Ghost Force

by Patrick Robinson

  1800, SATURDAY, MAY 28

  ON BOARD USS CHEYENNE

  NORTH ATLANTIC

  “Stand by, one.”

  “Last bearing check.”

  “Shoot!”

  “Weapon under guidance, sir.”

  “Arm the weapon.”

  “Weapon armed, sir.”

  Two minutes…

  “Weapon two thousand yards from target.”

  “Sonar…switch to active…single ping.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  1804, SATURDAY, MAY 28

  ON BOARD VIPER K-157

  Captain—Sonar…one active transmission…loud…bearing Green one-three-five…United States SSN for certain…close…really close.

  Captain Vanislav reacted instantly, attack, not defense… Stand by, tube number two…set targets bearing Green one-three-five…Range three thousand meters…Depth one hundred…shoot as soon as you’re ready.

  Hard right…steer zero-three-five…shut off for counterattack…full ahead…ten up…two hundred meters.

  Captain—Sonar…Torpedo active transmission!! … Possibly in contact…right ahead interval nine hundred meters!!”

  Captain Vanislav was going for the classic but reckless standard Russian defense of driving flat-out into the direct path of an incoming torpedo. But, too late, he shouted his last command, “Decoys!!” —just as the big wire-guided Gould Mk 48 American torpedo slammed into the bow of his ship just forward of the fin.

  It blasted a massive hole in the pressure hull, and the thunderous force of the ocean smashed through the bulkheads as if they were made of cardboard. Along with his entire crew, Captain Vanislav died instantly, much as the crew of the Ark Royal had done forty-two days before.

  She went down in 750 fathoms of ocean, just a few miles short of the Norwegian Basin, where the North Atlantic shelves down to a colossal depth of 12,000 feet, more than two miles.

  FOUR WEEKS LATER

  0900, SATURDAY, JUNE 25

  CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND

  Admiral Arnold Morgan smiled a thin smile as he scanned the front page of the New York Times . The single-column story at the top left hand of the page announced the resignation of the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

  Basically, Arnold quietly rejoiced in the demise of any left-wing leader of a Western country. And, anyway, that particular PM was never going to survive the catastrophe of the Falkland Islands.

  What caught his eye far more sharply was a front-page cross-reference to a story on page three, concerning the loss of a Russian nuclear submarine.

  It was an agency story, credited to Tass, Moscow, Friday; the headline over two columns described it as “missing, believed lost.”

  The Admiral read it carefully:

  The Russian Navy’s 9,000-ton nuclear-powered Akula-class submarine Viper , hull number K-157, has been lost in the North Atlantic.

  Naval officials believe it sank in the Norwegian Basin northeast of the Faeroe Isles, where the water is more than two miles deep. Both the search area and depth are so vast no rescue operation is planned.

  According to Russian Navy sources, Viper missed first one then a second satellite call sign. Every effort was made to make contact, but the submarine was patrolling hundreds of miles offshore.

  When it missed its third call sign, Viper had been missing for possibly three days and the search area, given a ten-knot average speed, would have been 360,000 square miles. There has been no further contact between the submarine and its base, and Russian naval authorities now accept the submarine has sunk, with all hands.

  A spokesman for the Russian Navy’s Commander in Chief, Admiral Vitaly Rankov, said last night: “Sadly, we have no information as to what caused the accident, and at this stage we are presuming a nuclear reactor failure, possibly at great depth. In Admiral Rankov’s opinion, we may never know the answers.”

  Admiral Morgan betrayed no emotion. He set the paper aside, just as Kathy came in bearing coffee and toast.

  “Did you read about that Russian submarine?” she said. “I saw it on CNN just now.”

  “I sure did,” he replied. “Took ’em long enough to admit they’d lost her.”

  “You’re always so critical of the Russians,” she said, smiling. “Poor Admiral Rankov, he’s such a jolly man…and anyway you don’t know when she sank, any more than they do.”

  “Don’t I?” grunted the Admiral, darkly.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PATRICK ROBINSON is the author of seven international bestselling suspense thrillers, including Nimitz Class and Hunter Killer, as well as several nonfiction bestsellers. He divides his time between Ireland and Cape Cod.

  www.patrickrobinson.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  A LSO BY P ATRICK R OBINSON

  One Hundred Days

  (with Admiral Sir John “Sandy” Woodward)

  True Blue

  Nimitz Class

  Kilo Class

  H.M.S. Unseen

  U.S.S. Seawolf

  The Shark Mutiny

  Barracuda 945

  Slider

  Scimitar SL-2

  Hunter Killer

  CREDITS

  Front cover photograph © Gandee Vasan / Getty Images

  COPYRIGHT

  GHOST FORCE . Copyright © 2006 by Patrick Robinson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Sony Reader July 2006 ISBN 0-06-119844-7

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Robinson, Patrick.

  Ghost force / by Patrick Robinson.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-10: 0-06-074691-2

  ISBN-13: 978-0-06-074691-9

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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