EndWar

“I’m okay.” He glanced over to the still-burning wreckage of his fighter. “My flying career just went up in flames, but I’m okay…”

“You’re not done yet. Not if I have anything to say about it. Just hang tight.” She pulled out her sidearm, handed it to him. “Now you got two.”

“If they come back, this won’t matter.”

She knew that, too, but pushed back his hand, forcing him to take the weapon. “Rescue will be here soon.” She started back toward her fighter.

And once she was strapped in and lifting off, the news that came in from Igloo Base took her breath away.

The USS Florida’s radio room, immediately aft, starboard side of the submarine’s command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) space, made it easy for the radioman on watch to stick his head into the passageway and announce, “ELF traffic,” even as Commander Jonathan Andreas watched the extremely low frequency (ELF) call light start to blink incessantly on his Q-70 display console, accompanied by a steady beeping. “The first character is in, and it matches our first call letter,” continued the radioman.

“Finally,” Andreas said through a deep sigh. He pressed the Acknowledge button, stopping both beep and flash, then stepped across to the port side of C3I and placed his hand on the sonar operator’s shoulder. “Give me a careful three-hundred-and-sixty-degree listening sweep.” Catching the officer of the deck’s eye, he continued, “If we’re all clear, take us up to periscope depth.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” responded the OOD.

Andreas had done as he and the XO had discussed. They had sprinted out of the immediate area, pinged the satellite’s transponder — and had received no response for their effort.

And that had left Andreas standing there in the control room wanting to pummel someone.

In the time it took for them to complete the acoustic sweep, rise to periscope depth, and extend their mast to visually confirm no surface contacts in the immediate vicinity, the second character of the ELF message had arrived on board. It matched the second of the Florida’s three assigned ELF call letters.

“Captain, there’s still no operational traffic from that satellite,” said the senior chief radioman. “GPS is coming through okay. The clincher for me, sir, is that ELF data rate. That’s about the speed of the old Michigan ELF transmitter. Their big bird in the sky is dead. I’ll stake a promotion to Master Chief on that, sir.”

“Roger that, Senior Chief. XO, round up all the Iridium satellite phones and make sure they’re fully charged. We’re going to execute my last plan, the one I didn’t tell you about.”

“Sir, are you serious? We’re going to call on the satellite phones?”

“Well, it ain’t pretty, but it’s all I got. It’s time to phone home.”

Andreas stepped aft to the Radio Room, poked his head inside and said, “Senior Chief, I’ll bet you a shiny new set of silver eagles for my collar that you’ll continue to get ELF transmissions until we figure out how to talk to COMPACFLT.”

Admiral Donald Stanton glanced up as his aide appeared in the little window on his computer screen. “Admiral Harrison for you, sir.”

Stanton accepted the call, and the window switched to Harrison in his office. “Chuck, what have you got?”

“Well, even though Michigan’s up, Andreas will be extremely cautious about breaking radio silence. It goes against everything he’s been taught. But when that silence becomes deafening, as it is now, he’ll run through his options.”

“We put the same four-line text message on every satellite phone on board.”

“And Andreas’s wife assures me he’ll understand the message.”

“All right. He just needs to receive it. Thanks, Chuck. We’ve run it up the flagpole, let’s see who wants to salute it. All we can do now is wait.”

Back on the Florida, Andreas reminded his XO that they needed just enough speed to maintain steerageway but no more. They didn’t want the sail to create a visible wake by agitating the bioluminescent organisms in the water.

Andreas then turned and regarded his communications officer. “Dan, you take two sat phones, and I’ll carry two. We turn all four on just before we open the hatch in the sail, then we head up to get a signal. We’re looking for a text message — that’s all. We aren’t ready to transmit anything. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

Andreas looked intently at the young lieutenant. “Do you remember what else I told you?”

“Yes, sir. Whatever I see on the display, write it down.”

“Good man, let’s go.”

Nine minutes later, the Florida was completely submerged, banked to starboard, preparing to level off at five hundred and thirty-eight feet, and coming to course one-six-zero.

All four cell phone text messages read the same:

URGENT-CALL COMPACFLT/8085553956/3672

Any submarine crewmember home-ported in Pearl Harbor would recognize the 808 prefix as the Honolulu area code. The COMPACFLT acronym didn’t need any explanation.

“But sir, how do we verify?” asked the XO.