"Arkady?"
"Right here, Captain."
Amanda could make him out only as a hazy outline in the smoke, but she knew he would be clad in his inevitable gray ' Nomex flight suit. She also knew that he was only a few inches taller then her own five feet seven, and that the eyes behind the faceplate of his smoke mask were an exceptionally clear and penetrating blue. In short, she knew Lieutenant Vince Arkady as well as she did the decks of her own ship.
"What's the bay status?"
"We've got a hot deck situation, Captain. No breakthroughs reported, but we're keeping things hosed down."
"Okay, we're going to be rigging a bypass to get power through to the motors and steering gear. Get set for it and have your people stand by to assist the cable teams."
"Will do."
"And we've got to ventilate these spaces. Drop the helipad elevator and get some of this smoke out of here."
"Tried it, Captain. No power. We're trying to get the circuits reenergized now."
"That's no good. We've got to ventilate now. Pop the safety latches with a crowbar and bleed the pressure out of the hydraulics reservoirs. That should bring it down. If it doesn't, get a couple of jacks from the DC
locker and force it."
"Aye, aye."
He gripped her shoulder for a second, then he was gone, yelling commands to his unseen hangar crew.
Amanda continued to follow the bulkhead around, squeezing past the parked bulk of Retainer Zero One, one of the pair of SAH-66 Sea Comanche helos assigned to the Cunningham's aviation section. Ahead, a man-sized oval of dull yellowish light became visible, and a moment later, she emerged through the open hatchway into the clean air of the small well deck right aft.
Peeling off the mask, she granted herself the luxury of a single unforced breath. The sea breeze blowing across her perspiration-dampened clothing produced a delicious chill, but she couldn't enjoy it for long.
Ignoring the somber featured man who had followed her out of the hangar bay, she circled the aft Oto Melara turret and descended through another deck hatch.
The atmosphere was considerably cleaner in the stern spaces, leaving only the belowdecks darkness to contend with. It took Amanda a matter of moments to locate the aft DC site leader and her team three levels down.
"We're tight, ma'am," the Chief Petty Officer reported in the glow of the battle lanterns. "The bulkheads at frame twenty-three are holding with no burnthroughs. The steering engine is okay and I've had hands down to check both access tunnels into the propulsor pods. No damage to the main motors.
We just need the juice to bring everything back up."
"You'll get it. The jumper teams are coming in right behind me."
"Okay! Hey, Wheeler! Get the access hatches open on the main junction box. Reichsbower, you do the same for the steering engine space. The rest of you guys fan out and start checking breaker panels. We got power coming in. Let's go!"
"Hey, Chief!" The voice of the man the site leader had sent to the junction box echoed in the passageway. "Come here, quick!"
Amanda followed the CPO as she hurried toward the call.
Seaman Wheeler was kneeling beside an open knee-level access panel in the side of the passageway. He had his flashlight aimed at a double X of blue tape stuck to the inside of the hatch.
"Ah, shit!" the Chief exploded. "Water damage!"
Amanda nodded grimly. "Cracked bulkhead or seal failure, they'll call it. I should have figured they wouldn't make it this easy. Okay, new game plan. We'll have to run a second jump back from Power Room One.
We'll feed the starboard propulsor from One, the port from Two, jacking directly into the feeder cables at the head of the access tunnels. We'll control the motor RPMs directly with the generator outputs."
She started back for the '-decks ladder. "I'm going forward to get '
moving on the new setup. Have your people get the access tunnels open again and stand by to splice into the main power busses--"
"Hold it, Captain Garrett. No sense in wasting any more of your time, or ours." The officer who had been trailing behind her stepped into the beam of her battle lantern. "I think we can terminate this thing now."
Amanda took a deep, deliberate breath. "Aye, aye, sir," she replied, reaching for one of the "dead" interphones on the bulkhead.
"Bridge."
"Bridge, aye." The voice of her exec, Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Hiro, came back crisply over the circuit.
"This is the Captain, Ken. It's all over. Secure the conflagration drill. Well done to all hands."
The 1-MC speakers took up the call a few moments later.
"Secure the conflagration drill. I repeat, all decks, secure the conflagration drill. Main Engine Control, energize all circuits.
Damage-control teams, shut down all smoke generators and commence stand-down. Set condition X-Ray in all ( spaces and ventilate the ship.
All hands, the Lady says well; done." [
The overhead lighting blazed on with a glare that momentarily made the eyes ache. The ventilator blowers came on stream as well, producing the soft roar of moving air that was the underdeck sound signature of a healthy man-of-war.
The smoke haze began to flow toward the intake grilles.
"I hope I wasn't being premature in issuing that ' done' comment, Captain Johannson," Amanda continued, re cradling the phone.
"Not in the least," the Fleet readiness officer replied. "Of course, I'll have to run a formal evaluation with the rest of my inspection team, but since your crew performed today the way they've been doing all week, I don't foresee any problems."
He extended his hand to Amanda. ' ', Captain.
You've got yourself a four-oh ship. I'd say that you're cleared for deployment."
From down the corridor, some covert listener produced a muffled whoop.
In seconds, the word that the Duke had made it would be spreading along the scuttlebutt line from bow to stern.
Amanda made her way topside again, past the damage control hands, who were starting to clean and rerack their gear. This time when she emerged onto the well deck, she could take the time to savor the clean Pacific trade winds.
The USS Cunningham lay at anchor in Pearl Harbor's East Loch. There, for the past week, she had been deeply involved in the process of winning back her spurs.
The big guided-missile destroyer was just out of the repair yards following a long and difficult combat deployment in the South Atlantic, having been the sole American naval vessel to see action during the recent military confrontation with Argentina.
Despite this, and despite the fact that the Cunningham had emerged from the Antarctic campaign with numerous battle honors, including the Presidential Unit Citation, the Duke had to re-prove her readiness to return to sea.
For the past month, she and her crew had been involved in a grinding ritual of tests and drills: gunnery requalification, engineering requalification, aviation and ASW requalification.
The climax had been the weeklong mass-conflagration and damage-control exercise. With this last hurdle cleared, the ship and crew were rated as ready to depart on their scheduled duty deployment to the western Pacific.
Looking forward, Amanda could see that the helipad elevator was down as per her orders and that a few last wisps of the odorless, nontoxic smoke from the exercise generators were issuing from the open well, like steam from the crater of an inactive volcano.
Just forward of that, fared into the trailing end of the streamlined superstructure, the towering fin of the Cunning ham's freestanding mast array stabbed upward. It was shaped like the raked back blade of some gigantic tanto fighting dagger, and the slight roll of the ship made its tip carve a delicate invisible pattern in the vivid blue of the Hawaiian sky.
Here and there, small clusters of sweat-soaked but jubilant crew personnel were emerging topside through the destroyer's weather-deck hatches, including some of Doc Golden's erstwhile "patients." They still had a good job's worth of cleanup and
reordering to deal with, but for the moment the men and women of the Duke could take a breather and feel proud.
Up on the rim of the helipad, Vince Arkady appeared. She caught the flash of his grin as he spotted her on the well deck. Moving deliberately, he lifted his arms and clasped his hands overhead in a boxer's declaration of victory.
Amanda smiled as well, and replied in kind. Reaching back, she snapped the rubber band that confined her ponytail.
Shaking her hair down around her shoulders, she leaned against the deck railing and took a deep breath.
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
2032 HOURS ZONE TIME; JULY 15, 2006
It was the most pleasant part of the day in Washington. Evening was just taking the edge off the sauna bath heat, leaving a mellow glow that would hold well into the night. Secretary of State Harrison Van Lynden didn't have the time to enjoy it, however. His town car swept through the security checkpoint at the gate and wheeled up the curving drive to the south portico of the White House.
Ahead, brake lights flared, marking the arrival of another member of the crisis team. As his own vehicle drew up and came to a halt, Van Lynden recognized Lane Ashley, director of the National Security Agency, disembarking from the limousine ahead. Briefcase in hand, she paused for a moment, waiting for him.
"Good luck, sir," his Secret Service driver said. "On whatever it is this time."
' ' watch CNN, Frank. They probably know more about it than we do."
"Where did they catch you this morning?" Ashley inquired as they hurried down the quiet, carpeted corridors of the presidential residence.
"Preparing for a very long day with the Belgian Prime Minister. Possibly one of the ten most boring men in Western Europe." "You were lucky," the tall, graying blonde sighed.
"Brian and I were about to fly out to the West Coast for our son's wedding."
"None of us are lucky today, Lane. God, what a can of worms!"
They broke off their brief conversation as they approached the security team that flanked the access elevator to the White House briefing room.
Even though he had made this passage scores of times during this administration, the Secret Service men carefully compared Van Lynden's spare, Yankee features with the photograph on his identity badge.
Then, with suitably respectful suspicion, they touched an ID wand to the badge's magnetic tab. The resulting electronic chirp verified that the secretary of state was indeed who he said he was. The process was repeated with the NSA director, then they were cleared through into the elevator and down into the White House's secured underground level.
"Were you able to get something put together?" Ashley inquired as they began to descend.
"Something. But the Boss still isn't going to be happy."
Benton Childress was a middle-aged black man, solidly built and tending toward portliness. His predilection for rather hairy tweed suits and gold-framed glasses gave the classic impression of a college history teacher. Not surprisingly so, for he had once been one. He had also been a Rhodes scholar, the mayor of a major midwestern city, and a lieutenant colonel in the Missouri Air National Guard. Currently, he was the forty-fourth president of the United States.
He was looking over the golden frames of those glasses now, regarding the three members of his assembled crisis team much as he must have a group of recalcitrant students.
"Miss. Lane, gentlemen," he said. "How in the hell was this allowed to get past us?"
Like another ex-Missouri National Guardsman who had sat in the Oval Office, President Childress had a decided propensity for plain speaking.
"Too many tasking assignments and not enough assets," Lane Ashley replied, levelly meeting the president's gaze.
Having battered her way up through the old boys' network within the CIA, she was well capable of doing some plain speaking of her own.
"Most of the resources we've had deployed on the western Pacific Rim have been focused on what's been happening inside mainland China. We simply weren't looking back over our shoulder at Taiwan."
The current incarnation of the presidential briefing room was done in dark cherry wood, the wall paneling and the massive conference table and chairs surrounding it. Its carpeting was blue, and the only diversions from the room's Edwardian elegance was the discreet systems workstation in one corner and the single large flatscreen display inset into each wall.
The superb air-conditioning and temperature control didn't even hint at the fact they were twenty feet underground.
"There's another aspect to that as well, sir," Van Lynden added. "When the Chinese civil war went hot, the Taiwanese went on a heightened state of military alert. Then, over the past six months, their government has been reporting a series of provocative actions taken by the Reds.
Aggressive jamming of communications and early-warning radar. Patrol boats and aircraft fired on. That kind of thing.
"In response, they instituted a partial mobilization of reserves and tied on a series of major readiness exercises and war games. Given the unsettled state of affairs in their neighborhood, these appeared to be reasonable precautions. No doubt they buried a lot of their invasion preparations inside all of this other military activity."
"That was pretty god damned convenient for certain people," Sam Hanson said.
With a ramrod spine and a steel-gray brush cut, Presidential Security Adviser Sam Hanson still looked and sounded very much the marine he had been for thirty years. With the advent of the Childress administration, he had stepped directly across from the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to this slot on the president's cabinet.
"We might want to go back and have another look at some of those '
actions.' "
"I don't think that would accomplish very much, Sam," Ashley said. "We know that many elements of the People's Liberation Army have rebel sympathizers operating within them. It would have been easy enough to arrange incidents from the inside."
"Or they could have been genuine," Van Lynden interjected.
"The Red Chinese have a history of attempting to intimidate the Taiwanese. Maybe they were trying to bluff the Nationalists out of an involvement in the war, and it backfired. Either way, I don't think it makes all that much difference now."
"Good point, Harry," Childress said. "I guess Monday morning quarterbacking isn't going to gain us much ground.
Let's see what's going on now, then we can decide what we're going to do about it. Director Ashley, I believe you have a situational update for us."
"Yes, sir."
The NSA woman nodded to the systems operator seated at the workstation.
"First image, please."
The conference room's indirect lighting dimmed. The Large Screen Display at the far end of the room activated, filling with a computer graphics map of mainland China and its environs.
Along the coast south from Shantau to the Vietnamese border and inland to Szechwan Province, the map glowed yellow. Manchuria and north-central China were marked in solid red, as was the major offshore island of Hainan. The western provinces were a swirled mottling of both colors.
"This is our current best estimate of the situation in China as of July fourteenth. We know that the rebels--or United Democratic Forces of China, as they refer to themselves-- hold the southeast, with their core power base being the Canton-Hong Kong area. The Communists maintain control of Beijing and the northeast."
"The old cultural dividing line between the bread eaters and the rice eaters," Van Lynden commented.
"Essentially so," Ashley agreed. "In the western provinces, things are more complicated. What has been a more or less straightforward civil war in the east has collapsed into a mass of localized conflicts and insurgencies between a large number of different ethnic factions, political groups, and plain, old-fashioned warlords. Most voice allegiance to one side or the other, but most also are operating with their own agenda.
"We don't think that even the Chinese know what all's going on out
there. In the Trans-Gobi region, contact has been completely lost with some provinces. Since we're talking about hundreds of thousands of square miles here, it might take years to get communications reestablished. When we do, we might find we have some entirely new nations to deal with."
"The ones that we have are more than enough for the moment." President Childress grunted. "Continue, Ms. Ashley."
"The overt phase of the Chinese civil war began approximately two years ago with an outbreak of large-scale civil protests in the Canton-Hong Kong area. The point of contention being both the replacement of locally born administrators with northern Chinese and the increasing bleed-off of profits from the Canton Special Economic Zone by the Beijing government.
"When the PLA Local Force units were ordered to suppress the rioting, there was a mass mutiny within the district command, a ' of the colonels' that led to most of the troops siding with the rioters. The leadership of the United Democratic Forces of China surfaced shortly thereafter to serve as the ad hoc government of the area in rebellion.
"The revolt spread from there. Most of the Main Force divisions have apparently sided with the Beijing government, as have the majority of the surviving air force and naval units, and the Armed People's Police.
The PLA Local Force elements and the People's Militia have generally sided with the rebels.
"This has led to a kind of strategic stalemate, with the UDFC's greater numbers being counterbalanced by the Communists' superior mobility and firepower. As a result, the battle lines in the eastern provinces have been essentially static for the past six months. That changed last night. First overlay, please."
The map graphics altered. Now, on the eastern Chinese coast, opposite Taiwan, there was a patch of orange notched into the red zone like an inflamed wound.
"I believe Mr. Hanson has the operational end for us."
Hanson nodded an acknowledgment and picked up the thread of the briefing.
"The show started during the early-morning hours with multiple air and cruise missile strikes. It was a classic tasking template, laying fire in on airfields, air-defense sites, command-and-control nodes. We've got something here that will show how things went down. The recon footage, please."
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