The wardroom was empty except for Christine Rendino and a discordant blast of noise. There were heavy metallic overtones to it, a creaking and groaning of tortured steel like a protracted avalanche in a wrecking yard. Intermixed was a continuous bubbling roar and a series of irregular thudding explosions like distant artillery fire. Although she couldn’t identify the sound mixture immediately, there was something about it that made Amanda shudder. The discordance was issuing from the wardroom stereo system; Chris was sitting cross-legged on the carpeted deck, directly at the focus of the speakers. Totally intent, she gave no notice that she had visitors.
Arkady, who was accompanying Amanda, came up behind the blond Intel. “Heavy-metal revival?” he inquired with a raised voice.
“Close, but no free game,” Christine replied. Leaning forward, she switched off the player. “This,” she said, tapping the first disc slot, “was made aboard the Duke down in Sonar Alley. It’s the death dive of the Han-class attack boat we killed, as recorded off the sonobuoy net.”
Amanda nodded to herself. No wonder she had shuddered.
“Now, this,” Christine continued, her finger moving across to the player’s second disc slot, “is a download from the Fleet Intelligence net. It’s a copy of a recording made aboard the Japanese SDF sub that monitored the sinking of the second Han. Pull up a couple of chairs, guys. I’d like you to hear them both.”
The first recording ran approximately five minutes, from the final sinking of the sub to the distant crash of the hulk pile-driving into the marl of the sea floor a mile below.
“Okay, here’s the sinking of the second Han. You’ll pick up some extra background noise here because the wreck is sliding down the face of an undersea cliff. That’s not what you’re listening for.”
Another few minutes of steely clamor.
“Okay, what was the difference?”
Amanda and Arkady exchanged glances. “Okay,” Arkady said finally, “I plead abject ignorance. What are we supposed to be hearing?”
“It’s what you aren’t hearing. Let me play a section of this first disc once again.”
She reset the player and again the cacophony issued from the speakers: the creaking and wailing of buckling steel, the bubbling roar, and, again, that ragged series of echoing booms.
“Those detonations,” Amanda said suddenly. “There weren’t any on the second recording.”
“Bingo!”
“What arc they?”
“Those are watertight compartments imploding as the sub sinks below crush depth.” Amanda sup another shudder and silently cursed the fact that she had an imagination. When she had been attached to the David W. Taylor Naval Research & Development Center she had seen photographs that had been taken inside a depth-killed sub by a mini-ROV. Physics played weird tricks down in the wet dark. Surrounded by cubic miles of water, the trapped crewmen had died in flames.
As the bulkheads had collapsed and the steel-hard walls of hyperpressure water had burst into the compartments, they had produced atmospheric shock waves that in turn had generated a searing heat pulse. In the microsecond before the compartments had fully filled, everything within them had been incinerated.
“I’m sure that someone around here will be very happy to make me feel stupid for saying this, but so what?” Arkady said.
“What it means is that the second Han wasn’t maintaining watertight integrity,” Amanda replied slowly. “He was running with his watertight doors open.”
“Exactly!” Christine gave a sober nod. “He was wide open. When he hit that seamount he flooded completely from bow to stern in seconds.”
“I’m not saying it again.” Arkady sighed as he got up and started for the coffee urn.
“Well, think about it,” Amanda said a little impatiently. “The SDF sub skipper who was trailing the second Han reported that he thought the Chinese boat had veered off toward Aichi Shima seamount in an effort to break contact.”
“Wait a minute.” Arkady paused with his mug under the urn’s spout. “If they were taking evasive action, they would have closed up to general quarters.”
“Uh-huh. and if they had been at general quarters they would have had all their watertight doors and hatches closed and secured.” Chris tapped the face of the CD player emphatically.
“This is another one of those failed assumptions the Captain was talking about the other day. We assumed this sub loss was due to the result of a fumbled combat maneuver. Uh-uh. This was an operational accident. These guys had no idea that they were being shadowed. They were just chuggin’ along, fat, dumb, and happy, and they sailed right into the side of that seamount.”
“Son of a bitch,” Arkady mused. “You’re right. That’s pretty good detective work, sis.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Christine replied noncommittally, continuing to stare at the disc player.
“Now, what’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, accidents do happen. But these guys were supposed to be good! Theoretically, the best the Red navy had left. Yet they pull this kind of total blooper on the most radically important mission their Fleet’s ever launched. I’m getting weird vibrations off this one. We’re missing something.”
Someone else in the room silently agreed. Neither the Intel nor the aviator noticed that Amanda had also started to regard the disc player with an intent and unwavering interest.