Ashes of Victory

— 14 —

President Cord Macklin felt he had lost control. Each successful attack made the United States appear weaker, less able to defend herself. If the trend continued without a meaningful response from the United States, the enemies of America would take advantage. They would create a maelstrom of death and destruction both domestically and internationally that had the potential to cripple the ability of the US to respond to larger threats, such as a Chinese attack on Taiwan or a North Korean attack on South Korea, as well as strike fear into the world stock markets.

Macklin felt compelled to demonstrate his resolve and take control of this dire situation.

The Dow had lost 15 percent of its value since the attack on Truman and Stennis. And now Lincoln had been trapped in the Suez Canal by two kamikaze attacks.

At least the carrier hadn’t been hit. Still, he had to find a way to get that canal cleared as Vinson was already steaming at flank speed toward the Taiwan Strait.

Reading glasses in hand, he stood at the head of the conference table in the Situation Room. In front of him sat the usual suspects in their usual seats. They were creatures of habit. The brass sat to the left of him and the civilians to the right. The sight reminded him of the band Stealers Wheel’s pop hit “Stuck in the Middle with You,” which had been popular when he flew Thuds in Vietnam. Back then, the powers that be had thrown him into the middle of a no-win war, and now he was the one doing precisely that to his troops, placing them in unwinnable situations.

“Gentlemen,” he finally said, “I’m starting to feel like a wounded elephant in the middle of a pack of hungry lions. The terrorists smell blood, and they sense the absolute fear that’s permeating our country. We, as a nation, have to be prepared to go on the offense and take the fight to them.”

He picked up his glasses and then checked himself, waiting to see who would speak first.

“President Macklin,” Hartwell Prost said right away. “We’ve seen suicide attacks since the early eighties, but this time around they’ve incorporated a strategic component to them. This isn’t just some guy in a vest blowing up a restaurant or beheading someone on YouTube, or even flying a plane into a building. They’ve stepped up their game to attack our very ability to counterattack by disabling our carriers, plus none of the usual suspects has claimed responsibility, making it harder to know where to counterattack. We’re dealing with a new kind of very focused, covert, and strategic terrorism, and that takes this to another level. We can’t afford to follow the traditional playbook anymore. They’ve changed their rules and that means we have to change ours.”

An awkward silence settled over the room.

“What are you suggesting?” the president asked.

The DNI sat forward and put his arms on the table, settling in before speaking. “We know which countries are either sponsoring terrorism or harboring terrorists. Our actions to date have been surgical strikes aimed at terrorist training camps and the like. But we’ve remained clear of damaging any nation’s infrastructure or military installations, aside from the isolated strike at Zahedan. You put the world on notice during your address to the nation, Mr. President. You said there would be no exceptions. It’s time we made good on that promise.”

Another moment of silence followed.

Sitting forward, a look of determination on his face, General Les Chalmers spoke. “I totally agree. Mr. Prost is absolutely correct. It’s past time to go on offense and stop this ongoing craziness. We’re being completely reactive and are losing this war.”

At this, Secretary of State Brad Austin sat forward. “Mr. President, gentlemen, I also agree that we are being completely reactive. But we face the same challenges that Bush faced after nine-eleven: a lack of targets. Sure, we can hit Iran with all we have, but that may not stop these attacks. So maybe we hit someone else. The question we have to answer is ‘How far are we willing to go?’ This can quickly turn into a game of Whac-A-Mole that we can’t win. In many ways, it already has.”

Clearly troubled and angry, Macklin leaned back in his chair for a few moments. “I know you’re right,” he said with a heavy sigh, then added, “but I also know we can’t do nothing. Perhaps we can at least make the damn mole afraid to stick his head out long enough to get our carriers repaired and our defenses strengthened.”

The president turned to Defense Secretary Adair. “Pete, I think we need to go to DEFCON Two.”

The blood drained from the secretary of defense’s face.

Macklin then looked at Chalmers and added, “Les, use all the assets you need.” He paused. “I want our enemies to carefully know that all potential consequences are on the table.

“Yes, sir,” Chalmers replied, a look of grim determination on his face. The president of the United States had just directed the armed forces to go to their second-highest state of readiness, a state not seen since the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991, as well as the potential use of nuclear weapons, something no president had done since the sixties.

“Hart,” the president continued, “I want you to coordinate with British and Israeli intelligence. See if they can’t get a handle on the origins of these terrorists. If they have Iranian or Saudi backing, I want to know. Also, let’s get the secretary of energy on the phone. I want an immediate status report on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. With the Suez Canal blocked and the potential that we may need to hit one or more of the oil producers in the Middle East, we are in real danger of a full-blown oil shortage.”

Just then, an aide whispered something to Secretary of State Brad Austin, who looked at Macklin.

“Brad?”

“Time for our call with the Egyptian president.”

“Right,” he said, standing, which prompted everyone to stand. “Need to go see about getting a canal cleared.”

Prost caught up to them in the hallway on the way to the elevator.

“Hart?” he said, regarding his DNI over the rim of his glasses. “Something you wish to add?”

“Yes, sir. As unfortunate as this situation is, I see it as a huge opportunity.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lincoln’s trapped, sir, and if I were the terrorist mastermind behind these attacks, I would be trying to figure out a way to take another shot before the canal is cleared.”

Slowly Macklin removed his reading glasses, folded them, and asked, “You’re telling me you want to use a six-billion-dollar carrier as… bait?”

Prost nodded.

Capt. Yuri Sergeyev had waited almost two days before getting under way in the midnight hour. He had held out as long as he felt prudent, while still leaving in time to make his rendezvous with a supply ship in the South China Sea in two days. K-43 would take on fuel, fresh food, and six torpedoes to replenish the ones fired at Stennis.

They had spent the time on the bottom of the pier ignorant of what was happening on the surface. Leonod Popov had listened to the passive sonar and reported multiple ships and small craft moving on the surface, but the cacophony of sounds in the water made it impossible to know more. He’d imagined helicopters dropping their arrays of sonar buoys into the water, looking for K-43, but Sergeyev knew that all of the activity on the surface would hamper any attempt to detect them.

“Ahead slow,” Sergeyev said in a quiet voice.

“Ahead slow, Cap’n,” Anatoli Zhdanov replied.

Nearing open water, Sergeyev wanted to see what might be lurking on the surface. “Come to periscope depth.”

“Periscope depth, aye.”

Sergeyev waited until the submarine stabilized at a depth of forty feet before he said, “All stop.”

“All stop, aye.”

Allowing the submarine to slow before raising the periscope minimized the risk of a “feather,” the small wake that would be easy to detect on the surface.

Sergeyev made a quick visual sweep and then abruptly stopped when he found himself looking at the stern of a Singaporean cutter a thousand feet ahead. “Down scope,” he ordered with a trace of concern in his voice before mumbling, “a cutter is in the middle of the channel. Anchor lines to port and starboard.”

Zhdanov frowned, rubbed his chin, and said, “We can’t afford to snag an anchor line or run aground. It’s a very tight space on either side, sir.”

The captain studied the nautical chart, looking for the deeper of the two sides. “True, but we can’t stay here.” Making his decision, he added, “Ahead slow, right full rudder.”

There was a pause before Zhdanov said, “Ahead slow, right full rudder, aye.”

Sergeyev knew his men were concerned, probably even questioning his orders. And that was fine, so long as they didn’t question him aloud.

He planned to attempt a daring maneuver: bypassing the anti-submarine vessel on its starboard, or right side, without running aground in the shallow water on that side of the canal. He glanced at the chart again. “Rudder amidships.”

“Rudder amidships,” Zhdanov said mechanically.

All hands were watching the captain as the depth of the water under the keel continued to decrease. He looked calm, but his pulse raced.

Popov, sitting at his sonar station, began to breathe faster, headphones on his bald head, perspiration running down the back of his neck. He kept his eyes closed, listening. Then, “Eleven feet, Cap’n.”

Masking his doubts, Sergeyev nodded.

“Seven feet,” Popov muttered.

The crew began exchanging frightened looks. Some of the men braced for a collision.

“Three feet. Captain, we’re going aground,” Popov said in a loud whisper, eyes wide open as he stared at his commander.

“Left standard rudder,” Sergeyev ordered, knowing they had to be very close to the starboard anchor chain of the Singaporean cutter.

“Left standard rudder,” Zhdanov uttered in a hoarse whisper.

The submarine made soft contact with the sediment at the bottom of the basin on its starboard side. Hanging on to anything within reach, the crew prepared for another impact.

But it never came.

Popov let out his breath. “Four feet,” he said with obvious relief. “We missed the anchor chain.”

“Rudder amidships,” Sergeyev ordered as K-43 snuck out through the narrow space between one side of the basin and the anchor line of the Singaporean cutter without catching it.

Taking a deep breath, Zhdanov repeated the order.

“Seven feet,” Popov said with a slight grin.

Watching the depth of the water increase, Sergeyev waited until they were no longer in danger, then turned to Popov.

“Leonod, find us a fast ride out of here,” he said, realizing he had been gritting his teeth so hard, his jaw hurt.

“Got three already, Cap’n. All bearing zero-four-zero. Range zero-five miles. Big, fat bastards. Accelerating to one-zero knots.”

Sergeyev did the math in his head, then said, “You know the drill. Ahead two-thirds. Bearing zero-seven-zero to intercept. Set your depth one-eight-zero feet.”

Zhdanov repeated the command.

K-43 cruised toward two massive oil tankers and a container ship leaving the Port of Singapore headed for the wide-open South China Sea.

“Contact still bearing zero-four-zero. Zero-two miles. One-five knots,” Popov reported.

Sergeyev nodded, hoping like hell that the closest tanker didn’t go beyond twenty knots, the maximum submerged speed of K-43’s air-independent propulsion system powered by the ultra-silent hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells.

“Contact bearing zero-four-zero. Three thousand feet. One-five knots.”

“Match bearing and speed,” Sergeyev ordered.

Zhdanov relayed the order as Popov reported, “Turning into her baffle, Cap’n. Speed holding at one-five knots.”

Nicely done, Sergeyev thought. At fifteen knots and while operating in the tanker’s baffle, they were pretty much invisible to any of the vessels that might still be looking for them.

Safely behind the noisy tanker and in open water, Sergeyev left the control room in the capable hands of his crew and went one level down to his small stateroom.

His submariner’s instincts tempted him to go after the badly damaged Stennis and fire a final torpedo. However, Omar Al Saud had different plans.

And that meant replenishing before tackling the second half of his daring mission, which further meant leaving the crippled carrier alone and heading straight to his assigned rendezvous coordinates.

The Russian captain splashed cold water on his face before settling into his narrow bed. As his head sunk in his pillow, his eyes gravitated to the photo taped to the wall. The smiling faces of his wife and their three girls filled his view.

“I’m halfway there, Katrina,” he whispered. “Halfway there.”

His family now lived peacefully on a patch of land nestled in the hills north of Coquimbo, Chile, where Sergeyev planned to start a vineyard and live the rest of his days in peace — courtesy of Omar Al Saud.

As long as I fulfill my promise, he thought.

Petty Officer Second Class Marshon Chappelle sat in a trance.

In the middle of his midnight shift, he listened to the sounds of the sea while staring at the dozens of tracers flickering down the two stacked thirty-two-inch flat-screen monitors that washed his dark features in hues of wan yellow and green.

To the untrained ear, the audio captured by the revolutionary BQQ-10 bow-mounted spherical active/passive sonar-array sounded like random noise.

But to Chappelle it represented the symphony of the sea, enhanced by the complementary wide aperture of fiber-optic sonar arrays mounted along either side of the hull. It resulted in a masterful and rich performance composed of many separate sources, harmonizing the music that also vibrated to life on his high-definition screen.

The language of the sonarman.

He could hear the discrete cavitation of a fishing boat to the south.

Bearing one-seven-six. Range nineteen miles. Speed one-three knots.

It sounded like a flute, hovering in the distance, distinctively alone, almost fragile, represented by the narrow trace traveling down the far-left side of his upper screen.

Then there was the richer sound of a clarinet, clear, simple, a slightly larger boat dancing with the waves, its small twin four-blade screws stirring tranquil waters on the surface as it traveled west.

Bearing two-six-seven. Range two-six miles. Speed zero-seven knots.

Chappelle enjoyed most the mellow tunes of the various saxophones, from sopranos and altos to tenors and baritones. They represented the middle spectrum of the music of his soul, smooth and ripe, capturing the cavitation of the young adults of the sea, from larger fishing rigs and pleasure cruisers to midsize merchant vessels. He heard them and saw them in complete harmony, rising and falling, their signals strengthening or fading, some lasting hours, while others played for a short time before vanishing in the background.

Then came the French horns and tubas, the big girls of the ocean, deep and beautiful, their traces dominating the low end of the spectrum, forming the canvas on which all other instruments performed.

Chappelle felt their combined power as he sat back, alone in the sonar station, hands open, palms up, fully in a meditative state as he listened.

And that’s when he heard it: a tenor sax, faint, almost imperceptible, but definitely the cavitation of a large seven-blade screw underwater. Too deep to be a surface vessel and lacking the accompanying sound of a diesel.

Hello.

Chappelle now closed his eyes, tuning in, but he could not hear the subtler hissing sound of the batteries, which could only mean—

Submerged and running on an electric motor powered by—

What the hell?

He bolted up and stared at his bottom screen in time to catch its very faint glow trickling at the far-right side, barely visible and definitely lacking the accompanying sound of a diesel or traditional batteries.

Since leaving the area southwest of Sri Lanka more than three days before, following the Tomahawk launch on the terrorist base, Missouri had made it to the southwestern coast of Malaysia. Along the way, it had transitioned command from US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) to United States Pacific Fleet (USPACFLT), the naval component of the United States Pacific Command (USPACOM) encompassing the eastern portion of the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, and the entire Pacific Ocean. Missouri’s orders from USPACFLT, headquarters at Naval Station Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, had been relayed to the Commander, Submarine Force, US Pacific Fleet (COMSUBPAC), which had directed Kelly’s boat straight toward the port of Singapore to rendezvous with Stennis as it crawled toward NS Pearl Harbor. The Mighty Mo was now tasked with providing submarine support in the wake of the tragic loss of North Dakota. The news had rattled the crew, especially those who had either friends or family aboard it, a list that included Cmdr. Frank Kelly. The skipper had taken the personal blow stoically, leaving Lt. Cmdr. Robert Giannotti in charge of the control room before retiring to his quarters.

Chappelle closed his eyes and listened again, this time picking up what sounded like a faint high-pitch whisper, like someone blowing very gently in his ears, almost imperceptible but still very real — the sound of hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells.

“Conn, Sonar! New contact! Bearing zero-seven-zero!” he finally announced, licking his lips and rubbing his eyes. “Range three-six miles. Speed one-five knots. It’s a type Two-One-Two.”

Lt. Cmdr. Giannotti appeared in a flash, his bulk hovering over him.

“Is that the bastard, Chappy?” he asked in his booming voice.

“Well, it’s not one of ours, sir. And it’s trying to sneak out of there in the middle of the night. So…”

“Nice job, kid. Stay on him,” Giannotti said before heading over to the pilot and copilot.

Chappelle closed his eyes and focused, locating it again near the far side of the orchestra playing that lone tu—

The contact suddenly vanished, both in his headset as well as on the screen. Gone. Poof.

Chappelle blinked when the alto sax dissolved within the fuller melody of two French horns and a tuba, the cavitation from the screws of two large tankers and a mega container ship steaming away from the Port of Singapore.

Son of a bitch, he thought, then shouted, “Son of a bitch!”

“What is it, Chappy?” Giannotti asked.

“Smart girl. It’s hiding in the baffle of a larger ship. It’s gotta be our guy.”

The large officer came running back, placing a hand on the back of Chappelle’s chair and leaning down. “How? Did it surface? We should hear her diesels.”

“Negative, sir. It’s running on those new batteries. Hydrogen cells. Could barely hear her and its single screw as it was. Now she’s a ghost.”

“Can you track which one?”

“There are three at the moment,” he said, pointing at the parallel contacts dripping down the left side of the bottom screen. “And it vanished behind the leftmost one… this oil tanker.” He placed his index on a vertical trace. “But the tanker’s baffle is so close to that of this second tanker and this container ship that the Type 212 could hop from one to the other and we would never know it, at least from this distance. Fortunately, all three are heading to the South China Sea.”

“For now,” Giannotti said.

“Yeah. But if we get close enough, I might be able to pick her up, even in the baffle.”

“Then let’s get you close enough,” Giannotti said before calling Cmdr. Kelly’s stateroom.

Feeling the mild acceleration of the Mighty Mo preparing for a hunt, Chappelle returned to his concert, scrubbing the outer reaches of the orchestra, searching for his tenor sax.

Cmdr. Frank Kelly worked through his seventeenth mile on one of the stationary bikes in the small gym amidships. His hands gripped the handles so hard that his knuckles were white. Drenched in sweat, he ignored the casual glances from the half dozen sailors lifting weights, just as he ignored his burning thighs and calves, his eyes fixated on the pipes running alongside the starboard side of the ship. But in his mind, he saw the torpedoes wounding Stennis and killing North Dakota.

Killing Little Charlie, he thought as everyone in the family called Lieutenant Junior Grade Charles Kelly, one of the 135 souls who had perished when the sub broke up and—

Kelly stopped pedaling when he sensed the sudden acceleration. The men working out also stopped, looking at one another in obvious confusion.

What the hell?

But just as he was about to climb off, Giannotti stepped through the bulkhead.

“What’s going on, Bobby?” he asked.

The large XO grabbed a white towel from the stack next to the water fountain, walked up to the bike, and handed it to his superior officer. “Time to get some payback, Boss.”

His heart pounding in his chest, Kelly caught his breath, wiped his face, then asked, “What are you talking about?”

“Chappy found the bastard, sir. We’re going hunting.”

A Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter hovered fifty feet over the flight deck after a five-hour flight from US Army Garrison Stuttgart in Germany that had included refueling over the Mediterranean. But today, the heavy-duty transport, designed to carry as many as fifty troops, hauled a very different load: US Naval Special Warfare Development Group commander Jake Russo, his team of eight operators, and more than 25,000 pounds of violence. That included a MK 8 Mod 1 SEAL Delivery Vehicle (SDV) secured to the bottom of the Super Stallion.

A fifteen-year veteran with the SEALs and on his third year as commander of DEVGRU, or SEAL Team Six, as it is more commonly known, Russo breathed in the dry desert air while he watched the helicopter crew lower the twenty-one-foot-long midget submarine just aft of the carrier’s island, out of the way of its rows of parked planes.

“Tell me, Jake,” said his right-hand man, Lieutenant Gustavo Pacheco, who stood next to his commander by one of the Super Stallion’s side windows. “Of all the damned places we could have gone to set up shop, why here? I mean, didn’t we just lose nine brothers on a carrier just like this one?”

Although Pacheco was right, of course, and the pain of losing team members — some of whom he had personally trained — was still incredibly raw, Russo ignored him. He kept his eyes on the SDV swinging slightly at the end of a thick steel cable as a sailor on the flight deck guided the pilot.

“We’re sitting fucking ducks here, amigo,” Pacheco added. “I mean, look at it. Just a big fat target ripe for a big fat missile, and that ain’t no way for a brother to die. No, sir.”

“We go where we need to go, Gus,” Russo replied as the SDV finally reached the flight deck and the crew disconnected the cable and began to secure it. “And this carrier is a step closer to getting some payback instead of sitting on our fat asses in Norfolk feeling sorry for ourselves.”

As the Super Stallion’s pilot shifted over amidships to drop them off, Russo added, “Besides, if it were easy…”

“Yeah, they would have sent the army,” Pacheco said.

“Copy that,” Russo replied.

But the commander also wasn’t happy with their current predicament. Unfortunately, arrangements had already been made for his team to use Lincoln as his staging area while waiting to get word on the whereabouts of whoever was responsible for the attacks against Truman and Stennis.

And now this mess, he thought, looking at the distant columns of smoke to the north and south as the large helicopter finally settled on the flight deck.

Russo jumped off and was greeted by a young petty officer with instructions to escort him to see the captain.

As his team unloaded their gear from the helicopter, Russo followed the sailor to the island. Looking around the deck, he had to admit that Pacheco was probably right on the money. At the moment, he felt more like a sitting duck than a SEAL.