The Antilles Incident

The Antilles Incident

Donald R. Todd

A Blue Star Production Publication

November 1997

A true story.

The names have been changed to protect all those involved.

ISBN 1-881542-37-8

An Original Paperback

Published by:

Blue Star Productions,

a Division of Book World, Inc.

9666 E Riggs Rd. #194 Sun Lakes AZ 85248

Printed in the United States of America

of reproduction in any form.

Visit us at our web site: http://www.bkworld.com

Author's Note:

The UFO/Maritime narrative herein described actually happened. It is one of several similar case histories in my files of occurrences between UFOs and Naval vessels on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In this particular incident, I'm grateful to the executive officer of the specified destroyer escort for the number of sessions together and for his generous detailed information. Owing to sustained military tentativeness re: the UFO enigma, the exec of the vessel here involved with a protracted UFO confrontation, expressed that he, the skipper and the ship, should remain out of the public domain. Stressing anonymity for the ship and crew, the exec and captain's wishes for confidentiality have been honored. All else is as it happened.

The Antilles Incident

Chapter 1

FILE NO. 88-104

Summer. Tropical Atlantic northeast of the Antilles.

0410. Zone Time

Tuesday. 23 August. 1988

Steaming eastwardly, USS Destroyer Escort DE-000 gathered for a hard lunge into a rogue swell. Guffing through, the ship settled on calmer water. On the bridge, Lieutenant Harley Clough, binoculars swaying from his collar, stood knees braced on Morning Watch. Through the subdued bridge lighting, he flicked a glance at the bulkhead clock. 0410. Then at the barometer. The glass was falling.

Page 1

His eyes dropped to a clipboard lying on the Plotting Chart. A most recent dispatch was clenched in its jaws. He scanned it for the nth time.

Unspecified craft reported in your

vicinity. Proceed to grid square 41-

79, scan sea and air. Report on

contact.

While a closing ceiling obscured the stars, a pallid moon cast spooky glitters on a fussy sea. The DE's sleek gray silhouette was spectral in the shafts of moonlight. Her irregular bow wave parted in ghostly thresh beneath the prow.

By the binnacle, Clough sought the muzzy horizon. In the quiet, the steady thrust of engines was a subtle tremor beneath his boots. The air conditioning's soft whirr mixed with some low jabber of compartmental intercom traffic. Periodically, some coded di-di-di-dahs from down in CIC beeped through an open circuit. Except for this and the abrasive wash of water along the outer hull, the ship was silent.

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Presently the navigator's voice droned behind. "Latitude 19-94 North, 61-66 West."

Clough acknowledged the latitude and longitude. By now they were well into the grid square. Bending to the voice pipe, he ordered, "Slow to one hundred-twenty revolutions." Checking the Plot reminded him that it was time to change attitude again on their zigzag course.

Dutifully DE-000 swerved, plunging eastward. Outside, her radar masts rotated monotonously. Glasses sweeping their respective sectors, the lookouts poised in silhouette. Inside, two chronometers were fixed to the bulkhead next to the radar repeater. One, the regulation ship's clock. The other, a timekeeper with spidery sweep arm. A strip of masking tape across the upper face read: "Submergence Time."

Behind Clough a telephone rasped in the silence. He depressed the lever. "Forebridge."

"Radar, we've got a spook. Small unidentified contact. Bearing zero-one-zero. Range, nine thousand yards."

Clough viewed the repeater alongside. A tiny ephemeral worm wriggled at the edge of the set.

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Clough ran a finger down the adjacent ship's register. According to the log, the only other naval vessel nearby, hours earlier had limped home with a fouled oil line along the main bearing. No other ships in the area, so the contact couldn't be a back echo. "Set on the top line?" queried Clough.

"Yes, sir. Finer'n a frog hair."

After a minute of studying the strengthening and weakening contact, Clough brought his glasses up. Hardly expecting to glimpse anything ahead on the black foam, he was anxious. As a stall, he held the glasses to his eyes while he contemplated disturbing the skipper.

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Chapter 2

ln the captain's sea cabin, Orrin Meadows slept lightly but securely. With paneled walls, the cabin's one porthole was secured and draped. Above the bunk, two shelves were jammed with books. The skipper's desk was an organized clutter of papers, periodicals, tapes, and calipers. A radio was secured to the bulkhead along with two intercom speakers and several telephones.

One of the telephones buzzed urgently. Awakened, Meadows snatched it down. "Captain."

"Radar report." Clough, was tentative. "Small surface contact. Range, nine thousand."

"Right," breathed Meadows. "Get Plotting onto it just in case. I'll be up." Then, as an

afterthought, "Negative zigzag."

"Aye, sir."

Plotting would be easier with a steady course.

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Rolling over, Meadows squinted at his watch and thumped the pillow. 0420. The contact was over five miles distant. Head down, the Captain had barely gotten the pillow warm when the phone grated again. Annoyed, he cracked his eyeballs. "Yes!"

"Sorry, sir." came Clough. "Dispatch just in. Tropical depression approaching. Latitude, nineteen point five. Longitude, sixty-one point two. Path west northwest, eighteen knots. Wind, Force Four."

Meadows glared at his pillow. "Right." he exhaled irritably. "I'm coming." For just a minute, the skipper collapsed onto his pillow and cradled his nape with his palms. Then reluctantly slinging knees over the bunk, he knuckled his eyeballs and reached for the shave kit. Shaving at the sink, he scraped his chin with the blade and peered at his image in the mirror. An attitude of humor, and years of searching skylines had etched age and laugh crinkles beneath intense blue eyes. Black, close-cropped hair. Stubborn jaw. Just under six feet, he was solid, tough, and reliable. With seven years at sea, two bobbing the Indian Ocean, three traversing the Pacific, and now a second pottering about the South Atlantic, much of the time had been uneventful.

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With the exception of two brushes with the Soviet Navy, one off Maui and the other near Guam, both obviously Soviet monitoring missions, there had been little to excite the ship's complement.

Skimming the razor along his jaw, he stared into the glass and reflected on the grid square dispatch received earlier, the message Clough had just read.

Proceed to grid-square 41-79.

Scan sea and air.

"Now, what the hell kind of a message is that?" he muttered. "Knocking around after some derelict, likely." He ran the razor down his throat. "Probably some erroneous report sent back to Brass."

Earlier, when Meadows had been on the bridge, spray lashed the windscreen. When the ship's bells jangled midnight, the bo'sun's pipe was a shrill whistle over the loudspeaker system followed by a brusk voice, "Relieve the watch!"

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A double shadow darkened the doorway as Lieutenants Junior Grade Harney and Stegman stepped through and saluted. Meadows' nod was official acceptance of their arrival on duty.

Saluting the Captain, the Exec went off duty.

Meadows checked his watch. Time for him to turn in, as well. A long day, he'd been on the bridge since first light. Normally asleep at such an hour, the skipper allowed no fixed watch for himself until an established routine was set aboard.

Moving to the door, he repeated his standard order to Harney and Stegman. "Report any and all contacts." Pausing, he added, "Check your course regularly. Don't leave it to the Quartermaster. He could make a mistake."

While fresh enlisted men crowded into the bridge and relieved personnel brushed out, the Captain stepped over the coaming and strode toward his cabin.

In his sea cabin, Meadows slipped off his shoes and flopped onto his bunk. Relaxing, he considered his officer arrangements on board.

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Clifford, the Exec, was on his own during daylight and First Watch; he was competent enough. Harney and Stegman added up to a dependable twosome of eyes and ears on Afternoon and Mid Watches. And with Clough covering the Morning and Dog Watches, Meadows could hardly expect more. Sliding palms up beneath his head, he'd gradually drifted into a soft slumber.

Standing before the head mirror now. Meadows mopped the last remnants of soap from his jaw and reviewed the mysterious message.

Scan sea and air.

Shaking his head, he could puzzle nothing from it.

Oilskin clad, those on duty on the bridge clustered in semi-darkness. The yellow-green reflection of the radar repeater cast etched shadows above cheekbones. Seemingly bodiless, dour faces hung eerily detached amid the glimmer.

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Leaning with the ship's motion and gripping the bulkhead, Meadows swayed into the dark of the forebridge. Thrusting his strong countenance into the radar's glow, he became another mask in this luminous circle of sorcery. A distant small echo flickered and wriggled at the top of the screen. For a moment, the skipper studied it, then stepped away.

Glancing around at those in the compartment, he nodded to the O.O.D. "Morning, Clough. I have the Conn."

Crossing to the chart table, Meadows checked relative positions. Their own grid course due east. The Unspecified's growing plot marks. The storm's track marching west. All destined, it seemed, to converge just a few degrees eastward of them.

Checking the bulkhead clock, the Captain plucked a phone from its bracket.

"Forebridge."

"Plot."

"Captain here. What's our Unspecified doing?"

"Still bearing zero-one-zero. Range, seven thousand. Speed, fourteen knots. Steady."

"Who's on Plot?"

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"Evans, sir."

"Right. Thank you." He bent to the voice pipe. "Engine room, give me one-four-five revolutions."

"One-four-five revs. Aye, sir."

The ship leaped ahead under the increased speed. Meadows snatched another phone. "Radar, what do you make of the contact?"

"Hard to say. Bit small for a ship."

"Ever see a return like it before?"

"Not exactly. It's about the size we'd get from a buoy or raft, or something."

"Fishing smack?" offered Meadows.

"Even small for that, sir."

"Yawl? Yacht?" suggested Clough, alongside.

"Still too small," insisted Thatcher.

Foreboding crossed Meadows' brow.

"Submarine?"

"About the right size for a conning tower."

Meadows and Clough exchanged glances.

"Range, five thousand." echoed radar.

Suddenly, the lookout bawled out: "Visual contact! Port ahead!"

Steadying his glasses, Meadows scanned the lashing waves. Then he spotted it. On the horizon.

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A rounded speck, globe-like. He studied it on a long swell. Disappearing in the intermittent trough, it rose again on the crest of the next. Eyeing it, Meadows was puzzled. The thing looked totally alien to him. Focusing on it for a concentrated minute, he turned to Clough. "What's it look like to you?"

Fascinated, Clough steadied on. "Like a dome of some sort. A glass dome."

"My sentiment exactly," expressed Meadows. The thought presently crossing his mind was absurd. He twitched his head. "Can't be," he muttered inwardly. "We couldn't possibly be chasing over the ocean after one of those things. I've heard about ‘em, but don't believe in 'em."

Without diverting attention from the object, he muttered loudly. "Give me one-five-zero revolutions."

Hammering on, the destroyer bashed through some accumulating swells. The distance shortened. In half-light, the glistening bubble enlarged, gained in detail. Pulsing lights, red on port, green on starboard, were in stark contrast to the gathering storm's black emerald sea.

Page 12

A long swell angrier than the others lifted the orb skyward. Hovering briefly, they got their first full glimpse of it. A glass or plastic cupola of sorts, awash, atop the shoulders of a larger whole barely beneath the surface.

Studying it, Meadows recalled the cryptic message received hours earlier. "Unspecified craft," he repeated, mentally eyeing it on the bare signal log. Scan sea and air. Why such ambiguity, he pondered. And why air? Was it aircraft, or vessel? Dispatching his ship on a seemingly wild goose chase didn't make sense unless it was compelling. The communiqué certainly hadn't a tone of urgency about it. And from what he could glimpse of the thing ahead, there seemed to be no emergency.

"Contact increasing speed," interrupted radar. "Fifteen, sixteen knots!" Thatcher's voice rose.

Meadows stared through the sectioned windscreen. The object was indeed receding and at unexpected speed. That was indeed surprising considering the lousy light and growing high chop to the water.

"She's moving at seventeen knots, sir!"

Page 13

Thatcher was agitated.

"One-seventy revs," ordered Meadows into the voice pipe.

The ship vibrated as she picked up speed.

The hands of the bridge clock indicating 0500, there was the first faint lifting of darkness in the east. Losing some of its vagueness, the horizon took on a harder outline. Ruffled and rising, the surface of the ocean abandoned its gloomy neutrality and, by degrees, was resolving into a dimensional thing. Although the bow was still hardly more than a smudge, the strengthening light made it possible to distinguish details in the upperworks. The lookouts, less of a blur now, addressed each other with more recognition than guesswork.

Meadows trained his binoculars on the leaden horizon. Above, the mast raked sultry clouds. Below, flashes of phosphorescence splintered the impetuous sea. At this point, the contact on radar had again become a twisting fleck of light. Persistent. Moving. There all the time and needed to be accounted for.

Wind gusts became moans tugging at the rigging. Straining sea-stained plates, the ship punched through a series of forming swells.

Page 14

Presently, radar buzzed.

"Bridge," responded Meadows.

"Contact coming around to zero-zero-five."

"Steer zero-zero-five, navigator." Meadows turned to Clough. "Damn thing's turning into the storm.

Glasses up and trained into the grayness, Clough was concerned. "Be hell to find if we don't nab it quick."

"If it is a sub and we should spook him into submerging ..." Meadows indicated the threatening weather, "he's liable to give our sonar the slip."

Glancing outside, he inhaled. "I'd dearly love to catch and identify it. But increasing speed any more in this murk wouldn't accomplish much."

Impatient to glimpse the Unspecified and mortally afraid of losing it, Meadows strained at the leash. Under gathering seas, more intense pursuit and overhaul might be increasingly unpleasant. Twice he moved to order more revs, but each time stayed his hand.

Gradually whipping the ocean into a whitish churn, shrieking wind tore at the surface.

Page 15

The first hard waves slammed the hull. Sounding one minute like mortars, they were like cannon fire the next.

"What if it is a sub?" posed Clough through the subtle thunder.

"What if?" parroted Meadows. "Depends upon whose it is.

Stepping to the chart table his mind was troubled. If a submarine, whose? And why loiter in such a desolate patch of ocean? Its small size could hardly account for it being a derelict awash. Its motion belied it being flotsam. An unreported motorized craft, possibly from some foundered ship? Meadows' fingers drummed the chart. Perplexed, he recalled Sherlock Holmes: "Without sufficient material, the mind churns itself into pieces. "

He stared ahead. At an increased seventeen knots, according to radar, the Unspecified's speed suggested a certain urgency. Impatient, he glimpsed his watch.

At the wheel, helmsman Cuddy followed the Captain's unhurried tread back and forth. He had his own ideas as to what the object was.

Page 16

Chapter 3

Ragged and dreary, dawn struggled. Under a smudged ceiling, the new day began. With the broadening dawn, Meadows increased speed. "Give me one-seven-five revolutions."

Forging ahead, the destroyer charged the lash of saw-toothed waves and trembled at each thrust into hammering combers. On one downward plunge, she poised as if not to come up. Pitching skyward again, she hovered as if to falter. At her stern, churning engines rammed her into seas exploding over her bow. The bell from the radar shack buzzed angrily.

"Forebridge," acknowledged Meadows.

"Jesus, sir! Shook hell out of the set that last one."

Meadows smirked. "Right, Thatcher. I'll ease her down. Still holding contact?"

Relieved, Thatcher's response was much happier. "Crabbed right onto his tail, sir.

Page 17

Solid fix."

"Check." Meadows bent to the voice pipe. "Ease her down to one-six-five, Chief."

Meadows stared ahead. At thirty-seven, he was the eldest of the crew. Not yet born during World War II, he'd been much too young for Korea. He'd been a college cadet during Vietnam; and the slightest hint of Desert Storm hadn't yet materialized.

Between sprays drenching the windscreen, Meadows stared out as if in a trance. A definite inner anxiety scratched at him, a premonition of sorts, of being totally alone in combat with an unknown foe on a lonely stretch of sea.

The bell from the radar shack shattered his reverie. "Yes."

The lookout's report confirmed radar. "Contact ahead! Crossing to port."

Meadows' brain ciphered automatically. The contact was crossing their bow on a nearly seven-degree turn to port. "Come to new course three-four-four."

Glimpsing his watch, it was now past seven in the morning. 0714. While sunlight attempted to forge through persistent gray, light rain and leaden clouds fought desperately to suppress it.

Page 18

In synch with the throb of fresh power from the starboard engine, Meadows leaned with the ship's abrupt healing.

Presently in the forebridge dimness, a fresh sou'wester glinted wetly. The Executive Officer. Turning, Meadows met Clifford's gray eyes. "What's this?" he smiled affably. "Have we rousted you out early?"

"Yes, sir." Clifford nodded sleepily. "With the ship continuing to alter course, I knew something was up. Thought I might be needed." Although indiscernible beneath the slicker and headgear, Clifford's blond hair was crew-cut. With half-back shoulders, he was clean shaven.

Meadows pursed. "We've a radar contact ahead, possibly a submarine, and a storm brewing." He jerked his head toward the bow. "We're chasing the contact right into it."

Appraising the situation, the three officers hunched in a clump.

Knowing he'd be rekindling Thatcher's wrath, Meadows again bent to the voice pipe. "Chief. Give me one-seven-zero revs." Straightening, he muttered, "We must maintain his same speed."

Page 19

"If he doesn't spot us." Clough was negative.

"Good chance he might," added Clifford. "He'll have a radar aft, of course."

"If he hasn't already tabbed us," offered Clough. "He's jumped ahead of us once."

"He'll have oscillators and baffles aft as well. If he doesn't swing the craft to get a bearing, though ..." Meadows was more certain. "His operator may have suspected that we're merely a radar shimmer."

There was silence while everyone contemplated the possibility. Then Meadows posed what seemed concluding logic. "If we don't drift to either side, but keep station within his baffles . . ."he shrugged hopefully. "We can only stay behind his propulsion wash and hope he's deaf as a post there."

A hesitant murmur of assent followed.

Meadows reached for an intercom switch. "Cease sonar transmission. Listen only."

Turning, Meadows glanced at his Third Officer. "Mr. Clough. As long as Clifford's on duty, why don't you turn in?"

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Lithe and gaunt, Clough nodded wearily and slanted gratefully toward the door. "Thank you, sir."

As the destroyer crept after the quarry, time seemed interminable.

Presently, radar piped up. "Contact bearing three-four-four. Range, four thousand."

Meadows and Clifford swept glasses up.

In the strengthening light, Meadows caught another long glimpse of the same glassy, bowl-shaped object.

Clifford jerked his glasses down. "My God, sir! It's a..."

Glasses pressed to his cheekbones, Meadows' scowl was intense. "It can't be," he breathed. "But if all they say is true, then they do exist!"

As another sea crested toward the destroyer, the globe slid into the intervening trough. Waiting, Meadows scanned the next bleak swell. Up the slatey side where the object should be climbing, all was blank. Jerking his glasses around under the ship's heave, he was staggered. Right before him, the strange gizmo had disappeared!

Page 21

On the point of utterance, radar crashed in on him. "Contact diving, sir." Similar reports were barked from other stations.

Suddenly, a clutter of decisions peppered him from a dozen directions like a swarm of biting gnats. Mind and voice in synch, he snapped. "Sonar. Commence extended bow sweep. Navigator. Steer three-four-four. Mr. Clifford. Note the time." The bulkhead clock read 0820. "Yeoman. Get a position from the navigator. And get this message off... Belay. Belay that last." His brain double-clutched. Naval regulations required that an object not merely be sighted, but clearly identified. Reports based on flimsy data, and unconfirmed, only aroused official indignation.

Radar buzzed. "Echo's faded, sir."

Meadows acknowledged. "Thank you, Thatcher."

Sonar crowded in. "Starting to get hydrophone effect off port bow," responded Rollins.

Meadows wasn't taking chances. "CIC. Mark the course. Mr. Clifford. Sound General Quarters!" To Yeoman Cartwright, "Start his submergence time."

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Clifford's bellow followed. "General Quarters! General Quarters! All hands, man your Battle Stations! Check all watertight doors!"

The shrill clang of alarm bells affected a stir throughout the vessel. The sudden clump of boots. Crewmen hastily donning helmets and life jackets. Mystical chatter over ship's circuitry. And the rattle and clatter of hatches being slammed and dogged.

A flood of reports became the ship's pulse.

"Cox'n on the helm, sir."

"Damage control manned and ready, sir."

"Depth charge crews on station."

"Plot closed up."

"Third boiler on line."

Meadows spoke into a phone. "Sonar. All around sweep. Maximum range."

Almost immediately, sonar responded. "Captain, I have a contact."

"Hard?" breathed Meadows.

"No fixed signature yet, sir. But slight down doppler.

"Okay, Rollins. Try to fix and hold."

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Meadows' breast beat to the ship's nerves and sinews responding to sudden urgency. Any number of times at sea, they had drilled for an emergency. With no adversary, of course, there was no real pressure. No anxiety. Different now; everyone aboard felt it. Raw crisis in its tenseness made actions swifter and smoother, feet lighter in quiet alarm.

Loath to submit, but circumstantially satisfied, Meadows was grudgingly convinced. The Unspecified, now specified. A legitimate UFO had startlingly dissolved virtually beneath their keel.

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Chapter 4

Meadows was puzzled. "Hell!" he mumbled. "According to what little I've heard, UFOs don't sit on the ocean's surface. Nor dive beneath it. They fly through the sky!" Suddenly, the communiqué scan sea and air made sense.

Huge rudder clutching the ocean on helm orders, the DE heeled over. Slicing at an angle, thick froth creamed from starboard. Gray seas slammed to port. In the rigging, the wind rose to shriek at the ship's audacity.

Station reports tumbled from the phones. Below decks, scuttlebutt ran rampant. In pursuit of some bizarre craft, a sudden sense of the eerie pervaded the ship.

On duty, Helmsman Cuddy knew full well what it was. "The Old Hag Syndrome." Eyes fixed on the compass and fingers rigid at the wheel, he'd experienced it.

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"They come after you at night," he muttered. "Up the stairs. Into your bed. No matter your whereabouts, they find you."

Down in CIC, enlisted men bent to their assignments. Lights on, the computer board blinked crazily with data tapes moving erratically. Oscilloscopes glowed. Shadowy marks and dashes, like a latent outbreak of measles, blossomed on the lucite plotting panel.

Scanning the sonar, Rollins sounded off "Double hydrophone effect on port bow."

"Bearing?"

"Difficult to say, sir. Three-four-four, basically. First echo at four thousand. Second, just beyond. Phantom cavitation effect from near echo, but no audible blade rate."

Meadows flicked a glance at Clifford. "How's her head?"

"Passing zero-zero-one."

To sonar. "Don't lose that farthermost echo." To the Navigator. "Bring her around to three-four-four. Port one third."

"Near echo fading," advised Rollins. "Far echo still strong."

"Some kind of dupe?" queried Clifford.

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Meadows' smirk was wolfish. "Like the old Nazi U-boat Pillenwerfer ruse. Belch out a volume of air astern. Suspended in water, it gives a false echo while the U-boat slips away." Jaw grim, he turned to Clifford. "Learned that from a WWII Atlantic Naval skipper at the Academy. In this case, however ..." he shrugged, "... it may be some type of electronic subterfuge." He shrugged again. "A pulsating energy field, maybe." He spoke into the voice pipe. "Give me five more revs, Chief."

The Specified’s heading for cover beneath the approaching storm, the Captain addressed Clifford. "Once on three-four-four, advise me when eight minutes are up."

Perusing the Plot before him, Meadows' eyes traced the submerged object's progress. -Steering a course toward the storm center, the UFO was obviously intelligently directed. Unmanned vessels just didn't wander purposefully at seventeen knots.

Hurriedly, the captain did a mental sum. In approximately eight minutes at seventeen-and-a- half knots, they should be well abreast of the submerged. Once parallel with it, he'd try radio contact.

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Failing that, he'd attempt to flush the bird; bring him to the surface.

The sky was a thunderstorm of clouds. Rain drummed against the windscreen. Exploding seas hammered the ship's plating.

Meadows stared out. It would be advantageous to know who or what his adversary was, and to understand the purpose and presence of this strange fellow below. Skeptical before regarding UFOs, his mind struggled to alter its thinking. The government and the Navy itself had adamantly stated officially that no such thing existed. Natural phenomena. Weather balloons. Hallucinations. Temperature inversions. These were the explanations. But the thing recently afloat before them, so exotic and totally un-maritime, could be nothing else but a UFO.

With a negative twitch of his head, his eyes attempted to penetrate the water pouring down the windscreen. That gut-scraping fear of a lone duet at sea returned. Knees uncertain, he stared more keenly into the water.

His mind grappled with this new proposition. How would he handle a crisis should it develop?

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Would his mental reflexes equal his adversary's responses? And what would be the final outcome?

Truthfully, he had misgivings. Palms on the chart table, he mused. Should he have originally signaled base regarding the contact? Instinct said no. But was instinct misled . . . simply a refrain from signaling so that an answer wouldn't reach him until well engaged?

Sonar interrupted. "Contact bearing three-four-four. Strong hydrophone now on second echo."

"Eight minutes," echoed Clifford.

Misgivings to the wind, it was time to act. Practically even with the submerged, he was uncertain as to its depth. As if in answer, the Soundman fed him the information.

"Depth: one hundred fifty. Steady."

Meadows pressed another phone. "Sparks, anything audio?"

"No, sir," responded Petty Officer Liggy. "All bands quiet. No radio traffic."

Meadows nodded. "Check. Crank up the S/R. All frequencies. Let's see if we can raise a response from our submerged stranger."

"Aye, aye, sir!" Liggy was enthusiastic.