stand a little straighter.

And suddenly there was Bryce again, looking rumpled, as if he'd just gotten out of bed. Must be nice, Dan thought. The XO leaned between the two plotters, getting in their way for a moment before their dance shifted to whirl on around him. “Understand you got the cuffs on our Russki friend again. Least that's what I heard.”

Packer didn't respond. After a moment, Evlin said, “That's right, Commander. We think it's him, anyway.”

“You
think?
Don't you know?”

The operations officer explained about the war reserve mode on Soviet sonars. Midway through, Bryce interrupted, “I was born at night, Mr. Evlin, but not last night. I've spent a lot of years on destroyers; I know about war reserve frequencies. So, we in torpedo range yet?”

“Basically, yes, sir.”

“I don't see no torpedo danger circle on your plot. How about getting on the stick, Lieutenant? And we're coming up his tail? That's a dangerous position, Jimmy John.”

Evlin said, “I don't think submarines have stern tubes anymore, Commander—”

“Shit they don't! Them Russians do, you can count on it! You better knock off that laid-back California attitude, Evlin. We could get a torpedo down our throat any second!”

“Excuse me, Captain,” Pedersen broke in. “The contact's showing a right drift. We won't show it on the plot for a while yet, but I think he's in a slow starboard turn.”

Packer leaned over the table. In its upward-directed glow his eyes were black pits, his face a skull's. “Al?”

“I concur. Recommend speeding up, then coming right, too, to stay in his baffles and continue closing the range.”

“Do it. Also, the commander has a point about torpedoes. Let's get the Nixie streamed and ready to turn on.”

“Aye, sir. Sonar, copy that last order?”

“Sonar aye, streaming antitorpedo noisemaker.”

“Bridge, Evaluator: Increase speed to fifteen knots; at plus ten, come right and steady course one-six-zero.”

Norden rogered from the pilothouse. He sounded exhausted, too. Again Dan watched the rudder indicator swing, the gyro creep around.
Ryan
's roll gentled, became a sway. A few seconds later, she began to pitch. It grew rapidly more violent. Suddenly she gave a great heave and corkscrewed downward. As her nose hit bottom, vibration tickled his feet through the deck plates and rubber matting. From outside, much louder, came a seconds-long roar, as if they were passing under Niagara Falls.

“Combat, Bridge. We're taking water in the pilothouse. It's above the ports now, green water, green water.”

He thought, Rich sounds calmer now. Good. It had worried him, the way his department head had acted last night, down on the forecastle.

A few seconds later word came up that the forward gun mount was taking water again. He had his mouth open to report it when the 21MC light came on. “Combat, Main Control. Is the captain there? This is Mr. Talliaferro. After steering reports the tips of the screws are coming out of the water. Engine rooms report vibration in the shafts. Recommend either slow to five knots or come right or left to get us out of the swell.”

“Acknowledged,” said Packer. He said nothing more. Evlin looked at him, waiting, then said into the intercom, “The captain heard you, Ed. We'll be staying on this course and speed. Operational necessity.”

“Okay, but if we shake these reduction gears loose, we aren't riding a ship anymore. It's going to be junk. Just twenty-two hundred tons of razor blades.”

Evlin clicked the lever twice.

Bryce said, “You listening, Jimmy John? She won't take much more pounding. We could slide right on under one of these big lunkers. A bulkhead gives way down where you flooded, she'll keep right on going. Saw it happen in Korea. DE hit a mine going flank speed, the internal bulkheads went, and it was gone, fast as it takes to say that. Thing to do's put a spread of Mark forty-threes in the water right now.”

“That's not the answer, XO,” said Evlin. Dan saw the tension in his back as he leaned over the table. “This submarine has done nothing aggressive. It's done nothing to indicate it has any hostile intent. Just track it, that's all we need to—”

Bryce rounded on him, cutting him off with a shout. “Don't give me any of that peacenik talk! You know, I'm slowly coming to grips with what's so shitty aboard this ship. You ought to relieve this—this
freak,
Cap'n. Calls himself a naval officer, but down in his office he's worshiping some swami—”

“That's enough,” said Packer. But he said nothing more. He just stared down at the plot, sucking his pipe. It was as if, Dan thought suddenly, he was keeping his options open—listening to them all, but not yet decided.

Or maybe he had, and only forebore to say.

“Are you going to shoot? Damn it—you listening to me? You feel all right, Jimmy John? Hey, he don't look that good. He's been on his feet for four days. Maybe we should call the corpsman—”

“That's enough, Ben,” the captain said sharply. “Another word out of you on that subject and I'll order you below. We are going to hold on to this contact, we are going to hold him close this time, and we're staying on this course! Is that clear to everyone?”

Great, Dan thought. He's going to hold on. But how? USS
Reynolds Ryan
was pounding herself into scrap. Much as he hated Bryce, what the XO was urging made sense. Either give up, let the sub go, or strike first and kill her before she realized they were there.

If they didn't make a decision, do
something,
they might not live much longer.

Packer wanted to obey orders. But there was a line between obedience and madness. Was the captain sick? Not crazy, as in howling mad, but with the steady, fixed monomania of an Ahab?

Dan wondered for the first time how thin that line might be. So thin, one might never notice when he inched over it.

Ryan
fell out from beneath them and crashed into what sounded like a bed of rocks. It was as if the ship had been dropped forty feet onto the floor of a quarry. For a few seconds she rode mushily, as if groggy from the impact; then shivered again as a wave raged against the starboard side, hammering like a drunken, angry father at a locked bedroom door.

Then it was pitching again. He clung to the radar repeater as
Ryan
reeled and wove and men stumbled across CIC. The closed, dim space soared and bounded through space like a box tied to a wheel. He'd thought his stomach sea-proof by now, but now he bent, searching with sudden desperation for the bucket. The spasm buckled him over before he found it, but though his stomach kinked on itself like a wrung dishrag nothing came up. He gagged, eyes feeling as if they were being squeezed out onto the deck. Before he could stop himself, he moaned aloud in sheer nauseated agony. Christ, he thought, drooling and spitting. How would this end? How much longer before they went down?

Just then there was a cry from Sonar. “Submarine close!” it sounded like. Then Reed was shouting, “Come right! Come right!”

Beneath his feet the old destroyer seemed to hesitate, just for a moment, and sway backward, as if her stern was being dragged down. She surged up again, then floated free for long seconds before slamming down even more violently.

The lights flickered out, then on. Across the compartment, Pedersen was knocked to his knees. The lights flickered out. Packer's pipe fell, bouncing and rolling, spraying out red-hot sparks. Men were screaming below them, through the deck itself. The great girder of the hull hummed like a huge, slow tuning fork. The lights flickered on. Confused yells above his head, the 21MC and Sonar Control intercoms coming on together in a shrill gabble, voices blasting out into the swaying, dim air.

“What's going on up there?”

“No signal.”

“Combat, Sonar! No signal from the thirty-five!”

“Combat, Bridge: We've got to slow, hammering her to death—”

“Sounding and Security reports taking water in the midships passageway, vicinity frame one thirty. Stand by—smoke in the passageway! Fire in the engine room!”

“Combat, VDS winch station: There's no strain on the cable back here. It's trailing loose in the wake.”

“Quiet down, goddamn it!” shouted Bryce above the din of the fire alarm going off.

Reed stood in the open curtain from Sonar. His haggard horselike face was gray. He said, across the slanting air, “I think we hit it.”

Packer said quietly, “Hit what, Lieutenant Reed?”

“Hit the submarine, sir. With the fish. The cable's gone slack and we show a short circuit.”

For a moment, Dan was glad. He tried to straighten, dragging his hand across his mouth. It came away gluey with drool and acid. His legs shook. Then he heard what Packer was saying, softly, as if to himself.

“We can't lose that gear. Now we'll have to track it till it surfaces. No,
force
it to surface. To make sure the fish isn't tangled in its shears, or in its prop.”