"Target is maintaining new aspect, Captain. He appears to be coming to a new course… I make it between one-nine-five and two-one-zero."
So he wasn't clearing his baffles, but changing course. That made sense, if one assumed that the target had just received new orders over the VLF antenna.
However, if he was about to begin a high-speed sprint, he would swiftly leave the Chinese submarine far behind.
"Target is picking up speed," the sonar officer reported. He reached up and touched his headset, pressing it tighter against his right ear. "I'm having trouble… Sir, the target has disappeared."
Jian had already seen the slanting line on the screen growing fainter. Now it was gone, lost somewhere in the ocean ahead.
Yinbi's captain scowled. "Keep listening. Inform me if you pick up anything."
"Yes, sir."
Still scowling, a black and introspective expression that kept his subordinates at bay as effectively as a high stone wall, Jian returned to the control room. Which way should he go?
His orders were reasonably specific. His first target was any American aircraft carrier that entered these waters. Other PLAN submarines were supposed to be in the area, ready to track and kill American attack subs, to, in effect, keep American submarines away from Jian's command while he stalked and killed the supercarrier.
Jian, however, was an opportunist. American attack submarines were notoriously difficult even to find, much less track. Picking up this one had been pure luck, thanks to the convergence zone west of the island of Luzon, and the fact that the target had been trailing a VLF antenna for the past few hours had given him an excellent opportunity both to hear the American, and to keep up with him. There were no American super-carriers within the horizon of Yinbi's sonar yet, and the sub he'd been trailing represented a target almost as tempting.
So the question now was… did he extrapolate the American's new course and attempt to follow? Or did he break off pursuit, radio the target's last-known position, course, and speed to headquarters, and hope the other PLAN subs could find it?
He'd not been able to close yet to an effective attack range; when he did, Yinbi would need to score a kill with her first salvo, because she would not get a second chance.
Jian, however, was confident of his own abilities, and of those of his crew. There was a good chance that he would be able to pick up the American again, especially if he began streaming an antenna once more. The alternative was to return to his patrol area north of Huangyan Dao, and wait for a supercarrier to show up.
He thought about the choice for only a moment.
"Maneuvering," he said. "Bring us to a new heading… two-zero-three. Ahead flank."
If the American submarine presented him with the opportunity, Jian would kill it.
16
" 'Next time, Jack, write a memo.' "
That line from a well-known submarine movie of a few years back, or something much like it, had lately become something of a mantra for John Stevens. The officer from the terrorism branch of the CIA's Directorate of Global Affairs said the words again to himself with a grim smile as he flew through the wind-and-rain-lashed darkness on board one of the Navy's heavy-lift transport helicopters. He'd loved that movie when he'd first seen it years ago as a young Green Beret officer. He'd never expected to live it, however.
At the moment, he was balanced more or less uncomfortably on one of the hard, fold-down seats on the Sea Hawk's cargo deck, scarcely able to move. He had traded his Washington pinstripes for a wetsuit with rubber boots and gloves, a lightweight helmet, an inflatable life jacket, and a harness securing him to a length of white line coiled carefully on the deck and secured by heavy clasps. A waterproof document case was strapped to his thigh. The wetsuit trapped his body heat so that he was sweltering in its close embrace.
The Sea Hawk's crew chief stood over him in the red-lit compartment. "Can you hear me okay?"
It was hard to hear above the roar of the massive, seven-blade rotor, but the crew chief's bellow carried. Stevens nodded.
"Okay! Skipper says we have contact!" The man held up a gloved hand, showing his widely spread fingers. "Five minutes!"
Stevens nodded again. His hand touched the document case for perhaps the hundredth time that night, reassuring himself that it was still there.
The trouble was, this adventure had begun with a memo… and it was not something that his superiors cared to broadcast by radio, even coded. They'd flown him first to Yokosuka, where he'd arrived after Virginia's departure and just before the shoot-down of Flight 1125. There'd been talk of trying to have him rendezvous with the submarine south of Taiwan, where the Virginia was supposed to pick up a SEAL element, but the timing had not allowed for that. Instead, he'd been put aboard a C-2 Greyhound, a COD aircraft — COD standing for Carrier On-Board Delivery — and been flown out to the deck of the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Roosey currently was part of CBG-8, traveling west through the Luzon Strait north of the Philippines en route to the Spratly Islands.
And from there, two hours ago, he'd been bundled up in the wetsuit and life jacket and put on board the Sea Hawk. They were going to attempt an at-sea transfer.
Normally that wouldn't have been much of a problem, but the weather had turned foul in the past twenty-four hours. Right now, most of the Spratly AO was blanketed in a thick storm — rain and lightning and high-gusting wind — and the fact that it was still the wee hours of the morning didn't help one bit. The SH-60H was equipped with night-flying gear, Stevens knew, but even the best technology could be easily confounded by Mother Nature.
Despite the storm, they'd apparently made contact with the Virginia, which meant she was on the surface and waiting for him somewhere up ahead. Stevens began taking long, deep breaths, trying to quiet the panic he felt.
John Stevens had begun his career in the Army, almost twenty years earlier, and after making sergeant he'd been accepted by the Special Forces, the Green Berets of song and legend. He'd resigned after sixteen years in the service, ten of them as a Special Forces operator. The politics of peacetime conflict were tougher to face than incoming hostile fire, and in the drawdown after the Second Gulf War he'd decided to call it quits.
However, the contacts he made with the Company — the CIA — had stuck with him, and when they'd offered him a job with the agency he'd agreed. For a time, he'd trained new recruits at a secret facility outside of Williamsburg, Virginia, the "Farm," but later he'd been transferred to a desk in Langley. He'd thought he would be there for the rest of his new career.
But when the director of DGI had needed someone with specific elite military experience — the sort of experience that trained men to do crazy stunts like jump into the ocean out of a helicopter flying through a raging storm — Stevens had volunteered. He still wasn't sure why.
Maybe he'd just wanted to get back in the field, back in harness once more.
He tugged at the harness and the lifeline. Yeah, he was in harness all right. Next time, don't send a memo. Get someone else in the office to do it!
The crew chief jerked a gloved thumb upward. Clumsily, he got to his feet, using a handrail to stay upright as he moved toward the open side door.