Virginia Class

21

The last shift for the midday meal was over, and, except for the five of them, only the mess crew was left, cleaning up and getting ready for the first supper dogwatch. Because it was the roomiest compartment on board, Garrett had commandeered the area, chasing out a half-dozen off-duty sailors using it as a lounge and posting a sentry at each door.

Katie Milford was present, along with the CIA officer, Jorgensen, and Lieutenant Halstead. Doc Colbert had given Ginger, the other woman, a sedative and was letting her sleep it off in sick bay. Katie's observations on board the terrorist submarine and yacht, however, would be invaluable.

"So the submarine that picked you up was crewed by Arabs," Stevens was saying. "Is that right?"

"Yes, sir," she replied.

"How did you know they were Arabs?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. The language, and the accent of the ones who spoke English kind of sounded like it, you know? Some wore turbans. Most were dark skinned, with beards or at least mustaches. Eyes like Omar Sharif. They looked Arab."

" 'Arab' takes on a lot of territory, Miss Milford. What kind of Arab? Saudi? Egyptian? Iraqi?"

"I don't know. Iranian, maybe? Or from Afghanistan?"

"Iranians and Afghani aren't Arabs. Damn it, miss, don't you have any clues about who these people are?"

"Take it easy, Stevens," Garrett warned. He understood that Stevens was trying to get information from the woman without leading her, but enough was enough. "Not everybody knows their geography like the crowd at Langley."

Stevens shot Garrett a dark, stay-out-of-my-business look, but changed the direction of his questioning. "What do you remember, Miss Milford? About the submarine. About your captors. Any little detail might help."

"I know Mr. DuPont thought they were Muslims. One of them got mad when he quoted something at him out of the Koran."

"That's Quran," Stevens said absently, correcting her pronunciation. "Did they stop to pray five times a day?"

"Mr. Stevens," Katie said with a tired sag to her shoulders, "you have to understand that we spent just about every minute crammed inside that tiny little room. All I saw was the other people from the Sea

Breeze, and mostly they were too seasick to talk much. Poor Mr. Schiffer was raving Bible verses at the end, and Mr. Kingsfeld was killed. They took us out one or two at a time when we asked to go to the bathroom, and then stood over us the whole time, watching and making jokes about what we were doing with each other. Once, just once, they took us up on deck to wash ourselves and our clothing in the ocean, and to get some fresh air. That was when the yacht arrived, and we were taken off the sub. After that, things were a little better. We had more room, and better food. We still didn't have privacy, though… and when we got to that island, they took the men off and left us there. That's when things started getting really bad…. "

She gave a shudder, and Garrett interrupted. "Stevens, I don't think badgering Ms. Milford further is going to get us anywhere. We know what we need to know… terrorist forces have a submarine in the area, and the Chinese are helping them keep it armed and fueled. Her description sounds to me like a Kilo-class boat. That certainly tallies with your information about a Pakistani boat gone rogue."

"Yes. Yes, it does. But what we still don't know is how committed the Chinese are to this operation. Why are they helping terrorists? What's in it for them?"

"Control of the Spratly Island Group, perhaps," Jorgensen put in. "They don't want an open war with Vietnam, so they get proxies to knock off Vietnamese assets in the region."

"Seems reasonable," Stevens said.

"And it explains the downing of a civilian jetliner," Garrett said. His fists clenched before him on the mess table. He struggled to control his voice. "If the terrorist sub was a Kilo with a surface-to-air missile, they could take on aircraft." He ticked the points off on his fingers. "An American yacht engaged in commercial negotiations with Vietnam. A Nissan car carrier. A Japanese airliner. It looks like they're waging war against Asian nations that are benefiting from Western commercial interests."

"Is that a political statement?" Jorgensen wondered. "Or an economic one?"

"In this day and age, the two are often the same," Stevens pointed out. "Economic power translates as political power."

"Leave it to the CIA to expose the cynical underbelly of terrorism," Halstead said, laughing.

"It's true, though," Garrett said. "When the AQ attacked Manhattan on 9-11, what did they go for? The World Trade Center. The living, breathing image of Western capitalism, and an economy bent on dominating the world. At least, that's the way al Qaeda would see it."

"Are those terrorists al Qaeda, then?" Katie asked. "Like the ones who blew up the Trade Center?"

"Quite possibly… or they're a closely related group," Stevens told her. "We've had reports for several years now about another shadowy terror group— called Maktum. The name means 'silent' or 'hidden.' They were a Pakistani offshoot of al Qaeda during the American operation in Afghanistan, and may have been organized to help some Taliban and AQ leaders escape the country. One of their leaders is a Saudi named Mahmud Salah Zahid. Nowadays he goes by the name Zaki Abar."

Garrett nodded. "Zaki."

"We have him in custody now on the yacht," Stevens added, "shaken up but alive. When that helicopter from the Roosevelt arrives, he'll be going on a little ride. I expect that when they interrogate the bastard back at Langley, we'll learn all sorts of interesting things about al Qaeda and the Maktum."

"All well and good," Garrett said. "But where does that leave us with the terrorist sub?"

"One thing…" Katie said.

"Yes?" Stevens said.

"There was one guy on board that submarine. I think he was an officer. He wasn't Arab. He was Chinese."

"Yes, that confirms that China is helping those bastards," Garrett said.

"Great," Jorgensen added. He made a face. "This could get real nasty, real fast."

Stevens scowled. "Your exec is right, Captain. We need to move on this fast. By now the Chinese on Small Dragon must know something's happened to the Al Qahir. They'll be making contingency plans."

"So… will the Chinese fight to help their AQ allies?" Jorgensen wondered. "Or stand back and watch us mop the deck with them?"

"They'll fight," Garrett said.

Stevens looked at him, questioning. "And how do you figure that, Captain? The best analysts at Langley have been going crazy for the past few weeks trying to determine the answer to that question. As far as they know, it's an even toss of the coin."

"They'll fight because they've already fought us," Garrett said. "That torpedo attack on the Virginia two days ago? I'm betting that that was a Chinese boat."

"What makes you think so?"

"Sun-tzu — a very wise philosopher of things martial — pointed out once that if you know the enemy and know yourself, you will always be victorious. Whoever the guy was that popped four fish at us the other day was good. He picked up a Virginia-class submarine, the quietest sub in the ocean, and managed to get into a firing position without us picking him up. I know how good my crew is, Stevens. I know how good — or how lucky — that guy had to be."

"Fine so far. Why couldn't it have been the terrorist sub?"

"Because no Islamic states have been engaged in a naval war since… well, the last one I know of was Pakistan and India thirty years ago. You need a shooting war to stay in practice."

"But—"

"There's more. Ms. Milford here has made a point of telling us that the crew of the submarine that picked her up was a pretty ragged and undisciplined bunch. Some in uniform, others in dirty civilian stuff, almost rags in some cases. Her description of what happened — the shooting of one of Sea Breeze's crewmen, the way the women were treated — it all speaks of a lack of discipline that you will not find on an efficient, well-run boat with a well-trained crew.

"But the Chinese have been in a shooting naval war recently… with us, a couple of years ago. They're still licking their wounds, I imagine, and some of their officers must be thinking pretty dark thoughts about us. Whoever ambushed the Virginia Thursday was a pro. That means the Chinese, not a damned mob."

Stevens nodded slowly. "That does make sense."

"Damned right it does. And here's some more sense. If you were the Chinese, sitting here in the Spratlys encouraging your new Muslim allies to take on the whole world, what would you expect would happen next?"

"Well… I don't know. I guess I'd expect the United States to strike back somehow."

"Right. How?"

"A naval task force…" Stevens's eyes widened. "The Seventh Fleet. The Roosevelt carrier battle-group."

"Does it strike you as interesting that the Chinese would arrange things to get the U.S. Navy involved in these waters? Imagine. We come stomping in with a battlegroup, looking for terrorists. And if a couple of torpedoes took out our carrier… would we blame the Chinese? Or the terrorists?"

"You're saying it's a trap."

"I'm saying I'm damned suspicious of this whole setup. The Chinese may be political opportunists, but they are not stupid, and they do not engage in foreign military adventurism without very good, very practical, very pragmatic reasons behind it. Right now, they're nursing a grudge because of the Taiwan incident a couple of years ago. Maybe some of them see this as a way to strike back without getting themselves involved in another open war. Or maybe the idea is to get us to abandon our support for Taiwan."

"I'm afraid that makes entirely too much sense," Stevens said, thoughtful. "I'm going to want you to write something up to that effect for me to transmit."

Garrett nodded, keeping his thoughts to himself. The report would present yet another opportunity for the Rear-Echelon Micromanagement Freaks to engage in their favorite pastime.

Still, given that they would find a way to micromanage no matter what he did, Garrett thought it better that they do so being fully informed. If the revolution in computer technology and communications made it easier for the REMFs to run things in real time from the comfort of a Pentagon basement, at least they also made it possible for them to do it knowing what the front-line people knew about the situation.

"Captain Garrett" sounded over the 1MC speaker on the mess hall overhead. "Captain Garrett to the control room."

"Damn." He stood. "Katie, you let these people grill you for another ten minutes, max, and then tell them where to get off. Do you read me?"

She smiled. "Aye aye, Captain, sir!"

He caught Stevens's eye. "Ten minutes."

"I think we're almost done here, Captain," Stevens said with a shrug.

Moments later, Garrett walked into the control room. Falk, the OOD, wore a worried look. "Whatcha got?"

"Sonar reports a new target, Captain. Sounds like a diesel boat running on its snorkel. Bearing zero-three-zero. It may be making for Small Dragon Island."

"Hot damn!" He swung into his command seat, swiveling to check the big navigation plot board on the control room's aft bulkhead. Zero-three-zero. Northeast, close enough.

Katie Milford had reported that the Muslim-crewed submarine was currently at Small Dragon. She'd seen it at the dock as the men were being led ashore from the Al Qahir.

If this contact was coming from the north, there was an excellent chance that it was the one that had taken a shot at Virginia two days earlier.

And Garrett wanted that sub, wanted it almost as badly as he wanted the Muslim-crewed sub at Small Dragon.

He was in a difficult place. His current task was to keep station with the Al Qahir until that Sea Stallion could arrive — an event that would not happen for at least another five hours, might not even happen until tomorrow.

His heart wanted to go after the submarine inside the enclosed pen at Small Dragon. That would be the Pakistani sub.

That was the boat that had shot down a civilian aircraft, the passenger plane with Kazuko on board.

But Garrett the tactician knew that chance had just handed him a golden opportunity. That diesel boat— probably a Chinese Kilo — was coming into Small Dragon on her snorkel, doing so to recharge her batteries. Snorkeling was an appallingly noisy procedure, one easily tracked by a good sonar crew. This was his chance to nail the bastard that had taken a potshot at Virginia, and, just maybe, to even the odds against them a little bit.

The down side: They were not officially at war with China yet, and while Virginia's orders allowed her to fire back if fired upon, Garrett could not prove, incontestably, that the Kilo out there was the same sub that had fired at him. Besides, firing back when fired upon didn't usually include a forty-eight-hour delay between the two salvos.

But in combat, victory generally goes to the side that makes the fewest mistakes, and that other sub skipper out there had just made a big one.

"Mr. Falk, sound battle stations," Garrett announced.

He was going to take that bastard down.

"Captain! A message from Small Dragon Island!" The messenger handed Jian a printout. He accepted it and scanned down the columns of computer-printed ideograms.

Zaki's yacht, Al Qahir, appeared to be in trouble. The boat had left the Small Dragon enclosure before midnight the night before last. At a point just twenty kilometers west of the island, Al Qahir, as tracked by radar from Small Dragon, appeared to have gone dead in the water. There'd been a confused radio broadcast — something about hitting a reef… and then silence for thirty-seven hours.

The presumption was that the yacht had struck a reef, and damaged her radio in the process. Yinbi's orders, signed by General Han, were to proceed west to the yacht's radar-plotted position and investigate. If the yacht was damaged, he was to provide assistance. If the craft could not be repaired, he was to bring Zaki and any of Zaki's key personnel back to base.

Jian did not like the orders. Had he been submerged, of course, he would not have had to acknowledge them, since Yinbi couldn't even receive radio signals once she submerged. However, with the snorkel above water, the UHF and broadband radio antennas were as well. The problem with technology, he decided, was that the chair-bound self-declared strategists back at a safe, cozy headquarters office somewhere could decide what the people on the front lines needed to do, directing them like so many expendable pieces in a game of chess.

Jian walked to the navigational chart table and studied the depth soundings west of Small Dragon.

No… no… no. It didn't fit. Much of the Spratly Island region was poorly charted, true, and there were indeed areas made deadly by reefs and shoal water. But the general area around Small Dragon had been fairly well surveyed when the base there was constructed. If submarines were going to be coming and going to the island, the waters had to be well charted.

And his charts showed open water to the west, with the bottom plunging sharply to a depth ranging between eight hundred and twelve hundred meters. There was no way they could have missed a coral reef that close to the construction site. It just wasn't possible.

If Al Qahir had not hit a reef, then, the only reasonable explanations were either some sort of fire and explosion, or enemy action. That fragmentary message hadn't mentioned an explosion. What they'd thought was a reef in otherwise comfortably deep water might well have been some sort of snare designed to stop them preparatory to a boarding action.

At least Jian had to assume that to be the case.

And then something else occurred to him.

Consider. The Al Qahir had gone dead in an otherwise empty ocean. If the terrorist yacht had been boarded by enemy commandos, those commandos must have come from somewhere… and, since no other radar targets had been detected, no ships or small craft, no aircraft, that somewhere must be an American submarine.

Quite probably the same Seawolf-class submarine he'd engaged two days ago.

So just possibly this encounter would provide Jian and the Yinbi de Gongji with a spectacular tactical opportunity. He could approach Zaki's yacht on battery power, silent as death. If the other submarine made a single noise, Jian would be ready with another spread of torpedoes, fired this time from such close range the American would not have time to outrun them.

"Engineer!" he snapped. "What is the charge on our batteries?"

"We've recharged by two-thirds, Captain. I recommend another six hours to bring the charge up to full."

Two-thirds battery power would allow Yinbi to maneuver silently for at least six hours, more if they moved slowly.

"Two-thirds will suffice," he replied. "Secure from snorkeling. Secure the diesel. Engage electric motor."

"Yes, Captain!"

"Helm! Come right to new heading, two-six-zero. Make depth one hundred meters, speed eight knots."

"New course two-six-zero! Depth one hundred meters, at speed eight knots! Yes, sir!"

"Sonar!"

"Sonar here, Captain!"

"We will be entering an area almost certainly occupied by an American submarine. I want to know the instant you hear anything out of the ordinary!"

"Yes, sir!"

The other submarine captain had the very luck of the devil, as Americans liked to say, evading or surviving a spread of four torpedoes.

That luck, however, was just about to run out.

"Target has gone silent, Captain," Queensly reported. "He's secured snorkeling and gone deep."

Damn! Garrett considered the navigational screen for a moment. The other guy was getting cagey.

Why did he choose to go silent now? Garrett closed his eyes, trying to get inside the mind of his opponent. It could be chance, true. The Chinese captain might be under orders to run silent when he was within a certain distance of Small Dragon Island, in order to mask Chinese submarine activities in the area from American sonar.

But there could be a slightly more paranoid explanation. While snorkeling, the other sub's radio antennas, some of them, were above the water. And, as Stevens had pointed out a few minutes ago, the Chinese base must realize that something was wrong with the Al Qahir—unmoving and out of communication.

It was entirely possible that the Chinese skipper had just been ordered to investigate the terrorist yacht.

"Weps?" he said.

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Carpenter replied, turning from his board. "Warshot status."

"Tubes two and four loaded, sir. Junior is loaded in number one."

"Prepare Junior for EVA."

"Prepare LMRS for EVA, aye aye."

He pressed the switch opening his 1MC mike. "Mr. Stevens, Mr. Jorgensen, Mr. Halstead, Mr. Michaels to the control room."

He checked the status readouts on his console. Virginia was currently station-keeping at eighty feet.

Lieutenant Michaels, the command and helm officer for the ASDS, reached the control room first. "You called for me, Captain?"

"Yes, I did. How long will it take to ready the ASDS for launch?"

"Her batteries should be charged up by now, sir. And the go-over for damage after the collision checked out okay. But we'll still need to run through the prelaunch checklist. I'd say… twenty minutes? Thirty at the outside."

Garrett scowled. That was not the answer he'd hoped for, though it had been what he'd expected.

As always, working off sonar data alone, the range to the other submarine was unknown. Just working off the nav chart, and assuming the Chinese boat had been on a course to Small Dragon from somewhere north, it could be as far away as twenty miles… or as close as five.

A Kilo had a top speed of twenty knots. That meant it could be moving into firing position within an hour… or as soon as fifteen minutes. The other skipper, if he was opting for a silent approach, would probably cut his speed back to twelve knots or less, both to avoid making noise and to allow his sonar operators to hear. That extended the time, but the other boat could still be in the area well inside of half an hour.

And preparing the ASDS for launch, and releasing it from the hatch, were fairly noisy operations. Hell, even if the SEAL minisub was ready to release now, there was a good chance the noise would be picked up by the Kilo, if it were as close as five or even ten miles away.

Stevens, Jorgensen, and Halstead entered the control room. "Reporting as ordered, Captain," the exec said.

"Sonar contact, XO. That Chinese boat was snorkeling toward the island, and just went silent. She may be maneuvering to close."

"I should get back aboard the yacht, Captain," Stevens said. "I'll take the women with me, so they'll be safe."

"Negative," Garrett rasped. "There's not enough time to clear the ASDS for launch. The other guy has his ears on."

"What about surfacing, Captain?" asked Halstead. "Or let me go up with a scuba tank. I want to be with my men."

"Sorry, Lieutenant. Those options are all way too noisy. You're with us for the duration, I'm afraid."

"Damn!"

"I must protest, Captain," Stevens said. "Your priority is to protect the yacht, the hostages, and our prisoners."

"Didn't you hear the man?" Jorgensen snapped. "That hostile is coming here, and he's likely coming to have a look at that yacht. Protecting the yacht is exactly what he's trying to do!"

The mission, the boat, the plant, the crew….

"I regret the inconvenience, gentlemen," Garrett said. "You're all four welcome to stay in the control room. Just stay out of the way, and hang on if we have to do some sudden maneuvering. Mr. Jorgensen? I wonder if you would escort Ms. Milford to her quarters, and see to it that she's in a rack, or at least hanging on. This could be a rough ride."

"Like the other day?" Jorgensen grinned. "Yes, sir!"

"I'd like to at least alert my team, on board the yacht," Halstead said.

"Negative, Mr. Halstead. That means coming to periscope depth to raise a mast, and that means noise. Diving Officer!"

"Diving Officer, aye, sir!"

"Rig for ultraquiet!"

"Rig boat for ultraquiet, aye aye, sir!"

"Where's the thermocline?"

"Thermocline is at two hundred eighty feet, Captain."

"Take us down to three hundred ten feet. Helm, bring us to course one-eight-zero."

"Set depth to three-one-zero feet, aye, sir."

"Come to course one-eight-zero, aye, sir!" Virginia slid into the black silence of the depths.