Brian's phone rang. He was on the road home from the base exchange, loaded up with food for the weekend. He hit the answer button on the carphone.
"Brian?"
"Speaking, no one else here."
"We need you to come back in."
Crap. He'd just spent 20 pounds on frozen goodies.
"Must I?"
"Yes. We're detecting the patterns that would indicate a problem."
This night, of all nights, it had to happen. Nearly 2 months from the start of dealing with this mess.
Maybe one of the fridges in the offices had a freezer. He muttered some expletives and turned the car around.
"Coming back now, will talk more once I'm in."
12 minutes later, he was through security and walking down the corridor to the meeting room they'd been working out of. He hoped that wasn't too late.
"What's the story?"
Petty Officer Andrews spun in her chair. "I escalated to Central Signals. They have a couple technicians trying to figure out if we need to jam them."
"Do they have my notes?"
"Yes." Good.
"Much word back?"
"They're comparing signals with the command and control apparatus. They said they'd call us once they've done that."
"They'll be calling with an ETA of them activating them then." The ETA of a war of some sort, he guessed. "Where are the signals at?"
"Between Norway and Denmark, in the Skagerrak, and in the Barents somewhere off Norway."
"Any diplomatic efforts yet? Unless there's great luck with submarines, we're not turning these off easily."
"Don't know."
"I think I need to call them." He had been pacing about the doorway. The whole thing now was whether or not they could get hands on whatever transducers they had, and whether or not it was worthwhile revealing the hydrophone array location in order to jam them. Neither of those were within his power, Central Signals had it now. "They taking it seriously?"
"Seem to be. You've raised the profile of our little investigation fairly high, so hopefully they do."
"When did emissions start?"
"About three quarters of an hour ago."
"How fine a read do we have on location?"
"Within a couple miles in the Skagerrak, its fuzzy in the Barents. Could be multiple sources. And the current estimate is that at least one of them is right on the edge of the Russian EEZ."
"Not good."
"No."
"Do you know if there's a freezer in the break room here?"