Undetected

by Dee Henderson

  As the order was acknowledged and implemented, Bishop picked up the intercom and switched it to 1MC. “Nevada, this is the captain. We just nudged an Akula away from the coast, and the Seawolf is giving chase. We’re turning toward home. Secure from all-quiet.”

  Crewmen began discussing the sequence of events of the watch, in good spirits and laughing occasionally. Bishop pulled the notepad from his left shirt pocket, scanned the original plan for this day. Engineering wanted to run a test on the batteries, he’d penciled in a fire drill, and a second watch meeting with his senior chiefs would review the repair and maintenance situation on the boat in preparation for homecoming. A missile drill prompted by a flash EAM—Emergency Action Message—was scheduled during third watch to pull together the entire crew on their primary time-critical mission. A rather routine day had started with an unexpectedly nice opening move, compliments of the Akula.

  Bishop put the list back into his pocket. “XO, would you like the deck?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The executive officer checked with every chief in the control room, conferred with the weapons officer the longest, studied the navigational chart, scanned every status board, then looked to Bishop. “I am ready to relieve you, sir,” Kingman stated.

  The XO was going to be ready to command a boat as his next duty station if Bishop had anything to do with it. Hours in control mattered. And toward the end of this watch, the boat was going to get hit with a fire drill, a good experience for his second-in-command.

  “I am ready to be relieved,” Bishop said.

  “I relieve you, sir.”

  Bishop picked up the intercom. “This is the captain. The XO has the deck.”

  Bishop stepped back from the captain’s chair as the ship log was updated to show the change in command. Rather than leave the command-and-control center, he settled in next to the weapons officer and out of habit checked the pressure status in every missile tube. Bishop would offer quiet counsel, suggestions, watch for trouble, step in if needed—he had his XO’s back. He doubted it would be needed. Kingman was learning fast. As his experience in the job grew, the list of events he’d already handled successfully was getting longer.

  When the XO’s first order of business was to contact sonar, ask for an update, then contact the chief engineer, Bishop relaxed even more and changed his plan. “Officer of the deck, a visual confirmation of the weapons board status seems prudent.”

  The boat was a lot more than what could be seen from this room. It was also conversations with those who had their hands on the parts that made up the whole. Over-reliance on what was visible from here could leave a captain vulnerable to a stuck gauge or a misreading indicator light.

  His XO took the suggestion immediately. “I concur. Petty Officer Hill, please join the commander for a visual inspection of the missile firing system.”

  Petty Officer Hill, who had managed to avoid one-on-one time with Bishop so far during the patrol, paled as he stood. “Yes, sir.”

  Bishop only smiled, sympathizing with the young man’s obvious nerves but not giving much allowance for them—or for the fact that the petty officer would turn 22 a few days after this patrol ended. This crew was young, but well trained. The pop quiz was going to last until they returned. Once Hill got a few answers right, his confidence would find its footing.

  Bishop headed with Hill down one level, his plan to stop first at the missile control center, where two security officers armed with Beretta M9s would be standing guard, then go down another two levels and aft to the missile bay where they could read the gauges monitoring the condition of each of the 24 Trident missiles.

  It was practically impossible for a nuclear weapon to misfire. The solid rocket fuel in the launch missile, however, was a combustible type A substance, and it was unforgiving if mishandled or if its environment suddenly changed in temperature or pressure. A three-stage rocket deciding it was time to spin up and fire was the kind of short circuit in the system that would make life very unpleasant for the crew when the missile hatch was closed.

  “Petty Officer Hill, why is armed security stationed at the missile control center during a deterrent patrol?”

  “Directive 781, sir.”

  “Do you believe the shoot-to-kill order is necessary?”

  “SecNav believes it is necessary. And I believe him.”

  “What is the firing depth for a Trident II D-5 missile?”

  A short pause, then, “I don’t know the exact depth, sir. I do know it’s a shallow launch.”

  “What pressure is required in the missile tube before the outer hatch may be safely opened?”

  “Equalized pressure to the ocean, sir. The fiberglass inner dome cover would otherwise crack, and water would damage the missile.”

  “Does seawater ever touch a missile during launch?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “The missile rises to the surface surrounded by the pressured nitrogen gas used to launch the D-5 out of the tube.”

  “You’re learning, Petty Officer Hill. Good answers.” Bishop nodded to the security officer and stepped into the missile control center to speak with the weapons duty officer for this watch.

  2

  Gina stopped along a bluff on Amberjack Avenue and stepped out of the car just as the rising sunlight filtered through the trees to the east. She watched as a submarine being maneuvered by tugboats pulled away from Marginal Wharf out to deeper Hood Canal waters, then watched the sub turn south. The USS Pennsylvania, she thought, given the pier from which it had departed. Probably traveling to Dabob Bay for a day of shakedown tests, as it wasn’t due to leave on patrol for another six days. Dabob Bay was a 35-minute sub ride from here and a deep enough inlet at 100 fathoms to allow for a sub to dive, for most systems to be tested, and for dummy torpedoes to be fired. Any problems discovered could then be fixed back at the pier before the boat left for the Pacific.

  Gina was glad she had come west to wait on her brother’s return rather than stay in Colorado. Naval Submarine Base Bangor had the feel of a national park. It was 11 square miles of forest preserve surrounding an assortment of base buildings, including four piers on the Hood Canal waterway where submarines docked. At the center of the base, on a bluff encircled by more barbed wire with posted warnings that guards were authorized to use deadly force, was the Strategic Weapons Facility—85 bunkers holding nuclear warheads, launch missiles, and solid rocket fuel. Lightning rods around those bunkers towered 50 feet in the air.

  The base had some of the highest security clearances she had ever encountered, but once her credentials had been issued and inspected at every checkpoint, she was free to move around the area. With two-thirds of the base made up of untamed forest, she could take walks along quiet roads surrounded by towering trees. She could head up to Cattail Lake and watch ducks and great blue herons, beavers and river otter, look for great horned owls, and find numerous raccoons. Sightings of coyotes and red foxes were a regular occurrence, and she’d heard that both a bobcat and a cougar had been spotted in the last month, attracted to the area by the various animals that were their prey. Early yesterday morning she’d had to wait for deer to clear the parking lot so she could walk to Jeff’s car. The base had so much wildlife that a fish and game warden worked on the property full time.

  Gina was growing accustomed to seeing submarines at the piers and often gliding through the water. The USS Ohio had reported back to port two days ago. The boat’s black hull now gleamed off Delta Pier A, its massive length dwarfed by the sheer size of the triangle docking port that could accommodate four submarines with ease—five in a pinch—and fully dry-dock one needing propulsion repairs. The USS Jimmy Carter was departing tomorrow, with the USS Nevada due back in this week. Something was always happening. It was a beautiful place to be stationed, peaceful, even though it was a very active military base.

  She thought about driving across to the Toandos Peninsula to watch the action in Dabob Bay but talked her
self out of it. When Jeff got back he’d likely offer her front-row seats for sub watching if she was interested, take her down to the piers, show her around. Occasionally VIPs were given a ride on a sub through the Admiralty Inlet and Hood Canal, and it had been offered to her in the past. She’d always declined. The Trident Training Facility was as close to being inside a sub as she cared to be.

  It would be claustrophobic to be in such a tight space with so many people. Closing the hatch and going several hundred feet below the water’s surface didn’t strike her as a smart thing to do. It was safe; it just wasn’t smart. Jeff would laugh at her conclusion, though he would not try to change her mind. He’d agreed with her observation that it wasn’t smart being hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean—it was simply an adventure, and he was wired to seek out the best adventure he could find.

  Gina did find sonar to be an interesting science. She had spent a decade studying the largest data sets she could find, and sonar data was a unique kind of very large, very complex audio data. A high percentage of the noise a submarine heard with sonar was the ocean itself: rockslides, small earthquakes, underwater volcano eruptions, waves crashing on the shore. Or living things such as snapping shrimp, schools of fish, seals, whales and dolphins vocalizing to one another. Some of those sounds traveled halfway across the ocean. And all those sounds, for purposes of a submarine’s mission, were a form of white-noise static that had to be weeded out in order to find useful audio information about another submerged submarine or a vessel on the surface.

  Gina had arrived in Bangor with a couple of new sonar ideas that might make it easier to locate another submerged submarine in all that ocean noise. Her ideas might not go anywhere, but it was interesting work just to find out.

  Vernon Toombs was the lieutenant commander who ran the Naval Undersea Warfare Center’s new acoustical research lab. He had arranged for her to borrow his office from eight p.m. until six a.m. each day and have sole access to audio lab three from eleven p.m. to five a.m. She could spool up any audio file she wished to study. It was a comfortable place to work with SCIF security throughout the building. No electronic monitoring could be done of a conversation or computer data runs from outside the building. The night hours she’d requested were ideal for the large-scale data studies she needed to run, as she could absorb all the computing power to crunch on one specific problem.

  Vernon had already told her if she wanted to stay around and work on sonar for the long term, the door was wide open. The office she was borrowing could be her own. The pay was good, there would be freedom to follow her interests wherever they led, and the lab resources were some of the best in the world. It was a persuasive pitch. She might consider it, depending on how the next few weeks worked out.

  There were drawbacks. She had her own security team that now kept tabs on her 24/7. The military assumed the base was an espionage target, and what she knew about cross-sonar put her and highly classified information at risk if it became known she was the original source of its design. Security was there to make sure she didn’t have a problem while she was in the Kitsap area, and it would likely be tasked to stay with her for the first few weeks after she left to make sure she hadn’t been identified and targeted. As the price for working on the sonar data, she reluctantly accepted the arrangement. She knew should she ever be designated a national security asset, the secure detail wouldn’t end when she left Bangor.

  Gina watched the sub depart, the morning sun glistening on the wet, black hull, then returned to her car. She pulled back onto the road, the security car behind her. She liked the three guys who had been assigned to her; one was always with her in rotating shifts of 12 hours. They were also there to help her secure the notebooks she used and the server-data rack she pulled at the end of a night’s work session. What she did with sonar was not particularly hard to figure out, she thought, but she did understand that the military viewed her as a resource to protect, just as they protected the officers who had detailed knowledge of the strategic weapons deployments.

  Kevin had been no more than a fleeting memory since she got here. She was functioning, the sadness was lifting at the margins, and she was looking forward to Jeff’s arrival back on land. Life went on.

  Breakfast at the Inside Out Café located in the Bangor Plaza was her usual stop after work, but she decided she could tolerate one more oatmeal raisin bar her brother stocked at his condo. It had been a long work night, and she was ready to get some sleep. She would like to get at least the first of the two sonar ideas sorted out before Jeff got back on land, but she didn’t know if that arrival was days or weeks away. A fast-attack submarine stayed out to sea while it was operationally useful for it to remain in an area. The USS Seawolf was due back sometime this month, and she’d probably learn it was in port the moment Jeff walked in his front door and stumbled over her shoes.

  Commander Mark Bishop entered his stateroom two floors below the command-and-control center of the USS Nevada, 14 hours after he had last left it. The officer of the deck would wake him if anything needed his attention, on the boat or in the ocean around them. Unfortunately he was one of two people aboard who knew another fire alarm was going to sound in a few hours. It would make his needed sleep a bit on the short side, as 18-hour days aboard a submarine—rather than the usual 24-hour days—made for a patrol that was lived on shorter, more frequent periods of sleep. Every hour he could get at this point in a patrol was welcome.

  Mark nudged off his tennis shoes, unzipped and removed his poopie suit, the solid-blue coveralls worn by every submariner at sea. Polyester with only a touch of cotton to keep lint from being an issue for the air filters, the garment zipped in the front and had six pockets—two in front, two slash pockets on the front of each leg, and two back pockets. Sewn above the right pocket was M. BISHOP, with a gold star inside a gold circle above his name signifying he presently had Command at Sea. A seven-point silver oak leaf on each collar showed his rank of commander.

  Onshore, the working uniform had changed yet again to the Navy’s version of camouflage—a blue and gray aquaflage that he personally thought was uncomfortably warm but otherwise serviceable. For official events, correct attire, thankfully, was still either the white or blue dress uniform, depending on the season.

  He had something tucked in most of the pockets, so he fished items out to drop on his desk before putting the blue coveralls in the laundry bag. The crew did their own laundry, sharing one washer and dryer, but it was considered bad luck for the commander to wash his. One of the cooks had volunteered, and Bishop had given in gracefully rather than upset tradition, though he was glad he had packed six of the suits for this patrol rather than the normal five. That way he would have one fresh in reserve should they get a visit from a rear admiral or other dignitary at disembarking. They were not supposed to shrink in the laundry, but either he was putting on more weight than normal during the patrol or they were getting overheated in the dryer.

  Bishop stretched out on his bunk with a sigh, his body finally acknowledging the aches that had settled into his bones over the last 86 days.

  The rotation of three watches gave the patrol a constant set of fresh eyes and minds monitoring operations. A third of the crew was asleep at any point in time. As the commander, he fit in sleep when he could while maintaining a rotating presence across all three watches.

  The enlisted men bunked nine to a room, their berths nestled between massive missile tubes in the center third of the boat. The 15 officers aboard shared 5 staterooms. As commander he had a stateroom of his own, including a desk and chair, and a bed tucked into a narrow room slightly bigger than a closet. Small, and yet it was precious privacy, something every man aboard craved after the first week.

  Eye level above his bunk, Mark had taped four photos, and he studied them for a moment before he closed his eyes. They were there to tug him back to the outside world and life outside this boomer for a few moments at the beginning and end of his day. They were carefully chos
en, selected specifically for this patrol.

  His wife, Melinda, icing a cake she’d made for her mom’s birthday—one of his favorite photos of her snapped during their nine years of marriage, and one of the last photos taken in the month before she died. His parents and two sisters, along with assorted nieces and nephews. His brother Bryce, with his new wife, Charlotte, both looking very content, seated together in the stands at Wrigley Field enjoying a baseball game. An older photo of his astronaut brother Jim, decked out in full space-suit gear as he headed across the walkway for a rocket ride on one of the last space-shuttle flights.

  When the day finally came for him to relinquish command, Mark was going to need his family to fall back on. He had spent his career working to qualify for the job he now held. Once these three years were over, he was going to have to come up with a new dream, a new goal in life. What it would be was still taking form. Late at night, he had begun to think about his future.

  He would be turning 41 this year. He could retire from the Navy when he’d put in his 20 years, pursue a civilian career. Or he could see about staying in until mandatory retirement at age 62. He thought a promotion to captain was likely, given his service record. Beyond that, a promotion to rear admiral and appointment as a flag officer would be a challenge, given the stiff competition and limited openings.

  He would stay in the Navy if given his preference and keep his work life in order. It was his personal life that needed attention. He missed his wife, missed being a husband. He wanted someone to come home to after sea patrols. He wanted someone there to share those shore duties with him. Melinda would have encouraged him years ago to move on, but he hadn’t been ready. It had felt disloyal to think about replacing her. And the idea of dating again, starting over with someone else, made him sigh just thinking about it.

  But, he told himself with hands locked behind his head as he gazed at his photos, it was time. The reluctance was still there, but he’d force himself to do what needed to be done when he got back to land. He wasn’t going to have a different future unless he revived his social life and got out there again, started seeing someone, started putting serious time into developing a relationship with a woman.