Piranha: Firing Point

Pacino bit his lip, wondering what the meeting was going to be like. The staff meeting on O’Shaughnessy’s 777 had never happened, even though they had been flying in with half the Washington establishment due at Wamer’s meeting coming up. After Daniels had left the cabin, Pacino had sent Kathy forward to see what was up, but she said the CNO, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Army Chief of Staff were closeted behind O’Shaughnessy’s door. They didn’t emerge until the plane was descending for the airport.

The other Land Rovers ahead of them contained the entourage they’d flown with but hadn’t seen. In the front was the truck for Stephen “Blowtorch” Cogster, the National Security Adviser, and his personal staff. Behind him, Freddy Masters, the Secretary of State, his staff members crowded in with him. Then came the Director of Combined Intelligence, Christopher Osgood. Number four drove Mason “Jack” Daniels. Next the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Bill Pinkenson, followed by General James Baldini, the Army chief, then Admiral O’Shaughnessy, and finally Pacino and White.

The next minutes were a blur as Secret Service agents and armed Marine Corps guards crowded around them, taking their bags, passing them through metal detectors, hustling them in the double wood doors to the lower level, then taking them to their quarters. Pacino was led down a hall walled by heavy wood logs chinked with beige mortar. Doors lined the corridor, one on the right marked with a sign showing three gold stars on a blue field, the letters below spelling adm m. pacino, cmdr. unified sub cmd. Looking at it, he felt a vague unease.

Why had he been selected to accompany O’Shaughnessy on this errand, when the chief hadn’t spent a single minute with him since his coming-to-Jesus talk on Saturday?

His instincts told him O’Shaughnessy liked him and would help him. And Warner obviously had spoken to the chief, asking him to bring Pacino along. But why?

This was a ground war going on in White China. Sure, there would be airlift and sealift coming from the Navy, and certainly a Marine invasion with close fighter air cover from the carriers, but all those functions resided with other officers. He was a submarine officer. The only action he’d see in this was detailing the two 6881-class ships to go with the Navforcepacfleet and the Rapid Deployment Force out of Yokosuka. The subs were the Annapolis, SSN-760, and the Santa Fe, SSN-763, both of them modernized within eighteen months, both admitted to drydocks after the Japanese blockade. They would act as an escort for the carrier battle group into the East China Sea ensuring no cheap diesel boats or robot mines got in the way.

Unless, all that considered, he was here because he was a submarine officer. Hadn’t Jack Daniels mentioned the loss of the Japanese submarines? Was there some connection he was missing? Was there something Donchez’s deathbed soliloquy had meant to tell him?

He cursed under his breath as he was led into the room. An oversize bed was placed against the left wall, flanked by two oak nightstands, and a large window spanned the opposite wall. Pacino glanced out the window at the view of the village below, the busy ski slopes beyond, then dug out his Writepad from his briefcase on the bed. Furiously he clicked through the menus, selecting a chart of the waters off China, ordering the software to display for him water depth.

Just as he’d remembered, the entrance to the East China Sea was guarded by a long arc of islands, the Ryukyu chain. The water there was around a thousand fathoms, but a hundred miles west, the entire East China Sea became shallower than a hundred fathoms — six hundred feet. A true littoral water, where sonar sounds would carry for miles, bouncing off the sandy bottom.

For a submarine, that was both good and bad news.

Good, in that a sub could hear a surface ship coming hundreds of miles away. Bad, because the sub itself would find it hard to hide out in a thermal layer. It took stealth away from the sub, its best weapon.

If the surface forces were up against subs in the East China Sea, they’d have an easy time of it. The frigates and antisubmarine helicopters would quickly sort out any bad guys.

His thoughts turned to Jack Daniels, who had worked for Donchez at NSA. Daniels had wanted to reach him about the sinking of the Japanese Rising Suns, the information seemingly worth eighteen urgent phone calls, yet anticlimatic when he finally delivered it. Donchez had thought the facts that sea trials were over and that the Rising Suns being at periscope depth was significant.

Jesus, Donchez and his babbling nonsense, talking about Red subs that Pacino would be “up against.”