by Tom Grace
O’Roark keyed the mike. “Control, Torpedo Room.”
“Go ahead, Torpedo Room.”
“One of those destroyers has taken a hit. There’s a lot of men in the water and a big piece of it just went to the bottom.”
“Periscope up!” Johnston ordered.
The photonics mast rose up silently from the sail and quickly broke the surface. Unlike previous generations of submarines, Virginia’s periscope did not penetrate the boat’s cylindrical hull. Instead of optics, the submarine employed the latest in digital imaging cameras and processors.
Johnston watched the periscope’s view of the surface world on one of the control room’s high-resolution displays, panning a three-sixty sweep with the keyboard controls, stopping briefly on Hangzhou and Aequatus, until he spotted the rising column of smoke. Zooming in, he saw every sailor’s worst fear.
“Captain, should we belay the order to surface?” Paulson asked.
Johnston shook his head. “We don’t know what did that, but I don’t see anybody shooting up there and we’ve got men in the water.”
“What about the other destroyer?”
“They don’t fuck with me and I won’t fuck with them. But to be on the safe side, load and flood the tubes.”
“Weps, you heard the man,” Paulson ordered. “I want four fish in the tubes, locked and loaded, and a solution on that second destroyer.”
HANGZHOU
“Bridge, CIC. Contact bearing zero-nine-seven, distance four thousand five hundred meters. It’s a submarine surfacing near the wreckage of the launch platform.”
Captain Jin remained at the port side windows as his ship rounded the bow of Aequatus for a clear view of Sanya. The sea was on fire and a huge piece of the destroyer had been torn away. Men were leaping from the stricken vessel; where possible, boats were being lowered into the water. The mangled wreck of a KA-28 helicopter covered the landing pad and much of the stern deck, making it impossible to ferry survivors off by air. The ship’s complement numbered 296 officers and men, and Jin knew that many of them would not survive the day.
Hangzhou’s starboard thirty-millimeter guns remained locked on Aequatus as the destroyer circled around to Sanya. Jin found the situation baffling. He could find no sign of weaponry on the large white vessel, and something capable of killing a destroyer with a single blow, he imagined, would be difficult to hide. His ship’s sonar had detected no mines in the water, but the sudden appearance of an unidentified submarine lessened his confidence in that technical resource. Jin knew that American submarines were very quiet and at low speed impossible to detect, but he also knew that the sound of a torpedo racing through the water was something even the poorest sonar operator could hear.
Unless, he theorized, it was lost in the noise of that launch.
“CIC, this is the captain. Target unidentified submarine with the forward guns.”
“Captain, that Chinese destroyer has spotted us and she’s painting us real bright with her fire control radar.”
“Damn,” Johnston cursed. “Sparks, see if you can raise that destroyer before they put a hole in our nice new boat.”
“Aye, Captain,” a seaman replied from the radio room.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
AEQUATUS
“Skye interrogated me,” Tao said flatly.
Kilkenny found no sense of shame or embarrassment in Tao’s admission, only concern.
“I’m sure you didn’t tell her anything.”
“They drugged me. I have no idea what I told her, but we have to assume she knows about Washabaugh.”
What Tao didn’t say, Kilkenny already knew—Skye eliminated anything she perceived as a threat. And outside, the rocket’s white smoke trail was slowly dissipating.
“Where did Skye question you?”
“In her suite, top floor.”
Kilkenny grabbed Unger’s pistol and handed it to Tao. “Just in case we run into anything on the way.”
Tao checked her weapon and followed Kilkenny into the stairwell. They ascended to the superstructure’s fifth level quickly, encountering no further sign of the ship’s security personnel.
“Skye’s suite is the double doors at the end,” Tao directed, her voice low and even.
At the top landing, Kilkenny stood beside the door with his back flat against the wall and signaled for Tao to pull open the door. As she did, he swung around with the MP5 tight to his shoulder and swept the passageway for targets.
Kilkenny caught the motion peripherally at first, and as he turned, saw one of the brushed aluminum entry doors swinging closed. He bolted down the passageway hoping to catch the door before its electronic locks could reset. Tao was right behind him.
As the opening narrowed, Kilkenny tucked his head and lunged. He struck the door with his shoulder, sending it springing back against the wall, and rolled into the suite.
Moug opened fire as Kilkenny planted his feet and pulled out of the roll. The first shot struck the thick body of Kilkenny’s submachine gun, flattened and hammered the weapon back against his chest. The second caught the upper left corner of the Draeger rebreather that covered most of Kilkenny’s chest and sent him sprawling backward. His head struck the door with a dull thump.
Before Moug could fire a third time, Tao leaned through the doorway and squeezed off two shots of her own. Both drilled into Moug’s torso, one puncturing the lower lobe of his right lung.
Moug staggered back, but instead of returning Tao’s fire, aimed off to his side and squeezed the trigger. Tao fired again, placing a bullet in the side of Moug’s head to finish the confrontation. Skye’s most-trusted confidant collapsed on the plush carpet of her suite, blood pouring from his wounds.
Beside the door, Kilkenny let out a low moan.
“Are you okay?” Tao asked, her pistol still aimed at Moug.
“Better than the alternative.” Kilkenny rose slowly, testing his balance. “Still seeing a few stars, but I think I’ll live.”
“More than I can say for Skye’s pit bull over there. That’s the bastard who sank Sea Lion.”
“Then do us both a favor and put a couple more into him, just to make sure.”
Tao cautiously approached Moug, but as she drew closer it became clear that he had already expired. She looked to the side where Moug had fired his final shot, expecting to find his last victim. Instead, she saw the desk from which Skye had questioned her. And atop its smooth surface sat a titanium-clad PowerBook with a bullet hole through its TFT display.
“Steve Jobs ain’t going to be too happy about that,” Kilkenny said as he joined Tao.
“I don’t think Moug’s preference for personal computers had anything to do with his last shot.”
“Even money, he was trying to keep us from getting at what’s inside.” Kilkenny took a closer look at the damaged computer. “I think we need Grin.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
IN ORBIT
Twenty-five minutes after lifting off from Argo, the upper stage of the Skye-4GR rocket coasted with its payload high over the eastern coast of South America. The spacecraft was exactly where its owner wanted it to be, even compensating for the minor drift caused by the loss of the launch platform’s thrust controllers.
The upper stage fired for the last time, a three-minute burn designed to deliver its payload to a specific point in orbit relative to the rest of the satellites in the Skye constellation.
Five hundred miles above Central Africa, at a speed in excess of seventeen thousand miles per hour, the upper stage released the satellite and began its descent back to Earth. Both objects had just passed through the eastern fringe of the Fence, and computers in Dahlgren logged their presence and assigned them consecutive numbers in the Space Command catalog.
Slipping out over the Indian Ocean, Zeus-2 made contact with the rest of the Skye constellation and its presence was acknowledged by the network. The killer satellite then transmitted a series of false diagnostic messages, warning its controllers of fatal
errors in its onboard electronics. It then moved on to the next phase of its program.
Like a knife being loosed from its sheath, the long black faceted craft slipped out of the reflective, metallic enclosure. Short bursts from its maneuvering thrusters allowed it to pull away from the abandoned shell. Gyros spinning, Zeus-2 reoriented itself, pointing its spear tip due north. Inside, the reactor powered up, feeding electricity to the spacecraft’s main engine—a Hall Effect Thruster. As a steady stream of ionized xenon blasted from its propulsion bus, Zeus-2 moved under its own power into a polar orbit.
CHAPTER SIXTY
AEQUATUS
Kilkenny and Tao found the bridge crew of Aequatus under the watchful eye of Lieutenant Ralph and a pair of his SEALs. The battle for the ship was over. Through the panoramic windows, they saw that two destroyers lay off the starboard side, one mortally wounded. Lifeboats dodged pools of burning fuel to pull survivors from the sea.
“What’s going on, LT?” Kilkenny asked.
“Mexican standoff. Virginia’s over by what’s left of Argo and the Chinese, as you can see, are just outside the window. Nobody seems to quite know what hit that ship over there, but the Chinese are giving our boat the evil eye. I bet a handful of MK-48s are pointed back this way, just to give the captain of that destroyer something to think about.”
“Virginia surfaced?”
“Yeah. Search and recovery. The Chinese shelled Argo. Between that and the rocket going up,” Ralph paused, “I’m pretty sure we lost four men.”
Kilkenny nodded. He’d been in Ralph’s position before and had written those letters to the families of his men.
“Hangzhou, this is the Virginia, over,” a voice boomed over the radio.
“Our guys are trying to get somebody over there on the horn, but the Chinese are giving them the silent treatment.”
Kilkenny studied the Chinese warships and quickly recognized they were of the same class.
“Mind if I borrow those for a minute,” Kilkenny asked Captain Werner, indicating the binoculars hanging from the man’s thick leathery neck.
Werner didn’t say a word, but slipped the strap over his head and handed the binoculars to Kilkenny. Comparing the two vessels, Kilkenny saw that the destroyer’s anti-ship missile batteries were positioned immediately forward of where the break had occurred on the damaged ship.
“What are you looking at?” Tao asked.
Kilkenny handed her the binoculars. “The ship that’s still in one piece.”
“Anything in particular?”
“Look for the big tubes, right where the hull curves down from the forward section onto the main deck. There’s a cluster of four.”
“I see them. What are they?”
“Ship killers. Surface-to-surface missiles. I’ll bet that’s what took out the other ship. Must’ve malfunctioned.”
“But what set it off?” Ralph asked. “They wanted to board Aequatus, not sink her. Nothing in those tubes should have been live.”
Tao shifted her gaze to the crippled destroyer. At the break, the main deck was level with the sea. Through the smoky haze, she saw the lines of walls and floors, the interior of a vessel ripped wide open.
“Nolan, did you take a good look at the other ship?” Tao asked.
“Just enough to guesstimate where it broke apart. Why?”
“Check out the break.”
Kilkenny saw buckled steel plates and other signs of a devastating explosion along one side of the ship. Scanning across the open wound, the signs of the blast diminished, and what struck him were the neat right angles of the bulkheads and decks and the sharp line of the break. It was like looking at a David Macaulay drawing of a ship—a transverse section.
“It was cut open,” Kilkenny realized. “The missiles blew after the fact.”
“Skye did that?”
“Yeah, which puts us in a good news-bad news situation.”
Kilkenny handed Tao the binoculars and picked up the radio handset. “Virginia, this is Kilkenny on Aequatus.”
“We read you, Aequatus.”
“Patch me through to the torpedo room.”
“Go ahead,” the radio operator replied.
“Grin, you and Rainey there, buddy?”
“Like where else would we be?” Grin replied. “You find Roxanne?”
“Yeah, and she’s fine. Rainey, can your satellite hit a target on the ground?”
“Sure, the beam will lose a little strength on the way down due to the atmosphere, but there’ll enough left to do some damage.”
“You guys see what happened to that destroyer?”
“Ugly, man,” Grin answered, offended by the senseless destruction, “very ugly.”
“If Skye did that with Zeus-1, would that have drained it?”
“Easily,” Rainey replied. “Missiles and satellites are clad in fairly thin materials; to cut through plate steel, she had to use everything on a sustained burst. Zeus-1 is now space junk.”
“Then that’s the good news,” Kilkenny said. “Bad news is the replacement is on its way up and we’re pretty sure Skye knows Washabaugh is on the ISS. Could Skye program the satellite from a laptop?”
“If it had the right software and a link to an antenna for the upload,” Rainey replied.
“Then you two catch the next boat over here, because I got a damaged PowerBook and we may be running out of time.”
“Hangzhou to Aequatus, respond,” a stern voice cut in.
“We hear you, Hangzhou,” Kilkenny replied.
“Is this Nolan Kilkenny?” a different voice asked.
“Yes?” Kilkenny replied, puzzled.
“There have been reports of your death off Chile.”
“I’ve heard that. They’re wrong.”
“Hey, Kilkenny,” Johnston’s voice boomed out of the speaker. “Now that you got that destroyer on the line, you mind asking them to switch off their fire control radar? It’s making us a little nervous.”
“How about it?” Kilkenny asked. “We didn’t have anything to do with happened to your ship.”
“Why are you here?” the stern voice was back.
“I believe for the same reason as you—someone murdered a few of our astronauts. We also had a boarding team on the launch platform.”
There was a long pause, and then a calmer voice returned.
“Our forces were unaware of your presence here. Have you captured C. J. Skye?”
“No. She escaped as we boarded this ship. She is heading to Kiritimati.”
“The weapon, can she fire on us again?”
“Not for a while yet. That’s why I need some help from two of my associates on the submarine. We want to stop her from ever using it again.”
There was another pause. Kilkenny stared out at the Hangzhou, wondering what kind of men he was dealing with.
“The submarine will no longer be targeted,” the stern voice announced.
“Confirmed, Hangzhou,” Johnston said. “We are no longer detecting your fire control radar. Virginia is also standing down. We’ve completed our recovery operation. Do you require assistance with your recovery efforts?”
Classy move, Kilkenny thought, extending the olive branch.
“Any assistance you have to offer,” the stern voice replied, “would be welcome.”
“Virginia will be moving into position to assist. Kilkenny, I’ll have your two men over, ASAP.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
“Roxanne, this is Anson Rainey,” Kilkenny said as the satellite engineer and Grin came aboard. “The guy who designed the Buck Rogers nightmare Skye just put in orbit.”
“Can you shut it down?” Tao asked.
“I’m going to try,” Rainey promised
As they reached the fifth level, they saw two of the ship’s medical personnel departing from Skye’s suite with a gurney bearing a sheet-covered figure.
“Who is that?” Rainey asked with a shudder.
“Owen Moug,” Kilkenny replied.
“Are you all right?” Tao asked.
“Until a few days ago, I thought I worked for two of the best people in the business. Now, to see what they became because of something I created …”
“You only built the tool,” Kilkenny said. “Skye and Moug were the ones who decided to use it the way they did.”
Grin let out a low whistle as he eyed the jagged hole in the PowerBook’s screen. “You weren’t kidding when you said this puppy took a hit.”
“Can you resurrect it?” Kilkenny asked.
“No need,” Grin said with a smile. Then he popped out the laptop’s hard drive. “When you said you had a damaged PowerBook, I put out the word that I needed a volunteer. I got five offers in under a minute.”
From a well-worn denim backpack, Grin pulled out the twin of Skye’s damaged computer and transplanted the hard drive. The machine ran through its hardware diagnostics, then stopped and displayed the message: KEY NOT FOUND.
“That’s not a standard OS-Ten request,” Grin said, puzzled.
Rainey glanced at the screen. “That’s our security.”
He then removed a thin steel chain from around his neck, at the end of which hung a USB device not much larger than a car key. Rainey slipped the key into a slot on the side of the laptop and almost instantly was granted access to both the machine and the ship’s network.
“Have a seat, my man,” Grin said, offering Skye’s black leather chair. “It’s time for hacking and cracking.”
Rainey loaded the program he had designed for controlling the Zeus satellites and requested a display of any current targeting commands. The laptop screen filled with a graphic of two tiny objects orbiting the Earth. One of the objects was in a circular low-Earth orbit while the other raced around the poles in a broad ellipse. He ran the mouse pointer over both of the objects, causing small windows of information about them to appear. The one in a circular orbit was the ISS, the other was Zeus-2.
“I definitely don’t like the looks of this,” Grin said.
