by Don Keith
“They saved our asses, whoever they are,” Foster noted.
“One other thing,” Allison said with a grim expression. “If they know precisely where those two Chinese boats are, they know exactly where we are, too.”
Ψ
Joe Glass’s IMMARSAT phone jangled alive. The commander of Submarine Squadron Seven grabbed it.
“Joe Glass,” he spoke into the receiver.
There was just a hint of static, then Jon Ward’s voice boomed out of the speaker.
“Joe, I’m sending you a link to a presentation that your next-door neighbor over Tonga way just made to the United Nations Security Council.” The head of Naval Intelligence was not sharing idle podcast recommendations with Glass. Whatever the presentation revealed, it would not be good news. “Listen to what King Tofuwanga has to say and give me a call back. I think we need to make some plans.”
Glass hung up the suddenly dead circuit. As if on cue, his computer screen blinked and Jon Ward’s email popped up. Sure enough, there was the link Ward had promised, a news feed from the United Nations.
When he clicked on the link, a video began to play. King Tofuwanga, dressed in a finely-tailored suit instead of his usual traditional Tongan garb, sat at a table with several microphones arrayed before him. The United Nations logo hung from pale blue curtains behind him. They formed an impressive backdrop for the portly monarch, making him appear almost legitimate.
Joe Glass could only appreciate the irony. This man was the titular head of a tiny island nation that even the diplomats in the room would have trouble locating on an unlabeled map. Even fewer knew anything about its long history, the recent struggles by some of its people—sometimes violently—to move toward a more democratic form of government, or this well-dressed ruler’s efforts to delay such nonsense. At any rate, the diplomats and media would typically not bother to appear for an address by such a minor player on the world political stage. But, from what Glass could see, the room was packed.
The camera slowly panned to reveal that all the seats at the kidney-shaped table were filled as well. The name plates identified the various countries whose representatives were currently sitting on the body’s Security Council. The Chinese ambassador to the UN sat on King Tofuwanga’s right-hand side. He was smiling and nodding slightly as the Tongan strongman began to speak.
After a few polite perfunctory remarks, Tofuwanga quickly got to the reason why he had bothered to travel all the way to New York City to appear in person before the Security Council. The man’s typical strong Tongan lilt was gone. Instead, he spoke with a pronounced English public-school accent. That was a vestige of his youth, spent in posh British private schools. Or at least until the stories of booze, sex, and drugs became so prevalent in the British tabloids that his father, King Tofuwanga the First, called him home to begin to prepare in a different way for his own regal term. Nowadays, the ruler conveniently switched to the English accent when he wanted to appear to Westerners to be well-educated and more convincingly king-like.
“Tonga is a small, beautiful, but poor nation,” he began. “As with many of our sister nations in the South Pacific, western colonialism has taken its toll over the centuries. But we are an ancient, proud people, one with a long sea-going tradition. Our warriors have traveled the Pacific for thousands of years to sustain and protect our people. The waters that surround the small bits of land that make up our homeland have traditionally been our domain for hundreds of years. From Niuatoputapu in the north to ‘Eua in the south, from Neiafu in the east to Esia in the west, Tonga has considered the sea to be our domain and depended on it to feed our people. Now the warm, blue waters that wash our shores have brought us a great gift. As is our ancient and long-recognized right, we are making the world aware that the Tongan people, and I, Tofuwanga, their king, have declared sovereignty over this traditional sea that continues to sustain our lives and domain.”
The screen shifted to a map of Oceania, the 169 islands that made up the Tongan kingdom clearly labeled amid all the blue of the South Pacific. But those specks of land were surrounded by a thick, bright-red boundary line at a distance of five hundred kilometers from the islands. The ocean waters between the northernmost Tongan island and Samoa to the north were divided neatly in half. So was the sea between Tonga and Fiji to the west. But to the east and south, the newly claimed boundary stretched far out across the open waters, encompassing all of the seas over the Tongan Trench.
Joe Glass snorted and shook his head. Of course it did. The new line of claimed territory included the spot where that huge mound of gold had been located by the research ship.
“These are our historic waters,” Tofuwanga continued, dropping the tone of his voice to a new level of authority. “To these we once again emphasize our long-held and historic claim even as we see more threats and intrusion by European and North American powers—as well as nations in our own region—for their own strategic and invalid purposes. Today, we call upon all the world to recognize the ancient rights of our poor and weak nation. We urge the world to honor our sovereignty and territorial integrity. Henceforth, no ship—and particularly no warship—may enter our sovereign waters without our prior permission. And we call upon the United Nations to defend our rights against any who would challenge them.”
Tofuwanga paused, allowing his words to echo throughout the chamber and to be translated for those on the Council and in attendance in the galleries. Then he turned toward the Chinese ambassador, who was still smiling, still nodding.
“Our dear and long-time friends, the People’s Republic of China, have become the first of the world’s peace-loving nations to formally renew their recognition of and respect for our rights,” the Tongan monarch continued. “By promise and treaty, they have pledged to come to our aid to assist us in defending those rights as well as the seas on which our very existence so totally depends. Any threat against or incursion into the territories of the people of Tonga will be considered a threat against the People’s Republic of China.”
The monarch smiled broadly, again looking toward the Chinese ambassador, who merely continued to smile and bob his head. The room was silent for a few seconds as the Council, as well as the media, took in the astounding news.
A mouse had just roared like a lion!
Then, as a gavel pounded and media members shouted questions, those sitting on the Council clamored for attention, for the right to question such a blatant power grab. Not to mention such an unabashed annexation of what by all rights were international waters.
Glass clicked off the screen. Jon Ward had been correct. This political fiasco, although revealed on the other side of the world, was indeed going to likely play out in Glass’s backyard. After all, the Tongan Islands were only two hundred miles across the deep blue waters from where he now sat, in American Samoa.
He and some other folks would have to quickly decide what to do about it. Tonga certainly had some very powerful and dangerous friends. And exactly what part would the deep-sea treasure play in this thing. Power or wealth. Either one often caused men to do bad things. With both at stake, who knew to what lengths these people would go?
Glass pushed back from his desk. Ever since his days as Jon Ward’s XO, he found it helped him to think if he could just get up and walk around. That was sometimes difficult to do on a submarine, but it always got the blood flowing, and that allowed him to better consider his options. He walked out of his cabin on the big tender and slid down a couple of ladders, to where he could step out onto the Chesty Puller’s enormous main deck.
It was a beautiful, peaceful day. The brilliant Polynesian sunshine left the sky a bright, cloudless blue. A warm breeze wafted across the harbor, carrying sweet scents from the surrounding jungle out over the broad harbor and serene azure waters.
Then he noticed a large, white vessel motoring across the harbor, making for the Port of Pago Pago main dock. Glass watched as the big, beamy ship passed nearby. Hard to tell from her lines what the ship was des
igned for, but she clearly was not a cargo vessel or one of those deep-water tuna factories that called the StarKist cannery home. He had been so deep in his thoughts about the Tongan mess that he had neglected to grab his binoculars when he left his office. He typically did, just in case there was something interesting to see from the tender’s high deck. Some of the sailors claimed a clear day offered views of sunbathers around the outdoor pools at the beach resorts but Glass had not yet had time to confirm it.
But then, as the white ship steamed past, Glass could make out the letters painted across her stern. Deep Ocean Explorer. So, this was the very ship that originated all the fuss when she located that golden hoard on the bottom of the Tongan Trench. He made a mental note to go over and meet with the ship’s master. And maybe determine if he had any idea the storm he and his vessel had caused.
But then Joe Glass’s attention was torn away from the Deep Ocean Explorer as he sighted another vessel rounding Tafagamanu Point at the mouth to Pago Pago Harbor. Glass did not need his binoculars to see what this ship was. The tall, gray, composite masts towering above the rocky outcropping were the first indications that this was a very large ship entering the harbor. And the gray color was a telltale sign that it was a Navy vessel.
Slowly and majestically, the ship rounded the point and steamed directly toward the inner harbor and to where Glass stood on the Chesty Puller. He could just make out the hull number—27—painted on her bow. It was the USS Portland (LPD-27), a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock. And she was showing up at the dance just in time. Glass knew that the ship had over seven hundred Marines aboard. That might be useful in light of the video he had just watched. But, more importantly, in Portland’s well deck were the two ORCA Extra Large UUVs that Jon Ward had promised him. Those long-range, long-endurance, unmanned submarines would be a vital tool for keeping tabs on what was happening in what was turning into a very busy neighborhood.
Joe Glass had jobs for both ORCAs. And, he knew, for some of those old-fashioned underwater vehicles, too.
The ones with living, breathing human beings aboard.
He headed back toward his office. Enough sight-seeing. He owed Jon Ward a return call.
14
“I don’t understand. Where the hell are they?” LCDR Aston Jennings was paging through the sonar displays on the George Mason’s command console. “If they stayed on the course they were supposed to, they should be here by now.”
There was no sign of the Chinese diesel submarines they were tasked with trailing. The ones George Mason had risked an international pissing match to keep an eye on. The four Yuan-class AIP boats had maneuvered themselves right into a fleet of Philippine fishing boats, no doubt to hide while they snorkeled long enough to recharge their batteries. As soon as the Yuans had shifted over from AIP propulsion to their diesel engines, the eleven-hertz tonal had disappeared. But even then, the broadband diesel noise had been easy to track.
That is until they got in amongst all the fishermen. Then there were dozens of diesels, all pretty much sounding alike. With no way to track their prey in the midst of all that noisy mess, Brian Edwards had decided to run around it. The intent had been to catch the Chinese when they came out the other side of the fishing fleet, continuing on to wherever they were going.
It all appeared to be a good plan. Just someone forgot to tell the Chinese. Or maybe somebody had told them and they decided to follow a different and far less obvious plan. Regardless, the George Mason had been making slow circles in a barrier search in the passage between Cagayan and Negros Islands. Not a hint of a scent on either the TB-29 thin-line array or the hull arrays. Lots of surface traffic—fishermen, coastal freighters, even the occasional cruise ship and ferry—but nary a sign of the missing Yuans. They had effectively vanished.
Jackson Biddle, George Mason’s executive officer, stood looking over the tactical display on the ECDIS with a puzzled expression. He measured the distance from where they had lost the Yuans to where they now sat helplessly, listening to the frustrating clatter. It was just a bit over seventy nautical miles and pretty much straight down the track that the Chinese submarine group had been steaming when the tail went off kilter.
“Well,” Biddle drawled, “the laws of physics tell us that if they ain’t here, they are somewhere else.”
Jennings, who was quite proud of his master’s degree in nuclear physics from MIT, shot back, “XO, there you go applying that old Newtonian physics solution to what is clearly a quantum physics problem. Quantum physics tells us that they are simultaneously nowhere else and everywhere else. We just need to figure out where Schrodinger left the cat.”
Several nearby crewmembers looked at each other, frowning and shrugging. They were accustomed to the esoteric arguments between Biddle and Jennings but, as usual, decidedly in the dark about what the hell they were talking about.
Biddle chuckled dryly. “Well, we have a couple of hours before we have to call home. If we don’t find your cat before then, that particular chat will not be a fun one.”
He drew a circle around the last location they held the Chinese with a radius of how far they could likely have steamed in the last couple of hours.
“Using my antiquated and outdated physics approach, they could be anywhere in this circle. We thought they were heading to the Surigao Straits, then out into the Philippine Sea.” He moved the cursor to the west and, lips pursed, thought for a short moment. “But what if they are really heading south, toward the Celebes Sea. From there, they could head further south into eastern Indonesia or make a turn out toward the South Pacific.”
Biddle drew an X a few miles to the west and a little south of Cagayan. “No point in sitting here idling. Let’s get our butts over there as fast as we can. Maybe we can see if our friends slid between there and Palawan. Come to course two-four-zero, ahead full.”
The George Mason jumped ahead and raced across the Sulu Sea. Biddle and Jennings, soon joined by Brian Edwards, their skipper, watched the clock’s inexorable movement toward their next communications window and the accounting they would need to make for the failure of their mission. For his part, the captain of the boat agreed with the idea of searching more aggressively to the west.
Skirting to the south of tiny Cagayan Island, an atoll almost in the center of the Sulu Sea, the submarine slowed to search speed a few miles to the west. From here, they could cover the western portion of the circle that Jackson Biddle had drawn.
Edwards, Biddle, and Jennings clustered around the command console, staring at the sonar display, willing a submarine contact to suddenly appear. But there was nothing that could be classified as a submarine. Only plenty of fishing boats, their blips on the display like a sky full of stars winking in defiance at them from all directions. The sonar team was doing their best to sort it all out, but ST1 Joshua Hannon could only shake his head when Edwards shot a questioning look his way. Nothing.
Jackson Biddle pointed at the clock. “Skipper, hate to say it, but it’s time to talk to the boss. Ship is rigged for a broadside.”
Edwards blinked hard and nodded. They had delayed the inevitable as long as they possibly could. They were already as late in the communications window as possible. Now he had to tell the boss that they had failed. Barging into Philippine territorial waters had come up with nothing except egg on his face. And a bunch of nagging questions about where the flotilla of Chinese boats was heading and why.
“Officer of the Deck, come to periscope depth for communications,” Edwards finally ordered, the reluctance heavy in his voice.
“Captain!” ST1 Hannon suddenly called out. “Detecting eleven hertz tonal on the TB-29. Reciprocal bearings zero-three-one and one-four-nine. I think we have regained our Yuans.”
“Hannon, first port call, your beers are on me,” Jackson Biddle promised the sonar technician.
“That’s cutting it way too close,” Edwards growled. “The SOBs must have been hiding between Cagayan and Calusa, just in case somebody was tai
ling them. No way they know we’re that somebody. Lesson learned. In case we didn’t know it already, these guys are sneaky and good.” He allowed himself a long sigh of relief. “Okay, now we have something worth telling the boss. Let’s do it before Hannon decides we’ve spotted a pod of migrating whales with digestive problems.”
Ψ
President Stan Smitherman impatiently waved the briefer to hurry through his slide deck. The president had an important golf outing scheduled with a pair of key benefactors. He was looking forward to some time on the links, but more importantly, this pair was promising to donate fifty million dollars to his campaign. With money like that on the line, they needed his full attention. And all this economic crap had long since given him a massive headache.
Secretary of State Sandra Dosetti leaned over and whispered, “Mr. President, you really should listen to this next part. It is extremely important.”
Smitherman snorted. “Get on with it, then. But know I am in one hell of a hurry.”
The briefer shifted over to a discussion of current gold prices. Smitherman squirmed in his seat and thumbed impatiently through the briefing notebook, looking for the end. Dosetti knew the signs well. The presenter had maybe thirty seconds before the President of the United States exploded and tossed him out of the conference room.
“Mister President, recent gold finds in the deep waters of the Pacific, if the projected volume proves out, could severely and negatively impact the price of gold,” the briefer droned on, flashing up a series of graphs. “It is located in international waters, and economical recovery of the gold is very problematic, but if someone should decide it’s worth it, go get it, and dump it on the market too quickly, the projected tonnage could affect the underpinnings of our economic model. We are already seeing some impacts on the gold mining stock futures market.”