Terminal Run

Pacino could feel his chair angle downward slightly. He trained his view to look ahead, looking down on the top of the sail, which was approaching the waves. A wave splashed over the top of the sail, then receded. The angle became steeper.

“Depth six five feet,” the chief reported.

Several waves washed over the sail and the cockpit went under, and nothing remained but a boiling wake. Pacino looked aft at the wake calming behind them, the aft edge of the sail a hump coming out of the waves, until they swallowed the aft part of the sail.

“Sail’s under,” Pacino called out. The waves were approaching his view, below him by ten feet. He did a low power search, and by the time his circle was complete, the waves were close.

“Eight zero feet.”

The down angle of the deck became steeper.

“Eight three feet. Five-degree down bubble.”

The waves were much closer now, the speed of the ship making the water seem to zoom toward him. Soon the crest of a wave was above the level of Pacino’s view, and it towered over him. Instinctively he took a breath and held it, and the wave splashed into his view.

“Scope’s awash,” he said, breathing again. A burst of phosphorescent foam surrounded him for an instant, and his view came out of the water again as the wave trough came by. His view cleared, the stars and the sky came back for a moment before the next wave crest splashed Pacino in the face, the green-lit foam washing around him. One final trough came, giving a momentary glimpse of the surface and the starlight and an approaching big wave, and then the crest hit him and the view was blinded by the fireflies of the foam and a storm of bubbles. The light particles cleared and Pacino found himself looking up at the underside of the waves, lit by starlight and the fading phosphorescent wake of the periscope. He saw three waves rolling by overhead, a thousand bubbles swimming by him, and then the sea around him became dark.

“Scope’s under. Lowering the Type 23.” Pacino pulled off the helmet. He blinked, back in the dim reality of the control room, his hair sweaty over his ears. O’Neal handed him red goggles to keep his eyes night-adapted, then donned wraparound red glasses.

“Rig control for red,” O’Neal called to the diving officer. Red lights flashed and held. The previously dark control room was lit in a haunted-house red that seemed bright to Pacino at first. The ship pulled out at 150 feet, where the Cyclops system trimmed the ship, bringing her to exactly neutral buoyancy.

Pacino turned to the captain, standing behind him with his arms crossed. He had changed into submariner’s coveralls, wearing his dolphins and command pin on his left pocket, his embroidered nametag reading catardi. His left arm had a patch with the Jolly Roger pirate emblem of the Unified Sub marine Command with the ship’s patch below it, his right sleeve carrying a patch with the American flag. He wore black sneakers. He also wore a black eye patch over his left eye, giving him the appearance of a pirate. Pacino knew from his youth that was not an affectation, but kept one eye night adapted in case of an emergency periscope depth.

“Captain,” Pacino said, standing up, “ship is submerged to one five zero feet with a satisfactory one-third trim. Request to go deep and return to point of intended motion.”

“Take her deep, JOOD,” Catardi ordered. “Test depth, steep angle.”

Piranha plunged into the deep cold of the Atlantic.

Admiral Kelly McKee stared into his empty coffee mug and shook the carafe, which was dry. He lit the third cigar of the flight, trying to think ahead to the intricacies of the upcoming war.

The key to the conflict was keeping the British out of the fight and attacking the Reds early, McKee thought. He shut his eyes, his mind wandering back to Admiral Patton’s briefing at the bunker. He concentrated on bringing back each word and each expression on the Navy chief’s face, back to the moment when the older man had unfolded the map of Asia onto the table.

“Two years ago, while the Red Chinese were fighting the Whites on the Chinese east coast, the Hindu Republic of India’s dictator Nipun sent his shock troops north, invading and occupying a vast plateau of Red Chinese territory.” Patton circled a region north of India’s northern border, an area colored the red of the Peoples Republic of China, labeled Xinjiang Uyger Zizhiqu.

“Soon into their occupation the Indians discovered a massive oil field, which they named “Shamalan.” The crude oil is incredibly sweet with almost no sulfur. India called in their friends from the UK, and within a year the Brits completed the work of a decade by constructing two cross-continental pipelines, two refineries, and two large oil unloading terminals.

The refined petroleum from the Shamalan oil fields is the best quality in the world, and the Indians are pricing it to sell. When the Saudi shipping lanes were shut down from the supertanker explosions, India’s production came on-line, making India a world economic power.