"Left full rudder, aye!" The helmsman would have hit the overhead but for the seatbelt. He instantly snapped his wheel to port. "Sir, my rudder is left full!"
"Minefield," the navigator breathed. Heads all over the room turned around.
"That's a good bet." McCafferty nodded grimly. "How far are we from the point where the boomer rendezvoused with the Natya?"
The navigator examined the plot closely. "Stopped about four hundred yards short of it, sir."
"All stop."
"All stop, aye." The helmsman dialed the annunciator handle. "Engine room answers all stop, sir. Passing left through one-eight-zero, sir."
"Very well. We ought to be safe enough here. You have to figure the Delta'd rendezvous with the sweeper a few miles clear of the field, right? Anybody here think Ivan would gamble with a boomer?" It was a rhetorical question. Nobody ever gambled with boomers.
Everyone in the control room took a deep breath at the same moment. The Chicago slowed rapidly, her turn taking her broadside to her previous course.
"Rudder amidships." McCafferty ordered one-third speed and lifted the phone for sonar. "The boomer doing anything different?"
"No, sir. Bearing is still constant at one-nine-zero. Speed still fifteen knots. We can still hear the Natya pinging, nearing one-eight-six, and her blade count is now about fifteen knots, too."
"Navigator, start figuring a way for us to get out of here. We want to keep well clear of all those patrol boats and report this news in as quick as we can."
"Aye. Three-five-eight looks pretty good for the moment, sir." The navigator had been updating that course continuously for two hours.
"Sir, if Ivan really has laid out a minefield, part of it's in international waters," the exec noted. "Cute."
"Yeah. Of course, to them it's territorial waters, so anybody bumps into a mine, it's just too damned bad-"
"And maybe an international incident?" Joe observed.
"But why did they ping at all?", the communications officer asked. "If they got a clear channel they can navigate visually."
"What if there's no channel at all?" the exec answered. "What if they set ground mines, and moored mines strung, say, at a uniform depth of fifty feet. You have to figure they'd be a little nervous that a mine or two might have too long a mooring cable. So they're playing it safe, just like we'd do. What's all that tell you?"
"Nobody can trail their boomers without surfacing the lieutenant understood.
"And we sure as hell aren't going to do that. Nobody ever said that Ivan was dumb. They got a perfect system here. They're putting all their missile boats where we can't get at them," McCafferty went on. "Even SUBROC can't make it from where we are into the White Sea. Final point, if they have to scatter the boats, they don't have to screw around in a single channel, they can all surface, spread out, and run for daylight.
"What this means, gentlemen, is that instead of detailing an attack boat to guard every boomer against somebody like us, they can put all the missile boats into one nice, safe basket and release their attack boats to other missions. Let's get the hell out of here."
"Ship in view, this is U.S. Navy aircraft on your port beam. Please identify, over." Captain Kherov handed the bridge-to-bridge phone to a Red Army major.
"Navy, this is the Doctor Lykes. How are y'all?" Kherov spoke halting English. The major's Mississippi accent might as well have been Kurdish for all he understood of it. They could barely make out the haze-gray patrol aircraft that was now circling their ship-circling, they noted, at a five-mile distance and certainly inspecting them through binoculars.
"Amplify, Doctor Lykes, " the voice ordered tersely.
"We're out of New Orleans, bound for Oslo with general cargo, Navy. What's the big deal?"
"You're well north of a course to Norway. Please explain, over."
"Y'all read the damned papers, Navy? It's liable to get dangerous out here, and this big ole ship costs money. We got orders from the home office to keep close to some friendly folks. Hell, we're glad to see ya', boy. Y'all want to escort us a ways?"
"Roger, copy. Doctor Lykes, be advised no submarines known to be in this area."
"Y'all guarantee that?"
This drew a laugh. "Not hardly, Doc."
"That's about what I thought, Navy. Well, if it's all right with you, we'll keep heading north a ways and try to stay under your air cover, over."
"We can't detail an aircraft to escort you."
"Understood, but you will come if we call you-right?"
"That's a roger," agreed Penguin 8.
"Okay, we'll continue north, then turn east for the Faroes. Will you warn us if any bad guys show up, over."
"If we find any, Doc, the idea is we'll try an' sink 'em first," the pilot exaggerated.
"Fair enough. Good huntin', boy. Out."
"God, do people really talk like that?" the pilot of the Orion wondered aloud.
