Terminal Run

As he arrived near her gangway he was met by his second in-command, Zhou Ping. Zhou was the son of a friend of Lien’s father in the Peoples Liberation Army Strategic Missile Force decades before. The friend had died a slow death of emphysema, and on his deathbed had asked Lien’s father to watch over Zhou, and when Lien’s father died, the obligation passed to Lien. At first Lien had considered the upholding of that promise yet another of dozens of duties to his father, but had soon seen an ingenious talent in the younger man, and had shepherded him through five sea tours, until today when Zhou stood as his first officer.

“It is my honor to greet you this rainy morning, Captain Lien,” Zhou said, bowing deeply. Lien Hua returned the bow and stood somberly, saying nothing for a moment, the rain falling down his collar, his black submarine force uniform drenched in the downpour.

“Tell me about the status of the People’s ship, Leader Zhou.”

“Nung Yahtsu is rigged for sea, my captain. The weapons load went perfectly. The Dong Feng torpedoes are tube-loaded in five tubes, the Tsunami special weapon is dry-loaded in tube six, and the remaining thirty torpedoes are rack-stowed. The reactor is in the power range, steam has been brought into the engine room the ship is self-sustaining, and the shore power cables have been withdrawn. The main engines are running at five percent power to the idle resistors, and the main motor has been tested. Lines are singled up, and the crew is at maneuvering stations. The navigation equipment has pin pointed us at the correct pier side location, and the radio equipment has received our permission to depart.”

“Excellent, Mr. First. Are there any discrepancies?”

“Yes, my captain. All class four and lower.”

“Very well, Leader Zhou.” Lien Hua looked skyward, the water pouring into his eyes. “A foul day to be a mariner, my friend, but all the better to shield us from the orbiting eyes of the barbarians.”

“They say it is good luck for the heavens to rain on us as we depart,” Zhou said. “But I would be equally content with the sun and a mild sea breeze.”

Lien Hua laughed and clapped his subordinate on the shoulder. “Prepare to maneuver,” Lien ordered Zhou. He took one last look around at the submarine base and set foot on the gangway. His boot landed on the rubber coating of the hull, and the bright lights of the submarine’s interior drove the gloom from the day. It would be a good run, he told himself as he lowered himself down the stainless-steel ladder to the deckplates below.

Ten minutes later, Nung Yahtsu cast off her lines and made her way into the deep channel. Lien Hua stood on the maneuvering tower of the fin, barely able to make out the admiral’s staff car with his wife and children inside. At ten minutes before noon the submarine rounded the turn at buoy number two and Lien’s family faded astern.

“Mr. First, I am going below,” he announced.

A half hour later the ship submerged and her engines sped up to maximum revolutions, on an intercept course with the Carrier Battlegroup One. By the time the task force entered the East China Sea, the Nung Yahtsu would be ahead of her, guarding her from enemy submarines and the enemy commanders’ evil intentions. Sometime before Nung Yahtsu escorted Battlegroup One to the firing position, she would engage and prevail over the Western submarines.

6

Michael Pacino got out of the staff car that had taken him from the Pentagon to the inner-security drydock area of Newport News Naval Shipyard. He still struggled to understand what Patton had found so urgent about the project he’d wanted Pacino to work on, and why it was such an emergency that Pacino had been plucked from his sailboat to perform it. Or even why Patton had needed him for it and not one of the several dozen hotshot MIT engineers who swarmed over the dry docks

The answers hadn’t come in the CNO suite, but perhaps they would be evident in the field, Pacino thought. He’d been asked to become project director of the SSNX rebuilding program. And not just to rebuild it, but to give it the power to outrun the fastest torpedoes in the inventories of the combat navies of the world. “That’s impossible,” he’d told Patton. “You’re asking me to make a Greyhound bus outrun a motorcycle. It can’t be done.”

Patton smiled. “It could if you strapped a few rockets to the bus, Patch,” he said in jest.

Pacino promised to make an attempt, but he was not optimistic. Before he left, Patton asked him if he would also take on program directorship of a new and secret weapons system, the Tigershark torpedo project, a program that up to now had failed dismally.

“It’s a lot like Project Snare, where we put a carbon processor into a submarine — you didn’t know we did that, did you?”