USS Towers Box Set

by Jeff Edwards

“What if your projections are wrong?” the president asked. “Why would you even risk the possibility?”

  The ambassador folded her hands in her lap. “Mr. President, China is not my country’s only concern. As your satellites have no doubt revealed to you, our Pakistani neighbors have begun massing troops near our eastern border, in the provinces of Punjab and Sindh. Even as we speak, Pak Faza’ya—Pakistan’s Air Force—is carrying out a campaign of intensive air patrols just within the boundaries of Pakistani airspace. Although these measures technically do not qualify as military action against my country, the armed forces of Pakistan are moving to an aggressive footing. The Pakistani government is clearly preparing to take advantage of India’s current discomfort.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “To use an American idiom, the sharks are circling, Mr. President. Both to our north, and to our east. We cannot allow them to smell blood in the water.”

  “I understand your concerns,” the president said.

  Before he could continue, Ambassador Shankar spoke again. “With all due respect, Mr. President, you do not understand our concerns. If the United States truly understood the cultural and political tensions in our portion of the world, you would not be so quick to sell weapons to Pakistan, or to back up the regime of terrorists who sit in power in Islamabad. Nor do you understand our concerns about China. I turn your attention to the so-called Sino-Indian War of the early 1960s. My people know what it is like to have the People’s Liberation Army come crashing across our borders. Your country, I am pleased to say, has never had such an experience.”

  “For us, this is not an exercise in foreign policy,” she said. “It is not political theory. We are faced on two sides by enemies who have historically demonstrated their will to destroy India, and are currently taking actions which are directly hostile to my country. We will not show weakness. And if that means that the Three Gorges Dam must be destroyed, then such is the price China will pay for massacring our villages without warning or provocation.”

  The president shook his head. “Madam Ambassador, I beg you not to do this.”

  Ambassador Shankar sat for several seconds before speaking. “Can you offer us an alternative? Will you align your military power directly with ours, and signal to China and Pakistan that to fight India is to fight the United States of America?”

  The president said nothing.

  The ambassador smiled sadly. “There is your answer, Mr. President. If you will not stand with us, then we will defend ourselves without your help. And we will use whatever means are at our disposal.”

  “What if your projections are wrong?” the president asked again. “What if China retaliates with nuclear weapons?”

  Ambassador Shankar sighed. “Then they will discover that India also has such weapons, and—if we must—we are not afraid to take the war to our enemy’s doorstep.”

  CHAPTER 28

  CNN CENTER

  190 MARIETTA STREET

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  SATURDAY; 29 NOVEMBER

  10:19 AM EST

  The video came to an end, and Irene Schick immediately hit the play button again. She had watched the clip five times in a row, and she still couldn’t believe it. She fast-forwarded to the point where the assault rifles started firing into the crowd, and the bodies began hitting the ground.

  The audio was muffled and nearly unintelligible, but the video footage was amazing… Chinese troops gunning down peaceful protestors with no visible provocation of any kind. Blood. Raw panic. The terrified crowd stampeding like cattle.

  Tibetan activists had been accusing China of similar atrocities since the 2008 riots, but the evidence—what little there was—had nearly always been lacking in quality or persuasiveness.

  But the scene unfolding on her computer monitor was the real deal. As tactless as the cliché sounded in this context, this footage looked like the proverbial smoking gun. Not just one or two rioters fired at under questionable conditions, but a hundred people dead or injured. Maybe more. She’d have to assign a crew to analyze the video frame-by-frame, count the bodies, and pull up subtle details that might be overlooked without meticulous study.

  According to Byron Maxwell at Amnesty, the recording had been shot from a cell phone. Judging from the quality of the video, it must have been a good one. Even when expanded to full size on Irene’s 25 inch LCD monitor, the images were clear and well-defined. Far short of professional quality, but more than good enough for broadcast.

  The video would lose some detail and pick up some digital artifacts when it was enlarged for A-roll, but that would only add to the drama, and confirm the authenticity in the minds of the viewers.

  They could get the tourist guy who shot it into a local affiliate studio in California, or maybe just do a voice interview while his video ran in the background. They’d also have to let one of the Amnesty International spokespeople sneak in some air time, as payback for the tip and the video. Irene was already starting to plan the first segment in her head. This was going to be the lead story for days. She could already feel it.

  She picked up her phone, punched a number, and started talking as soon as the call was picked up on the other end. “Roger, this is Irene. How long will it take to get Tom Gwinn or Kelly Spencer into Tibet with a full crew?”

  There was a half second pause before Senior Producer Roger Calloway spoke. “Are you serious?”

  “Damned right I’m serious,” Irene said. “We’re going to need one of the headliners on the ground in Tibet fast.”

  She looked at the slaughter playing out on her computer screen. “Hang on to your ass, Roger. I’m about to drop a stick of dynamite in your lap.”

  CHAPTER 29

  USS CALIFORNIA (SSN-781)

  NORTHERN BAY OF BENGAL

  SUNDAY; 30 NOVEMBER

  1824 hours (6:24 PM)

  TIME ZONE +6 ‘FOXTROT’

  The Sonar Supervisor’s voice came over the net, “Conn—Sonar. Sierra One Five bears zero-three-niner. Contact shows slow right bearing drift.”

  Captain Patke touched his Officer of the Deck on the shoulder. “Let’s come a couple of degrees to starboard, and keep as close to the center of his baffles as we can.”

  The OOD nodded. “Aye-aye, sir.” He began issuing quiet orders to the helmsman.

  Sierra One Five was the current sonar tracking designator for a Chinese Shang class nuclear attack submarine. USS California had been trailing the Chinese sub for nearly twenty-hours, and now they were about to follow it past the perimeter ships of the Indian aircraft carrier strike group.

  Patke and his crew had performed a similar operation five days earlier, when they had slipped past the defensive ring of ships surrounding the Chinese aircraft carrier, near the southern end of the Bay of Bengal. Then, they had received orders to break off their surveillance, to locate and trail this Chinese attack submarine. And here they were at the northern end of the bay, following the sub as it tried the exact same maneuver against the Indians.

  There was a good chance they would succeed, too. The Chinese sub skipper was skillful and cautious, and his boat was reasonably quiet. As quiet as Chinese submarines ever got, at any rate.

  Captain Patke glanced at the master dive clock. It was coming up on 1830 hours. Above the surface, the world would be experiencing that strange period of illumination known as nautical twilight, when the sun was below the horizon, but its rays continued to light up the sky. The surface of the sea would be too dark to make out visual details, and the still illuminated sky would be too bright to allow the human eye to properly acclimate to the darkness.

  This was the time of day when aircrews and shipboard lookouts would have the hardest time spotting the silhouette of a submerged submarine, or the feather of an exposed periscope.

  Patke nodded. The Chinese sub commander was doing it right. If the noise of his boat’s reactor plant didn’t give away his position, he would make it past the defensive ring of Indian destroyers and frigates, and into the hear
t of the aircraft carrier’s screen.

  * * *

  A half-hour later, it was clear that the skipper of Sierra One Five had succeeded in his objective. His boat was well inside the screen of the Indian aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant. Patke’s own boat, the California was still trailing silently behind, using the screw noise and reactor plant noise from the Chinese sub as a mask against detection.

  Contact Sierra One Five, the Shang, was one of China’s second-generation subs, and its acoustic signatures were significantly reduced from the older Han class boats. But there was a world of difference between less noisy, and silent. Despite the skill of her commander, Sierra One Five might be just a smidge too noisy to escape detection by the sonar operators in the Indian battle group. And given the close trailing-distance, that would probably mean detection of the California as well.

  Patke pulled off his wire rimmed glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose before returning his glasses to their usual perch. Following close on the ass of a potentially hostile submarine was risky on the best of days. Doodling around inside the defensive perimeter of another navy’s aircraft carrier brought an entirely different order of risk. Now, the California was suddenly doing both at once. If anything went wrong at all, it would take about three seconds for this entire situation to go straight down the frigging toilet.

  Patke took at last look at the tactical plot, and then strolled over to the accordion door that led to Sonar Control. He leaned against the door jam, and stared into the dim interior of the sonar compartment. The boat’s leading Sonar Technician, Chief Petty Officer Lanier Philips, was the Sonar Supervisor on duty.

  Captain Patke caught the eye of the sonar man. “How’s it looking, chief?”

  The sonar chief looked up, his African American features intense with concentration. He shifted his headset far enough to the side to expose his right ear, and used his left palm to press the remaining earphone tighter against his other ear. “We’ve got a solid track on this guy, captain. You know that weird little low frequency flutter that the Han class boats make in their second-stage heat exchangers? Looks like the Shang class has a similar design. The dB level is a lot lower on these boats, but the tonal is still there.”

  The chief turned back to the array of sonar screens. “If you keep us in his baffles, sir, we can track this guy until the fat lady sings.”

  Captain Patke nodded. “How about our Indian friends up above? Are their sonars good enough to sniff this guy out?”

  The Sonar Chief frowned at the screen, and answered over his shoulder. “Hard to say for sure, skipper, but I doubt it. The primary tonal we’re tracking is not all that loud. We detected it, but we’re sticking to this contact’s butt like a barnacle. Also the contact is running below the layer, and so are we. We’re in the same water with him, which makes it easier for us to track him.”

  The layer (also referred to as the sonic layer) was a barrier to sound energy caused by the transition from virtually constant water temperature near the surface of the ocean, to the thermocline, a zone of rapidly decreasing water temperature that extended down to about two thousand feet. This abrupt shift in temperature could reflect much of a submarine’s acoustic signal away from the hull-mounted sonar sensors of surface warships. This did not make submarines acoustically invisible to ships on the surface, but it created a tactical edge that all good sub commanders knew how to exploit.

  Patke nodded again. If Chief Philips was right, contact Sierra One Five’s presence might go unnoticed by the Indian Navy ships above.

  Patke was about to walk away when the Sonar Chief spoke again.

  “That’s weird…”

  Patke turned back. “What have you got, Chief?”

  Chief Philips tilted his head to the side, and stared at one of the sonar waterfall displays. “Got a transient… It sounds like…”

  The sonar man straightened up suddenly and keyed his headset’s microphone. “Conn—Sonar. Sierra One Five is flooding his tubes! I say again, contact is flooding his tubes!”

  “Holy shit!” someone in the control room said. “He’s gonna shoot!”

  Patke sprinted the half dozen steps back to the OOD platform. The unidentified author of that comment was correct. Sierra One Five was getting ready to launch weapons.

  Damn! Patke had been sure that the Chinese sub had come on a mission of surveillance. He had not expected the crazy bastards to start shooting.

  He raised his voice. “All stations, this is the captain. I have the Conn, belay your reports. Helm, right full rudder, new course one-niner-zero! Diving Officer, take us down! Make your new depth six hundred feet.”

  He didn’t wait for acknowledgements before belting out his next set of orders. “Weapons Control, prep torpedo tubes one, three, and five. Do not flood tubes until I give the order. Countermeasures, stand by to launch decoys.”

  The deck tilted under his feet as the California nosed down and heeled to starboard in response to the boat’s changing course and depth.

  The Sonar Supervisor’s voice came over the net again. “Conn—Sonar. Sierra One Five is opening his outer doors.”

  “Not yet,” Patke said softly. “Don’t shoot yet, you stupid son of a bitch. Just hang onto your torpedoes a little while longer…”

  The California needed distance now, to separate herself as much as possible from the bearing of Sierra One Five before the Chinese sub started pumping out torpedoes. Because about thirty seconds after the launches were detected, the Indians were going to pounce on this stretch of water with every antisubmarine warfare asset they could scare up. The area would be swarming with frigates, helicopters, and those new Kamorta class ASW corvettes that the Indian Navy was so proud of. Every one of them would be firing torpedoes at anything bigger than a tuna. And the Chinese sub, Sierra One Five, would probably pump out a few reactionary weapons as it struggled to escape.

  “Passing three hundred feet,” the Diving Officer said.

  “Very well,” Patke said. Not deep enough yet, but there wasn’t any more time. If the California was going to get out of this alive, she needed speed. He would just have to accept the increased risk of detection. “Helm, all ahead full.”

  The helmsman’s response was immediate. “All ahead full, aye!”

  There were about ninety seconds of relative calm before the Sonar Supervisor’s voice came over the net again. “Conn—Sonar. Torpedoes in the water, bearing zero-four-zero! Looks like a pair of wake homers, headed for the Indian carrier.”

  Patke glanced at the tactical display screen. The range to contact Sierra One Five was opening quickly, but not quickly enough.

  “This is going to be just like when I was a kid,” the Officer of the Deck said softly.

  “How do you figure?” Patke asked. He couldn’t imagine how anyone’s childhood could be at all similar to the situation unfolding now.

  “My little brother would steal cookies from the cookie jar,” the OOD said. “But I was always the one who got in trouble for it. He ate the cookies, and I got the ass whuppin’.”

  The OOD nodded toward the tactical display. “I recon that’s what’s happening right here, sir. Our Chinese pals reached into the Indian cookie jar and grabbed themselves a big handful of snickerdoodles. We didn’t touch those damned cookies, but we’re about to get our asses whupped for it, just the same.”

  Patke looked at the continually-opening range on the tactical display. “Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky this time.”

  Four or five minutes later, sonar began reporting torpedoes in the water, but subsequent evaluation located them all at a safe distance to the northeast.

  The control room crew began to breathe easier.

  “Well, we didn’t get any cookies,” Captain Patke said. “But at least we didn’t get an ass whipping that we don’t deserve.”

  Perhaps it was the tempting of fate. Perhaps it was purest coincidence. Or perhaps it was simple bad luck. But the Sonar Supervisor’s next report came over the net
less than ten seconds later. “Conn—Sonar. We have just been over-flown by a multi-engine turboprop aircraft. We have multiple active sonobouys in the water!”

  “Launch two static noisemakers,” Patke said.

  The Officer of the Deck turned to the Countermeasures Control Panel. “Aye-aye, sir. Launching static noisemakers now.”

  A pair of pneumatic hisses and two muffled thumps announced the ejection of the countermeasures.

  “That’ll give our friends upstairs something to ping on,” he said. “Now, let’s get a little bearing separation. Left standard rudder, come to new course one-five-zero.”

  The helmsman acknowledged the command, and turned the control yoke to the left, beginning the California’s slow turn.

  Patke looked up at the overhead of the control room, as though he could see through the intervening steel and seawater to the Indian ASW aircraft circling in the night sky above. “Give us a break here, guys. We didn’t shoot at your carrier, and we didn’t come to steal your fucking cookies.”

  CHAPTER 30

  21ST SPACE OPERATIONS CENTER

  ONIZUKA AIR FORCE STATION

  SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA

  SUNDAY; 30 NOVEMBER

  0430 hours (4:30 AM)

  TIME ZONE -8 ‘UNIFORM’

  Technical Sergeant Jennifer Thaxton touched a soft-key to silence the alert on her SAWS console. The Satellite Analyst Workstation was monitoring real-time telemetry from GEO-3, a U.S. Air Force infrared detection and tracking satellite currently passing over northern China. The satellite had just triggered an alert, signaling a significant thermal bloom near the Chinese end of the Gobi desert.

  Thaxton called up a GPS grid and superimposed it over the site of the bloom. She was ninety-percent sure that she knew the location of the sudden heat source, but she wanted to be absolutely certain. She ordered the software to fix a cursor point at the center of the infrared hot spot, and then read off the accompanying latitude and longitude. Yep. She’d been right.

  A flurry of taps on the keyboard summoned up a schedule of known activities for the facility in question. Thaxton scanned it rapidly, and then called up yet another screen—pulling in ballistic tracking data from two Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites belonging to the Air Force, and an Onyx bird from the National Reconnaissance Office.