Sea Strike

by James H. Cobb

  A minute more, and he was in the operations center. It was a cramped facility, a double row of workstations shoe horned into a smallish room that had at one time served as an enlisted men's cafeteria. Its walls were lined with glowing

  Large Screen Display telepanels, and the interior lighting was kept low.

  The watch officer looked up as Macintyre entered. ' ' to see you, sir. I think we may have something of a situation developing here."

  Macintyre joined Doyle in front of the graphics display of the Chinese coast. "What's the latest?" he demanded. "NSA is recording a major spike in the Red Chinese command-and control nets. Their coastal-defense zones have gone on hot alert. Both Task Force 7.1's duty Hawkeye and the Air Force's AWACS patrol, out on Empire North station, are recording multiple aircraft launches from air bases in the Shanghai region. Intent unknown."

  "Has Admiral Tall man been made aware of what is happening?"

  "Yes, sir. Task Force 7.1 has closed up to general quarters.

  As yet, there have been no further live-fire events recorded.

  "

  "Okay ... Where's the Cunningham now?"

  The watch officer indicated a point on the flatscreen.

  "About twenty-five miles off the coast, proceeding east.

  They're still clear. The Reds have not reacquired."

  Macintyre allowed himself to feel a degree of relief. His people were out of it for the moment. God knows what might happen next, but they had some time to sort things out.

  ' ' me a channel to Captain Garrett. And get me a copy of their current ops profile."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  There was a headset waiting for him in the adjacent communications room and a personal-computer pad loaded with the pertinent information.

  "Milstar link established, Admiral. Cunningham acknowledging."

  "Put me through," the Admiral replied distractedly. He speed-read the single-page summary of the tasking outline, refreshing himself on what the Duke had been attempting out there.

  "You're up, sir."

  "Thanks, son." Macintyre keyed the lip mike. "Captain Garrett? This is Elliot Macintyre. What have you got?"

  Amanda Garrett sounded weary beyond the radio channel'sencryption jitter, but she also sounded focused. "A major strategic development, sir."

  "That's an understatement, Captain. You seem to have kicked somebody's puppy. We're seeing a heavy reaction from the Red coastal defenses and we're reading you in at only twenty-five miles off the mainland. Are you sure you are secure enough to be dropping EMCON?"

  "No choice, sir. I have a priority sighting report and I need instructions. My intel's premise about Shanghai was correct."

  Macintyre glanced at the computer pad again. "You mean about the Reds having a major project there?"

  "Yes, sir. We are datalinking our findings now." Across the communications room, a printer began to spit out hard copy. Macintyre pointed and snapped his fingers, sending a radioman scrambling to retrieve the pages.

  "I'm sorry about the mess, sir," Amanda continued stiffly.

  "I accept full responsibility for the events in the Shanghai approaches.

  I'm afraid that I've failed your confidence."

  "As far as responsibility goes, Captain, you were operating under my orders. And as far as failing my confidence, that has yet to be seen.

  Stand by."

  The report was concise. Four pages of terse military phraseology, but the meat of it might have been contained in a single paragraph.

  "Captain."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Continue to open the range from the coast. As soon as you are clear, cross-deck over to the Enterprise and make a personal report on this to Admiral Tall man. I suspect that the two of you are going to have some things to talk about."

  OVER THE EAST CHINA SEA 0436 HOURS ZONE TIME; AUGUST 12, 2006

  The eastern horizon was giving birth to a molten-gold sunrise.

  Amanda watched it from the rear cockpit of Retainer Zero One, her head resting against the seat back. She had made a futile attempt at sleep, but had given it up as a bad job.

  They had been an hour in the air with another to go before making rendezvous with the carrier. The Sea Comanche had long-range ferry tanks clipped beneath its snub wings, and Arkady held her down low in the shadows just above the wave tops. Looking forward now, she could see the slight, repetitive movements of his flight helmet as his eyes tracked in a pilot's pattern: horizon to horizon--instruments--horizon to horizon--instruments ... Arkady had insisted on flying her himself, downing a load of caffeine tablets to burn away some of the night's fatigue.

  He hadn't said much since taking departure from the Cunningham, but then, that was one of the things Amanda had always appreciated about him. He wasn't afraid of the silent times.

  She also suspected that he was partially telepathic, or at least, able to feel the pressure of her gaze on him.

  "Penny for your thoughts, babe," he said quietly over the interphone.

  "I don't know if they're worth that much."

  "Then, give ' away for free."

  Amanda let her breath hiss away softly. "Well, I'm thinking that you might be flying a new skipper out to the Duke later this morning."

  There was no response for a moment, then the back of the helmet moved in a minute negative shake. "Nah, I'd bet they'd give her to Mr. Hiro."

  "I presume that's supposed to make me feel better?"

  "It should. He knows the ship and the crew. And you've taught him everything you know about stealth-operations doctrine. The Duke will be a lot better off in his hands than with some black shoe off a conventional can."

  In spite of everything that had occurred within the past twelve hours, and what might happen within the next, Amanda found that she could still laugh. "I think we're missing connections here, Arkady."

  Again, the back of that gray flight helmet gave a shake.

  "No. Not really. The thing is, babe, that I know you. I don't think you really want somebody blowing sunshine in your ear just now. We can't control what kind of judgment call the powers that be are going to make about this situation.

  That's out of our hands. But last night, when you committed us to that recon run, you did it for what you believed were all the right reasons.

  Right?"

  Amanda let her eyes drift back out to the sunrise. ' ' the time, I thought so."

  "Knowing what you do now, pluses and minuses, personal- and world-wise, would you do anything different?"

  She was pleased to find that the answer came easily.

  "No."

  "Well, there you go."

  Admiral Tall man's fist slammed onto his desktop like a bomb.

  "Commander Garrett," he said in a deadly monotone, "this Task Force is now on full war alert. We are at battle stations. Seventy-five miles to the west of here, my combat air patrol is eyeball-to-eyeball with a full squadron of Q-5 attack bombers all armed for maritime strike. I, for one, would like to know how the hell all this came about."

  The tension in the Admiral's cabin was thick enough to be physically tangible. Amanda held a parade-rest posture in front of Tall man's desk while his chief of staff paced restlessly.

  Beyond the bulkheads, the thunder of air operations raged on at an increased tempo.

  "All of the essentials were in my after-action report, sir," Amanda replied levelly. "We were executing a reconnaissance pass of the Yangtze estuary and the Shanghai military district, investigating a theory developed by my intelligence officer. She believed that the Communists have been delib-erately maintaining a reduced operational level within the Shanghai military district to divert attention away from some high-security project, or activity, they had under way there."

  Commander Walker cut in. "I read the report you passed on to our theater intelligence section. We could find no concrete indication of any kind of special project. As far as I can tell, Captain, all you were operating on was a whole lot of nothing."

  "
Sometimes that is all you have to start with, Commander," Amanda replied quietly. "At any rate, during the course of that pass, we experienced a failure in our thermographic vision systems. Exactly what, we don't yet know.

  The systems checked out four-oh both before and after the event.

  "As a result, we were involved in a collision with a Red Chinese torpedo boat--one of a squadron that was apparently deployed on picket duty ahead of the estuary mine barrier.

  We were forced to disengage under fire and to suppress both the mainland coastal batteries and pursuing fast-attack craft with Standard HARMS.

  Following disengagement, we resumed full stealth protocols and cleared the area."

  "I'll say this for you, Captain Garrett," Nolan Walker said bitterly.

  "When you blow it, you blow it big. The Reds are already stating over diplomatic channels that it was a United States naval vessel that violated their coastal waters. They claim to have concrete evidence. I don't suppose you have any idea what that might be?"

  ' ' the life raft we dropped to the survivors of the torpedo boat we rammed."

  "Oh, Christ!" Walker exploded. "What in the hell possessed you to do that!"

  Amanda snapped her head around to stare down the Chief of Staff.

  "Because there were men in the water, Commander!"

  "That's enough!" Tall man cut in. "Okay, I guess that covers what happened. Now, let's see if it was worth it. Admiral Macintyre has informed me that you've got some material that I should have a look at."

  "Yes, sir. Shortly before the collision we detected what sounded like a convoy assembling up the Yangtze on our passive sonar. At the suggestion of my intel, Lieutenant Rendino we executed a single high-definition surface sweep of the area with our SPY 2A Aegis radar.

  Amanda lifted her briefcase to the corner of the desk, popping the latches. "As you know, sir, the SPY-2A has a skin track silhouette capacity at closer ranges That is, we have enough definition on the return to actually get an identifiable outline of the target."

  She removed a folded strip of hard copy from the briefcase.

  Opening the first section, she spread it across the desk top before Tall man. Walker moved in and peered over the Admiral's shoulder, intrigued in spite of himself.

  "This is a graphics printout of the skin-track," Amanda continued.

  "computer enhanced for maximum clarity."

  Running down the edge of the paper was a single ink jetted line, the representation of the river's surface At two points the line jiggled upward, producing a sketchy, but recognizable, outline of a small vessel.

  "The lead craft we think, is one of the Shanghai pilot launches. The second is definitely a Lienyun-class coastal minesweeper. Now, here it really gets interesting. "

  Amanda unfolded another series of sheets. Revealed were two neat rectangles extending above the river line, the larger ahead of the smaller. There was no need for commentary.

  Tall man and Walker both instantly recognized the sail and the upper vertical stabilizer of a nuclear submarine.

  "There are three of them, sir," Amanda said "By measuring the hull length between the sail and fin, we were able to determine that the two leaders are Han class attack submarines The trailer is a Block 2 Xia fleet ballistic-missile boat."

  Much as she had done when she had been confronted with this revelation, the two male naval officers became very still and very quiet. Mentally, they were running the same equation one Block 2 Xia equaled sixteen Ju Lang 2 sea launched intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Sixteen Ju Lang 2 IRBMs, in turn, equaled thirty two megatons of thermonu clear firepower.

  "All of our intelligence indicates that the Reds have not sortied a nuke for over a year," Walker said quietly. "They laid up their fleet because they lacked the resources to keep them operational. Is there any chance that these could be hulks under tow?"

  Amanda shook her head. No. She removed a CD from the briefcase and placed it on the desk. "This is the track we recovered from our passive sonar. Analysis indicates that all three boats were maneuvering independently under reactor power."

  She moved back and paced a step or two. "Intel says that several Chinese nuclear submarines were laid up in Shanghai. The Communists must have made an extraordinary effort to put these three back in commission. They waited until there was a hole in our satellite coverage, then they sortied the boomer. The attack subs are probably acting as escorts, and the torpedo boat that I rammed must have been part of a security screen covering the departure."

  "I wonder if your busting in on their party might have scared them back into their hole?"

  Amanda shook her head "I'd doubt it, sir. The Communists know that if word gets out that they have an operational boomer, the Nationalists will go for it with everything they have. I think they earned through with the sortie. I think this wolfpack is at sea right now."

  Admiral Tall man scowled and studied the hard-copy stop as if all the secrets of the universe were encrypted upon it.

  "Nolan," he said finally, "get on the horn to the Flag bridge. Have them bring us around and get the Task Group headed north. Then talk to Air Ops and have them initiate a maximum-effort ASW search pattern covering an area well, starting with everything within a hundred-andfifty-mile radius of the mouth of the Yangtze River.

  "I've got a hunch that the Reds are going to be a little bit cranky about any sub hunting that may be tried up that way, so have the air boss tie on some fighter cover for the Vikings.

  Set up the Bombcats, a Hummer, some tankers, whatever's needed."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then inform Captain Williams and the CAG that I'd like them both on the Flag bridge in a half hour for a situation briefing. Have the staff work us up a data dump on everything we have on the Red Chinese nuclear-sub force and the local ASW environment"'

  "Aye, aye." Walker turned to the interphone on the cabin bulkhead.

  With that done, Tall man glanced at Amanda from beneath lowered brows.

  "You had breakfast yet, Commander?"

  Amanda shook her head. "No, sir."

  "Well, go down to the wardroom and get yourself something to eat. Then get back up here in time for that briefing.

  I want you to sit in on it before you head back to your ship."

  "Very good, sir." Amanda tightened the lock on her expression, concealing the surge of relief she felt.

  The Admiral continued. "An aspect of your orders was that the Cunningham would revert to the tactical command of Task Force 7.I should we get into a conflict situation out here. As of right now, Captain, I'm activating that clause.

  "The Duke is the closest surface platform we have to the primary search zone. I want you to get out there and reacquire that boomer. Then park yourself on his tail until Washington decides what they want to do about it."

  "Will do, sir."

  Tall man looked up and studied her fully for a moment, maybe for the first time as a subordinate and an asset instead of a question mark.

  "You know, Captain Garrett, I think you would have met Napoleon's requirements for becoming a marshal of the French Army."

  Amanda caught the reference and smiled back with honest humility. "I know, sir."

  Vince Arkady was waiting down corridor from the Flag cabin, out of sight of the Marine sentry posted at the door.

  He straightened as Amanda appeared around the corner, searching her face for some clue to what might have happened inside.

  "I may lose the Duke, Arkady," she said somberly. She let the words hang in the air for a moment, then she smiled, "but not today."

  Arkady made a show of snapping his fingers. "Oh, well, back to the old advancement-by-assassination plan, then."

  "Afraid so," she replied, starting down the passageway ladder to the lower decks. "Let's go hit the officers' mess.

  All of a sudden, I'm starving."

  "Me too. Jesus, what a night!"

  "Yes, and I've got a hunch that this is only the beginning."

  Amanda Garre
tt had departed by the time Commander Walker finished relaying Tollman's orders via the interphone.

  "What was that you were saying about Napoleon, sir? I think I missed something." The Admiral smiled and crossed his arms on the desktop.

  "It was just an old story from the Napoleonic Wars. It seems that this French general was in line for promotion to marshal, and Napoleon's staff was busy talking up the man in front of the Little Emperor. They described in considerable detail the man's accomplishments, battle honors, the glowing testimonials given to him by his fellow officers, just generally praising him all over the place.

  "Napoleon just waved it all off, saying, ' don't want to know if the man is capable, I want to know if he is lucky!' "

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  1412 HOURS ZONE TIME; AUGUST 11, 2006

  It was a standard presidential motorcade. A District of Columbia police cruiser ran point, its flaring light bar clearing a path through the pre-rush-hour traffic flow on New York Avenue. Then came the three identical black Lincoln limousines. Two transported only Secret Service cadre. The third, the "carrier," was positioned randomly in line with the others. A tan Ford Explorer with the heavy-weapons team followed, and another D.C. cruiser brought up the rear.

  Inside the president's vehicle, Benton Childress's press secretary shook his head and commented from one of the rearward-facing jump seats. "The Alliance of American Educators isn't going to be to pleased with your address today, sir."

  "Unpleasant realities are something that we all have to live with, Brian," Childress replied, perusing his speaker's notes again. "One of them is that everyone, no matter how noble their cause, is going to have to learn to live with a budget. This government is just beginning to regain a degree of fiscal responsibility. My administration is not going to be taking any backward steps on that path. People had better get used to it."

  "You do enjoy doing things the hard way, Mr. President."

  One of the car phones on the forward divider shrilled. The Secret Service team leader who had been riding in the other shotgun seat took the call. He listened for a moment, then held the handset out to Childress. "It's the National Security Adviser, sir, from the Pentagon."