“Satellite head-counts,” Brodie said. “They’re almost always wrong.”
Jefferson said, “It’s the best we can do. We’re lucky to have anything.”
“Chief, I’d trust Ms. Kida’s numbers,” Scott said. “JDIH says there’s closer to thirty men on Matsu Shan, not twenty.”
“And if I were you, Scott,” said Jefferson, helping himself to coffee, “I’d trust the SRO’s numbers. Their data is damn good.”
Brodie said, “Colonel, you know as well as I do that those nose-pickers always count heads twice and miss the other ones. Shit, there could be forty, fifty Chinamen on that rock for all we know.”
Zipolski said, “Hey, Chief, what’s it matter, we ain’t pokin’ no stick in a hornet’s nest, just doin’ a sneak ’n’ peek.”
“One that could turn into a hornet’s nest,” Scott said. “Assume it will.”
The other SEALs kept silent as they followed the discussion. They knew that a mission’s success or failure hinged on good intelligence; bad intelligence was for losers.
Jefferson pulled a face on Scott. “How many spec-ops did you say you’ve been on?”
“Enough to know we can’t underestimate what we might encounter on Matsu Shan.”
“Hell, we don’t need a lecture on the basics,” Jefferson retorted. “We all know how this works. I mean, it’s good that Brodie posed the question, but I’m inclined to trust the SRO’s estimates. Trust me, this won’t be like Croatia.”
Scott ignored Jefferson’s snide reference to the bungled Balkans op and turned to Brodie. “I’ll bring it up and see what General Radford has to say. Maybe they have fresh data they can share with us.”
“Right, sir. Thanks.”
Jefferson said something but was cut off by the tone signal indicating an SVTC transmission was about to start. The blue screen rolled to the SRO seal, then a fuzzy picture of Karl Radford. His image was distorted by transmission through space and 500 feet of seawater, into the RDT antenna aboard the speeding Reno.
Radford adjusted his necktie and cleared his throat. “We on?” The image faltered but returned, clearer this time. “Commander Scott, Colonel Jefferson, men, good to see you.”
“Good to see you, sir,” Scott said.
The SEALs greeted Radford with nods and casual waves.
“We’ll be joined by Ms. Kida from JDIH headquarters in Tokyo, that is, if the patch can be made….” Radford looked off camera. “It is? Outstanding. Ah, there she is.”
The screen had split in half. Fumiko appeared on the left side, her image beamed to the Reno from a broadcast studio inside JDIH.
Scott saw that she had on a dark man-cut suit over a white top and that her long silky hair was pinned back in a bun behind her head. Though she looked austere and businesslike, Scott noted with pleasure that her eyes sparkled brightly and that her lips had been painted glossy red. He thought she looked as lovely as she had when they’d met for the first time at the safe house in Virginia.
After they exchanged greetings, Scott said, “How was your trip back to Japan?”
“The trip, oh, well, it was long,” Fumiko said coolly, adjusting her posture.
“You should have stopped off in Hawaii, spent a day at Waikiki.”
Fumiko looked down at papers in her hands.
Radford cleared his throat and said, “Gentlemen, we seem to have a gap in our coverage of the movement of Marshal Jin and his entourage from North Korea. Fact is, we’ve lost him.”
“Lost him…,” Scott said.
“We were keeping tabs on him right up through yesterday. Take a look.”
The screen went to green, then to an aerial view of a sun-spanked harbor at a low angle — less than twenty degrees off horizontal — taken from an over-the-horizon-looking KH-12 satellite. One of the satellite’s cameras zoomed in on a rusty cargo ship.
With the image in motion, a Mercedes-Benz limousine rolled up to the ship’s gangplank. Men in uniform poured into the picture and came to attention. A man in civilian clothes got out of the limousine and boarded the ship. Scott easily recognized Marshal Jin from briefing photos of him he’d seen earlier. Jin took a salute from the ship’s captain and disappeared from view.
“The harbor is Nam’po; the ship is the Sugun, a 1900-ton North Korean rust bucket. Note the chopper on her fantail,” Radford said. “An SA 365N Dauphin 2, in gray and olive drab, no markings. Ms. Kida, why don’t you take over.”
“Thank you, General.” The image changed to an oblique view of the Sugun, wallowing like a hog in moderate seas. “She sailed three days ago. Here, you can see that we tracked her by satellite into the Yellow Sea, where we lost her just north of Shanghai.”
“Lost her, how?” Scott asked.
Fumiko met his gaze on the video monitor. “Coastal traffic in and out of Shanghai is very heavy. Many ships look alike; it’s easy to confuse them.”
“Why wasn’t one of our SSNs put on her ass?”
Fumiko trapped her lower lip under white front teeth. “I—”
“We’re short of assets,” Radford grumped. “Go on, Miss Kida.”
“We thought we’d picked her up again the next day, near Wen-chou. The NKs trade with Mainland China, and the Sugun has called at that port in the past.”
“But not this time.”
“No. The ship we thought was the Sugun turned out to be another one that looked like her, and without a helo.”
“So where is she now?” Jefferson asked.
“We don’t know,” Fumiko said. “We’re searching for her,” she added as if that would make things right.
“Holy shit,” Chief Brodie rumbled under his breath.
The other SEALs looked at each other and silently rolled eyes.
“Have you any fresh comms intercepts that might tell us something?” Scott said. “Like maybe where Jin disappeared to.”
Fumiko said, “No, no comms. Even so, there’s no reason to believe anything has changed.”
An infrared picture on the screen showed the incredible volume of coastal traffic plying waters between Mainland China and Japan. Hundreds, if not thousands, of green deltas representing vessels of all types, infrared heat signatures from their machinery and cargoes glowing bright red and orange, swarmed off the coast of China at Shanghai and other ports.
“Scott.”
“Yes, General?”
“Take a look at this.” The picture shifted to macro view. Radford jockeyed a pointer up against a bright red delta outlined in white, north of Taiwan. “We think this one may be a Chinese diesel submarine. Don’t have a positive on it yet, but its heat bloom comports with a Chinese Kilo 636.”
“Think she’s on routine patrol?”
“Don’t know that either. We’ve counted heads up at Tingchow, their Northern Fleet sub base. Couple of their boats are missing, and this guy might be one of them.”
“Okay, we’ll definitely keep him in mind. Thanks for the heads-up, General.”
Jefferson shifted in his chair. “General, if you have no reason to think Jin has aborted—”
“None.”
“—then we still have a go, right?”
“Right. And as soon as we find the Sugun, we’ll let you know if it appears anything has changed.”
Scott knew how quickly a situation could change, how it could scuttle plans and endanger lives. Their lives. For all its vaunted technology, the SRO was too often left in the dark; unlike the JDIH, Radford had pushed for and received heavy funding for electronic intelligence-gathering — Elint — via satellites and the like rather than human intelligence — Humint — on the ground in hostile territory. Satellites were useful for finding submarines like the Chinese Kilo, and large, unmovable facilities like air bases and weapons dumps, but not people.