“Conn, ECMs. The helicopter has just dropped a dipping buoy.”
“Belay that depth,” Kiyoda told Minori. “Make it five-zero meters.” A dipping buoy was a sonar unit that enabled the Russian Ka-27 Helix helicopter launched from the frigate to get a fairly accurate fix on their depth and position.
“Yo-so-ro,
five-zero meters,” Minori replied.
“ECMs, conn, put out a decoy,” Kiyoda ordered. “Sonar, conn, give me a course, speed, and range to the target.”
“Zero-one-zero degrees relative, speed of closure five-one knots, range just under twenty-four nautical miles.”
Kiyoda instantly did the sums and subtractions in his head. “Come right ten degrees to course three-five-zero.”
“Hai,
coming
omo-kaji,
ten degrees to three-five-zero,” Minori said. It put them bow on to the Russian frigate.
“Weapons, give me a final firing solution on the Harpoon,” Kiyoda said. The GRX-2(B) torpedoes had an effective range of fifteen miles, but the Sub-Harpoon could be used to sixty nautical miles.
“Kan-cho,
is this a drill?” Lieutenant Takasaki asked. Like Minori, he was one of the bright ones out of the Maritime Self Defense Force Academy, and Kiyoda had handpicked him. The man's loyalty was absolute.
Rectitude and justice, Kiyoda had learned, were the principles that it was time to die when it was right to die, and to strike when it was right to strike. His men and officers all understood that. Mishima had understood it, just as the old man, Sokichi Kamiya, understood it perfectly. Before this patrol Kiyoda had gone to see the man in the mountains outside of Tokyo. They'd sat in the garden listening to the gurgling water and the gentle music of the windchime that hung in a gnarled old tree.
“Remember that revenge is justified only on behalf of one's superiors and benefactors,”
Kamiya-san
had told him. “Revenge may never be used to correct the wrongs done to yourself, your wife, or your children.”
“This is not a drill,” Kiyoda said. “Give me a firing solution and open torpedo door three.”
“Hai,
the solution is coming up,” the weapons control officer replied.
Kiyoda hesitated. The sounds made by the opening torpedo-tube door would be picked up by the chopper's sonobuoy, and understood for what they were.
“Kan-cho
, sonar, we've got a high-speed screw incoming,” Nakayama said excitedly. “I think the Helix dropped a torpedo on us.”
“ECMs, conn, get it off our tail,” Kiyoda ordered, keeping his voice calm. Everything was happening as he'd planned it. The Russians were easy to manipulate, especially now. “Come left thirty degrees to new course three-two-zero, and ring for emergency stop.”
There was no way they could outrun the torpedo, so their only recourse was to make it think they had by turning and slowing down while releasing a stream of bubblemakers that would drift straight ahead at the old speed long enough for the torpedo to home in on the false target.
“Give me the new solution,” Kiyoda said. Minori glanced over him and a slight smile creased the corners of his mouth. He understood.
“The solution is on my board,” Lieutenant Takasaki reported crisply. He too was excited.
“Conn,
Kan-cho,
the torp took the bait!”
“Hai,”
Kiyoda said. “Watch for the second one.” The Helix carried two torpedoes. “Match bearings and shoot tube three.”
Takasaki hesitated a fraction of a second, then uncaged the firing switch and flipped it. “Missile away,” he called out.
“Time to impact?”
“I'm estimating forty-eight seconds after surface ignition,” Takasaki said.
The Sub-Harpoon was blown out of the torpedo tube and was carried to the surface in a buoyant canister that was jettisoned when the missile came to launch position. At that point its rocket motors fired, and it accelerated toward its target at just under Mach one, its terminal radar active until lock-on. It was simple, and very effective. In this version, the warhead consisted of seven hundred fifty pounds of high explosives jacketed in a high-carbon-steel case designed to penetrate well within the bowels of a ship before it blew.
Takasaki was watching the launch clock. “Ignition now,” he called out.
“Sonar, conn, what's our bogie doing?”
“Same course and speed,
Kan-cho.”
“Watch for the torp ⦔
“Here it comes, here it comes, but it's farther away this time,” the sonarman radioed. “Right on our starboard bow.”
“Come right ten degrees to three-three-zero,” Kiyoda said. “Target number one on that torpedo and launch when ready.”
It was a tricky maneuver. Minori had the boat turning practically in its own length, and even before the turn was completed Takasaki launched their torpedo from tube one.
“Eight seconds to impact,” he called out.
“Come left one-five-zero degrees to new course one-eight-zero, emergency dive to two-five-zero meters.”
“Hai,
coming left one-five-zero degrees to one-eight-zero,
emergency dive to two-five-zero meters,” Minori repeated, and the boat heeled over to port, nose down as it accelerated.
A tremendous explosion hammered the hull.
“We got it,” the sonarman reported unnecessarily, and Kiyoda laughed. It had begun.
“Give me a damage report,” Minori was shouting into the intercom.
Takasaki was looking at the captain. “Shouldn't we wait to see what damage we've done to that frigate?”
“Time to impact?” Kiyoda asked.
Takasaki checked his board. “Nine seconds.”
“I trust your shooting, Shuichiyo. Besides, I don't want that Helix crew picking up our sail number.”
“They'll know,” Minori said.
“But they fired the first shot,” Kiyoda said.
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The snow had tapered off in the late morning hours, and by early afternoon most of Washington, D.C., was back to normal. By 6:30, when Carrara was able to leave his office, the parking lot had been plowed, although the forecast was for more of the white stuff overnight.
He'd done a lot of thinking about what McGarvey had told him, but he wasn't in the position to do his old friend much good, although it was his understanding that the meeting with Yemlin had gone off without a hitch. He'd gotten that call from a Yemlin aide at home last night.
Deputy Director Lawrence Danielle wasn't saying much, and nothing had come down from the seventh floor. But as he told Mac, it wasn't likely that the DCI or the White House would be interested in helping out. It was a private-sector problem, and official policy was to leave it at that. After the President's economic summit in Tokyo the situation might be different, but they'd have to wait and see.
His car phone buzzed just as he was pulling out of his parking slot. He stopped and picked it up.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Danielle wanted to catch you before you got too
far,” the DDCI's secretary said. “He would like you in his office as soon as possible.”
“I'm still in the parking lot,” Carrara said, pulling back into his slot. “Be right up.”
Danielle was waiting for him in his conference room, a dozen large photographs spread out on the table. With him was the Agency's senior photo analyst, Nathan Conley, a short, slightly built man who'd come to them from the Defense Intelligence Agency after the University of Minnesota. Carrara had worked with him before.
“I don't know if this is coincidence or not, Phil, coming on the heels of Kirk McGarvey's visit, but it sure as hell is going to get the DCI's attention,” Danielle said. He was an older man, stoop shouldered, with thinning white hair and a pale, almost translucent face.
“What have we got?” Carrara asked.
“These shots were taken by our KH-14 recon satellite less than an hour ago,” Conley said. “Over the Tatar Strait, between the Siberian mainland and Sakhalin Island. We got lucky with the weather.”
Carrara studied a few of the photographs, but it was hard to make out anything for sure, although in one sequence it seemed as if he was seeing a burning ship.
“At 2215 Zulu, a Russian Federal Navy Krivak-class frigate was attacked and sunk by what appears to be a Sub-Harpoon launch,” Conley said. “We're still checking, but we think the Russian ship was the
Menshinsky,
which sailed from Vladivostok six days ago.”
“We did this?” Carrara asked, hardly believing what he was being told.
“No, sir,” Conley said. “We have no assets in the region at the moment. Which leaves only the Japanese.”
Carrara looked up. Danielle's mood was impossible to gauge, except that he didn't seem happy. Mac would be called back, and Carrara was getting the feeling that his old friend could be right about the Japanese. It was a sobering thought.
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It was midnight before Carrara could get away. There'd been no word from the Russians about the incident, but
Navy Intelligence reported that six surface vessels were converging on the location, and SOSUSâSound Surveillanceâmonitors in the region had picked up the signatures of three Russian submarines, one of them a boomerâan Oscar-class cruise missile boatâwith more than enough firepower to start and finish a war.
There would be nothing from Europe for another few hours, nor had Japan made any comment, although CIA's Tokyo Station reported a lot of activity at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
CIA Director Roland Murphy, the General, had briefed the President at 10:00 P.M. and was expected back at the White House at nine in the morning for an update. In the meantime the Agency was on emergency footing. There was no telling how the Russians would respond, or how the incident was going to affect the upcoming economic summit meeting in Tokyo.
“What the hell are the damn fools thinking about?” the DCI had asked at one point.
“Maybe it's an isolated incident,” Deputy Director of Intelligence Tommy Doyle suggested. “Hell, General, it might have been nothing more than a sub-driver with an itchy finger. The fever is running high over there just now.”
“I don't buy that for one minute, and neither will the President. They pick their sub skippers just as carefully as we do. For my money it was a directed action. And if the bastards wanted to stir up a hornet's nest, they sure did it.”
The one stroke of good fortune was that the news media hadn't gotten the story yet, although Tokyo Station's latest cable warned that the international press corps was beginning to stir, and downstairs the Public Affairs night-duty officer had received two calls from the
Washington Post
wanting to know what was going on in Tokyo. The media couldn't be kept in the dark for long, but all the White House wanted were a few hours to figure it out before they had to start making policy and answering questions.
Before he left, Carrara went upstairs to Danielle's
office. The DCI, like nearly everyone else, was dug in for the night. “I'm going home for a couple of hours, boss.”
Danielle looked up. “What about the Europeans?”
“I'll be back before they start opening up. Dan can start on the early stuff if anything comes in. I need a shower, a shave, and a clean shirt.”
Danielle stared at him thoughtfully. “We need to call McGarvey on this one. He's hit too close to home. Where the hell is he getting his information?”
“He's still got friends in the business.”
“Too many friends,” Danielle said.
“Yes, sir,” Carrara nodded.
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Carrara pulled off the parkway a couple of miles south of Agency headquarters and telephoned McGarvey's hotel from a gas station pay phone. “We have to talk.”
“Where are you?” McGarvey asked.
“I'm on the parkway. I'll be there in fifteen minutes.” He hung up, his palms cold and wet. He was committing treason for friendship. McGarvey was owed, he told himself. Nonetheless, the headhunters, and ultimately Murphy, would have his balls nailed to the wall if and when he was tumbled. Activities prosecutable under the National Secrets Act.
All the way downriver and across the Key Bridge the same refrain played itself in his head. A betrayal of a basic position of trust. The most heinous of crimes against his country.
It had begun to snow lightly by the time Carrara pulled into the Four Seasons Hotel parking lot. McGarvey was waiting, and as soon as he got in Carrara headed for the darkest corner he could find and parked.
“Did you get word from Yemlin?” McGarvey asked.