Virginia Class

8

Black-hulled and silent, Shuhadaa again slipped like a great, hunting cat through the shadowed forests of the sea. The water here was shallow — less than thirty meters, just barely deep enough to allow the vessel to remain submerged.

If the Vietnamese possessed a decent antisubmarine search force, ul Haq thought, with ASW helicopters, it would have been a hopeless mission. They would have been spotted long ago, as visible in these brightly sunlit and shallow waters as a beached whale. But the target appeared oblivious to the threat closing in now from the southeast.

"Target in sight," ul Haq called from his place at the periscope column, peering into the eyepiece. "Bearing three-zero-eight, range… seven hundred meters."

"Target bearing three-zero-eight," Lieutenant Mahmud Jamal replied from the weapons board. "Range seven hundred meters."

Ul Haq took a last, long look through the periscope optics. This was no wood-hulled Vietnamese or Filipino fishing boat.

The Spratly Island facility was similar in many respects to the Chinese base at Small Dragon Island — a large marine platform built on pedestals like an oil rig, rising from a patch of coral barely above the surface of the water even at low tide. To the left, a heliport was connected to the main structure by a causeway. The base itself resembled a four-story apartment building, with clusters of microwave relays, radar masts, and satellite dishes on the roof.

Amboyna Cay — the Chinese called that speck of coral Anbo Shazhou — was a powerful symbol. It lay just 150 kilometers southeast of Spratly Island itself, the rock that gave its popular name to the entire archipelago stretched across 410,000 square kilometers of the South China Sea, and could, therefore, be considered to be the capital of this entire region. It also lay close to the border of a large patch of mostly empty ocean west of the Amboyna Cay that now, according to Chinese intelligence, was being actively prospected for gas and oil.

The Vietnamese base facilities on Spratly Island itself were out of the submarine's reach. Spratly was one of the few islands in the group with any land area at all, and Shuhadaa Muqaddaseen did not carry cruise missiles that could strike inland targets. But Amboyna

Cay was another matter. The Vietnamese base was built, in part, over the water.

Reportedly, it was serving as a supply center for the oil prospecting vessels operating to the west. Striking this base would send a decisive message to Hanoi: Your assets in these waters are vulnerable.

By using the rogue Pakistani submarine to make the attack, China distanced herself, could, as the American intelligence phrase so elegantly put it, "plausibly deny" any involvement in the incident. Hanoi might suspect Beijing's complicity, but once the attacks on western shipping began a few days later, they would have to publicly accept this as simply another terrorist outrage. With luck, they might decide that defending these islands was futile and withdraw. Or, again with luck, they might take overt action against Chinese interests in these waters, providing Beijing with the excuse necessary to move in with its own overt military muscle.

At worst, Vietnam would lose an important petroleum prospecting base, and their development of commercial assets in these waters would be delayed, possibly for years.

"May I see, please? Captain."

Ul Haq nodded and stepped back from the eyepiece, so that Commander Hsing could take his place. "Would you like the honor of ordering the attack, Commander?"

Hsing studied the target for a moment, then turned, shaking his head. "No, sir. I wished merely to verify your target."

Still letting us do your dirty work, ul Haq thought. The man was less advisor than spy.

No matter. During the past forty-eight hours, Shuhadaa had tracked and destroyed three fishing boats — two flying the flag of the Philippines, and one the flag of Vietnam. In each case, a boarding party had gone across in a rubber boat ostensibly to check their papers, assembled the crew on the afterdeck, machine-gunned them, then planted explosive charges in the vessel's bilge. There was no sense in wasting an expensive torpedo on a fifteen-meter wooden hull.

The Spratlys were an important fishing ground for both the Philippines and the Vietnamese, with several million tons of fish being taken from these waters each year. Sinking those fishing boats was, at best, an economic pinprick, more symbolic than anything else. Destroying the base now centered in the periscope's crosshairs, however, would be a far more savage blow, to both Vietnamese pride and economic interests.

Best of all, destroying that base would also strike directly at the soft, economic underbelly of the hated West — a strike at the Western oil interests, and at one of the governments supporting them.

"Very well." Ul Haq took his place at the periscope once more. It looked as if a helicopter, an ancient, Soviet-era MI-8 cargo transport, was being readied on the heliport. He could just make out the black specks of men moving about the aircraft. "Ready tubes one and three," he said.

"Tubes one and three, ready to fire," Lieutenant Jamal reported.

"Set running depth at one meter." That was, in effect, right on the surface. Any alert lookout on the Vietnamese base would almost certainly see the torpedoes as they approached.

But a fixed base would have some problem maneuvering clear of the threat. And the water was so shallow here; ul Haq wanted to make certain his torpedoes didn't slam themselves harmlessly into sand.

"Running depth set at one meter, Captain."

"Open outer doors, tubes one and three."

"Tube doors one and three are open, Captain."

"Fire one!"

The hiss of compressed air flinging the torpedo from its bow tube was audible throughout the boat. Ul Haq felt the deck shift with the change in trim, until the enlisted man on the trim tanks could compensate.

"One fired, Captain!" Jamal said. "Torpedo one is running straight and normal!"

"Fire three."

Again, the hiss of compressed air shrilled through the submarine.

"Three fired! Torpedo three running straight and normal!"

"Estimate time to target."

"Time on target for first torpedo… forty-five seconds."

Ul Haq glanced at the sweep hand on the control room clock, then returned his full attention to the periscope eyepiece. Patience … patience … A quick check to make certain the periscope camera was running. Beijing would want to see the films, if it was possible to return them to the Chinese.

There was no indication that the Vietnamese base was aware of the approaching torpedoes. The helicopter appeared to be about to take off. Its rotors were running. He could see no other activity at all.

After a time — he would not let himself look at the clock again — he became aware of a soft, rhythmic chanting in the control room. "Sab'a … Sitta … "

Counting. The officers and men in the control room were counting down the seconds. He locked glances with Commander Hsing, who shrugged and looked away.

"Khamsa … "

"Arba'a … "

Their voices were becoming louder now, the chant more insistent. Khalili appeared to be leading it, standing near the weapons board next to Jamal, beating off the time with one clenched fist.

"Talaata … "

"Itneen … "

"Waahid … "

The countdown reached one… and nothing happened. The faces of a dozen men were turned toward his, questioning. Had something gone wrong? Had they missed?…

Seven hundred meters away, the first of the two torpedoes, running slightly slower than expected, reached the target. The weapon was a 533-mm naval torpedo based on the old Soviet 53-VA design, built in China, purchased by Pakistan. It was twenty-one feet long, twenty-one inches thick, and carried a warhead weighing 1,250 pounds.

Skimming at thirty knots just above the shallow, sandy bottom, it passed within ten feet of one of the massive steel and concrete pylons supporting the Vietnamese naval base overhead. The electromagnetic exploder detected the steel supports above and to the sides, and detonated.

On board the Shuhadaa, half a mile away, ul Haq was watching the MI-8 helo lifting off from the heliport. Then with startling suddenness, a towering, mountain-sized geyser of water, white foam and black mud spewed skyward high above the very top of the main building. Over half a ton of high explosives erupted in a savage blast that all but engulfed the base in spray. The shock wave, magnified by the shallow sea bottom, rolled across the Shuhadaa with a thunderous roar a second later.

The second torpedo detonated to the left of the first, beneath the base side of the heliport, close by the causeway. The hovering MI-8, caught by the blast, lurched sideways, its main rotors slamming into the crumpling steel of the deck. Stores of aviation gasoline on the platform itself erupted in a secondary explosion, sending an immense black and orange fireball roiling into the sky. The helicopter, fragmenting in midair, struck the heliport pad and then tumbled into the water.

Around him, the submarine's crew screamed and shouted at the sound of the double explosion, some dancing up and down, some hugging one another, some chanting, "Allah akbar! Allah akbar! Allah akbar! … "

God is great….

Through the periscope, ul Haq watched the fire spread as burning gasoline spilled into the ocean, fed, he guessed, by ruptured pipes. The helipad was engulfed in flames. The main building still stood, but at least two of its support pylons had buckled, and the entire structure was now tilted sharply to the left, perilously balanced above waves and flame. Ul Haq considered sending a third torpedo… but a moment later, gravity completed the work of the first two. One by one, struts and supports, strained beyond engineering limits, gave way, and with a ponderous shudder, the base facility collapsed, the sound of the destruction rumbling and creaking and booming through the submarine's bulkheads. In seconds, all that ul Haq could see was the right side of the building, canted sharply at a forty-five degree angle above the sea and all but lost in the smoke.

How many were on that thing? he wondered. Chinese intelligence reported as many as a hundred or a hundred fifty at any given time. Most would still be alive… and facing now the unenviable choice between burning alive in the wreckage or jumping into the shark-infested water fifty miles from the nearest other speck of land. A few might manage to launch rafts or lifeboats, but the toll in human life would be high.

"Stations!" he barked into the microphone, trying to be heard above the raucous cheering. "All hands to stations!"

Slowly, the cheering subsided. Commander Hsing took a turn at the periscope, stepping back a moment later with a satisfied nod.

Noor Khalili asked for a look as well. The former Taliban warrior looked at ul Haq with a gap-toothed grin. "Victory, Captain! It reminds me of the World Trade Center!"

Hardly that, ul Haq thought, but the comparison was disquieting. Jihad warriors around the globe still thought of the suicide attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City as a splendid, spectacular, and God-given victory in the holy war against the hated American infidels and the West. Somehow, none seemed to make the connection that if there'd been no 9-11, as the Americans called the attack, there would have been no invasion of Afghanistan, no eradication of the Taliban regime, no second war in Iraq, no wholesale, worldwide hunt for members of al Qaeda and other jihadist groups. War against the West this might be, but, so far, the armies of Allah had been getting the worst of it by far.

Violence always beg at violence. Attack invited retribution. These waters would soon be swarming with the agents of retribution — Vietnamese and, in all likelihood, Americans as well.

Those sentiments, he knew, might be less than ardently martial for a leader of the Maktum, but they reflected something of his own ambivalence. He believed passionately in striking at the hated West by any means possible, yes… but did not believe the Maktum could hope to match the U.S. Navy, blow for blow. Speedboats were cheaper than submarines, and required the sacrifice of fewer men willing to die for the cause.

Ignoring Khalili's joy, he picked up the microphone. "Our target has been destroyed."

The cheering began again. "Silence! Silence on all decks!" He waited until the shouts of "God is great" died away once more. "Helm, bring us left to three-five-zero degrees. Maneuvering, ahead one quarter." Replacing the microphone, he looked at Commander Hsing. "I trust this satisfies the letter of our contract?"

"It does, Captain. Most satisfactory."

"Then it is time for us to seek other prey."

"Damn it, Ginger, Katie," an angry George Schiffer said. "I wish you girls wouldn't do that. I've told you about it before!"

He stood on the yacht's forward deck, braced against the sailboat's gentle list as it cut through glass-calm water, hands firmly planted on hips as he stood above the two basking women. Ginger Tompkins and Kate Milford rolled over on their beach towels, both gloriously, exuberantly naked.

"Why, Mr. Schiffer," Ginger said in a mock-innocent voice. "Whatever do you mean?"

"You… you know damned well what I mean," Schiffer said. He tried to speak firmly, but the sudden double display of full-frontal nudity, one blond, the other redhead, made him falter and take a step back. "I mean you girls running around the boat like… like that!"

"But Mr. Schiffer," Kate said, running her hand down the taut front of her body from breasts to thigh in a lascivious stretch, "we're not running around. We're just laying here sunning ourselves! You wouldn't want us to show the clients tan lines now, would you?"

"Besides," Ginger added, "Mr. DuPont told us to be extra nice to the clients." Smiling, she waved at the two Vietnamese officials, watching the scene from the well deck aft. "And… that's what we're doing."

"Sure! I think they're enjoying the view."

"I don't hear Mr. Nguyen or Mr. Phuong complaining, do you?"

He glanced back at the two Vietnamese nervously. It was tough to read their impassive faces.

"Do you remember what happened on Tuvalu last month?" he asked. "The police were very upset… and you two were just topless then. The People's Democratic Republic of Vietnam is still Communist, I don't care how free market they've become, and some of them are pretty conservative. I don't want you to offend them."

"Sounds to me like you're the conservative, Mr. Schiffer," Ginger said. "Why are you so uptight?"

"I am not uptight! It's a matter of morality. Of common decency!"

"George, what's your problem?"

He spun, startled. His boss had padded forward on bare feet, and he'd not heard his approach.

"Uh… Mr. DuPont, sir. I was just suggesting that the girls might want to put on swimsuits. You know, so they don't give offense to the natives."

Matthew DuPont's expression was also unreadable, masked behind his expensive aviator's-style sunglasses. "The girls' bikinis make them look more naked than plain, bare skin. As for Mr. Nguyen and Mr. Phuong, they are not natives, so you can drop the patronizing bullshit. Ginger and Katie are doing what we pay them to do. I suggest you do the same and not interfere with their job."

"Sir, the police chief on Tuvalu was most upset…. "

DuPont sighed. "George, two hundred years ago, the natives on those islands were happy and uninhibited. A woman's bare breasts were milk glands for feeding children, nothing more, and they certainly weren't objects of shame. Then your missionaries showed up and taught them how to be ashamed of their bodies. Yes, they get a bit upset nowadays at tourists to the islands who shuck their clothes and go natural. I don't blame them a bit.

"But out here we're fifty miles from the nearest land, and the only prude with a stick up his ass on this boat is you."

"Sir! I don't have — I'm not uptight!"

"Then stop acting like it. Your religious right is showing."

"That's not fair!"

"No? You're Baptist, aren't you?"

"No, sir." He'd been raised in an independent Bible church, though, in fact, he hadn't been to church in years. His ideas of right and wrong, however, were firmly entrenched in fundamentalist Christian doctrine. "This isn't a religious issue," he insisted. "It's just common decency!"

"George, there is no such thing as absolute morality. Those native people, two hundred years ago, thought nothing about women going around with their bare boobs showing. No big deal. Kissing, though, that was another story. They thought rubbing mouths together was about the dirtiest, most disgusting thing a couple could do. That was their morality… at least until the missionaries got through with them."

DuPont was wearing rather tight swim trunks. The bulge at his crotch proved that he was more than casually interested in the women's current state of attire. Schiffer suspected that his boss had been having relations with both women the whole way across from Hawaii, but he had been doing his best not to think about it. DuPont, after all, was married, and a senior vice president of Global Oil to boot. Even in this libidinous day and age, scandal could play havoc with stock market numbers.

The state of DuPont's swimwear was making Schiffer increasingly conscious of the swelling discomfort in his own suit. Ginger stretched out on the deck, arms high above her head, her movements luxuriously catlike… then absently reached down and rubbed the gold-furred delta between her legs.

Jesus! He tried thinking about icebergs. "That doesn't prove there isn't such a thing as right and wrong, sir…. "

"George, you're giving me a pain. Get out of here. Go below and help them fix lunch, will you?"

He glanced at the two women again. Maybe going below was a good idea. Their nakedness was… distracting, and the iceberg ploy wasn't working.

"Hey, Mr. Schiffer," Katie said. She rolled over and deliberately took Ginger in her arms. "Maybe we should kiss instead, huh?" They started kissing full on the mouth, hands restlessly sliding everywhere, and Schiffer turned and fled.

He heard their laughter at his back, raw and taunting.

Ul Haq pressed his face against the periscope's eyepiece, studying the target.

"What is it?" Khalili demanded. "What do you see?"

Ul Haq ignored him for a long moment. The ex-Taliban officer would not have approved of what he was watching.

Though the range was just over one hundred yards, the periscope optics magnified the image enough that ul Haq could see the deck of the two-masted sailing yacht clearly. Several men stood aft, in the well deck, while two more stood forward, just in front of the mainmast. On the deck were two women, either naked or wearing extremely skimpy bathing attire.

As a good Pakistani Muslim, ul Haq believed that women should cover up in order to avoid tempting males. The Taliban, though, was notorious for its mistreatment of women. When they'd ruled Afghanistan a few years before, gangs of Taliban thugs had stoned, raped, or mutilated women, sometimes for crimes as slight as exposing their faces, or for failing to brick over the bedroom windows in their homes. Ul Haq had never approved of such an extreme interpretation of religious law. Pakistan — especially in the cities, tended to be more tolerant of uncovered women, especially with the influx of foreign films and foreign tourists.

Besides, he'd seen something of the world. Twice he'd visited England, and he'd even been to the United States, attending a year-long exchange student program in college. He knew that other peoples' ways were not necessarily his ways. That didn't lessen the extent of their sin against God, of course, but he did understand that other cultures viewed skin — specifically female skin — differently than did the clerics of fundamentalist Islam. Those women displaying themselves in front of those men simply didn't know what they were doing.

He was glad that only he could see what the periscope saw, however. The scene would surely have enflamed the crew, and Noor Khalili would have become insufferable.

"In Allah's name, have we found the target?" Khalili demanded.

"Yes," ul Haq said, continuing to peer through the scope. "At least… we have a large sailboat… twenty meters, at least. I cannot see the name or registry, but it appears to match the information your colleagues provided. It flies an American flag."

"The American yacht!" Khalili's fist cracked against his open palm. "Then we should take them!

Now!"

Ul Haq turned from the periscope eyepiece. "My friend, you should learn the first order of the submarine sailor. It is patience. We have the target in sight. We stalk him. We make certain of our prey's identity. And, when the time is right, we attack… not before."

"And I remind you of our mission." Khalili glanced aft, at the taciturn Chinese officer standing by the chart table. "We were forced to strike at the Vietnamese base to satisfy the Chinese, but now we are free to hit the Americans. If the sonar contact is, indeed, the sailing yacht Sea Breeze, we have both targets in our sights at once — Vietnamese and Americans! We should surface and take her passengers on board!"

Ul Haq sighed, returning his attention to the periscope. Khalili's joy at the destruction of the Vietnamese base had swiftly taken on a dark and fanatic aspect. He was grating on ul Haq's nerves.

An hour ago, Shuhadaa had come to snorkeling depth to recharge her batteries, and to radio a detailed report of the attack against the Vietnamese base. The al Qaeda courier and liaison, Zaki, was cruising somewhere in the general Spratly area on board the motor yacht Al Qahir, serving as a communications relay for the Shuhadaa … or was Zaki himself giving the orders for this mission? Ul Haq had not been told who was ultimately in command, nor was it important that he know. Over the radio, Zaki had congratulated him on the successful attack, and had then passed on some interesting news.

According to Chinese intelligence, two months ago, the sailing yacht Sea Breeze had set sail from Hawaii for Danang in Vietnam. The sailboat was registered as the property of the Global Oil Corporation, and on board, supposedly, was a senior official of that company. In Danang, Sea Breeze had picked up two representatives of the Vietnamese government, then set sail again, this time for either Spratly Island, or for the base at Amboyna Cay.

The intelligence report suggested that Global Oil was trying to impress the Vietnamese officials — the incongruous American phrase ul Haq remembered from his stay in the United States was "butter up" — to secure lucrative petroleum concessions and exploitation rights in the Spratly Island area. According to Zaki, the Sea Breeze was now somewhere between Spratly and Amboyna Cay.

By taking the passengers hostage, Shuhadaa Muqaddaseen would both embarrass the Vietnamese attempting to stake commercial claims in the region, and hurt American interests. Besides, having hostages on board would help safeguard the Shuhadaa as she continued her mission. Guided by Zaki's information, ul Haq had located the American yacht almost at once.

The two women on the deck appeared to be… what were they doing?

Perhaps it was time to interrupt the party after all.

"Prepare to surface!" he barked, snapping the handles of the periscope home. "Down scope! Boarding party, report to the forward escape hatch, with arms and life jackets!"

Khalili was right. There was no point in delaying further. The horizon was empty, save for that single tiny, vulnerable, unarmed yacht. There would be no better time.

"Take us up!"