Terminal Run

by Michael Dimercurio

“Sail’s under,” Pacino called out. The waves were approaching his view, below him by ten feet. He did a low power search, and by the time his circle was complete, the waves were close.

  “Eight zero feet.”

  The down angle of the deck became steeper.

  “Eight three feet. Five-degree down bubble.”

  The waves were much closer now, the speed of the ship making the water seem to zoom toward him. Soon the crest of a wave was above the level of Pacino’s view, and it towered over him. Instinctively he took a breath and held it, and the wave splashed into his view.

  “Scope’s awash,” he said, breathing again. A burst of phosphorescent foam surrounded him for an instant, and his view came out of the water again as the wave trough came by. His view cleared, the stars and the sky came back for a moment before the next wave crest splashed Pacino in the face, the green-lit foam washing around him. One final trough came, giving a momentary glimpse of the surface and the starlight and an approaching big wave, and then the crest hit him and the view was blinded by the fireflies of the foam and a storm of bubbles. The light particles cleared and Pacino found himself looking up at the underside of the waves, lit by starlight and the fading phosphorescent wake of the periscope. He saw three waves rolling by overhead, a thousand bubbles swimming by him, and then the sea around him became dark.

  “Scope’s under. Lowering the Type 23.” Pacino pulled off the helmet. He blinked, back in the dim reality of the control room, his hair sweaty over his ears. O’Neal handed him red goggles to keep his eyes night-adapted, then donned wraparound red glasses.

  “Rig control for red,” O’Neal called to the diving officer. Red lights flashed and held. The previously dark control room was lit in a haunted-house red that seemed bright to Pacino at first. The ship pulled out at 150 feet, where the Cyclops system trimmed the ship, bringing her to exactly neutral buoyancy.

  Pacino turned to the captain, standing behind him with his arms crossed. He had changed into submariner’s coveralls, wearing his dolphins and command pin on his left pocket, his embroidered nametag reading catardi. His left arm had a patch with the Jolly Roger pirate emblem of the Unified Sub marine Command with the ship’s patch below it, his right sleeve carrying a patch with the American flag. He wore black sneakers. He also wore a black eye patch over his left eye, giving him the appearance of a pirate. Pacino knew from his youth that was not an affectation, but kept one eye night adapted in case of an emergency periscope depth.

  “Captain,” Pacino said, standing up, “ship is submerged to one five zero feet with a satisfactory one-third trim. Request to go deep and return to point of intended motion.”

  “Take her deep, JOOD,” Catardi ordered. “Test depth, steep angle.”

  Piranha plunged into the deep cold of the Atlantic.

  Admiral Kelly McKee stared into his empty coffee mug and shook the carafe, which was dry. He lit the third cigar of the flight, trying to think ahead to the intricacies of the upcoming war.

  The key to the conflict was keeping the British out of the fight and attacking the Reds early, McKee thought. He shut his eyes, his mind wandering back to Admiral Patton’s briefing at the bunker. He concentrated on bringing back each word and each expression on the Navy chief’s face, back to the moment when the older man had unfolded the map of Asia onto the table.

  “Two years ago, while the Red Chinese were fighting the Whites on the Chinese east coast, the Hindu Republic of India’s dictator Nipun sent his shock troops north, invading and occupying a vast plateau of Red Chinese territory.” Patton circled a region north of India’s northern border, an area colored the red of the Peoples Republic of China, labeled Xinjiang Uyger Zizhiqu.

  “Soon into their occupation the Indians discovered a massive oil field, which they named “Shamalan.” The crude oil is incredibly sweet with almost no sulfur. India called in their friends from the UK, and within a year the Brits completed the work of a decade by constructing two cross-continental pipelines, two refineries, and two large oil unloading terminals.

  The refined petroleum from the Shamalan oil fields is the best quality in the world, and the Indians are pricing it to sell. When the Saudi shipping lanes were shut down from the supertanker explosions, India’s production came on-line, making India a world economic power.

  “But the Indians refuse to sell any of that oil back to Red China. So the Reds want the plateau back. And revenge.” Pat ton sank into his chair, the fleet commanders sitting as well. “A major Asian war is now inevitable. That concludes the unclassified portion of this briefing. The following is classified Top Secret, special compartmented information, codeword “Echo.” Six hours ago the Peoples Liberation Army began their mobilization to the western front. The trains are rolling, the convoys are winding their way over the passes, and the jet transports and fighters are in flight. And as the Reds mobilize toward the Indian frontier, the Red Northern Fleet is starting their engines and singling up their lines, preparing to depart the ports of the Red Chinese Bo Hai Bay east of Beijing.

  “Kelly, your unit, the Virginia-class submarine Leopard, is lurking inside the bay. She’s spying on the Red communications from Beijing, but she’s also a trip wire. When the Red fleet departs the bay on the way to the Indian Ocean, Leopard will be tasked with shadowing the fleet as it moves south.

  “As you know, the Red Northern Fleet is formidable. They used to be a rust bucket mothball flotilla that couldn’t even cruise in the deep water of the bay. But they’ve been reequipping, and the Russian Republic has been building export-version aircraft carriers, antisubmarine destroyers, fast frigates, and antiaircraft heavy cruisers around the clock. The three Red Chinese carriers are top-of-the-line Kuznetsov-class giants, and the Beijing-class nuclear battle cruisers are fully seaworthy. Their aircraft are top shelf, if not a match for ours, but they have them in sheer numbers. With three carrier battle groups they intend to surround and crush India.

  “The Red submarine force admiral, Chu HuaFeng, has rebuilt his fleet after his defeat in the East China Sea. Now he’s got eleven fast attack nuclear submarines—six Russians, three

  Japanese Destinys, a French Valiant-class, and the lead ship of the Chinese-built Giant Wave or Julang-class has completed sea trials and loaded weapons, and Chu’s best captain will be taking her to sea. All the foreign-sourced subs have been reworked to accept Chinese supercavitating East Wind torpedoes, all refit for ultra quiet sound quieting by the Swedes, and all engineering spaces redesigned and reworked by the Germans.

  “But before they can use that firepower, they have to get in close, within cruise missile range of their targets, since the missiles’ warheads are much heavier now, reducing their range. I’ll tell you why in a moment. The Red generals proposed an early attack against India with the cruise missiles that are in range now, but their Supreme Commander, General Fang Shui, is insisting on a time-on-target attack. That means he’ll mobilize slowly and deliberately, while India sweats, and then when the second hand hits the twelve of zero-hour, every missile and bomb hits India at once. Communications and infrastructure are hit so hard they may as well be destroyed. The enemy’s morale collapses. And the oil rigs, pipelines, and refineries are the first targets.

  “Each Red carrier battle group is carrying about three hundred heavy short-range cruise missiles armed with precision enhanced blast-radius plasma warheads. The enhanced blast weapons are heavier, which reduces their range, which is why General Fang wants them positioned before he shoots anything.”

  Patton paused to pour himself a black coffee. Neither admiral said a word, each man watching him as if he were about to perform a magic trick. He took a pull of the scalding liquid and cleared his throat.

  “But the war with the Reds at sea is only part of the picture. Let’s go back to the Indians for a moment. The British constructed the oil facilities for India against the advice of the European Union, since the EU’s economy is closely tied to China, and the EU is betting the Chinese will kick the Indians ou
t of the Shamalan fields. The British have pulled the Royal

  Navy Flotilla out of the European Union High Seas Fleet. They’refueling up and loading food and weapons. A squadron of advance ships is heading for the eastern Mediterranean, where we expect they will transit the Suez Canal to the Gulf of Oman, to the Arabian Sea and into the western Indian Ocean. By the time the Reds enter the eastern Indian Ocean, half the British force will arrive in the west with the remainder of their fleet joining them two weeks later.

  “The Royal Navy Fleet order-of-battle consists of four carrier battle groups and twenty nuclear attack submarines, all of them front line units. Their firepower in heavy cruise missiles and aircraft outnumbers the Red Chinese two-to-one. Once the Reds see the Royal Navy coming, we believe they may put aside their time-on-target plan and preemptively strike at India with every missile in range, but since most of their force will be out of range they’ll fill the gap by shooting their ICBMs from the forty silos in northern Red China, all of them armed with old-fashioned multiple reentry-vehicle hydrogen bombs, doped with cobalt to make them enhanced-radiation high-yield city-killers. These are your grandfather’s nuclear weapons, each one of them Asian Treaty violations. So the coming of the Royal Navy will, in all likelihood, trigger a nuclear war on the Asian continent, and we’re talking radiation clouds and the total destruction of the Shamalan oil fields.

  “The Royal Navy won’t stand idly by while their ally gets nuked. The Brits will counterattack both the Red Northern Fleet and Red China itself. The bad news is that the Brits know about the nuclear weapons in the Red ICBMs. London has vowed to attempt to deter the Chinese with their own nuclear threat. While the Brits are on their way to the Indian Ocean, they will be converting their clean plasma warheads-which surgically strike targets with no collateral damage—into ultrahigh-yield hydrogen bombs, the most powerful nuclear warheads ever invented. If that’s not bad enough, the British are pulling their old neutron bombs out of cold storage and flying them to their carrier groups, for the possible use of leveling Red Chinese troop concentrations. Rumor has it that five

  of them could be targeted at Beijing. A few days into the battle, the Peoples Liberation Army and a considerable number of Chinese civilians will be a scorched pile of bones.”

  Patton let the words hang in the air, watching his fleet commanders’ faces grow dark.

  “Our objective in this war is twofold. We will be putting weapons on the Red Chinese fleet with the goal of sinking them before they can get in range of Indian targets. We will be targeting their sub force, with the tactical objective of sinking every platform. The second goal in-theater is to neutralize the Royal Navy. In this conflict, their high tempers and radioactive weapons will do nothing but harm. We must get them to withdraw. “Kelly, your East Coast submarines will sail for the choke point Arabian Sea entrance to the western Indian Ocean, the corridor that the Royal Navy battle groups must travel to come in-theater. Your forces will position themselves in attack range of the Royal Navy Fleet. I’m certain that diplomacy will be enough, and that your orders to face the British will be a mere contingency plan, and that you’ll hear from me to turn back and attack the Red Fleet with The Viking. If the worst happens and England won’t listen, that’s when you get your final orders. Orders to blockade the Royal Navy.”

  “Blockade? What if a blockade fails? Are you contemplating giving me orders to fire on the Brits?”

  Patton sighed. “If it comes to that, yes.”

  The Viking’s face had turned red, and Kelly McKee’s eyebrows formed a stormy frown.

  “But it won’t. Kelly, the heaviest lifting for your part of the operation will be done by your Pacific squadrons. Together with your unit in the Chinese Bo Hai Bay, your western submarine force will intercept each of the three Red Chinese surface battle groups that are on the way to the Indian Ocean. Kill them before they can do their mischief. And kill them from over the horizon before they can make it in-theater, if you can, and if not, chase them into the Indian Ocean and sink them there. If the gods are with us, your subs will get to them before

  they can get to The Viking’s battle groups and sink them. Once the Chinese fleet is on the bottom, the strategists think the Reds will break off from the Indians—they don’t have enough missiles deploy able by rail or truck to stop an advance of Indian shock troops, and an attack could start a fight the Reds wouldn’t be able to finish.

  “Vie, if Kelly’s submarines are late or defeated, the mission falls to your surface action groups. Your carriers and surface fleets will go it alone against a well-armed Chinese force. It will be up to you to stop them.”

  Next Patton had dropped the bombshell about their communications being compromised, and their extraordinary orders about using pad computers and Internet E-mails to communicate. While McKee and Ericcson were trying to recover from that shock, Patton addressed The Viking, telling him more details about his mission. When Ericcson had left, Patton frowned over at McKee.

  “Kelly, because of the communications security penetration, I want you to brief your captains personally, face-to-face. They don’t brief their crews until they’re safely submerged. And except for the NSA agents, there will be no E-mail from any crew member to shore. We’ll sail the old-fashioned way, in the dark. Now, about the forward deployed unit, the Leopard—you’re going to have to get word to the Leopard that she’s at war without using the battle network and without making her surface.”

  “We’ve got some new technology allowing us to rendezvous with a submerged unit. I’ll get a few of the pad computers to her by the time she’s in the East China Sea.” McKee pushed his chair back. “Is that all, sir?”

  “I wish it were, Kelly. I’m surprised you’re not thinking ahead. Since our command network is penetrated and compromised, we’rein deep trouble with the Snare. With her deployed in the Atlantic, she could target our East Coast subs as they scramble to the Indian Ocean.”

  And that was the moment in McKee’s mind when the operation went from being a wartime deployment to a war. The Red

  Chinese, formidable as they were, were an enemy he could accept. But having his own advanced weapons systems turning on him frightened him. His thoughts were interrupted by the Navy pilot standing in front of him.

  “Admiral? We’re descending for a straight-in approach now. We should have you on the tarmac in fifteen minutes. Welcome to Hawaii, sir.”

  “Thanks,” McKee said, craning his neck to see the lights of Honolulu out the window.

  As he packed his pad computer into his briefcase, he wondered if the Piranha would be enough to stop the Snare. McKee choked off the thought. Catardi’s Piranha would prevail over the out-of-control robot sub. He had to—because if Snare sank Piranha and made it into the Indian Ocean, the war would be lost.

  5.

  The weathered fishing boat tossed in the waves of the Yellow Sea northeast of Shanghai. The moon and stars were gone, an impenetrable overcast lingering over the area for the last two days. The trawler’s booms were extended, her fishing nets deployed. Two miles astern of the trawler, the TB-23 thin-wire wide-aperture towed array tasted the quadrillion noises of the sea and fed them to the Cyclops II sonar suite in the forward hold. The boat fished not for food but for a nuclear submarine. Its prey was the stealthiest and quietest manned undersea craft ever constructed. Finding it would be impossible without the processing power of the Cyclops system. While the submarine was quiet, it still contained pumps and turbines and motors and a propulsor, all machines that rotated, and when manmade machines rotated, they vibrated at a rhythmic frequency and emitted cyclic tones into their surroundings. These machines were mounted on four-dimensional sound mounts, their vibrations shielded from the universe and absorbed, at least most of the vibrations. Deep within the beast, steam and water pulsed and flowed like an animal’s blood in veins and arteries, each flow pulse putting another sound in the water. To the conventional sonar devices, the noise emitted by the target would go unnoticed, as if it were the
noise of quiet rain in a tumultuous thunderstorm. It was true even of the TB-23 linear towed array, which heard only the vast frequency spectrum of the loud seas, passing each

  noise at each frequency up the signal wire to the main computer.

  Deep within the consciousness of the Cyclops II, the noise from the sea was sifted, the sheer amount of data able to choke the computers of only two years before, those ancient machines able only to search in a narrow slice of ocean for the target. But Cyclops II could listen to the entire world and filter out the random ocean noise that didn’t have rhythmic pulses, leaving only the pure harmonic tonals from rotating machinery. From a hundred thousand yards away, the trawler’s computer isolated four tonals, locked them in, and identified them positively as a United States Virginia-class nuclear submarine. The technician at the Cyclops console called the fishing boat’s deck officer, who called the captain, who called the operations officer, who woke up the two divers and sent them to the aft hold.

  In the red-lantern-lit hold, the two divers strapped masks around their necks and adjusted their tanks. The Mark 17 High Thrust Underwater Vehicle hummed with the power of her fuel cells. The commander of the mission climbed into the front, his chief petty officer climbing into the aft seat. When the checklist was completed, the two men put their faces into their masks. The lights in the hold shifted from a dim red glow to complete darkness. The trawler’s support crew shut the overhead hatch, sealing the pressure-tight hold. The HTUV inclined to a steep down-angle as the rail launching system prepared to eject them from the hold. The door in the keel opened slowly until the noise of the wake roared below them. The Mark 17 suddenly moved, catapulted down the inclined rails and splashing into the water, diving beneath the surface, the roar of the trawler’s screws overhead made more violent by their own thruster coming to full power.

  The lieutenant who sat in the forward seat cranked the throttle of the motorcycle-style controls, pushing the Mark 17’s yoke down, accelerating the vehicle in a steep dive. The noise of the surface faded astern as they sank deeper, the engines becoming quiet as the craft leveled off at eighty feet below the