“I’m up,” McKee said, throwing his legs out and jumping down from the bunk. “Tell Captain Judison I’ll be there in two minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” The messenger shut the stateroom door behind him as McKee turned on the desk lamp, the stateroom dimly illuminated. Karen Petri’s curtain opened, and she climbed out of her bunk and found her coveralls.
“We’re flanking it,” she said sleepily. McKee nodded at her as he pulled on his patrol-quiet boots.
“Judison has news on the conn,” he said. “You ready?”
Petri shook out her hair, pulled it back in a ponytail, and nodded.
McKee stepped out into the red-lit passageway and hurried forward to the ladder to the middle level, emerging on the forward bulkhead of the control room, which was also lit by red lights, but much dimmer than the passageway, the lights rigged to prevent loss of night vision for the officer of the deck in the case of an emergency periscope depth maneuver. Judison and his officers were gathered around the navigation chart.
“Good evening, sir,” he said crisply. “Hammerhead has increased speed to flank to get in position to intercept the Snare.”
McKee took the pad computer Judison handed over and read the Snare intelligence summary. Snare had transmitted a sitrep giving away her position, and a message had been intercepted from the hijackers telling Snare to rendezvous at Pico Island. An infrared satellite scan had captured the sub on the surface. She would be following the African coast on her way to the Indian Ocean, or so the Naval Intelligence experts supposed. It was great news, McKee thought, since they had finally located the out-of-control sub. All they had to do was sink her, and the first part of the mission was over, leaving only the Red Chinese and the British.
“What’s your plan to intercept the Snare, Commander?” McKee asked formally.
Judison pointed to the chart. “We’ve laid a course from Snare’s position that will take her to the Indian Ocean, along the fastest route. The variable is speed, because she may be going ten knots or fifty. For the sake of a tactical plan, we’ve assumed she’s doing a maximum-speed run, and we’re flanking it to intercept her track a hundred miles ahead of where she’ll be at that time. Then we’ll proceed slowly northward to intercept her as she comes south. It’ll be a long search if she’s
slow and a short one if she’s barreling south like I think she is.”
“If she were in a hurry, she wouldn’t have been at the Azores, which was out of her way from the North Atlantic if she were on the way to the IO. And we don’t even know she’s going to the Indian Ocean.”
“She’s reportedly heading due south from the Azores, Admiral. Where else would she be going?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” McKee muttered. “Where’s the Piranha?”
“Her last sitrep put her here, but that was two days ago.”
McKee cursed. If the battle network had been operational, the Piranha would have been popping out a message buoy every twenty-four hours with a situation report, but the SLOT buoys didn’t work well with the Internet E-mail communications bypass. And he couldn’t use extremely low frequency ELF transmissions to call Piranha to periscope depth, since the transmissions had been considered compromised. Their last use had been the calling of the Leopard up to PD so she could be boarded. Which reminded him—Leopard was overdue for a sitrep on the Red Chinese battle group
“I’ll be in the V.I.P stateroom for the next half hour,” McKee said to Captain Judison. “Keep flanking it, but be ready to come to periscope depth at the top of the hour.”
At 0455 local time, Admiral Egon “The Viking” Ericcson snoozed in his working khaki uniform on top of the bedclothes of his stateroom’s spacious rack. His pad computer lay on his chest next to his reading glasses, both rising and falling with his breathing, the room quiet except for his snoring.
The messenger of the watch knocked quietly once, then twice, then a third time. With no answer, she glanced at the Marine Corps guards, who opened the mahogany door silently. The nineteen-year-old third-class petty officer radioman’s mate crept to the admiral’s bedside and leaned over the grizzled senior officer, wincing as if leaning over a high-voltage
wire. She touched the admiral’s shoulder and shook him gently, and when nothing happened, shook him hard.
Ericcson bolted upright, the pad computer and his glasses falling to the deck, the admiral roaring, “I wasn’t asleep, goddammit! I was just resting my god damned eyes. Who are you and what the hell do you want?”
The messenger gulped and handed the admiral a pad computer from flag plot. “Sir, the captain sends his respects at zero five hundred and wishes to inform you of flash traffic.” She bent over and retrieved the reading glasses, the admiral glaring at her before putting them on and squinting at the computer.
“Turn on the damned light,” he said, his eyebrows rising at the message.
“By your leave, sir,” the messenger said, hoping to be dismissed. The admiral said nothing, the words of the first message telling the story of the Leopard sinking the Red surface task force.
“By your leave, sir?”
“Get the hell out!” Ericcson shouted. As the youth bolted to the door the admiral yelled, “Hold it right there, messenger. Get Pulaski and Hendricks to flag plot. I want them there in two god damned minutes!”
“Yes, sir. I mean, aye aye, sir!” The messenger collided with the doorjamb, then ran down the passageway.
Ericcson read the second message about the Snare, then turned back to the Leopard sitrep. The destruction of the first battle group had powerful implications. He hurried to flag plot, the battle group operations officer and the ship’s captain waiting for him, a mug of coffee already steaming on the chart table for him.
“You realize what this means?” Ericcson asked Captain Pulaski, whose eyes were red with dark circles beneath. “It means the first battle group is on the bottom. Which means the Reds are thinking hard right now, and the second and third groups much farther north in the Yellow Sea and the northern East China Sea may even turn around, or proceed much slower on an antisubmarine warfare zigzag. We’ve won the first bat tie, and the Reds are reeling from the psychological impact. We’ve kicked their asses in the first quarter, gentlemen. They might not even return after halftime.” Ericcson pulled a Parta gas out of his pocket, clipped it with a gold cutter, and put a flame to it with his Jolly Roger squadron lighter.
“Uh, sir,” Pulaski said, “may I remind you we don’t have a satellite photo of the first battle group yet to assess the damage, or any telemetry of the attack? Leopard’s torpedoes may all have missed.”
“Number one, Pulaski, no way she missed, and number two, why the hell don’t we have an overhead shot by now? Get on the horn and get me some fucking intel.”
Pulaski turned and walked brusquely out of the room. Ericcson puffed the cigar, waiting for him to return. By the time he did, the cigar was half smoked.
“The resolution on our end is crappy,” Pulaski said, spreading the color printout on the chart table. “If our battle network were up and running, this would have been in real time, and it would have been sharp enough to see the cigarettes the surface ship crews were smoking.”
Ericcson took out the glasses and leaned over the photograph. A slow smile spread over his harsh face. He stood and ran his hand through his crew cut, then stubbed the cigar in the butt kit and looked over at Pulaski.
“Now what do you say, my ops boss and good friend?”
“I think we sent the Reds back to the locker room, sir.”
“A touchdown on the kickoff return.” Ericcson grinned.
“If you two could stop with the sports talk for a minute,” Hendricks said, “we need to determine what our next move will be.”
Ericcson nodded solemnly. The captain of the John Paul Jones had a point. “Any recommendations?”
Pulaski nodded. “Since the Red fleet won’t beat us into the Indian Ocean, I say we lay in a new course to the northern opening of the Formos
a Strait and intercept Battlegroups Two and Three as they come south. I say we shoot a message to Kelly McKee and ask him to send a few extra submerged units
to cover us, even though he’s tasked them with the British to the west.. This is much more important than waiting for Brits who may never come^ If McKee backs us up, we can whip Battlegroups Two and Three with supersonic fighter air power and give them a thrashing from our cruise missiles. Hell, get us close enough, sir, and I’ll shoot my pistol at the bastards.”
Ericcson looked at Hendricks, who nodded. “Very well, gentlemen, let’s intercept Battlegroups Two and Three in the East China Sea. First get the word to the task force, then draft a message to McKee—and make it damned persuasive—and then inform Admiral Patton.”
The officers left. Ericcson fired up a second cigar and poured a second cup of coffee. He was missing sleep and had survived on coffee and nicotine for the last thirty-six hours, and he should have felt like an upright corpse, but instead he felt as strong as a teenager. It would be a good day, he thought, standing at the windows of flag plot as the ship turned to the northwest. The sun rose over the seascape as he finished the cigar, but he barely noticed. The grainy photograph of the sunken Chinese fleet was far prettier to him than nature.
“Admiral, the messages from periscope depth,” the messenger of the watch said as he handed McKee the pad computer.
McKee waved his thanks and clicked into the computer from his seat at the wardroom table, on Captain Kiethan Judi son’s left side. The first message was a comprehensive intelligence summary from ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence. The Suez Canal had been blocked longer than expected, and the Royal Navy Fleet remained bottlenecked, and the British fleet commander was at a decision point—whether to turn to leave the Mediterranean and go around Africa to get into the Indian Ocean, or to wait until the channels could be cleared. There was some speculation that the British were contemplating the use of tactical nuclear weapons to vaporize the obstacles, but if they did they’d be screwed, McKee thought, since a nuclear explosion would fill the deep channels with silt, and they’d have to be dredged. The British would undoubtedly
come to the same conclusion. He didn’t envy the Royal Navy commander. McKee would probably have abandoned the idea of waiting for the canal to be cleared and gone around—at least that way there was no waiting and the fleet would have been doing something instead of sitting in frustration at anchor off Egypt.
The next paragraphs described the Red Chinese loss of Battlegroup One and the effect of the loss on their leadership. The commander of the PLA Navy had been ousted, his replacement considered more aggressive but not as gifted in strategy or tactics. The PLA Navy submarine force admiral, Admiral Chu HuaFeng, had kept his position, but keeping his job was not assured in the long run. The sinking of the battle group had been a body blow to the Reds, but the blocking of the Suez had almost worked against the U.S. cause, since the delay of the Royal Navy seemed to make the Reds think they had an extension on their deadline to get into the Indian Ocean.
Battlegroup Two was making way cautiously into the East China Sea on a full antisubmarine warfare posture, with deployed ASW destroyers, two escorting submarines—one a retooled Russian short-hull Omega cruise missile submarine, the second a new French Valiant-class. The first would be no worry, since the Omega tended to rattle at the high speed of advance of a surface force, but the French Valiant would keep McKee awake. The ship was the best quality construction with an elegant design, but fortunately was not operated by the French—if it were, it would have been a formidable adversary —but the Red crews undoubtedly barely knew how to operate her, or so the intelligence digest hoped.
Battlegroup Three had formed up in the Bo Hai Bay and was sailing for the Lushun-Penglai gap on the way out into the Yellow Sea. McKee’s submerged unit Lexington had been ordered to make a maximum-speed run for the mouth of the Bo Hai as soon as the crisis had erupted, but there hadn’t been enough time for her to make it there. She would probably be too late to ambush the third Red fleet, and would have to settle for an intercept in the northern East China Sea. Unless Battle group Three slowed down. The intelligence digest went on to describe the land mobilization of the Reds, but McKee would save that for later reading.
The next message was from Admiral Ericcson. He transmitted that he was abandoning his orders to enter the Indian Ocean and had turned his fleet to the East China Sea to intercept and engage Battlegroup Two directly, and requested additional submarine assets to help him—which was no problem, because McKee’s orders from Patton to support The Viking had resulted in the deployment of the Virginia-class submarines Orion and Hornet in-theater to kill the second surface force, and the Essex had maneuvered to the Formosa Strait.
The final message was a situation report from the Piranha. She was ahead of schedule on her flank run to intercept the Snare, and would set up a barrier patrol off the African coast to ambush her as the robot submarine came south. McKee drummed the table, thinking about Patch Pacino’s son embarked aboard the Piranha. The battle was coming, and he’d always intended to get the Pacino kid off the ship before she sailed into the Indian Ocean, after the action against the Snare. McKee had full confidence in Catardi and Piranha, and knew deep in his heart that they would sink the Snare, but what he didn’t know was how much damage Catardi would take in sinking the robot sub. Could McKee sit back and allow Patch’s kid to go into the battle? Was there some way to evacuate him that wouldn’t endanger the Piranha or give away her position? He’d put the issue to Karen Petri. It was hard to be objective about the father of the modern submarine navy, McKee thought, or his only child.
McKee left the table, Karen Petri getting up to follow him. In the V.I.P stateroom he drafted a message to Ericcson, telling him he could enter the East China Sea without worries, but leaving out specifics. The second message he wrote to Rob Catardi onboard Piranha, tasking him with evaluating the feasibility of a helicopter evacuation of Midshipman Pacino, with the young midshipman leaving the submarine by a submerged scuba lockout. The Hammerhead slowed from her flank run
to return to periscope depth for the second time in that hour to transmit McKee’s messages, the time spent at slow PD speed holding the ship up from her rendezvous with the Snare. Deep again after the radio transmission, the Hammerhead sped back up to flank, the deck vibrating frantically once again.
The Piranha had come up to periscope depth during Pacino’s and Alameda’s mid watch Now that they were back deep and flanking it, the pad computer had been brought in. Catardi read the last transmission from Admiral McKee. What the hell? Catardi thought. The admiral wanted to pull young Pacino off the ship right before the Snare attack. That would depend on the weather—with the ship rolling at PD, it was probably nasty topside—and on the tactical situation. But it would be a damned shame to let the midshipman go, Catardi thought. Patch was a few days away from a submerged OOD qual board, and he was a good luck charm. When he left the ship, lady luck might leave with him. Catardi sniffed at the last thought, thinking that such lunacy only contaminated his thinking when he wasn’t fully awake. He buzzed the conn.
“Officer of the Deck,” Alameda said in her deep iron in control-of-it-all voice.
“OOD, Captain, send the messenger for the pad computer and route it to the navigator, and have him make a recommendation to me by zero eight hundred. ComUSubCom wants a feasibility study of the idea of locking out Mr. Pacino in a scuba rig, having him float for an hour or two while we clear datum, then having him picked up by helicopter. Somehow somebody at HQ thinks that will be safer for him than having him go into battle with us.”
“Aye, Captain,” Alameda said flatly.
Catardi pulled the covers over his shoulders and turned off the desk lamp, the door cracking open as the messenger took the pad computer and quietly left. Catardi was back asleep before the door was fully shut.
In the control room, Lieutenant Alameda looked at Midshipman Pacino. “Looks like you’ve got a tick
et home,” she said.
“USubCom wants you off the boat, and that will probably happen sooner than later, because we’re due to intercept the Snare’s track before evening meal.”
Pacino looked back at her, hoping his face didn’t betray his emotions. “Bad idea,” he said. “The sea state is too strong for a personnel transfer.”
“It won’t be a small boat,” she said. “You’ll put on scuba gear and go out the escape trunk. We clear datum while you wait on the surface, and once we’re gone a chopper will pick you up.”
Pacino nodded, cursing mentally. He would be missing the action of attacking the Snare, and he was a few days away from his OOD quals. But the worst would be leaving Carrie Alameda. Since their time in the DSV, she’d been as businesslike with him as she’d been when he arrived aboard. He kept trying to catch her eye, but it was as if she’d forced the event from her memory. It was a damned shame, he thought. He missed her, even though he stood watch with her every day and slept in her stateroom every sleeping period. Losing her and losing Piranha was too heavy to process, but ignoring the loss seemed impossible. He remembered Toasty O’Neal’s question from what seemed a year ago: So, you going subs? He knew the answer now, and wondered how his mother would deal with him wearing dolphins, and what his father would think deep down, despite his insistence that he didn’t want his son endangered onboard a nuclear submarine.
Four feet away, Lieutenant Carrie Alameda watched the midshipman leaning over the chart table. She longed for him, but knew the realities of the fleet. She’d been wrong to make a move on him.; but her emotions had overwhelmed her. It was just as well that he’d been ordered off the ship. Maybe when he was safe, back at Annapolis, she could write him and tell him how she felt. Even then, the idea of a relationship that bridged the distance between them and the gulf of their age and rank seemed absurd. But she knew she couldn’t let go of
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