The Ghost Agent

by Alex Berenson

  Twelve hours before, at 0100, Tong had received his initial orders for this operation. He expected that the transmission they’d just received would include the final confirmation. He was glad to have the fail-safe of two separate orders. He wasn’t nervous, not exactly, but what he was about to do would echo around the world, and he wanted to be sure he wasn’t making a mistake.

  The Xian was the third of China’s new Shanghai-class subs, by far the most advanced submarines that China had ever built. Until a few years before, China’s armed forces had relied on leaky ships, rusting submarines, and fighter jets whose design dated from the Korean War. China had refused to show its weapons to visiting American generals, for fear that they would sneer at the country’s weakness.

  These days, China still kept its ships and jets secret. But now the country wanted to hide its strength. Chinese students studied engineering and software and fluid dynamics at the top universities in the United States. Some stayed in America and made fortunes in Silicon Valley. But most came home, and more than a few were working for China’s navy – whose top priority was building a submarine that could challenge the American fleet.

  China’s focus on undersea warfare was pragmatic. Building surface ships capable of challenging the United States would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, more than China could afford, at least for now. Even a single nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was a massively expensive proposition. No country, not even the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, had tried to compete with the United States in aircraft carriers.

  But submarines were much cheaper, billions of dollars instead of hundreds of billions. And a lone sub could wreak havoc on an opposing fleet. In World War II, a single German submarine had sunk forty-seven boats in less than two years. Of course, the Xian wouldn’t sink forty-seven American ships, but if it scuttled even one it would change the balance of power in the western Pacific, forcing the Americans to back off China’s coast.

  Taking out an American boat wouldn’t be easy. The American navy had not been seriously challenged since the Battle of Midway in World War II, when it decimated the Japanese fleet and started the United States on the path to victory in the Pacific. The collapse of the Soviet Union had only lengthened its lead. Its aircraft carriers, destroyers, and nuclear attack submarines were the best in the world.

  But if any submarine could successfully break through the American defenses, it was the Xian. Put into the water just last fall, the Xian was the most advanced diesel-electric submarine ever built – in China or anywhere else. Noise-reducing anechoic tiles coated its hull. A seven-blade skewed propeller enabled it to slice through the water almost silently. Advanced electric batteries powered it, allowing it to stay underwater for weeks.

  Further, the PLA’s engineers had greatly improved the Xian’s secondary power source. Besides its batteries, the sub had an ‘air-independent propulsion’ system of hydrogen fuel cells. When the batteries and fuel cells ran together, they could push the Xian to thirty knots in short bursts, almost as fast as American nuclear subs.

  The Chinese had also nearly closed the gap with the electronics and sonar systems that the U.S. Navy used. The Xian’s computers ran noise-filtering and noise-recognition software that made the Xian’s sonar operators, for the first time, competitive with those on American submarines. And the Xian’s satellite link meant that it could get regular updates on ships far outside its sonar range. The combination meant that the Xian could avoid the submarines and frigates that formed the outer cordon of American battle groups and get within torpedo range of the big prizes, the destroyers and cruisers and carriers that were the heart of the United States fleet.

  And at that point the Xian had an even more unpleasant surprise for the American navy.

  Inside the Xian, Tong read over the order one final time and tucked it into his pocket. ‘Retract the buoy,’ he murmured to his communications officer. Then, to his operations officer, ‘Any change in the target’s direction?’

  ‘No, sir. Still one-eighty at twenty knots’ – directly south, toward the Xian, which was cruising north – ‘at fifteen knots. Range now seventy kilometers’ – about forty miles.

  ‘Take us to sixty meters’ – two hundred feet, in the middle of the thermocline.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The ops officer tapped the touch screen in front of him a few times and the Xian began to ascend, so gracefully that Tong could hardly feel it rise.

  ‘Set us on combat status.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The officer tapped his screen three more times. All over the submarine, LCD panels turned from a steady green to a flashing yellow, warning the Xian’s crew that an attack might be imminent and that silence – always important on a submarine – was more crucial than ever.

  ‘And ready the Typhoons for launch.’

  Tong felt the surprise in the room as he spoke. The ops officer paused, only for a second, before he answered.

  ‘The Typhoons. Yes, sir.’

  The control room was nearly silent now. On his control monitor Tong saw the Xian slowly rise toward the surface: 150 meters . . . 140 . . . 130 . . . The officers and crew moved precisely, no wasted motion, not even wasted breath, yet the anticipation in the cramped room was palpable. These men all knew now what they were about to do. And they were ready.

  Twenty minutes later Tong’s monitor briefly flashed red, alerting him that they were now twenty kilometers – about twelve miles – from the target, within range of the Typhoons. The Xian carried two of them, Chinese versions of the Russian VA-111 Shkval.

  Though they were called torpedoes, Shkvals were basically short-range cruise missiles that targeted ships, and the Russians had never been able to make them work properly. They often outran their guidance systems and badly missed their targets. They also had an unnerving habit of swinging back on the subs that launched them. When the Kursk, a Russian nuclear sub, sank in the Barents Sea in 2000, there were rumors, never proven, that a malfunctioning Shkval had caused the accident. For whatever reason, after the Kursk went down, the Russians stopped trying to build Shkvals.

  Despite those problems, China’s admirals had seen the Shkval’s potential as they searched for a weapon that might overcome the American fleet. At a secret lab outside Shanghai, their naval scientists had spent five years redesigning the missile’s guidance systems and engine. And they’d succeeded. In tests off Hong Kong in the last two years, the Typhoon had proven capable of successful launches from as far as twenty-five kilometers out – about fifteen miles.

  But those targets were obsolete oil tankers, not American destroyers with the most advanced counter-torpedo systems in the world. No one in the Chinese navy really knew how the Typhoon would perform in combat.

  They were about to find out, Tong thought.

  ‘Reduce speed to ten knots,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Do we have final visual confirmation?’

  The operations officer tapped his screen again, and there it was, a recon photo straight from the satellite overhead, time-stamped 12:55, the big gray boat cutting sturdily through the waves, the photograph’s resolution good enough to reveal the big ‘73’ painted in white on its side.

  The DDG-73. The USS Decatur.

  Tong admired the precision with which his commanders had calculated this mission. Despite all China’s progress, America still thought that China was a poor backward nation unworthy of respect. The Decatur had killed twenty-two Chinese, and the United States had not even apologized.

  Today China would have its revenge. The Xian would fire one Typhoon, enough to cripple the destroyer but not sink it. An eye for an eye, as the Americans said. And the Americans would learn what they should have already known, that they needed to treat the People’s Republic as an equal.

  ‘Reduce speed to three knots.’ The Typhoons had one great weakness. They could be launched only when the Xian was nearly stopped. But since the Decatur had no idea that the Xian was in the vicinity, the submarine’s speed har
dly mattered.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The Xian slowed perceptibly.

  ‘Prepare to dive to two hundred meters on my command.’ Hit or miss, Tong didn’t plan to hang around once he launched. The Americans would expect him to flee west, to the Chinese coast. Instead he planned to take the Xian southeast, into the open ocean, and depend on the sub’s ability to stay silent.

  The combat center was hushed now, every man looking at Lieutenant Han, the sub’s weapons control officer. Tong nodded to Han. ‘Fire.’

  ‘Away,’ Han said quietly.

  The Xian shifted slightly as the Typhoon left its hull. Tong heard – or maybe just felt – the hum as the underwater missile accelerated away. A couple of his men gave each other tentative thumbs-up signals, but Tong didn’t even smile. ‘Now dive,’ he said. They would have time later to savor what they’d done. If they survived.

  Two hundred feet above the Xian, and ten miles north, Captain Henry Williams sat in the Decatur’s combat information center. He was glad to be well off the coast, out of range of Chinese captains who might want to avenge the previous week’s accident by trying to ram his ship.

  The Navy had finished its preliminary inquiry into the crash. As Williams had expected, it had found he’d done nothing wrong. Still, the days since the accident had been difficult. Willams couldn’t understand why a bunch of college students had thought that playing games with an American destroyer would be a good idea.

  So now the Decatur was cruising loops in the East China Sea, and Williams was splitting his time between his ship and the Reagan, where he’d met three times with the Navy’s internal investigators. He’d even lost the pretty L.A. Times reporter, Jackie, who’d gotten bored after a couple days sailing laps and headed back to the Reagan. Probably for the best, Williams thought glumly. Neither he nor his men believed they had caused the accident, but killing twenty-two civilians didn’t do wonders for morale. Even in the combat center, his officers seemed to be moving at three-quarters speed. Maybe he ought to call a meeting, make sure his men knew they’d done nothing wrong.

  The torpedo alarm blared, jolting Williams to full attention. Had to be false, he thought. No way could a Chinese sub get close enough to launch on them without being picked up by his sonar operators.

  Next to Williams, Lieutenant Umsle, the Decatur’s tactical action officer, was already on his phone. ‘Sonar’s confirming a launch, sir.’

  In an instant, the ship’s morale became the least of Williams’s problems. ‘General quarters!’ he said. ‘Immediately!’

  A siren rang across the ship. ‘General quarters! All hands to battle stations! This is not a drill!’

  Umsle listened for a few seconds more before hanging up. ‘The good news is we should have plenty of time. It’s way out. Twenty thousand meters.’

  Even a fast torpedo covered only forty-five knots an hour, about 1,300 meters a minute. The Decatur would have at least fifteen minutes for evasive action, and the fish would probably run out of fuel before it reached the Decatur. Obviously, the Chinese captain had been so worried that he would be spotted that he had been afraid to launch from close in.

  ‘Full power to the turbines and hard left,’ Williams said. Preserving his ship was the first priority. Then the Navy could bring its attack subs into the area and take out the Chinese sub that had been foolish enough to make this hopeless swipe.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ A jolt of power ran through the ship as the engines began to produce peak power.

  Umsle’s phone rang again. He listened, then handed Williams the black handset. ‘You need to hear this, sir.’

  ‘Sir.’ It was Terry Cyrus, the Decatur’s sonar chief. ‘We’re getting an unusual read. The bogey looks like it’s running at two hundred fifty knots.’

  ‘That can’t be right.’

  ‘I know. But it is.’

  A Shkval? Those were Russian, and anyway they didn’t work.

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘Certain, sir. The arrays are running perfectly. It’s unmistakable.’

  ‘Is it on us?’

  ‘Unclear. It may be a two-stager.’ In other words, the missile would slow once it got close to the Decatur and become a conventional acoustic wake-homing torpedo.

  ‘Okay. Assuming it’s on us, how many minutes to impact?’

  ‘Three.’

  Three minutes. ‘Thank you, chief.’ Williams turned to Umsle. ‘Hail the XO’ – the executive officer, the Decatur’s second-in-command, currently on the bridge – ‘and tell him to get the damage teams ready for impact in three minutes. We’re not outrunning this thing.’

  The next minutes seemed to pass in a single breath. The torpedo-missile, whatever it was, closed steadily. It seemed to be running blind, not changing course to track the Decatur, but that didn’t comfort Williams. It surely would deploy a second guidance system once it got close. Indeed, two miles from the Decatur, the torpedo surfaced briefly and corrected its course, turning toward the destroyer.

  What Williams didn’t know was that the Typhoon had a GPS system and a satellite transceiver that linked it to the Bei overhead, enabling it to home in on the Decatur effortlessly. The Decatur’s towed array, which created a noisy ‘wake’ capable of confusing a conventional acoustic homing torpedo, had no chance of stopping the Typhoon.

  Once the torpedo corrected its course, Williams accepted the inevitable. Time to focus on saving his men. ‘Clear the turbine room,’ he said to Umsle. The engine rooms were close to the waterline and filled with heavy equipment – among the most vulnerable spaces on the ship. ‘And tell everyone else to buckle down for impact.’

  For just a second, Williams let himself pray. Please, God, make it a dud.

  It wasn’t.

  The explosion cut through the destroyer’s half-inch-thick steel hull, tearing a twelve-foot hole just above the waterline. For a few moments, chaos ruled. The 8,000-ton warship shuddered with the impact, then began to list. Water roared through the hole in the armored plates, flooding the turbine room. Eleven sailors died in the explosion, and six others were swept into the ocean, their bodies never recovered. Fuel poured out of a line burst by the explosion, setting off two small fires.

  Still, Williams was proud of the way his crew and his ship responded after the explosion. The years of emergency training had paid off. Within three minutes, the Decatur’s firefighting squads had put out the fires, the most serious threat to the integrity of the ship. Within seven minutes, the bulkheads were sealed and Williams had his first damage report. And five minutes after that, the most seriously injured sailors had been evacuated and were receiving medical attention in the infirmary, awaiting helicopter transfer to the Reagan.

  At that point Williams allowed himself to think for the first time of what the Chinese had done. The sub was gone. The explosion had damaged the Decatur’s sonar gear, and even if he could find the sub, Williams was in no position to chase it. Not with his boat crippled, not facing this silent submarine and mysterious supertorpedo. Already the Navy had begun to search for the sub, moving a half-dozen surface ships and three attack submarines toward its last known location. Williams wondered if they’d find it. It had sure sneaked up on his sonar operators, and they graded above average every time the Navy tested them. The Chinese had obviously improved their technology in the last couple of years. The fleet was going to have to be much more careful out here, Williams knew that much.

  He knew something else too. New torpedoes, new sub, new whatever, the Chinese had made a big mistake today. Did they really think that the United States wouldn’t punish them for what they’d done?

  THIRTY-TWO

  WELLS SNAPPED AWAKE.

  And wished he hadn’t. Lava burned through his right shoulder, the one he’d dislocated in Afghanistan. He twisted his head, looking around, trying to get his bearings. He seemed to be . . . he was . . . hanging off the ground, trussed like a pig in a slaughterhouse. His wrists were handcuffed over his head, dangling from a steel chain attached to th
e wall behind him. His ankles were pulled up behind so they were at waist height and attached to shackles mounted directly to the wall. His knees and shoulders bore all his weight, and his body tilted forward, over the cement floor. If his arms were cut loose, he’d slam his head on it before he could get his hands down to break his fall. He tried to hold himself still; the slightest twitch caused the pain in his shoulder to spike, tendons catching fire one by one.

  Wells looked around the room. His pants, shirt, and shoes and socks sat neatly in a corner. But they hadn’t taken off his black, Halloween-themed boxers. Exley had tried to switch him to boxer-briefs, promising that they’d flatter him, her only effort to upgrade his wardrobe. Now he was glad he’d refused. Though even formfitting shorts might be less ridiculous than smiling jack-o’-lanterns. Trick or treat indeed. What underwear went best with torture, anyway? Wells supposed the question was unanswerable. Black might be a good choice. Hide the blood.

  A tiny part of him admired the precision of the setup. His captors could get at his face, his legs, his neck, his everything, without repositioning him. Escape was a fantasy. The shackles were so tight he could hardly feel his hands and feet. He would be up here until they let him out. Or he died.

  The cell around him wasn’t reassuring. Twenty feet square, with only a couple of battered wooden chairs for furniture. Windowless, of course. White-tiled walls. The floor stained with dark whorls, remembrance of agonies past. A drain set in the middle of the floor, to ease the disposal of blood and vomit. A sour smell, half locker room, half slaughterhouse. The only comforting item was the security camera mounted in a corner, its black-rimmed lens making slow circuits of the room.

  At the end of the cell, a wide steel door with a tiny peephole. But Wells couldn’t hear anything of the world outside. The walls were soundproofed, he supposed. He had no idea where he was, or even if it was day or night, though he didn’t feel as though much time had passed since his arrest. As soon as they’d gotten him out of the courtyard, they’d knocked him out with some kind of fast-acting anesthetic. Maybe the same stuff he’d used on Kowalski’s men.