Terminal Run

Not with what I know. I’man NSA agent. If they interrogate me, they’ll break me. They’ll know about the battle network, and the entire war could be compromised.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Phillips said in a hard voice, but seeing his point. She tried to think, but there seemed to be no solution.

“Give me a twenty-two,” he said.

“What do you intend to do, Mr. Oliver?”

“Give me the gun, XO.” His look stopped being frightened for a moment, a hard resolve in his eyes. Reluctantly she handed it to him.

“Don’t use it unless you have to.” she said.

“Goodbye, Donna.” he said. “Good luck.” He slipped backward off the raft and stroked away from the Julang submarine’s approach. Phillips watched him swim, his head barely visible over the crests of the waves. When she could no longer see him, the sound of a single gunshot echoed over the water.

“Oh, Jesus,” she said, putting her head in her hands.

When she looked up, the Julang had heaved to, close aboard. Phillips looked at it in wonder. Until now it had been an impersonal diamond shape on a firecontrol display, or a dimly remembered grainy intelligence photograph, and now here it was. It seemed so big in reality, the sail towering over them, the hull wider than their Leopard’s. On the bridge she could make out a half-dozen men, and something else. Either they all had broomsticks, or weapons.

She watched the men on the bridge as they pointed the automatic rifles at the life rafts from a distance of thirty yards. She realized that they were not threatening with the rifles to take the Leopard survivors hostage, but intending to shoot to kill. The scream was torn from her lips without conscious thought.

“Crew! All hands! In the water, now!” She bodily tossed Captain Dixon off the raft and into the sea, grabbed the man next to her, and threw herself backward into the water as the first shots rang out over the waves.

Zhou Ping raised the AK-80, the rifle heavy in his grip, the precise long-range scope installed before the weapon was brought to the fin. In the scope he could see the closest life raft, with a woman sitting next to a man slumped against the yellow inflated wall of the raft. The man had gold insignia on his chest, perhaps a high-ranking senior officer. Zhou clicked off the safety, ready to fire, when a gunshot rang in his ears.

“What was that,” he asked, taking his face from the scope.

“They’re shooting at us, Mr. First,” Fighter Ling said. “Shoot them!”

Zhou put his eye back to the scope, but the people in the rafts were jumping off into the sea. He located the senior officer he’d been aiming at before, put the man’s chest in his crosshairs, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle jumped slightly, coughing as it fired a single round.

“Select the rifle to full automatic, sir!” Ling shouted.

“Damn thing,” Zhou said, finding the switch that took the rifle out of semiauto, then re sighting on the survivors in the water. He squeezed the trigger and sprayed the rafts and the men in the water with bullets until the clip was empty.

The other rifles began firing as he down loaded the clip and put in a fresh one, then emptied that clip, the bullets flying over the sea at the Americans.

“Look around, number two scope,” Captain Andrew Deahl ordered from the conn of the USS Essex, the Virginia-class SSN dispatched by Admiral McKee to find the Julang-class before it could form up with Battlegroup Two. Deahl stood behind the command console with the Type 23 helmet on, the room rigged for black despite the daylight hour, so that he could better see the seascape in the periscope view. The crew, stationed at battle stations since sonar had detected the Julang at long range, waited silently for the next order. When the Julang, designated Target One, had vertical surfaced, Deahl had ordered tubes one and two check fired, the attack aborted, to see what was happening.

“Depth seven zero, speed zero, Captain.”

“Up scope.” Deahl hit the joystick strapped to his wiry thigh and the photonic mast came out of the sail. Deahl’s view showed the underside of the waves, the computer’s superimposed bearings selected to the bearing of the Julang. When the scope broke through the waves, Deahl reported, “Scope’s breaking, scope’s clear! I have Target One surfaced. Observation, Target One! Bearing three zero five, bearing mark] Range, three divisions in low power, masthead height set at three zero feet, range five hundred yards, angle on the bow starboard one two zero! Attention in the firecontrol party — we are suspending torpedo attack until we can determine Target One’s actions. Carry on.”

“Bastard’s probably just broken down, Skipper,” the XO said in his Baton Rouge accent.

“Sonar, Captain,” Deahl said into his boom microphone, “do you show loss of propulsion on Target One?”

“Captain, Sonar, no. His engines are idle, but he is still steaming.”