Virginia Class

13

"Think they're here yet?" Jorgensen asked.

"They're SEALs," Garrett replied. "They're here. The problem is finding them in an invisible needle in a very large haystack."

Virginia had made good time coming south from her too-brief stopover in Japan. After taking on board additional supplies — including fresh fruit and vegetables for the galley and more frozen food to replace that lost when the freezer had gone tits-up — they'd continued south, rounding the southern tip of Taiwan to reach the spot specified in their orders. They were cruising slowly now at one hundred feet, waiting to make contact with the SEAL element designated Trident.

"So… what do we do? Hang out a 'welcome' sign?"

"Much as I hate to say it, we wait another minute… and then we go active."

Jorgensen made a face, and Garrett could sympathize. Submariners employed two distinct forms of sonar, their principal means of sensing what was in the ocean around them. Passive sonar was the act of listening. Most things moving around in the ocean were noisy, to one degree or another, and Virginia's sensitive electronic ears could pick up a tremendous amount of information just by paying attention.

Active sonar meant sending out a loud, sonic chirp— the sound equivalent of radar — and collecting the reflected sound waves when they bounced back from a target. Active sonar was far more informative than passive — especially when your target was another submarine designed to be as stealthily quiet as possible.

But going active also meant broadcasting your existence and your exact position to every passive listener in the area, and that was something that submariners tended to regard as a decidedly unnatural act — kind of like a burglar shouting "Anybody home?" as he crawled in through the window.

Garrett was all too aware that this region south of Taiwan had recently been a combat zone. Three years ago, he'd brought the Seawolf into these waters, and taken on a small fleet of hostile attack subs, courtesy of the People's Republic of China. The PRC's new and growing fleet of attack submarines had been crippled in that exchange, but there was every reason to believe they were in the process of making a comeback.

Might there be PLAN boats lurking out there, listening for an American sub to go active? It was a distinct and uncomfortable possibility.

"Sonar, Conn."

"Go ahead, Conn. Sonar."

"Heads up back there, and ears on. We're going to go active in a second, and I want to know if you get so much as a twitching octopus as a response."

"Aye aye, sir!"

He checked the control room clock, which was still set to local time. Oh-nine hundred hours….

"Sonar, Conn. Give me a ping. We're looking for an ASDS in this immediate vicinity."

"Conn, Sonar. One ping, aye…."

The sonar pulse struck the ASDS hull like a hammer blow, loud enough to leave ears ringing. Lieutenant Mark Halstead looked up and said quietly, "Right. They've got us."

"And close, too," TM1 Diller added. "That's good. I want out of this freaking sardine can."

EM1 Arthur Nemecek chuckled. "Yeah, but we'll be trading one sardine can for another. Let's just hope we get to stretch our legs a bit during the crossover!"

"Shit, Nemmie," Halstead said. "At least we're riding in style! It could be a lot worse."

"Roger that," Chief DiMercurio said, laughing. "You ever ride in a Mark VII?"

"Sure," Nemecek said. "In training."

"Then thank your stars this isn't training. You think this is cramped? This ain't nothin'."

There were eight other SEALs in the ASDS passenger compartment, together with their gear, and the quarters were indeed cramped. Designated as the Advanced SEAL Delivery System, the ASDS was essentially a large, blunt-nosed torpedo — sixty-five feet long, just under seven feet wide, and just over eight feet high. On-board crew-habitable spaces consisted of three compartments — the control room forward where the pilot and copilot ran the thing, a central lockout chamber, and the aft passenger-cargo space. Designed to carry up to sixteen SEALs — a full SEAL platoon — the passenger space was still claustrophobic with half that number, especially when they'd brought rucksacks and carry bags filled with weapons, ammo, and combat gear. They sat hunched over, side by side on the narrow, thinly padded bench, wearing their wetsuits against the possibility of an unscheduled swim, with their gear at their feet or piled up aft.

The best that could be said about the vehicle was that it was dry. Until the introduction of the ASDS only a few years before, SEAL underwater delivery vehicles had been wet, which meant that even in enclosed SDVs, the passengers needed to be fully suited up, and breathing either from their own scuba gear or from an onboard air supply.

Halstead had been in on some of the battles over wet versus dry SDVs early in his SEAL career, shortly after the first Gulf War. Navy departments, like all bureaucracies, tended to protect their own turfs, and ever since the 1960s, the submarine service had insisted that only they should own and operate dry submarines.

The SDV — the official acronym stood for "Swimmer Delivery Vehicle," but everyone uniformly referred to the vessel as a SEAL Delivery Vehicle — had been designed to carry up to eight SEALs silently and invisibly to their target, but their range was sharply restricted, partly by the limitations of their electric batteries, but mostly by the fatigue of the operators. Riding inside an enclosed, fiberglass hull was less tiring than swimming, but it was still uncomfortable and cold. The whole idea of the SDV was to preserve the strength and stamina of the SEALs riding it, extending their range and increasing their endurance. Wet transports simply could not protect passengers from the heat-sapping effects of the sea, or the physical stress of a long haul under water.

So the SEAL community had long been angling for a dry transport. They'd evaluated a number of possible machines; the Mark VII Mod 6 had been a dry version, but it carried only four SEALs, its endurance was limited to five hours, and it could only manage about seven knots, giving it an operational range — to the target and back — of only about fifteen miles. In any case, there'd been incredible political pressures against its adoption from the Navy Department's submarine contingent. Dry submarines belonged to the submariner service, damn it, and all SEALs should take note.

For their part, the SEALs insisted that SDVs should be operated solely by the Teams' Special Boat Squadrons. SBS crews were themselves SEALs, and so could be trusted to listen to SEAL concerns about a tricky approach to a target or a mission requiring tight timing.

Slowly, though, as the SEAL presence in the Special Warfare community had expanded during the '80s and '90s, a workable compromise had been reached, and the first ASDS had gone operational in 2000. A true minisubmarine built by Northrop-Grumman Ocean Systems in Baltimore, Maryland, it displaced fifty-five tons, could manage ten knots, and had a range of over 125 nautical miles. The political compromise turned out to be a simple one. The vessel's pilot and commander was a submarine officer, while his co-pilot and navigator — Halstead, in this case — was a SEAL officer.

The whole issue of who controlled what had first amused Halstead, then frustrated him. As long as the squad got to where it was going, he didn't much care who was driving… or which department at the Pentagon claimed the ownership, the credit, or the budget. The important thing was that the SEALs now at long last had a minisub that could get them and their gear to the target, if not in complete comfort, at least in full fighting trim.

Another sonar ping chimed through the bulkhead, louder this time. "Heads up, back there," Lieutenant Michaels called over the 1MC from the forward compartment. "We've got a lock on the Virginia. We'll be docking in five minutes."

"About freakin' time," HM1 Forrester said. "This is not my preferred means of travel."

"What is?" DiMercurio asked. "Jumping out of airplanes?"

Nemecek looked at his diver's watch. "Hell, we've been in this glorified coffin for three hours now. Right now, I'd take being wrapped up and shipped FedEx if it was faster." They'd departed at just past 0100 hours that morning from the Taiwanese naval base at Kaohsiung. Eight hours on that narrow bench was enough to drive anyone nuts.

"Hey," RM2 Pulaski said. "Is it true what they say about chow on submarines?"

"Abso-damn-lutely," DiMercurio said. "Best chow in the Navy. Best coffee, too."

"Yeah," Halstead added. "You just have to not mind if the guy next to you at the table has his elbow in your ribs."

He felt the ASDS roll slightly to the left and accelerate, moving to a rendezvous in the darkness.

"There they are. Helm… thruster control. Hold us steady." Garrett could see the approaching minisub now, a dark-slate shadow like a huge, squared-off torpedo looming out of the surrounding blackness from astern. The camera in the Photonics mast captured the approach, transmitting the image to the big screen in the control room. Floodlights on the aft edge of the sail illuminated the silent incoming shape of the ASDS, barely discernible against the black backdrop of the ocean one hundred feet down.

Like the docking of a smaller spaceship with a larger in some science-fiction epic, the minisub gentled down toward Virginia's afterdeck, aligning itself with the circular rim of the forward escape trunk hatch. A soft thump echoed through the Virginia's control room as the ASDS settled home and the docking collar sealed.

"ASDS docking complete," the dive officer said. "Docking collar secure and locked."

"Mr. Jorgensen?" Garrett said. "Perhaps you'd like to welcome our guests on board. See that they're settled in — torpedo room."

"Right, Captain."

A few moments later, Jorgensen led the SEALs in through the control room. All, Garrett saw, were big, massively muscled men — young, hard, and imbued with an almost palpable air of quiet and deadly competence.

"Welcome aboard the Virginia, gentlemen," Garrett said.

"Thank you, sir," one of the men replied. He appeared to be the leader of the group, though none wore emblems of rank. "Good to be aboard."

"I'm Captain Garrett."

"Lieutenant Michaels, sir," the man said. "This is my SEAL opposite number, Lieutenant Halstead."

"My XO will see that you're bunked in properly, show you where to stow your gear. If you need anything, see him."

"Yes, sir."

The line of SEALs filed through the control room, on their way down to the torpedo room. A close-mouthed lot, Garrett thought… though the ASDS commander, Michaels, would be a submarine officer rather than a SEAL, at least so said the protocol for those odd little hybrid beasts.

Garrett had worked with SEALs before. Submariners, he'd long ago decided, had much in common with the SEALs. SEAL training was more brutal than submariner training, while submarine school was far more technical than the SEALs' BUD/S program, but both groups were as tight-lipped as clams when it came to talking about themselves or what they did, and both groups were consummate professionals.

And, like submariners, the SEALs were very good at what they did.

It meant some crowding, but he was glad to have them on board.

Kazuko Mitsui couldn't wait for the flight to be over. She'd been on some bad flights, but this one was the worst ever. The drunken lawyer in G-3 reached out and groped her ass. "Hey, baby! Come sit with us!"

Somehow, she maintained her plastic smile as she spun out of the lout's grasp. Be nice to them, she thought. You must be nice to them. Bastards! …

JAL ran several special flights down to Bangkok, designated informally as sex-weekend specials. They were especially popular with Japanese businessmen— men usually quite devoted as husbands and fathers back home, but who enjoyed taking a weekend "business trip" every once in a while to the fleshpots of Bangkok, where for a price you could party in nightclubs much wilder than any on the sex strips of Tokyo or Kyoto, have your choice of girls-for-an-hour or for-a-night or for-the-weekend, or even take to bed a couple of twelve-year-olds of either sex.

Flight 1125 had originated in Tokyo, flown to Singapore to pick up some more businessmen in that repressed but cosmopolitan hub of commerce, then gone north to Bangkok, carrying a raucous cargo of vacationing men all eager to sample the fleshpots over a very long weekend, one extending all the way through to Tuesday. Now, the flight was headed back to Tokyo, again after a stopover in Singapore. Some of the men were still sampling, and it promised to be a long and difficult flight home.

Kazuko walked to the front of the main cabin and began helping the other flight attendants with the liquor wagon — the big cart filled with drinks of various descriptions, snacks, plastic cups, and ice. She heard a yelp and turned. Miko, another stew, had just been pawed by the same man who'd grabbed her. She met Miko's gaze but the other just rolled her eyes and shrugged. Another day on the job. Together, Kazuko and Miko began passing out drinks, moving slowly down the aisle.

She was thinking of Tom. She'd been thinking about him a lot these past few days.

Kazuko was beginning to realize that she still loved the tall American submariner, that she'd loved him ever since she met him during the time he'd been stationed at Atsugi. She'd been pretty hard on him during their last phone conversation. Damn it, she still couldn't see a long-term future for the two of them when he was at sea for such long stretches of time.

Stretches that never seemed to match up with the long periods when she was working overseas flights.

Another explosion of bawdy laughter from the back of the aircraft made her shake her head. The behavior of some of the passengers embarrassed her, and reflected badly on Japan Air Lines. Some of the passengers — that sweet family in Row K, for instance — had nothing in common with these international booze-and-sex-party junkies. The flight must be a nightmare for them.

She was beginning to wonder if the answer might not be for her to quit her job, move to America, and marry Tom.

Of course, at this point she didn't even know if he would have her. She'd been pretty rough on him, after all. But he had promised to try to visit when he was in Tokyo. Maybe, on the way home from this deployment…

Ul Haq leaned against the combing along the edge of the small weather bridge atop the sail, reveling in the cool and blessed feel of the wind against his face. After hours breathing the stink of a submerged diesel boat, it was good to taste the clear, clean salt air once more.

He was glad of the chance to give the batteries a good, long recharge, but even happier at the chance to feel clean wind on his face again. The day was bright and hot, the sea glassy and smooth. No other ships were visible, no aircraft, nothing but the unvaryingly crisp line between sea and sky in every direction.

But, because he was captain of a submarine, and because submarine captains worry about such things, he still was anxious. Shuhadaa had been running on the surface for a dangerously long time, now, and the chance that the submarine would be spotted on the surface was considerable.

They had come now over a thousand kilometers from their starting point at Small Dragon Island, and they were no longer within the Spratly Islands. Just thirty kilometers to the southwest lay the southern tip of Malaysia, and the city of Singapore.

After today, Shuhadaa Muqaddaseen would begin making her way back to the northeast. She needed to refuel and to replenish onboard consumables. But she had come this far to the west in search of a particular target. According to the Maktum, and information radioed that morning from Zaki, that target was approaching Shuhadaa's position at that very moment, and approaching fast, at a speed of nearly seven hundred kilometers per hour. But the target had yet to appear on radar.

Had Zaki been wrong about the timing? How long should he wait, risking detection on the surface in broad daylight, before submerging once more? Zaki had also reported the imminent arrival of an American aircraft carrier battlegroup, and that meant American submarines and American antisubmarine aircraft.

How long before they were within range?

"Captain!" sounded over the speaker on the weather bridge. "This is the radar room!"

"Go ahead."

"Sir, we have a target, airborne, bearing two-zero-one, range twelve kilometers! Altitude two thousand meters."

This was it. "Very well. Sound battle stations! Weapons! Stand by surface-to-air!" This was it….

"What's that?" someone screamed from the port side of the aircraft. An instant later, a savage bang rocked the cabin, and Kazuko and Miko both were thrown to the deck. The aircraft dropped into a sharp roll to the left, sending the drink cart toppling into seats and passengers caught in its path.

Things happened too quickly for Kazuko to sort them out. Something was terribly, terribly wrong with the aircraft — she knew that — but exactly what the problem was she couldn't tell. It felt as though the port engine had fallen off, leading to a sharp wing-drop to port. Was that possible?…

She tried to see out the port-side windows, now below her and behind screaming passengers and cascading drinks and ice. It looked like a fire; she could see the flicker and glare of yellow light.

Then the aircraft began tumbling wildly, and Kazuko fell into the ceiling. The drink cart followed, crashing down on top of her, along with Miko and a number of passengers who'd not been belted in.

She was fortunate to lose consciousness then. She was not aware of the burning airliner's long, long fall into the sea….

Ul Haq watched the pillar of smoke rising from the western horizon. The target, JAL Flight 1125, had been hit by a single surface-to-air missile fired from the single-rail vertical-tube launcher in the aft part of the submarine's sail and brought down into the sea. The Pakistan navy had paid a great deal extra for that little technological trick; most Russian Kilo-class submarines built for export didn't have a built-in SAM.

The Shuhadaa did, however, and the Maktum had plans for its use. Why struggle with slipping a bomb past airport security, when a Stinger anti-air missile or a SAM fired from a submarine launch tube could do the job just as well? This new SAM design, especially, was deadly — a heat-seeking missile that could strike a target at an altitude of up to five thousand meters. The original Russian design had been strictly for last-ditch and desperate defense against incoming air. The new design was considerably larger, fired from a tube inside the sail itself. No longer was the weapon strictly for self-defense. The only restriction was that the target be low enough to hit, which meant the attacking vessel needed to get close enough to the airport to engage the aircraft before it climbed above five thousand meters.

In Pakistan, ul Haq had seen plans for having a Kilo-class submarine patrol off the southern approaches to Long Island on the American East Coast, along the incoming traffic lanes for JFK International Airport. A suicide mission, perhaps, for the submarine and all on board, but the air lanes there were so busy that a skillful skipper might down four or five jetliners before other aircraft were routed away from the scene, and the American Navy closed in for the kill.

He wondered if he would volunteer for such a mission. So many civilians, men, women, children…

Isn't there something in your religion about Christians and Jews both being "People of the Book?" We are not "infidels."

Somehow, he could not shake DuPont's words from his mind.

"Request permission to join you on the weather bridge."

Ul Haq looked down in surprise. The Chinese attache, Hsing, was looking up at him from the ladder below the sail's round hatch.

"Of course."

Hsing clambered the rest of the way up into the cockpit. "I watched the kill on radar," he said. "An excellent shot."

"We can thank our Russian friends for the technology," he replied. "Little skill is required with a heat-seeking missile."

"You are aware, of course, that the Americans will be far more upset by this attack than at the destruction of Amboyna Cay."

Ul Haq nodded. "The Vietnamese can be seen as provocateurs on the world stage," he said. "But the passengers on that jet…"

"How do you justify that, Captain? I understand Khalili and even Zaki. But you seem to be… more reasonable."

"I am a follower of Islam…"

"So am I," Hsing said. "Ah, that surprises you? There is a sizeable population of Chinese Muslims, especially in the western parts of my country."

"I knew you were Muslim," ul Haq said. "But I assumed that you had joined Shuhadaa Muqaddaseen because of your orders, not because of your faith."

"It was more because of the Americans. My brother was killed three years ago in a battle for our Taiwanese province."

"Ah." Ul Haq nodded. "I see. You and Noor Khalili have much in common then."

"I find the man a thoroughgoing psychotic. He is too… intense. A fanatic. He lets his fears and his hatreds lead him, not his head."

"I see. And you are guided by your head?"

"In part. And by a determination to see the American imperialists stopped. They seem to feel they now own the world, with the right to intervene in the internal politics of other nations any time, and anywhere, they please."

"Ah. I see." He nodded. "That, I suppose, is why I am here as well."

"It can be lonely, standing against a colossus."

"And it can be rewarding when you strike a solid blow."

"And how do you feel, Captain ul Haq, about the fact that the blow you struck just now was against several hundred innocents on board that airliner?"

He thought about it a moment. The question had been bothering him for some time, he knew, but he'd not allowed himself to face it.

"There are no innocents," he said at last. "We are in a war, on the side of Allah, blessed be His name, against the decadence and greed and corruption of the West. Those not actively with us are legitimate targets. Those who do not help us are the enemy."

That, at any rate, was the party line, parroted in full from one of the handbooks of the Maktum.

He thought again of DuPont using the Quran against him, and wondered if he truly believed what he'd just said.