by Don Keith
She turned and looked at him as she cranked the engine.
“We have already moved your things.” She pulled out of the parking spot with a screech. “Look, they were not after you. They were after me. But they knew before you did that I was going to contact you as you left the restaurant. And you would have been killed in the crossfire, just in case. So far, as far as I know, they suspect that I was merely trying to get close to an American businessman who was working in Taipei. That I wanted to see if I could learn about anything else that might be going on. Like they smell a rat and it might be a cover for other types of espionage.”
TJ Dillon rubbed his forehead with his thumb. He was now dizzier than before, but not from the body blow or the hard landing on the sidewalk.
She steered the Honda to the attendant’s stand, waved at the woman inside—who had already opened the gate for them—and pulled out into the street, turning away from the wrecked Mercedes, the dead driver, and all the mayhem on the main road in front of the restaurant.
“I don’t understand.”
Two police cars rushed past them, lights flashing and sirens shrieking, headed the other way.
“Of course not. It’s complicated. Let’s just say that they know a lot more than they should. Not all. Not nearly all. Just enough to be suspicious, which is concerning but not a showstopper. And to get you, me, and your driver killed. But let’s get as far from here as we can while they are still just one out of three. And then I’ll explain it. If I can.” She turned and gave him an absolutely dazzling smile. “It’s complicated.”
He looked at her sideways and braced himself for the on-two-wheels, tire-squealing turn she was in the process of making.
“Bed bugs, huh?”
That dazzling smile again.
“Occupational hazard.”
7
Vice Admiral Yon Hun Glo awoke from a fitful nap and glanced out the window as his plane banked, coming around to the approach course to Sanya Phoenix International Airport. The city and its powdery sand beaches stretched out along Hainan Island’s southern coast. This tropical isle was one of China’s most popular vacation destinations. High-rise hotels and condominiums lined the beachfront while luxurious vacation homes dotted the hillsides up and away from the beaches.
But Yon Hun Glo had not rushed down here from PLAN Naval Headquarters in Beijing to enjoy some fun in the sun. Far from it. By this time tomorrow, he fully expected to be several hundred miles out to sea.
The staff car, a black Mercedes limo, met the admiral at the VIP gate and immediately sped away, headed out onto China National Highway 225, the Guo Doa. Traffic was thick, slow-moving. Even so, the usually impatient Yon Hun Glo sat back and reviewed the secure emails on his tablet as the limo inched down Jiefang Road into Sanya. Finally, traffic thinned a bit and they made better speed once they cleared the center of the city and were on Yuyu Road toward Yulin. By the time they pulled to a stop at the pier, Yon Hun Glo had managed to wade through most of the detritus that seemed to pile up in his virtual in-basket. For a fleeting instant he longed for the days when all he needed to do to escape the cloying bureaucracy was to lower the periscope and take his submarine deep. Now, with the responsibility as Commander of the PLAN Submarine Force, he was at the mercy of every minor Party gofer anxious to make points. There was no escape.
The Admiral’s Barge, resplendent with polished brass and gleaming teak, made short work of crossing Yulin Harbor from the pier to the vast and growing naval base on the far shore. The harbor was crowded with warships, ferries, and cruise liners, either heading out or returning from the deep, blue South China Sea.
A UAZ personnel carrier was waiting at the pier to whisk Yon Hun Glo past the surface-ship piers, filled with destroyers and frigates, all busily getting ready for sea. There was frenzied activity everywhere. Next, the gigantic carrier pier served as a temporary home to two of the PLAN’s massive aircraft carriers.
The admiral smiled and snorted as he watched the hustle and bustle all around him. His brother had quoted Sun Tzu—as usual—as they had discussed the plan for the mission he was now on. The great military strategist had said, "All warfare is based on deception. There is no place where espionage is not used. Offer the enemy bait to lure him."
As Yon Hun Glo gazed out over the vast beehive of activity, he saw the massive deception at work. The American spy satellites would closely watch the surface fleet arm for war. It was all a massive sleight of hand, a diversion to keep them busy while he did something else entirely. A Shakespeare quote came to his mind: “Sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
The personnel carrier hurried further down the coast road, passing still more piers, warehouses, and maintenance buildings. Then, it suddenly made a sharp left turn into the entrance of a mammoth man-made cavern. The granite had been hewn out to offer an accessway that was fully twenty meters from the surface of the water to the top. It was easily thirty meters across the water, plus another ten meters on either side to form a very wide entrance road.
The admiral had to blink a few times as his eyes adjusted to the change from the brilliant tropical sun outside to the much less glaring artificial illumination inside the giant cavern. Then, he caught his breath as he saw, nestled up against the nearside wharf, his old boat, the Wushiwu. And beyond, three sister submarines. Across the dark water, on the far-side wharf, a pair of Type-93A modified Shang-class nuclear attack submarines sat motionless. His brother, Yon Ba Deng, had strongly suggested that they use these nuclear-powered boats for this mission. It had required considerable persuasion to convince the Assistant Vice Deputy to the Minister of National Defense for Naval Matters—and technically Yon Hun Glo’s boss—that stealth was far more important than speed for this mission. Besides, as capable as they were, the Shangs would be no match for the American Virginia-class boats in the unlikely possibility they encountered such an adversary out there.
And there was a much more interesting use for the nuclear-powered boats. They could perform a far more sinister diversion. And the key to his and his brother’s bold plan was diversion.
The personnel carrier came to a halt at the foot of the Wushiwu’s gangway. Yon Hun Glo was surprised to feel such a strong wave of nostalgia as he walked toward the brow of his old boat. Once a submariner, always a submariner. Now, even as her new captain, Liu Zhang, and the boat’s political officer, Yu Feng, waited at the boat’s end of the short brow, Yon Hun Glo hesitated for a moment, watching his former command bob easily in the light swell from a passing vessel.
Yon made a quick inspection. The Wushiwu’s mooring lines were crisply faked out in neat figure eights. Line handlers stood stiffly at the ready at each mooring line, awaiting the command to cast off. The shore power cables dangled limply from a crane, while the ship’s diesels already grumbled deeply, announcing they, too, were prepared to depart.
The admiral—always on command—could not suppress a tight smile. “His” boat was ready to get underway, precisely as he had ordered.
Yon Hun Glo finally crossed the brow and boarded the Wushiwu. He bowed, greeting Captain Liu and Political Officer Yu, both of whom knew precisely what was running through the admiral’s mind as he stepped aboard. Then he dropped down the hatch into the boat, skimmed down the ladder with the practiced submariner’s style, immediately passed through the control room—noticing that the same swirl of smells still circulated throughout the vessel—and then climbed the well-worn ladder to the bridge. He was a little surprised—but very pleased—to see that Wushiwu had already backed from the pier and out into the channel, and she was now heading toward the cavern’s mouth.
The other three boats were in various stages of following Wushiwu out to sea as soon as she led the way. As with all PLAN submarines, they were officially known only by their pennant numbers, Pennant Numbers Eighteen, Nineteen, and Twenty, respectively. However, sailors being sailors, and inevitably a superstitious lot even in today’s PLAN, they knew their boats as the Shiba, the Shijiu, and the Er
shi.
The trio of Yuan-class submarines dutifully followed the leader out to open water in a line, like ducks behind their mother. Then, they all turned south before diving and disappearing from sight.
Ψ
The KH-12 Advanced Keyhole satellite passed two hundred and fifty miles above southern China. The bird’s advanced multi-spectral cameras continuously photographed a swath of almost a thousand miles wide and streamed the data up to a geosynchronous communications satellite orbiting at twenty-three thousand miles out over the central Pacific. From there it was downlinked to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, located in Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
The images, each with a resolution good enough to read a license plate number, were automatically reviewed by some very advanced artificial intelligence algorithms running on some of the world’s most advanced super-computers.
Fifteen minutes after the four Yuan submarines emerged from the cave on Hainan Island, the phone rang in Jon Ward’s office in the Pentagon.
Ψ
The George Mason had this stretch of the Philippine Sea all to itself. In one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world, that was an exceedingly rare event. The submarine’s officers knew it was time to make the most of the opportunity. LCDR Jackson Biddle, the executive officer, and LCDR Billy Jonas, the engineer, both stood as their commanding officer, Brian Edwards, stepped into the wardroom. The chief of the boat, Dennis Oshley, and three other chiefs—all nukes—were sitting at the other end of the wardroom table. They stood as well.
When Edwards took his seat at the head of the table, they all plopped down.
“Okay, Eng,” Edwards started. “We can spend the next couple of hours playing around out here in all this empty ocean. The Nav says we are at the front end of our patrol box already, so we have a couple of hours before PIM catches up with us. You got your trainees all ready to show their stuff?”
Billy Jonas was a product of the University of Nebraska NROTC program and the Navy Nuclear Power Training pipeline. He had reported aboard the George Mason only a few days before they left Pearl Harbor on this WESTPAC deployment. At just five foot seven and a few pounds overweight, he was already known to the crew as “Fireplug.”
“They’ve finished the check-outs and prac facs for these drills,” Jonas answered. He flashed an evil grin. “Whether they really are ready or not, we’ll soon find out. ET3 Maddox is the reactor operator trainee. I’ve got four trainees in the engine room. MM1 Nelson is the engineering watch supervisor trainee, and Ensign Walters is the engineering officer of the watch under instruction.”
As Edwards nodded his approval, Jackson Biddle chimed in. “Skipper, I’ve got ST1 Hannon as copilot U/I and Lieutenant jg Pawley as officer of the deck U/I. If you can observe Mr. Pawley, the COB can observe Hannon.”
Edwards nodded and the discussion shifted to what havoc they were about to wreak on the trainees. They also ran through the safety precautions to make sure nothing got out of hand. Despite the common belief, there was very little downtime on a submarine at sea. Continual training helped ensure every man and woman knew what to do while on watch, and especially if something went haywire. These drills were as close as they could get to train for the real thing, because for most of them, once they started, they pretty much were the real thing. Thirty minutes after the start of the meeting, they all filed out and took their stations.
Edwards walked into the control room. Ray Pawley was huddled with Ashton Jennings, the WEPs, and the on-watch officer of the deck. They were closely studying a screen that told them all the immediate actions that should be taken for a reactor scram. That was the term for an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor by dropping all the control rods to squelch the fission reaction.
Joshua Hannon sat in the co-pilot’s seat. Chief Schmidt sat in the pilot’s seat beside him. The atmosphere in George Mason’s control room was tense, expectant.
“Mr. Pawley, you think you have a handle on this?” Edwards asked as he stepped up to the command console. He flipped through the sonar displays as he waited for the young officer’s answer. Good. Nothing on the screens. No contacts out as far as George Mason’s supremely sensitive sensors and high-tech processing algorithms could reach.
“Yes…yes, sir,” Pawley answered, stuttering nervously, a thin trickle of sweat running down the side of his face.
“Reactor scram!” the announcing system suddenly blared throughout the boat. “Conn, maneuvering, reactor scram, answering all stop. No apparent cause.”
“Pilot, make your depth one-five-zero feet,” Pawley coolly ordered, but then, “Left full ridder...uh...I mean rudder. Steady course south. Rig ship for reduced electrical.”
The big boat was already angling upward as the pilot used what remaining speed he had to get shallow and maneuver the ship around to the ordered course.
Joshua Hannon grabbed the 1MC microphone and announced, “Reactor scram, rig ship for reduced electrical, casualty assistance team lay aft.” He then flipped a couple of switches that secured most of the ventilation fans and other electrical equipment that were, at least temporarily, unnecessary. That included the toaster and coffee pots in the galley and almost all of the ventilation and air conditioning systems. The control room suddenly got quiet—no one noticed the noise of the constantly blowing ventilation fans until they were no longer there—and the temperature had already begun to rise.
“Sonar, clearing baffles to the left. Report all contacts,” Pawley called out to the sonar operators. They sat over on the starboard side of the control room and could hear the OOD U/I just fine without using the communications system. They would be looking for any quiet contact that may have snuck up on them in the sub’s baffles, the area directly behind the boat where hull-mounted sonar units were unable to hear anything.
“Conn, maneuvering, rigged for delayed scram. Request ‘prepare to snorkel,’” came the report over the engineering announcing circuit. The nukes had not immediately found and fixed the cause of the reactor scram. But they had secured all unnecessary steam loads so that the residual reactor steam and heat would be available for emergency propulsion. They had also lined up the engine room systems to be ready to rapidly come back online when the reactor was “fixed.”
Everyone on board the submarine knew one thing for damn certain. This might be a drill for training purposes, but when the control rods back there in the nuclear reactor hit the bottom, it was no longer just a drill. The reactor was really shut down. It would not be making power again until they had successfully completed all the procedures to safely and rapidly restart it. It was analogous to the pilot of a fighter plane turning off his jet engine to go through procedures for a flameout. It might be for training, but if he did not get power back quickly, very bad things would really happen.
“Pilot, make your depth six-two feet,” Pawley ordered.
Chief Schmidt reached over to his flat-panel display and keyed in six-two feet as the ordered depth. The big sub started to angle up, but their forward speed had dropped to near zero. It just was not moving fast enough to get up to periscope depth. Ray Pawley recognized that he had a choice to make: use some of the remaining residual reactor heat to turn the propulsor, or shift propulsion to the emergency propulsion motor and use the battery to move the sub. Or he could hover up, using high pressure air to blow water out of the trim tanks.
But Pawley also recognized he did not have a great deal of time to study the situation.
“Co-pilot, hover up to six-two feet and prepare to snorkel,” he ordered confidently.
“Hover up to six-two feet and prepare to snorkel, aye,” Joshua Hannon answered, reaching toward a button on his flat-panel display. Chief Schmidt reached over and swatted Hannon’s hand away. Shaking his head, the experienced pilot pointed to the correct switches to line the trim system up so they would automatically blow water overboard. That would bring them up to periscope depth. Sure enough, the big boat started to move vertically upward.
; Ashton Jennings leaned over to Ray Pawley and quietly asked, “You suppose you might want to be able to see out when you get up to PD? Might be helpful, just in case somebody’s up there.”
Pawley nodded. “Co-pilot, raise number two scope.”
The low-profile photonics mast (LPPM) slid up, but the only picture on the large screen command display was a uniform blue. Gradually, though, the blue shade became paler, until finally the video cameras cleared the sea surface. It was a clear, sunny day in the Philippine Sea. And a quick 360-degree scan verified that no unexpected company was up there to greet them.
“No close contacts,” Ray Pawley called out. “Commence snorkeling.”
“Snorkeling” was exactly what it sounded like. A pipe deployed up to the surface to take in fresh air while allowing smoke from the diesel generator to be ejected from the boat.
“Commence snorkeling, aye,” Hannon answered. “Snorkel mast coming up.” The big covered pipe appeared on the command display. Seconds later, Hannon announced, “The ship is snorkeling. The diesel is ready for full loading.”
Air began to move in the control room again as the big Caterpillar diesel down in lower level sucked in great gobs of fresh sea air and pushed diesel exhaust smoke back overboard.
“Conn, maneuvering. The diesel is not assuming electrical loads. The diesel breaker will not shut. Engineer recommends securing from the drill,” the engineering announcing circuit boomed. There was a problem, and it was a real one, not part of the drill. The generator was not able to provide the power needed. It was time for the first team to fix the problem with the diesel.
Edwards grabbed the 1MC microphone and ordered, “Secure from scram drill for training. Secure snorkeling. Conduct a fast recovery start-up.”
Ten minutes later, the reactor plant was back up online, supplying steam to the turbines and main engines. The sub was back down at three hundred feet, again heading west. The electricians had found a blown fuse in the diesel breaker-closing circuit and replaced it. The drill had gone well and had even uncovered a problem that would have been serious had they been engaging the enemy. Or if they had actually experienced a reactor scram.