“Come right three-four-zero, make my speed five knots, aye, Skipper,” the diving officer responded.
Paradise was positioned at the ballast control station, his hands hovering above a pair of small handles at the top of the panel. They controlled the manual emergency blow valves which, when opened, would send high-pressure air into the ballast tanks all at once. The boat would head to the surface like a rocket.
“Blow all tanks,” Harding said gently. “Emergency blow all tanks.”
Paradise turned the levers with both hands, and the Seawolf came off the bottom, started to accelerate, then suddenly came alive.
“Bridge, CIC,” Ogawa’s excited voice reported. “The target is on the way up. Very fast.”
This wasn’t what Captain Kurosawa expected. “What is his depth?”
“He’s already passing fifty meters and accelerating. Bearing still zero-seven-zero, but his range is opening, six thousand meters now.”
“He’s making an emergency blow,” Kurosawa said. “Go to battle stations, surface.” He stepped over to the radar screen and pulled a phone from the overhead as battle stations, surface, was announced throughout the ship. The moment the American submarine broke the surface he would give the order to destroy it.
The Seawolf broke the surface two hundred meters off Natsushio ’s port bow, two-thirds of its hull shooting out of the water like a breaching whale. For a second Captain Tomita stood watching as a huge phosphorescent wave spread outward from the submarine. “Fantastic,” he said softly.
“Bridge, ESMs.”
Tomita snatched the phone. “This is the captain.”
“That submarine just sent a burst transmission. But it’s going to take at least a half hour to decode it, if at all.”
“Never mind that,” Tomita shouted. “Uesugi, this is the captain. Open torpedo doors one and two and target that submarine. I want two snap shots as soon as possible.”
“Hai, kan-cho,” Lieutenant Uesugi replied instantly.
With the submarine on the surface and illuminated by many radars, there was no doubt that it was an American Seawolf.
“Bridge, CIC. We have a confirmation of submarine type—”
Captain Kurosawa angrily overrode him. “I want a positive lock on that target now,” he shouted.
“Kan-cho, that is no longer advisable,” Lieutenant Commander Ogawa came back.
“Prepare to open fire—”
“Kan-cho, we have an incoming air-launched missile now,” Ogawa shouted.
Before Kurosawa could react, a tremendous flash seemed to rise up from the sea fifty meters dead ahead. An instant later the sharp bang of the explosion hammered the bridge windows, and a second after that the American jet fighter/interceptor that had fired the shot roared overhead from the starboard.
Captain Tomita was about to give the fire one, fire two order, when a similar flash/bang erupted off his bow between him and the Seawolf. Two seconds later the second F/A-18 Hornet screamed overhead less than a hundred meters above the Natsushio ’s sail, and Tomita ducked down beneath the steel coaming, his insides seething like a boiling cauldron.
TWENTY-FOUR
The countdown clock had been restarted a few hours ago, around 9:00 P.M. Ripley looked up from his console as the numbers changed to T-minus 40:00:00, then 39:59:59. After searching Kimura’s computer and finding nothing, he’d come back to his console at launch control. If nothing else at least he’d be with his own team, although Johnson and Wirth had gone back to the guest quarters for a bite to eat and a few hours’ sleep around midnight and Maggie and Hilman were busy at their consoles. Ripley flipped a switch to show him a view of the launchpad. There was still a lot of activity out there and would be until a few minutes before launch.
Maggie slid over beside him and looked over his shoulder at the monitor. “I’m about finished with my stage. Do you want to leave Hilman here? We could get something to eat and go over to my room.”
Ripley looked up at her and smiled tiredly, but shook his head. “Nothing I’d like better.”
“Well, you didn’t get anything from Kimura’s system, so what’s next?”
“Unless my eyes were playing tricks on me last night, the answers are out there on the pad.”
“Short of shutting down the clock and unbuttoning the payload hatch, there’s not much you can do about it, Frank.”
Ripley glanced back at the monitor, his brows knitting in sudden concentration. “We don’t need to do that, at least not yet. But you just gave me an idea. If I was right, and what I saw in the payload section wasn’t the satellite we worked on, where is it?”
“Do you think they switched satellites?”
“It’s possible.”
“Why?”
Ripley tore his eyes away from the screen. “That’s the million-dollar question. But if I can find the bird that we worked on, it’ll prove that what’s loaded aboard the H2C isn’t what we signed for.” A look of triumph crossed his face. “In that case you better believe I’ll blow the whistle.”
“Where are you going to start?”
“We saw the original satellite being moved to the launchpad and taken up to the white house on the elevator. At least one of us has been on duty out there or here at the monitors at all times since then. The only place the original satellite could be is somewhere near the launchpad.”
“So what, Frank? They’re not going to let you wander around out there.”
“Why not?” Ripley asked. “I still have my pass. I’d simply be doing my job.”
Maggie leaned a little closer and lowered her voice. “Think about it. If they are hiding something and they think that you’re on to them, they’ll stop you.”
Ripley smiled again. “That’d be just about as good as finding the old satellite, because if they did it I’d shut down this launch in a New York minute.”
“He’s making the connection,” Hirota said.
“As we expected he might,” Joseph Lee said. They were in the Tanegashima security chief’s office listing to Ripley’s conversation with Margaret Attwood. Despite the late hour, Lee was keyed up because of the events in Washington and the possibility that McGarvey might be putting it together too. Nothing his remaining Washington contacts were telling him warned that McGarvey was on the way, but he had gut feelings about these matters. As he did with the chief astronaut on the American Tiger team. “But he hasn’t actually found anything yet.”
“If he does, he could delay the launch, Lee-san,” Hirota said respectfully. He looked like a compact, hard-muscled Buddha, except his eyes were cruel and calculating. Lee had more respect for him than he had for Kondo.
“If we interfere with his movements he could also cause trouble,” Lee suggested, wanting to hear Hirota’s answer.
The security chief nodded sagely. “There are ways around that.”
“At all costs the launch must not be delayed, except for technical reasons. It must not fail.”
“If I am given a free hand in this, the launch will go off on schedule and Major Ripley will cause no further trouble.”
They were the answers that Lee wanted to hear. He smiled inwardly. “With a delicate touch, Hirota-san. There are four others on the Tiger team, among them his lover, Captain Attwood.”
Hirota flushed slightly with pleasure at Lee’s use of the polite form of address. He nodded again. “With delicacy, Lee-san, I assure you. But accidents do happen.”