“So far, so good. Relax, Jonesy. Light up if you want.”
“Thanks, Cap’n.” Jones fished out a cigarette and lit it with a butane lighter. He had never approached the captain quite this way. He knew Mancuso to be a tolerant, easygoing commander — if you had something to say. He was not a man who liked his time wasted, and it was sure as hell he wouldn’t want it wasted now. “Okay, sir, we gotta figure he couldn’t be too far away from us, right? I mean, he had to be between us and Iceland. So let’s say he was about halfway between. That gives him a course about like this.” Jones set down some more pencils.
“Hold it, Jonesy. Where does the course come from?”
“Oh, yeah.” Jones flipped open his clipboard. “Yesterday morning, night, whatever it was, after I got off watch, it started bothering me, so I used the move we made offshore as a baseline to do a little course track for him. I know how, Skipper. I read the manual. It’s easy, just like we used to do at Cal Tech to chart star motion. I took an astronomy course in my freshman year.”
Mancuso stifled a groan. It was the first time he had ever heard this called easy, but on looking at Jones’ figures and diagrams, it appeared that he had done it right. “Go on.”
Jones pulled a Hewlitt Packard scientific calculator from his pocket and what looked like a National Geographic map liberally coated with pencil marks and scribblings. “You want to check my figures, sir?”
“We will, but I’ll trust you for now. What’s the map?”
“Skipper, I know it’s against the rules an’ all, but I keep this as a personal record of the tracks the bad guys use. It doesn’t leave the boat, sir, honest. I may be a little off, but all this translates to a course of about two-two-zero and a speed of ten knots. And that aims him right at the entrance of Route One. Okay?”
“Go on.” Mancuso had already figured that one. Jonesy was on to something.
“Well, I couldn’t sleep after that, so I skipped back to sonar and pulled the tape on the contact. I had to run it through the computer a few times to filter out all the crap — sea sounds, the other subs, you know — then I rerecorded it at ten times normal speed.” He set his cassette recorder on the chart table. “Listen to this, Skipper.”
The tape was scratchy, but every few seconds there was a thrum. Two minutes of listening seemed to indicate a regular interval of about five seconds. By this time Lieutenant Mannion was looking over Thompson’s shoulder, listening, and nodding speculatively.
“Skipper, that’s gotta be a man-made sound. It’s just too regular for anything else. At normal speed it didn’t make much sense, but once I speeded it up, I had the sucker.”
“Okay, Jonesy, finish it,” Mancuso said.
“Captain, what you just heard was the acoustical signature of a Russian submarine. He was heading for Route One, taking the inshore track off the Icelandic coast. You can bet money on that, Skipper.”
“Roger?”
“He sold me, Captain,” Thompson replied.
Mancuso took another look at the course track, trying to figure an alternative. There wasn’t any. “Me, too. Roger, Jonesy makes sonarman first class today. I want to see the paper work done by the turn of the next watch, along with a nice letter of commendation for my signature. Ron,” he poked the sonarman in the shoulder, “that’s all right. Damned well done!”
“Thanks, Skipper.” Jones’ smile stretched from ear to ear.
“Pat, please call Lieutenant Butler to the attack center.”
Mannion went to the phones to call the boat’s chief engineer.
“Any idea what it is, Jonesy?” Mancuso turned back.
The sonarman shook his head. “It isn’t screw sounds. I’ve never heard anything like it.” He ran the tape back and played it again.
Two minutes later, Lieutenant Earl Butler came into the attack center. “You rang, Skipper?”
“Listen to this, Earl.” Mancuso rewound the tape and played it a third time.
Butler was a graduate of the University of Texas and every school the navy had for submarines and their engine systems. “What’s that supposed to be?”
“Jonesy says it’s a Russian sub. I think he’s right.”
“Tell me about the tape,” Butler said to Jones.
“Sir, it’s speeded up ten times, and I washed it through the BC-10 five times. At normal speed it doesn’t sound like much of anything.” With uncharacteristic modesty, Jones did not point out that it had sounded like something to him.
“Some sort of harmonic? I mean, if it was a propeller, it’d have to be a hundred feet across, and we’d be hearing one blade at a time. The regular interval suggests some sort of harmonic.” Butler’s face screwed up. “But a harmonic what?”
“Whatever it was, it was headed right here.” Mancuso tapped Thor’s Twins with his pencil.
“That makes him a Russian, all right,” Butler agreed. “Then they’re using something new. Again.”
“Mr. Butler’s right,” Jones said. “It does sound like a harmonic rumble. The other funny thing is, well, there was this background noise, kinda like water going through a pipe. I don’t know, it didn’t pick up on this. I guess the computer filtered it off. It was real faint to start with — anyway, that’s outside my field.”
“That’s all right. You’ve done enough for one day. How do you feel?” Mancuso asked.
“A little tired, Skipper. I’ve been working on this for a while.”
“If we get close to this guy again, you think you can track him down?” Mancuso knew the answer.
“You bet, Cap’n! Now that we know what to listen for, you bet I’ll bag the sucker!”
Mancuso looked at the chart table. “Okay, if he was heading for the Twins, and then ran the route at, say twenty-eight or thirty knots, and then settled down to his base course and speed of about ten or so… that puts him about here now. Long ways off. Now, if we run at top speed… forty-eight hours will put us here, and that’ll put us in front of him. Pat?”
“That’s about right, sir,” Lieutenant Mannion concurred. “You’re figuring he ran the route at full speed, then settled down — makes sense. He wouldn’t need the quiet drive in that damned maze. It gives him a free shot for four or five hundred miles, so why not uncrank his engines? That’s what I’d do.”
“That’s what we’ll try and do, then. We’ll radio in for permission to leave Toll Booth station and track this character down. Jonesy, running at max speed means you sonarmen will be out of work for a while. Set up the contact tape on the simulator and make sure the operators all know what this guy sounds like, but get some rest. All of you. I want you at a hundred percent when we try to reacquire this guy. Have yourself a shower. Make that a Hollywood shower — you’ve earned it — and rack out. When we do go after this character, it’ll be a long, tough hunt.”
“No sweat, Captain. We’ll get him for you. Bet on it. You want to keep my tape, sir?”
“Yeah.” Mancuso ejected the tape and looked up in surprise. “You sacrificed a Bach for this?”
“Not a good one, sir. I have a Christopher Hogwood of this piece that’s much better.”
Mancuso pocketed the tape. “Dismissed, Jonesy. Nice work.”
“A pleasure, Cap’n.” Jones left the attack center counting the extra money for jumping a rate.
“Roger, make sure your people are well rested over the next two days. When we do go after this guy, it’s going to be a bastard.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Pat, get us up to periscope depth. We’re going to call this one into Norfolk right now. Earl, I want you thinking about what’s making that noise.”
“Right, Captain.”
While Mancuso drafted his message, Lieutenant Mannion brought the Dallas to periscope-antenna depth with an upward angle on the diving planes. It took five minutes to get from five hundred feet to just below the stormy surface. The submarine was subject to wave action, and while it was very gentle by surface ship standards, the crew noted her rocking. Mannion raised the periscope and ESM (electronic support measures) antenna, the latter used for the broad-band receiver designed to detect possible radar emissions. There was nothing in view — he could see about five miles — and the ESM instruments showed nothing except for aircraft sets, which were too far away to matter. Next Mannion raised two more masts. One was a reed-like UHF (ultrahigh frequency) receiving antenna. The other was new, a laser transmitter. This rotated and locked onto the carrier wave signal of the Atlantic SSIX, the communications satellite used exclusively by submarines. With the laser, they could send high-density transmissions without giving away the sub’s position.