Terminal Run

4

The run to the continental shelf would take ten hours. Once Piranha passed the six-hundred-fathom curve, the ship would submerge and continue to follow the track line to Point November, the point where the secret-classified chart ended and the top-secret chart began.

At the turning point from the Thames River into Long Island Sound, Captain Catardi ordered a speed increase. The deck below the bridge had been rigged for dive, with all the line lockers shut and latched, the cleats rotated into the hull, and the hatch shut and dogged. The hull was clean and streamlined. With relatively open water stretching in front of them, the ship’s surface speed rose to thirty knots at all-ahead flank. The vessel’s top speed of forty-nine knots could only be achieved submerged, since the cigar shape of the hull was not efficient at cutting through the surface effect of the waves. The bullet-shaped nose plowed into the sea, the water curving smoothly down on either side of sail and rising back angrily up at the mid-deck, then spreading into a churning white wake a third of a ship length wide extending to the horizon behind them. The flow of the water was hypnotic. Pacino stared at it, watching the bow wave from the crow’s nest viewpoint of the bridge cockpit. Even more impressive than the sight of the wave was its noise, the jet engine roar of it deafening as it cascaded over the bow. The hurricane wind generated by their flank-run surface passage competed with the noise of the bow wave, the wind alone so loud that it would require a man to scream in the ear of a companion to be heard. The sustained shriek of the sea and the wind could lead to fatigue, but in Midshipman Pacino’s case, the noise was music, a song he had heard in his dreams but had lingered just beyond reach. The deck beneath his feet, a grating over the bridge access tunnel to the forward compartment upper level, vibrated violently from the ship’s fight with the bow wave, the trembling of the ship’s thirteen thousand tons testifying to the sheer horsepower pouring out of the propulsor.

An hour into the flank run, a dolphin jumped out of the water at the bow and vanished back into the sea, then returned, his passage a vision of speed. Soon the dolphin was joined by a second one, but after a few minutes they grew bored and disappeared.

Pacino had remained the junior officer of the deck when the maneuvering watch was secured and the surface-transit underway watch section was stationed for the long haul to the dive point. Captain Catardi sat on the top of the sail, dangling his feet into the bridge cockpit, watching Pacino conn the submarine. An hour later, Catardi ordered the flying bridge rails disassembled, and he vanished down the hatch into the access tunnel to the deck thirty-two feet below Pacino’s boots. For the next four hours, Pacino kept the watch with an annoyed Lieutenant Alameda and the lookout behind them, who had his own cubbyhole hatch coming out of the sail.

Behind Pacino the periscopes rotated, one the property of Crossfield, the navigator, the scope rotating to take visual fixes at the bearings to the landscape navigation aids. The second belonged to one of the junior officers, the contact coordinator, whose function was to concentrate on the shipping in the seaway and help Pacino avoid a collision. Further aft of the periscopes the radar antenna rotated slowly in constant circles, reaching out to the coastline and seeing ahead, the blips on its screen the merchant ships far at sea, the navigator and contact coordinator sharing the display hood down in the control room. Further aft of the radar mast, the telephone pole of the AN BRA-44 BIGMOUTH antenna was bumped a few feet out of the sail. Pacino looked around at the seascape, the lush green coastline, the greenish blue of Long Island Sound, the rushing bow wave, and the white of the wake washing by the hull and flowing to the rudder. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and searched the seaway ahead for other vessels, but other than the occasional sailboat, they were alone in the sea. Another hour into the surface run Pacino realized he was as happy as he could ever remember feeling. The vibration of the deck in his boots and the scream of the wind and sea in his ears were the most romantic sensations he’d felt in his life.

He looked over at Alameda’s hard face, half obscured by the bill of her ball cap and her binoculars. He had attempted to penetrate Alameda’s gruff attitude, without success — his father’s words in one of his E-mails coming back to Pacino that some people would hate him for reasons perhaps even they didn’t understand, and to leave them be. He had been more successful with Wes Crossfield, the serious navigator, who had gone over the charts and line handling commands with Pacino before the underway. It was strange, that the entire ship was divided between these two officers, Alameda running the aft half with the engineering spaces, Crossfield responsible for the operation of the tactical half, the forward spaces with the torpedoes and electronic control and sensor areas. The department heads reported to Catardi and to his second-in-command, the executive officer, called the universal Navy nickname of “XO.”

Piranha’s XO was Lieutenant Commander Astrid Schultz, a tall, slim blond woman with brown piercing eyes and a no nonsense toughness. She had smiled a greeting to Pacino in the wardroom before he came to the bridge, shaking his hand. The junior officers seemed to be terrified of her, but she had a den mother quality beneath her toughness.

The junior officers had been hurling insults and inside jokes at each other, the easy camaraderie of the ship making it seem like Pacino had stepped into a fraternity house where each officer, chief, and enlisted sailor knew and appreciated the virtues and flaws of the other crew members, the crew working together like a single organism. Pacino had heard his father talk about it, but had never quite believed that eighty people from such varying backgrounds could get along so well, welded into a pipe for weeks and months at a time. Pacino wondered what other words of truth from his father he had rejected.

The sun slipped lower in the western sky as the hour approached 1800. Alameda’s relief for OOD watch arrived in the bridge cockpit, a junior grade lieutenant named O’Neal, his first name unknown, the crew simply calling him “Toasty.” He was a tall, light-complected blond Academy grad, shy and easygoing, but awarded the Bronze Star for bravery the previous summer. O’Neal relieved Alameda, the hostile chief engineer vanishing into the access tunnel. O’Neal turned to Pacino and told him that he could go below, since there was no junior officer of the deck for the evening watch.

“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d like to stay on watch until we submerge.”

“We don’t pull the plug until midnight, Mr. Pacino. You’re welcome to stay, but you’ll miss evening meal.”

“That’s okay, sir. But call me Patch.”

“I’m Toasty. Good to have you aboard.” He raised his binoculars and searched the horizon, silent for some time. Finally he spoke again. “So. You going subs like your old man?”

“I’m going to see how this run goes. I’m probably going to be all thumbs in a submarine.”

O’Neal laughed. “Jesus, you do a back-full ahead-flank underway without tugs, making those slacker DevRon 12 line handlers wet their pants, you put the ship dead center of the channel right under the nose of the squadron commodore, and you wonder if you’ll be any good at this? There isn’t an officer aboard who could have done that. Hell, I don’t think the captain could do that.”

Pacino’s face flushed. “Shiphandling is one thing,” he said, the binoculars at his eyes, staring ahead to the dimming horizon. “Being a competent submariner is another.”

“The engineer seems to think you’re a natural.”

“Alameda? That’s strange. She treats me like garbage.”

“She just doesn’t have much use for nonquals. Once you’ve earned your dolphins she’s okay, but until an officer or enlisted is qualified in submarines, she figures they are breathing her department’s air — she owns the atmospheric control equipment — and drinking her department’s water.”

“Well, she had me fooled.” Pacino raised the binoculars to his eyes, the two falling silent, and there was only the roar of the bow wave and the stretch of seawater from horizon to horizon.

Piranha sailed on, making way for the continental shelf as the sun set astern.

All too soon the watch neared an end as the control room called up that the ship was thirty minutes from the dive point.

“Stand up,” O’Neal ordered Pacino. “Take a last look around and take in a last breath of fresh air.” Pacino complied, watching O’Neal. “This will be your last look at the surface with your naked eyes and the last real air for weeks, so savor it.” Pacino did, aware that he was taking part in a ritual practiced for generations. “Now, crouch down in the access tunnel and hold the flashlight.” O’Neal reached up on the port side and rotated a metal plate on a hinge until it was horizontal above his head, partially blocking the starlight, the plate latching with a click. Another plate on the starboard side came up, a third aft, and the fourth forward. The last clamshell hatch shut out the stars completely and made the cockpit disappear. Their perch was now faired into the smooth upper surface of the sail.

Pacino lowered himself down the ladder into the red lamp lit vertical tunnel and paused to watch O’Neal come down and grab the upper hatch and slam it shut on the seating ring. He wheeled the dogging mechanism clockwise, and the metal claws unfolded and locked the hatch in place. Pacino then continued down until he emerged from the dim tunnel into the red-lit upper-level passageway. O’Neal followed, turning a switch to plunge the access tunnel into darkness. Then he pulled shut the lower hatch and dogged it the same way. Pacino clicked off the rig for dive checklist. The final item, the drain valve, was checked shut by O’Neal.

The two walked in the dim red lights to the control room on the middle-level deck, which, unlike the upper level, was completely dark. The instrument panel of the enclosed ship control station was the only illumination in the forward part of the space. In the darkness Pacino could barely make out the silhouette of a man wearing a bulky helmet standing behind a console, Ensign Breckenridge.

“Sir,” Pacino reported, “bridge and sail rigged for dive by Mr. O’Neal and checked by me.”

The two reassumed the watch. Pacino was ushered to the chair at the command console and instructed to put on the Type 23 periscope helmet.

“Well,” a Boston accent said from behind him, “I’m ready to hear the junior officer of the deck’s report.”

“Mark the sounding,” Pacino called into the Type 23 helmet’s boom mike. The display came up, a breathtaking three dimensional view, as if Pacino’s head were back up on the sail.

“Six five four fathoms!” O’Neal’s voice replied.

“Captain,” Pacino said, gulping, hoping he’d remember all that O’Neal had taught him. “Ship is on course one one zero at all-ahead flank making three zero knots. Ship is rigged for dive by Chief Cavalla and checked by Mr. Breckenridge, sail rigged for dive by Mr. O’Neal and checked by me. We are two minutes from the dive point, sir, with ship’s inertial navigation tracking the GPS nav sat confirmed by the navigator with a stellar fix. The diving officer is stationed. We hold no surface contacts by visual or sonar. Sounding is six hundred fifty-four fathoms. Request permission to submerge the ship, sir.” Pacino breathed, hoping he hadn’t forgotten anything.

“Very well. Junior Off’sa’deck,” Catardi said. “Submerge the ship to one five zero feet.”

“Submerge the ship to one five zero feet, JOOD aye, sir.” Pacino waited, breathing heavily, his heart hammering again.

“Thirty seconds to the dive point!”

“Very well, Quartermaster.”

“Mark the dive point!”

“Diving Officer.” Pacino called, his voice steady despite his nerves, “submerge the ship to one five zero feet!”

The diving officer sat in the ship-control enclosure, a station resembling a heavy jet cockpit with two seats, a central console, and consoles surrounding the seats. The diving officer was a chief petty officer in charge of the torpedomen, a burly woman named Marshall. She acknowledged, her voice growling back, “Submerge the ship to one five zero feet, Diving Officer, aye, sir.” She picked up the 1ME microphone and her voice rang out throughout the ship. “Dive! Dive!” She reached into the overhead for the lever to the diving alarm.

Pacino jumped, startled at the sound of the diving alarm horn howling a deep OOOOOOOOOOH-GAAAAAAH just above his head.

“Dive! Dive!” the chief’s voice announced a second time.

“Helm, all ahead two-thirds,” the chief called. She had control of speed during the diving evolution, O’Neal had said.

“All ahead two-thirds, aye, easing throttle to ahead two thirds, indicating turns for ahead two-thirds,” the helmsman called.

“Very well,” the diving officer said. “Opening forward main ballast tank vents.”

“Train the periscope to zero zero zero relative,” Toasty O’Neal whispered to Pacino. He did and saw an odd sight, four geysers of water screaming vertically up out of the bullet nose. “Now call, ’Venting forward.’”

“Venting forward,” Pacino said.

“Venting forward, aye, sir,” the chief said. “Opening aft main ballast tank vents.”

Pacino turned his view to look aft and witnessed the same phenomenon of an eruption of water from the aft hull, four fire hoses pointed upward. The venting was so violent that it took thousands of gallons of water upward with the air, he thought.

“Venting aft.”

“Venting aft, aye, sir. Rigging out the bow planes. A moment passed. “Bowplanes extended and locked. Helm, take control of your bow planes.”

“Bowplanes tested, tested sat,” the helmsman said.

“Helm, ten degrees dive on the bow planes.”

“Ten degrees dive, aye, my bow planes are down ten degrees.”

Pacino watched as the bullet nose of the bow burrowed deeper into the water, the geysers now submerged, some vapor still shooting up through the waves, until there was nothing forward except ocean. He trained his view aft, at the waves rising up the cylinder of the hull. The hull peeked out only between waves, then vanished under the water.

“Decks awash,” Pacino called.

The aft hull exposed itself one last time, then was under, the white wake smothering the vessel. “Hull submerged.”

“Hull submerged, aye, sir. I have the stern planes stern planes tested in rise, tested in dive, stern planes tested sat, I have the bubble, sir, and stern planes to ten degrees dive. Proceeding to ten-degree down bubble. Flooding depth control one to the halfway mark, flooding commenced. Tank at five zero percent, hull valve shut, backup valve shut.”

“Very well, Dive,” Pacino said, acknowledging the chief.

Pacino could feel his chair angle downward slightly. He trained his view to look ahead, looking down on the top of the sail, which was approaching the waves. A wave splashed over the top of the sail, then receded. The angle became steeper.

“Depth six five feet,” the chief reported.

Several waves washed over the sail and the cockpit went under, and nothing remained but a boiling wake. Pacino looked aft at the wake calming behind them, the aft edge of the sail a hump coming out of the waves, until they swallowed the aft part of the sail.

“Sail’s under,” Pacino called out. The waves were approaching his view, below him by ten feet. He did a low power search, and by the time his circle was complete, the waves were close.

“Eight zero feet.”

The down angle of the deck became steeper.

“Eight three feet. Five-degree down bubble.”

The waves were much closer now, the speed of the ship making the water seem to zoom toward him. Soon the crest of a wave was above the level of Pacino’s view, and it towered over him. Instinctively he took a breath and held it, and the wave splashed into his view.

“Scope’s awash,” he said, breathing again. A burst of phosphorescent foam surrounded him for an instant, and his view came out of the water again as the wave trough came by. His view cleared, the stars and the sky came back for a moment before the next wave crest splashed Pacino in the face, the green-lit foam washing around him. One final trough came, giving a momentary glimpse of the surface and the starlight and an approaching big wave, and then the crest hit him and the view was blinded by the fireflies of the foam and a storm of bubbles. The light particles cleared and Pacino found himself looking up at the underside of the waves, lit by starlight and the fading phosphorescent wake of the periscope. He saw three waves rolling by overhead, a thousand bubbles swimming by him, and then the sea around him became dark.

“Scope’s under. Lowering the Type 23.” Pacino pulled off the helmet. He blinked, back in the dim reality of the control room, his hair sweaty over his ears. O’Neal handed him red goggles to keep his eyes night-adapted, then donned wraparound red glasses.

“Rig control for red,” O’Neal called to the diving officer. Red lights flashed and held. The previously dark control room was lit in a haunted-house red that seemed bright to Pacino at first. The ship pulled out at 150 feet, where the Cyclops system trimmed the ship, bringing her to exactly neutral buoyancy.

Pacino turned to the captain, standing behind him with his arms crossed. He had changed into submariner’s coveralls, wearing his dolphins and command pin on his left pocket, his embroidered nametag reading CATARDI. His left arm had a patch with the Jolly Roger pirate emblem of the Unified Sub marine Command with the ship’s patch below it, his right sleeve carrying a patch with the American flag. He wore black sneakers. He also wore a black eye patch over his left eye, giving him the appearance of a pirate. Pacino knew from his youth that was not an affectation, but kept one eye night adapted in case of an emergency periscope depth.

“Captain,” Pacino said, standing up, “ship is submerged to one five zero feet with a satisfactory one-third trim. Request to go deep and return to point of intended motion.”

“Take her deep, JOOD,” Catardi ordered. “Test depth, steep angle.”

Piranha plunged into the deep cold of the Atlantic.

Admiral Kelly McKee stared into his empty coffee mug and shook the carafe, which was dry. He lit the third cigar of the flight, trying to think ahead to the intricacies of the upcoming war.

The key to the conflict was keeping the British out of the fight and attacking the Reds early, McKee thought. He shut his eyes, his mind wandering back to Admiral Patton’s briefing at the bunker. He concentrated on bringing back each word and each expression on the Navy chief’s face, back to the moment when the older man had unfolded the map of Asia onto the table.

“Two years ago, while the Red Chinese were fighting the Whites on the Chinese east coast, the Hindu Republic of India’s dictator Nipun sent his shock troops north, invading and occupying a vast plateau of Red Chinese territory.” Patton circled a region north of India’s northern border, an area colored the red of the Peoples Republic of China, labeled Xinjiang Uyger Zizhiqu.

“Soon into their occupation the Indians discovered a massive oil field, which they named “Shamalan.” The crude oil is incredibly sweet with almost no sulfur. India called in their friends from the UK, and within a year the Brits completed the work of a decade by constructing two cross-continental pipelines, two refineries, and two large oil unloading terminals. The refined petroleum from the Shamalan oil fields is the best quality in the world, and the Indians are pricing it to sell. When the Saudi shipping lanes were shut down from the supertanker explosions, India’s production came on-line, making India a world economic power.

“But the Indians refuse to sell any of that oil back to Red China. So the Reds want the plateau back. And revenge.” Patton sank into his chair, the fleet commanders sitting as well. “A major Asian war is now inevitable. That concludes the unclassified portion of this briefing. The following is classified Top Secret, special compartmented information, codeword “Echo.” Six hours ago the Peoples Liberation Army began their mobilization to the western front. The trains are rolling, the convoys are winding their way over the passes, and the jet transports and fighters are in flight. And as the Reds mobilize toward the Indian frontier, the Red Northern Fleet is starting their engines and singling up their lines, preparing to depart the ports of the Red Chinese Bo Hai Bay east of Beijing.

“Kelly, your unit, the Virginia-class submarine Leopard, is lurking inside the bay. She’s spying on the Red communications from Beijing, but she’s also a trip wire. When the Red fleet departs the bay on the way to the Indian Ocean, Leopard will be tasked with shadowing the fleet as it moves south.

“As you know, the Red Northern Fleet is formidable. They used to be a rust bucket mothball flotilla that couldn’t even cruise in the deep water of the bay. But they’ve been reequipping, and the Russian Republic has been building export-version aircraft carriers, antisubmarine destroyers, fast frigates, and antiaircraft heavy cruisers around the clock. The three Red Chinese carriers are top-of-the-line Kuznetsov-class giants, and the Beijing-class nuclear battle cruisers are fully seaworthy. Their aircraft are top shelf, if not a match for ours, but they have them in sheer numbers. With three carrier battle groups they intend to surround and crush India.

“The Red submarine force admiral, Chu HuaFeng, has rebuilt his fleet after his defeat in the East China Sea. Now he’s got eleven fast attack nuclear submarines — six Russians, three Japanese Destinys, a French Valiant-class, and the lead ship of the Chinese-built Giant Wave or Julang-class has completed sea trials and loaded weapons, and Chu’s best captain will be taking her to sea. All the foreign-sourced subs have been reworked to accept Chinese supercavitating East Wind torpedoes, all refit for ultra quiet sound quieting by the Swedes, and all engineering spaces redesigned and reworked by the Germans.

“But before they can use that firepower, they have to get in close, within cruise missile range of their targets, since the missiles’ warheads are much heavier now, reducing their range. I’ll tell you why in a moment. The Red generals proposed an early attack against India with the cruise missiles that are in range now, but their Supreme Commander, General Fang Shui, is insisting on a time-on-target attack. That means he’ll mobilize slowly and deliberately, while India sweats, and then when the second hand hits the twelve of zero-hour, every missile and bomb hits India at once. Communications and infrastructure are hit so hard they may as well be destroyed. The enemy’s morale collapses. And the oil rigs, pipelines, and refineries are the first targets.

“Each Red carrier battle group is carrying about three hundred heavy short-range cruise missiles armed with precision enhanced blast-radius plasma warheads. The enhanced blast weapons are heavier, which reduces their range, which is why General Fang wants them positioned before he shoots anything.”

Patton paused to pour himself a black coffee. Neither admiral said a word, each man watching him as if he were about to perform a magic trick. He took a pull of the scalding liquid and cleared his throat.

“But the war with the Reds at sea is only part of the picture. Let’s go back to the Indians for a moment. The British constructed the oil facilities for India against the advice of the European Union, since the EU’s economy is closely tied to China, and the EU is betting the Chinese will kick the Indians out of the Shamalan fields. The British have pulled the Royal Navy Flotilla out of the European Union High Seas Fleet. They’re fueling up and loading food and weapons. A squadron of advance ships is heading for the eastern Mediterranean, where we expect they will transit the Suez Canal to the Gulf of Oman, to the Arabian Sea and into the western Indian Ocean. By the time the Reds enter the eastern Indian Ocean, half the British force will arrive in the west with the remainder of their fleet joining them two weeks later.

“The Royal Navy Fleet order-of-battle consists of four carrier battle groups and twenty nuclear attack submarines, all of them front line units. Their firepower in heavy cruise missiles and aircraft outnumbers the Red Chinese two-to-one. Once the Reds see the Royal Navy coming, we believe they may put aside their time-on-target plan and preemptively strike at India with every missile in range, but since most of their force will be out of range they’ll fill the gap by shooting their ICBMs from the forty silos in northern Red China, all of them armed with old-fashioned multiple reentry-vehicle hydrogen bombs, doped with cobalt to make them enhanced-radiation high-yield city-killers. These are your grandfather’s nuclear weapons, each one of them Asian Treaty violations. So the coming of the Royal Navy will, in all likelihood, trigger a nuclear war on the Asian continent, and we’re talking radiation clouds and the total destruction of the Shamalan oil fields.

“The Royal Navy won’t stand idly by while their ally gets nuked. The Brits will counterattack both the Red Northern Fleet and Red China itself. The bad news is that the Brits know about the nuclear weapons in the Red ICBMs. London has vowed to attempt to deter the Chinese with their own nuclear threat. While the Brits are on their way to the Indian Ocean, they will be converting their clean plasma warheads — which surgically strike targets with no collateral damage — into ultrahigh-yield hydrogen bombs, the most powerful nuclear warheads ever invented. If that’s not bad enough, the British are pulling their old neutron bombs out of cold storage and flying them to their carrier groups, for the possible use of leveling Red Chinese troop concentrations. Rumor has it that five of them could be targeted at Beijing. A few days into the battle, the Peoples Liberation Army and a considerable number of Chinese civilians will be a scorched pile of bones.”

Patton let the words hang in the air, watching his fleet commanders’ faces grow dark.

“Our objective in this war is twofold. We will be putting weapons on the Red Chinese fleet with the goal of sinking them before they can get in range of Indian targets. We will be targeting their sub force, with the tactical objective of sinking every platform. The second goal in-theater is to neutralize the Royal Navy. In this conflict, their high tempers and radioactive weapons will do nothing but harm. We must get them to withdraw.

“Kelly, your East Coast submarines will sail for the choke point Arabian Sea entrance to the western Indian Ocean, the corridor that the Royal Navy battle groups must travel to come in-theater. Your forces will position themselves in attack range of the Royal Navy Fleet. I’m certain that diplomacy will be enough, and that your orders to face the British will be a mere contingency plan, and that you’ll hear from me to turn back and attack the Red Fleet with The Viking. If the worst happens and England won’t listen, that’s when you get your final orders. Orders to blockade the Royal Navy.”

“Blockade? What if a blockade fails? Are you contemplating giving me orders to fire on the Brits?”

Patton sighed. “If it comes to that, yes.”

The Viking’s face had turned red, and Kelly McKee’s eyebrows formed a stormy frown.

“But it won’t. Kelly, the heaviest lifting for your part of the operation will be done by your Pacific squadrons. Together with your unit in the Chinese Bo Hai Bay, your western submarine force will intercept each of the three Red Chinese surface battle groups that are on the way to the Indian Ocean. Kill them before they can do their mischief. And kill them from over the horizon before they can make it in-theater, if you can, and if not, chase them into the Indian Ocean and sink them there. If the gods are with us, your subs will get to them before they can get to The Viking’s battle groups and sink them. Once the Chinese fleet is on the bottom, the strategists think the Reds will break off from the Indians — they don’t have enough missiles deploy able by rail or truck to stop an advance of Indian shock troops, and an attack could start a fight the Reds wouldn’t be able to finish.

“Vie, if Kelly’s submarines are late or defeated, the mission falls to your surface action groups. Your carriers and surface fleets will go it alone against a well-armed Chinese force. It will be up to you to stop them.”

Next Patton had dropped the bombshell about their communications being compromised, and their extraordinary orders about using pad computers and Internet E-mails to communicate. While McKee and Ericcson were trying to recover from that shock, Patton addressed The Viking, telling him more details about his mission. When Ericcson had left, Patton frowned over at McKee.

“Kelly, because of the communications security penetration, I want you to brief your captains personally, face-to-face. They don’t brief their crews until they’re safely submerged. And except for the NSA agents, there will be no E-mail from any crew member to shore. We’ll sail the old-fashioned way, in the dark. Now, about the forward deployed unit, the Leopard — you’re going to have to get word to the Leopard that she’s at war without using the battle network and without making her surface.”

“We’ve got some new technology allowing us to rendezvous with a submerged unit. I’ll get a few of the pad computers to her by the time she’s in the East China Sea.” McKee pushed his chair back. “Is that all, sir?”

“I wish it were, Kelly. I’m surprised you’re not thinking ahead. Since our command network is penetrated and compromised, we’rein deep trouble with the Snare. With her deployed in the Atlantic, she could target our East Coast subs as they scramble to the Indian Ocean.”

And that was the moment in McKee’s mind when the operation went from being a wartime deployment to a war. The Red Chinese, formidable as they were, were an enemy he could accept. But having his own advanced weapons systems turning on him frightened him.

His thoughts were interrupted by the Navy pilot standing in front of him.

“Admiral? We’re descending for a straight-in approach now. We should have you on the tarmac in fifteen minutes. Welcome to Hawaii, sir.”

“Thanks,” McKee said, craning his neck to see the lights of Honolulu out the window.

As he packed his pad computer into his briefcase, he wondered if the Piranha would be enough to stop the Snare. McKee choked off the thought. Catardi’s Piranha would prevail over the out-of-control robot sub. He had to — because if Snare sank Piranha and made it into the Indian Ocean, the war would be lost.