Kiyoda smiled. “Admirable. If I wanted to lose him it is exactly what I would do. But that is not what I wish. We're not here for that purpose.”
“If we sink this one our homecoming will not be so benign as it was before.”
Whenâ
not if
â
that American warship goes to the bottom in Japanese territorial waters the circle will be complete.
Kamiya-san'
s Morning Star will begin.
“Only if we fire first,” Kiyoda said. “Come left to three-one-five.”
“Hai,
turning left to three-one-five degrees,” Minori repeated the order.
“Come to all-ahead stop.”
“Yo-so-ro, kan-cho!”
Â
“Target has turned inboard again and is fading, new course three-one-five,” Don Sattler, the
Thorn's
Combat Information Officer said.
“Bridge, aye,” Ryder replied. He put down the growler. “He's stopping for another look, skipper. New course three-one-five.”
Hanrahan studied the chart. “He'll try for the strait this time. I can feel it.”
Ryder joined the captain. “He'd be a fool to go for it out in the open like this. All he has to do is duck below the thermocline where'd we'd lose him, and the option would be his. Wouldn't be a damned thing we could do to stop him. If we hung around the narrows he might continue south and pop inside someplace else. If we took the bait he'd switch back and sneak under us.”
“He's not going to do that, Red,” Hanrahan said. “Because I'm going to lean on him again.”
“Still might force him to duck and run.”
Hanrahan looked up. “Then our assets coming from Okinawa will handle it. But it's not going to happen that way. He wants to confront us. Maybe here, maybe farther south. But I'm getting a definite feeling that the crazy sonofabitch wants to have it out with us.”
“Seventh will be on our ass.”
“I'm not going to shoot unless I'm shot at first,” Hanrahan said. “But we're damned well going to be ready for it, and we're going to let him know that we are.”
“Let's put the choppers up again, Skipper.”
“Do it now, X. And call the Orion back. I want as much help as possible.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper.”
“Helm, come right to three-one-five,” Hanrahan said. “Give me turns for thirty knots.”
“Coming right to three-one-five, aye,” the helmsman responded. “Engineering answering for speed of thirty knots, aye.”
Hanrahan got Sattler on the growler. “Don, I think he's going to try for the strait this time. I'm going to end-run him and try to get at least ten thousand yards out front.”
“That'll give him a pretty good firing solution on us if he wants to take it, Skipper.”
“I know that. So I want no mistakes here. The choppers are going up again, and I've called for an Orion, so we'll have backup. In the meantime, I want sonar to go active. I want to know exactly what he's doing and how he's doing it.”
Sattler lowered his voice. “Mike, that's an MSDF sub out there. We're allies, not enemies. Have you thought this out?”
“All the way, Don. Keep me posted.”
“Will do, Captain.”
Â
The American destroyer was so close that when her sonar went active everybody aboard the
Samisho
could hear it. Kiyoda watched his attack-center crewmen. All of them, including Minori, looked up as if they could see
through the skin of the hull and through eighty meters of water.
“Conn, sonar.”
Kiyoda answered the comms. “This is your captain. We hear it, Nakayama.” He felt a sense of well-being.
“Hai, kan-cho,
but she's making turns for thirty knots, on a new course of three-one-five.”
Kiyoda brought the data up on his command console and overlaid a chart outline showing the Takara Strait, Tanegashima and Yaku islands to the north, and the tiny rock, Kuchino, to the south. The target designated sierra-zero-nine was running directly for the entry to the strait, and within minutes she would be well out ahead of the
Samisho.
“It's what you thought he would do,
kan-cho,
”his XO said.
Kiyoda nodded. “A little sooner than I thought. It would appear that he has concerns about us roaming the East China Sea.”
“He has made his intentions very clear to us. Once he's in the strait he'll turn back and confront us bow on.”
“Pinging us continuously.”
“Hai, kan-cho.
He'll want to know exactly what we're doing, and he'll want us to understand his interest. No mistakes.”
Kiyoda keyed the comms. “Sonar, conn. What's his range and bearing?”
“Range five thousand meters, and now his bearing is changing. Estimate his new course two-nine-five.”
The data was showing up on the command screen. “He's turned twenty degrees inboard,” Minori observed.
“Still running around us. But on that course he'll cross our bows.” Kiyoda smiled cruelly. It was for this moment, and the subsequent moments of strategy and battle, that he had been born. It was for this task that he'd been selected by
Kamiya-san,
and for which he had picked and trained his fine crew.
“We can help him,
kan-cho,
if it is still your desire to confront that destroyer captain,” Minori said.
“Continue.”
“I recommend that we come to fifteen knots and turn right seventy degreesâwhich will place us perpendicular to his port flankâwhile we make our depth twenty meters.”
“Do it now,” Kiyoda said, and he turned to his weapons control officer. “Flood tubes one, two, three, and four.”
Minori turned back. “With their sonar active they might not catch it.”
“I hope they do not,” Kiyoda said. “When we are in position and have a firing solution, we need only open our doors and fire. But they will not expect such fast action. They will be waiting for flooding noises, and if need be we shall catch them by surprise.”
“Hai, kan-cho,
it will catch them by surprise.”
Â
The weather over Yokosuka was gray overcast, windy, and chilly, which suited the dark mood of Seventh Fleet Commander-in-Chief Vice Admiral Albert Ryland. He stepped out of his staff car in front of fleet HQ and sniffed the air. It smelled of the sea, and tidal flats, and of other mostly oriental odors: fermenting soya beans perhaps, raw fish, ginger. A foreign place that had always been a mystery to Westerners. Americans no longer belonged here, and yet he told himself a hundred times over that had the U.S. had a bigger presence in Japan in the 1930s maybe Pearl would never have happened. A lot of very intelligent people were predicting an all-out war with the Japanese within the next fifteen years. Ryland for one was a nonbeliever, yet he felt in his military gut that a confrontation between the U.S. and Japan was inevitable. Not an all-out warâthe incident would fall far short of such insanity. But people would get killed. Of that he had absolutely no doubt. But was it happening now? Was that MSDF sub-driver getting into position to take the opening shots?
The weather was developing from the south. It meant that for now the tactical advantage lay slightly in favor of
the submarine. Surface conditions would make operations aboard the
Thorn
difficult in the narrow strait where seas could build up rapidly. And these were Japanese waters that the MSDF knew a lot better than we did.
“We're supposed to get some rain, Admiral,” Ryland's driver said.
“Don't I know it, Chief. Don't bother waiting. This one looks like an all-nighter.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ryland went in and took the elevator up to Operations on the fifth floor. It was 3:00 P.M. When he'd been recalled to headquarters, he'd been at a meeting with the mayor of Yokosuka about the recent trouble between U.S. Navy personnel and Japanese nationals. The
Samisho
was apparently heading into the East China Sea, the
Thorn
right on her tail. Some hard decisions were going to have to be made, and made soon.
His Operations Officer, Captain Thomas Byrne, was waiting for him. “We're running a three-way link between Mike Hanrahan aboard the
Thorn
and Fred White in one of our Orions. It looks as if that sub-driver wants to force the issue.”
Byrne was a big, tall black man who'd played defensive end for Navy and who'd graduated number six in his class. Ryland, who was from Birmingham, Alabama, initially had some difficulty accepting a black man as his Ops officer. But that trouble had lasted only one day. Since that time Byrne was, in the admiral's book, one of the best officers in the navy.
“Nobody's fired any shots yet, I hope.”
“No. But Mike is blocking the entrance to the strait, and the
Samisho
is on the way up.”
They went down into the pit together where Seventh played its war games, and where search-and-rescue operations were conducted. Byrne had brought in some of his staffers, and by the looks on their faces they were dug in for the duration. The activity was centered on the area south of the Japanese rocket-launching facility on Tanegashima
Island. Sensitive waters. But nothing on the display indicated that the MSDF or the Japanese Air Self Defense Force was involved in the unfolding drama. That didn't make sense to Ryland. If somebody were screwing around off Florida's Cape Kennedy, the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard would sure as hell be interested.
“Get me Hanrahan on the phone,” Ryland said. He took off his coat and traded it to one of the ratings for a cup of strong, black coffee. Ships at sea ran on nuclear fuel or bunker oil. Admirals ran on coffee.
A half-minute later Byrne handed him the phone.
“Mike, this is Al Ryland. How's it looking down there?”
“Admiral, you know that we've been following
Chrysanthemum,
and now it looks as if she wants to get through the strait. I'm blocking the deep-water passage, and she's on the way up.”
“Has she flooded her tubes?”
“We've been pinging her continuously to let her know what we're doing, but my chief sonarman thinks he might have heard flooding noises. Hard to tell for certain, sir.”
“If you are fired upon, you can defend yourself, Mike. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the meantime I'm going to see if I can get you some relief down there. But Mike, whatever happens I want you to stick with that sub until you're told otherwise.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
Ryland looked at the situation board. It just didn't make sense. “Get me Vice Admiral Shimakaze. Tell him it's urgent.”
“Yes, sir,” Byrne said. Ikuro Shimakaze was CINC of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force fleet.
Â
Glen Zerkel stood on the floor of Prototype Assembly Hangar One at Guerin's Gales Creek facility, his mouth
open. He was hidden in the shadows beneath a gallery of offices that ran the width of the huge building. Filling the vast hangar was the most fantastic airplane he'd ever seen. The word
America
was painted on her fuselage, and the American flag appeared on both of her two vertical stabilizers that towered a hundred feet off the floor. She was brightly lit by dozens of spotlights from above and below and from all sides. Scaffolding rose around both swept-back wings, where the cowlings had been removed from her engines. Even sitting like that, parts of her missing, parts of her imprisoned inside cages, the hypersonic airliner looked as if she were flying. As if she were climbing straight up into a blue-black sky, stars faintly visible even though it was bright daylight. She was Star Trek's
Enterprise,
only more sexy and fantastic because she was real.
Getting into Guerin's facilities, including this one, had been easy. The company was so vast that tight security was nearly impossible to maintain. It was simply too expensive. The Pantex nuclear assembly plant in Texas, for instance, was much smaller yet spent millions each year on security. Zerkel had penetrated that facility's outer perimeter several years ago but had to get out when he'd stupidly tripped an alarm. This place was much easier. He just didn't want to get careless. Too much was at stake. If he screwed it up he had no doubt that Mueller would kill him.
Zerkel took several photographs of the fantastic airplane. He wanted to show his brother what they were working on out here. He'd already seen Guerin's warehousing and parts distribution system, which included a vast depot that accommodated incoming shipments to Guerin by air, by truck, by rail, and even by sea. Tomorrow he would tackle Guerin's headquarters and main engineering facility at Portland's airport.