Terminal Run

Wilkins pulled the foil tab and withdrew a card with a long string of letters and numbers written on it.

“Navigator, authenticate the E-mail message on the pad computer,” Dixon ordered.

MacGregor glanced from the card to the E-mail and back, finally looking up at Dixon. “Sir. the E-mail message authenticates. It’s a valid message, sir.”

Dixon nodded. “Take the SAS packet and destroy it under two-man control and sign for it,” he ordered. The junior officers left, and as they shut the door behind them, the small computer beeped.

“There’s a second E-mail in here,” Phillips said as she looked at the computer.

“Let me see that,” the captain said. Another message had come in from the Internet link from the periscope antenna. “Another one needing authentication.”

It took another several minutes to get the second SAS authenticator opened, but when it authenticated the second message, Dixon looked up at Phillips and Oliver, the sub commander’s face a hard war face but with the color drained from it. He slowly reached for a phone and buzzed the officer of the deck on the conn.

“Off’sa’deck, Captain. Take her deep and increase speed to flank and close the Chinese surface force. Spin up all four war shot Mark 58 Alert/Acute Mod Plasma torpedoes. Make tubes one and two ready in all respects and open outer doors. When we’re within ten thousand yards of the nearest battle group combatant slow to ten knots, downshift main coolant pumps, and rig for ultra quiet And send the navigator back to my stateroom.”

“Captain, what is it?” Phillips asked.

Captain Dixon looked up at both officers. “It would appear we’rein a shooting war.”

Lien Hua walked down the rainswept concrete jetty. His black uniform with its minimal insignia became drenched. It was uncomfortable, but there would be time to change later, and the wet uniform reminded him of the hardness of this day’s task. He continued down the pier to the security barrier, where the admiral’s staff car had pulled up. Inside there was no admiral, but instead Lien’s wife and daughters.

“Well, hello, girls,” he said, smiling in spite of the stress he felt. “What brings you here?” His eyes turned toward his wife’s beautiful face, her upturned eyes seeking his. She smiled back at him and climbed out of the car, hoisting the umbrella over her head, the wind blowing over the pier making it flap loudly. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him hard, then hugged him again. Her lips came to his ear, her voice barely audible above the storm.

“I wanted to tell you I love you. And to tell you to be careful. And that I’m sorry we fought.”

Lien Hua smiled, kissing her cheek, then pulling back so he could look in her eyes, the eyes of a princess. “It was my fault, dearest,” he said. He looked around sheepishly. “And I love you too. Let me say goodbye to the girls.” He leaned over their window and kissed each rain-spattered small face, touching their hair and pulling them close, the smell of them reminding him of home and safety and happiness.

“Father, Mother says you are going to war. Is that true?”

“Mother should not say such things,” he said, glancing in amusement at his wife. “We are going to sea for another exercise. I will be home soon. And until I do, you must mind your mother.”

“We will, Daddy,” they chorused. He touched their noses and hugged them both again.

“Admiral Chu let you come in his staff car?”

“His wife thought it would be a good thing.”

Lien nodded. “Thank you for coming, my princess, but I must go.”

“We’ll watch your departure from here. Be safe, my love,” she said. “Come home to us.”

He bent to kiss her, then turned to walk back down the pier, pulling his collar up against the driving rain and wiping her lipstick from his face as he approached the berth of the fast attack nuclear submarine.

The ship was a brand-new Chinese-designed Julang-class, built on Red Chinese soil by Chinese engineers and shipbuilders in the Huludao Naval Base and Shipyard in the northern Bo Hai, now stationed at the Jianggezhuang Submarine Base, where no Westerner could spy on her secrets. Even in the gloom of the hammering rain she was a sleek, black, graceful beauty. She was so low in the water she was barely visible, her cigar-shaped hull awash to the top curving surface, her fin rising from the midsection, the shape vertical forward, curving on the upper surface and sloping back to the deck aft. The topside section sloped gently to the water aft of the fin, the rudder slicing upward, seeming disembodied in the black water of the slip. The vessel’s name was Nung Yahtsu, which the barbarians would translate to mean Teeth of the Dragon. It was a name conferred upon her by Lien Hua himself when she was but a helpless hoop of high-yield steel in a forlorn drydock, and the fierce name would shape the vessel’s coming destiny. This day she would sail into the seas far from her home base and bloody her teeth with the flesh of the barbarians.