Terminal Run

Vermeers nodded, frowning out at the horizon sternly, as if imitating Pacino, but eventually the old Vermeers returned. “But, sir … I know you’re the program director and all, but… the Tigersharks don’t work. They home in on and destroy the firing ship.”

“They will work, as soon as I get done tweaking them.”

“Captain,” Vickerson said, turning, “ship has cleared the traffic separation scheme. ETA to the dive point is six hours.”

“Very well,” Pacino said, climbing down from the flying bridge and opening the deck grating to the bridge access tunnel. “XO, I want to see you and the navigator and the engineer in my stateroom.”

He lowered himself into the hull. The smells of the ship and the sea intoxicated him with all the things that were back, things he’d lost. He refused to let his emotions swell with the feelings, because deep in the Atlantic, his only son could be gasping his last breaths.

22

Captain Lien Hua walked into the command post and found Zhou at the command console doodling on a paper tablet.

“Dou’s starting the reactor,” he said. “The battery is back on-line.” The lights in the overhead flickered and held, the uneven wavering light of the casualty lanterns banished by the brightness. “And we need to submerge. Station underway watch section two and prepare to vertical dive.”

Zhou Ping grinned. “Yes, Captain, section two and prepare to vertical dive.”

Fifteen minutes later the Nung Yahtsu was steaming submerged on her own power, on course north to intercept Battlegroup Two, but no longer in a hurry. Captain Lien ordered a transit speed of eight knots, the optimal for covering ground while engaging a maximum-scan sonar search. This time the Americans would not have the advantage of searching slow and quiet while Nung Yahtsu was forced to burn through the seas at full speed. This time, Nung Yahtsu would sneak up on the Americans.

By the end of the morning watch the ship had arrived at the sinking location of the American submarine. Captain Lien ordered an excursion to periscope depth, and while they examined the surface for flotsam — evidence of a kill they could report to the Admiralty — they transmitted their after-action report to Admiral Chu and received their messages. Lien was scanning the message traffic, which was minimal since the Admiralty assumed they’d been lost. Lien decided to linger at periscope depth to see if the Admiralty would give them emergency orders once their after-action report was digested, and it became clear that Nung Yahtsu had returned from the dead. It was then the American helicopter was sighted. Lien ordered the periscope dipped, only allowing it to be exposed for ten seconds every minute.

In the second minute of observing the U.S. Navy chopper, his face pressed close to the warm optics module of the periscope, Lien noticed that the chopper was not searching for them with a dipping sonar, but had focused its attention on the sea. Two divers jumped out, and a man-basket was being lowered to the sea.

“Dead slow ahead course zero four zero,” Lien ordered from the periscope. “Raising scope.” When he saw what was going on, he became furious.

“Arm the antiair missile battery,” he commanded. “Target number one, U.S. helicopter rescuing survivors of our submarine attack.”

“AAM battery armed,” Zhou Ping reported. “Periscope station has control.”

“Target bearing and altitude, mark!” Lien observed, the periscope still up after the time he should have lowered it. “Missile one — re!”

There was no sound as the Victory II antiair missile lifted off from the sail in a bubble of steam from the gas generator and broke the surface. The missile’s solid rocket fuel ignited and it flew straight upward to a thousand-meter height and made a graceful Mach 1.1 loop downward, its infrared heat seeker seeing the helicopter’s twin jet exhausts. The missile sailed into the port engine and exploded. The hundred pounds of high explosive was not sufficient on its own to blow up the chopper, only to damage it severely, the fireball blowing off a rotor and sending the chopper spinning out of control. The explosion in the tailpipe of the number two turbine sent turbine blades scattering through the airframe, severing two fuel lines, and the still-burning fireball set off the fuel and then the fuel tanks, and the Sea Serpent IV helicopter detonated with the power of a ton of TNT, blowing rotor blades, aluminum structural pieces, control panels, and human flesh over the surface of the sea. The shock wave from it slammed the eardrums of Lieutenant Commander Donna Phillips in life raft number one. A five-foot piece of helicopter rotor whooshed over her head, the debris flying fast enough to have cut her in half, another piece of shrapnel puncturing the flank of the life raft.

Phillips’s expression fell. Life had just become much more complicated.