She dug through the rest of the stack until she found the Navy phone book for Norfolk. She leafed through the directory until she found the section for the Atlantic Fleet Command. She ran a pencil along the listings until she found the Atlantic Fleet Commander’s office, and wrote down the number for his Executive Assistant. She picked up the handset on J.W.’s Navy secure telephone console, and dialed the number.
“CincLantFleet headquarters, Admiral Denniston’s office, Yeoman first class Michaelson speaking, this is a non-secure line, may I help you, Sir?” intoned a faintly bored male voice on the other end.
Diane took a deep breath. “I need to speak to the EA,” she said, with as much authority as she could muster.
“And may I ask who is calling, Ma’am?”
“Yes. This is Diane Martinson. My husband is Chief of Staff to Group Twelve in Mayport.”
“Uh, yes, Ma’am, and the subject, please?” The voice not bored now, but curious, cautious.
“I’ll tell that to the EA,” she said haughtily. “And this is fairly urgent.”
“Uh, yes, Ma’am,” replied the yeoman. “I’ll see if he’s available. Please hold.”
Silence. No music, no cute little advertisements for careers in the Navy, not even the clicking, you’re-on-hold sound. Silence. Diane began to wonder if she’d have the nerve to tell them what was going on. Mike had confided in her, told her everything, and she would probably have to use it all. Including, ultimately, she realized with a sudden chill, the source of her information. She wondered how Mike would react if he knew. She took a deep breath, and let it out as the line opened again. An exceptionally smooth, baritone voice came on the line.
“Mrs. Martinson, this is Captain St. Claire. What can I do for you?”
The voice projected a sincere interest in what Diane had to say, and enough warmth to imply that they were old friends, overlaid by the faintest suggestion that her calling instead of her husband was somewhat peculiar. She took another deep breath.
“I realize this is unusual, Captain St. Claire, but this is an unusual situation. How do you make this telephone secure?”
“You’re calling from a STU-III?” he asked, the surprise evident in his voice.
“Yes, I think so. They put a secure telephone in the quarters when J.W., er, my husband, took the job as Chief of Staff.”
“Right. And you want to go secure. Very well. See the red button at the top left of the telephone? Push that down and hold it for two seconds, then let go. When the word ‘secure’ shows up in the data readout panel, we’re secure. Push it—now.”
Diane did so, and heard a faint trilling sound like a facsimile machine in the earpiece, and then Captain St. Claire was back on the line. The requisite word showed up in the display above the dial panel. His voice was no longer quite so clear, but otherwise there was no difference.
“Are you there, Mrs. Martinson?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Very good. Now, how can I help you?”
His tone of voice inferred now that he thought he was about to become embroiled in a domestic dispute or some other tawdry personal matter, but was ready to do his manful duty.
“Yes. Well, I’ll get right to the point: this is about a submarine, a Libyan submarine, as a matter of fact, that has apparently been operating in American waters off Jacksonville for a month, waiting to ambush the Coral Sea in revenge for the bombing of Libya three years ago. The Coral Sea is due home from Puerto Rico this afternoon, so an attack is probably going to happen this afternoon, and the only thing between the Coral Sea and the submarine is an old training destroyer, the Goldsborough, who has been sent out by his Commodore to prevent the ambush. And apparently nobody else in Mayport or anywhere else, for that matter, even knows that all this is going on.”
She ran out of words suddenly, and felt a slow burn of embarrassment rising up her face as the silence on the other end of the line grew, an incredulous, I must be talking to a drunk or a psycho case silence from the other end.
“Captain St. Claire?”
“Uh, yes, Mrs. Martinson. I’m afraid you’ve caught me somewhat flat-footed. This is most—”
“I know,” interrupted Diane. “You think you’ve got a nut or a drunk wife on -the phone. Let me walk you through what I know about it, and then you can call COMDESRON Twelve’s office, that’s Commodore Aronson, and simply ask him what’s all this about Goldsborough and a Libyan submarine, OK? I’ve been awake all night trying to decide whether or not to make this call, so I’m only going to give it to you once, and then it’s all yours, all right? Can you tape this line?”
“Uh, well, actually, yes we can, but—”
“Get your tape running, Captain. Time is shorter than you know.”
There was a one minute delay while someone set up the tape, and then Captain St. Claire came back on the line.
“Mrs. Martinson? We’re taping now, all right? Is it possible that we can talk to Captain Martinson? I don’t mean to imply anything by that, but it—”
“Forget it,” said Diane. “He’s on the Coral Sea; that’s one of the reasons I’m making this call. Now, I want you to listen without interrupting me.”
“Mrs. Martinson,—”
“Just let me talk, Captain St. Clair, and whoever else is on the line. You really don’t have much time.”
Diane had heard a few clicks on the line while waiting for the tape recorder to be set up. St. Claire putting someone else on the line so that there would be a witness. Fair enough. Diane knew she was lighting a fuse; the more sticks it lead to, the better Mike’s chances were.
She then went through the entire story, from the first incidents, to the slow accretion of evidence, sparse as it was, to the Group’s skepticism of the whole theory, to the first and second explorations by Goldsborough, the sound recordings of the Deyo, the Admiral’s emphatic denunciation of the idea that there might be a submarine out there hunting the Coral Sea, and then the Commodore’s secret decision to send Goldy out covertly to rendezvous with Coral Sea. It took a half an hour, and Diane found herself perspiring when she was finished. She waited for a reaction.
“Uh, stand by, Mrs. Martinson, this is, uh—we’ll be right back to you, Ma’am,” said St. Clair.
Probably calling the little men in the white coats, she thought. She took another deep breath to steady her nerves. If that’s the way they were going to react, then that was all she could do. They’d been warned. She drank some cold coffee, unaware that it was cold.
“Mrs. Martinson?” inquired a new, older voice.
“Yes?”
“This is Vice Admiral Bennett. I’m Admiral Denniston’s Chief of Staff. I’ve been listening to what you had to say on a speakerphone in my office. I apologize for eavesdropping, but my EA said this was—important.”
I’ll bet he didn’t say important, thought Diane. Bizarre, maybe, but not important.
“Mrs. Martinson, your—story, uh, this report, is extremely disturbing. You are exactly correct that we have no knowledge of anything like this going on in Mayport, or of any Libyan submarine operating out of area. In fact, if I recall my morning briefing, our intelligence—Mike, is thing secure? It is? OK, thanks. Mrs. Martinson, our intelligence has all the Libyan submarines in their base or otherwise accounted for. I—”
“Call Washington,” interrupted Diane. “Talk to the people who do the photo analysis of the North African coast. The satellite reveals that one of the submarines at the base is a decoy. That is, Mike—we, uh, they think it’s a decoy. That the real sub left port over a month ago.”
There was another stunned silence at the Norfolk end. Then the Admiral came back on the line.
“Uh, Mrs. Martinson, national satellite photography is extremely sensitive material,” he began, sternly. “I have to ask you: how in the hell do you know what you’re telling us? Is this something that Captain Martinson—”
“No!” She almost shouted.
“No,” she continued in a softer voic
e. “Captain Martinson thinks the whole thing is untrue.” So much for your MFR, dear. “He is as convinced as Admiral Walker is that there is no submarine. They both feel that the whole idea is preposterous, and that it wasn’t worth reporting up the line. Admiral Bennett, they may even be right. But if they are wrong and the Commodore and Mike are correct, the Navy is about to experience a very bad afternoon.”
“I have to ask, Mrs. Martinson—who is your source for this? The Commodore? And if not, is it this—Mike?”
Diane took a deep breath.
“No,” she said. “It’s not the Commodore. My source is the Captain of the Goldsborough, Commander Mike Montgomery.”
There was a strained silence, as the unspoken but obvious next question vibrated down the phone lines.
“Look,” she said quickly, to fill the silence, suddenly beginning to run out of courage. “I’m not going to explain the circumstances. They’re not relevant right now, anyway. Call Commodore Aronson’s office. Warn the Coral Sea. Get some ships out there to help Goldsborough. You’re almost out of time. You’ve been warned. Do something. Don’t sit there on your high ranking tailfeathers and be part of another Pearl Harbor, OK?”
Then she hung up the phone, and sat back in her chair, J.W.’s chair, she thought irrelevantly, her heart pounding. The secure telephone rang back immediately, but she did not answer it, staring at it instead, willing it to stop ringing. Finally it did. You’ve had your warning, big shot. And now, more than one cat is out of the bag, besides.
She went limp in the big leather chair. Oh, Mike. I told you I’d handle our situation my way, and now God knows what they’re going to do. I just hope and pray they don’t play politics with this. It would be just like them to focus on the indiscretions of a Navy wife and not on the submarine. She leaned forward, grasping her knees, and huddled in the chair. Outside, the normalcy of the beach, the base, the rolling surf sounds flowing through the beach side windows above the sounds of the air conditioning, concentrated her fears in the empty house.
The secure telephone began ringing again, but she ignored it.
SIXTY-TWO
Atlantic Fleet Headquarters, Norfolk, Virginia, Friday, 9 May; 1320
Admiral Bennett and Captain St. Claire looked at each other blankly after Diane hung up.
“Get her back on the line,” ordered the Admiral, running his hands through his thinning hair.
The Admiral stood by the yeoman’s desk while St. Claire pushed the retrieve circuit button, but the STU-III in Mayport was not responding.
“No joy, Admiral.”
“But she was definitely calling from a STU-III?”
“Yes, Sir, and the ID was correct: quarters unit for the Chief of Staff at Group Twelve. Sir, I’ve met Mrs. Martinson. At a reception down there. It did sound like her.”
“She must be something to look at if you remember her, Mike,” said the Admiral dryly.
“Uh, yes, Sir, as a matter of fact she’s a memorable lady. But this bullshit about a submarine—”
“Yeah, I know. Run that tape back for me. I want to hear this all again. And then I want to talk to Eli Aronson. If it were any other name but that one, I’d go on to lunch. He and I were golfing buddies when he was on the SurfLant staff here a year ago. Super officer, but he’s also fully capable of getting mixed up in some squirrely thing like this. Must be something in the water at Mayport,” he said, shaking his head.
St. Clair rewound the tape quickly, and then they put it back on a speaker in Admiral Bennett’s office and listened to the whole conversation again. The two yeomen in the outer office tried to look like they were not paying any attention. St. Claire switched it off when they got to the point where Diane had hung up.
“Do we need to tell the Admiral?”
St. Claire did not have to distinguish between Admiral Bennett, who was a Vice Admiral, and Admiral Denniston, a four star who was the Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet. The CinC. Admiral Denniston was the Admiral. Bennett shook his head.
“Not yet. But get the N2 up here—I want him to pull the string in the intel system on the possibility that the Libyans have planted a decoy. And get me Aronson on the phone—I’ll take it in here. Why does shit like this always have to break loose on a Friday,” he asked no one in particular.
Bennett walked back into his office, while St. Claire instructed the yeoman to get Commodore Aronson in Mayport on the horn for Admiral Bennett. He went over to his own desk, ready to pick up the silenced handset on which all EA’s listened in to their bosses’ conversations in order to keep records called memcons, a memo of conversation. He arranged a pad and pen as he waited. He heard the yeoman say yes, Sir, a few times, and then the yeoman punched a button transferring the call into Bennett’s office and gave St. Claire a signal to pick up. The yeoman scribbled down something on a yellow gummy, and passed it to St. Claire. Commodore not there; this is CSO. St. Claire nodded and listened.
“Commander Barstowe speaking, Sir,” came a nervous voice over the line.
“Commander, this is Vice Admiral Bennett; where’s your boss?”
“Uh, Admiral, he’s over on the Deyo right now, Sir. Can I help you with something?” There was a distinct note of anxiety in Barstowe’s voice now.
“Yes, Commander,” replied the Admiral in a patient but increasingly threatening tone. “You can get your boss on the phone. Secure. I want to ask him a question.”
“Uh, yes, Sir, right away. I’ll have him call you right away, Sir. Secure, Sir.”
St. Claire, realizing that there would be no conversation to record, hung up his phone. Prematurely, he found out, as he could still hear the Admiral in the other room.
“The subject?” said the Admiral in a voice that was getting louder. “Yes, I can tell you the subject. It’s a one word subject. It’s submarine. Make it two words, as in Libyan submarine.”
A pause. Then St. Claire heard the Admiral get up out of his chair.
“What did you say?!” the Admiral shouted. “Just what the hell do you mean by ‘Oh, shit,’ Commander?!”
Out in the front office, St. Claire hurriedly grabbed his phone and punched in the number for the duty officer at the Atlantic Fleet Operations Center.
SIXTY-THREE
USS Goldsborough, Jacksonville Operating Areas, Friday, 9 May; 1145
Despite the air conditioning, it was becoming hot in the Combat Information Center. Mike sat in his Captain’s chair near the central plotting table, surrounded by almost two dozen men at their various general quarters stations. Everyone was wearing battle dress, which included fully buttoned, long sleeved shirts, trousers tucked into their socks, gas masks in their hip pouches on one hip and a CO2 inflatable lifejacket on the other, protective flashburn hoods and gloves, and steel helmets. The extra gear made it awkward to move around the crowded CIC, especially with all hands present. The men were quiet but alert, doing their surveillance jobs with an intensity Mike had not seen before in Goldsborough.
The operations officer perched on his stool at the head of the plotting table, while the trackers plotted a radar contact closing them from the southeast.
“What do you think, Ops,” asked Mike from his chair. There was no room for him at the plotting table.
“It could be him, Cap’n,” replied the operations officer. “The radar contact on the Raytheon display is big enough, and he’s coming in at about twenty knots. But ESM isn’t holding anything out there but a commercial surface search radar. No TACAN, no GCA radars, no nothing that indicates an aircraft carrier. Passive sonar says it’s big and moving down the highway, but can’t give any other clues. Right now he’s out there at twenty two miles, so we’ll get a look at him pretty soon. The lookouts have been alerted, as has the bridge watch.”
“OK. If it is the Coral Sea, we’ll come up to fifteen knots, turn around and parallel his course, and open up the active sonar. We’re far enough out now that I think the best ambush area is west of us, towards Mayport.”
“Yes, Sir, we’re ready with search plans. The PC indicates that that submerged ridge line is about ten miles back to the west, so we’re in good position.”
Mike nodded, and reached down for the intercom unit to the bridge, customarily called the bitch-box.
“XO, Captain.”
“Yes, Sir, Cap’n,” replied Farmer.
His GQ station was on the bridge when the Captain came into CIC. His primary duty was to take over command if CIC were knocked out, and to act as general maneuvering safety officer if things got hot and heavy during an action. He was supported on the bridge by a full GQ watch team, which included an Officer of the Deck, Junior Officer of the Deck, a tactical communicator, three quartermasters, a bosun, a messenger, three additional phone talkers and three lookouts.
“XO, this big radar contact continues to close from the southeast. Keep a sharp eye for a visual ID; we need to know if it’s Coral Sea.”
“Aye, aye, Sir. Bit early, though, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is, and no corroborating ESM, either. May be a big merchie. He’s going twenty knots.”
“Sounds more like a Toyota carrier than a Navy carrier,” said Farmer. “Those guys haul ass.”
“Yeah, well, anyway, keep your eyes peeled. What’s the weather?”
Mike had been in CIC all morning. He could walk twenty feet out through the front door of CIC and see for himself, but did not want to lose his red lighting adaptation.
“Bright sunlight, light high clouds, sea state zero, wind calm, temp is hot, sweat is everywhere,” said Farmer.
“People pay money for cruise conditions like that, XO; enjoy.”
“XO, aye.”
Mike punched out the intercom buttons. They waited.
Fifteen minutes later, the lookouts on the signal bridge, one level above the pilothouse, spied the oncoming ship low on the horizon. He called the description down to the CIC via the sound powered phone circuit.
“Looks big and looks like a box,” relayed the operations officer.
“OK, that’s probably a merch; XO was right, I’ll bet it’s a Toyota boat.”
Scorpion in the Sea Page 50