Terminal Run

Ericcson took out the glasses and leaned over the photograph. A slow smile spread over his harsh face. He stood and ran his hand through his crew cut, then stubbed the cigar in the butt kit and looked over at Pulaski.

“Now what do you say, my ops boss and good friend?”

“I think we sent the Reds back to the locker room, sir.”

“A touchdown on the kickoff return.” Ericcson grinned.

“If you two could stop with the sports talk for a minute,” Hendricks said, “we need to determine what our next move will be.”

Ericcson nodded solemnly. The captain of the John Paul Jones had a point. “Any recommendations?”

Pulaski nodded. “Since the Red fleet won’t beat us into the Indian Ocean, I say we lay in a new course to the northern opening of the Formosa Strait and intercept Battlegroups Two and Three as they come south. I say we shoot a message to Kelly McKee and ask him to send a few extra submerged units to cover us, even though he’s tasked them with the British to the west.. This is much more important than waiting for Brits who may never come^ If McKee backs us up, we can whip Battlegroups Two and Three with supersonic fighter air power and give them a thrashing from our cruise missiles. Hell, get us close enough, sir, and I’ll shoot my pistol at the bastards.”

Ericcson looked at Hendricks, who nodded. “Very well, gentlemen, let’s intercept Battlegroups Two and Three in the East China Sea. First get the word to the task force, then draft a message to McKee — and make it damned persuasive — and then inform Admiral Patton.”

The officers left. Ericcson fired up a second cigar and poured a second cup of coffee. He was missing sleep and had survived on coffee and nicotine for the last thirty-six hours, and he should have felt like an upright corpse, but instead he felt as strong as a teenager. It would be a good day, he thought, standing at the windows of flag plot as the ship turned to the northwest. The sun rose over the seascape as he finished the cigar, but he barely noticed. The grainy photograph of the sunken Chinese fleet was far prettier to him than nature.

“Admiral, the messages from periscope depth,” the messenger of the watch said as he handed McKee the pad computer.

McKee waved his thanks and clicked into the computer from his seat at the wardroom table, on Captain Kiethan Judi son’s left side. The first message was a comprehensive intelligence summary from ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence. The Suez Canal had been blocked longer than expected, and the Royal Navy Fleet remained bottlenecked, and the British fleet commander was at a decision point — whether to turn to leave the Mediterranean and go around Africa to get into the Indian Ocean, or to wait until the channels could be cleared. There was some speculation that the British were contemplating the use of tactical nuclear weapons to vaporize the obstacles, but if they did they’d be screwed, McKee thought, since a nuclear explosion would fill the deep channels with silt, and they’d have to be dredged. The British would undoubtedly come to the same conclusion. He didn’t envy the Royal Navy commander. McKee would probably have abandoned the idea of waiting for the canal to be cleared and gone around — at least that way there was no waiting and the fleet would have been doing something instead of sitting in frustration at anchor off Egypt.

The next paragraphs described the Red Chinese loss of Battlegroup One and the effect of the loss on their leadership. The commander of the PLA Navy had been ousted, his replacement considered more aggressive but not as gifted in strategy or tactics. The PLA Navy submarine force admiral, Admiral Chu HuaFeng, had kept his position, but keeping his job was not assured in the long run. The sinking of the battle group had been a body blow to the Reds, but the blocking of the Suez had almost worked against the U.S. cause, since the delay of the Royal Navy seemed to make the Reds think they had an extension on their deadline to get into the Indian Ocean.

Battlegroup Two was making way cautiously into the East China Sea on a full antisubmarine warfare posture, with deployed ASW destroyers, two escorting submarines — one a retooled Russian short-hull Omega cruise missile submarine, the second a new French Valiant-class. The first would be no worry, since the Omega tended to rattle at the high speed of advance of a surface force, but the French Valiant would keep McKee awake. The ship was the best quality construction with an elegant design, but fortunately was not operated by the French — if it were, it would have been a formidable adversary — but the Red crews undoubtedly barely knew how to operate her, or so the intelligence digest hoped.