Attack of the Seawolf

At the end of the table, the end opposite from Donchez, sat Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Brian Bevin, who had been promoted to Chairman when Dawson was inaugurated only months earlier. The general was a big man, athletic, tough-looking — a linebacker’s jaw, a broken nose, sunken eyes beneath a pronounced brow under tightly trimmed blond hair. Donchez’s only contact with Bevin had been at a Pentagon staff cocktail party four months ago, the last time he had been in D.C. He’d seemed an amiable sort, known to his staff as “Uncle Brian.” Bevin took pleasure in his nickname, it was said, but he did not seem his jolly smiling self now-his wide face impassive, tight. Donchez suspected the Chairman was not fond of evening meetings in which his military was in a position of reporting failure. For that, Donchez could hardly blame him.

Next to Bevin were President Dawson’s military aides, one from each service. Near Bevin, Martin Steuber had taken a seat, his eyes unreadable, staring through Donchez as if he weren’t there.

“Gentlemen,” Donchez began, “we’re here because of a problem with the China intelligence operation, with our SPEC-OP boat, the USS Tampa, in the Chinese Go Hai Bay. About two hours ago Tampa transmitted an emergency message that she’d been caught in the bay by units of the Chinese navy and was being taken captive after a battle in which she sank one Chinese surface vessel. The message also indicated that the captain was planning to initiate a ship selfdestruct if he was unable to repel a Chinese boarding party. That was the last transmission we had from her.”

Donchez paused, scanning the faces for reaction. No one moved. The contents of the messages had apparently already been known to most of them. Donchez turned on the overhead projector and parted the curtains.

“At 1645 our time, shortly after sunrise Beijing time, we had a KH-17 satellite pass over the Go Hai in the vicinity of Tianjin. That was before we got the distress call from the Tampa. But we did pick this up.”

Donchez dropped a transparency on the top of the projector and stepped away from the picture.

The scene was a black-and-white high-elevation view of the western bay, obviously a satellite photo from the faint appearance of the scan lines running diagonally across the picture. At the bottom of the picture three large surface warships and one small patrol craft were heading east. The wakes of the ships were white streaks across the blank darkness of the bay water. At the top of the picture two helicopters were taking off, heading in the same direction as the surface ships.

“The satellite shot showed the three destroyers you see here and one patrol boat heading on course zero eight five. In the direction of the estimated position of the Tampa at that time. As you can see from the wakes of the ships, they are moving out at maximum speed.”

Donchez let the image sink in for a moment before he pulled it off and went on to the next.

“The next satellite pass was not due for another ninety minutes, and it was not going to overfly the Tianjin area. We decided to re task the satellite, to use the KH-17’s onboard fuel reserves to maneuver the unit into a new orbit that would place her over the western shore of the Go Hai Bay. In the maneuver, almost all of the unit’s fuel was expended.” Donchez paused, taking in the glares of the men at the table. He had just admitted to ruining a half-billion-dollar surveillance satellite by using all the fuel that had been intended to last five years.

“But we did get this,” Donchez said, lifting the cover off the projector’s lens.

The photo on the screen showed the piers of New Harbor, Xingang, China.

One large finger of concrete, the seaward pier, extended horizontally across the picture.

Near the pier a strange assembly, looking like three ships lined up alongside each other, was maneuvering toward the pier. Donchez looked at the photo for a moment, feeling sick to his stomach. That photo had engraved itself in his mind. He pulled it off and replaced it with a blowup showing only the three ships together, the image becoming grainy from the magnification;

The shape between the destroyers was the cigar shape of the topside portion of a nuclear submarine, her paint blown off in patches to reveal bare metal, perhaps scars from the battle that had resulted in her capture.

“I regret to tell you that Tampa has been taken captive by the Communist Chinese. As you can see, there is a destroyer tied up on both Tampa’s port and starboard sides, and she’s being pushed in toward the pier.”

Donchez turned off the projector, not wanting to look at the image of one of his fleet’s finest submarines captured by the Chinese.

“That’s all I have,” Donchez concluded.

“I requested an overflight by an RF-117E, the reconnaissance aircraft that’s equivalent to the Stealth fighter.

So far we haven’t heard from the Air Force.”

He sat down on Kent’s side of the table, opposite Dawson, Trachea, Ferguson and Steuber.