Terminal Run

Captain George Dixon glared angrily at the arrested intruder, who sat at the captain’s conference table in a borrowed ill-fitting submarine poopy-suit.

“So let me see if I got this straight, Lieutenant, if that’s what you really are,” Dixon said in a hostile South Carolina drawl. “You invade my ship and then tell me my entire communications suite is non secure and compromised, and I can’t use it to talk to anybody. And that means no one from USubCom can talk to me. And that you’ve got a handheld computer gizmo that will bypass the battle networks to allow me to talk to the National Military Command Center, except that the messages are passed by Internet Email.”

“To be verified by the SAS sealed authenticators, Captain,” Oliver said. “There’s no way that SAS could ever be compromised. The computers and SAS are the bypass to the Navy Tactical Data System, which is now hardwired to the Chinese, and maybe the Indians.”

“Why shouldn’t I have you arrested as a foreign conspirator?”

“Why don’t you call for the SAS packet and verify the Email message to be authentic?”

Dixon stroked his waxed handlebar mustache with two fingers. He was young for submarine command, a six-foot-one inch dark-haired man, but he had served early in his career with David Kane, who had rocketed to flag rank, and Kane’s recommendations made Dixon’s obstacles vanish before him. Dixon had gone from being a junior officer on a 6881 sub to a Seawolf-class as navigator during the Japanese War, then as XO of another 6881 during the East China Sea war, and finally named prospective commanding officer of the new construction Virginia-class submarine Leopard, which had finished her sea trials early and been loaded out and sent to sea on the emergency special operation to the Bo Hai Bay. During Dixon’s hectic operational life, he had managed to fall in love with a Charleston beauty, pursue her, marry her, build a house, and have two children, both boys with the fine blond hair and blue eyes of their mother, both with the energy and enthusiasm and penetrating logic of their father, the boys and their mother a hemisphere and a half year away. As a reminder of them, he carried a gold coin his wife had given him for their first anniversary, kept perpetually in his left coverall pocket. At times when he was uncertain, like now, he liked to take it out and feel its heavy weight in his hand.

Dixon raised the phone to the conn, pressing the buzzer. “Officer of the Deck, send the navigator and communicator to my stateroom, and get the executive officer from her workout in the torpedo room.”

While they waited, Dixon checked the message again. The ship was still at periscope depth, rolling in the waves while the Chinese battle group the first one to sortie from the Port Arthur piers, sailed far over the horizon, getting further away every minute. A knock came at the door.

“Come in,” the captain called.

“Nav and Commo here, sir,” MacGregor, the redheaded navigator, said, as usual sounding like he’d been swallowing raw coffee grounds. The Scotsman habitually talked so fast he had been nicknamed “Burst Comm” by his former ship, in reference to the burst communications that came down from the satellite.

“Gentlemen, I am ordering you to withdraw SAS eight zero-four-echo-three from the SAS safe.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” MacGregor said. “I’m required to ask why, sir.”

Dixon looked at Oliver, who nodded. Dixon handed him the pad computer. MacGregor read Lieutenant Oliver’s E-mail letter of introduction, looked uncertainly up at the captain, then grabbed young Ensign Wilkins and headed aft to the executive officer’s stateroom. While Dixon waited, Executive Officer

Donna Phillips knocked and entered, the thin, medium-height brunette wearing sweat-stained workout clothes and a towel around her neck, her shoulder and arm muscles still bulging from the weights she’d been lifting in the torpedo room. Normally Phillips could be found in perfectly starched coveralls, working in her neat stateroom. She wore her hair in a chin length bob, and other than when she worked out, it was never known to have a single hair out of place. The hairdo emphasized her strong cheekbones and her dark eyes, which were usually engaged in a frown. Dixon had worked with Phillips for two years, and he was well pleased with her, though he thought she would do well to lighten up on her heavy-handed command of the crew.

“XO, meet Lieutenant Brett Oliver, detached duty to NSA, and now to us.”

“Captain, you want to tell me what’s going on?”

Dixon handed her the pad computer to read Oliver’s note, her only expression a raised eyebrow.

MacGregor and Wilkins returned with a foil packet, the junior man holding it as if it were a ticking bomb. “SAS authenticator eight-zero-four-echo-three, sir. Please verify that it is the correct one, sir,” Wilkins said.

Dixon squinted at the printing on the packet, then said, “Eight-zero-four-echo-three, packet checks. Open the packet.”