The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [212]
Jones hesitated just a fraction before answering. "I think somebody was tracking Maine."
"Track an Ohio! Come on."
"Where is she now?"
"Heading back out to sea, as a matter of fact. Blue Crew is embarked. She links up with a 688 when she clears the strait for some noise checks, then clears to her patrol area." Mancuso could discuss almost anything with Jones. His company consulted on the sonar technology for all submarines and anti-submarine platforms in the U.S. fleet, and that necessarily included a lot of operational information.
"Got any Gold Crew guys on base now?"
"The captain's off on vacation. XO's here, Dutch Claggett. Know him?"
"Wasn't he on the Norfolk? Black guy, right?"
"That's right."
"I've heard good stuff about him. He did a nice job on a carrier group on his command quals. I was riding a P-3 when he kicked their ass."
"You heard right. He's being deep-dipped. This time next year he'll be taking command of a fast-attack."
"Who's his skipper?"
"Harry Ricks. Heard of him, too?"
Jones looked at the floor and muttered something. "I got a new guy working for me, retired chief whose last tour was with Ricks. Is he as bad as I hear?"
"Ricks is a super engineer," Mancuso said. "I mean it. He's a genius at that stuff."
"Fine, skipper, so are you, but does Ricks know how to drive?"
"Want some coffee, Ron?" Mancuso gestured at the pot.
"You might want Commander Claggett here, sir." Jones rose and got his own coffee. "Since when have you turned diplomat?"
"Command responsibilities, Ron. I never told outsiders about the crazy stuff you did on Dallas."
Jones turned and laughed. "Okay, you got me there. I have the sonar analysis in my briefcase. I need to see his course tracks, depth records, that stuff. I think there's a good chance Maine had a trailer, and that, Bart, is no shit."
Mancuso lifted his phone. "Find Lieutenant-Commander Claggett. I need him in my office at once. Thank you. Ron, how sure -"
"I did the analysis myself. One of my people looked it over and caught a whiff. I spent fifty hours massaging the data. One chance in three, maybe more, that she was being trailed."
Bart Mancuso set his coffee cup down. "That's really hard to believe."
"I know. That very fact may be skewing my analysis. It is kinda incredible."
It was an article of faith in the United States navy that its fleet ballistic-missile submarines had never, not ever, not once been tracked while on deterrence patrol. As with most articles of faith, however, it had caveats.
The location of American missile-sub bases was not a secret. Even the United Parcel Service deliverymen who dropped off packages knew what to look for. In its quest for cost-efficiency, the Navy mainly used civilian security officers - 'rentacops' - at its bases. Except that Marines were used wherever there were nuclear weapons. Wherever you saw Marines, there were nukes about. That was called a security measure. The missile boats themselves were unmistakably different from the smaller fast-attack subs. The ship names were on the Navy register, and the sailors of those ships wore ballcaps identifying them by name and hull number. With knowledge available to anyone, the Soviets knew where to station their own fast-attack boats to catch the American 'boomers' on the way out to sea.
At first this had not been a problem. The first classes of Soviet fast-attack submarines had been equipped with 'Helen Keller' sonars that could neither see nor hear, and the boats themselves had been noisier than unmuffled automobiles. All that had changed with the advent of the Victor-111 class, which approximated a late American 594-class in radiated noise levels, and began to approach adequacy in sonar performance. Victor-111s had occasionally turned up at the Juan de Fuca Strait - and elsewhere - waiting for a U.S. missile sub to deploy, and in some cases, since harbor entrances are typically restricted waters, they had established contact and held on tight. That occasionally had included active sonar-lashing,