Undetected (17 page)

“That's Washington State ahead of us, and that's Canada on your left,” Bishop said, pointing. A night view didn't get more exquisite than this as land rose up ahead, forests of trees, communities built down to the shoreline along inlets, the streetlights forming ribbons through the trees.

“It's truly beautiful, Mark.”

“We don't often return home at night, but with three subs to transit, we'll use the dawn to our advantage. You can already see it beginning to brighten on the horizon.”

She glanced around, seemed to be fascinated looking from the sail at the size of the
Nebraska
's trailing curved hull. In the moonlight the huge circle hatches of the 24 missile tubes were only an impression in the otherwise smooth deck. She started to say something, and her words froze.

He felt her frustration, saw it in the way she grimaced and
her hands tightened. “Hey, relax.” He rested his arm across her shoulders, turned her slightly into his body away from the lookouts and the XO, and waited for the words to return.

“It never happens this frequently,” she finally whispered. “I don't know what's changed.”

“Don't worry about it. What were you going to say?”

“It's odd to know something this heavy floats.”

Bishop chuckled. “It defies common sense, doesn't it?”

He tapped the solid surface of the sail. “A boomer is one solid mass of metal.”

She leaned her arms against the surface near the windshield and watched the water and the glistening moonlight and the approaching land for half an hour.

“I'd like to go below now, get some sleep,” she eventually said. “When we reach the pier in about 14 hours, I want to be ready to hit the lab and find out what the
Ohio
was hearing while we were actively pinging.”

At first, Bishop was surprised by her plan to immediately go to work, but then decided he wasn't surprised at all. Sleep wouldn't come while she wondered at the answer, so she might as well see what the data from the
Ohio
looked like. “Sounds like a good plan,” he replied.

He turned on the red-light flashlight—the color helped protect night vision—to illuminate the hatch, and he lifted the grate for her. “The ladder treads will be a bit slick, so take your time. I'll go first and stay just below you.”

He stepped down, waited for her to begin her descent, and carefully confirmed she had her footing on each rung. She stepped off the ladder inside the command-and-control center, where he helped her off with the jacket. “Like an escort to the stateroom?”

“I'm good. Thanks for showing me that, Mark.”

“You're welcome. Sleep well, Gina.”

“Good night.”

Bishop watched her leave and then headed back topside. He nodded to the XO guiding the
Nebraska
home and took a spot at the back of the sail. The stars in the night sky were still bright even as the coming sunrise began to lighten the horizon. He let himself consider a thought he'd been holding at bay for the last week.

He'd made a mistake, he finally let himself acknowledge, telling Jeff no regarding dinner with Gina. She was young, but he thought now he could have looked past that. She was interesting. He enjoyed her smile and her laughter. And if he'd spent the last few weeks dating her instead of ceding that ground to Daniel, he might have been able to move beyond the surface questions by now to begin learning about her dreams and hopes, the core of who Gina was.

Bishop sighed, accepting reality. He might believe now he had made a mistake, but he couldn't undo how facts had changed. Gina seemed genuinely happy in Daniel's company. Jeff had chosen a good man, and Bishop agreed with the choice. Daniel had been telling her stories from prior patrols, making her laugh, talking about his family and hers, sharing history—everything a guy hoping to court her would be doing. Jeff had been right to introduce the two of them. They would make a good couple.

Bishop had planned to call Jessica, but he hadn't followed through. Jeff's description had simply been too accurate. Jessica was the kind of lady who would take dinner to someone who was sick, bake a cake for a friend, run errands to help a neighbor out. She would be a wonderful wife and mother
one day, and life would be peaceful. But there weren't layers to her.

Bishop had thought a woman like Jessica was what he wanted, someone who would give him a peaceful life and a happy marriage. He found himself now wondering if what he really wanted, what he had really been waiting for, was something more complex. Gina defined that characteristic in every way he could measure it. Her age, her smarts, those thoughts which tangled her in knots, the relationship failures of her past, that tendency to get easily hurt. Setting out to have something with her would have been a careful adventure, and he'd let her slip through his fingers. Even encouraged it to happen, for Jeff to introduce her to Daniel, and done what he could to make sure she had the time during this trip to get that relationship on a solid footing.

Jesus, do you have any idea
how I'm supposed to get myself out of this
jam I've put myself into?
he prayed, wondering if God would take pity on him. He'd finally met someone interesting, someone who had his attention, and he'd mishandled it before the possibility even got any traction.

M
ark waited for the high-tech security pad to place the digits one through nine in a random order on the keypad, then searched for the digits he needed to enter the building security code. The door clicked, and he pulled it open. The entire Naval Undersea Warfare Center's new acoustical research lab was an SCIF building, protected against electronic eavesdropping from outside. He headed up the stairs, provided a palm print, and was granted access to the second-floor labs and offices.

Mark paused before he tapped on the open corner-office door. There was something very pleasant about watching a woman absorbed in her work. Gina had been here for the majority of the last seven days, and he didn't think it had registered with her yet that it was Saturday. Toombs had found her a permanent office, and the desk surfaces were cluttered with open books, printouts, Post-it notes. At the moment she was studying data flowing across the screen and watching the picture on the second screen shift—wave forms of the audio, he realized, the visual form of the data he was accustomed to seeing on a waterfall screen. Her algorithms were turning
parts of the data stream orange and red and deep blue, and she hit the pause button to study the screen.

Her concentration broke as she realized someone was watching her, and she turned, her surprise followed by a welcoming smile. “Mark.”

“How's it going?”

“This is the first configuration, the
Ohio
recordings,” she said, and pointed to the screen and the flow of color in the sonar data. “It shows the ocean filled with geological noise. He's hearing the ping; he just thinks it's ocean noise.”

She shifted the cursor and zoomed in on a section of the audio wave form. “Here's the ping. But the sonar algorithm isn't picking up anything unusual to classify this as something to analyze further. When I force the audio stream through the deeper analysis, the software says it's a rock falling—which it actually is, as that was the sound I used as my cross-sonar ping.” She frowned slightly at the screen. “I'm not sure I could even write an algorithm that would identify this as something for further study or that could see it as something deeper than
just
a rockslide. It's possible I've created something I can't even deconstruct.”

Bishop smiled. “It's good then, the data.”

“Better than I expected by far.” She changed the data stream and the colors shifted. “Here's the coastal water ping. A cross-sonar ping has limitations where you would expect, in the noisy environment near the coast. The range it works drops down significantly. In the open ocean you can get an additional 60 miles on average. As you get into the coastline and the noise picks up, the added range falls to just over 15 miles.”

“That's still very significant for coastline work.”

Gina nodded. “I think the Undersea Warfare Group will
decide to deploy this capability in relatively quick fashion. The risks to cross-sonar are minimal compared to the visibility this offers. I think the returns are well worth the additional risks.”

He leaned against the corner of her desk. “How long do you need to complete the review?”

“At the pace this is going, I'll be finished by Monday.”

“I'll let Rear Admiral Hardman know.”

Bishop wasn't at all sure how to handle matters now with Gina. Given his own recently acknowledged interest in her, he was trying to find that elusive line between their genuine friendship and wanting to bring it to another level. He deliberately brought up the question he was curious about. “Are you going boating with Daniel this weekend?” He was aware Gina and Daniel had been out together several evenings in the last week.

Gina nodded. “Lunch on his boat tomorrow, followed by an afternoon on the water. We're fitting in what we can before he heads to Groton for five weeks at sub school.”

Bishop would have straightened, but he forced himself not to move from his perch, to simply nod. “You'll miss him.”

“He's nice company,” she replied. He thought she sounded a bit cautious.

He raised one eyebrow. “What just passed through your mind?”

She shook her head. “Are you heading home?”

“I am. I just swung by to see if I could talk you into wrapping it up for the day. Jeff has called me twice to say you need to be badgered to get out of this office. I noticed he has given up on calling you.”

She smiled. “Guilty. Give me the long side of 20 minutes
and I'll be done with what I want to get finished for the first pass. The idea works. Everything from this point on is simply polish to answer the question of what specifically gives the algorithms trouble.”

“I'll go let your security know you're finishing up so they can pull the server card for you when you're ready.”

“I'd appreciate that, Mark.”

Bishop got into his car, set his soda in the cup holder. Daniel Field was heading to Connecticut for five weeks. It was an unexpected opening. He thought about the situation as he watched Gina's security walk her to the sedan they were using to chauffer her around.

By the time Daniel left for Groton, Gina would have spent enough time with the man to have formed a solid impression. If she was looking at Daniel Field as the answer to her hopes and dreams, Mark would back off. But if there was a gap there, some maneuvering room, a soft opening, he had five weeks while Daniel was away to find out if there was something possible for him with Gina. If he did nothing, he would lose her for good—to Daniel Field or another man like him. He didn't want that to happen, but neither did he want to play with this woman's heart. She deserved better. But he'd like to find out if a future with her was an option.

Getting this woman to see him as more than a friend of her brother's would not be simple. She knew him as Jeff's friend, Melinda's husband, commander of the USS
Nevada
. He'd measure the success of the next few weeks by the amount of time he was able to spend with her. He needed to add to that list of how she saw him.

He wasn't going to come at her directly with an invitation to a movie and dinner. She no doubt would get flustered, come up with reasons to decline—she was seeing Daniel, she was living here only temporarily, she was getting over a broken relationship, there was too large of an age gap—whatever the reasons she would offer him as a polite way to say no, it would complicate things. He didn't plan to offer her that opening, not until she was at least comfortable with him.

It would be good for her morale to know that two men thought she was worth their time and attention. Nothing would help her recover from the bruised emotions Kevin had caused more than to realize she was liked by two guys. He didn't mind that idea at all. But he wasn't going to ask her to choose between himself and Daniel, because at the moment, she'd choose Daniel. Mark would work first on changing what she knew about him. Then he'd tell her he was seriously interested. It was a plan, one he could work with.

He followed the security car with Gina through the Bangor base and onto Highway 3 heading south. He'd decided to restart his social life, and he realized he'd already done so in a rather unexpected way.

Gina Gray. Gina B . . .
No, he wouldn't go there, not yet.

He watched the security car turn off toward Jeff's condo, and he headed on toward his own home. The odds were slim that there was any hope for him, but he had worked on small hope before. Until there was an engagement ring on her finger, there was still a chance.

The ocean tank was full. Bishop eyed it with some well-deserved caution. His XO was 12 feet below him, leaning into
the open hatch of the compartment butting up against the tank. “What have they built for us today, Kingman?” Bishop asked his XO.

“A torpedo room.”

“This is going to be interesting. Who's up for this training session?”

“The weapons group, and level three and four flood-suppression teams.”

The torpedo room mockup was part of a real sub, decommissioned, cut into sections and turned into full-size training compartments. They were going to face actual flooding today. A metal plate was holding back the ocean tank water. When people were in place for the drill, that metal plate would lift, a not-yet-announced problem with a hatch or a pipe or the hull would occur, and water would rush into the submarine compartment just as it would if the sub were out at sea. Only here, if the team learning how to combat the flooding got into trouble, the metal plate could be lowered in place and the water would recede.

Bishop had endured flooding in the missile bay when a missile tube failed to hold its seal, in the sonar dome when an accident had breached the hull, and in the command-and-control center when a ballast tank had failed. It had been a while since he'd fought flooding in the torpedo room.

The door to the adjoining teaching wing of the building opened. His XO met up with him on the observation level while more than 50 guys—a third of the gold crew—entered the training facility, fresh from morning lectures on flood-control procedures.

“Gear up, gentlemen,” the XO called. “Weapons team, first watch, you're with the captain. Flood teams three and four,
you're with me.” Kingman glanced back at Bishop. “Captain, permission for spectators to head to the bleacher seats?”

Bishop smiled. “Granted. Someone put personal video on this. I want to see how many times I get knocked off my feet this session.” He took off his watch and emptied his pockets, wanting something salvageable at the end of the day. He was due for a refresher course in flood control and had written himself into the training exercise. He would be in the compartment on an unrelated matter when the trouble began.

The training personnel conducting the drill joined them, carrying fluorescent numbers to slap on the back of uniforms to make the video easier to analyze. Bishop joined the six men of the weapons team as they took up stations in the torpedo room.

The drill began as a normal load-and-fire procedure. The torpedo—real but with no charge inside—moved along the tracking rack, was loaded into the tube, the hatch sealed, the tube pressurized to fire, and the outer door opened. Without an ocean to speed into, this torpedo would be caught by a steel net inside the tank.

“Torpedo three, fire.”

The torpedo man fired the MK48.

A real explosion shook the torpedo tube and echoed back into the torpedo room, vibrating through the hull. The tube hatch slammed back open, and water abruptly flooded into the sub compartment. The man nearest the hatch stumbled backward as the force of the water hit him. The man closest to the firing panel slammed a hand down on the flood alarm, setting off a piercing warning alarm throughout the ship. The nearest weapons man to the intercom grabbed the mike
to send a flash message to Control. “Explosion, deck four. Torpedo tube three fatally damaged, hatch blown open, full tube flooding of the torpedo room under way.”

The flood-suppression teams for levels three and four rushed down the ladder and the narrow passageway. Having to abandon the torpedo room to the incoming water, sealing the door, and welding it shut was the last step a boomer crew wanted to take, for it would leave the boat defenseless. The flood team entered the room, closed the hatch door behind them, and prepared to fight the water instead.

“We plug it,” the flood officer ordered, shifting people to the most effective option possible to stop the water. The damaged hatch door was struck with sledgehammers until it broke free. The tube cap was unbolted from the first torpedo tube and hefted into place. Brute force got it tipped up while the water pressure did its best to shove the cap back. The torpedo loading arm provided leverage to force the circular metal cap against the open torpedo tube while the flood officer clamped a vice down from above. Men scrambled to wrap the tube tape into place—tightly woven rope designed to build a seal one wrap at a time to hold against the water pressure. Water, now at mid-thigh, slowed, then stopped flooding in. The finish man lit a torch to weld the patch in place. Men stood, heaving to get their breath back.