Virginia Class

15

"What in the name of Allah is going on over there?"

The man who now called himself Zaki Abar lowered his binoculars and gave the young man standing next to him a sharp look. "Do not swear upon the name of Allah, glory be to Him."

Muhammad Jabarrah gave Zaki a sour look. "Not all of us share your… intense interest in religion. That does not mean we do not share the same devotion to the cause."

Zaki sighed. He'd learned long ago that a certain amount of latitude was necessary in dealing with the wildly diverse range of beliefs within the far-flung army of the Islamic jihad. There was a powerful temptation to see the alliance as monolithic, a united army of God, holy and righteous, marching together beneath His holy banner of jihad. That mistake was common enough in the West, and especially in the United States, where the activities of groups like al Qaeda and Maktum were seen as representative of Islam as a whole.

In point of fact, however, most Muslims cared little for politics, or for the struggle between the faithful and the West. One key purpose of Maktum was to educate the faithful worldwide, to show them that the decadent American giant could be brought down as the prophet Dawud had brought down the giant Goliath. America could be fought, could be defeated with the help of Allah, praise be unto Him. Within the ranks of the movement itself there was an astonishing array of belief and practice — Sunnis and Shi'ites, Sufis and Ismailis, puritanical Wahhabis and reform-minded Ahmadiyas — and even those individuals like Jabarrah who seemed to have no faith, no belief in Allah at all.

The unbelievers, the mere fact of them, bothered Zaki at times, but he'd long ago decided that the best course was to leave their souls in the hand of Allah, blessings upon His name. There was little Zaki himself could do to argue them into paradise, and too stringent an insistence upon observance of the sharia might even drive such men from the movement.

And Maktum desperately needed fighters such as Jabarrah, men with a fanatic's hatred of America and the West, but with the cold, hard, calculating minds of born killers.

So Zaki said nothing, raising his binoculars to his eyes once more, and studying the long, low shape of the submarine surfaced ahead.

There was a heavy swell running beneath a slate-gray sky — the precursor to the fast-approaching storm system. The waves were high enough to almost entirely obscure the submarine's deck, though the bluff, sharply rectangular conning tower rose above the dark water like a cliff.

It was the Shuhadaa Muqaddaseen, obviously enough, its hull such a dark gray as to appear almost black. There was no flag above the sail, and no number on the hull; one of the PLAN subs in the region would have been flying the bright red flag of the PRC.

Through the binoculars, he could see a number of people on the sub's forward deck. They appeared to be a ragged lot, most without shirts, some completely naked, none in anything like a uniform. They appeared to be bathing, squatting or standing on the deck and using sponges and buckets of water to wash themselves down. Several uniformed men stood nearby, armed with assault rifles, so Zaki assumed that these were the prisoners Captain ul Haq had told him about over the radio.

"It would appear," Zaki said after a moment's study, "that those are our new guests. It looks like they're having a seawater bath."

"Do you seriously think it a good idea that we take them aboard? We don't have the facilities to care for prisoners."

"And you believe a submarine does?" Zaki chuckled. "Believe me, my friend. They will think their quarters on board Al Qahir palatial compared to what they had on the Shuhadaa Muqaddaseen."

"It was not their comfort I was thinking of," Jabarrah replied. "It was the difficulty of guarding several hostages. And it was particularly the danger of holding hostages. If the Americans find out—"

"And how are they supposed to find out?" Zaki asked with a shrug. He glanced up at the solidly overcast sky. "This rendezvous was specifically arranged to take advantage of this approaching storm. The American spy satellites cannot see through a solid cloud deck."

"You underestimate their technology."

"And you fear their technology as if it were magic. It is not. Remember the lesson of Vietnam. Remember the Russians in Afghanistan."

During the war in Vietnam, a poor and tiny country, with few technological assets, had managed to hold the American tiger at bay for ten years, and ultimately to wear him down to the point that he'd given up. In Afghanistan, the Soviet giant had been defeated by a handful of the faithful, mujahedin armed with antique weapons and a few hand-me-downs from the Americans. A crafty, determined, and dedicated fighter could always outlast the giant, no matter how imposing his arsenal of military toys.

"I remember," Jabarrah said, nodding. "And I also remember the Americans in Afghanistan… and in Iraq. They have learned their lessons from Vietnam very well indeed, and we cannot stand up to them face-to-face and survive. They have technologies to see in the dark and to see through storms. It is magic, of a sort. And it is a magic that your reliance on Allah will not be able to balance."

"All things are possible for Allah, the powerful, the compassionate, the all-knowing," Zaki said. "And all things are possible for those who trust Him. All the technology in the world could not withstand His wrath."

Jabarrah turned sharply, eyes blazing. "Yes? And where was His wrath when the Americans descended upon Afghanistan? Where was His wrath when their aircraft and missiles and smart bombs found our bases and our headquarters and our training camps and our arsenals and reduced them all to flaming debris and shattered bodies? Where was His wrath when their Special Forces came, digging us out of our caves and mountain redoubts? Where was His wrath when they overthrew the Taliban and imposed the rule of their puppets on the nation?"

"Gently, my friend. I am not your enemy." Zaki was about to say something about the ways of Allah being mysterious, but decided against it. Jabarrah, he knew, had lived in Afghanistan for many years, had had two Afghani wives and a son who'd fought for the Taliban. Both wives had been killed during the bombing of Kandahar; the son had been missing since the American assault on Tora Bora, had probably been one of thousands buried alive inside one of the caves during the bombings there.

Jabarrah, Zaki thought, had every right to be bitter. What he didn't yet understand was that it was useless to blame Allah for the murders of his family, that sometimes the ways of Allah were beyond human comprehension. All Zaki could do with such a man was to exercise patience, and trust that Allah would bring him back to the true faith in the end.

"I have no answers for you, my friend," Zaki said simply. "I do not know the mind of Allah. But I do know that the Americans, though powerful, are not Allah, and do not have His power."

Jabarrah gave Zaki a scornful look. "They could have one of their Los Angeles or Seawolf submarines thirty meters away from Al Qahir, right there." He pointed at an empty path of ocean off the yacht's port side. "It could be lying in wait, lurking just beneath the surface, watching every move we make, perhaps listening to our very words, and you would never even be aware of it!"

Zaki sighed. "If that is true, why should we even bother to continue the fight? Why not simply give up, assume that Allah has abandoned us, and flee while we still have our lives?"

Jabarrah looked away, silent for a long moment. "I suppose it comes down to wanting to take as many of the Westerners with me as I possibly can before I am overwhelmed. Vengeance. I want to kill them for what they did to me and my family!"

"My friend, if you cannot trust Allah just yet, then have trust in me, and in your brothers within Maktum. We have resources, and we have knowledge that you don't know about. You will have your vengeance. Believe me. But for now, you must learn trust, and you must learn patience."

Al Qahir was drawing much closer to the submarine now, close enough that the prisoners on her forward deck were easily visible without binoculars. Two of them, he saw with a small start of surprise, were extremely beautiful women wearing skimpy swimsuits. That must have made life interesting on board the submarine.

Crewmen on the Shuhadaa Muqaddaseen were rigging fenders — large tires tied to lengths of mooring line and suspended from deck cleats along the curving side of the submarine's hull. Sailors tossed lines across the narrowing gap of water between the two vessels and, as Al Qahir's pilot briefly reversed engines, then shut them down, they gentled the yacht up to the submarine's side and made her fast. It took a few minutes to rig a brow — a boarding gangplank reaching from the submarine's aft deck to the yacht, an evolution made difficult and dangerous by the surging waves. The task was accomplished at last, however, and an armed, black-bearded man in a Pakistani naval lieutenant's uniform waved them aboard.

"You are Zaki?" the lieutenant asked as he stepped off the pitching and shifting uncertain footing of the gangplank.

"I am."

"Lieutenant Daulat," the man said. "Come with me, sir."

Zaki followed the man to the submarine's forward hatch, bracing himself to descend through the narrow tunnel down through the deck into stygian darkness, then ducking out through a stoop-through into a harshly lit world of green-painted steel, claustrophobic ceilings covered by pipes and bundled wires, and men. Ul Haq was standing by the gleaming column of the periscope tube.

"Hello, Captain."

"A pleasure to see you, sir. Be welcome on board."

"Thank you. I… saw the packages you have for us up there." He pointed at the overhead. "The ones you want us to take off your hands."

Ul Haq's voice dropped to a whisper. "I need them off this vessel, Zaki. They are disrupting morale and harming the efficiency of my command."

"So your report stated. Very well. We can take them back to Small Dragon Island for you, I suppose."

"Excellent. Shuhadaa Muqaddaseen is on her way there now for reprovisioning, but we will be much better off without the prisoners."

Zaki looked bemused. "Your submarine has a speed of… is it twenty knots?"

"Yes."

"And Al Qahir can manage perhaps twelve. You would get the prisoners to safety more quickly if you kept them with you."

"One of the prisoners has already been killed," ul Haq told him. "The conditions in which we must keep them are… not good. I fear morewill die if they stay on board the Shuhadaa Muqaddaseen."

"You show compassion for the weak, the helpless, and even for the infidel. The Prophet would approve, I suppose."

"This is not a matter of compassion, Zaki. It is a command decision I make for the good of my vessel, and for the good of my men. The prisoners all are topside at the moment, bathing and washing out their clothing. I would appreciate it if you could transfer them directly to Al Qahir."

Zaki nodded. "I understand. It will be done." He stopped, blinked, and looked around the close confines of the control room. "In the name of Allah the merciful," Zaki said, his eyes watering, "why does it stink so in here?"

"If you were a submariner," ul Haq replied, "you would know, and understand."

Garrett studied the glowing screen of the chart table, scowling. According to the slowly moving line of green light across the various shades of blue on the map, Virginia was making good time, but as she moved into the Spratly AO, he needed to make some decisions about where to begin the mission.

His orders gave him a fair amount of latitude. He was required to check out Small Dragon Island with the help of the SEAL element on board, and he was supposed to try to track down and investigate an eighty-foot yacht wandering somewhere in all those hundreds of thousands of square miles of atoll-speckled ocean.

There was also the small matter of the renegade submarine causing so much havoc in the Spratly Islands. And beyond.

Kazuko …

But where to begin? The Spratly Area of Operations encompassed something like a quarter of a million square miles of mostly open ocean, an area roughly the size of the state of Texas, made treacherous by submerged reefs, coral atolls, and extensive and largely uncharted shallows.

His first inclination was to head west, probing the region around Spratly Island, and out beyond in the direction of Singapore. The renegade sub was out there somewhere, and he wanted to find that vessel with all the hunger of a desperately starving man.

But it had been over twenty-four hours since Flight 1125 had gone down; a Kilo-class sub could be anywhere within 500 miles of the shoot-down point — a tiny and hard-to-find target lost somewhere within an area of some 780,000 square miles. It would be useless to simply charge in and start looking. Virginia's sonars were the best, most sensitive sub-borne arrays in the world, but the Kilo, when operating submerged and on her batteries, was one of the quietest submarines in the world.

There was an old adage in the service, however. To catch a submarine, you use a submarine. Attack subs like the Virginia were the natural enemy of hostile subs, designed specifically to hunt them down and destroy them. And the point was not only that Virginia had the equipment for that kind of hunt, but that her skipper had that kind of mind.

A hunter's mind. A mind that knew how the enemy sub's skipper thought, and could use that information to hunt down the quarry.

And what Garrett's hunter mind was telling him now was that a Kilo-class submarine on an ocean deployment would most likely be at the far end of her patrol leg if she'd left Small Dragon Island and ended up at the place where Flight 1125 had gone down. Her captain would want to take on more fuel for the boat's diesels, and fresh food for the crew. What were the possibilities?

Not Vietnam, certainly. If the reports were true, this Kilo was knocking off Vietnamese targets in the Spratlys. Vietnam would be the Enemy.

Most likely would be a submarine tender… a large ship equipped to resupply, rearm, refuel, and reprovision a submarine at sea. There were no intelligence reports of such a vessel in the area, however. Further, if that Kilo was trying to maintain a low profile, something as big and as highly visible as a sub tender would be a definite liability.

Which left some other land port or base.

A port in Indonesia was a possibility, but the only destination that made sense was Small Dragon Island, which had featured prominently in the earlier intelligence reports on activities in the region. It was possible that one of the other Chinese-held islands was equipped to restock the Kilo… but the CIA reports on Small Dragon suggested there was a kind of a hangar blasted into coral rock, a garage, if you will, large enough to accommodate a couple of submarines, with channels and approaches deep enough that the subs could enter the base submerged.

Garrett was willing to bet his career that the pirate Kilo was headed toward Small Dragon Island, on the eastern fringes of the Spratly Island group close by the Palawan Passage.

That was where Virginia would begin her hunt. If the Kilo wasn't at Small Dragon now, she soon would be… and Virginia, and Garrett, would be ready.

A chime sounded. "Captain? Comm," a voice called over the map screen's intercom function.

"Yes?"

"Message in from Yokosuka, sir. VLF band, priority urgent."

Virginia was currently trailing an antenna from her sail that enabled her to pick up VLF signals while submerged. That limited his speed to less than twenty knots but enabled him to stay in touch with the outside world. "Let me see it."

He walked back to his command chair and sat down, pulling up his touchscreen and tapping open a message window. The message, brief and to the point, scrolled across the screen.

A company package? That could only mean someone from the Agency — the CIA — and that, Garrett thought angrily, could only mean trouble. The fancier the electronics, the better the communications net, the more damage some REMF back in Washington — or Langley — could do through ass-stubborn micromanagement. Damn!

However, orders were orders, and Virginia had a rendezvous to make. He glanced up at the control room clock, which had been reset at Yokosuka to register local time, now Zulu -8, as opposed to GMT. The time was now 2020 hours local, but that was 1220 Zulu — Greenwich Mean Time. He had a bit over seven hours to get to the rendezvous point which was — thankfully — only about three hours from Virginia's current position.

"Navigation Officer! Set a new course. Come right to two-zero-zero. Comm, reel in the wire and prepare for thirty knots."

They would keep that rendezvous, but the "company package" had damned well better stay out of the way.

"Ch'ien Nine-five is making unusual noise, Captain."

Jian nodded, looking over the shoulder of the sonar officer. The sound trace for the target was faint, almost lost in the background noise of the ocean, but it was there. "What is it? What do you hear?"

"I'm not sure, sir. It might be an electric motor… some kind of winch. There's a kind of intermittent metallic scraping sound. It could be a cable being pulled into the target."

"Let me hear." He accepted a sonar headset and listened for a moment. Yes… there it was… a faint, almost undetectable fluttering sound, a faint whir, and the occasional clunk and scrape of metal on metal.

Jian nodded, then handed the headset back. "He's drawing in his low-frequency antenna. Perhaps he's received new orders."

VLF radio signals — those on the EM spectrum from about 3 to 30 kilohertz — could penetrate the ocean to a depth of about fifteen meters. A submarine could pick up those signals by traveling very close to the surface, or by trailing either a wire antenna or a loop antenna buoy.

It was fortunate that the target was streaming an antenna, for what Jian was attempting to do would not otherwise have been possible.

Stalking the American submarine was itself an exercise in extreme frustration. The Yinbi could manage a top speed of about twenty knots — perhaps a bit more. The American submarine could reach thirty easily, and once had apparently touched almost forty. That made trailing the American more than a little difficult.

Fortunately, the American wasn't running at full speed all the time and, as he entered the waters that embraced the Spratly Islands, he'd begun moving more sedately, streaming the antenna in order to receive radio signals from his headquarters.

The faster a submarine ran, the more noise it made. Even one of the ultraquiet American boats left an acoustic signature when they burst into a sprint. When this one was moving at thirty knots or better, it was difficult — but possible — to track him.

But, of course, at such speeds the American sub would swiftly leave Yinbi behind. Fortunately again, however, when the American streamed his VLF antenna, the cable vibrating as it moved through the water produced a unique sound — not loud, but loud enough and distinctive enough to allow Yinbi to track him. When Yinbi had first picked up the American, he was traveling deep and fast; six hours ago, he'd slowed to less than twenty knots and begun streaming his antenna.

At times, too, the American slowed even further— probably so that his sonar operators could take a careful listen around. At those times, the American appeared to simply vanish off Yinbi's screens, but was then moving so slowly that Jian could close on the target's last-known position.

It was important to stay behind the American—"in his baffles," as the expression put it. The Yinbi was extraordinarily quiet herself, but Yankee sonar technology was capable of picking Jian's vessel up if he made the slightest mistake.

And so, Yinbi pursued the American in a series of alternating sprints and rests. The enemy was averaging a speed of about eighteen knots overall, which meant that Yinbi could stay with him if his own slowdown periods for listening were kept to a minimum. The task was made easier — a little easier, at any rate — by the fact that the American had been maintaining a more or less straight course for the past twenty hours. Each time Yinbi's sonar lost him, it was easy to estimate his position with the assumption that he was still traveling south, but at reduced speed.

It was made more difficult — and deadly — by the fact that each time the American slowed, he became effectively invisible. When that happened, there was a chance that Yinbi, sprinting toward the last-heard position at twenty knots, would run right into the American from behind. Operating solely on passive sonar, there was no way of knowing either the target's exact depth or its range.

"Winch noise has ceased, Captain. He may be preparing to speed up."

If so, Yinbi might well lose him this time. Jian had been able to stay on the target's tail so far only because the American had been trailing that antenna. If he was going to sprint again, he would almost certainly get away.

"Captain!" the sonar operator snapped. "Target changing aspect!"

Jian picked up the microphone for the sub's intercom system. "Maneuvering! Come to dead slow!"

He studied the sonar screen. Sure enough, the long, straight line barely visible against the hash of background noise was now slanting toward the right — an indication that the target had changed course and was now registering on sonar receivers along Yinbi's side, and not solely from dead ahead.

It was possible that the American was clearing his baffles — moving in a large circle to allow his sonar operators a chance to listen for pursuers in his wake. At such times, all the hunter could do was go dead slow and silent.

"Target is maintaining new aspect, Captain. He appears to be coming to a new course… I make it between one-nine-five and two-one-zero."

So he wasn't clearing his baffles, but changing course. That made sense, if one assumed that the target had just received new orders over the VLF antenna.

However, if he was about to begin a high-speed sprint, he would swiftly leave the Chinese submarine far behind.

"Target is picking up speed," the sonar officer reported. He reached up and touched his headset, pressing it tighter against his right ear. "I'm having trouble… Sir, the target has disappeared."

Jian had already seen the slanting line on the screen growing fainter. Now it was gone, lost somewhere in the ocean ahead.

Yinbi's captain scowled. "Keep listening. Inform me if you pick up anything."

"Yes, sir."

Still scowling, a black and introspective expression that kept his subordinates at bay as effectively as a high stone wall, Jian returned to the control room. Which way should he go?

His orders were reasonably specific. His first target was any American aircraft carrier that entered these waters. Other PLAN submarines were supposed to be in the area, ready to track and kill American attack subs, to, in effect, keep American submarines away from Jian's command while he stalked and killed the supercarrier.

Jian, however, was an opportunist. American attack submarines were notoriously difficult even to find, much less track. Picking up this one had been pure luck, thanks to the convergence zone west of the island of Luzon, and the fact that the target had been trailing a VLF antenna for the past few hours had given him an excellent opportunity both to hear the American, and to keep up with him. There were no American super-carriers within the horizon of Yinbi's sonar yet, and the sub he'd been trailing represented a target almost as tempting.

So the question now was… did he extrapolate the American's new course and attempt to follow? Or did he break off pursuit, radio the target's last-known position, course, and speed to headquarters, and hope the other PLAN subs could find it?

He'd not been able to close yet to an effective attack range; when he did, Yinbi would need to score a kill with her first salvo, because she would not get a second chance.

Jian, however, was confident of his own abilities, and of those of his crew. There was a good chance that he would be able to pick up the American again, especially if he began streaming an antenna once more. The alternative was to return to his patrol area north of Huangyan Dao, and wait for a supercarrier to show up.

He thought about the choice for only a moment.

"Maneuvering," he said. "Bring us to a new heading… two-zero-three. Ahead flank."

If the American submarine presented him with the opportunity, Jian would kill it.