Attack of the Seawolf mp-2
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Attack of the Seawolf
( Michael Pacino - 2 )
Michael Dimercurio
One of our subs was missing
The nightmare fear of the U.S. had come true. One of our finest submarines, the U.S.S. Tampa, on a top-secret spying mission, had fallen into Chinese Communist hands. The Communists, fighting for survival in a savage civil war, now held not only the sub, the crew, and gutsy Commander Sean Murphy hostage, but U.S. power and prestige as well.
America had one last desperate card to play. The most advanced submarine in the world, the still untried U.S.S. Seawolf, under the command of maverick daredevil Captain Michael "Patch" Pacino. The Seawolf had to steal back the Tampa from where it lay guarded by the entire Chinese fleet armed to the teeth with technology from the bankrupt Russians.
Michael DiMercurio
Attack of the Seawolf
To Theresa Lynn, Matthew Robert, and Maria Dean
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book, and an entire writing career, is the result of a long chain of people, all of them extraordinary.
The line certainly begins with parents and extends through teachers and mentors, commanding officers and colleagues. To those who have helped on the way, I offer my thanks:
To Donald I. Fine, the giant of publishing who taught me the hard parts and was patient with me when I might not have deserved it.
To Natasha Kern, my agent, the first to see something in the words I wrote.
To Alice Price, who convinced Natasha that what she saw was not a mirage.
To Adam Levison, an editor who listened and explained.
To Barbara Field for her superb illustrations, and for her willingness to learn the insides of a nuclear submarine to make them.
To Andrew Hoffer, production manager, who made it seem easy.
To Richard Mareinko, the venerable commander and founder of SEAL Team Six, a daring and creative Navy SEAL who revolutionized modern special warfare commando techniques, whose life stories came to me not only from his excellent book Rogue Warrior but from Bique family folklore and the girl who used to babysit his kids.
To Lieutenant Commander David De Longa Ph.D., my old roommate from MIT,
Scuba School, and the USS Hammerhead, who opened up the world of deep diving submersibles and showed me exactly how one goes about flying a helicopter.
To the officers and men of the U.S. Submarine Force, especially the alumni of the USS Hammerhead, SSN-663, and especially to Commander Tim Mulcare, now executive officer of the Norfolk, who showed me the workings of a 688 class.
To every teacher who cared, particularly those at Ballard H.S. in Louisville, KY.” and at Annapolis.
And, of course, to Mom and Dad.
EPIGRAPH
He who will not risk cannot win.
— John Paul Jones
Pick out the biggest and commence firing.
— Captain Mike Moran, USS Boise.
Fight her till she sinks and don’t give up the ship.
— Captain James Lawrence of the USS Chesapeake, as he was carried below, mortally wounded, in his losing fight with the HMS Shannon.
The colors must never be struck.
— Lieutenant William Burrows, USS Enterprise, 1813.
Take her down.
— Commander Howard Gilmore, aboard the World War II submarine USS Growler, ordering his crew to leave him on deck, wounded as he was, and submerge to save the ship.
CODE OF CONDUCT FOR MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES
I. I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.
II. I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command I will never surrender my men while they still have the means to resist.
III. If I am captured I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.
IV. If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.
V. When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am bound to give only name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.
VI. I will never forget that I am an American fighting man, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.
PROLOGUE
WEDNESDAY. 1 MAY
LO YANG HONAN PROVINCE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Even in the moonless night, the KL-87’s digital infrared camera captured the endless rows of crudely camouflaged People’s Liberation Army tanks, the Main Force Battalion that was waiting to ambush the opposition White Army brigade advancing from the west.
Su Lee snapped off the images, the photos captured on the camera’s computer memory, satisfied that she had gotten it all. After one last glance at the huge armored force in the valley below, she climbed back onto the rickety bicycle for the trip back to the village, to her room in the women’s dormitory of the farming cooperative. Although it was risky to be out in the middle of the night, her situation gave her an implied cover — as a former prostitute under rehabilitation, her nocturnal activities would immediately be assumed to do with her original crime. No one would suspect her of espionage. Unless they found the KL-87’s digital camera in her bag. And who would want to search a prostitute’s handbag?
She pedaled through the moonlit night back to the village, past the sleepy and shabby buildings of the farm cooperative, until she reached the hut of her own co-op. She parked the bicycle against the building and slowly climbed the creaking stairs to her tiny room.
She shut the door behind her, set the digital imager on the bed, and pulled the remainder of the KL-87 set from its hiding place in her beat-up suitcase, wrapped securely in old clothes.
The KL-87 was a three-module secure communications system, newly developed in the United States by DynaCorp International. The first module was the digital imager, a camera that took photographs recorded not on film but on a computer hard disk for later uplink by the transmitter module. The second piece was a small computer keyboard and tilting screen, used for typing in a message and encoding it. The third module was the transmitter antenna assembly, which took the encrypted messages and digital camera images and uplinked them on a time-varying secure UHF frequency to an orbiting U.S. communications satellite in a geosynchronous orbit over the western Pacific. The entire kit, when stowed, took up no more room than two shoe boxes, but weighed a solid ten pounds.
Su Lee checked the door and the window, then sat on the bed to begin her typing, the message introducing the uplink of the photos with a brief verbal description of the P.L.A force strength. She typed in the instructions for encoding the message, plugged in the digital imager, tied in the transmitter, and hit the two key combination ordering the unit to transmit. Satisfied, she watched as the unit transmitted the signals to the satellite above. It was unfortunate that the photographs contained so much data — the transmission would take almost fifteen minutes to uplink all the bits from the photos. Su was about to cover the KL-87 with a bundle of clothing from the suitcase when the door crashed open.
Su Lee stared down the barrels of three AK-47 automatic rifles held by three Red Guards. She felt a burst of adrenaline,
a flash of raw fear, soaking her armpits, nauseating her stomach. In reflex, she plunged her hands under the KL-87, getting under its weight, and threw the connected modules at the first of the Red Guards. As the unit flew through the air, Su turned and plunged through the window, falling the twenty feet to the street below. Pain shot through her chest as ribs punctured lungs. Blood spurted from her neck, her flesh ripped apart by the fall through the window’s thick glass. Su pressed a hand to her neck, the slick warm liquid soaking her arm. Above her, rifle fire sounded in the room, blowing the remainder of the glass from the window, showering her with fragments. One guardsman appeared at the window while footprints sounded on the street coming from the direction of the door.
By now blood surrounded Su. She couldn’t move her legs, and the boots of the guards were thumping closer. Agony flooded her, more at being caught than at her injuries. In a savage movement of her free arm she pulled out the hem of her tunic, and with it, two tiny white pills she had carried with her since her arrival at Loyang. She bit both of them and swallowed, an almond bitterness filling her mouth.
By the time the guardsmen arrived to drag her up by her arms, Su Lee was dead.
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA HEADQUARTERS, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
Director Robert M. Kent frowned as he put the coffee mug down on his desk. The brew had gone cold and bitter. He looked up at Steve Jaspers, the Deputy Director of Operations, and accepted the briefing folders Jaspers handed over.
“The China penetration operation has derailed, sir,” Jaspers said without preamble, sinking into a couch in front of Kent’s large desk.
“Six penetration agents were sent in. Two were lost on insertion, the other four reported they were set up and in position, but as of now the final four are compromised.”
“Details,” Kent said, opening the folder to the first page, showing a passport photo of an attractive young oriental woman and beneath it a summary of her background.
“The first was a contractor, operational name, Su Lee. She was dropped into Loyang in the Province of Honan south of the Yellow River. The territory is still in Communist hands, but only miles from forces of the White Army, which we believed were massing for an attack. Su was given identity papers as a relocating Beijing resident. The relocation was for political reasons — she was listed as a convicted prostitute, sent out to a farm co-op as ‘rehabilitation.” We got her initial report on the KL-87 that she had picked up on rumors of White Army forces preparing for an attack from the west with the People’s Liberation Army forces waiting for a counterattack to the east. She intended taking the digital imaging camera to the P.L.A troop encampment first. Apparently she was successful. The images had just started to come in on her second KL87 transmission, which ended suddenly. Nothing more was heard from her.
“The second was another contractor, operational name, Chu Cheng. Chu parachuted into the village of Ganyu near the seacoast in northern Kiangsu province, again very near the border of White Army occupation, but still on territory controlled by the People’s Republic. For the last two weeks his identity was working. He was set up as a teacher in a vocational school, with political relocation orders from Beijing. His cover story cast him as a former manufacturing engineer being rehabilitated for falsification of factory production statistics. We got his initial report that he was in place and intended to scout out the P.L.A positions in the vicinity, perhaps make a weekend trip over the line to the frontier. We haven’t heard from him since. He’s missed four scheduled reports. I have to presume he’s captured or dead.”
“The third?” Director Kent asked, a sour look crossing his face as he shut Chu’s file and opened the next in the stack.
“Third was Sung Yu-shu.” Jaspers continued.
“He was dropped into the village of Kangba, about one hundred and eighty miles north of Beijing. We had suspected this to be an area of future attacks by the White forces to the north. A week after Sung was inserted, we got his set-up transmission, but he reported that there was no White or P.L.A activity as we had suspected from the satellite photographs.”
“Damned satellites,” Kent grumbled.
“We’re getting less information from them than I’d have ever guessed. And they cost a half a billion each …”
“They only show things, sir, not intentions or trends. Anyway, Sung intended to head further north and find out if he could sniff out any activity. We never heard from him again.”
“The fourth?”
“Operational name, Hu To-pin. We set him up in Beijing after bringing him in by ship from the port of Tianjin and from there by rail to the capital. He took a job as a stock boy in a state-run store for party officials, which was conveniently located on Chang’An Avenue, not far from the Great Hall of the People. In addition to the KL-87, he was given some sophisticated eavesdropping gear for reception of UHF communications and microwave transmissions. The former to listen to orders from Beijing to P.L.A unit commanders, the latter for possible phone intercepts. He wasn’t going to listen or interpret, just record the intercepts for compressed burst relay to the COMMSAT using the KL-87. The western Pacific COMMSAT yesterday afternoon logged that it was being addressed by Hu’s KL-87, but after just a few seconds the transmission stopped. We haven’t heard anything more. Hu has missed three checkin transmissions since. I’m listing him as compromised.”
Kent glanced at the map of China that now occupied an entire wall of his office across from his desk.
The Chinese Civil War remained the main priority of the CIA as well as Kent’s chief personal frustration.
The map showed the Japanese-supported insurgents of the White Army occupying a wide swath of the mainland from the southern coast to the north central region, cutting Communist China in half. The Communist Chinese still held the far west and the northeast, including the vicinity within three hundred miles of Beijing. The White Army was rumored to be preparing a massive assault on Beijing, but the rumors also held that Beijing was planning a counterattack that could wipe out the White Army and take back central China.
This bloody war had the potential to torch all of Asia, Kent thought, perhaps even spread further.
There was still the question of China’s old nuclear weapons, supposedly destroyed over the last five years, but perhaps only stockpiled in a P.L.A weapons depot. If China could sever the link between the White Army of the New Kuomintang and Japan by attacking Japan itself, this struggle, a mere Shanghai rebellion just the year before, could break out into world war, which was never supposed to happen again after the end of the Cold War. With the linking of the world’s economic markets, a single air raid on Tokyo might well wipe out the computers of the world banking system, and with them start the worst depression of the century. If the Communists won, China would be sent back fifty years to the Mao era, perhaps starting another cold war, this time with the Chinese. If the democratic forces of the White Army won, China would likely be a future ally and trading partner.
America had to act, but Congress and the President had ruled out direct military intervention. The best Kent could hope to do was keep an eye on the war and make sure the White Army at least had the benefit of knowing what Beijing was doing. But how could he do that? Since diplomatic relations had been severed with Communist China, the CIA no longer had embassies or consulates to allow the operations of the station chiefs, which meant they had no way to collect intelligence from Chinese local agents. The progress of the Civil War was a complete mystery to the CIA and the administration. With Jaspers telling him that the penetration agents had failed, intelligence on the Civil War would be solely by satellite photographs, which were nearly useless without human reports from the ground. Without hard intelligence, the White Army would not have the benefit of intelligence and U.S. foreign policy would have to be made in the dark.
And the President wanted answers. Now.
Kent shut the last of the four files and looked up at Jaspers.
“So now we brief the President that we haven’t got a single idea what’s going on in goddamned China.”
Kent stood, handing back the briefing folders to Jaspers.
He pulled on his suit jacket from a hanger near the door and walked into the anteroom, Jaspers trailing.
“Your car’s waiting,” the receptionist said to Kent, who nodded, continuing out the door, Deputy Director Jaspers still following.
“Sir, just a thought,” Jaspers said, “the commander of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, Admiral Richard Donchez, is in Washington visiting the Pentagon. I can have him at the briefing at the White House by the time you get there.”
Kent looked at his deputy from under the ridge formed by his bushy gray eyebrows.
“The Navy? What are you getting at, Steve?”
“Sir,” Jaspers said, “I think maybe it’s time we sent a submarine into the Go Hai Bay to listen to Beijing.”
Kent shook his head.
“That’d be like sailing a sub up to Chesapeake Bay to the Potomac River to eavesdrop on Washington. Too dangerous.”
“But that’s all we have left.”
After a moment Kent stepped into the limo, shut the door, and lowered the window. Jaspers crouched over to listen to Kent’s decision.
“You’re right.” Kent said.
“Get Admiral Donchez to the briefing.”
CHAPTER 1
WEDNESDAY, 1 MAY
2125 GREENWICH MEAN TIME
WESTERN PACIFIC OCEAN 300 NAUTICAL MILES SOUTH OF TOKYO BAY
0625 LOCAL TIME