The deck seemed to rise toward his face in slow motion, ready to strike him.
His world went black before the deck had a chance to come up.
CHAPTER 6
The Gulfstream SS-9 swept-wing twelve-passenger jet touched down on the south runway, the rain on the asphalt forming a cloud behind the swift jet as it reversed its engine thrust, making its way to a halt on the diamond-cut pavement. At the midpoint of the 8,000-foot runway the jet turned off to a taxiway and headed for the hangar building, where the green Marine Corps SH-3 Sea King helicopter idled. The jet braked to a halt, its engines whining as they spun down. Almost immediately the forward port door opened, a stairway unfolded and Admiral Richard Donchez climbed out and jogged into the helicopter.
The deck canted forward as the aircraft lifted off and climbed from the wet asphalt, heading north toward the Pentagon’s helipad. Donchez turned to the other man in the chopper, Vice-Admiral Martin Steuber, who held his glance for a moment, then looked away out the rain-streaked window.
Donchez wasn’t happy to be pulled off the podium as he was in the middle of a speech at the launching of the SSN-22, the second of the controversial Seawolf-class submarines built by Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut. Donchez’s speech was calculated to condemn cancellation of the Seawolf program in favor of the inferior follow-on class of fast-attack submarines, the Centurion-class.
Steuber leaned over to Donchez.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but it seems something went wrong with the China operation. The SPEC-OP boat’s in trouble. That’s all I heard, but after we get the word in NMCC we’ve got a date at the White House to brief the President.”
Donchez looked hard at Steuber, suddenly mindful of what could go wrong with a nuclear submarine sent into China’s restricted territorial waters.
Admiral Richard Donchez would give the briefing, since he had been responsible for the China operation.
Steuber handed him the transparencies.
President Bill Dawson sat on the side of the large table against the curtained wall. He wore a golf shirt and khaki cotton pants, looking as if he had been pulled from a golf course. If Donchez had to guess his mood, it was one of impatience, but an impatience that was a prelude to anger. Secretary of Defense Napoleon Ferguson sat beside Dawson, looking uncomfortable in his rumpled gray pinstriped suit, his collar unbuttoned, his patterned tie at half-mast. Ferguson could be relied on to support military operations even when they went as badly as this one had. Ferguson was solid, Donchez thought. As if reading his mind, the SecDef gave him a nod. Donchez returned it, his face grim.
On Dawson’s right sat Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Eve Trachea, impeccable in a blue suit, her face serene, her eyes on Dawson, giving him the odd feeling of being sized up. He had predicted that Trachea would be ready to say I-told-you so when the operation’s failure was reported, but now he was not so sure. Eve Trachea was unpredictable.
On the other side of the table CIA Director Robert M. Kent sat with his deputy director and the deputies of the operations and analysis divisions. Kent looked like he had a migraine headache.
At the end of the table, the end opposite from Donchez, sat Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Brian Bevin, who had been promoted to Chairman when Dawson was inaugurated only months earlier. The general was a big man, athletic, tough-looking — a linebacker’s jaw, a broken nose, sunken eyes beneath a pronounced brow under tightly trimmed blond hair. Donchez’s only contact with Bevin had been at a Pentagon staff cocktail party four months ago, the last time he had been in D.C. He’d seemed an amiable sort, known to his staff as “Uncle Brian.” Bevin took pleasure in his nickname, it was said, but he did not seem his jolly smiling self now — his wide face impassive, tight. Donchez suspected the Chairman was not fond of evening meetings in which his military was in a position of reporting failure. For that, Donchez could hardly blame him.
Next to Bevin were President Dawson’s military aides, one from each service. Near Bevin, Martin Steuber had taken a seat, his eyes unreadable, staring through Donchez as if he weren’t there.
“Gentlemen,” Donchez began, “we’re here because of a problem with the China intelligence operation, with our SPEC-OP boat, the USS Tampa, in the Chinese Go Hai Bay. About two hours ago Tampa transmitted an emergency message that she’d been caught in the bay by units of the Chinese navy and was being taken captive after a battle in which she sank one Chinese surface vessel. The message also indicated that the captain was planning to initiate a ship selfdestruct if he was unable to repel a Chinese boarding party. That was the last transmission we had from her.”
Donchez paused, scanning the faces for reaction. No one moved. The contents of the messages had apparently already been known to most of them. Donchez turned on the overhead projector and parted the curtains.
“At 1645 our time, shortly after sunrise Beijing time, we had a KH-17 satellite pass over the Go Hai in the vicinity of Tianjin. That was before we got the distress call from the Tampa. But we did pick this up.”
Donchez dropped a transparency on the top of the projector and stepped away from the picture.
The scene was a black-and-white high-elevation view of the western bay, obviously a satellite photo from the faint appearance of the scan lines running diagonally across the picture. At the bottom of the picture three large surface warships and one small patrol craft were heading east. The wakes of the ships were white streaks across the blank darkness of the bay water. At the top of the picture two helicopters were taking off, heading in the same direction as the surface ships.
“The satellite shot showed the three destroyers you see here and one patrol boat heading on course zero eight five. In the direction of the estimated position of the Tampa at that time. As you can see from the wakes of the ships, they are moving out at maximum speed.”
Donchez let the image sink in for a moment before he pulled it off and went on to the next.
“The next satellite pass was not due for another ninety minutes, and it was not going to overfly the Tianjin area. We decided to re task the satellite, to use the KH-17’s onboard fuel reserves to maneuver the unit into a new orbit that would place her over the western shore of the Go Hai Bay. In the maneuver, almost all of the unit’s fuel was expended.” Donchez paused, taking in the glares of the men at the table. He had just admitted to ruining a half-billion-dollar surveillance satellite by using all the fuel that had been intended to last five years.
“But we did get this,” Donchez said, lifting the cover off the projector’s lens.
The photo on the screen showed the piers of New Harbor, Xingang, China.
One large finger of concrete, the seaward pier, extended horizontally across the picture.
Near the pier a strange assembly, looking like three ships lined up alongside each other, was maneuvering toward the pier. Donchez looked at the photo for a moment, feeling sick to his stomach. That photo had engraved itself in his mind. He pulled it off and replaced it with a blowup showing only the three ships together, the image becoming grainy from the magnification;