Threat Vector

FORTY-EIGHT

He who conquers the sea is all powerful.” It was the motto of the INS Viraat, the Indian aircraft carrier that docked in Da Nang one week to the day after Chairman Su Ke Qiang ordered all foreign warships out of the South China Sea.

The Viraat began its life in 1959 as Britain’s HMS Hermes and sailed under the Union Jack for decades before it was sold to India in the 1980s. No one could argue that the carrier was still cutting-edge, but a recent refitting by the Indian Navy had extended the Viraat’s life a few years, and, new technology or old, it was an important symbol of the Indian nation.

At just under thirty thousand tons, it was significantly less than a third the size of the Nimitz-class Ronald Reagan. There were 1,750 sailors and pilots on board, as well as fourteen Harrier fighter jets, and eight Sea King attack helicopters.

On the second day after the carrier arrived in Da Nang, one of its Sea King helicopters was patrolling in India’s oil exploration zone when it spotted a Chinese Song-class submarine moving to within ramming range of an Indian oil exploration vessel. The sub struck and damaged the ship minutes later, sending the thirty-five civilian crew members of the exploration ship into lifeboats. The Sea King began ferrying the crew to other vessels nearby, but not before calling in the antisubmarine-warfare-capable INS Kamorta, a corvette that had moved into the SCS along with the Viraat. The Kamorta raced to the area and got a radar fix on the Song-class sub.

The Kamorta fired one 213-millimeter rocket from its deck-mounted RBU-6000, a Soviet-designed antisubmarine rocket launcher. The rocket sailed from the horseshoe-shaped launcher, flew through the air for five kilometers, and then dove into the water. It sank to a depth of two hundred fifty meters but exploded prematurely, inflicting no damage on the sub, which had dived to a depth of three hundred twenty meters.

A second missile also failed to find its target.

The Song-class sub escaped the encounter. But this was the excuse the Chinese were waiting for.

Three hours after the attack on the Chinese submarine, just after dark, the Ningbo, a Chinese guided-missile destroyer on station between Hainan and the Vietnamese coast, went to battle stations. It launched four SS-N-22 missiles, NATO classification Sunburn, a Russian-developed anti-ship missile.

The Sunburns streaked over the water at Mach 2.2, three times faster than the American Harpoon anti-ship missile. The radar and guidance systems in the nose of the weapons kept them on target as they closed on the biggest ship within range.

The Viraat.

As the lightning-fast flying three-hundred-kilogram armor-piercing warheads neared their target, anti-missile defensive SAMs on board the Viraat fired in a desperate attempt to shoot down the Sunburns before impact. Miraculously, the first SAM out of its launch tube struck the first incoming missile just four kilometers from impact, but within moments all three of the remaining SS-N-22s slammed into the starboard-side hull of the big ship, with the second missile striking high enough to send three Sea King helos into the air in a fireball and to destroy two of the Harriers on the deck with the resulting shrapnel.

The carrier did not sink — three three-hundred-kilogram warheads were not enough ordnance to put the thirty-thousand-ton ship on the ocean floor, but the missiles succeeded in effecting a “mission kill”—a naval term for rendering a vessel useless as a war-fighting instrument.

Two hundred forty-six sailors and airmen were killed as well, and the Viraat’s support ships all raced to the aid of the carrier to help put out fires and to pull crew members from the black water.

Two Harrier pilots in the air at the time of the accident found themselves with nowhere to land, as they were too low on fuel to make it to their divert airfields in Vietnam. Both pilots ejected into the ocean and survived, though their aircraft were lost to the waves.

While the PLAN immediately declared the attack a defensive response to India’s attack on the submarine earlier in the day, it became abundantly clear to the world that China had determined that the South China Sea was worth killing for.

Valentin Kovalenko rented a white Nissan Maxima from a rental lot near Ronald Reagan Airport and drove it north over the Francis Scott Key Bridge and into Georgetown.

He was on yet another milk run for Center, or so he deduced from the instructions that Center gave him the evening before, shortly after his face-to-face introduction to Crane.

Kovalenko did not imagine today’s work would be as dramatic as last night’s events. He was to pick up a car, and then conduct surveillance on a location just two miles from his flat.

As usual, Kovalenko did not know a single thing about his operation past his instructions.

He drove through Georgetown for a few minutes before he went to his target location, just to make certain he had not acquired a tail. It was good tradecraft, of course, but Valentin was not just looking for enemy surveillance. He spent as much time keeping his eyes peeled for Center, or someone from the organization he worked for, as he did for the local police or American counterintelligence operatives.

He turned off Wisconsin and onto Prosper Street, a quiet two-lane row of big Federal and early Victorian homes with tiny front yards, as well as an elementary school and some small retail shops. Kovalenko kept just slightly below the speed limit as he scanned for the address he was looking for.

3333.

He found it on the right. It was a two-centuries-old two-story home on a small piece of hilly land hemmed in tight on both sides by a redbrick school and a two-story duplex. A black wrought-iron fence surrounded it, and the front of the house was covered in leafy trees and bushes. It looked like a zero-lot haunted mansion. There was a garage down at street level, and winding stone steps led from the gate at the sidewalk in the front of the property to the home above.

Valentin drove around the corner, pulled into the small parking lot of a dry cleaner’s, and here he used a digital audio recorder to help him remember as many details about the property as possible. When finished, he drove around back and looked at the street to the north of 3333 Prosper. Here he found that a back alley went behind the property, between the two streets.

For his third pass he went by on foot, parking his car on Wisconsin and doing a full circle of the block, taking time to look over many different properties, not just his target location.

He walked down the back alleyway, past the school grounds, and he found there was a small gate that provided access to the target location.

In all his passes on all sides he did not see any hint of movement in or around the home, and he noted there were dry autumn leaves on the steps leading to the front door that looked like they had been there for a while. While he could not see inside the garage, and he had no idea if there was direct access to the house from inside the garage, it was his best estimate that the property was not occupied at the moment.

He could not possibly fathom what Center wanted with this location. Maybe he was looking for some local real estate. As vague as his handler had been about what he needed to know about the place, Valentin wondered if all his subterfuge was unnecessary.

Maybe he should have just walked up to the front door and knocked and asked for a tour of the place.

No. That was not Kovalenko’s style. He knew the best thing for him personally was to keep his interactions with others to a minimum.

He returned to his car on Wisconsin and headed back to the airport to return the rental. He’d go home, report his findings to Center via Cryptogram, and then get good and drunk.

John Clark stood still as a stone on his back pasture, and a cold autumn wind blew oak leaves across his field of vision, but he did not focus on them as they passed.

Suddenly he moved; his left hand whipped across the front of his body, to his waistband under the right side of his leather bomber jacket, and then it drew back out, pulling with it a black SIG Sauer.45-caliber pistol with a short, stubby silencer attached. The pistol rose to John’s eye level, centered on a steel disk the width of a grapefruit that hung from a metal chain at chest level ten yards off, just in front of a backstop of hay bales.

John Clark fired one-handed at the small target, a double tap that cracked the cold air despite the suppressor.

A pair of satisfyingly loud metal “pings” echoed across the pasture as the bullets exploded against the steel.

All this took place in under two seconds.

John Clark used his right hand to move his jacket aside, and then he resecured the pistol back in his cross-draw appendix holster.

Clark had come a long way in a week of daily handgun drills, but he was not satisfied with his performance. He’d like to cut his time in half. And he’d like to achieve his hits from twice this distance.

But that would take both time and commitment, and though John had the time — he had nothing but time these days — for the first time in his adult life he wondered whether he really had the commitment he needed to achieve an objective.

As disciplined an individual as he was, there was something about a strong likelihood that you would need your gunfighting skills to save your own life in the future that tended to focus your energies into being an excellent student.

And John knew he would not be shooting his gun in anger anymore.

Still, he had to admit, the movements and the gun smoke and the feel of the weapon in his hand — even in his left hand — felt damn good.

John reloaded a magazine on the small wooden table next to him, told himself he’d run through a few more boxes of ammo before lunch.

He had nowhere else to be today.