He was catching up on traffic in his in-port cabin. A long analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agency said that India was abandoning its traditional defensive orientation. It had just concluded a major exercise, Divine Weapon, testing its ability to mobilize forces if another flare-up occurred over Kashmir. The plan was to rapidly destroy Pakistan’s military potential, without a lengthy period of preparation or warning.
It sounded eerily like the Schlieffen Plan Tuchman was describing in The Guns of August. Rigid, aggressive, depending on speed and shock to occupy territory and destroy an adversary. But Pakistani counterexercises in Sialkot, Cholistan, and Sindh had mustered heavy tanks and drilled self-protection procedures after use of a tactical nuclear weapon.
He scratched his chin, staring into space as Savo rolled and something in his closet went clunk. Clunk… clunk.
For half a century, the U.S. Navy had served as a balancer between Pakistan and India, to be thrown into the scales one way or the other to preserve peace. But the subcontinent’s economic growth, plus the drawdown in the fleet, meant it mattered less and less.
At some point, the U.S. would finally have to choose. One ally or the other. And the spurned partner would automatically become an enemy.
In international news, Premier Zhang had warned “outside powers” against interfering in the South China Sea dispute with the Philippines. As Blair had said, the financial markets were getting nervous as the Chinese continued to liquidate and transfer their U.S. debt holdings. The dollar had dropped against the renminbi, and the stock market was tanking.
His J-phone beeped. It was Cheryl. “We’re ready for you, Captain.”
He coughed hard and long into his fist, until he had to pant for air. “Be… be right down.”
In the passageway outside the mess decks, he flicked lint off his coveralls and made sure he had his BlackBerry. Coughed again, cleared a thick throat. Checked his Hydra. Fully charged.
When he pushed the door open Chief Toan cried, “Attention on deck!” and the ranks of men and women surged to their feet. The food service attendants had cleared, but a tang of disinfectant lingered. He waved them down, muttered, “At ease,” and took a seat in the front row with the department heads. One of the messmen brought a paper cup of bug juice; he nodded thanks and sipped at it, though he didn’t really care for the pink flavor.
Matt Mills started. The first slide was the western Indian Ocean. An enormous blue triangle, with the Pakistani and Indian coasts at the top, Saudi Arabia to the west, India to the east. Five thousand miles of empty sea rolled to the southward, reaching down to the Antarctic.
The ops officer began with the weather. “The Southwest Monsoon sets in towards the end of May, shortly after it establishes over the western Arabian Sea. Conditions persist through June, July, and August. South-southwest winds. Typically ten to sixteen knots to about 52 degrees east, becoming 22 to 27 knots in the area of 52–54E. As the exercise moves east, around midocean, we can expect increased wave and swell heights, the farther toward India we operate.”
Dan sat back, massaging his neck, half listening — he knew this already from the pre-exercise messages and the briefing book Cheryl had put together — while he stared at Amy Singh’s erect head. She’d braided her hair. His gaze trailed down the smooth long neck, to firm shoulders… he jerked his eyes away.
As he’d expected, and half dreaded, Singhe had taken hold of the Terranova investigation with a death grip. She’d interviewed every woman who’d been on the steel beach that day, along with the compartment petty officer for the access trunk, the electrical officer, even the laundry personnel. (They’d complained to the supply officer about being asked to log semen stains on coveralls.) She’d reinterviewed Terranova, trying again to come up with anything that could lead them to the groper.
But all, so far, without success. He shifted uncomfortably. They had to file a follow-up report today. If they made no progress, there’d be an NCIS investigation the next time they made port.
But the guy was still out there. Sex crimes had a way of escalating, as the perpetrator sought to re-create whatever twisted kick he got from humiliating and frightening his first victim. Next time, he might not be satisfied with holding someone at knifepoint and ejaculating on her.
The deck rolled. The steel around them creaked. The crew shifted and coughed. Mills was explaining the scenario. “Exercise Malabar 10 grows from exercise 9, which explored responses to extremist threats to shipping during the assembly of a multinational convoy. Building on that, this year’s exercise will validate procedures and tactics in assembling a mixed-nationality naval force in response to a major Pacific crisis, and moving it through a narrow strait against surface, air, and subsurface opposition from Orange forces.”
Dan stopped his leg from bouncing. It was obvious who Orange was meant to be. He was reminded of the bastion-penetrating exercises NATO had done in the eighties, testing ways to get through Soviet defenses. But Malabar 10 would be conducted while real-world tensions to the north, as per the DIA message, were escalating by the day.
“Also, we may have an audience,” Mills droned on. “A three-ship Chinese task force is heading our way. The overt justification is to provide security for their merchants in the Gulf, like that tanker that went through at the end of our freedom-of-navigation, uh, exercise.” The next three slides showed the three modern, high-tech surface combatants.
Dan lifted a hand. “Address the Iranian involvement, Matt.”
“Yessir. Savos’ been the subject of hostile comment on Fars, the Iranian news agency. They say the castaways we picked up are escaped murderers. They demand them back for execution.”
That was interesting. Given that the trio claimed to be fleeing religious persecution, CentCom and ComFifth would not have given out which ship had picked them up. Dan half turned, scanning the faces behind him. Usually they’d have offloaded any refugees stat, but given the time frame and the upcoming exercise, it hadn’t happened yet. Hermelinda had them scrubbing out pots in the scullery for now. The refugees had asked to be taken into the crew, but certain of the chiefs had balked, saying they might be spies. One dude in particular, Behnam Shah, had seemed more inquisitive than his sea daddy had felt comfortable with.
Mills said, “So this reignites the Hormuz transit issue. They’ve personally dared us to try it again, and threatened that if we do, they will destroy USS Savo Island with a, quote, new weapon, unquote.”
“We’re not turning them over, of course,” Staurulakis said calmly. “These threats are probably just the usual bluster. But we’ll have to keep an eye over one shoulder while we’re operating in the IO.”
Mills sat down, and the ASW officer, Winston Farmer — a colorless guy, old for his rank, who looked a likely candidate for early baldness — took over.
Modern ASW wasn’t like the World War II movies. Active sonar, pinging, gave away your own location, and only worked at short ranges. Machinery noise from a submarine propagated by three pathways: direct path, convergence zones, and deep channels. “Direct path” meant straight from the source to the receiving hydrophone. But over long ranges, sound curved up toward the surface.
So that after about thirty miles, the sounds hit the surface and bounced down again. If you had good equipment, a trained team, and proper positioning, you could hear your quarry thirty, sixty, ninety miles away. The “deep channel” could extend the range even more. But Chinese nukes were getting quieter, and their latest conventional boats were often less noisy than the sea around them.