Scott hefted the palm-sized weapon. “Tracy, you’ve violated just about every rule on the books governing firearms in Japan, to say nothing of getting Rick in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
“Since when did you start giving a shit about Rick?”
“I haven’t, but if you’d been stopped—”
“Well, I wasn’t. I thought you could use it. So sue me.”
Scott dropped the Glock’s ten-round magazine, then slammed it home. He examined the chamber to see that it was charged, then pocketed the pistol. “What about a car? Did you get one?”
“You want me to sneak you out of here, right?” Tracy said.
“Yes. Did you follow my instructions? Find the parking lot?”
“Yeah.” She threw him the keys: he saw the Lexus logo. “It’s Rick’s.”
“Does it have diplomatic plates?”
“I didn’t look.”
“Thanks, Trace.”
Her eyes sparkled in the lantern light. Scott knew that she knew she had him on the hook she was so good at setting and that she could, if she wanted, play him to death.
Tracy came and stood close to him. Her shirt was thin silk, and he felt her heat radiating through it and the hard tips of her breasts against his chest. She studied his face. “You look as if you could use some sleep.” She reached up and touched his hair. “Christ, I almost forgot how good looking you are.”
He felt his cock stiffen. Her hand went to it, kneading it, teasing it.
“Trace… not now… not here…”
“Why not here, of all places?”
Her mouth was on his, tongue probing deep, hands fumbling with his zipper. She pulled it down and was inside his shorts when she felt Scott’s steel grip around her wrist.
“You’re hurting me — What’s the matter, afraid you’ll come in your pants—?”
He clamped a hand over her mouth. “Shhh. Listen.”
He took his hand away from her mouth, zipped up, then motioned that she should get behind him and stay there. He went to the door and listened.
“It’s quiet,” he whispered. “Too quiet. This place normally goes twenty-four-seven.”
The whores and their johns had vanished. The inn was dead silent save for a creak from its ancient timbers. Even the steady hiss of traffic from the street out front seemed to have died.
Scott doused the lantern, then took Tracy’s hand. “Come on, time for us to get out of here.”
The sonar technician seated at the Kilo’s MGK Rubikon monitors alerted Zemin. Zemin studied the thin green blip working down the screen; UNIDENTIFIED flashed red at the bottom. Zemin scratched his cheek. “Range to the target?”
“Fire-control reports approximately twenty thousand yards, Captain. But as you know, sir, the margin for error is great with such a weak contact.”
Zemin factored that into his still sketchy strategy for identifying the target, which was on a southerly heading, and, according to information radioed from the SH-5 amphibian, inside Grid 21X due east of Rongcheng.
Zemin moved cautiously. He knew the Kilo’s integrated fire-control/sonar system, good as it was, sometimes faltered when given weak low-frequency tones to process for target identification. Should he bend on more speed, close in and risk being detected by the intruder, or should he trail him at a safe distance and learn nothing? Zemin looked at the monitor: The narrowband trace had not fattened at all.
“Very well. Comrade First Officer, both motors ahead together one-third. We’ll close slowly. Maintain our present course.”
“Aye, Captain.” The first officer moved off to relay orders and to update his electronic data pad.
“Sonar watch,” Zemin said.
“Sir.”
“Do not take your eyes off that band. Let me know the moment it changes.”
“Aye, sir.”
Zemin thought about his uncle, the hunter, and recalled the American 688I he’d flushed off Matsu Shan: We will creep like a cat, then step like a bull to make this bird take wing too.
Park and Kang emerged from the Red Shark’s cramped and steaming engine room. Their inspection of the polymer electrolyte membrane, an essential part of the hydrogen fuel cell, revealed that a valve in the main bleeder line connected to the hydrogen burner had iced up. The ice had created a backup in the line, which in turn had caused a bulge to develop around a welded joint behind the valve. This event had resulted in a measurable buildup of pressure in the fuel cell. Park knew there was no safe way to relieve the pressure buildup from inside the submarine’s hull. All such valving was located in the superstructure, out of reach.
Park stood in the engine room, wiping his hands on cotton waste, listening to Kang’s assessment of the situation, when the Captain’s Light in the overhead began flashing again. This time Park saw CONTROL ROOM on the LCD and dashed forward, where he was directed into the sonar cubicle by the first officer.
“Captain, sonar contact, very faint,” reported the sonar watch officer. “Bearing zero-two-three.” The excited officer wiped his burnished face with a sleeve.
“Put it on external,” Park ordered.
The officer toggled an audio interlock on the DBQS sonar system. A quiet, stuttering hiss emerged from the speaker mounted flush with the workstation’s top surface. Park inclined his head, listened, and frowned. “Turn count?”
“Thirty turns — four knots, sir. Range coming on, sir.”
Park glanced up at the integrated displays. The Konsberg MSI-90U system kept recycling, hunting for data it needed.
Park swung into the control room and snapped, “Helm! Come left to one-two-zero.”
The officer of the watch relayed the order and acknowledged with, “Aye, Captain.”
Park watched the needle on the compass repeater at the diving station swing left and steady up on 120. Satisfied, Park ordered, “Activate flank sonar array.”
Park gambled that the FAS-3 flank passive sonar array, a long, tubular affair mounted on the Red Shark’s port side, working in tandem with the bow’s wide aperture array, would allow the integrated tracking system to identify the target with greater precision.
The sonar warrant officer lined up switches, then held up his right hand, palm and fingers open. Abruptly he made a fist and said, “Activate array.”
A sailor in the sonar room muscled a hydraulic actuator. After a brief delay, a suite of green lights on a panel above the sonar workstation flashed twice to indicate that each of the ten receptor modules in the array had activated.
Park stuck his head into the sonar room. The sonarman had his eyes glued to the monitor and both hands clamped to the earmuffs of the headphones he wore. He sensed Park’s impatience and squirmed in his seat.
“Contact?”
“Yes, Captain. Very clear contact. Bearing, still zero-two-three.”
The first officer bulked behind Park in the sonar room.
“We have him now,” Park said.
“A PLAN submarine, Comrade Captain?” asked the first officer.
Park gave the officer a thin smile. “We’ll know very soon. If he is, we will go to silent operation, and when we do, it will seem as if we have vanished.”
The sonar officer twisted around in his seat. “Comrade Captain… I have a computed range to the target: eighteen thousand yards.” Nine miles.
Park waited while the integrated tracking system ran comparisons, hunting for a positive identification of the target.
If the target is a Chinese sub, Park thought, the Red Shark would not only have to run silent but possibly seek cover in the littorals, where bottom irregularities, salinity, turbidity, and temperature gradients would provide cover and impede detection. Risky business running silent in the littorals, and he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Better to quietly sidestep the Chinese boat and simply disappear.