The call popped up on his computer screen. Brian had been tapping around the laptop, going through his notes to try to figure out what was going on, if there was a chance that the signals they were picking up were anything other than what he hoped they weren't. The call jolted him.
'Hi, Brian here.'
The voice which responded sounded a lot like a senior officer. It was what you eventually learned was gravitas, a sense of magnitude behind each word.
'Lieutenant Commander Gibbs here. We think we have a read on the situation, but before we do anything drastic, we wanted your input. What are the USSes set to target, do you know?'
'They can be set to target most anything, sir, but all indications are that they're set for submarines and the big Russian ships, probably they'll try to sink anything that smells military and is more than 100 meters long.'
'You realise that sometimes NATO subs are in there?'
'Yes sir. Wasn't my idea sir.'
'Based on the data we have, a lot of the USSes are actually in the Russian EEZ in the Barents, as is one of the transmitters. There's very little we can do up there. The signals are one way, these things lock on and can't be turned off. It'll have to be something covert.' He sighed. 'In the Skaggerak we can be a bit more kinetic. We've put a note out to everyone in the area, so they're all pulling their vessels out of there for safety.'
'How long till we've sonobuoys there?'
'2 hours, unless some of the German bases have a plane ready to go.'
'We've no map of where these USSes are, we can only reconstruct vaguely where they are, so if we don't get the signals stopped, there's a diplomatic crisis while we carry out the trickiest seabed hunt there ever was.'
'I've a chap on the phone begging the Norwegians to get sonobuoys in the Barents. We can't quite tell anyone yet, I can't do the necessary clearances myself, so we're blowing up the phones of everyone we can.'
'What's the submarine scene up there looking like? Other than Russians obviously.'
'It smells like the French and maybe someone else is up there. Not loads of hope of getting help from them.'
'You're aware of the proposed plan to jam the signal?'
'Yes.'
'And the estimated timeline till they brute force it?'
'It's absolutely guaranteed within the next 96 hours, but they could hit it at any moment, and are more likely to hit it now than later.'
'Are we ready to burn a hydrophone array yet?'
'That's at least 25 million worth of hydrophone array announcing its location to the world.'
'And the Russians view impeding the nuclear fleet as an escalation that's nearly as bad as bombing them. There's no off switch on these things. We know it'll work, we've modeled the signal vs the noise we can make. Unless there's someone who can put a hole in the transmitters, or a ship up there that can jam it, we've no options.'
'Well, putting a few hundred depth charges in the North Atlantic creates enough noise that the transmitters aren't heard.'
'And we can do that?'
'No. It's not an option.'
'How long till we can get jamming live?'
'Can be running as soon as we can get a Captain to sign off on it. Should have ours here in a few minutes.'
'OK. You have the protocol we sent over?'
'Yes. It's ready to run.'
'In that case, I would recommend you run it now. You can do that. Whoever is running this is very smart, and when we got a squad of cryptoanalysts on the job, the most dangerous time was the start. It's guaranteed within 4 days, but there's a 80 or 90 percent chance of success in the first 10 hours, unless they've made a mistake, which they won't have.'
'I can't do that. That's the end of a career.'
'It's over if they crack it before your Captain gets there. And as likely as not, someone dies over the head of it.'
'Oh, here he is.'
The Captain was known to Brian. A good, no-nonsense man, he was filled in on the plan.
'Somethings popped up? Run the jamming. Brian, how long can we keep that up?'
'The techies could guarantee us 3 weeks full functionality.'
'Jamming running!' was called out in the background.
'Think you can do something to kill these?'
'I'll give it a go. The Skaggerak one we can likely find. Barents is a whole other deal.'
'I'll pull the strings and get you what you need. Go home, go to bed, hope this holds through the night.'
Brian hung up the call, and went to the minifridge in the break room. His ice cream had run away.