Seas of Crisis by Joe Buff Read Free Book Online

help their eyes adjust to the dimness. Several small pocket flashlights were brought out, to frequently check pipes and fittings for flaws that might otherwise go unobserved. All hunched more closely over their consoles. Their voices became more restrained.
    “Chief of the Watch, secure ventilation fans.”
    “Secure ventilation fans, aye.” COB worked switches. The air circulation vents ceased their hushing sound; the gentle cool breezes stopped. The change was portentous, eerie. Challenger, like a living thing, was hunkering down for maximum stealth.
    The control room slowly began to grow stuffy, from the heat and tense breathing of two dozen men and the warmth of electronics— Challenger ’s acoustic and thermal insulation kept the chill of the water outside well away from her innards. The crew was used to this, but no one liked it. If it went on for too long, personnel performance would be degraded, and eventually some important part of the combat systems might fail. Jeffrey knew that this was just one of many unpleasant trade-offs an SSN’s captain faced. Peering forward, he could see people shifting in their seats, flexing their shoulder blades, moving their heads back and forth, to loosen cramping muscles. The excitement of new mission orders had worn off. It wasn’t a game anymore.
    “Helm,” Bell ordered in a low but firm voice, “slow to ahead one third and make turns for five knots.”
    The helmsman, Patel, acknowledged, then gingerly touched icons on one of his screen menus. His arm movement was jerky, and Jeffrey thought he could see his hand shaking. In a moment, Patel reported in a near-whisper, “Maneuvering answers, ahead one-third, turns for five knots, sir.” Jeffrey heard the strain in his voice. Meltzer would have been handling the stress much better, but he’d been promoted to navigator.
    “Very well, Helm. Left five degrees rudder, make your course three-four-zero.”
    Again Patel acknowledged Bell, twisting his joystick.
    Feeling strangely detached, almost as if he’d been plunged back in time to the height of the Cold War, Jeffrey saw the own-ship heading’s readout on his console change as Challenger swung gently left. Who am I kidding? We’re in a second Cold War with Russia right now that could quickly turn hot.
    He envied the men who had assigned stations they could fixate on. With nothing concrete at the moment to keep him preoccupied, he found his mind beginning to dart from one item to the next. His gravimeter display, set in forward-looking mode, showed rugged Little Diomede and Big Diomede Islands a short distance ahead, slowly drifting rightward on the 3-D picture as Challenger continued her turn. He could see the ocean floor, the parts of the islands that rose steeply from the bottom, plus a notional transparent plain that marked the ocean’s surface, and the terrain of the islands exposed in the air. The sea floor was almost perfectly flat, at a depth of only one-hundred-sixty feet.
    On the left edge of the image, a mountainous knob three miles wide rose suddenly from the ocean floor to altitudes of over six thousand feet above sea level: the beginning of mainland Russia. On the right edge, on both the gravimeter and the navigation chart, Cape Prince of Wales and the Prince of Wales Shoal were visible. This jutting part of the Alaskan mainland was tipped by a mountain, too, though only half as tall as the Russian ones.
    Jeffrey eyed the tactical plot. All merchant shipping had been left behind, and none was detected in front. Every one of the handful of contacts held on the display, surface or airborne, was denoted by an icon that meant it was military, and Russian. If something submerged was lurking in ambush, a submarine or an unannounced minefield, Challenger ’s sensors and technicians hadn’t spotted it yet. Not that they weren’t trying. A few of the sonarmen and fire-control specialists were already wiping sweat off their foreheads.
    Rules of engagement for