Undetected
Authors: Dee Henderson
Tags: #FIC042040, #FIC027020, #FIC042060, #Women—Research—Fiction, #Sonar—Research—Fiction, #Military surveillance—Equipment and supplies—Fiction, #Command and control systems—Equipment and supplies—Fiction, #Sonar—Equipment and supplies—Fiction, #Radar—Military applications—Fiction, #Christian fiction
© 2014 by Dee Henderson
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Ebook edition created 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingâwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-6453-4
Scripture quotations are from the
Holy Bible
, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Jennifer Parker
Cover photography by Brandon Hill
The Son radiates God's own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.
Hebrews 1:3
F
ar below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, the USS
Nevada
glided silently through the waters. The storm 450 feet above the ballistic missile submarine barely disturbed their smooth, quiet ride.
Commander Mark Bishop stood off to the side in the command-and-control center, alert to what was happening but letting his crew do their jobs. The executive officer, his second-in-command, was serving as officer of the deck while the various stations were manned by the third watch. After 79 days at sea, they were at the top of their game, running drills and practice exercises with precision, handling busy nights like this one with a professional focus.
The storm above was hiding a full moon. For the crew of the
Nevada
it didn't matter if the moon or the sun was outâthey ran their own 18-hour version of a day aboard the sub with three watches lasting 6 hoursâbut they tracked the phase of the moon and the topside weather so they would know conditions should they need to make an emergency ascent and surface.
They were eight days away from the end of this patrol.
Handwritten signs counting down the hours were becoming artistic contests between divisionsâengineering was holding the top spot in Bishop's opinionâand the chief of the boat reported crew morale was good. Mark had already made the rounds through the four levels of the
Nevada
on the prior watch, and he tended to concur. Problems were remarkably few for this late in a deterrent patrol.
They had four days of relative calm before they would be moving into the busy waters off the western coast of the United States, where they would be dealing with the surge in surface traffic along the shipping lanes. But that didn't mean no one else was out here in the ocean with them. Bishop left the command-and-control center and walked forward to the sonar room.
A submarine crew was blind when underwater; the only way to tell what was around them was to listen. The sonar guys were listening tonight with some of the most sophisticated acoustical devices ever created. A dome full of hydrophones stretched across the front of the submarine, and a towed arrayâa long cable set with more hydrophonesâwas now deployed and trailing behind them. Sophisticated software took the data, created a three-dimensional picture of all the noise around the boat, then worked to identify the direction and source of the sounds.
Bishop stepped into the narrow room. His sonar chief, Larry Penn, standing behind his seated men, slipped off his headphones and offered a quiet, “The whales are moving east.”
“Got a count?”
“Four, plus two young.”
Penn handed the headphones over, and Bishop listened
for a minute to the haunting whale song. At least one male in the group, Bishop thought, given the sophistication of the melody. Bishop handed back the headphones. “Have you marked this audio for the marine biologist?”
“I'm having it dubbed,” Penn confirmed.
Bishop was sure he had encountered more whales in his years on the job than most marine biologists would in their entire careers. The oceans were more active than most people realized, and whales traveled for thousands of miles just as submariners did.
“Anything more on the faint surface contact?”
“The acoustical signature identifies it as the fishing trawler
Meeker III
out of Perth, Australia.”
“He's far from home tonight.” The Navy maintained files of acoustical signatures for every military ship and submarine in service around the world, as well as most commercial vessels. Given enough time, they were able to identify nearly every ship they heard above them.
“Got time for a question, Captain?” The sonar technician at the broadband console stack turned to ask.
His rank was that of commander. It would be another two years before he might be promoted to the rank of captain, but Navy tradition designated that the man in command of a boat be addressed as Captain regardless of his rank.
“Give me the question, Sonarman Tulley.”
“Do whales drink water?”
He'd been caught by that question two patrols ago. “No. They extract water from the food they digest. They don't drink salt water.”
“Good answer, sir,” Tulley replied.
Trying to stump the captain was considered a time-honored
custom on the
Nevada
. Those who succeeded were noted on the captain's board for the day and got a good-natured pat on the back from fellow crewmen. Sometimes even from the captain himself.
At the sonar terminals tonight were two experienced operators along with an ensign on his first patrol. The waterfall displays were filled with small blips in all directions. The ocean was noisy tonight, both above them and below. They were crossing over the moonless mountainsâa range of seamount formations deep in the oceanâthat were staggering in their size and height, but none of them reached the ocean surface. Numerous volcanic vents below them were releasing magma, creating hot, flowing spirals of ocean water that climbed to the surface like chimneys. Fish congregated to feast on the plankton that bloomed in the mineral-rich water.
Nevada
's sonar operators were listening for obstacles that the ship could hitâseafloor features not on the navigational mapsâas well as surface ships and other submarines. In an emergency ascent to the surface, Bishop would like to reach open waters rather than turn an unlucky fishing vessel into tinder. Other submarines might have hostile intent or might simply run into him by accident. Even a friend was a potential danger to the submerged
Nevada
.
The sonarman monitoring the narrowband console stack leaned forward. “Sir, possible new contact. Bearing 082.” He worked to bring the sound into sharper focus. “Surface contact, two screws.” The software searched for a match to the sound. “Possibly the transport vessel
Merrybell
, sir.”
The sonar chief reported the new contact to the command-and-control center. “Officer of the deck, sonar. New contact. Bearing 082. Surface ship transport vessel
Merrybell
.”
It was a routine night. Bishop felt a sense of contentment. The men were eager to be home, but while on watch they were giving the
Nevada
their A-game. The boat was in good hands. They wouldn't miss whatever could be heard out there. It took an enormous amount of trust in the sonar guys for the rest of the crew to be able to sleep well while underwater. They all knew if the sonar crew made a mistake, a collision risked the safety of the boat and the lives of all aboard.
Bishop had come forward to the sonar room to more than just observe operations. He turned the conversation to his concern for the next few days. “A Russian sub, an Akula II, was hiding at 135 fathoms, 87 miles off Washington State, when the
Alabama
came home from patrol,” he said. “The Akula was using the noise of the shipping channel and the current along the continental shelf to stay hidden. We need to assume he's around, and I doubt he's going to tuck himself into the same spot again. I want a good, solid look at the continental shelf before we approach.”
“If he's there, we'll find him, sir,” Penn assured him.
“I'm counting on it.”
They would be able to hear the Akula before it heard them, all things being equal. But Bishop would like to tip the odds even more in his favor. “Any sign of the
Seawolf
?”
“Not yet, sir.”
Their job was to hide, and the USS
Nevada
crew took it as a point of honor that no oneâfriend or foeâhad ever located them while on a deterrent patrol. But in this situation it would be prudent to seek out some help to ensure they had a clear route home. The USS
Seawolf
would be in the waters to the east where they were heading, guarding the front door to the Naval Submarine Base Bangor. Cross-sonar with the
Seawolf
, and the picture about the possible Russian Akula would get a lot clearer.
“As soon as you get a glimmer of a contact that might be the
Seawolf
, we'll go all-quiet and see if we can't slip in beside him unnoticed before we say hello.”
Penn grinned. “I like it, sir.”
Commander Mark Bishop headed back to the command-and-control center. If asked what he did for a living, he tended to offer the deliberately low-key reply, “I'm in the Navy,” and leave it at that. He was the commander of the ballistic missile submarine USS
Nevada
gold crew. He was one of 28 men entrusted with half the U.S. deployed nuclear arsenal.
His job was to keep this nuclear submarine operationally safe, its crew of 155 trained and focused during their 90-day submerged patrol, and be prepared to launch a missile carrying a nuclear weapon on valid presidential orders. A civilian conversation about his work couldn't go very far when nearly everything he did was classified.
They were off hard-alert, the USS
Maine
had taken over for them, but they could be back to that highest readiness level within three to five hours.
There were always two ballistic missile submarines on hard-alertâin their watch area ready to fireâpatrolling in the Pacific, another two on hard-alert in the Atlantic, with two more in each ocean ready to come to hard-alert within a few hours. The remaining six boomers in the U.S. fleet of 14 were in port undergoing maintenance and resupply, preparing to return to sea. The number of subs made possible
a rotation home every 90 days while maintaining a constant strategic deterrent for the nation.
Each ballistic missile submarine was assigned two crews, a gold crew and a blue crew, who would alternate taking the submarine out on patrol. Three days after he arrived back in port, Bishop would hand over the
Nevada
to his counterpart on the blue crew, and the submarine would undergo 25 days of refitâmaintenance and resupplyâand then the blue crew would take her out to sea to patrol for the next 90 days. Bishop and the gold crew would get the
Nevada
back in four months' time.
His crew considered having to share the
Nevada
with the blue crew to be a painful time-share. The men loved having four months onshore, but they hated to give up
their
boat to others' hands. The grumbling would begin soon after they set foot back on the
Nevada
. If an item could be moved, blue crew left it somewhere gold crew wasn't expecting. The first few days would be spent returning the coffeepot, training materials, onboard movies, wrenches, maintenance logs,
Nevada
photos, and the boat mascot to the proper gold-crew-designated spots. Repairs and maintenance not up to gold-crew standards would get fussed over and typically redone. The rivalry between the two crews over who best handled and cared for the USS
Nevada
was intense. Bishop considered it a healthy attachment to the boat on which they depended for their lives and for their country's safety.
The
Nevada
was 560 feet long, the center third housing 24 Trident II D-5 missiles standing four stories high. Each missile carried eight nuclear warheads. The USS
Nevada
was one of the most lethal weapons ever built and, paradoxically, also one of the safest.
The training never stopped. The drills never stopped. Safety was life, and submariners lived it like no other profession on earth. They knew their boat inside and out and focused intensely on what could go wrong, how to prevent it, and if it couldn't be prevented, how to immediately fix it. There had never been a ballistic-missile submarine lost at sea since this class of submarines began to patrol the oceans over 30 years ago. Bishop considered it a sacred trust to maintain that record.
He was in the second of his three years in command of the USS
Nevada
. After three years, the Navy would congratulate him on a job well done, send him back to shore duty, and in due course promote him to captain. He was in no hurry to get that promotion. This was the sweet spot of his career. The best job in the service was the one he now had. He was taking full enjoyment in every day of this command.
His next job might be to oversee a squadron of six missile subs, or serve at the Pentagon, or teach at the Naval War College. A challenging job would emerge, he knew, but shore duty meant his not being at sea. He was going to miss this job when it came his turn to relinquish command, and that day would inevitably come. But it wouldn't be tonight.
Bishop paused beside the navigation officer and studied their position on the horizontal digital display table. The boat's location and all known contacts were electronically identified and constantly updated. The navigational map for this stretch of the Pacific had been updated just before the patrol began, and this new map had exquisitely detailed topology. The continental shelf and the canyons leading away from it stood in perfect relief. If the Akula was out there, the territory he could be hiding in was vast, and the terrain gave
him numerous places to select. There was no need to risk a contact. But where to position the boat for the next few days was the question.