High Flight

by David Hagberg

  “Detonation on number two,” the Samisho’s chief sonarman Tsutomu Nakayama reported unnecessarily. They’d all heard the explosion. “Number one is a definite miss!”

  “Come right to two-seven-zero degrees,” Kiyoda ordered. “Crash dive the boat. Make your depth six hundred meters.”

  “The thermocline is at three hundred meters, Kan-cho,” Minori pointed out. “In our condition I do not think we can survive beyond that depth. Recommend we level off at three hundred fifty meters.”

  Kiyoda walked back to sonar. “Was it a good hit?”

  “On the bow, Kan-cho,” Nakayama said. “But I don’t hear any breakup noises.”

  “Are they searching for us?”

  “Their sonar is silent, but Sierra-Zero-Four and -Five have us.”

  “We have target acquisition from Barbey,” Sattler reported. “Cook confirms. Skipper, she’s diving fast.”

  “Can we fire on their data?” Hanrahan asked.

  “Aye.”

  Ryder came across the bridge and pulled Hanrahan aside. “Mike, we’ve got a hole in our bow, and we’ve taken casualties. We need to break off and turn downwind, or we’re in danger of sinking.”

  “The sonofabitch attacked us.”

  “If he shoots again we might not be so lucky!”

  “We’re a U.S. warship, and we will defend ourselves. That’s from Seventh.”

  “Goddammit …”

  “Either you’re with me or against me, X!” Hanrahan shouted angrily. “Which is it?”

  Ryder backed off. “You’re the boss.”

  Hanrahan keyed the growler phone. “Fire ASROC one, fire ASROC two.”

  The eight-tube anti-submarine rocket launcher was on the deck just forward of the bridge. The weapons launched one after the other on long trails of fire and smoke. At a pre-set distance from two thousand to eleven thousand yards out, the Mark 46 acoustic homing torpedo would detach itself from the rocket and splash down.

  “Bridge, CIC. Estimate we’ll lose the target in ninety seconds if she continues to dive.”

  Too late, Hanrahan said to himself. They’d waited too long. “Follow it down,” he told Sattler. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “If we miss, he’ll run,” Ryder said. “He’s hurt. He won’t come back against three-to-one odds.”

  “Yes, he will,” Hanrahan replied. “And we’ll be waiting for him.”

  “Two torpedoes in the water, eight thousand meters to starboard and fading,” Nakayama reported.

  The Samisho was sharply down at the bow. Everyone in the conn was holding on to something for support.

  “Have they found us?”

  “Iie, Kan-cho.”

  “We are passing beneath the thermocline,” the diving officer said.

  Kiyoda looked across at Minori. “Level off at six hundred meters, then shut down all non-essential systems. Bring life support to forty percent.”

  “We could make the run around Okinerabu and surface for repairs,” Minori suggested.

  “No,” Kiyoda replied, and he turned and headed back to his compartment.

  The Fair Winds lay ahull. Stripped of sails, her tiller lashed hard to starboard, her bows were held forty-five degrees off the wind so that she slowly skidded down the waves, making a half knot to leeward.

  Liskey steadied himself against the boom gallows as he scanned the horizon to the west through binoculars. He and Carol had been below to get some rest when they’d heard the explosion. They’d scrambled topside in time to see what looked like a pair of rockets taking off.

  Now there was nothing but blackness to the west, although the eastern horizon was gray.

  “What was it?” Carol shouted.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe cruise missiles.”

  “That was one of our ships. Are we fighting the Japanese?”

  “Damned if I know, Carol. But it sure as hell isn’t an exercise in this weather.”

  Carol glanced at the apparent wind indicator. “The wind is dropping. Let’s put up the trysail and storm jib and get out of here.”

  “Not yet. I want to see what happens.”

  “Downwind.”

  “The islands are downwind,” Liskey said.

  “A beam reach, then. Back to Okinawa.”

  “We don’t know what’s out there. We’re okay here for the time being.”

  “Okay?” she cried.

  “Easy,” Liskey said. “Whatever it was, the shooting has stopped, and we’re drifting away from it. We’ll be okay here, trust me.”

  Carol looked into his eyes. “I do,” she said, shakily.

  It was late. John Whitman was alone in his office for the moment, watching CNN, one part of his mind tying to figure out what had gone wrong. The mistakes he’d made over the past couple of weeks were enough to fill a hard disk drive. Trouble was none of them had ever understood what they were facing. And the call from Gary Topper, the Guerin pilot, had done nothing but muddy the waters. Adkins was apparently no longer running operations at Langley, and Howard Ryan was unavailable, but Whitman left a message for him. Nothing made sense.

  One of his clerks came in with a message from Dulles. The Guerin TransStar had just touched down. Two of Whitman’s people, Special Agents Mark Lusk and Don Harrington, were standing by with a half-dozen D.C. cops to take McGarvey into custody. “Even if you have to bring him in a body bag, do it,” he’d told them.

  Whitman called upstairs to the assistant director’s office. “They just touched down.”

  “Did you call the FAA?” Wood asked.

  “Yes, sir. The fleet is being grounded.”

  “Call me when they get here,” Wood said.

  “Will do.”

  A call came in. “Mr. Whitman, this is Special Agent Newton, I’m in Hereford, Maryland. It’s Mueller again. He offed a Maryland Highway Patrol cop a few miles from here.”

  “Tell me you have him.”

  “No, sir. Pennsylvania Highway Patrol thought it spotted him, but we just got word from New York that he’s been seen north of Elmira. They’re setting up roadblocks.”

  “How’d he get that far?”

  “Well that’s the problem, Mr. Whitman. The shooting took place a little before six.”

  “That was four hours ago, for Christ’s sake,” Whitman swore.

  “I just found out about it. Maryland H.P. wanted to handle this on their own, since it was one of their people who bought it. But I convinced them otherwise.”

  Whitman patted his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He’d quit five years ago, but he still felt the urge when he was under stress. “You say New York Highway Patrol is setting up roadblocks?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Has he got Reid and the Kilbourne woman with him?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Don’t try to force the issue, Newton. Make damned sure New York H.P. understands that they’re dealing with a professional. You make damned sure you understand.”

  “I hear you, sir. Nobody is going to take a chance.”

  Whitman’s other line rang. It was Special Agent Mark Lusk.

  “We’re just leaving the airport.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “McGarvey’s cooperating for now.”

  “What about the Japanese?” Whitman asked.

  “He’s dead.”

  The ride from Dulles seemed to take forever. It had begun to snow and the roads were slippery, but there wasn’t much traffic, so they made good time, Lusk driving and McGarvey and Harrington in the back seat. They were bracketed front and back by D.C. cops, lights flashing and sirens wailing. Lusk pulled up at the Tenth Street entrance to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, and McGarvey was hustled upstairs to a fifth-floor conference room, where Whitman waited with Kenneth Wood and a steno. The guard at the door was armed.

  “At long last, Mr. McGarvey,” Whitman said.

  “Are you John Whitman?”

  “That’s right …”

  “Have your people picked u
p Edward Reid or Bruno Mueller yet?”

  “I think we’ll ask the questions here,” Wood said, motioning for the steno to begin, and for McGarvey to take a seat.

  “Unless I miss my guess the President is in the White House situation room trying to figure out why the Japanese attacked us, and how to avoid an all-out war.”

  “We’ll get to that in due time.”

  “If you don’t listen to me right now, it’ll be the biggest fucking mistake of your life. The Japanese didn’t bring down our airplanes this time. Reid and Mueller did it through a company called InterTech.”

  “Sonofabitch,” Whitman said. He looked at Wood.

  “What do you have?” McGarvey asked.

  “We think all of Guerin’s 522s have been sabotaged. We got that from you. But the triggering signals were sent through InterTech to a series of devices that were planted at the eight airports, plus Andrews. The signals were generated in Tokyo, we know that for sure, but the repeaters were not Japanese-made.”

  “A computer hacker could have set up the signal transfer to make it look like it came from Tokyo.”

  “It was confirmed from NSA.”

  “For Christ’s sake, John,” Wood warned.

  “What do you have on Reid and Mueller?”

  “Even if they are involved, they’re working for the Japanese,” Wood said.

  “A Japanese zaibatsu called Mintori Assurance sabotaged the fleet. They brought the American Airlines flight down in ’90, and they were going to bring down a few others over the next couple of years. But not this time.”

  “This is crazy,” Wood shouted angrily. “You’ve been directly linked to I don’t know how many murders. You’ve had meetings with Japanese spies and Russian spies, and the CIA thinks you should be shot on sight.”

  “You’ve seen my file.”

  “You’re damned right we have!”

  “Then what would I have to gain?”

  “Frankly I don’t know, yet. That’s why you were arrested.”

  “I called you, remember?” McGarvey said. “Unless you want a lot more people killed, you’d better cooperate with me.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Wood swore.

  “If it was Reid and Mueller, how did they do it, and why?” Whitman asked.

  “I don’t know. But Reid has the answers, if we can get to him in time, and convince the President.”

  “Put him downstairs, and get an interrogation team in here. Maybe they can get the truth out of him,” Wood ordered.

  “Just a minute, sir,” Whitman cautioned. “What if he’s right?”

  “He’s a murderer. Even the CIA cut him loose.”

  “But what if he’s right? Can we afford to take the chance now?”

  Wood was fuming, but he said nothing.

  Whitman turned back to McGarvey. “Reid and Mueller are in upstate New York right now. They’re probably going to try for the Canadian border.”

  “How many people has Mueller already killed?”

  Whitman hesitated. “A pair of our agents in front of Reid’s place, two Japanese nationals in what appeared to be a surveillance van, and a Maryland Highway Patrol cop. New York H.P. is setting up roadblocks, but they’re taking it easy because of the woman.”

  McGarvey went cold. “Dominique Kilbourne?”

  “Yes.”

  McGarvey looked away for the moment. Mueller would know that Reid was under suspicion by the FBI as well as the Japanese, but he would protect his benefactor because running and hiding took money. But why take Dominique?

  “Would Reid know that I was involved in the investigation?” McGarvey asked.

  “It’s possible.”

  He should have killed her. She was excess baggage. She would slow him down. Almost impossible to get across a border with a hostage. Too many things could go wrong.

  “What is it?”

  “He knows that he’s lost, so he’s willing to exchange Reid and the woman for me.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “He’s one of the ones who killed an old friend of mine in Paris a few years ago. He’ll think I want to settle an old score.”

  Wood shook his head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “There’s no place for him to go. Has he switched cars since he killed the highway patrol officer?”

  “Presumably not,” Whitman said, understanding dawning in his eyes.

  “You’re talking about some high-noon standoff,” Wood said. “You’re crazy.”

  McGarvey thought about it. Compared to the Kennedys and Socrates and Kilbournes of the world he probably was.

  “Have the local cops isolate them until you can fly me up there.”

  Wood was speechless.

  “You want answers that only Reid can give you. But you’d better make up your mind, before it’s too late.”

  After a few hours sleep on Okinawa while his Orion P-3C was refueled, Fred White’s eyes were gritty, but he was alert. So was his entire crew. Shots had been exchanged between the Thorn and the Samisho, and Seventh was taking the situation very seriously. The Japanese sub-driver was probably crazy, and it had everyone worried.

  Kadena had sent out a squadron of F-16/91As, designated Charlie-Seven, which were on station keeping, in relays, one hundred miles south. They were seriously crowding the fifteen-minute separation order—in fact at Mach two they could be overhead in a little more than four minutes—but nobody was complaining.

  They’d found nothing on MAD in a dozen sweeps over a grid ten miles on a side, so White had dropped to within two hundred feet of the surface and throttled back to deploy dipping sonobuoys. Either the sub had bugged out, or it was hiding beneath the seasonal thermocline, which around here was at about nine hundred feet.

  “We’ve got company,” Ensign Gifford said. “Two bogies in the air, bearing zero-one-zero. They have us on radar.”

  “Tanegashima?” White asked.

  “Definitely F/A-18s, estimated closure speed above Mach one-point-five.”

  “Sonar, have you got contact yet?”

  “Negative, the buoy is still deploying.”

  “I have a definite weapons radar lock,” Gifford reported excitedly. “Skipper, they have us.”

  “Get that off to Charlie-Seven.”

  “Aye, aye,” Lieutenant Littlemore said.

  “How far out are they?”

  “Forty miles … Skipper, they’ve launched missiles! Two missiles incoming, same bearing!”

  “Deploy ECMs!” White shouted.

  “Home Plate, this is Charlie-Seven leader.”

  “Charlie-Seven leader, Home Plate, we’ve monitored the transmission. You are authorized to engage. Splash them.”

  “Roger,” Lieutenant Todd Kraus said. “Let’s go, Gene,” he radioed his wingman.

  Kraus hauled his aircraft left in a seven G turn, hit the afterburners, then set the weapons selector on his stick to the new Hughes AIM-140 air-to-air missile. He activated his target-detection radar, but they were still too far out for a positive lock. The Orion was probably as good as dead, but the two bogies wouldn’t survive either.

  “I have a positive contact,” the Orion’s sonarman reported. “Depth two thousand feet … sounds quiet … she’s just lying there.”

  “Get that off to the Thorn,” White ordered. He slammed the throttles full forward and forced the nose of the big four-engine ASW aircraft down. Their only chance of survival was to fly so low to the waves that the incoming missiles’ targeting radar would be confused by the surface clutter. It was a long shot.

  “Oh, shit …” Gifford shouted. A split second later the Orion exploded in a ball of flames.

  “The Orion is splashed,” Sattler reported excitedly from CIC. “Charlie-Seven has orders to engage!”

  “Have we got the targeting data on Chrysanthemum?” Hanrahan demanded. His blood was singing.

  “Roger that.”

  “Program two Captors for zero delay at two thousand feet and launch immediatel
y.” The Captor, or Encapsulated Torpedo, consisted of a Mark 46 Mod 4 torpedo housed in a tube. It was designed to sit on the ocean floor and, using its passive sonar, watch for traffic. When a submarine was identified the sonar system went active and the torpedo was launched.

  “The data is entered,” Sattler reported moments later.

  “Launch one, launch two!”

  “Shit, the Orion is a definite kill,” Kraus’s wingman, Gene Levitt, said.

  “Range is forty-four thousand yards. I have target acquisition on bogie one,” Kraus replied calmly, although his heart was pounding.

  “I have a lock on two,” Levitt reported. “But they’re starting to turn away.”

  The pipper on Kraus’s head-up display was correct. He hit the trigger once, and then a second time. Both AIM-140 missiles streaked away, accelerating to better than Mach four.

  A second later Levitt launched his pair of missiles.

  “Kan-cho to the conn!” The battle stations Klaxon sounded throughout the Samisho.

  Kiyoda felt sluggish because of the high CO2 content in the air. He stumbled to the attack center without bothering to button his tunic. Sweat poured from his forehead.

  “Sonar reports two objects passing through the thermocline, but we can’t make them out,” Minori reported, his voice hoarse. “No sounds of torpedo screws.”

  Kiyoda tried to think it out. He stepped back to the sonar compartment.

  Nakayama, his head cocked, was intently listening to something in his headset. He looked up and shook his head.

  “ASROC?” Kiyoda asked. He had to think. His boat and crew were in jeopardy.

  “Iie, Kan-cho.”

  “Captor,” Kiyoda said, suddenly making the connection. He raced back to the attack center. “Launch all weapons! Ima! Ima!” Now! Now!

  “What range and bearing?” Minori shouted.

  “Extrapolate from their last known position!” Kiyoda screamed. “Emergency surface the boat. Launch the SOS buoys! Ima!”