Piranha: Firing Point

What was that all about? Was it possible that the Rising Suns hadn’t gone down, that the Red Chinese somehow had gotten their hands on the top-of-the-line advanced-technology vessels? Could Nagasaki Mod II plasma torpedoes in the bows of Rising Sun submarines be aimed at the Rapid Deployment Force? Was that the reason the Reds had chosen now as the time to attack the Whites, because they had a silver bullet in the East China Sea?

Donchez, Pacino thought, had had lung cancer. The Bethesda attending physician had said the cancer had metastasized to Donchez’s brain. Pacino had heard about brain cancer, from old Master Chief Gambini, the sonar chief of the Piranha. His wife, Maureen, had died of brain cancer, and for the last year of her life had barely recognized her own family, yelling at friends she adored, spitting at her cherished black lab. The brain cancer had turned her inside out. Had Maureen’s logical process changed, or just her emotions? And even if she could remember, would that have any bearing on Donchez? Was all this about the Red subs a sign of senility or loss of brain function; a grand fantasy?

And if so, should he give voice to that fantasy when Wamer was charged with making a decision? If he told her the East China Sea was potentially unsafe, and she pulled the carriers and troop transports back while his subs scoured the area, what would happen then? Two escort subs would take months to sanitize the East China Sea. And the Pearl Harbor boats would take a week to get there, a week lost, and even with all twelve Pearl ships, it would still take a month to search the operational area. If they delayed by a month. Red China would win. Wamer, as Paully had said, needed to strike now. And what of the political damage to her administration?

Hadn’t she just said. To our friends in White China, I say, hold on, the cavalry is coming? What should he tell her?

That the RDF and the Navforcepacfleet was standing into danger, he thought. That some one hundred ten ships stood a good chance of never making it to the beach. So could he really tell her to turn the RDF around?

Wamer would have to wonder about him. Yes, he’d got the Navy Cross for bravery, but he’d also had two submarines shot right out from under him. Would she think he was gunshy? After all, the ships of the fleet were armed to the goddamned teeth with antisubmarine frigates, antisubmarine destroyers, both carrying depth charges and smart torpedoes. They had variable-depth sonars and towed linear sonar arrays, plus there were Seahawk V antisubmarine helicopters bristling with antisub sonars and more sonobuoys and smart torpedoes of their own. Above all that, the three aircraft carriers had their three squadrons of Blackboard S-14 slow-flying antisubmarine jets, each with over a thousand sonobuoys, a magnetic-anomaly detector, and a couple sub-killer torpedoes, not to mention the ten P-5 Pegasus patrol planes waiting on the runways in Japan. Each one was bigger than a 757, with more sub detection gear than you could put in a warehouse, and deep-diving antisub torpedoes, eight apiece.

So what had Donchez been worried about? He walked to a table by his couch, picked up the phone, consulted a list done in calligraphy under the seal of the president, searching for Paully White’s number, then punched four buttons.

“Captain White.”

“Paully, it’s me. Get in here.”

“Admiral Pacino, the president requests your presence at the meeting,” the staffer said, discreetly shutting the door after herself.

“Boss, I’m dying to know what’s going on,” White said.

“Sorry, Paully, no staff allowed,” Pacino said, annoyed.

The meeting had been going on for three hours already, well past sunset, and he had not been invited.

When he had called the chief of staffs office for word, the secretary had indicated he should stand by until the president needed him.

He and Paully had spent most of the evening looking over the videodisk of the Tanaka videoconference.

They’d made some progress, but not much. They had decided to go through it frame by frame, but so far it all looked normal, as normal as it could in Japanese with the NSA translation in captions at the bottom of the screen. During breaks in the examination of the disk, they’d put on the news. The Satellite News Network had the best coverage, but eventually even SNN’s reports became stale and repetitive. The Reds were still pushing in the center, consolidating in the north, and attacking Hong Kong by air. The firebombing of Hong Kong had killed SNN correspondent Brett Hedley, a reporter of some notoriety. The video of the fuel-air explosive that had killed him was played several times before SNN decided it was too gruesome to air.

Meanwhile, Pacino had called for his staff aircraft, a supersonic Grumman SS-12, which had been put back together at Norfolk Naval Air Station’s maintenance section. The jet was due by half past midnight, and the pilot had been given instructions to stand by at the plane rather than drive out to the village.