Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

116 JEFF EDWARDS
Shari and Andy stared at each other in disbelief. “Say again,” Shari
said.
“I repeat,” the TACO said, “all buoys are cold.”
“All of them?” Andy asked softly.
“Every one of them,” George said. “The only tonals we’ve got are
coming from those two yachts, and that merchant ship. We have zero
possible submarine contacts.”
“Have your guys go over the grams again,” Shari said. “Maybe they’re
missing something.”
“They’ve been over them twice,” George said. “Then I went over them
myself. Those grams are ice cold.”
Shari’s eyes went to the Tactical Data Display. “Check the numbers,
Andy. First you do them, and then give them back to Nav for a crosscheck.
While you’re at it, get Nav to run a diagnostic on GPS. Maybe we
planted the Briar Patch in the wrong spot.”
“I’ll check, boss,” Andy said. “But I’ve never seen a GPS plot that was
off by more than a few inches.” He flipped a selector switch and began
talking to the Navigator on another circuit.
Shari keyed her mike. “George, have your ASOs run diagnostics on
their gear.”
“Already in progress,” the TACO said, “but I can tell you up front that
the equipment is running sweet. Whatever’s wrong ain’t in the ARR-78s.”
“Let’s swing back and re-seed that bad buoy,” Shari said.
“That’s not it,” George said. “There isn’t enough room in the blind
zone for one sub to hide, much less four.”
“Maybe all four of them aren’t down here,” Shari said.
Andy kept his eyes on the TDD and punched buttons, watching the
changing numbers like a hawk. He keyed back into Shari’s intercom
circuit. “That’s certainly a possibility. But AEW got solid ES cuts on at
least two of their radars. Even if there are only two of them down here,
there’s no way they both just happened to be sitting under the only bad
buoy in this whole piece of water.”
“If anyone’s got a better explanation,” Shari said, “I’d love to hear it
right now.”
“These new 212Bs are supposed to be bad-ass,” Andy said. “Maybe
they’re just so quiet that we can’t detect them.”
“I can’t rule that out,” George said. “But I’ll believe it when I’ve seen
the proof.”
“Could be we’re seeing it now,” Shari said. “Or not seeing it, as the
case may be.”