Commander-in-Chief

77

Terry Walker had been told nothing about his family’s escape, but he could see the panic on the faces of Limonov and Kozlov, and he knew something had happened. He sat at his computer, making his trades, sending billions of dollars into invisible accounts, quite possibly for the Russian president. But while he did this he kept one eye on the Russians, trying to figure out what was going on.

Soon the four security officers were taken aside by Kozlov, and then they moved out into the hallway. He didn’t know what they were doing at first, but when he asked to go to the bathroom Kozlov himself drew his pistol, then led Walker down the hall, past the four men, all of whom had their guns out and trained on the elevator and stairs.

He’d asked Limonov what was up, but the Russian bean counter would not speak to him at all. He just chewed his fingers and made his trades, argued with Kozlov in Russian, and looked like he might have an aneurysm at any moment.

When it was time to leave for the day, all seven men moved down the stairs and out to the vehicles. Walker walked in the middle of the group; he was the only man without a gun.

As soon as one of the security men put his key in the door of one of the Land Rovers, laser beams shined lines of red light from several directions. The security men raised their pistols high; then the men began spinning and dropping to the ground, one after another.

All four were dead in under two seconds; flashes of light across the parking lot were the only indicator of the source of fire, but Walker hadn’t heard a single gunshot. He dove to the ground. Above him Kozlov fired a single shot before he too tumbled facedown onto the parking lot.

Walker lay next to the man, their eyes locked together, Kozlov’s empty with death.

Limonov tried to run, but pieces of the parking lot kicked up in front of him and he stopped, raised his hands. Limonov’s chest was covered by the red dots of lasers.

Walker shut his eyes and prayed this was the end of the horror.

Soon after he opened them, he sat with his wife and son on a sofa in a luxury Gulfstream jet. The three could not hold one another tight enough, and Walker promised the very serious men on the aircraft with him that he would answer any question, provide any assistance, or reveal any detail to the world that they wanted from him. He’d leave the BVIs and never return; he just didn’t want to have anything to do with the man tied to a chair at the front of the cabin.

Jack Ryan, Jr., sat in front of Andrei Limonov. Limonov might have been able to recognize the President’s son, it happened from time to time, after all, but the Russian wore a blindfold.

He looked white from terror, so Jack decided to play on his fears.

Jack said, “Limonov, you’ve got no choice. You are done.”

Limonov licked his dry lips. “Actually, I do have a choice. To me this is quite simple. I am infinitely more afraid of Valeri Volodin than I am of Jack Ryan.”

Jack was momentarily stunned. Then he realized the man was talking about his father.

He recovered and said, “You misunderstand the situation. We aren’t taking you to the USA. You aren’t going to Guantánamo. You are going home. Back to Moscow.”

Limonov’s chin rose slightly, and Jack thought he detected a tremble in his lip. “I don’t understand.”

“No? I bet you’ll figure it out. We’re going to plop your ass in the middle of Red Square the same morning the news gets out that a top Russian financier with Kremlin ties has been in the BVIs moving eight billion, and you have turned over the account numbers to American Feds.”

“What? Wait, that’s not what happened. I didn’t give you anything!”

Jack leaned forward. “Your boss might own the press in Russia, but he doesn’t own it all over the world. It won’t take any time for Volodin to learn what happened here, or maybe I should say our version of what happened. No matter the circumstances, what do you think he’ll do with you?”

Clark had been listening from across the cabin, but he stepped over for a moment and leaned down, just behind the Russian’s left ear. “No, Limonov, don’t even bother to think, because you can’t imagine it. Volodin has spent decades learning the best ways to exact payback on those who fail him, and I’m pretty certain when he finds out the U.S. has access to his money, he’s going to be a lot more pissed off than he’s ever been.”

Clark said, “Your end will be a fucking horror movie, pal. And your death will be the best thing that ever happened to you in your whole life.”

“No!”

“If you will work with us, give us the accounts and the details of your network, you will be protected. If you don’t… well, like I said, it’s back to Moscow for you. This time next week someone will be digging your eye out with a pair of tongs.”

Limonov just nodded slowly. “Take me to America. I’ll tell you about Volodin’s money.”

Ryan looked to the back of the plane and gave the others a thumbs-up. Nobody was going to Moscow, but the threat had served its purpose.

The USS James Greer (DDG-102) sailed south at twenty-two knots. The ship was rigged for quiet but the relatively high speed negated much of the hard work the engineering department put in to keep the vessel stealthy. The twin screws of the Arleigh Burke — class destroyer were designed to reduce noise, even when under significant power, but at twenty knots, those with ears in the ocean ahead would be able to tell something was coming.

Commander Scott Hagen knew he was taking a calculated risk with his tactics, but he thought it worth the gamble. After days patrolling Lithuanian waters, essentially taking the place of the significant portion of Lithuania’s Navy that had been sunk in a two-and-a-half-hour period earlier in the week, he had finally received approval to patrol out into the open sea. As soon as these orders came through from the Sixth Fleet commander, he sent both of his MH-60 Romeo Sea Hawk helicopters out in front of him to clear the way, and he ordered his engine room to give him the highest speed they could manage without rendering the towed array completely ineffective. Doctrine would have him picking his way a lot more slowly and carefully — as it was, the SQS-53 hull-mounted sonar’s effective range was cut by two-thirds — but Hagen saw tonight’s objective less as a typical sub search and more as a race against time, so he pushed on.

He also had a strong suspicion he knew where danger prowled in the Baltic, and it was dead ahead, out of range of his vessel, at least for a short while longer.

Thirty miles south of the James Greer, the Polish Navy was in a fight right this minute, and although the Poles seemed to think they had the upper hand, as far as Hagen was concerned, they just had a tiger by the tail.

For the first few days of the conflict the Poles had stayed in their own waters, but the northern coast of Poland lived and died on the basis of its Baltic seaports, and ever since the submarine warfare kicked off with the sinking of the Maltese cargo ship Granite, few ships of any type had dared enter the southeastern sector of the Baltic Sea. Seeing the economic imperative of opening their coast back to commerce, the Polish government ordered its navy out to ensure the safety of ship traffic.

They sent a search-and-attack unit — a collection of integrated surface vessels and aircraft with antisubmarine warfare capability — out to comb the waters west of Kaliningrad in search of the Russian submarines. An Orkan-class fast attack boat had been positioned to the east of the rest of the group. Above it, one of Poland’s Mi-14 helos with antisubmarine dipping capability had detected an undersea contact but had not been able to designate it as a threat with any confidence, so the Orkan began moving closer to join the helo in the hunt.

Without warning, a pair of torpedoes were launched from the location of the possible contact, and though the captain of the Orkan managed to avoid one of them with evasive maneuvers, the second inbound Type 53–65 blew his small boat all the way out of the water, killing every last one of the thirty-two on board.

The Poles also had another helo in the area, an SH-2G Super Seasprite. It locked on to the undersea contact, declared it hostile, and dropped a pair of Mark 46 torpedoes into the black water.

A Polish corvette received the data pulled from the integrated targeting system of the Seasprite helicopter, and it launched a pair of its own torpedoes at the target. With four weapons converging simultaneously at one target from two directions, the Kilo had little chance.

The sonar technicians on the James Greer heard the death of the Russian sub in their headsets, and even though they were still some twenty-six miles from the action, it felt like they were right there in the submarine with the doomed men.

While it was natural to empathize with the dying, every one of the sonar technicians on the Greer knew the horrific sounds in their headsets were the sounds of justice. The Russians had started this shit, after all, and they’d killed a lot of innocent people.

Commander Hagen played no part in the celebration. He stood in the CIC quietly while the overhead speakers and the digital dead-reckoning tracer table in front of him gave him the news about the kill of the Russian sub, and he thought about the other undersea threat out there, the second Kilo. In their previous attacks the two enemy vessels had worked in tandem, so he expected it was just a matter of moments before one of the two Oliver Hazard Perry — class frigates in the Polish SAU found out that the other Russian submarine was also here in the sea north of Gdańsk.

He also knew the only reason the Polish helo had detected the Kilo in the first place was that it had been moving into position, preparing to fire on the Orkan, so Hagen wanted to be close enough to detect the other Kilo’s attack when it came.

Hagen was pleased to see that his USWE, or undersea warfare evaluator, on duty, Lieutenant Damon Hart, played no part in the brief celebration in the CIC. Instead, Hart loomed over the dead-reckoning tracer table, his eyes rapidly scanning the contacts and tracks, taking in headings, speeds, directions, and even coastline features.

The commander saw Weps was as focused on finding, fixing, and finishing that other Russian sub as he was.

Hagen shouldered up next to the young man and scanned the display himself now. As NATO members and close allies of the U.S., the Poles were on the same tactical data-exchange network as the U.S. Navy, and this made coordination between the two nations’ fleets and aircraft as seamless as Hagen could possibly hope for. The Northrop Grumman Link-16 network allowed every designated track of every surface or subsurface contact — friend, foe, civilian, or unknown — to be immediately shared with every allied system in the hunt. The Polish helos and ships, the American helos and ships, all had the same near-real-time visual understanding of the battle space, and they were all rendered on the digital map on the big table.

Lieutenant Hart glanced up quickly at his captain. “That other Kilo is out there, sir.”

“I know it is, Weps. The question is, will he attack this entire SAU while he’s alone?”

Hart said, “I sure as hell wouldn’t.” He followed that with a “Sir.”

“I wouldn’t, either, unless I got a little blue communications folder from Naples ordering me to. Remember, this isn’t just about the psychology of the Russian captain, or the conventional doctrine of submarine warfare. This is about his orders. Politics is driving this fight. Not the military minds under the sea.”

Hart nodded. “The right move for him, if he is alone, would be to play it safe. If he doesn’t play it safe, if he does attack, it must mean there is another element to this fight I haven’t figured out yet.”

Just then, the ASW tactical air controller came over the speakers. “All stations. Casino One-Two is reporting passive broadband contact, bearing zero, zero, eight. Initial classification of contact is POSS-SUB, confidence level high.”

Hart said, “Designate Contact-Enemy Sub One-One.” A red V-shaped indicator showed up on his digital dead-reckoning tracer table a moment later, east of the Polish SAU and eight degrees off the starboard bow of the Greer. This went instantly to everyone on the Link-16 system, meaning all the Polish ships saw the contact from the MH-60 Romeo, as well. The allied vessels only had a single bearing, not enough to identify the track of the submarine.

Seconds later, Hart heard a voice in his headset. “USWE, Sonar. Polish contact designated Friendly Surface Zero Five has gone active sonar.”

“USWE, aye.” Hart looked up to his commander. “That’s one of the two Polish frigates, the Generał Kościuszko. He’s exposing himself to that Kilo.”

Seconds later the same voice said, “USWE, Sonar. Friendly Surface Zero Five has launched two torpedoes. Heading one, eight, eight.”

“USWE, aye. Are they acquiring?”

“Sonar, negative. Not yet.”

Hart and Hagen stood there, hoping like hell the Polish frigate took out the Kilo before it had a chance to fire back. Now that the frigate was actively pulsing the water hunting for echoes, the Kilo would have no difficulty launching Type 53-65s right at it.

Hart said, “The frigate is firing the fish to keep the Kilo on the defensive. We’ll be able to launch an ASROC at the same contact in three minutes, but we’re still out of effective range for now.”

Hagen just nodded.

A radio operator just feet away in the CIC spoke loudly into his mike: “All stations, I have one… correction, I have two undersea missile launches. Popping up on the surface. I say again, two Vampires in the air!”

It was quiet in the CIC for two seconds while this information was processed. The Russian Kilo was not known to have undersea missile launch capability. It only had torpedoes and mines.

The commander spoke calmly over Hart’s shoulder. “What bearing?”

Hart asked the question into his mike. “What’s the bearing on the launch?”

“Bearing zero, three, one.”

Hagen and Hart looked down at the display. The missile launch had come from a completely different bearing from the designated contact.

This could mean only one thing. It was a different sub.

Hart said, “Jesus Christ! What the fuck is over there?”

“Calm down, Weps,” Hagen said, then he spoke over the 1-MC net. “All stations. General Quarters. Condition Zebra. Missiles inbound off the starboard bow. Set Aegis to ready-automatic. CWIS to auto-engage. All hands prepare for impact.”

A confirmation of the orders came over the net a moment later.

Hagen looked up at one of the two big Aegis display screens on the wall. A pair of missiles were in the air, forty miles from the James Greer, but only thirteen miles from the Polish frigate that now pinged active sonar. He called over his headset. “EW, this is the captain. Can you ID those Vampires?”

The electronics warfare technician came over the net an instant later. “Captain, EW. Missiles in the air appear to be P-800s. They are not heading for us. Looks like they are going after Friendly Surface Zero Five.”

Hart and Hagen exchanged a glance. Hart said, “That has to be a mistake. The P-800 is the Oniks. The only sub that carries those is the Severodvinsk class, but the Baltic Fleet doesn’t have a—”

Hagen said, “Trust the data in our hands now, Weps. Not the intelligence reports.”

“USWE, Sonar. Passive sonar from friendly Air Zero Nine designates contact at bearing zero, three, one. Initial classification, POSS-SUB high. No cross-fix information. Evaluating acoustics now.”

“USWE, aye,” Hart said, the distraction in his voice noticeable. “We have to get close enough to get a cross fix on that target.”

“USWE, Sonar. Both torpedoes launched by Friendly Surface Zero Five failed to acquire, break. We have solid track on the Kilo.”

“Range to target Enemy Sub Zero One?”

“Range, twenty-four thousand yards.”

Hart spoke softly, not exactly to his captain, not exactly to himself. “That’s just barely in the launch window.” He took a couple of calming breaths and said, “Fire Control, USWE. Launch two ASROCs on Contact-Enemy Sub Zero One.”

A female voice replied instantly. “USWE, Fire Control. Launch two ASROCs on Contact-Enemy Sub Zero One, aye!”

On the deck of the James Greer, a hatch sprang open, and a cloud of white smoke billowed out. From within the smoke, a fourteen-foot-long RUM-139 VL-ASROC antisubmarine rocket launched into the cold night air above a pillar of flame.

Two seconds later another missile cell on the deck launched a second weapon, and it chased its teammate up toward the stars.

Inside the housing of each missile was an MK-54 torpedo, but it did not splash into the water to begin its search immediately. Instead, it lifted high into the sky, pitched over on the heading of the Kilo submarine directly off the ship’s bow, and climbed to a height of 10,000 feet. At the apex of its flight path the missile broke apart and the Mark-54 dropped in free fall toward the water above the submarine contact. Shortly before the Mark-54s hit the water, parachutes deployed from each torpedo, but the devices still hit the water hard enough to descend far below the surface from gravity alone.

Once in the sea, both torpedoes came alive, started up and ran diagnostics of their systems, reported back to the James Greer, and began searching for the exact contact they had been sent into the water to seek out.

Hart was up against two enemy submarines at the same time. As soon as he saw good start-up on his weapons targeting the Kilo, he looked back at the Aegis displays on the wall, just as the Polish frigate Generał Tadeusz Kościuszko was hit midships with an Oniks. The 550-pound warhead detonated into the side of the 444-foot-long vessel, creating a fireball that lit up the sky twenty miles away from the James Greer.

The camera on the top of the Greer’s mast broadcast the explosion to the men and women in the CIC, causing them all to stop what they were doing for a moment.

But not for long. Just as the missile hit its target, the radio operator came back over the net. “All stations, I have three missile pop-ups, bearing zero, four, two! More Vampires in the air! I think they are coming for us.”

“God almighty,” Hart said softly.