Seas of Crisis Read Online Free PDF

executive assistant, was handling himself with commendable professionalism. A Naval Academy graduate like Bell, Meltzer spoke with a Bronx accent that got thicker under combat stress. He always walked, in the ship or ashore, with a strut on the cocky side, chest puffed out, as if daring the Navy—or life in general—to keep giving him more difficult things to do. Jeffrey, who’d grown up in St. Louis and done Navy ROTC at Purdue, liked this attitude; Meltzer was popular and admired among the junior officers as well, and respected without reservations by the chiefs and other enlisted people. More visibly ambitious than Sessions, and more socially poised and outgoing, he took being made a department head in stride.
    To Jeffrey’s practiced eyes, there was no sign of jealousy among the men who’d remain for a while yet as lieutenants, junior grade. If anything, the feeling shipwide was one of a group bond renewed, and strongly validated, by their shared Presidential Unit Citation. Jeffrey could sense this in the busy control room, packed with two dozen people sitting at consoles or standing in the aisles, each doing some specialized task, or helping or teaching or learning.
    The tactical plot was updated for the umpteenth time. The surface wind came from the south, at force four—about fifteen knots—strong enough to cause whitecaps. The same wind created enough noise that Challenger ’s advanced passive sonars could use ambient ocean sounds, instead of telltale active pinging, to detect any silent collision threat—even an errant mine—in time to avoid it, if people stayed on their toes. With prevailing currents coming from southeast, across a fetch of open water whose temperature in early summer was well above freezing, the risk of encountering an iceberg soon was minimal; the Bering Sea only froze during winter. Jeffrey knew this would change, menacingly, once they got above the Arctic Circle—near the summertime reach of the polar ice cap, and closer to massive coastal glaciers from which the biggest icebergs calved.
    Jeffrey had an unobstructed line of sight to the big displays on the bulkheads at the front of the control room, because Challenger possessed no old-fashioned periscopes. Instead, data from photonics masts, which retracted into the sail—conning tower—when not in use, would electronically feed imagery to full-color, high-definition plasma screens that many crewmen could observe simultaneously.
    “The photonics mast control console,” Jeffrey said to Bell.
    “Commodore?”
    “I don’t think you’ll be needing it anytime soon. I’d like to take it over, while I’m in Control, as a place to sit and command my strike group.”
    The console was on the aft bulkhead of Control, its screens dark now, the seat unoccupied. The console was also near the doors to the radio room and the electronic support measures room. The radio room contained the ship’s top-secret encryption equipment. The electronic support measures room contained the equally classified signals-intercept eavesdropping gear. Both doors had security warnings posted on the outside, and were protected by combination locks.
    Jeffrey pointed toward the doors. “They’ll be handy in case I need either one, and I can reconfigure the console to show me the data I’ll want, and I’ll also be out of your way but still in easy speaking distance.”
    “Certainly, Commodore.”
    That console also happened to be the one closest to Jeffrey’s stateroom that he shared with Sessions and used as an office. He could move back and forth quickly and unobtrusively. On a submarine there’s no formality like someone shouting Commodore in Control or Captain off the Bridge or crap like that.
    “New passive sonar contact on the starboard wide-aperture array,” the sonar supervisor of the watch, a senior chief, called out. “Bearing zero-six-five, range twenty thousand yards.” East-northeast, ten nautical miles. The northern Bering Sea’s bottom