Undetected by Dee Henderson Page B

had the skills to go where she would like and work on what was appealing. Finding a job would never be an issue. But that led to a nomadic life. The crosscurrents of boredom, others’expectations, and whether she could settle down someplace long term all added to her brother’s concerns for her future.
    Jeff had hoped Boulder would be a good place where she’d be able to stay for more than a few years. Jeff’s big-brother worries were shared by Mark too, now that he realized she was again in transition. He remembered similar worries with his own sisters before they’d married and settled down, starting families of their own.
    Gina had come to Bangor to see her brother. Mark got that priority without her having to say it. The fact she was here weeks before Jeff was due back in port told Mark more than she had said about Boulder and how badly the breakup had hit her. Gina was keeping herself busy while she waited by working on her sonar ideas. Probably true enough.
    â€œSome sonar ideas, is it? Care to talk about what you’re working on?”
    She gave him a long look, as if considering whether she wanted to answer him. “What if you could actively ping,” she finally said, “and the other guy couldn’t hear you?”
    He stopped, stunned. “That’s possible?”
    â€œIt’s one idea I’m here to explore.”
    It felt like a punch. She was a national-security nightmare.
    One advantage the U.S. had over every other submarine force in the world was its ability to be quieter than the other guys, to hear them coming by passively listening. The only way another country’s submarines could find a U.S. sub was by a mistake on the part of the U.S. crew, or by an active ping—sending out a sound through the water and listening for the returning echo. But the fact they generated the sound gave away their own position. It was a basic tenet of submarine warfare that to ping was to get yourself a torpedo in reply.But if it was possible to ping without being heard —it turned on its head basic submarine warfare tactics.
    Mark started walking again. He wanted to wince, but his job had trained him to accept the unthinkable and deal with it—fast, logically, and with a steady, cool calm. The implications of her idea were reverberating through his mind. This was more than just dangerous territory; it was destabilizing.
    If an enemy nation—or, for that matter, their allies—would ever find out what was in this woman’s head, billions of dollars of military hardware would be at risk, and decades of underwater dominance would disappear. The oceans would become a level playing field, even if the numbers were still vastly superior on the U.S. side. No wonder security was hovering over her.
    He looked over at her. “Who have you told?”
    She offered a slight smile. “You.” She ate another bite of her ice cream. “I asked Lieutenant Commander Toombs if I could use the lab here to run down my ideas, since moving around terabytes of classified data is a bureaucratic nightmare. He arranged for me to use his office at night and opened up an audio lab for me so I could work without interruption. I’m running the idea against the data from the USS Ohio encounter with the British sub Triumph . The Ohio was cross-linking sonar with the USS Michigan when it happened. It’s a big data set. So I snuck out for ice cream while it runs.”
    Gina had moved on from working for the Navy six or seven years ago, and this was the idea she had nudging around in the back of her mind? Mark couldn’t help wondering about the ideas she hadn’t taken the time to explore.
    â€œThe concept isn’t without its limitations,” she added. “It requires cross-sonar to be running. The active ping is faint,which theoretically means it will work better with one sub above and one below a thermal line. The amount of cross-sonar conversation