Undetected (6 page)

“Navigation, bridge. Time to the next turn?” Kingman asked.

“Bridge, navigation. Seven minutes, twenty seconds.”

Hours later the USS
Nevada
passed through the now-open Hood Canal Bridge, people scrambling out of their cars to watch the massive submarine slip through the opening. Bluffs on either side of the waterway held dense forests coming down to the water, along with a sprinkling of expensive homes glimpsed through the trees overlooking Puget Sound.

The
Nevada
made the final turn toward home. No matter how many times Bishop made this journey, the impact was still the same—pride in the crew, appreciation of the beauty around him, and a deep sense of relief that another patrol had ended without incident. Their home port appeared ahead on the east shore of Hood Canal.

“Engineering, bridge. All stop,” the XO ordered.

The sub's forward speed began to slow, and only momentum now carried the boat forward. They came to a peaceful pause, just north of the fourth pier. Two tugboats joined up and nudged the boat in concert toward Delta Pier B. Crewmen turned cleats on the boat's smooth hull upward to allow mooring ropes to be secured. The
Nevada
snuggled into its berth.

“Good job, XO,” Bishop said.

Kingman grinned. “Thank you, sir.” Sweat had turned the edges of his hair wet, and his face showed exhaustion to go along with the pleasure. The man had completed an
extended workout getting the
Nevada
in without a scratch on her hull. It was Kingman's first time navigating the entire 155-mile transit—16 hours in command, figuring out what to do when. Bishop had provided occasional summaries of what came next, just as a good caddy would provide a pro golfer, but Bishop had never needed to step in with stronger advice or direction. Bishop remembered well his first time piloting unassisted through the transit. It was a sweet relief and well-earned success.

People were waiting for them on the pier—contractors and Navy personnel who ran the maintenance and supply operations for Bangor—several of the faces familiar, as many had worked on the base 20 years or more. Security concerns now prevented civilians from being on the pier, so families would be waiting for the crew at the Squadron 17 ready room. Bishop watched as marines from the Weapons Storage Facility took up their station, each of them fully armed. They would remain in place around the clock while missiles were aboard.

The walkway swung over from the pier to
Nevada
's exposed surface deck. Bishop pushed up his sunglasses and headed from the sail down the ladder into the command-and-control center. Men were securing the boat, shutting down equipment, and preparing to connect for power to the shore.

Bishop picked up the intercom and set it to 1MC. “This is the captain. Welcome home, crew of the USS
Nevada
. A good patrol, and a solid chance at the battle E this year. You did the
Nevada
proud. Families are gathering at the Squadron 17 ready room. Enlisted not assigned duty stations for the overnight watch are dismissed after the boat is secured.
Report back to the boat at 0900 for hand-over preparation. All officers report in to the commander. Captain out.”

A good patrol, and he felt the relief of having gotten his men safely home to their families. But as he secured the mic in its place, he knew he would not have anybody waiting for him in the ready room. It was time to change that.

A
fter 90 days without sunlight, Commander Mark Bishop preferred running errands at night for his first few days back onshore. Even with dark sunglasses, the sun's rays seemed overly bright. Life onshore—traffic, dogs barking, advertising everywhere he looked, crowds passing by—seemed loud and chaotic. At night, at least this assault of sights and sounds was tempered. He was a man in good shape, but being in command of a deterrent patrol left him physically beat, tired to the bone. When he stepped onshore the toll made itself felt. For the next couple of weeks he planned on 12 hours of sleep a night to get himself feeling less like an old man, good food, and as much time
not
being in charge of anything as he could arrange.

The
Nevada
was still claiming most of his time, yet that was soon coming to a conclusion. Hand-over of the boat to the blue-crew commander was just 10 hours away, at which time this patrol would officially be over. What he wanted tonight was ice cream, and at two a.m. on Bangor base—with his home and a 24/7 supermarket nearly a half hour away—the choices were between what the Squadron 17 ready room had
left in the freezer or what the newly opened 7-Eleven across from Bangor Plaza had available.

So, ice cream from the convenience store, then back to the USS
Nevada
for another three hours of paper work, clear his personal belongings from the captain's stateroom, and prepare for final walk-through. A skeleton crew was aboard tonight, monitoring the reactor shutdown and off-loading sonar recordings. The full contingent of gold crew would be back at the sub at 0800 for the final crew call and hand-over to the blue crew, with the ceremonial awarding of dolphins appropriately scheduled for the Bangor Plaza Conference Center's
Nevada
ballroom at noon.

He would have the privilege of pinning 14 of his crew this afternoon. Getting approved to wear the dolphins—proof you were qualified to call yourself a submariner—required demonstrating the knowledge and function of 70 distinct systems on board, from navigation to missile control. The 70 signatures collected on your qual card came from senior crewmen evaluating your competency. Then you had to survive two verbal exams by the chief of the boat and the captain. Getting pinned with dolphins was a key milestone during the first two years of a submariner's life. Those being awarded today had earned it.

Once dismissed from the ceremony, the gold crew's 30 days of R and R would start in earnest. A month from now, training and class assignments would post, and for the two months after that, men would be busy with two-day to three-week refresher courses at the Trident Training Facility or at the Submarine School, Groton, Connecticut. Half was cross-training for other jobs aboard the sub; the rest focused on the equipment the crewman was responsible for repairing,
maintaining, and operating on the boat. The final month before blue crew returned with the
Nevada
, gold crew would begin preparations for their next patrol. It was four months of life onshore with a cadence that worked. When it ended, most of the crew would be looking forward to going back to sea. Mark would be one of them.

He planned to spend part of his month of R and R rehabbing the deck behind his house, then expected to spend two months attending classes and working on special projects for the Submarine Group 9 commander. It would be a very pleasant summer. He hoped to fit in as many fishing trips as he could arrange. He'd never bought a boat, figuring enough friends owned one that buying gas and helping swab the decks would get him a fishing partner or a set of keys when he wanted to go out. Catch some fish, get some sun, enjoy the water from above rather than below, see how a first date with Linda went—he had his core plan for his summer in mind.

He pulled into the parking lot of the 7-Eleven on Ohio Street. Ice cream. Then finish preparations for the hand-over of the
Nevada
. When this day ended he'd be on R and R. It already had the feel of being a very good day.

Mark noticed the security before he noticed her. A security officer was at the door of the 7-Eleven, standing by the spin rack of potato-chip selections, unobtrusively checking out those who came and went. Mark recognized him, was acknowledged in return with a brief nod, and with that recognition Mark came to sharp alert. He scanned the store, expecting to see the rear admiral who ran Bangor getting himself a sandwich, but saw no one in uniform among the four
individuals in the store. Mark headed toward the back of the store, paused to see what bakery goods were left, considered a day-old donut, then talked himself out of it.

She was standing at the glass doors of the freezer display, studying ice-cream choices. She finally reached in and selected a pint, the dark ribbing around the side of the container one he recognized as dark chocolate with brownie chunks. She wore an oversized Navy jacket in blue and gold, faded jeans, beat-up tennis shoes, her long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail.

He glanced over a second time as she turned toward the checkout counter. “Gina?”

She stopped and looked back at him.

Gina Gray
. It had been two years since he last saw her. She was working in Colorado, her brother Jeff was still at sea. There was no reason for her to be on the West Coast, and yet here she was, at Bangor, wearing one of Jeff's jackets. She smiled when she recognized him.

He had his reason for the security.

He stepped in her direction. She looked good. Thinner than he remembered, but otherwise she hadn't changed. She looked as young as some of his crew, and just about disappeared in the jacket—like a high school cheerleader wearing a football player's letter jacket. She was . . . what?—he tried to remember—a decade or so younger than her brother? So 26 now? Or 28? He'd known her for four years before he realized there was a Navy department that existed because of her ideas. She'd created cross-sonar.

“What brings you to Bangor?” he asked.

She started to answer him, and her words froze. Her eyes closed as she fought the embarrassment of it.

He relaxed, waited. He knew about her occasional difficulty with words. It was a kind of stage fright that people experienced before a speech with a large audience or when performing in front of a crowd. But for her it came and went in an unpredictable fashion. Much like a stutterer had moments when the words wouldn't come, Gina had moments when her speech didn't cooperate. Mark had his ideas for why it happened so often with him over the years, but he'd kept those thoughts to himself. She got embarrassed enough as it was.

A minute passed. The words weren't returning.

He chose a pint of cherry chocolate chip ice cream for himself, picked up two plastic spoons from the basket beside the hot-dog relish, reached over and took her ice cream pint. He gently tugged her hand. “Come with me, Gina.”

He paid for her purchase and his. He gave a nod to the security man as he directed her outside.

Jeff had introduced them at a backyard barbecue seven years ago. A good man and protective of his sister.
“Gina, the genius,”
Jeff liked to whisper with affection, his arms draped across her shoulders. He'd give her cover from the crowd when her words wouldn't come and shyness overwhelmed her. She was interesting, Mark thought, for her unusual life and abilities. She had never met his late wife, but he knew Melinda would have liked her.

With a nearly full moon and a gentle southwesterly wind, enjoyable Bangor views of the night sky welcomed them outdoors, and he nodded north so they could walk a bit and be away from those who might overhear a conversation. Security fell in a ways behind them.

He opened his ice cream; she opened hers.

“It's good to see you, Mark,” she finally said softly.

“The same.” He took a bite of ice cream, glanced her way. “I saw Jeff in passing four days ago, off the coast. He was having a good time. I left him chasing an Akula.”

She smiled. “He'll enjoy that.”

“Your cross-sonar works like a charm. Fast-attacks use it all the time to sync up when they're protecting a battle group. But it's been handy even for us boomers, especially when we're at our most vulnerable, coming into home port.”

“I'm glad to hear it.”

“What brings you out to Bangor?” he asked again.

“I had some sonar ideas I wanted to explore, and I needed to get away from Boulder for a while.”

“Something happen?”

She shrugged. “A guy I met there . . . well, we broke up. It's been hard seeing Kevin at work every day. And the satellite mapping work I've been doing of the oceans' seabed is done but for the processing time.”

“I've seen a couple of the new navigation maps. Those yours?”

She nodded.

“The detail is superb.”

“Thanks.”

“I'm sorry to hear about Kevin. Jeff's mentioned him a few times.”

Mark knew Gina had been dating Kevin Taggert for the last two years. Her brother thought he was okay, but Mark could hear in the way Jeff talked about it that he was kind of cool on the guy. Kevin was a government academic who also worked at NOAA, maybe a good fit for her on paper, but not so much in reality. The fact the relationship had broken apart wouldn't surprise Jeff.

“Kevin was kind about it, but I didn't see it coming. Not sure why I didn't.” She shook her head. “You had a good patrol?” she asked.

“All-quiet,” he said. “The best kind.”

“Got a chance for the battle E this year?”

He smiled. “Working on it.
Nebraska
is going to be stiff competition.” He wanted to win Best Boat of the Year, and his crew was giving him their all to make it happen. They were a competitive bunch of guys.

He liked Gina. Always had. She was younger than his sisters. She had started college at 14, taken an interest in sonar because her brother was pursuing a career as a submariner. The Navy had gotten a fortunate break there. She could have turned her interest to medicine or biochemistry. Cross-sonar was so classified, the Navy department that deployed what she'd developed had been given the name Sonar Maintenance and Acoustical Hardware Longevity Program. The name alone suggested it was too boring a department to be curious about, which was effective at keeping interest low as to what was being done.

“Gina,
the genius,”
Jeff would say with affection, while privately Mark knew he worried about what his sister was going to do to keep from being bored. It was one thing to be a gifted child, another to be a gifted adult. She was ahead of where knowledge was at in her own fields of study, and finding something to keep her absorbed required breaking new terrain. Jeff was concerned about the pressure she felt from expectations on her to produce new science. She had the skills to go where she would like and work on what was appealing. Finding a job would never be an issue. But that led to a nomadic life. The crosscurrents of boredom, others'
expectations, and whether she could settle down someplace long term all added to her brother's concerns for her future.

Jeff had hoped Boulder would be a good place where she'd be able to stay for more than a few years. Jeff's big-brother worries were shared by Mark too, now that he realized she was again in transition. He remembered similar worries with his own sisters before they'd married and settled down, starting families of their own.

Gina had come to Bangor to see her brother. Mark got that priority without her having to say it. The fact she was here weeks before Jeff was due back in port told Mark more than she had said about Boulder and how badly the breakup had hit her. Gina was keeping herself busy while she waited by working on her sonar ideas. Probably true enough.

“Some sonar ideas, is it? Care to talk about what you're working on?”

She gave him a long look, as if considering whether she wanted to answer him. “What if you could actively ping,” she finally said, “and the other guy couldn't hear you?”

He stopped, stunned. “That's possible?”

“It's one idea I'm here to explore.”

It felt like a punch. She was a national-security nightmare.

One advantage the U.S. had over every other submarine force in the world was its ability to be quieter than the other guys, to hear them coming by passively listening. The only way another country's submarines could find a U.S. sub was by a mistake on the part of the U.S. crew, or by an active ping—sending out a sound through the water and listening for the returning echo. But the fact they generated the sound gave away their own position. It was a basic tenet of submarine warfare that to ping was to get yourself a torpedo in reply.
But if it was possible
to ping without
being heard
—it turned on its head basic submarine warfare tactics.

Mark started walking again. He wanted to wince, but his job had trained him to accept the unthinkable and deal with it—fast, logically, and with a steady, cool calm. The implications of her idea were reverberating through his mind. This was more than just dangerous territory; it was destabilizing.