The Weapon

by David Poyer

  Dan rubbed his face, remembering the Korea Strait, the wake-homing torpedoes no one had thought the enemy had until ships had started exploding. He didn’t want to face a homer that ran at two hundred knots and couldn’t be decoyed. “Okay . . . thanks for backgrounding us. But we’re getting to the tough part. And, like they say in the movies, this can’t go outside this room.”

  He waited until they nodded. “I can’t address sources. But we have intel the Russians have solved the homing issue.”

  Pirrell sat up straighter; Chone, who’d been polishing his glasses, stopped. Boscow narrowed his eyes and whistled. “How?”

  “That’s what we don’t know.”

  “What we thought you could tell us,” Henrickson put in. “At least, if it’s possible. Because if it is, our tactical assumptions change radically.”

  The scientists looked at each other. “I guess they would,” Chone said.

  “It would be fearsome then,” Boscow said. He was patting his pockets as if looking for a cigarette.

  The discussion went technical. Dan was fascinated at how they all seemed to drop their personalities and, moving up to the table, before long were so deep in impedance of supercavitating flows, sensor topology, wavelet theory, and pa ram e ter extraction that even Henrickson looked nonplussed. They seized paper and begin scribbling equations, or drawing rough supercavities with variously shaped bodies within them. At one point Boscow seemed convinced that a partially supercavitated body that trailed a flexible stinger might be able to register enough of a return sonar pulse that acoustic homing was possible, but Chone showed him he was wrong.

  Pirrell was arguing for what he called “heterodox” solutions. “The high vehicle speed and bubble noise rules out any kind of acoustic guidance. Even water-based guidance: V sub I in a dense medium’s too slow to keep up with the update rate. Thus, we’re forced to conclude it has to be guided by a non-water-based system.”

  “Wire guidance? I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe electromagnetic?”

  “Translation?” Dan said.

  “Radio-controlled,” Henrickson said.

  “I got that, damn it. But what about the sensors? Are you saying the sensors are offboard?”

  “Possibly,” the younger scientist said, but his tone was cautious. “Can’t you give us anything more to work with?”

  He hadn’t mentioned the Admiralty, but he didn’t think that had any bearing on the technical aspect. Chone and Boscow were raising their voices now, pushing equations back and forth. He raised his, too. “Uh, Chandra . . . Doctor Chone?”

  “I told you—no, you’ll still have to pierce the interface. And anytime you do that, there’s instability in the reentrant jet intensity—yeah?”

  “Uh, the impression I’m getting here—”

  “Is that we’ll need some time to study the question.”

  “Is that you don’t know?”

  Chone smiled condescendingly. “It’s not that we ‘don’t know.’ In most technical matters, Commander, once you know something can be done, you’re halfway to doing it yourself. My opinion is, your most likely possibility is some kind of simplistic acoustic guidance.”

  “How would that work?”

  The older scientist turned a sketch for him to see. “Two fold-out vanes near the base of the vehicle. Passive transducers on the tips. A rocket jet puts out mainly high frequency sound. If the transducers are carefully tuned, enough low-frequency signal might come through that they could pick up a carrier’s screws. The vehicle travels at a constant depth, so all it needs is left-right homing, bang-bang, down the middle to the target.”

  “They wouldn’t be at the base,” Boscow put in. “Tail fins would be right in the flow. They’d have to be on canards, up front. Unless you want a tail boom—”

  “It won’t have a tail boom. Supercavity closure means a reentrant jet—”

  “Captain, we’ve heard from Dr. Chone and Dr. Pirrell. How would you guide this thing?” Dan interrupted. “Any other possibilities?”

  Boscow squinted. “We’ve played around on paper. Penn State, the Applied Research Lab, I mean. Wire guidance, or fiber optic, but there’s that fucking jet back there. Or, have the weapon sense the magnetic field of the target, like a magnetic mine. But that’s effective only at very short ranges—fifty to sixty yards. The local fields of the weapon itself, its own steel and electrical currents, are much more powerful than the external field you’re trying to pick up.”

  Chone stretched in his wheelchair, so thoroughly Dan heard his spine pop. “To really answer your question, Commander? We can argue over how it could be done, but bottom line, we’re just speculating. If we actually knew how it was guided, OPNAV could set money aside to evaluate it. NAVSEA would task us, 415 or 404 would manage us, and we’d emulate it in the Weapons Analysis Facility. Reverse engineer from that, then breadboard a countermeasure. But we need details. Plans, circuit diagrams, programming, sensor specifications. Best of all—”

  “A complete round.”

  Chone smiled. “Exactly. Best of all.”

  There didn’t seem to be much to add to that. Pirrell offered to take him through the Weapons Analysis Facility, where he watched a disconcertingly intelligent Block III ADCAP Mark 48 warhead track a virtual Chinese Xia-class sub under twenty feet of ice. They “saw” everything the warhead saw, watched every decision it made; as far as its computer knew, it was two hundred feet down in the deep Arctic. It made him wonder how much of what he himself thought was authentic, unquestionable, might be only illusion. That took an hour, then they had tomato soup and sandwiches in Building 990. “Let’s head on out of here,” Dan muttered when the scientist went back for a refill on his Coke. Henrickson hesitated, but finally nodded.

  They stopped on the way to the gate to look at the bay and the great spidery bridge that vaulted across it. The Narragansett glittered in the noon light, a gray-green expanse that made Dan wish he was sailing now.

  The grass on Warden Field was greener than he remembered it; the sky, the hill-walled Severn even lovelier. The steady bass thud of the Naval Academy Band echoed from the walls of the alumni auditorium as the first glittering of the oncoming parade swung into view.

  He hadn’t come back to Annapolis that often over the years. Walking through the Yard with Blair on his arm, memories surfaced. When he’d walked these bricks as a mid, women had been a mystery, a yearning, seen only on weekends or when you went home on leave. Now on the carefully tended walks young women marched in dark blue, their faces as serious as those of the men.

  “Did you ever think, when you were here, there’d be women?” his wife asked.

  “Never crossed my mind. And if it had, I’d have hated the idea.”

  She grinned. “Changed your opinion?”

  “Worked with too many of ’em to think they’re not just as good as the guys.”

  In her heels Blair was taller than he was. Her hair was shining blond and she slouched, even standing. He’d met her in the Persian Gulf, when she’d been the chief adviser to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Now she was undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness in an administration as unpopular with the military as any had ever been. Which puzzled Dan, as she seemed to spend most of her time fighting for better pay, better housing, increased readiness . . . though she didn’t automatically believe the latest and greatest missile or radar was worth any price. When she got angry, people got out of her way. He’d seen her intimidate four-star generals. She’d turned that emotionless logic on him a couple of times, and he didn’t relish it happening again. But she didn’t hold a grudge, and when they argued, making up made it worth staying.

  Now they stood in the VIP stand with the generals and admirals Blair outranked, the Commandant and the reviewing officer holding the salute as the guns boomed, making babies scream in the stands, dogs bark, and dozens of car alarms go off at once. Amid their discordant wailing the steady thud . . . thud . . . thud of the battery was like the hea
vy dull strokes of a sledge.

  Then young voices echoed high in the cool air. “Pass . . . in. . . . review.” And a leatherfaced Marine next to Dan muttered the irreverent parody passed from generation to generation: “Piss . . . in . . . your . . . shoes.”

  With a renewed blare of brass and crash of drums the march-past began. Dan stood at attention as the Brigade went by. From here he couldn’t smell dust and crushed grass, gun oil and sweat-soaked wool, but he remembered them. And how simple Duty had been, when he’d been one of the marching thousands. How clear and clean everything had seemed.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Just that I thought it’d all be different.”

  “The Navy? Life?”

  “Everything.” He blinked at the bright faces trooping by. They put the women at the end of each company, or maybe it was just that they tended to be shorter, so they ended up in the rear rank. There were a lot of female stripers, though; the Brigade Commander was a stocky brunette the PA system announced was from Montana. “It makes you think, coming back.”

  “Would you like to, really? To teach, or on the staff? That could be a nice assignment.”

  He told her maybe, but to please not try to help him in any way. “I’ll take what I’m assigned.”

  “Dan, believe me, if you don’t ask for what you want, you will not go far.”

  “At this point, I don’t think it makes a difference in my promotability.”

  “Are you kidding? With a Congressional?”

  “My record’s not held in my favor in most quarters,” he told her. “There are a lot of people on those boards who don’t think I ought to get another command.”

  “By which you mean, another ship. But there are better opportunities than another ship, Dan.”

  “Maybe. But that’s what I want.”

  He heard the stubbornness in his voice. She looked unhappy or angry, too, and to break the mood he put his arm around her. Leaned to brush her cheek with his lips. Then remembered he was on the Academy grounds, and she was a four-star equivalent, and a marine general was watching them; he let the arm drop. She didn’t seem to notice. She was looking at the Homecoming schedule he’d printed out for her. “Feels funny not having an aide to tell me where to go next . . . okay, so six P.M.’s the dinner, with the guys from your old company. Then the dance, and tomorrow’s the game.”

  He smiled. Her tone said she’d accepted what he’d said. Maybe not agreed, but accepted it. “Yeah,” he said. “Tomorrow’s the game.”

  It was a close one, against Rice. Navy trailed from the first quarter, rallied after the half, then scored two touchdowns in quick succession to win. The stadium had been quiet during the first half, but wound up till by the end they were all on their feet and screaming, even Blair. When they finished singing “Navy Blue and Gold” and were filing out he grinned. “Never saw you this excited over a game.”

  “It was a good one.”

  They went to the class dinner in King Hall and for once no one near them was obnoxiously drunk, or wanted to start a food fight. She looked lovely and he wanted her. By the time they got back to the hotel he couldn’t keep his hands off her, and she had her hand in his trouser pocket. As soon as the door was closed they were tearing each other’s clothes off.

  The main event was over and they were lying tangled together when the phone rang. She grimaced. “How do they always know?”

  “Well, they were a little late this time.” He untangled himself and got it, then hesitated, unsure how to identify himself in an unofficial environment. Jeez, maybe he’d been in the Navy too long. Said at last, “Uh—Lenson here.”

  “Dan? This is Captain Calvin Carroll Hines. SURFLANT N2?”

  Dan knew Hines from e-mail exchanges. Code N2 was Surface Force Intelligence, deputy for Admiral Olivero, commander of Surface Forces, Atlantic. Olivero was Captain Mullaly’s immediate senior, which made Hines the representative of his boss’s boss. “Yessir. What can I do for you, Captain?”

  “I’m not interrupting? Saw you at the game and figured you’d be staying here. Got a minute? Can you come down to the bar?”

  Across the bed his wife was getting up. Dan eyed her nude buttocks, her long tapering legs as she bent to pick up clothing. The shine of moisture where he’d just been. How could any man leave something like this? How could he want to go to sea again?

  “Commander?”

  “Be right down, sir,” he said into the phone.

  The bar was modern and intimate, and was packed with alumni catching up. He stood in the doorway until an older man gestured him over. He was in slacks, a sports shirt, and a blue N-star Academy sweater.

  “Beer?”

  “A Coke, thanks.”

  They discussed the game first, Dan wondering what this was about but figuring the intelligence officer would tell him when he was ready. The ambient noise was deafening, though, and got worse every time the TV showed a clip from the game. Finally Hines suggested they take a walk.

  “Sir, is this official? My wife’s upstairs. We don’t get much time together—”

  “The deputy undersecretary? Wouldn’t want to keep you two apart.” The captain gave no clue how he meant this, though. “Yeah, official. Just a couple minutes. It’s the high-speed torpedo issue.”

  Dan figured this meant the Shkval. Outside, they headed toward the lights of the nearby mall. Not a star was visible above them. He remembered when this had been green fields. Hines said, “On the tasking? There was a working group, Navy/DIA/Commerce/Defense Acquisition Agency, to coordinate how we go about meeting it.”

  “Uh, TAG hasn’t passed that to me yet.”

  “The decision points are in Mullaly’s in-box. Short version: Since Shkval-K’s being advertised for export, Commerce suggested we were making this harder than it had to be. Maybe the Russians would sell it to us, if we offered a deal—say, a joint venture to manufacture Shkvals for the USN.”

  “You mean, just buy it?”

  “Sometimes that’s the easiest way.”

  “Well, that sounds reasonable,” he said cautiously. “Do you think they’d go for it? This is supposed to be the most advanced weapon they have.”

  “They need the cash. It’s worth a try.”

  “I, uh, I assume we wouldn’t actually be putting Russian weapons in U.S. tubes? The safety issues—”

  Hines waved that away. “We’ll get Lockheed or Hughes to safe up the design, then charge us ten times as much. But that’s many exits down the pike. Right now we’re just talking about buying five or six for testing and evaluation.”

  “Uh, exactly who at Commerce suggested this? I know some of those folks from when I was at the NSC.”

  “All we got was the minutes and actually just our part of that. Well, the Russians put millions of dollars into this thing. Like you say, it might not be designed to NATO standards, but hey, it works. And Commerce says the more we buy from the Russian Federation, the more they can buy from us. That’d make their constituency happy.”

  “From what I saw in the White House, we’re too eager to sell certain things,” Dan said.

  “Above our pay grade, son. I’ve talked to the development shop at SUBLANT. Consensus, not only would we remove a threat to the carriers, our subs could use something like this hunting diesel boats in shallow water. Get a one-ping solution and clobber them at close range.”

  “Whatever. So, Commerce is going to buy it?”

  Hines waited till a teenage couple buzzed past on motorbikes. “No. They don’t want to get involved. They want us to buy it. From the Ministry of Defense.”

  Dan waited for the punch line. But apparently this wasn’t a joke, because Hines went on, “CNO’s willing to commit funding from his acquisition pot. So, rather than whatever Norm had you set up to do, Admiral Olivero wants us to try to get to this system legally first. You’re already backgrounded. And as it happens there’s a major arms exposition opening Monday. Day after tomorrow.” Hines gave it a beat, then ad
ded, “Short notice, I know. But working at TAG, you’re used to travel, right? We had our office cut the paperwork.”

  They stopped by a dark blue Mercury. Hines glanced around the lot, then popped the trunk and came up with manila. “Orders, tickets, a briefing package—you can read in on the plane. An invitation from the Russian Federation state corporation for military export. It’s not made out to you by name, but it does invite the U.S. to send a rep, in case there’s any question on their end. Who you can call up at the Building to work out the contractual end, if you get that far on the first visit. Which you probably won’t, so don’t sweat it.

  “We don’t expect you to come back with a finished deal, all right? Just talk to them, let ’em know we’re interested, but only if it’s reasonable—don’t act like we’re hot for this thing, they’ll triple the price. Your assistant, we overnighted his package yesterday. But they said you’d be at the game this weekend, and since I was going, too . . . the personal touch . . . flight’s at zero-seven tomorrow. So actually that works out, you can go right to BWI from here.”

  Dan hefted the envelope—it was heavy—then tucked it under his arm. He was still trying to get his head around the switch in direction. Hines wheeled back toward the hotel. “Any questions?”

  He’d already planned his week, and it hadn’t included travel. But everything else Hines had said made sense. Especially the part about it being easier to buy what you wanted, than get it under the table. “Well, this is sudden, like you said, sir. But I guess we can give it a try. Uh, you never said where exactly I’m going?”

  “Didn’t I? ARMINTEX—the International Armaments Exhibition. In Moscow.”

  Dan stopped at the hotel entrance. “Wait a minute. I thought San Diego, or Toronto, but—we’ve got to be in Moscow Monday? And I’m leaving tomorrow morning?”

  “Not a problem, is it?”

  He tried to recall how many pair of socks and underwear he had with him. “Uh, I don’t have uniforms—”