Piranha: Firing Point

“Sounds like we’re in the huddle, with the quarterback saying, ‘Same play, on one.’ The backup force could get attacked just like the first RDF. I think we stand a good chance of getting our butts kicked.”

“Do you think they will sink us before we get to the East China Sea?”

Pacino thought, the circuit silent for a moment.

“Hello?” Warner said.

Well, would they? He thought. What would he do, fresh from the killing of an entire convoy?

“Madam President, before I answer, I want to think this through. Can I have an hour?”

“Twenty minutes.” “We’ll be landing soon,” Pacino said. “Can you video into my quarters?” That would be perfect, he thought.

He’d be able to see her face and, even better, he could get Paully’s opinion, even call up Number Four, Jack Daniels, and see if he had any hard intelligence about the men who had managed to steal a submarine force.

Red subs, Mikey. You’re up against the Reds.

So be it, he thought. Red Rising Sun submarines, the most advanced in the world.

“We’ll video you in, what, half an hour?”

“Perfect, ma’am.”

Warner and O’Shaughnessy clicked off without warning.

Pacino walked back to the cabin, deep in thought.

Paully White was there, concentrating on the widescreen.

“What’d she say?” “You probably know more than I do,” Pacino said, sinking into the seat next to Paully.

“Warner has another rapid deployment force,” White whined. “Now there’s suddenly time to get a Hawaiian convoy to the East China Sea. Where was that plan yesterday?”

“Paully, never mind. I need you, now. We’ve got a war to plan.”

“I’m ready. What’s on the list?”

“Get Number Four Daniels on the horn. Ask what he has on the Rising Sun, and see if you can get him on the case to track down Admiral Tanaka. We’re going to need him. Then we’ll need to put Bruce Phillips from the Piranha on a video conference.”

“Bruce will be well on the way to the East China Sea by now.”

“That’s okay. But before you do anything else, we need to get Santa Fe and Annapolis the hell out of the zone.”

“But aren’t they going in to see if they can find—”

“I don’t care, Paully. They can’t win against a half dozen Rising Suns who know they’re coming. Tell them to get the hell out of the op area right now. When we go in, we’ll go in coordinated — Pegasus patrol planes, Blackboards, Seahawks, the 688’s, Bruce’s Piranha, the works. And we’ll sanitize that damned zone but good.”

“ELF call signs, emergency periscope depth?”

“Yeah, and tell them to withdraw at emergency flank.

And don’t give me any backtalk about ruining reactors, Paully.”

“Hell, no. Admiral. I’d tell them emergency flank even if you were quiet about it. Those boys are standing into danger.”

“Hop to it, Paully. Bring’em out.”

EAST CHINA SEA

USS ANNAPOLIS, SSN-760

“Conn, Radio, we’ve got the first letter of our ELF call sign.”

ELF, Patton thought in frustration, extremely low-frequency radio waves, transmitted out of Lualualei Naval Radio Station off Maili, Oahu. Transmitting the ELF radio waves required tremendous power. An entire nuclear plant big enough to light up Baltimore had been built on-site at Lualualei just to power the massive antennae.

The radio waves, unlike the higher frequencies, were able to penetrate the upper layers of the ocean and the earth’s crust. Unfortunately, the data rate was so slow, it would take ten minutes just to receive two alphabetical letters. Admiral Pacino had ordered that subs change their call signs to a single alphanumeric encrypted character, with a second letter thrown in as a confirmation, because he didn’t want to wait ten minutes to drag a submarine to periscope depth in an emergency.

Patton had not been thrilled with the new system. The office of submarine captain was one of the last existing dictatorships in the world. At sea he was accountable almost to no one, receiving radio messages rarely, transmitting almost never. But with an ELF call sign, the brass could call him to periscope depth at any time of the day or night. It might take them twenty minutes to get the radio computer’s attention, but at that point they were required to come up and see what the Navy Com-Star satellite had to say.

An emergency ELF call could mean a declaration of war, retasking, new rules of engagement, new orders, anything. Though Patton was sorely tempted to wait until the second or even third ELF call, buying himself time to try to detect an enemy submarine, he knew he had to come up. For all he knew, the convoy had been hit by an air attack instead of a sub assault, and there was a new mission waiting for him on the Comstar’s broadcast.

“OOD, clear baffles and take her up,” he ordered.

Five minutes later, he watched the television screen in the overhead. In the periscope view that Lieutenant Dietz was rotating in the hot-optics module, there was nothing there but sea and sky and a stark, ruler-straight horizon. There were no seagulls, no clouds, no aircraft, and no convoy ships.