Jeff Edwards
Steel Wind
PRAISE FOR JEFF EDWARDS BOOKS
“Jeff Edwards has created a superb thriller that grips the reader from beginning to end. Brilliantly executed.”
— CLIVE CUSSLER, International bestselling author of ‘RAISE THE TITANIC’ and ‘THE ROMANOV RANSOM’
“Unfamiliar and exciting territory — a magnificent yarn! Guaranteed to keep you turning pages well into the night.”
— GREG BEAR, New York Times bestselling author of ‘KILLING TITAN’ and ‘DARWIN’S RADIO’
“Jeff Edwards spins a stunning and irresistibly-believable tale of savage modern naval combat.”
— JOE BUFF, Bestselling author of ‘SEAS OF CRISIS’ and ‘CRUSH DEPTH’
“Brilliant and spellbinding… Took me back to sea and into the fury of life-or-death combat. I could not put this book down.”
— REAR ADMIRAL JOHN J. WAICKWICZ, USN (Retired), Former Commander, Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command
“Smart and involving, with an action through-line that shoots ahead … fast and lethal. I read it in one sitting.”
— PAUL L. SANDBERG, Producer of ‘THE BOURNE SUPREMACY’ and ‘THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM’
The tactics described in this book do not represent actual U.S. Navy or NATO tactics past or present. Also, many of the code words and some of the equipment have been altered to prevent unauthorized disclosure of classified material.
This novel has been reviewed by the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review, and is cleared for publication (Reference 17-S-1071).
Cover Artwork & Design by Rossitsa Atanassova
DEDICATION
To my little brother, Eric, who is everything I hope to be when I grow up.
EPIGRAPH
Offshore where sea and skyline blend
In rain, the daylight dies;
The sullen, shouldering swells attend
Night and our sacrifice.
Adown the stricken capes no flare —
No mark on spit or bar, —
Girdled and desperate we dare
The blindfold game of war.
Let’s pretend it’s not the end of the world,
Act like we got a future up ahead.
Diggin’ fallout shelters in your mama’s basement,
Only ninety miles from bein’ dead.
Cold war tango in the Caribbean —
Shit is heatin’ up way too damned fast.
Better hope your house ain’t on the target grid,
Or you can say goodbye to your own ass.
FOREWORD
Of Hope and Suspicion
I want to be wrong.
As recently as last month, North Korea had all the earmarks of an escalating nuclear threat to the United States, to our allies in Asia, and to the world itself. We had no reason to believe that the Kim family would even consider dismantling their arsenal or releasing the death grip on their captive citizens anytime in the foreseeable future.
Now, all of that seems to be changing. If we can take recent events at face value, the mad circus on the Korean peninsula may finally be shambling in the general direction of sanity.
So, I find myself hoping that I was wrong about the most important parts of this book. I hope I was wrong about the brutal tenacity of the Kim dynasty. I hope I was wrong about the mental instability of the current Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic. I hope I was wrong about the danger that North Korea poses to the safety of humankind.
By the time this book reaches your hands, we may know how wrong (or how right) I was. Kim Jong-un’s overtures toward disarmament and reunification will ultimately prove themselves to be genuine, or they will be revealed as yet another act of misdirection from a family of tyrants who have been deceiving their own people and the international community for more than half a century.
As I type these words, I don’t know which outcome is more likely, but I do know which one I’m hoping for. I have grave misgivings about Kim’s motives and intentions, but I want my fears to be wrong.
For all our sakes, I hope this book turns out to be nothing more than an adventure story and not a foreshadowing of things to come.
Jeff Edwards
May 2018
PROLOGUE
The white hull of the Coast Guard patrol boat Sawfish cut cleanly through the morning swells. Driven by a pair of 1,500 horsepower v-8 diesels, the boat’s twin screws carved parallel tracks of foam across the rolling wave tops.
The Sawfish helmsman knew her job. She kept the patrol boat in precise position, a hundred yards off the starboard beam of the suspect ship.
Standing to the helmsman’s left, at the port side bridge windows, Master Chief Ray Whitaker watched through binoculars as his boarding team made their final approach. Even with the binocs, faces were generally indistinguishable at this distance. But he could make out the silhouettes of all five team members, dark blue coveralls, helmets, and flak vests contrasting sharply with the bright orange pontoon hulls of their boat.
Whitaker exhaled slowly through his lower teeth. He didn’t like the look of this one. He didn’t like it at all.
The suspect ship, the Motor Vessel Aranella, was ignoring all radio hails. Pushing forward at a steady eighteen knots, the big freighter showed no signs of stopping to comply with repeated boarding demands from the Sawfish. That in itself was cause for concern, but something else was wrong here. Something Whitaker couldn’t quite put his finger on.
According to the pre-boarding report, the MV Aranella was registered under the flag of Liberia, with ownership held by the Consolidated Maritime Group: a tidbit of knowledge that added to Whitaker’s suspicions.
On paper, CMG was an international consortium of chartered dry-bulk carriers, with corporate headquarters in the Liberian capital city. In reality, the entire company infrastructure amounted to a website, a single bank account, and a dead-drop post office box in downtown Monrovia.
It was a shell corporation, designed to hide the identities of the real ship owners. Protect them from litigation and prosecution whenever their nebulously-registered vessels carried prohibited cargoes, or engaged in other illicit activities. Unfortunately, misleading registries and so-called “flags of convenience” were perfectly legal under international maritime law.
Yet another loophole through which the profiteering corporate snakes of the world could slither. But even that wasn’t the source of Whitaker’s unease. It was something else…
Ray Whitaker was a Boatswain’s Mate Master Chief, a seasoned sailor, with two and a half decades of service in a no-nonsense profession. He didn’t believe in premonitions — at least not the kind of mumbo-jumbo psychic bullshit you saw in movies. He chalked up the uneasy feeling to some unnoticed detail picked up by his subconscious. Some speck of half-processed information niggling at the fringes of his awareness.