Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

132 JEFF EDWARDS
used the secure sat-phones to make four tech-assist calls to the engineers at
Lockheed Martin who built the system, and the software bubbas who
wrote the program code. None of them have ever heard of anything like
this problem. They’re going to fly a tech rep out to help us troubleshoot it,
but they’ve already pretty much said they don’t have a clue of how to
tackle this. In fact, one of the engineers as much as told me that we’re full
of shit. He said we can’t have this problem, because the system isn’t
capable of generating this type of sector-specific interference.”
The chief snorted. “What? Does he think we’re making this shit up?”
“I don’t know what he thinks,” Gordon said. “But I’ll tell you what I
think. There is nothing wrong with this radar, Chief. Not a fucking thing.
It’s clean as a whistle.”
“So where is the interference coming from?” It was the captain’s
voice.
Chief Lowery leapt off the workbench. “Attention on deck!”
They all scrambled to attention.
“Sorry, Sir,” Chief Lowery said. “We didn’t see you come in.”
Captain Bowie motioned for them to relax. “Don’t worry about it,
Chief. Carry on. Please.”
All four men relaxed their postures, but no one made any move to sit
down.
“Let’s get back to my question,” the captain said. “If there’s nothing
wrong with the radar equipment and nothing wrong with the software,
where is this interference coming from?”
“We don’t know, sir,” Chief Lowery said.
“But you agree with your techs that there’s nothing wrong with SPY?”
the captain asked.
Chief Lowery shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t. SPY is not designed to
lose sixty degrees of coverage every day or two. And, if SPY is operating
outside of its design parameters, by definition something is wrong. I don’t
know if it’s hardware or software, sir. But something is sure as hell wrong
somewhere.”
The captain nodded. “Well said, Chief.” He reached out and patted the
side of one of the gray radar equipment cabinets. “Our primary anti-air
and anti-surface sensor seems to be in the habit of losing its mind every
day or two. There are no two ways about it, gentlemen. That’s
unsatisfactory.”
Fisher squinted his eyes and opened his mouth. Then he appeared to
think better of it, and he closed his mouth.
“Go ahead, son,” the captain said. “Whatever it is, you can say it.”