Piranha: Firing Point

The airplane landed on the runway with a hard jolt, the engines screaming in reverse, the jet down at the naval air station two miles from Pearl Harbor.

“Paully, Annapolis and Santa Fe are gone, they’re down. And I have to assume that any other 688s we send in will get attacked before they can react.”

“I don’t know. Admiral. The Annapolis and Santa Fe were operating under the late JeanPaul’s orders, out ahead and flanking it, loud as train wrecks compared to these Rising Suns. Is it possible that if they were doing a proper sonar search, they’d have detected them?”

“Maybe. I’ll think about it. Meanwhile, we’ve got a videoconference with Warner in fifteen minutes. We owe her an answer about whether the rogue subs will be coming out of the East China Sea to meet the task force of the backup RDF in the mid-Pacific.”

“I’d say it depends on what goes out on the news, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, with all the news transmitted instantly to the world from Satellite News Network and all the other wannabes, this rogue force is cut into our plans. President Warner announces to the world that we’re coming, they embark news reporters on the Webb, and they take a chopper up to look down at the goddamned formation.

What better tactical data could this rogue commander have?”

“Stop calling him a rogue. It makes him sound like a good guy. Let’s call these subs the Red Squadron and the flotilla commander Red One.”

“Fine, Red goddamned One. Anyway, this dude gets his intelligence beamed right to his television widescreens, and SNN transmits Warner’s every mood.” “Quiet, let me think,” Pacino said. “Maybe there’s something I can do.”

“About the media? Are you kidding?”

“Sshh.” Pacino rubbed his eyes, an idea beginning to surface.

When he opened his eyes, the jet had taxied to Pacino’s hangar, the lights overhead flickering as the engines died. Pacino and White stood, gathering their things as the door came open.

Pacino walked out into the warmth of the Hawaiian night. A breeze was coming off the sea, and the smell of it was comforting, the hot air welcome after the chill of the Tetons. At the bottom of the stairs Joanna Stoddard waited, his administrative assistant, there at four-thirty in the morning to meet him and Paully. She was in her thirties, pretty in a suppressed librarian manner, married to a surfer. When she was younger she had worked for Pacino as a lieutenant, one of his junior aides. She had left the Navy to get married, then immediately asked him to hire her as a civilian, and had been with him ever since.

“Joanna, good to see—”

She interrupted him. “The reporters have been after me. Everyone wants to know what you’re going to do next. Including Warner and the CNO. The president and Admiral O’Shaughnessy are waiting for your videoconference once we get there. And there are four visitors in your office now, a Japanese man claiming to be Akagi Tanaka.”

Pacino and White shared a look. “Who else?”

“Colleen O’Shaughnessy and Emmitt Stephens from the shipyard. Admiral Dick Livingston from Naval Personnel.”

“How’s the SSNX?”

“I canceled the christening ceremony so Stephens could get it lowered into the water. You better bet the press were mad about that—”

“Christening ceremony?”

“Yessir. To name it, remember? Admiral O’Shaughnessy’s orders came over on your Writepad? Naming the SSNX the USS Devilfish’ “Oh, yeah.” Donchez again, Pacino thought, feeling an ambivalence to the ship’s name, the memories of the first submarine by that name too painful. “So is it in the water? And loaded out with Mod Charlies and Mark 52s?”

“Captain Stephens called and said something about the SSNX security provisions being complete. Beyond that, he wouldn’t answer my questions.”

The two officers and Joanna walked to an idling staff car. The big black Lincoln utility truck lacked the usual fender flags, and the decals of the Unified Submarine Command had been removed, evidently to avoid the SNN and network news crews. Pacino got in the back right-side seat, Paully in the back left, Joanna riding shotgun.

“And Colleen O’Shaughnessy? What’s she doing in my office at oh-dark-thirty?”

“Wouldn’t say. You know her, if she doesn’t want to answer, she just stares you down with those huge brown eyes of hers.” Stoddard sounded almost catty, he thought.

“I think she got that from her old man.”