fleet—all the ships were front line fighting SSNs, no one candidate suggesting herself to be the one ridden into the op area. So McKee had picked the ship that still appeared every night in his dreams, the ship of his past.
As he got closer to her, her breathtaking sleek lines made him ache, just as the face of a beloved exgirlfriend would. He stopped fifty yards aft of her and stared, the currents of the past made real to him. He tried to shake the emotions, forcing himself to see the ship as a machine. There was her simple slab-sided rudder protruding from the black water of the slip. Further forward her hull sloped gently out of the water, where the aft escape trunk hatch was latched open, an electrician watching as the shore power cable gantry slowly retracted into the pier like a rocket’s fuel boom rotating back to the tower just before liftoff. Forward of the aft escape trunk the hull was a perfect cylinder, the top curving surface of her glossy and black, her skin the same as a shark’s to lower skin friction and absorb sonar pings. A hundred feet further forward the tall sail rose starkly from the hull, the conning tower a simple fin, vertical at the forward and aft ends, but in cross-section, teardrop shaped. Three masts rose out of the top of the sail, each one with a mottled gray-and-black-painted fairing. McKee could see the stainless-steel rails of the flying bridge above the cockpit with its Plexiglas windshield. Forward of the sail he could see the forward access hatch opened, and there the bullet nose sloped down into the water. There was no doubt, he thought, she was a beauty.
“Admiral?” a booming voice asked from far away. McKee tried to bring himself back to the moment, and saw the husky athletic form of Commander Kiethan Judison standing in front of him, at attention, his hand to his garrison cap in a rigid salute. Judison’s trademarks had been his struggle with his weight, his too-loud voice, and his mop of hair, but it seemed he had won the battle of his waistline, his hair was short, and only the foghorn voice remained. McKee came to attention and returned the salute, then broke into a wide grin at his former navigator, who was now in command of the ship.
“Kiethan,” McKee said. “Great to see you, and my apologies in advance for cramping your style with a flag rider. You know I hated that when I was CO.”
“I know, Admiral,” the captain of the Hammerhead said, “but this is different—this time it’s you. And now the baddest submarine in the fleet just got badder. Welcome aboard, sir. And good to see you again, ma’am,” Judison said to his former executive officer. Karen Petri smiled at him and returned his salute. “Would you like a tour?”
“I’d love a tour, Commander,” McKee said, grimacing at his watch, “but we need to go. I’ll walk through with you after we pull the plug.”
Judison grinned. “Well, let’s go then.”
After the deck sentry announced their arrival, Judison shouted up at the bridge, “Off’sa’deck, lose the gangway!”
The gangway silently rose off the deck and retracted into a pier structure, only the singled-up lines keeping Hammerhead fast to the pier. The three officers lowered themselves down the forward access trunk ladder, the sensations of the ship making McKee smile. The harsh electric smell, the bright fluorescent lights, the growl of the ventilation system, and the whine of the inertial navigation binnacle made it seem like coming home. Judison led them to the V.I.P stateroom, where their bags were already loaded on the train-compartment-style bunks.
“I’ll let you two get settled and meet you on the bridge,” Judison said, shutting the door behind him.
Karen Petri looked up at McKee, noticing him looking at her, and she smiled shyly. “Not much privacy here, is there, Kelly?”
“Does it bother you?” he asked.
“No. It’s cozy. I just thought maybe it was making you nervous.”
McKee laughed. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad to be here,” she said quietly.
A knock rapped at the door, and she rapidly turned away from him to rummage in her bag.
“Yes?” McKee said.
“Sir, the captain sends his respects and invites you to come to the bridge. The ship is getting underway.”
“After you. Captain Petri,” McKee said, He smiled as he climbed to the top of the bridge access tunnel and on top of the sail to the flying bridge. He had a good feeling about this run. He clipped off the end of the Cohiba with an engraved cutter given him by the old Devilfish crew and lit it with a Hammerhead lighter, the cigar firing up to a mellow glow. He handed cigars to Captain Judison and the two junior officers down in the cockpit, and puffed the stogie, feeling happy for the first time in months as the land faded away behind them and the buoys of Thimble Shoal Channel passed by on either side of the ship.
When they cleared the Port Norfolk traffic separation scheme and turned to the southeast, he went below with Judison and Petri. After he changed into his submarine coveralls-the sleeve patches showing the emblem of SSNX-1, the Devilfish—he joined Judison in the wardroom to look at the charts of the op area, and to collect his radio traffic from the ships of the squadron that had already submerged and were flanking their way to the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, where they would sail into the Indian Ocean. After a voyage of a week and a half, they would be in-theater, the first mission to get in close to the Royal Navy battle groups and submarines, the second the sinking of anything still afloat after the eastern Indian Ocean submarines and Admiral Ericcson’s surface fleet fought it out with the Reds.
He poured himself a cup of strong coffee and leaned over the chart display with Judison and Petri, the deck shaking with the power of the flank bell, the ship rolling and pitching in the waves of the Atlantic. McKee smiled, back in his element.
A hundred and fifty nautical miles north-northeast of the Nung Yahtsu, the United States Navy fast-attack nuclear submarine Leopard sped deep beneath the waves at an engine order of all-ahead flank. The needle of the reactor power meter remained steady on the dash, marking one hundred percent power.
The propulsor thrashed in the sea at 240 RPM. The steaming engine room howled with the power of the main engines and the two ship service turbine generators powering the gigantic reactor recirculation pumps. At this speed the ship flew through the water like a bullet at just over fifty knots, almost fast enough to outrun a conventional torpedo. The decks of the vessel shuddered violently at the flank bell as she sped southward to intercept the Chinese battle group
In the first moments of the maximum-speed run, books had been shaken off bookshelves, cups vibrated out of pantry cupboards, and anything on a table not strapped down would walk its way to the edge. It was not the gentle bumpiness of a backcountry dirt road in grandfather’s pickup, but more like the old-fashioned muscle toning machines with the strap that jiggled the body frantically. The power of the screw at flank would set the teeth buzzing. The psychologists had assumed that the vibration would lead to crew fatigue, but exactly the opposite was true. The shaking hull reminded every crewmember aboard that the ship was headed for something vital, that she was speeding on to her destiny.
Captain Dixon walked into the control room and looked at the chart. “What time are you slowing?”
“Top of the hour, sir,” Lieutenant Kingman said. Kingman was the damage control assistant, one of the chief engineer’s right-hand men.
Leopard had been sailing a southern course parallel to the Chinese battle group track, but fifty miles east, outside of their detection range, but at the very point that their own sonar systems had to strain to hear the loud convoy. The ship had been called to periscope depth to receive an E-mail intelligence update and to send a situation report, and the time shallow at six knots had allowed the convoy to disappear far over the horizon, and had called for a flank run to catch up. Fortunately, they had made their last trip to periscope depth until time-on-target. Since the flank pursuit began, every ninety
minutes the Leopard slowed to ten knots and maneuvered back and forth in a target motion analysis wiggle to allow their passive sonar system and the battle control computer to rec
alculate the battle group position and course. Once the battle group movement was determined, Leopard would speed back up to flank. She would keep up this sprint-and-drift tactic until she was fifty nautical miles ahead of the fleet, when Dixon’s orders had them turning to intercept the track of the battle group and coming to periscope depth as the Chinese ships sailed directly toward them. By the time the huge surface ships were about to run over Leopard, Dixon’s torpedoes would begin connecting.
“Torpedo room ready?”
“It’s like being at the Academy the night before final exams before Christmas, Captain. Everyone’s tense and nervous and excited and happy at the same time.”
“Keep up the max parallel scan for Chinese attack submarines, OOD. Intel has the battle group steaming with the Julang-class, and we don’t know what she sounds like.”
“Yes sir. We’ve got the transient processors straining, and we’researching the probable tonal frequencies, but so far all we’ve heard are the surface ships.”
“The battle group is the haystack. Find the needle.”
“We’reworking it, Cap’n, but the flank run isn’t helping. Our signal-to-noise ratio blows with us blasting through the ocean.”
“We’ll continue on the parallel course to the battle group until we’re a hundred miles further south of them. Then turn to intercept their track at a right angle. We’ll close the track at flank so it will only take an hour, then we’ll slow to four knots and orbit at the hold position. When we get to the battle group track, they’ll still be sixty-five nautical miles north, a two-hour trip for them to overrun our position. In that two hours we’ll be rigged for ultra quiet and pacing back and forth across the battle group incoming vector. Odds are, an antisubmarine escort sub will be twenty or thirty miles ahead, but
he’ll come clanking in at his flank speed. We’ll catch him first.”
“Will we fire on him if we see him?”
“No. We’ll let him go by, but we’ll keep tabs on him. If we shoot him and miss, he’ll alert the convoy and they’ll disperse, and they’ll get away. As soon as we release weapons against the Chinese battle group we’ll put the remainder into the Julang-class SSN. Then we can put our feet up on the table and smoke cigars.”
“It’s an excellent plan, Captain,” Kingman said. “Damned glad I thought of it.”
“Recompute the intercept time and get the navigator up here to examine the new courses. The XO will brief the crew in the mess decks. We’ll man battle stations at zero three hundred.”
Captain Dennis Pulaski stood up from the console he’d been leaning over. The overhead satellite image appeared on the two-meter-tall bulkhead display screen, the resolution startlingly detailed on the high-definition display.
Admiral Ericcson slowly unwrapped a fresh cigar as he scanned the screen.
“Good weather shot,” he said slowly. “Suez Canal is busy today.”
“Busy every day, sir,” Pulaski said. “Twenty tankers in the queue waiting to enter the canal from the Med side. Another fifty at anchor waiting their turn. The Red Sea side is lighter, but not by much. And the canal itself is filled nose-to-tail with tankers big and small. The Red Sea channels are choked with hundreds of vessels.”
“Any cruise ships?”
“Nothing showing up here, sir.”
“Chore number one, Dennis, is to find out where the nearest passenger vessels are.”
“I’mon it, Admiral.”
“What about the British? Where are they on the Suez approach?”
Pulaski leaned over the console and adjusted the display.
The vantage point of the view climbed as northern Africa and the Mediterranean came into the picture and the Suez shrank. Pulaski made an arrow appear on the display.
“The better part of the Royal Navy carrier battle groups are transiting here, north of the Libyan Gulf of Sidra, west of Crete, Admiral. But we don’t have anything on the positions of their submarines. There’s a chance they were sent on ahead.”
“What’s the British speed of advance?”
“Thirty-eight knots, sir.”
“Not bad. Nothing like what we’redoing, though.”
“Oilers and tender ships are keeping the group’s speed down.”
Ericcson lit the cigar and stood deep in thought. “Calculate the transit time for a time-on-target cruise missile attack on the ships in the Suez Canal, the approaches to the canal from the Med and the Red Sea channels, assuming we put down ten ships here, fifteen here, and twenty here,” Ericcson said, using the Partagas as a pointer.
“Large bore Equalizers?”
Ericcson nodded.
“How close a tolerance on detonation time, Admiral?”
“Five minutes.”
Pulaski shook his head. “Missiles would be flying all night, sir. We’re right at the edge of the range circle. It’s coming out at six and a half hours time-of-flight from launch number one. By the time they get there, their targets are far over the horizon.”
“We won’t target them until late. Their last fifteen minutes inbound.”
“That’s a lot of telemetry, sir. There’s forty-five missiles inbound. If the weather degrades and we don’t have a clear overhead shot, or if the satellites are out of position, or there’s a problem receiving your signal, we could risk the whole missile battery.”
“We could give them a backup targeting zone and then confirm their individual targets close-in. They would fly for where we want explosions and if they don’t hear from us, they can
seek out tankers or ships where we want detonations, and if they do hear from us, they get a target in the last minutes of flight.”
Pulaski smiled. “Perfect. The Suez becomes blocked by tanker wrecks, the Brits are bottled up in the Med, and you’ve just bought us two or three weeks to attack the Red Chinese.”
Captain Hendricks picked that moment to enter flag plot with a coffeepot and a plate of bagels and pastries. “What are you two conspiring about now,” he asked.
“The admiral has a plan to block the Royal Navy from the Indian Ocean.”
Hendricks listened for a few minutes, his face becoming white. “Oh no, no sir, you can’t do this. That’s civilian shipping, in international waters, for God’s sake. You can’t just toss missiles at the Suez Canal, dear God, what are you thinking, sir? We’ll be barbecued in the world press. The U.S. will be seen as a nation of war criminals, pirates, aggressors—”
“How will they know it’s us?”
“Oh, please, Admiral. Forty-five heavy supersonic cruise missiles streaking over every piece of territory between here and the Suez Canal? Who else would have the means to do that? And the motive? Not to mention the twenty thousand souls in our task forces who’d know we launched nearly fifty missiles a few hours before massive explosions in the Suez. Come on, sir. The world will know, and we don’t have the authority to do this, and even the President wouldn’t do this.”
“Think of the alternative, Captain. The Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean. These missiles will need to be targeted on British ships if we don’t plug up the canal. The Brits are bringing in-theater some of the nastiest nuclear weapons ever created. You want to let them in?”
“I’m not saying that, sir. I’m just—you could be about to kill a thousand civilians on these tankers. Or what if there’s a cruise ship in the mix? You want that to be your legacy? You attacked a cruise ship? After what happened to us last summer, you can still consider this?”
“So, Casper,” Ericcson said, puffing his cigar, “are you saying we need to get permission to do this? Maybe you’re right.”
“Permission?” Hendricks sputtered. “Sir, we can’t do this at all!”
“You’re right, you’re right, Patton will need to weigh in on this, maybe even bring in the President. Still, I’d think they’d want to have it done while having someone to blame. Dennis, put together a quick briefing draft for Admiral Patton, just a few sentences. Make it a “UNODIR,” so it reads unless otherwise dir
ected we will launch missiles in twenty minutes. Then, if we don’t hear from Patton, we go ahead, and I’ll be accountable for anything that screws up. They can put me in prison after we sink the Chinese. If we do hear from Patton, and he says to hold off, but his message seems to lack a certain urgency, we’ll know he wants this done and wants us to disregard his countermanding order. We’ll claim we didn’t get his order in time. If Patton comes roaring back with a flash message saying stand down from your attack and repeats it three times, I’ll back off. How’s that?”
“Overkill, sir,” Pulaski said. “Just launch the damned missiles. You drag Patton into this, of course he’ll say no. You think the Pentagon wants responsibility for a hundred or a thousand civilian casualties? Plus, we’ll have to pay for the damage and repair the canal.”
Ericcson laughed out loud. “You’re worried about a lawsuit? Listen, draft the message, but just give Patton ten minutes to reply. Meanwhile, let’s take the task force to battle stations and prepare to launch the missile salvo.”
“Admiral Patton? A flash transmission came in on the bypass E-mail circuit marked personal for CNO, sir.” The Navy lieutenant commander handed Patton a tablet computer, and the admiral put down his pen and pushed his reading glasses to the bridge of his nose as he read.
He studied the message, then wandered to the sepia-colored globe in the corner of the Chief of Naval Operations suite and tapped at the Suez Canal, frowning in concentration.
“Draft a reply, with immediate priority,” he said.
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