The helicopter circled back and flew down the row of ships, seeming to stretch all the way to the horizon.
“Bernard, despite the ships steaming five and six across, the convoy is three miles long! It is perhaps the largest show of naval force ever put to sea.”
“Christie,” an off-camera voice asked, “how will these troop ships get the men ashore? Is it expected that these ships will just dock at a harbor and offload the men?”
While he’d been talking, the lead ship of the convoy, the Webb, came back into view. The camera panned in, the ship growing to its true formidable size, taking up the entire on-screen view.
“Well, Bernard, we’ve been told that of the seventy troop ships, the first twenty are amphibious vessels. By amphibious, we mean that the ships can either half climb up on the shore or have front-loading doors or both, with some of them offloading by opening giant doors in the back and letting off hovercraft and swimming troop transports, even some tanks that come ashore like boats, but that then just keep driving up on the beach and on into the countryside. The amphibious ships all contain the U.S. Marines, and we’ve been told that the Marines will be landing first. Once the beachhead is secured, the Army troops will follow. The other fifty ships are more like standard cargo carriers, with containers that will be offloaded later in the invasion, Bernard.”
The deck of the carrier had come close again, until the view resembled its earlier patch of deck and sea and sky. The chopper bounced on the deck, and then the view became steady. The background noise that the reporter had been shouting over suddenly died, a whooshing sound coming as the rotors wound down.
“Christie, has there been any word on the location of the landing?”
“No, in fact, Bernard,” the reporter said as she climbed out of the helicopter. Handing her helmet back, she flashed her dazzling television newscaster smile at the Navy petty officer. “We’ve been prohibited from going anywhere near the navigation equipment or charts of any kind. In addition, our computers have all been checked to have the satellite-positioning software removed. At this point we can only guess what our position is, but from some of the flyovers done by charter aircraft, and by guessing our speed, we estimate that within the hour we should be crossing the line of the Ryukyu Island chain, which is the border of the East China Sea. From there we’ll be heading to our beachhead on the White Chinese coast. Once we get to the beach, the name of this operation will change to Operation White Hope. Back to you, Bernard, this is Christie Cronkite, onboard the USS James Webb, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, reporting for SNN World News.”
“Thank you, Christie, and now we pause for these words…”
“This is Christie Cronkite, onboard the USS James Webb…”
“Turn it off,” Pacino said.
Since Donchez’s last words had deleted themselves from the screen twenty minutes before. Pacino had stared out the window for most of that time. Finally he’d pulled himself together, blinking, his eyes scratchy and swollen. The first thing he’d done was call for Paully to put on SNN, to see what had happened to the Whites.
Once he saw how the ships were steaming in a rank-and-file formation, he’d been shocked speechless.
“Warner didn’t listen,” Pacino said finally.
“I would have thought for sure she would listen to you this time,” Paully said. “After all, didn’t she say she guaranteed she’d listen?”
“I guess she listened but didn’t act,” Pacino said between clenched teeth. “I can’t believe this. Those ships are sitting ducks. If any of what Donchez said is true, that fleet could be doomed.”
“Is there anything we can do about it? You want to talk to O’Shaughnessy? I can patch him in.”
“Why? I said my piece. Somehow the word didn’t get through. Now, those Rising Suns may be out there. They’ll pick off those ships in the convoy like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“We’ve got some work to do, boss. And we don’t have any time.”
“Okay, how far to Pearl?”
“About three hours.”
“Time enough. I’m going to change my mind. Get O’Shaughnessy on the video. While I’m talking to him, you’ve got to find Tanaka.”
“Admiral Tanaka? Can I ask what’s on your mind?”
“Tanaka designed the Rising Sun subs practically by himself, we’ll need him. Next, get on the horn and find out the status of the Pearl Harbor boats. I want every unit to get out to the East China Sea as soon as possible. Tell them to throttle up to emergency flank.”
“Emergency flank? Are you serious? You’ll be throwing away twelve nuclear reactors, you know that. You’re talking about two hundred million dollars of replacements, with drydock time piling up to a year for each boat. Emergency flank will make every ship radioactive up to the forward bulkhead of the torpedo room.”
“Paully. Emergency flank. Now.”
“Aye, sir. Your fleet. Your stars.”
Exactly, Pacino thought. The stars that he needed to earn once more, and damned quickly. White moved aft to where he’d piled his computer equipment, and began working. Pacino looked out the window. The clouds were all far beneath the plane, and nothing was visible above but the brilliant stars. The past will forgive you, Pacino thought. Follow your instincts, Mikey.
* * *
“Admiral? The CNO is up and on the seat screen.”
“Thanks, Paully.” Pacino punched the fixed-function key, and a glowering O’Shaughnessy came up, his hair rumpled, wearing a robe. His face was stubbled, his eyes puffy. “What do you want?” he said, his voice flat.
“What happened after I left. Admiral? The fleet’s steaming like ducks in a shooting gallery.”
“We were overruled. The fleet’s making a max-speed run for the coastline. Warner’s not in the mood to zigzag. Or to execute a feint. They should hit the beach in a matter of hours, and it’ll all be over.”
“Admiral, I’m convinced the fleet’s standing into danger. They could be targeted any moment.”
“Is your conviction the result of new evidence?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
This was it. Pacino thought. He would have to bring Donchez into it.
“Sir, Director Donchez had gathered quite a bit of new data—”
“We saw all that, Pacino. It’s old news. And it may even be tainted. Did you have access to Donchez’s ’data’ when the meeting with Warner went down?”
“No, sir. I heard later.”
“Well, forget it. Anything else?”
“Sir, I’ll say it one more time, because no one seems to be hearing me. The fleet’s in danger. We have to get them out to the Pacific until my forces can assure them of a safe passage. I’ve got a dozen 6881 subs steaming toward the East China Sea at forty-five knots.”
“So now you’re not just recommending a zigzag, you want them to withdraw? For what, an entire week?”
“Affirmative, boss. Get the fleet the hell out there. I’m more convinced than ever. JeanPaul’s in deep trouble.”
“Noted, Admiral,” O’Shaughnessy said, his face a closed book. “Anything else?”
Pacino was amazed. He had hit a brick wall with O’Shaughnessy. His blood rose, and he could feel himself on the edge of control. “Sir, maybe I’m being out of line or tactless, but shouldn’t we get back to Warner and tell her she’s making a mistake?”
“Pacino, unless I’m forgetting, didn’t we cover all this at the briefing?”
“Well, yessir, but she didn’t listen. I’m going to ask you. Admiral, straight out. Did you go against my recommendation after I left?”
O’Shaughnessy’s face became darker. “You’re out of line, Pacino. Now, it’s two in the morning and I’m going back to sleep. You have your orders. I suggest you follow them.”
“Aye-aye, sir. I apologize for waking you up.” What a waste of time, Pacino thought, angry and disappointed.
He was about to click off the admiral in disgust when O’Shaughnessy’s voice returned: “Patch? For the
record, I backed you up. The fact that you doubted that, I take that as being you not backing me up. I suggest in the future you learn to command your tongue better than you’re commanding your submarine force.”
And then the CNO hung up on Pacino.
“Dammit,” he cursed. Putting a wedge between himself and O’Shaughnessy was the last thing he’d wanted.
Now the CNO was angry, and worse, he had again mentioned that he thought Pacino was not doing his job.
“Well, that was no help,” Paully said.
“Brick walls,” Pacino muttered.
“Can you go over his head, to Warner direct?”
“I could, Paully. Believe me, I’m in the mood to try, but I’m keeping in mind one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“If I push it to the point of getting fired, I can’t do anyone any good.”
“True. Coffee?”
“Yeah, it’ll be one long damned night. Let’s keep going. Let’s raise the Navpacforcefleet admiral-in-Command. Maybe we can make some headway with him.”
“Admiral JeanPaul Henri, the last naval aristocrat?”
“Patch him on.”
* * *
Henri took some time to come up on the video. A three-star admiral himself, Henri was a career surface-warfare officer, rising in that sexy portion of the surface navy devoted to antiair warfare. He had commanded an Aegis cruiser, the Ark Royale, during the Islamic War.
An SNN news crew had been aboard as he shot down more than forty supersonic jet fighters, most of them intent on firing missiles at the landing force that came ashore in southern Iran.
That news crew had made him a household face, on par with the commanding general of the invasion. General Pinkenson. His ship was likewise immortalized, the SNN reporters calling it the “Robocruiser.” Henri had never forgotten his taste of the limelight. His offices and sea cabins were decorated with several dozen pictures of him on the bridge of the Robocruiser. He had risen without further media attention, and the loss of it had seemed to sour him. His ambitions seemed fueled by one thing — to get back in front of the television cameras, hopefully as the Chief of Naval Operations.
In addition, for reasons unknown, he’d always been less than cordial to Pacino. He had gone on camera after the Japanese blockade to criticize the way Pacino had handled the submarine war. Pacino had always been convinced that he had found something that would get himself on television, and that he hadn’t really meant what he said. Still, Pacino could feel his stomach tensing as Henri’s face came up.
He wore large, square, wire-rimmed glasses that made his eyes seem bigger than they were. His puffy face was red from years of drinking, his jaw fleshy, his jowls growing by the year. He was ten years older than Pacino but looked much older. He grimaced as he said: “Hello, Pacino. I can just guess what you’re calling about. I heard all about your wild ideas to make us spend a week getting to the beach when we’re seventeen hours away.”
Wild, Pacino thought, the same term Warner’d used to describe Donchez.
“You’re in deep trouble, JeanPaul. I thought I’d let you know. You’d best put your fleet in an ASW formation and get your Blackboards in the air.”
“Yeah, right. Anything else?”
“The 688s. Where did you deploy them?”
“They ran on ahead about five hours ago to scour the East China Sea. They’re going about four knots faster than us, so they should be about twenty miles ahead. That should be sufficient to warn us of anything out there, if you’ve trained those guys right. And so far, no enemy submarines.”
“What about the P-5s out of Japan? Are they searching yet?”
“Um, no.” Henri’s jaw was jutting out pugnaciously.
Pacino imitated him, feeling an uncharacteristic sarcasm surfacing. “Um, why not?”
“Um, because there’s no threat, and UAIRCOM has some problems with them, maintenance and staffing and other nonsense. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Pacino, we’re on full air-attack alert, and we may be getting paid a visit by a real threat — enemy fighter jets. Flicker fighters, unlike ghost submarines, are somewhat lethal, and they’ll be coming in at Mach 1.2, giving us only a few seconds to react. So if it’s acceptable to you, I’d like to be getting back to the tactical problem at hand. Oh, and one more thing, Pacino. Don’t call me again.”
He hung up. Pacino smashed his hand on the darkening screen in frustration, cursing at Henri.
“The Pearl subs? Where are they? Are they up to emergency flank?”
White sighed. “They left within an hour after your call, when we were on the way to Andrews Air Force Base. That’s 400 miles down. 4,200 to go.”
“Almost four days at max speed.”
“The world is damned big. Geography is a killer. Which is why Warner stationed this huge an army in Japan.”
“Paully, what’s your gut feeling?”
“Sir, I think that’s the last conversation you’ll ever have with JeanPaul Henri. I think he and his force are going down. We’ve done every damned thing we could, and it’s not enough.”
“There’s one thing we haven’t done. Get a message out to the Santa Fe and the Annapolis.”
“Careful, sir, that JeanPaul’s turf.”
“Hell with him. Send those two subs a message and don’t bother copying JeanPaul. Tell them USUBCOM suspects the presence of possible Destiny or Rising Sun-type submarines under the control of the Reds. Tell them they could be reverse-engineered copies or copies made from stolen Japanese plans. I don’t know, think of something and make it sound credible. And when you’re done with that, call ahead to the shipyard. I want to lower the SSNX’s floating dock and go waterborne tomorrow. Make sure you tell them to get the SSNX out of dock under maximum security. That will mean something to them. I’ve got a way to sneak it to sea no one will believe.”
“How?”
“You’ll see. Just tell them. Max security.”
“Okay,” White said doubtfully. “No problem, I can do that. Uh, can I ask why?”
“You did ask. We’re putting the SSNX in the water because we’re getting the SSNX underway. Give me the file on the crew.”
White smiled. This was the Admiral Pacino he knew.
He clicked through the Writepad until he reached the SSNX personnel file, then handed it to Pacino.
Pacino frowned, drumming his fingers on the table, wishing he could figure out what to do next.
NAZE — YAKUSMMA GAP
USS JAMES WEBB, CVN-80
The stateroom of the force commander was cavernous and plush. The bunk was queen-size, the conference table a half acre, the room full of warm, glowing lamps.
On the bulkheads were a half dozen pictures of Henri on the bridge of the Ark Royale.
Admiral JeanPaul Henri sat at his conference table, his Writepad computer angled upward so that it could be used as his personal video phone. Pacino’s face had just winked out, and the paranoid, grandstanding submarine officer’s warning was still ringing in his ears.
Henri sat back and shut his eyes for a moment, thinking.
The fleet was almost a third of the way to the beach, and it was damned late to be thinking about antisubmarine warfare. With the press crawling all over the ship, it wouldn’t do to be conducting massive air operations, launching aircraft and helicopters. He’d be asked why they were launching the S-14s and the Seahawks, and he’d either have to tell them they were patrolling for submarines or to be potentially caught in a lie, and the latter was no way to ascend to CNO.
In addition, the wind was from the northwest. Turning the ship into the wind for flight ops would mean diverging from the base course, which was straight in to Shanghai.
That would lose him time, and according to his orders, time was of the essence. More important, the press was hyper aware of the time. They’d been asking him constantly when they’d be at the beach.
He’d seen something in Pacino’s eyes, Henri thought.
He touched the screen of the
Writepad and played the conversation back. The man, Henri’s main competition for the job of chief of Naval Operations, had a haunted look about him. His eyes were hollow. Hollow and frightened. Pacino was scared, Henri thought. If he could believe the reports of some of his old classmates at the academy, it was a rare thing for this guy to be frightened.
Henri reached for a phone. “Officer of the deck, get the captain, the air boss, and the ASW officer to my stateroom ASAP.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” The phone clicked.
It took all of thirty seconds for the officers to get to his stateroom, all of them looking pumped with adrenaline, spoiling for a fight. Good for them, Henri thought. They had no idea what troubles he was shouldering. If they had any idea of the weight of responsibility of fleet command, they’d run for the hills.
“Gentlemen, I want a squadron of S-14 Blackboards brought onto the main deck. I want them and their crews ready for launch in one minute or less. Full alert.”
“Aye, sir,” the captain replied for the men. Henri waved them all out They knew better than to ask him why, and he’d be damned if he’d tell them.
For a moment he considered calling Kagoshima base, where the P-5 Pegasus patrol planes were on standby, but then reconsidered. That would be going overboard.
After all, if Pacino was afraid, maybe that was just because he didn’t possess the backbone that Admiral Jeanpaul Henri did.
That had to be it, he insisted to himself.
NACE-YAKUSHIMA GAP
USS ANNAPOLIS, SSN-760
“The captain’s in control,” the voice shouted out.
Piranha: Firing Point mp-5 Page 16
