The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [379]
"Level at six-zero feet, sir."
"Very well," Pitney replied.
"Conn, sonar, contact lost on Sierra-16. Surface noise is screwing us all up."
"What's the last position?" Ricks asked.
"Last bearing was two-seven-zero, estimated range four-nine thousand yards," Ensign Shaw replied.
"Okay. Run up the UHF antenna. Up scope," he also ordered the quartermaster of the watch. Maine was taking twenty-degree rolls now, and Ricks wanted to see why. The quartermaster rotated the red-and-white control wheel, and the oiled cylinder hissed up on hydraulic power.
"Wow," the captain said as he put his hands on the handles. He could feel the power of the sea slapping the exposed top of the instrument. He bent down to look.
"We have a UHF signal coming in now, sir," the communications officer reported.
"That's nice," Ricks said. "I'd call that thirty-foot seas, people, mostly rollers, some are breaking over. Well, we can shoot through that if we have to," he added almost as a joke. After all, this had to be a drill.
"How's the sky?" Claggett asked.
"Overcast - no stars." Ricks stood back and slapped the handles up. "Down 'scope." He turned to Claggett. "X, we want to get back tracking our friend just as soon as we can."
"'Aye, Cap'n."
Ricks was about to lift the phone to MCC. He wanted to tell the missile-control crew that he wanted this drill over just as fast as they could arrange it. The communications officer was in the compartment before he could push the proper button.
"Captain, this isn't a drill."
"What do you mean?" Ricks noticed that the lieutenant didn't look very happy.
"DEFCON-TWO, sir." He handed over the message.
"What?" Ricks scanned the message, which was brief and chillingly to the point. "What the hell's going on?" He handed it off to Dutch Claggett.
"DEFCON-TWO? We've never been at DEFCON-TWO, not as long as I've been in I remember a DEFCON-THREE once, but I was a plebe then."
Around the compartment, men traded glances. The American military has five alert levels, numbered five through one. DEFCON-FIVE was denoted normal peacetime operations. FOUR was slightly higher, calling for increased manning of certain posts, keeping more people - mainly meaning pilots and soldiers - close to their airplanes or tanks, as the case might be. DEFCON-THREE was far more serious. At that point units were fully manned for operational deployment. At DEFCON-TWO units began to deploy, and this level was saved for the imminent threat of war. DEFCON-ONE was a level to which American forces had never been called. At that point, war was to be considered something more than a threat. Weapons were loaded and aimed in anticipation of orders to shoot.
But the entire DEFCON system was more haphazard than one might imagine. Submarines generally kept a higher-than-normal state of alert as a part of routine operations. Missile submarines, always ready to launch their birds in a matter of minutes, were effectively at DEFCON-TWO all the time. The notice from the FLTSATCOM merely made it official, and a lot more ominous.
"What else?" Ricks asked communications.
"That's it, sir."
"Any news come in, any threat warning?"
"Sir, we got the usual news broadcast yesterday. I was planning to get the next one in about five hours - you know, so we'd have the Superbowl score." The lieutenant paused. "Sir, there was nothing in the news, and nothing official about any crisis."
"So what the hell is going on?" Ricks asked rhetorically. "Well, that doesn't really matter, does it?"
"Captain," Claggett said, "for starters, I think we need to break off from our friend at two-seven-zero."
"Yeah. Bring her around northeast, X. He's not due for another turn soon, and that'll open the range pretty fast, then we'll head north to open further."