The larger man pulled out a large flexible flat panel display, and after working with it, a map of China came up on it. He pointed to Beijing. Lien looked up—was he being interrogated? He shook his head, and the man sat down.
Not that it mattered. They would execute him soon anyway.
“Captain Pacino, ship is submerged at one five zero feet with a satisfactory one-third trim,” Lieutenant Vickerson reported. “Sounding is five six five fathoms.”
Pacino stood on the conn in the rigged-for-red control room of the Devilfish, thinking the last time he had been here, the ship was returning from the East China Sea after the last tussle with the Reds. He concentrated on the moment and looked at the female officer.
“Very well. Increase speed to standard and take her to four hundred feet, flat angle.”
Vickerson stared at him. “Depth limit is one five zero feet, Captain. The shipyard said the welds weren’t completed. We’ll flood before we get to two hundred.”
The XO walked to the conn from the navigation station aft, his face a fearful mask in the eerie red lights of the overheads. “Sir, Vickerson is right.”
Pacino nodded. “I know. Take her down, OOD. Flat angle.”
“Aye, sir,” she said, and made the orders.
Pacino picked up the 1MC microphone, his voice booming
throughout the ship. “Attention, all hands,” he said. “This is the captain. As you all know, we have been sent on an urgent mission to sink the Snare, which has gone seriously out of control and has fired upon one of our own ships. The Piranha is on the bottom and the Snare has run out of weapons range of the Hammerhead. She is on her way east to fire weapons at American targets, but she will never make it to the range circle of her missiles, not if the Devilfish has anything to say about it. However, in order for us to fight the ship in this battle, we must have all combat capabilities. I am ordering the torpedo tubes prepared and I will be modifying the Tigershark torpedoes so that we may engage the Snare. I am also ordering the ship be taken to test depth so we can see if we’ll flood or stay intact, because when we take on the Snare we will be fighting her from the deep, not from periscope depth talking to an Air Force bomber. Therefore, because I am betting that the shipyard has done better work than they are willing to take credit for, Devilfish is now proceeding deep. All hands, rig ship for deep submergence. Carry on.”
Pacino replaced the microphone in the cradle and looked up to ten pairs of doubting eyes. Vickerson turned and looked at him, biting her lower lip.
“Captain, two hundred feet, sir.”
“Very well.” Pacino stood straight on the conn, glaring at the depth gauge.
“Two fifty, sir.” Vickerson swallowed. “All stations report ship rigged for deep submergence, sir.”
“Very well.” On every level of every space, phone talkers would prowl with flashlights, hoping to find a leak before the ship flooded catastrophically. The difference was critical, as the old submarine saying went—you find a leak, flooding finds you.
“Three hundred feet, sir.”
“Proceed to test depth, Officer of the Deck, thirteen hundred feet.”
“Thirteen hundred feet, aye, sir. Ship is at all ahead standard.”
“All ahead full,” Pacino ordered, knowing that full speed at test depth violated the ship’s operating envelope, since a jam dive at full speed would send them plunging through crush depth before they could recover.
“Full, aye, Captain,” Vickerson replied. Pacino smiled to himself—she was beginning to learn. It was obviously harder for Vermeers, who stood there with beads of sweat on his forehead.
“Five hundred feet, sir.”
The ship kept plowing deeper, until a loud groaning shriek sounded from above the control room, making Vermeers jump. “It’s just the hull adjusting to the pressure, XO,” Pacino said.
“I know that, sir,” Vermeers said. “I’m wearing dolphins.”
Pacino glared at the depth gauge.
“One thousand feet, sir.”
The phone on the command console buzzed. Vickerson lunged for it, looking up to say, “Torpedo room reports a leak on tube three’s inner door, sir. Leak is dripping, but increasing to a steady drip.”
Pacino nodded as if it were good news. “Very well.”
“Aren’t you taking us up, sir?” Vermeers asked.
Pacino glared at him.
“Eleven hundred feet, Captain.”
The hull shrieked again, a loud series of pops roaring from left to right and echoing in the depths of the seas. Vermeers tried to maintain a war face, but it was not easy for the young officer.
“Twelve hundred feet, Captain.”
The phone buzzed again. Vickerson listened. “Sir, tube three leak is now streaming.”
Pacino nodded, glancing at Vermeers, who nodded in imitation.
“Thirteen hundred feet, Captain,” Vickerson reported. “Tube three leak is streaming so hard the water is hitting the deck twenty feet away, sir.”
“Cycle tube three’s outer door,” Pacino ordered. “And all ahead flank.”
Vermeers’s face looked white even in the red-lit room. If full speed were dangerous at test depth, flank was suicidal. Especially before the ship had undergone sea trials. The deck below Pacino’s feet began to tremble as the ship sped up to flank speed.
“Aye, sir, opening outer door, tube three, door open, and shutting outer door.”
Pacino waited.
“Sir, tube three leak is down to a slow drip.”
“Very well. Offsa’deck, take the ship to five four eight feet, thirty degree up angle.”
The deck rose steeply. In the upper level, the sound of dishes breaking in the galley could be heard, several crashes of books and equipment sounding from the middle level. The crashing had barely stopped when the deck leveled out.
“XO,” Pacino said dryly, “I think you could do a better job stowing for sea. Should I take a few more angles, or do you think you can identify and fix the problems?”
“I’ll take care of it, sir.”
“OOD, I want you to increase speed slowly—”
“Sir, we’re already at flank—”
“—by coordinating with maneuvering and raising reactor power one percent at a time until you get a main lube oil bearing discharge over-temperature alarm, then back down one percent, which will be the emergency flank setting. Make sure the engineering officer of the watch has all main lube oil cooler balance valves fully open before you start.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” Vickerson said, more calmly this time as she hoisted a phone.
“You know you’ll ruin the reactor and make the ship a high radiation area by going above one hundred percent power, Captain,” Vermeers said. “We’ll be back in the shipyard for two years if you go over a hundred and ten percent.”
“I’m well aware of that, XO, just as I am that the Snare is out there spinning up twelve cruise missiles.”
Pacino stood on the conn, feeling the deck of the Devilfish
shaking, waiting until he could get to the intercept point with the Snare.
The president of Cyclops Systems Incorporated, Colleen O’Shaughnessy Pacino, had designed the current generation of submerged battle control systems since the SSNX had first gone to sea, a soaring success for both Colleen and Michael Pacino since Cyclops got a bigger, more lucrative contract and they had gotten married. But the good times were in the past, since now Colleen Pacino was about to answer to Congress for the failed Tigershark torpedo program. That had been her biggest problem until, twenty hours ago, her husband had told her about the nightmare with Anthony Michael.
“Of course I’ll go,” she had said, as she sat up in the bed and swept her raven-black hair out of her face.
The chopper flight had gone on for hours. Finally the chopper hovered over the rear deck of the Explorer II and lowered her down to the deck. By the time she was taken inside she was soaked from the high winds and the driving rain.
Commande
r Peter Collingsworth met her in a narrow passageway. He had a solid body that could stand to lose a few pounds and stood taller than average, with a full red beard, a tangled mop of reddish-brown hair, jolly blue eyes, a freckle covered nose, and a firm handshake. His voice was higher than his body would suggest, his manner open and friendly. Colleen threw the hood off her head and shook out her hair in the towel she’d been given, gripping the Royal Navy commander’s hand.
“I’m Colleen Pacino,” she said. “I’ma defense contractor sent out by Admiral Patton. One of the survivors in the Piranha is my stepson.”
Collinsworth nodded seriously, releasing her hand. “Welcome aboard Explorer II. I’m the venture commander. The captain of the ship is Kenneth Knowles, who is on the bridge. I’d offer you something to drink, but I assume you’ll want to get to business. If you’ll use this empty stateroom, you can
take a shower and change into dry coveralls. I’ll meet you in the control room in five minutes.”
Colleen nodded, ducked into the stateroom, dived under the warm fresh water shower, toweled off, and donned the British coveralls with the odd emblems above the pockets. When she emerged, a crewman was waiting to take her to control, a large but crowded space jammed with monitors, computers, radios, and other equipment. She could hear Collingsworth talking to one of his officers, his voice calm and confident. When he was done he came over to Colleen. She expected him to give a speech about the weather being too severe and the rescue taking too much time.
“Mrs. Pacino. here’s how we see things. Emerald has shoved off and hightailed it out of the storm. She’s disconnected from the hydrophone cables and left the buoy locator for the wreck floating, and we’re retrieving it now. Once we have it aboard we’ll set up the stabilizer system to hover in place over the wreck. The submersible will be going overboard next with the hull-cutting rig.”
“Where is it?” Colleen asked. “I didn’t see it on the deck.”
“It’s in the belly of the ship. It goes down from inside, so we’re not weather limited. It’s lowered by two arms that take her clear of the keel, and that way she can dock on the way up even in a hurricane. There’s something about bad weather and sub wrecks that go together like tea and milk. The Admiralty wouldn’t let a little weather stop a rescue.”
Colleen smiled genuinely for the first time in days.
“Now, the rescue won’t go as planned because we’re out of time. According to the chaps on the Emerald, the sounds have stopped from in-hull a few hours after Captain Catardi reported that the oxygen levels were falling whilst he was suffering from extremely cold temperatures. If we don’t have those crewmen up here in four hours, we’re all wasting our time. We propose using an experimental and potentially dangerous plasma explosive torch over the command module of the sub’s DSV. The idea is it will slice through thick steel in minutes instead of hours. But anything that has the energy to melt
through submarine hull material has energy enough to damage the survivors, even breach the hull of the DSV. But there’s no time for anything else. Can you authorize us to use this method?”
“How long will it take?” Colleen asked.
“An hour.”
“Then hurry,” she said.
Collingsworth nodded and jogged down the passageway and disappeared into a hatch. Colleen checked her watch. In an hour, dead or alive, they’d have Anthony Michael back.
“One, display the chart with the cruise missile range circle and our position, and show the estimated time to arrive at the range mark. Good, now please set up a targeting routine with a close-up of the following locations for target selection.” Krivak had no idea what the latitude and longitude of the White House was, but he’d zero in the crosshairs on Washington, D.C.” until he found it. Then he’d lock in the target and move on to the next missile. He worried briefly that One Oh Seven would refuse to launch the missiles, but he wouldn’t know until he fired the weapons.
He thought for a moment that he should approach the firing point in a random zigzag, to throw off any American military units that would try to stop him. It seemed excessively paranoid and would make the time to missile impact much longer. He ruled the idea out. Snare would proceed straight on. He might even speed up from thirty-five knots to fifty, but that might create a train wreck of noise and invite detection. No. the middle course was best. He congratulated himself for his good instincts, and when the targeting was done, there was nothing left to do but wait.
Wait and plan his escape, because once the missiles flew out of the sea, there would be twelve missile trails pointing to his location. If the U.S. military detected him with the launch, Snare wouldn’t last an hour. If he did survive the launch, and the missiles made it to the coast, the hunt for Snare would happen after impact. Either way, he would be a dead man if he
remained aboard. He would need to abandon ship in the middle of the ocean, which was not a pleasant thought.
There was no real need to rush this. Better to arrange for Amorn to be ready to pick him up at the launch point and spirit him away from the Snare. The question was—what to do with Dr. Wang? Leave him aboard to fend for himself? Shoot him as they left the Snare! Or take him into the business?
Krivak told One Oh Seven to slow and come shallow. He’d patch in the cell phone connection to Pedro and Amorn and arrange to meet them in a chartered yacht near the firing point. He’d set the Snare to sail to China then, and by that time he’d have an idea what to do with Wang. A couple of nine-millimeter rounds in the eyes would probably be the best solution, though, he thought. The Snare could be the doctor’s coffin, and he could die with his creation.
Admiral John Patton hated the evacuation bunker’s office. It was cramped and smelled like moldy concrete. He tried to concentrate on his E-mail when Commander Marissa Tyler, his aide, peeked in the door, a look of concern on her face. He motioned Marissa to take a chair.
“Trouble?” Patton asked.
“One of NSA’s satellite cell phone network monitors filtered and saved a call. The keyword was Snare. Here’s the conversation.”
Marissa pointed her pad computer at the main display monitor, and the sound playback module flashed at the screen. She pointed the laser pointer at the play function.
Amorn, it’s me. Krivak. On the Snare, dammit.
Yes, sir, I can hear you now. Listen to me. Get a motor yacht, a fast one, and get it to the Atlantic coordinates I’m about to read to you.
Patton listened to it two more times, then began to draft a message to Kelly McKee.
24.
This time the messenger shook Admiral Ericcson’s shoulder hard the first time and said loudly, “Sir, I know you’reawake. Captain Hendricks sends his respects at the hour of zero one hundred and requests your presence in air operations. Strike aircraft launch begins in twenty minutes, sir.” With that she whirled and slipped out the door. Ericcson struggled to a sitting position, staring after her, eventually finding his voice and muttering, “Damned straight I was awake.”
Ericcson raided the humidor, checked his uniform in the mirror, rigged the stateroom, and opened the door to the passageway. The Marine guards snapped to attention and he waved a salute at them, then made his way toward air operations. Every officer and enlisted man he passed greeted him with a quick, “Morning, Admiral,” the words slurred together. When he reached air operations, he entered the room and let his eyes adjust to the dimness, the glow of the flat panel displays the only illumination.
“Admiral,” Carrier Commander Hendricks said.
“Sir,” the ship’s operations officer said. Simon Weber was a newly promoted commander who had just assumed the duties after Captain Jones had rotated ashore.
“Good morning, Admiral,” Captain Pulaski said, the battle group ops boss seeming well rested for the first time this voyage.
“Gentlemen,” Ericcson said in a booming gravelly voice as
he pulled out a Partagas. “Rumor has it we’re about to strike the enemy any minute.”
The air operations officer, Commander Eric Nussbaum, swiveled in his command chair, stood, and approached the admiral. “Sir, aircraft launch commences in five minutes. Request to launch strike in accordance with Attack Plan Delta and your night orders, sir.”
Ericcson clipped the cigar with the gold cutter. He put the cigar between his teeth and spoke around it. “Air Ops, you have permission to launch aircraft in accordance with Attack Plan Delta.” He put a flame to the cigar, then said to the room, “Gentlemen, good luck to you all.”
The room responded, then quieted. The air operations officer returned to his command chair at his large console and donned his headset. Ericcson puffed the cigar to mellow life, glancing through the smoke at the tactical display, a busy plot that took some time getting used to. The east coast of White China was the left border, the Formosa Strait at the bottom. The NavForcePac Fleet’s Task Force Alpha to the east, Red Chinese Battlegroup Two to the north. A display next to it was a blown-up scale plot of Battlegroup Two, showing individual ships in their dispersed antisubmarine formation. Vector arrows were drawn from each ship indicating ship’s course, the length indicating ship speed. The ship symbols identified each ship. The aircraft carrier Nanching was the primary target, the Beijing-class nuclear battle cruisers next, the missile cruisers also highly targeted. The information on the plots came from the fleet’s drones, a set of sixteen UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, the Mark 14 Predators, launched during the evening watch. Each Predator was tiny, wrapped in stealth radar absorbing material, and flew at nearly forty-five thousand feet, orbiting the Chinese fleet and looking down with an array of infrared and visual sensors. The fleet’s positions would normally have been confirmed with satellite updates down loaded from the tactical Keyhole satellites through the Navy Tactical Data System, but since the network was compromised, Ericcson had to make the attack using fleet resources. The Viking
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