“We need to bring Kane into the loop,” Pacino said.
“But let’s be careful. I don’t want to call him to this stateroom — that’s a power play. We should do this in his stateroom, with him at his command seat. I want you to be particularly respectful of Kane, Paully — this is a guy who’s not too happy with us aboard. When Kane talks, you and I listen hard. We don’t make phone calls to his officer of the deck. We don’t ask his officers tactical questions. We don’t even ask the nav tech the ship’s position. Our information has to come through Kane. And for that to work, Kane’s got to be on the team.”
Paully found the phone, the special command circuit between the conn, CO’s stateroom, the XO’s stateroom and maneuvering. He buzzed the captain’s stateroom, listened, then spoke quietly, looking up at Pacino.
“Captain Kane would love to speak with us in his stateroom. He said to pop on in through the head door.”
Pacino remembered how uncomfortable he had been as a submarine skipper when an admiral, even though it was Dick Donchez, had been riding the ship at sea. The situation was miserable, all he could wait for was the moment the admiral left. But though he could empathize with Kane now, nothing he could do short of leaving Kane’s ship would make the situation completely comfortable for Kane, but as he had said to Murphy a lifetime ago, they would all need to operate outside their comfort zones. He knocked on the door to the commanding officer’s stateroom. Kane’s voice was muffled as he called Pacino in.
“Thanks for the reception. Captain Kane,” Pacino said. “That shower made me a new man. Your ship is impressive.”
Kane stood, offering Pacino his command chair. Pacino waved Kane into it, sitting in a seat at Kane’s right against the bulkhead.
“Great layout,” Paully said.
Pacino poured a cup of coffee, admiring the ship’s emblem on the cup, the snarling fish swimming past the sail of a submarine, and felt the old urge to command his own ship again.
“The video camera is above the status panels on the centerline soffit. Admiral,” Kane said. “I’ll pipe the Oval Office into the central screen.”
“We’ve still got a few minutes,” Pacino said. “I wanted to brief you on what our approach is going to be. Paully, roll out the chartpad and show Captain Kane what we’re suggesting.”
White dropped his semisarcastic style and slipped into a crisp just-the-facts briefing, showing Kane the Oparea and the deployment of the seven attack submarines on the Pacific side, where he envisioned the placement of the Barracuda. If Kane was upset by the Barracuda acting as a standoff command and control ship, he didn’t show it. But there was also no enthusiasm on his face either, which might have been due to the commitment of the seven ships against the entire Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force submarines.
“Sir,” Kane said to Pacino, “we’ve got the better part of a squadron of submarines steaming two days to a week behind us. There were boats out of Pearl that couldn’t get out of repair for a weekend and worked to get going for a few days before they deployed. Before I’d put a half-dozen 688s into the Oparea I’d recommend a coordinated attack with the other two-dozen ships. We could put that together by, say, the day after tomorrow. We could go into that Oparea and clean it up.”
“I know,” Pacino said. “But the president wants to see results by Christmas. That’s hours away. I can’t wait a week. The blockade has to go back up now.”
“I think the wolfpack idea is a good one, but seven ships, sir, that’s just—”
“Unavoidable,” Pacino finished for him. “But I’m going to see if I can buy some time with President Warner. We should get to setting up the videolink now.”
Kane hoisted a phone to his ear. Within seconds the deck inclined upward as the ship came shallow, preparing for periscope depth. Minutes later the ship rocked gently in the swells near the surface, the radio antennae raised so that they could transmit to the Comstar satellite.
Kane spoke into a phone again, probably to radio, Pacino thought, to set up the videolink. The central screen went blank, then deep blue with a countdown of time on it, the numerals slowly rolling down from two minutes. Pacino laid out his chart pad and Writepad on the surface of the table, waiting for the videolink, preparing his argument to Warner.
When the numbers rolled down to zero the seal of the president of the United States flashed briefly on the screen, followed by the appearance of three people at a table, blue curtains behind them. Pacino recognized the situation room of the White House basement and realized that things must be even worse than he thought. The situation room in the basement was almost never used by Warner.
In the center of the screen was Warner herself. She looked rested and calm, her eyes wide and blue, hair neatly coiffed, makeup light. She wore a cream-colored suit, a simple string of pearls, her hands on the surface of the table. On her right was Adm. Tony Wadsworth in his service dress blues, gold stripes up to his elbows, rows of ribbons under a gleaming surface-warfare pin, a deep frown etched in his face, his eyes black and angry. To Warner’s left was Richard Donchez in a blue pinstriped suit looking as if he’d lost another ten pounds since Pacino had last seen him. Donchez looked emaciated, weak, like he didn’t have much time left. Pacino vowed he’d see him first thing when this was all over.
“Can you hear us, gentlemen?” Warner asked. There was a slight disconnection between the image and the voice, as if the videolink were some old foreign film that had been dubbed. Just one of the problems with the massive amount of data that had to be transmitted for a videolink. It would probably be another five years or even a decade before videolink technology was good enough to replace voice-only telephones.
“Good morning. Madam President,” Pacino said crisply. “You’re coming through fine. Can you hear me?”
There was a delay as his transmission made its way to the other end — another damning trait of videolink hardware that would need to be upgraded. The one-second delay made it impossible to speak in real time — if someone tried to interrupt, it wouldn’t be heard until another sentence down the road.
“I hear you fine. Admiral Pacino. You know Admiral Wadsworth and Mr. Donchez. Who do you have with you?”
She probably didn’t give a damn who was with him, he thought as he hurried through an introduction of Kane and White.
“Well, let’s just get to it, shall we? Are your forces in the exclusion zone yet. Admiral?”
Pacino described his status and his intentions, watched Warner’s face, her brow crinkling in annoyance as he tried to persuade her to give him three more days. Wadsworth’s face was a thundercloud. Donchez’s expression was unreadable. He spent half the time scribbling on a Writepad in front of him.
“Admiral, I don’t have three days, I don’t have three hours. I need some Japanese submarines sunk in the next two days. If you’re not done with that in forty-eight hours I’m going to withdraw the blockade and meet with Kurita. You have forty-eight hours to put those submarines on the bottom. I want a report at seven a.m. my time on the twenty-sixth and I want good news.”
Donchez’s face seemed to carry a warning. Pacino could hear his Writepad’s electronic alarm beep once, announcing the receipt of an urgent electronic mail.
“Madam President, could I mute this for just a few seconds?” Pacino asked.
“Certainly, Admiral. We’ll wait.”
Pacino nodded at Kane, who pressed a function key on his seat arm, and the screen displayed the words outgoing AUDIO/VIDEO MUTED.
“We’re in deep shit,” White began. Pacino held his palm up to Paully without looking at him, his concentration on his Writepad. He flashed his fingers through the software buttons until he got to the E-mail function, the flash transmission blinking on the menu. He selected it, the E-mail sent from Donchez just a few seconds old.
He skimmed it, then read it again. The text was short and simple, in Donchez’s trademark telegraphic style, all in capital letters MIKEY, URGENT YOU GET WHATEVER SUBS INTO OPAREA YOU CAN
NO MATTER THE RISK. WARNER UP AGAINST FULL BLOWN MEDIA ATTACK. CONGRESS VOTING DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS TO PULL. PLUG ON ENLIGHTENED CURTAIN. SINK MSDF SUBS BY THEN OR WITHDRAW. WADSWORTH PROPOSES RELIEVING YOU IMMEDIATELY ON DEC 26 IF NO RESULTS. GET IN, ATTACK, GET OUT. GIVE WARNER SUNK DESTINYS SO HER NEGOTIATION WITH KURITA WILL GO IN OUR FAVOR. SHE MEETS KURITA REGARDLESS OF RESULT, SO KILL HIS FORCE. URGENT YOU COME HOME IN ONE PIECE. NEED TO TALK TO YOU ASAP. UNCLE DICK.
Pacino stared at the Writepad, then saved the message and pushed the Writepad aside. Warner had a prearranged meeting with Prime Minister Kurita. It wouldn’t matter if the entire US submarine force arrived on December 27, it would be too late. Modern warfare happened very fast, with information flowing almost faster than it could be generated. Twenty years before, Pacino might have been given two weeks or a month to get ready for the blockade. Look at how long the army had had to prepare for Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia, dragging equipment and men into the desert for six months before the shooting started with the Iraqis. Look at how long the air force had taken to set up for the bombing of Chah Bahar, Iran. Three weeks to assemble the bombers and plan the mission. The invasion of southern Iran had taken two months. But now the world political stage called for immediate victory. Battles were no longer exclusively in the hands of the generals and admirals, the politicians were deeply involved. And yet that wasn’t new… hadn’t Jimmy Carter tried to micromanage the failed Desert One rescue of American hostages in Iran? Hell, it went all the way back to World War I, the only obstacle to the commander in chief taking tactical command being his information-and-command systems.
In the past the speed of information flow had mostly limited the president to the back seat, the field commanders in wartime making the immediate decisions. But now here he was taking rudder orders from the president when he should be given a free hand. He’d been unable to convince her to use the most elementary fighting tactic, the massing of force against the enemy.
Wadsworth hadn’t been helpful, and all Dick Donchez could do was tell him to follow his orders or he would be fired.
“We ready to reconnect?” Pacino asked the group.
They nodded. “Turn it back on.”
Pacino looked up at the screen. “Madam President, we’ll engage the MSDF submarines and report back in forty-eight hours.”
“Good luck. Admiral,” Warner said, holding her palm up to Wadsworth, who obviously wanted to say something.
The connection was cut off at the other end, the presidential seal appearing, then the screen went blank.
“Cut it,” Kane said into a phone. “Go deep and flank it.”
The deck inclined, downward this time, to a steep ten degrees as the ship dived for the depths.
Pacino stared at the chart for a moment, then told Paully to present the plan one last time. Pacino barely listened, the plan rolling through his head at every waking moment. By the end of the presentation Kane and Pacino had no changes to make. The submarines would deploy as he’d indicated.
CHAPTER 29
EAST CHINA SEA
FORTY KILOMETERS SOUTHWEST OF MLYANOURA DAKE ISLAND
SS-810 WINGED SERPENT
Comdr. Toshumi Tanaka flashed his fingers over the keyboard of the Second Captain console set up in his stateroom. The upper console displayed the navigation chart, showing their progress from the Sea of Japan through the Korea Strait southeast through the East China Sea past the southern tip of Kyushu. In a few more kilometers they would emerge into the Pacific on the southeast side of the Home Islands. The nav display also projected the Winged Serpent’s future track, following the coastline separated by seventy kilometers, northeast toward Tokyo Bay, where off the mouth of the bay south of Point Nojimazaki a replenishment ship would take station at anchor. The Chrysanthemum would be standing to, looking like an old rusty tanker flying a Liberian flag, her name painted in English in uneven rust-obscured block letters. But all resemblance to a merchant tanker ship would end there.
If Winged Serpent had not gained contact on the American submarines by then he would continue up along the coast of the Home Islands until he reached the Shibotsujima island at the far north point of Hokkaido Island. There he would turn the ship back southwest and patrol farther from the coastline, 150 kilometers distant, steadily working his way deeper into the Pacific until he had contact. Nothing could stop him now. The orders had taken for ever to come but finally he was at sea doing what he was born to do. Unrestricted submarine warfare against all units of the American navy.
He would paint the sea bottom with their blood. He would remain at sea until the food was gone, and beyond, until the last Nagasaki had been launched and had hit its mark. Then he would sail only for the rendezvous with the Chrysanthemum, reloading torpedoes, food and bottled water. He would give the crew and his officers twenty-four hours with the replenishment ship’s prostitutes, comfort women, and they would be back ready for battle. The thought of indulging himself with a comfort woman did not cross his mind. He could only focus on one thing — righting a wrong.
The lower console of the Second Captain was a text display of intercepted radio messages from the Americans, with some probable decodings. They weren’t assured of being correct. Many times the names for things came through but numbers were problems. Typically numbers, such as the latitudes and longitudes of positions, were double or triple encrypted. The first encryption was electronic, converting the raw-form message into meaningless electronic symbols that were then sent over the radio circuits. A second encryption could be done with the radio transmission itself, in which several dummy messages could be transmitted at once on separate frequencies, the real message cut into the text of the various dummy messages so that the actual radio transmission jumped frequencies, the receiver on the other end decoding all half-dozen messages and discarding the portions of the dummy messages that had no meaning, retaining only the vitals of the actual message. Even then a third encryption could be done at the point of receipt, where numbers that came out of the system were altered by the message reader. A one could become a three, a four a six, with a constant added on or multiplied with the “raw” number. Sometimes numbers were subtracted. Sometimes they were inverted and the nearest whole number used, sometimes multiplied by pi, then the third decimal figure the result of the convolution. This could go on to the point of absurdity, but in any case there had been so many cases of latitude and longitude distortion from messages that were broken that Tanaka no longer trusted them. It was the verbal content of the messages that intrigued him. The term “wolfpack” recurred several times.
Tanaka reclined in his seat, recalling the rich history of submarines, when in the last great war the Nazi submarines would gather together to attack convoys. If one was too far away, the other boats might be better positioned — the old vintage boats too slow to chase a swift convoy, relying instead on positioning themselves in the paths of the surface ships. In addition to positioning, two boats had twice the torpedo loadout of one. Finally, if one were to come under attack, a second boat could vector in and counterattack out of nowhere. There was one case that came to mind when the destroyer Aggressive was closing in on the damaged German Untersee-boot U-458 to ram and sink her, and the undetected U-501 was submerged at a right angle to Aggressive’ assault, delivering three torpedoes to the attacking destroyer, breaking her in half and sinking her just a few hundred meters before she would have overrun the U-458. Both U-boats had escaped. So now the Americans were going to gang up for safety from the aggressions of the Destiny class.
Tanaka tapped through some sequences, coaxing the Second Captain to extrapolate the positions of the Winged Serpents sister ships, the Destiny IIs. The Three-class ships were virtually useless in a fight with a submerged enemy. Most of them were probably already sunk, dead and gone, their poor programming inadequate to the task of fighting a true antisubmarine-warfare attack-submarine. But the Two-class ships would be there patrolling the waters surrounding the Home Islands, preparing themselves with the sa
me intelligence data that he had. He considered putting up a message to the other ships in his Two-class squadron but decided against it. The commanders knew what they were doing.
Tanaka closed out the lower display and dialed in the sonar computer-screened data, the computer looking for preset characteristics, filtering the ocean’s noise through the system’s knowledge of what the American submarines sounded like. The raw data coming in from the sea was voluminous and random, but a man-made ship made pure tones, tonals and specific transient rattles. Bangs and flow noises and squeaks. The computer could be used to filter out the meaningless clutter of the seas and look only for noises that matched pure tonals, the regularity of a screw thrashing through the seas, the noise of a hatch slamming, a sewage pump putting water overboard, a torpedo tube flooding. The Two class’ Second Captain combat control system had catalogued over ten to the fifth transient and tonal noises, and although that sounded like a lot it was a thousandth of a percent of the random noise of the sea.
With the Second Captain on the case. Winged Serpent could not fail. It would be, Tanaka thought, as if he were a Wild West gunman going up against blind men.
CHAPTER 30
ALEUTIAN TRENCH, BOUNDARY OF THE BERING SEA AND THE PACIFIC OCEAN
USS PIRANHA
Bruce Phillips leaned the captain’s chair far back in the dark of the wardroom, the large-screen flat panel displaying a classic Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, the bulging muscles of the protagonist exposed, tensing as his arm lifted a hefty weapon and he began firing a machine gun into a crowded city street. Phillips shoved a handful of popcorn in his mouth, listening to the comments of his wardroom as the bullets flew.
The phone rang from the conn. Phillips pointed the remote at the flat panel and the action froze, plunging the room into silence.
“Mindless violence,” Phillips muttered in mock disgust as he hoisted the phone to his ear. “Captain.”
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