The Circle

by David Poyer

  He found out later that Packer had ordered the flooding then. The chain locker, forward powder magazine, all but one of the potable water tanks, and two deep storerooms aft.

  At 0530, the captain brought her around again for the fourth try. But now when she took the first roll, there was a lightning crack aloft and a spurt of black smoke.

  The bedspring framework of the air-search antenna toppled out of it. A corner of it smashed into the anemometer, wiping it off the mast. The little vane sailed away, its propeller windmilling, as the radar cartwheeled once and, trailing cables, plunged down into the slick-looking sea in the lee of the laboring ship.

  The higher the weight, the worse its effect on stability. Dan, watching, multiplied the mass of the antenna, motor, and gear train by its height above the keel. As far as he could figure, it was better than taking fifteen tons of ice off the main deck.

  Whether it was that or the flooding, or both, this time she rode better. She was logy but didn’t seem to be rolling as far. She rode differently, no longer rising to the waves, but sliding her nose under them, like an old cat burrowing under the blankets on a winter night. He watched the seas sweep across the forecastle, so deep that he couldn’t see the ground tackle for minutes on end. They swept over the mount, burying it, just the tip of the UHF antenna atop it sticking up like a periscope. Just as well we flooded the magazine, he thought.

  For a moment, his swollen, wooden, blood-imprinted face tried to smile. It was as if Ryan, hunting a submarine, was determined to become one herself. Then his quivering lips stilled.

  Only if she went down, she’d never come up.

  He was thinking about coffee and dry clothes when the 1MC said, faint above the renewed howl of the wind, “Now relieve the watch. On deck, Antisubmarine Condition One Alfa, Watch Section Two.”

  16

  DAWN arrived on schedule a little before 1100. Dan was topside when it came, making his way aft toward the head. He stopped for a moment in the lee of the bridge.

  He stared out, shivering, as gray light seeped slowly back into the world of sixty-seven and some degrees north.

  It showed him a universe conceived in monochrome. The sky was low and less gray than gray-black, as if slag heaps were smoldering just below the jagged horizon. Why did that edge seem closer, as if the world had shrunk overnight? As Ryan inclined sluggishly, he gripped the icy steel of the splinter shield and leaned out, looking down.

  Yes. The black boot topping was two or three feet beneath the average waterline. The old destroyer was riding lower, like a gradually soaking log.

  Beneath the growing light the sea steamed like a boiling kettle. White haze moved steadily past the laboring ship, pushed by the wind. Only dimly, in the last minute before they were on them, could he see the oncoming swells. He tried to count seconds between the crests. They were confused, hard to tell apart, but they seemed longer. They were still high, though. Thirty feet from crest to trough was his estimate. Their smooth gray faces drew closer and closer, solidifying gradually behind the sea smoke, then suddenly leaping from ghostliness into imminence, towering like black cliffs under the slaty sky. They collapsed with the roar of a gravel slide, shattering suddenly into white froth over new white ice.

  The deck reeled back to port, flinging him downward through space. Clinging to the rail, he stared down into the smoky, roiling, gray-green surface. For a moment, in the smooth funneled surface of an eddy, his own blurred face peered back from beneath the sea.

  From all this, he computed slowly that the prevailing swell was still from the starboard beam, or maybe a little abaft it. The wind had veered and was almost from astern. The storm center was still moving north, then. Good; about time they had a break. But then, if they had to steam southwest, they’d be beam-on again.

  “There’s no way you can win,” he said, then stopped himself. Not out loud! He was getting tired.

  On the bright side, she was still afloat. Nine hours ago, you wouldn’t have bet your paycheck on that, he thought. Ryan was wallowing, half submerged. She wasn’t designed to ride this way. Old steel wouldn’t take the strain forever. But at least she was coming back from the rolls. And for the last few hours, she’d been making twelve, sometimes fifteen knots as Packer ordered turns cranked on.

  Then he remembered the floe. A shiver traced his spine under the foul-weather jacket. He squinted forward, scanning the hunchbacked sea. The lookouts had been doubled, and they’d maneuvered to avoid three more since sighting the first. Nothing now, though. He decided it was safe to take a leak.

  The bridge urinal was aft of the pilothouse, tacked on as an afterthought next to the forward stack. A steel closet the size and shape of a coffin shielded it from wind and spray. Rock salt and broken glass grated under his boots as he set his legs apart, leaned against the bulkhead, and wearily hauled it out.

  So far, this watch was a zero. They were making easting, but they had no contact. Reed and Orris kept talking about a front they expected to cross. They seemed to think that was hiding the sub from them. But whatever the reason, so far Sonar reported only the low-frequency rumble of ice floes grinding themselves to slush.

  The only interruption of the hours of waiting and listening had been two messages. The one from CINCLANTFLT ordered Packer for about the eleventh time to make every effort to locate B41. The other, relayed from the British, was a heads-up on an AGI, a Soviet intelligence ship, headed in their direction from the vicinity of the Skagerrak. The original date time group of the contact was twelve hours old, which meant it might be anywhere by now. The surface radar showed nothing; electronic countermeasures, ditto.

  He didn’t like what it all pointed to—that they’d lost their quarry—but there wasn’t much point denying it. They’d done their best. They’d held on to a nuke in a sea state 7 storm for almost twenty-four hours. Not too shabby! But they’d lost it at last. Sooner or later, even Packer would have to admit that.

  Anyway, another hour and he’d be off watch and dead to the world. He sighed as used coffee hit stainless steel. The stack was right behind him, radiating heat. It was almost comfortable.

  On the far side of the speckled peeling steel, the wind howled and hummed. He was used to it now. It was almost like silence, and silence would have shouted louder than any sound. Now it merged with the whine of the intake blowers and the hiss of spray. He slumped forward, letting his eyes close on gritty fatigue just for a moment.

  * * *

  THE next thing he knew something cold and wet was pressing against his cheek and somebody was tugging on the collar of his jacket. “Yeah, here he is,” Pettus was shouting. Then his voice came close. “Jesus, Mr. Lenson, you want to crap out, I can show you better places than that. Get up, man, they want you back in Combat.”

  When he got back to CIC, angry at himself, angry at Pettus, and angry at Evlin, the others were all still in the same places it seemed they had kept since the ship was commissioned. Pedersen, Matt, Lipson, Evlin, Silver, and Packer. He’d always remember them just like this, standing like the goddamn Dutch Masters around the plotting table. It was stenciled on his brain.

  Now they were discussing where B41 might have gone in the hours since they’d lost track of her.

  “She can’t be moving very fast,” muttered Evlin. Beneath the fluorescent illumination, bluer than daylight, the flat sheet was blank save for the concentric glowing circle that represented Ryan’s eastward creep. “After that first real noisy burst, she never made over fifteen knots the whole time we held contact. I think that’s all she can make, and her CO’ll hold that down because of the noise. Now she’s on the far side of this front. She can’t move fast through ice, either, unless she gets deep, and then she’ll be in the sound channel and we’ll pick her up. He knows that. So I’d look for her around two hundred feet, right about”—his hand hovered over a white emptiness a foot or so southeast of the rosette, then came down, fingers splayed—“right about here.”

  “He thinks he’s lost us.”


  “I’d agree with that, yes, sir.”

  “Captain?”

  Packer lifted his head slowly.

  It was Trachsler. One of the damage-control officer’s arms was strapped into a brace. His other hand held a large flat book. Dan wondered how he’d gotten up the ladders. “Ken, you shouldn’t be walking around with that busted wing,” Packer said.

  “That’s all right, sir. Look, can I brief you on our counterflooding, on buoyancy—”

  “Yeah, damn right. Let’s get out of Al’s way here.”

  They moved off to the radio desk, and Dan heard Trachsler’s whispery voice grave and low, going over cross curves of stability and free surface and loss of reserve buoyancy. He sounded like an undertaker discussing the cost of the obsequies. Dan breathed deeply, fighting a sudden access of fear. Every once in a while it reached in through the exhaustion and squeezed his gonads. Couldn’t Packer just admit he’d lost? He reached out to brush gray paint with his fingertips. Solid steel. But only a quarter of an inch thick. How much longer could it keep out the sea?

  How much longer would Packer expect it to?

  * * *

  AT 1140, Cummings arrived to relieve him. Dan was taking off his phones when the Sonar Control intercom came on over their heads. “Evaluator, Sonar,” it said. He tried to ignore it as it hissed for a moment. Then it said, “There it is again. Must have just crossed the front. Evaluator, Sonar: active sonar on bearing one-one-zero true. I say again, active sonar, bearing one-one-zero degrees true!”

  Evlin was hanging on the button only a second ahead of Packer. “What kind of sonar?”

  “We’re trying to figure that out, sir; we’ll tell you soon’s we do,” said Orris’s high voice. The leading sonarman sounded exhausted and anxious. “Permission to lower VDS to four hundred feet, see if we can get a direct path.”

  Packer leaned over Evlin’s shoulder and said into the speaker, “Granted.” Evlin snapped off. The captain said, “Could that be him?”

  “Could be, sir.”

  “Going active to keep clear of the ice? Now that he figures he’s lost us.”

  “Could well be,” said the ops officer again, detaching his glasses. Under them his eyelids were inflamed. He massaged them delicately with the balls of his fingers, then fitted the glasses back on. Across from him, Matt and Lipson got up from their perches on the desk, pulled their pencils off where they were stuck to the overhead with tape, and checked the points with the grave expressions of infantrymen inspecting the bores of their rifles.

  “Evaluator, Sonar: Contact at one-one-zero is not a Soviet submarine sonar.”

  “Shit fire,” said Packer. He snapped the lever down. “Orris, goddamn it—what the hell else can it be? Check it again! There’s nobody out here but me and him.”

  “I know my business, sir. It’s a high-freq emission; could be a forward-looking underice rig … but the frequency’s wrong, the pulse repetition rate.…” The sonar tech stopped.

  “What is it? Is Reed there? Put him on, please.”

  “Yes, Captain. I was checking a pub. It’s definitely not a standard signature. Another possibility is that he’s operating in wartime reserve mode. If so, we won’t have it in the book. Because the Soviets have never used it before.”

  Packer and Evlin looked at each other. Chief Pedersen glanced at Dan, showing his teeth in a visual uh-oh.

  The captain reached up. “Assume it’s him, Aaron. Get us a line of sound and a Warren range. Give me a course to intercept.” He snapped off viciously and looked around. “Where’s my fucking…”

  “On top of the first-aid cabinet, sir.”

  “I got to stop smoking so much. My throat feels raw as hell.” But his fingers were packing the pipe as he said it, as if they weren’t listening, Dan thought.

  Bearings started to come in, and a little later, ranges. The plotting team began to plot. Packer sucked flame, then stood over the table, arms folded, staring into space as he puffed. Dan eased away. He was getting a headache. He figured it as part fatigue, part tension, but some of it and the runny nose for sure was from all the smoke he was breathing.

  “Evaluator, Sonar. Bearing one-zero-eight. Estimated range thirteen to seventeen thousand yards.”

  “That’s pretty broad-brush, Orris. Can’t you get me a sharper range than that?”

  “No sir, not with this technique. We can ping if you want an exact range.”

  “Negative. I don’t want to ping yet. Can you get me a target angle?”

  “From doppler, if it’s a forward-looker, estimate starboard one forty, one thirty.”

  “Coming up in his baffles?” mused Evlin.

  “Could be. Could be here’s where we get lucky for a change. Tell the bridge, stay alert for ice. He’s looking for it, we better, too. Is our fathometer on?”

  “No, sir, it’s been secured since we went to Condition One A.”

  “Good job … okay, quiet ship. Make sure Ed gets the word in Main Control.”

  “Want me to take it?” asked Cummings, beside him. Dan started. He’d been standing there with his mouth open, trying to sort out what was going on. As far as he could make out, the submarine was running southeast, and Ryan, delayed by the storm, was emerging from the warm- /cold-water front astern of it, where every ship or submarine, because of its own screw noise, was deaf. He’d forgotten his relief. Now he hesitated, torn between his body’s lust for rest and his own excitement. After so many hopeless hours, he didn’t want to leave just when they’d regained contact.

  Packer took the choice away from him. “Mr. Lenson, I want you to stay on the weapons circuit. No offense, Tom? Get yourself some sleep and come back up around four.… Al, get a message off to CINCLANTFLT. Flash. Para one: ‘Have regained contact with track B forty-one.’ Give our position, as near as you can figure. Para Two. ‘B forty-one emitting in war reserve mode. Sonar environment, scattered ice and confused propagation conditions. Cannot guarantee maintaining contact. Urgently need P-three assist. Urgently need guidance on engagement.’ That’s all. Send it right away.”

  The intercom said, “CIC, Main Control: Quiet ship set in engineering spaces. Max speed available, fifteen knots.”

  “Dan, can you get that? I’m writing this message—”

  “Yessir.” He hit the button. “Evaluator, aye.”

  He suddenly realized he ought to get busy, too. Over the sound-powered phone, he told underwater battery fire control and the after five-inch—the only operable gun now—to reman stations, conduct movement checks, and train fifteen degrees to starboard. Just in case Packer wanted one, he asked Stefanick for a status on the Asroc. It was still down. All they had were torpedoes, then, the six trainable tubes forward of the bridge. And the gun, if the sub surfaced.

  It probably wouldn’t come to that. But if it did, he was ready.

  So when Packer turned to him suddenly and said, “Len-son, what have we got in the forward tubes?” he was able to say, “Sir, they’re full, three Mark forty-three war shots in the starboard mount, one war shot and two practice torpedoes in the port mount.”

  “Are they ready? Free of ice, firing circuits checked? If we need them, I don’t want another repeat of yesterday.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ve been having the men go out and chip the ice off the muzzle doors every couple of hours.”

  “Good thinking.”

  They told you at the Academy never to say thanks when you were complimented. But that didn’t mean the captain’s offhand remark didn’t make him stand a little straighter.

  And suddenly there was Bryce again, looking rumpled, as if he’d just gotten out of bed. Must be nice, Dan thought. The XO leaned between the two plotters, getting in their way for a moment before their dance shifted to whirl on around him. “Understand you got the cuffs on our Russki friend again. Least that’s what I heard.”

  Packer didn’t respond. After a moment, Evlin said, “That’s right, Commander. We think it’s him, anyway.”

  “You thi
nk? Don’t you know?”

  The operations officer explained about the war reserve mode on Soviet sonars. Midway through, Bryce interrupted, “I was born at night, Mr. Evlin, but not last night. I’ve spent a lot of years on destroyers; I know about war reserve frequencies. So, we in torpedo range yet?”

  “Basically, yes, sir.”

  “I don’t see no torpedo danger circle on your plot. How about getting on the stick, Lieutenant? And we’re coming up his tail? That’s a dangerous position, Jimmy John.”

  Evlin said, “I don’t think submarines have stern tubes anymore, Commander—”

  “Shit they don’t! Them Russians do, you can count on it! You better knock off that laid-back California attitude, Evlin. We could get a torpedo down our throat any second!”

  “Excuse me, Captain,” Pedersen broke in. “The contact’s showing a right drift. We won’t show it on the plot for a while yet, but I think he’s in a slow starboard turn.”

  Packer leaned over the table. In its upward-directed glow his eyes were black pits, his face a skull’s. “Al?”

  “I concur. Recommend speeding up, then coming right, too, to stay in his baffles and continue closing the range.”

  “Do it. Also, the commander has a point about torpedoes. Let’s get the Nixie streamed and ready to turn on.”

  “Aye, sir. Sonar, copy that last order?”

  “Sonar aye, streaming antitorpedo noisemaker.”

  “Bridge, Evaluator: Increase speed to fifteen knots; at plus ten, come right and steady course one-six-zero.”

  Norden rogered from the pilothouse. He sounded exhausted, too. Again Dan watched the rudder indicator swing, the gyro creep around. Ryan’s roll gentled, became a sway. A few seconds later, she began to pitch. It grew rapidly more violent. Suddenly she gave a great heave and corkscrewed downward. As her nose hit bottom, vibration tickled his feet through the deck plates and rubber matting. From outside, much louder, came a seconds-long roar, as if they were passing under Niagara Falls.