With Durand’s words, watchstanders put aside their normal duties and started the process of solving a submerged puzzle. Crewmen who normally pumped the sanitary tanks or monitored the battery jumped to man the fire control computers or the manual plotting tables, working to find the target’s range, course, and speed while knowing only the bearing to it. It was a slow, trying, iterative process.

Durand reached for the MJ handset and spun the growler. It caused a loud whoop in Joe Glass’s stateroom and interrupted the thought he was giving to a move he was about to make on the battered chessboard.

“Captain.”

“Skipper, Officer of the Deck. I have a new contact on the thin-line array.” He punched a series of buttons on the BQQ-5 sonar repeater and read the information from the screen. “Current bearing one-six-four and two-four-zero and drawing aft. Designate sierra four-four and four-five. Received frequency two-four-point-one hertz. I am finishing this leg, then coming to two-nine-zero to resolve ambiguity.”

Glass leaned back and rubbed his chin. He glanced across the table at Sergei Andropoyov and smiled. “We have a new contact. It could be our friend. We are working to find out for sure.”

Andropoyov nodded as Glass rose to leave. He half looked at the chessboard as he responded, “Good. Captain, I believe it wise that you are using caution and prudence.”

Glass pulled the doorway curtain aside and stepped into the passageway. “It is always wise to be careful, Sergei.”

He almost bumped into Brian Edwards heading for the control room. The XO was zipping up his blue poopie suit as he rushed down the narrow passageway. His hair was tousled and his face still lined from sleep.

“Pull you out of the rack, XO?”

Edwards grinned. “It’s the plight of being second in command. Middle management. These things always seem to happen when the skipper is awake and I’m asleep.”

“Yep, rank hath its privileges. Now, let’s see if this is our friend swimming around out there. Everything ready?”

“Yes, sir. The COB and I finished up a couple of hours ago. We just got to sleep, in fact.”

The two stepped into the control room. Except for a flurry of activity on the starboard side where Pat Durand and his fire control technician were working at a pair of computer screens to find a solution, the room was quiet. Glass allowed himself a slight smile. This was the way a professional crew was supposed to work. The teamwork was smooth and the information flowed quickly. They had learned a lot in a few weeks.