While the cutter herself didn’t have much in the way of armaments to take out the Tango-class submarine, they could dog the sub using their sonar until a strike aircraft could be called in from any number of naval air stations. They had come too far to blow it this late in the mission. If it meant an hour or two delay to lurk quietly under the surface until the cutter was out of range, so be it. Patience and silence were the two cardinal virtues of a submariner.

The trip north had taken them more than a week, most of that time spent well outside normal shipping routes and running at snorkel depth so the boat’s three diesel engines could draw air. Only when sonar reported a nearby ship, usually one headed inbound from Asia as they came abreast of ports along the U.S. and Mexican west coasts, would they retract the snorkel and dive out of sight.

While normally crewed by seventeen officers and sixty-one seamen, this particular sub had only two dozen men aboard, and the captain couldn’t have been prouder of them.

“Sonar, sit-rep,” he whispered. He was standing behind the man hunched over the antiquated passive sonar system.

The sailor slipped off the one headphone he’d had plastered to his right ear. “The cutter’s still moving away at eight knots. I put him at five miles distant.”

In relative terms, five miles was a tricky distance. It was only a five-minute drive by car or it was a two-hour walk. At sea, with sound able to travel so far through the vastness, five miles could be considered shouting distance.

“Any indication he’s towing an array of his own?”

“No, sir,” the sailor whispered back. “If he was, he’d cut his engines to drift. Otherwise, he couldn’t hear anything over his own propellers.”

The man suddenly tightened the headphone to his skull once again. It was as if speaking of it made it happen. “Captain! His screws just went silent. He’s drifting!”

The captain placed a restraining hand on the younger man’s shoulders. “Steady, son. He can’t hear us if we don’t make a sound.”

The boy looked sheepish. “Yes, sir.”

“We’re nothing but a three-hundred-foot-long quiet spot in the ocean. Nothing to hear here. Just move along.”