Each sonobuoy had the passive systems to listen for an enemy sub within a thousand yards or so, and a tiny radio transceiver to broadcast the digital data back to the plane. When the sonobuoy survived the drop to the water and the transceivers worked, it was a great system.
“Number one in the water and I have a signal.” Whitehorse had a flat, nasal voice.
Stevens thought it might have been the longest sentence he’d heard out of the boy.
Clunk.
“Number two in the water and—live. She’s good.”
Collins came in again. “Look at the salinity, Whitehorse. Where’s the layer?”
Stevens cut the nerd babble from the rear seats. He didn’t expect they’d find the sub, but it was an exercise and he didn’t want to be remembered as the first casualty.
Clunk.
“Startex,” Goldy said. The game was live; if anyone had seen them, they’d be called with an imaginary missile shot over the radio. Stevens looked at the digital readout on the encrypted comms without thinking, fearing the worst. Nothing came, and he smiled. He looked down where the live buoys from Whitehorse’s drops were matched up with the projected pattern and prepared to turn west toward the island after the next drop. At this altitude, even at low speed, every turn was exciting.
Clunk.
“I—uh, skipper? We—shit, there it is again. Maybe a sub?” Collins, from the back seat, with nerves making him sound like a girl.
Stevens made the turn to put the next buoy in the pattern.
“Whitehorse? You concur?”
“It’s a sub,” Whitehorse said. Flat and confident. “Diesel running about five knots.”
“Well, it’s a pleasure to know they’re cheating harder than we are,” Goldy said. “He’s at least a few miles off his start line.”
“I got him on two buoys. I got a fix.” Collins’s voice rose an octave. “Hey! There he is!”
Goldy tapped her helmet and cut out the back seats. “Want me to call him in to the boat?”
“No. Let’s drop an active on him so he’s dead and then call him in. Those pickets are right over there; we may be under their radar horizon but they’ll be on a broadcast like white on rice.”
“Roger that.”
“Whitehorse, you ready with an active drop?”
“Roger.” Whitehorse sounded interested.
“Collins, you ready? You going to fuck this up?”
“No—ah, yes. Sir. No.”
Goldy reached over and slapped Stevens on the helmet. Stevens gave her a smile that said, Yeah, I’m an asshole. Then he got the plane right down on the wave tops at the lowest speed he could manage and aimed for the datum, the little mark on his computer screen that told him where the sub was, one hundred and fifty meters down.
“Ready to drop,” Whitehorse said.
The high-bypass turbofans screamed like asthmatic banshees as he aimed for the datum.
Clunk.
“In the water. Ready for active.”
“Go,” said Collins.
Breeeet!
Every man on the submarine’s bridge heard the screech as the buoy went active. The former navigator froze, his mind blank.
“There is not another sub out here.” The second engineer sounded less positive than his words implied.
“Whoever that is knows where we are and that we’re leaving the exercise area. Battle stations!” the navigator said.
“It must be Americans from the exercise.”
“What are they doing over here?”
“Cheating. They’re famous for it.” The second engineer got down on the chart table.
Breeeet!
“It has to be an aircraft.”
Around them, sailors tumbled into their action stations, many of them looking sick and gray. The navigator still couldn’t focus his mind on the problem. No one had planned for detection this early.
“We have to shoot it down,” the second engineer said.
“What?”
“We have to shoot the American down.”
“What if he’s already passed on our location?”
“What if he has? It will be an hour before they can have another plane here. We’ll be long gone.”
The navigator hesitated and saw something he didn’t like in the second engineer.
“This is my decision.”
“Not if you endanger the mission.”
The navigator saw the gulf yawning at his feet. They were no longer part of a service with a hundred years of tradition. His whole view of himself and his place in the ordered universe shredded. He was alone, the captain of a ship of mutineers. And the second engineer was prepared to walk over his corpse if he didn’t act immediately.
“Surface!” he shouted. “Khuri, man the launcher. I want to hit him the moment the tower clears the water.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Petty Officer Khuri was one of the few men qualified to fire the rotary missile launcher in the conning tower, and it could be fired only when they were surfaced.
“Satisfied?” he snarled to the second engineer.
The younger man nodded and shrugged, as if to say that events were his masters, not his servants. It was a popular saying among the faithful.
The navigator wondered how they would maintain discipline.
He felt the bow incline sharply.
“They’re coming up!” Collins said.
“Jeez! Well, that’s sporting. Goldy, snap a photo for the cruise book. Hey, Collins, you don’t suck as much as I thought. Whitehorse, that was sweet.”
“Can I call the boat?”
“Get the photo first.”
Stevens took his time, banked the plane and climbed a little to get Goldy a better camera
