“For the duration,” McGarvey said. What other choice did he have?
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Newton Kilbourne was the kid born on the wrong side of the tracks who made good. He stood on the engineers' gallery gazing at the P/C2622 on the prototype assembly floor. Building airplanes had been nearly the same as building automobiles, until this one.
Time
magazine said that this airplane was the most sophisticated and most complicated machine ever built. She was on this week's cover, her variable geometry wings fully extended, hanging in space, nose high, the curvature of the earth visible beneath her sonic nose baffles that looked like drooping walrus moustaches. Even on the floor, surrounded by scaffolding and platforms, workers scrambling in, around, and over her like ants at a picnic feast, she looked as if she were flying at supersonic speeds, and Kilbourne was proud. But they were trying to kill her, and it was as if someone were trying to rip out his heart. The pain could have been no worse.
He was a large man, with a thick torso, a massive head set on a twenty-one-inch neck, and huge, rock-hard fists. As a young man he'd been a street scrapper. In the navy, he'd held the fleet boxing championship. Middle age and
a desk job had done little to diminish his powers. But this time there was no clear target to hit, no ugly face to smash, no kidneys to punch. Only sneaking around and spying. And sabotaging, he thought sadly. The bastards.
Al Vasilanti came onto the hangar floor, walked around to the front of the futuristic-looking airplane, and stood gazing up at her.
Kilbourne walked to the end of the gallery and took the stairs down. The bulk of the engineering was completed. Only the flight-readiness people were left on the project. The gallery seemed empty.
“When did you get back, Al?” Kilbourne asked as he approached, but he was stopped in his tracks when he got close enough to see what condition Vasilanti was in. The old man looked old. His body seemed to have shrunk inward, and his face had sagged and wrinkled. The sparkle had faded from his eyes.
“She's a beautiful machine, Newt. You've done a magnificent job. The board didn't want me to hire you, but I told them to go to hell.” Vasilanti chuckled, the sound dry, like corn stalks rustling in a breeze.
“There's more to be done.”
“You'll do it.”
“If they'll leave us alone.”
Vasilanti tore his eyes away from the airplane and looked bleakly at Kilbourne. His expression was cold, his entire posture changed, as if he were an animal about to strike. “It'll be their mistake if they don't back away.”
“Maybe we need help from Washington.”
“Fuck them,” Vasilanti said. “This airplane will fly, Newton. Any man gets in my way will die. If need be I'll kill him myself.”
“Whatever it takes, I'm with you, Al.”
“Of course you are,” Vasilanti said. “McGarvey will do it for us.”
“I don't trust him,” Kilbourne said, but Vasilanti turned away and looked up at the airplane again.
“There's never been anything like this. Never.”
“No, sir.”
“We'll call her âAmerica,'” Vasilanti said. “And screw all the sonsabitches who'll think that's corny. I want the name painted on both sides of her fuselage, and the flag painted on her tail feathers.”
Kilbourne didn't know whether to laugh or cry. “At least it's better than âSavior.'”
“She'll be that, too,” Vasilanti said. “But she's âAmerica,' and everything that means. Hope, promise for the future, fair play, honesty.”
Vasilanti was of another era, Kilbourne thought sadly. But maybe it was time, after all, to bring back a little of the old to mix with the new.
America.
He smiled, the first time in weeks. “I'll have it done by morning, Al.”
“See that you do,” Vasilanti said.
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“By going to Japan I'll be stirring up a hornet's nest,” McGarvey said.
“Al Vasilanti did the same thing by showing off the P/C2622,” Kennedy replied.
“They'll react. You'll have to handle it.”
“I'm not sure that we're up to it. But as I said we don't have the choice.”
“More airplanes could fall out of the sky. Maybe it'd be better if you did give up.”
“We've covered that, Mac. Now, if you're going to work for me I don't want to hear that kind of shit again. Clear?”
“Clear,” McGarvey said, and he felt like a heel for maneuvering the man the way he had.
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Technically their patrol should have been on the homeward stretch, Commander Michael Hanrahan told himself. By now the
USS Thorn
should have been heading for the barn at Yokosuka for some much needed R&R, although with the trouble up there he figured he'd have to wrangle transportation for his people to Seoul or maybe even down to Taipei. Yokosuka wasn't safe.
After this one he was due to be rotated stateside for Pentagon duty. Rumor had it that he was being looked at
for his eagle, which, considering how little time in grade he had as commander, would put him on the fast track for his first star. Maybe three years, tops four or five. Not bad for a thirty-eight-year-old mick who'd graduated from the Academy at the bottom of the heap. But in the ensuing sixteen years he had busted his hump. Except for flattops, there wasn't a ship or boat in the navy that he didn't know inside and out. From submarines to captain's gigs, Hanrahan had gone to school on design, construction, and operational techniques so that he could recite page and verse from just about every manual in current use. His friends sometimes called him “Professor,” and so far as he knew his men liked and trusted him, which in itself wasn't bad in the modern navy.
The only problem was he'd never fired a shot in anger in his career. He'd missed Vietnam, and he'd not participated in the Gulf War. And frankly he didn't know how he would react under fire. Well, he hoped.
You couldn't ask for a better ship under you than the
Thorn
, he assured himself for the tenth time this morning. She was a Spruance-class destroyer laid down in the late seventies and retrofitted with new weapons and electronics systems numerous times in her eighteen-year life. At a little over 560 feet, her four General Electric LM2500 gas turbine engines could push her 7,800 tons through the water at speeds in excess of thirty knots.
In addition to the Sea Sparrow Improved Point Defense Management System (IPDMS) and Harpoon antiship missiles, the
Thorn
carried Phalanx Close In Weapons Systems (CIWS) cannons that fired radar-aimed 20 mm Mk 149 depleted-uranium sub-caliber ammunition at burst rates of over four thousand rounds a minute, five-inch deck mounted guns, Mk32 torpedoes, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and the Mk41 Vertical Launch Anti-submarine Rocket System. Some of her ASW rounds were loaded with one kiloton nuclear warheads. Combined with the sophisticated SOS-53C bow sonar system, towed arrays, numerous radars, and a pair of
SH-60F LAMPS III ASW helicopters, no submarine currently operated by any navy in the world was completely safe from the
Thorn
and her crew of two hundred ninety-six men and officers.
The legend over the door to the ship's Combat Information Center below decks was simple and to the point: “Find âem, shoot 'em, kill 'em.”
“Let me see that message again, Red,” Hanrahan said. “Maybe we can get out of it after all.”
The
Thorn
's executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Willis RyderâRed to his friendsâhanded over the flimsy that comms had sent up less than ten minutes ago. “Looks airtight to me, skipper.”
“Nothing's that black and white.”
The message from Seventh Fleet Operations was simple and direct. It ordered the
Thorn,
which was 250 nautical miles south of Tokyo Bay, inbound for Yokosuka, to intercept the Yuushio-class MSDF submarine
Samisho,
submerged and possibly heading south. Absolutely no loopholes. But the third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs were the most disturbing to Hanrahan.
3. IT IS BELIEVED THAT THE SAMISHO WAS THE MSDF SUBMARINE INVOLVED IN THE TATAR STRAIT SINKING OF THE RUSSIAN NAVY FRIGATE MENSHINKSKY. THEREFORE THE SAMISHO IS TO BE CONSIDERED POSSIBLY HOSTILE XX RPT XX THE SAMISHO IS TO BE CONSIDERED POSSIBLY HOSTILE.
4. ONCE YOU HAVE INTERCEPTED THE SAMISHO YOU WILL FOLLOW HER UNTIL OTHERWISE DIRECTED.
5. YOU ARE TO MAINTAIN A DEFENSIVE POSTURE AT ALL TIMES. YOU WILL RETURN FIRE ONLY IF FIRST FIRED UPON XX RPT XX YOU ARE AUTHORIZED TO RETURN FIRE ONLY IF FIRST FIRED UPON. GOOD LUCK MIKE XX TOM SENDS XX EOM
“I'm not going to get into a shooting match with the Japanese Navy,” Hanrahan said.
“Skipper, I don't think anybody wants that.”
“You read the brief. Unless Intel screwed up the sequence of events, the
Samisho
tricked the Russians into taking the first shot. That will not happen to us.”
“We've got the advantage. The Russians had no idea that he might try something funny. All we have to do is find him and stalk him.”
“That's right, Red,” Hanrahan said distantly. He was rereading the message.
He and Ryder could have been brothers. Both men were husky, both had red hairâthough Ryder's was a thicker, brighter redâboth had freckles, and both were very bright. The main difference between them was that Hanrahan was sometimes indecisive while Ryder was sometimes too quick. Together they made a good team.
Hanrahan looked up, a sly grin twisting the corners of his mouth. “If I read this correctly, we're supposed to find the
Samisho
and stick with her wherever she goes until we're relieved. Seventh says she sailed with full stores, which means we could be out here for another ninety days.”
“They won't keep us out here that long, Captain.”
“Doesn't matter, because I have no intention of chasing that boat all over the Pacific.”
“Sir?”
“Red, it's my intention to be back in Yokosuka within forty-eight hours, mission accomplished.”
“Captain, I'm one hundred percent behind you. But I will not participate in a sham search. If I'm ordered to find the
Samisho
I'll do everything within my power to do it. Otherwise I'd just be wasting your time, my time, and the time of a damned fine crew.”
“That was a pretty speech, X,” Hanrahan said frostily. It pissed him off that his executive officer didn't have more trust in him. They'd sailed together long enough.
“I'm sorry, sir. Tell me what you want, and I'll get to it.”
“We're going to find the
Samisho,
Red, as rapidly as we can. And then we're going to herd her back to port.”
“She might not want to turn tail,” Ryder said. “She's a quiet boat. She could try to sneak around us.”
“I don't think so,” Hanrahan said. He picked up the growler phone, and punched the number for the Combat Information Center. “This is the Commanding Officer. Sonar picking up anything yet on passive?”
“Negative, sir.”
“Let me talk to Don.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Lieutenant Donald Sattler was CIC officer. He was an Annapolis graduate and a fine man. They didn't come much better in Hanrahan's book.
“Good morning, Skipper. Sonar's picked up nothing yet, but we just started.”
“I want both choppers up as soon as possible.”
“They'll be airborne within five minutes.”
“How's it look out there?”
“Surface conditions are good, and there's very little traffic, which means our search pattern won't be cluttered. The sharp thermoclines are below eight hundred feet, so unless that sub-driver has gone deep, or has decided for some reason to run silent, we'll have a pretty good chance of nailing him.”
“In passive mode.”
“That's right, Captain,” Sattler said.
“As soon as the choppers are up and on station I want sonar to go active. I want to find the bastard and I don't want to screw around doing it.”
Ryder raised his eyebrows.
“He'll not only know that we're up here, Skipper, he'll know that we're looking for him,” the CIC officer said.
“That he will, Don. I want this mission brought to termination as expeditiously as possible. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Sattler replied. “If he's out there, we'll know it real quick.”
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“Conn, sonar.”
Lieutenant Minori answered the comms. “Conn,
hai.
”
“I have sonar contact, range fifteen thousand meters
and closing. It's an American war ship. They're pinging us.”