Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon

by Cameron, Marc

  Captain Tian stepped forward, gave him another pack with a short shotgun inside.

  “The chief sawed off the barrel, to make it easier for you to carry.” The captain pursed his lips again, patting Wan on the shoulder. “I would hate for you to see a polar bear.”

  At that, the captain nodded to the assistant medic, who’d had little training but for what he got on the job. He carried a long steel needle. “The medical manual suggests submariners egressing from depths perforate their eardrums prior to leaving, to avoid a more violent tear during rapid ascent.”

  “Very well,” Wan said. He did not know if puncturing an eardrum would hurt, but he thought having one ripped apart by pressure might render him incapable of making the decisions he would need to make at the surface. He pushed the SEIE suit’s hood back to expose his ears. “Please go ahead.”

  “Me?” the seaman stammered. “I had thought …” He held up the needle with an unsteady hand.

  Wan smiled, rescuing the young man by taking the needle from him and deftly popping both his own eardrums, quickly, one after the other, before he had time to think. It smarted, but, to his surprise, it was not excruciating, and he could still hear.

  He returned the needle and entered the escape trunk. The heavy door closed behind him with a resounding metallic thunk, muffling the sound of the cheers coming from the crew.

  Almost immediately, seawater began to flow in around his feet, filling the metal box, the rising pressure causing the holes in his eardrums to hum.

  He did not hurt—yet.

  31

  Captain Cole Condiff, skipper of the Virginia-class fast attack submarine USS Indiana (SSN 789), stood in the control room, behind the officer of the deck. They were three hundred feet under the Arctic ice, eight hundred miles south of the North Pole, approaching the point where the Beaufort Sea became the Chukchi.

  A second U.S. sub, the Seawolf-class USS Connecticut, had departed the latest ICEX the week before, but Condiff had held his boat back, running drills, waiting. Russian subs were well aware of the U.S. Navy’s biennial Arctic combat and tactical readiness exercise. There had been nearly fifty personnel at the camp above the ice for almost three weeks. The Russians did the same kind of training, maybe even more, if you considered the proximity of their sub bases to large sheets of ice. The Chinese were throwing up ice camps, too, attempting to show some polar connection. Their subs were also here, or so he’d heard, charting, learning.

  With new shipping lanes and trade routes coming into play as the ice opened up more and more each year, every nation with a toehold in the Arctic worked to make sure they had the right tools to navigate and protect their interests. If the Russians knew about ICEX, then they would be lurking, waiting on the fringes for the U.S. subs to go home.

  Captain Condiff’s predatory drive kicked in at the thought, and he’d decided to let the Connecticut draw away any lurkers, and then he would fall in behind, hunting his way home.

  Indiana had been under the ice for six days—since they’d said good-bye to their friends at the ice camp. Thick floe and huge daggerlike ice keels prevented deployment of the ELF antenna, making communication with the outside world impossible. Condiff expected open water by the end of watch, where the ELF could pick up any traffic from command. Until then, his sonar technicians watched the wavering green waterfall on their screens for the sound signatures of a Russian submarine.

  Condiff took a deep breath. He was long past smelling it, but knew there was an odor there that those on land found disquieting if not disgusting. His wife made him wash his uniforms three times as soon as he walked in the door after a deployment. Even then, she relegated them to designated plastic totes that stayed on a shelf in the garage until the next time he went to sea.

  Reusable water bottle in one hand, the skipper chatted with one of the newest members of his crew, a twentysomething woman named Ramirez. A freckled farm-boy lieutenant from Nebraska named Lowdermilk was officer of the deck at the moment, leaving Condiff to conduct his training. Unlike older submarines, Virginia-class subs like Indiana had consolidated the watch positions of dive, helm, outboard, and chief of the watch into pilot and copilot who both sat at a console in front of the officer of the deck, who gave them maneuvering orders. Combat control consoles ran along the starboard side. Sonar technicians sat at consoles to port, opposite combat control.

  Along with approximately ten percent of her crewmates, this was Ramirez’s first tour. Participation in ICEX was a surprise bonus for these newbies, since Blue Noses, submariners who’d crossed the Arctic Circle, were relatively rare. It was one of the few missions a young submariner could brag about while ashore without getting into trouble.

  Ramirez was taciturn, a quality Condiff liked if he did not share. Even better, she was a quick study. Her formal training was to be a sonar tech, or STS. Captain Condiff had no doubt that she would eventually become an outstanding one, but before that, he liked to have his newbies take a tour through the specialties, sonar, combat control, engineering, communications, among others, even the galley. Everyone on the sub drilled in emergency procedures, so she got plenty of that as well. Not only had these few weeks of round-the-boat training taught her a little about most of the systems, she’d been able to see firsthand how components of the crew acted and interacted. The rest of the crew also got to know Ramirez and her fellow newbies.

  Each new submariner also spent half a day shadowing him. Mentally exhausting to be sure, but it had borne fruit in the form of a crew of cohesive submariners and junior officers who were ingrained with the concept of servant leadership.

  Today was Ramirez’s day. She stood off his left shoulder, Rite in the Rain notebook and pen in hand, eager to learn.

  “Tell me about our enemy, Seaman Ramirez,” Condiff said.

  “Our enemy, sir? Here, at this moment?”

  “Yes,” Condiff said. “Here on this sub.”

  “… Russia, sir?”

  “Not at the moment,” Condiff said. He turned to Lowdermilk. “Lieutenant?”

  “The sea, Skipper,” Lowdermilk said. “The sea is our enemy.”

  “You are correct, Mr. Lowdermilk,” Condiff said. “You may continue driving my boat.”

  Lowdermilk grinned. “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Condiff took a swig from the water bottle and winked at Ramirez. “I’m not kidding, you know. Even now, Mother Ocean would love to crush our hull with her bare hands. And if she’s unable to do that, she would sink and flood and freeze us without a second thought. Don’t believe me? Punch a tiny hole in the sub and then try to make friends with her. No, ma’am, the sea is an invasive species.” He took another drink and then raised the bottle as if in a toast. “And I love it more than just about any other place on the planet.”

  He gestured at the nearest sonar technician. “So Petty Officer Markette, there, is keeping an eye on a surface ship making its way through the ice … Right, Petty Officer Markette?”

  “Aye, Captain,” the STS said. “Bearing two-five-five. Heavy, slow screws. Turn count suggests it’s the Healy. Getting a lot of interference from the ice floe, but we’re estimating her at eight miles.”

  The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy had been in the area before they dove. They’d picked up her groaning screws off and on throughout the week as she maneuvered through the ice, along with the periodic groans of a smaller boat they assumed to be an Arctic research vessel.

  “Thank you kindly, Petty Officer Markette.” Condiff glanced at Ramirez again. “Ice … just frozen water … so still the enemy …”

  Markette sat up straighter in his chair.

  “Con. Sonar. Contact,” he said, all business. “Sound transient, far, bearing two-four-zero … Explosion. I think it was a torpedo.”

  “I have the con,” Condiff said, moving forward.

  “Captain has the con.” Lowdermilk stepped out of the way, deftly nudging Seaman Ramirez with him.

  “Station a tracking party,” Condiff said before
turning toward sonar.

  Lieutenant Lowdermilk relayed the order on the 1 MC, or main communications circuit, alerting the entire ship that a contact needed tracking, but the captain was not quite ready for battle stations. Designated crew, along with the XO, were needed in control.

  “Report,” Condiff said.

  “Nothing, sir,” Petty Officer Markette said. “The sound of the launch blended with ice noise at first. The fish launched and then detonated … six seconds later.”

  “The Healy?” Condiff said, feeling bile rise in his gut.

  “Heavy screws are still present, sir,” Markette said. “Turn count is accelerating. She’s speeding up.”

  “Assessment?”

  Markette listened to a playback of the noise. “There it is,” he said. “Hiss, crack, boom. I think the transient was a sub firing a torpedo through the ice.”

  “No other contacts?”

  “No other contacts,” Markette said.

  Lowdermilk said, “Shall we find open water and send up an X-SUB?”

  The X-SUB was a communication buoy developed by ALSEAMAR, that, when deployed by tether, allowed two-way communication between the submarine and ships or land while staying at depth.

  “Not yet,” Condiff said. “I’m not ready to show our hand on the surface quite yet—even with a little buoy. No telling what kind of air assets are up there.” He addressed the petty officers in the pilot and copilot seats, giving them the coordinates and speed he wanted.

  “… Take us toward the sound of gunfire …”

  32

  The other members of ELISE filtered into the secret space by ones and twos, bringing small boxes of supplies for their desks—a favorite type of pencil that couldn’t be nabbed at the supply closet, a coffee mug that had served them through many overseas assignments, or maybe a framed photo or two to help anchor them to normal life … whatever that was. Smartwatches, Fitbits, iPads, or outside electronics of any kind were not allowed.

  Hendricks, Wallace, and Li had worked through a pool of thirty prospective personnel files and sent nine names to DNI Foley for approval. Once Foley signed off, Hendricks and Wallace had met with each of them personally and invited them to apply to participate in a special project that would require in-depth background checks, including a polygraph and a financial review that one of the men later described as more intrusive than a lingering prostate exam. Hendricks, Wallace, Li, and even Director Foley worked around the clock to complete the vetting process.

  No one on ELISE knew how long the assignment would be, but once they found out it was a mole hunt, they were in it for the long haul.

  Monica Hendricks sat at the head of a long oak conference table, flanked by David Wallace of the FBI and retired rear admiral Peter Li, her longtime friend and unofficial deputy on project ELISE.

  With the last two team members less than five minutes out, Hendricks asked the others to stow their belongings quickly and join her at the conference table. She’d already laid out twelve yellow legal pads and twelve black Skilcraft government pens.

  It was often said that it took a spy to catch a spy. Monica preferred to think that it took a spy to catch a rat. Turncoat, sellout, traitor, quisling—many pejoratives fit the bill, but rat was a much better descriptor than mole.

  Moles lived underground, out of sight. They were hard to find, but they were blind and witless, digging away toward the smell of food or a mate. Beady-eyed and conniving, rats, on the other hand, slinked through the darkness, eating grain stores, shitting on what they didn’t eat, and spreading plagues.

  Rats who sold out to Israel or Taiwan or France, while they couldn’t be forgiven, might at least be understood. Rats who gave up their knowledge to Communist countries were beyond redemption.

  Of the twelve people assigned to ELISE, there were seven women and five men. Two were black, three were of Chinese heritage, and two were Hispanic. The rest were white. There was one Southern Baptist, one Lutheran, and one Jew. Agnostics, Mormons, and Catholics tied at three apiece. Everyone in the room spoke at least two languages. More than half, including all the Mormons, spoke fluent Mandarin. Most had graduate degrees, one from Harvard Law School, two were former cops, and two had taught high school. Nine were parents. Three had grandchildren and would gladly show you dozens of photos, though they did not post them on any sort of social media.

  An extremely diverse group, but for all their differences, every single member of ELISE hated Communism with the intensity of a thousand suns. Socialism was no better, just Communism by another name. All of them had been around the world and witnessed firsthand the damage Communist regimes rained down on the people. Voicing the notion aloud made one sound like a crazed zealot, but experience had taught everyone in the room that Communism was a fairy tale on paper, the cold reality of which brought riches to the rulers and sorrow, starvation, and death to the ruled. The record of the United States was far from perfect, but those who worked for Monica Hendricks made no apologies for the fervent belief that theirs was not a fight against merely an alternate dogma to democracy, but against evil.

  The brush did not paint as broadly when it came to people. Communism was evil, but not all Communists were evil. Some were idealists, caught up in the dream. Others were simply trapped in the cogs and wheels of a great and terrible machine, unable to slip away without being crushed. There were tens of millions of good Chinese people who identified as Communists but would have happily gone another way if not for fear of being run over by a tank.

  Whatever Hendricks’s moral views on the Communist regime of the People’s Republic of China, they were a formidable enemy, capable enough to penetrate the CIA with an as-yet-unknown agent in place. She did not intend to underestimate their resolve or their abilities at espionage.

  For the protection of all involved, ELISE would be run out of a nondescript office off the mazelike underground mall in Crystal City, Virginia, rented under the name of a fictitious advertising corporation set up by and paid for with funds from the good folks at FBI Counterintelligence Division, where David Wallace served as section chief of counterespionage.

  The space, an open bullpen, was large enough for a long conference table Admiral Li was already calling the Big Deck. Fifteen desks, including Hendricks’s, surrounded the table. Two computer servers occupied one of the two closets at the far end of the room, next to a small supply closet. The room had been transformed in a matter of hours by technical surveillance and countermeasures experts, also from FBI, into one big SCIF. This Secure Compartmented Information Facility guarded against what the NSA called TEMPEST—the leakage of electronic signals and sound that could be picked up by an adversary. A typical suburban home spilled enough TEMPEST information from its routers, mobile phones, smart devices, vehicles, and even pacemakers to piece together a large intelligence file.

  The room had no windows. False walls and a second ceiling, six inches lower than the existing one, formed a room within the room, impregnated with metal foil to act as a Faraday cage. Everyone who entered, including the IT specialist, was deeply vetted and read all the way in to ELISE. In the unlikely event that they received a visit from, say, an FBI or CIA assistant director or White House staffer, a rotating red beacon would begin to flash annoyingly in the center of the ceiling, reminding everyone that there was an outsider in their midst. They should cover their work product and keep any details of the mole hunt to themselves.

  All computer and most telephone lines going in and out of ELISE space were encrypted and firewalled. The handset of each regular landline phone was affixed with a large red sticker that warned it was not a secure communication device. Cell phones—even Hendricks’s and Wallace’s—stayed in cubbies in the outer lobby with a plainclothes officer from CIA police whose job it was to run force protection. Even the cell-phone cubbies were enclosed with Faraday film to keep anyone with a scanner and a Yagi antenna from grabbing a list of the phones parked in front of the location. It didn’t seem like much, but that informati
on formed another piece of the puzzle that Monica Hendricks did not want to give up.

  The George Bush Center for Intelligence, AKA Langley, was less than ten miles up the George Washington Parkway. The White House was three miles to the north across any number of bridges. FBI HQ was just six blocks east of that. Crystal City was only two metro stops away from the Pentagon. Arlington National Cemetery was one more on the Blue Line. Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling, the now-not-so-secret second home of the HMX-1 (Marine One) presidential helicopters, as well as the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was directly across the Potomac. You couldn’t hear them in the SCIF, but every few minutes, the walls of the ELISE office space gave a tremulous shake signifying the takeoff of a commercial aircraft from Reagan National Airport on Runways 1 or 33 to the north, a scant two blocks away.

  Restaurants and shops in and around Crystal City were accustomed to military and civilian government types staying at one of the many hotels while on TDY to Washington. Some experts reckoned, correctly, in Hendricks’s estimation, that with all the government knowledge floating around, Crystal City was one of the most heavily trolled places in the United States by foreign adversaries. Amazon was buying up office space in several high-rises connected to the Crystal City underground, and now it was even odds whether the people in line at Starbucks or Ted’s Montana Grill worked for Jeff Bezos or Uncle Sam.

  “First off,” Hendricks said, once everyone had arrived and the door was secured, “thank you all for participating. I don’t have to tell you what a sensitive matter this is.” She introduced herself, and then went around the table and had each person give a two-minute thumbnail of their background. When it got back around to her, she said, “You see that only six of you presently serve as counterintelligence officers. That is by design. If you do, we want your expertise. If you don’t, we want your different point of view. You’ve each been briefed individually on what we know about SURVEYOR—which is precious little, so there’s no need to go over that again at this point.”