Terminal Run

The Viking walked a pair of dividers across the surface of the map, measuring the distance from their position to the Strait of Malacca before he noticed Captains Casper Hendricks and Dennis Pulaski standing behind him. Hendricks was a Harvard grad, an ugly officer with a long thin nose, eyes much too close together presiding over thin lips and a weak chin. He was tall, thin, and awkward, with one of the deepest mean streaks Ericcson had ever seen in the fleet, but the man was sharp and incisive when it came to grasping a tactical situation, which led to bitter arguments over tactics. The admiral loved to mix it up with the ship’s captain, but the raised voices obviously bothered Hendricks. Ericcson had wanted to stop in a liberty port and get the man drunk and laid to see if it would loosen him up, but there had been no time during the flank run from Pearl. Captain Pulaski, the battle group operations officer and Ericcson’s acting chief of staff, was Hendricks’s opposite. Pulaski was short and solid,

his thick arms and legs carrying a barrel chest with a hairless bucket for a head, his pockmarked features blunted by four years of brigade boxing at the Academy, his fists appearing capable of driving nails without a hammer. He spoke with a thick Chicago accent, every syllable sounding tough and intimidating. His thuggish appearance fronted for a tactical intelligence as honed as Hendricks’s or Ericcson’s. In contrast to the ship’s captain, Pulaski loved the tactical flaps with The Viking, sometimes breaking into language even more colorful than Ericcson’s. At their last tactical session, Pulaski had erupted, crossing the line by roaring, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Viking — my second-grade daughter can deploy a fleet better than that.” Flag plot had gone completely silent, Hendricks’s face had gone white, and Ericcson had drawn himself up to his full height, a murderous look coming to his face before he roared in laughter and clapped Pulaski on the shoulder. Hendricks looked like he eagerly awaited the day when both officers would leave his ship far behind them.

“Morning, gentlemen,” Ericcson said. “Pour yourselves some coffee and get your asses over here and look at the chart. We have serious problems.”

“Same problems we had last night, Admiral,” Pulaski said, filling his coffee cup and rubbing his eyes, the ops boss looking rumpled, wrinkled, and tired.

“Exactly, sir,” Hendricks said in his cultured accent.

“Except that today I’ve had an idea. One of those inspired middle-of-the-night ideas that can get you fired. Look at it like this, men.” The Viking jabbed a finger at the fleet marker at their position in the Philippine Sea. “This is us.” Then he pointed a finger at the marker outside the Suez Canal. “The Royal Navy.” At the far end of the chart, the East China Sea ended and the South China Sea began near the island of Taiwan. The admiral placed a red marker in the South China Sea between Taiwan and the Philippines. “Red Chinese Northern Fleet Battlegroup One, making way at thirty-five knots.”

Ericcson put his chin in his hands, thinking. “Listen, the Royal Navy Fleet is going to be here too soon. Allowing the Brits in-theater is a loser. We need to attack them the minute they exit the Gulf of Aden, or maybe as soon as they leave the Red Sea and enter the Gulf of Aden, here at the choke point “That would take a miracle, sir,” Hendricks said. “The East Coast submarines are inbound, but at least six days out. Besides which, we don’t have direct operational control of them. They still report to McKee.”

“Not the point,” The Viking said. “Look at the chart. What do you see?”

Pulaski pointed at the Suez Canal. “If we hold the Royal Navy Fleet at the Suez for six days, we can set up an ambush for them when they come out of the Gulf.”

“Exactly,” The Viking said, stoking a new cigar. “We’ll block the Suez.”

“But, sir, how would you propose to block the canal? We can’t just drop a big bomb on it.” Hendricks looked like he’d just bit into a lemon.

“I need some real-time overhead intelligence of what’s transiting the Suez Canal. And hurry.”

Nung Yahtsu moved through the dark and the cold at a keel depth of three hundred meters on a course of one nine zero degrees true.