Hostile Contact. Gordon Kent

       1

      400 NM east of Socotra, Indian Ocean.

      Captain Rafe Rafehausen slammed his S-3B into the break and thought that he’d done it badly, out of practice, the move both too sudden and too harsh, and beside him he heard Lieutenant jg Soleck give a grunt. Rafehausen had an impulse to snarl and overcame it; he was the CAG and he didn’t fly enough and the kid was right—he should have done it better. Although, as he knew from the weekly reports, the kid’s landing scores were the worst on the boat.

      “Gear one, two, three, down—and locked—flaps, slats out—hook is—down—read airspeed and fuel, Mister Soleck—”

      The jg muttered the fuel poundage and airspeed, which Rafehausen could have read perfectly well for himself, of course. He supposed he was trying to communicate with the much younger man, who seemed mostly terrified of him.

      “Not one of the great breaks of all time, Mister Soleck.”

      “Uh—no, sir—but good, sir—considering—”

      Rafehausen lined up dead-on, said, “Ball,” when he caught the green, and took the LSO’s instructions almost unconsciously, now into his groove and operating on long and hard-won experience. He caught the two wire, rolled, lifted the hook and let a yellow-shirt direct him forward.

      “Nice landing, sir.”

      Rafehausen smiled. “Little rough, Mister Soleck. Practice makes perfect.” He slapped the ensign on the shoulder. “Weeklies tell me you need some practice yourself.” He would have walked away then, but he saw the kid blush and look suddenly stricken, so he put the hand more gently on his shoulder and walked with him over the nonskid that way, shouting over the deck noise, “Don’t take it wrong, Soleck—we all get into slumps! Hey, how about you and me do some practice landings together sometime?”

      He debriefed in the Det 424 ready room, which was his for the moment only because he’d borrowed one of their aircraft, and then made his way to the CAG’s office. He wished, often, that he was a squadron officer again—no stacks of paper, no wrangles with personalities and egos. Now that it was too late, he knew that when you were a squadron pilot, you were having the best that naval air offered; Soleck didn’t know how lucky he was. What came later—rank, status, command—were compensation for not being a young warrior with a multi-million-dollar horse and a whole sky to ride it in.

      “Another urgent p-comm from Al Craik, Rafe,” a lieutenant-commander said as he sat down. “Same old shit—‘Request immediate orders,’ etcetera, etcetera.”

      “What’s the medical officer say?”

      “No way.”

      “Even in non-flight-crew status?”

      “Negative. MO says the man ‘needs to heal and overcome trauma, period, and don’t ask again.’ Another month, maybe.”

      Alan Craik was a personal friend, and Rafehausen wished he could help him. Craik had been flown back to the carrier with part of one hand shot off and so much blood gone that the medics thought they’d lose him; now back in the States, he was recovered enough to be itching to return to duty. But not enough to serve.

      “Send Craik a message over my name: the answer is no, and don’t ask again for at least two weeks.”

      

      Unimak Canyon, Aleutian Archipelago.

      “Depth is two hundred meters and steady.”

      “Steady at two hundred.” The Chinese captain, standing by his command chair, turned and looked toward sonar station three, the towed array whose passive equipment had most reliably tracked the American. His crew had scored more contact hours on an American ballistic missile submarine in the last four days than any submarine in the history of the Chinese Navy. No moment of that time had been easy.

      Even when he knew where the submarine would be, it was almost invisible.

      Even trailing it by a mere four thousand meters, it was almost inaudible.

      He dared not close any more. His own boat, the Admiral Po, was a killer, slow but sure—the best his service had to offer, but too loud and too old, and no amount of pious mouthing to the Party would change the fact that she leaked radiation from her reactor compartment. Her condition affected the crew, destroyed morale, made retention of the dedicated specialists vital to the service nearly impossible.

      He was going to change that. He was going to follow an American ballistic missile sub, a “boomer,” from her base near Seattle to her patrol area, wherever that was. And he was going to take that information home and shove it down the throat of the Party until they paid the money to make his service the equal of her rivals in Russia, Great Britain, and, most of all, America. Because when he had the patrol area where the most precious eggs in the American nuclear basket rested, he would bury the army and the airforce.

      “She’s turning to port.”

      “All engines stop!” Drift. Every time the American maneuvered, Admiral Po had to drift. He couldn’t take the risk that the Americans were executing a clearing turn to get their passive sonar on their wake. Twice the boomer had done just that, and he had waited, knuckles white, drenched in sweat as the two submarines passed in silence. He couldn’t risk detection. Detection would imperil not only the operation but also its source, a faceless spy whose radio transmissions told him where to pick up the boomer near the American west coast and when.

      Admiral Po’s secret friend. Jewel.

      “Passing 340 relative and increasing engine noise.”

      “Increasing speed?”

      Two men in a darkened ballroom. Each can track the other only when he moves and makes a noise. Where is he? Where is he going? How fast is he moving?

      Omnipresent—Is he behind me?

      The sonarman, his best, watched his three screens, touching buttons and waiting for the computer to analyze tracking data. Passive sonar was an imperfect sensor that had to detect emanations from the target; only active sonar sent out its own signal and listened for the reflection. Sonarmen on passive looked for certain telltale “lines:” auxiliaries, reactors, propeller wash. They hoped for a specific signature that could be reliably assigned to the target, and not, say, a passing whale or a fishing boat on the surface. When they had a library of such noises, they became better trackers, but this endless game of follow-the-leader required constant analysis and perfect guesswork. The cream of the sonar team had been at their stations since they entered the difficult undersea terrain of the Aleutian chain—three watches. The captain hadn’t left the bridge for more than an hour in four days. Despite air-conditioning and high discipline, the bridge stank of sweat and shorted electrical power, a faint ozone smell that never left the Admiral Po. The captain thought it was the smell of leaking radiation.

      “Nine knots and still increasing, turning hard to port. I think he’s diving, as well. I’m losing the track in his own wake.” The man sounded exhausted. That was not good; the excitement had kept them going through the first bad moments off Kodiak Island. Now that, too, was gone.

      “Come to 270 and make revolutions for three knots.”

      “270 and three knots. Aye.”

      “Status?”

      “He’s gone.”

      The captain rolled his head slowly to the right and left, banished all thought of angry response from his mind, and settled slowly into his command chair.

      “He’s drifting. He will complete the turn as a clearing turn before running the Unimak channel.” The captain didn’t feel anything like the certainty he projected, but it was a skill that came with command.

      “270 and three