Sergeyev frowned. Good enough in his book meant that even at slow speed, those US Navy anti-submarine warfare assets might still hear him, given their proximity. For this to work, he needed to create some separation before taking a chance with the electric motor again and making a run for the nearest shipping lane into which they could disappear again.
The Americans had certainly heard the grinding sound, and then noticed the absolute silence. And based on the continued depth charges, they had not bought his attempt at playing dead.
As Sergeyev knew, the navy could stay on station indefinitely, dropping weapons in the general area, waiting to hear the grinding noise again.
“Captain,” Popov reported, “the Vinson has stopped its engines.”
Sergeyev frowned. “It has?”
“Yes, sir.”
Rubbing his bearded chin, Sergeyev stared into his sonarman’s eyes, aware that the American carriers required forward speed into the wind to launch aircraft. They would never just stop in the middle of the strait. Unless…
“The torpedoes,” Sergeyev finally said. “We must have damaged it enough to—”
“But we hit Stennis with five, sir,” Zhdanov interjected. “And it still kept going.”
“Lucky shot?” Sergeyev offered with a shrug, remembering the first two explosions taking place too far from the carrier to have hurt it, but the last torpedo had managed to detonate very close to its target. But unlike with Stennis, he had not heard any secondaries, meaning the damage had been minimal, but apparently enough to make it stop.
“Either way,” Sergeyev added, “it’s an opportunity.”
Seeing the puzzled faces of his two sailors, the captain said, “The last known position of the carrier placed it almost thirty miles from the coast of mainland China.”
Zhdanov blinked in understanding. “Surface currents. It’s northbound on the Chinese coast and southbound on our side. And we get an added boost down here,” he added, referring to the thermohaline circulation they had used to drift closer to Vinson in the first place. The underwater current created by the sinking of large masses of cool water relative to the warmer surface waters would provide the propulsion to get away.
“Get us off the bottom,” he finally said. “Forty feet should do it. Then we can drift south of the strait.”
— 25 —
By the time Hartwell Prost reached a quiet street just north of campus, his team with no name had vetted every faculty member in the school of law and had zeroed in on a Dr. Teng Soh, professor of international law. A background check placed him at Oxford at the exact time that Xi Jiechi had attended the British university. Though now an American citizen, Dr. Soh had made multiple visits to Beijing in the past few years; according to university records, they were related to joint research projects with Peking University.
It’s gotta be him.
Standard tradecraft protocols required Prost to cross-check the intel by monitoring the professor’s phone conversations, hacking into his email account, and perhaps even shadowing the professor to make sure he wasn’t under surveillance. But time was of the essence, and more so now that, despite the best US Navy ASW precautions, the damn ghost sub had managed to launch three torpedoes at Vinson and damaged it. So, the DNI had made the call to approach the mark as soon as his people performed a quick and dirty check for tails, which had brought him here this late evening in a somewhat desperate move.
He stopped at a three-story brownstone halfway down the block. Standing in the shadow of a chestnut oak tree, he inspected the place, noticing the first-floor lights were on. The intelligence report indicated that the professor lived alone.
Here we go, he thought, walking between two parked cars and crossing the street and opposite sidewalk before stepping up to the front door and knocking twice.
A moment later, the door opened, and an Asian man well into his sixties, wearing khaki slacks, a white shirt, and a brown cardigan sweater, opened the door. He looked every bit the stereotypical professor.
“May I help you?”
“Professor Teng Soh?”
“Yes?”
“Professor, my name is Hartwell Prost. I’m the director of national intelligence for the United States—“
“Good,” he interrupted before stepping away from the doorway to let him in. “Xi said someone like you might be stopping by. Took you people long enough.”
Restless and unable to sleep, President Cord Macklin crawled out of bed a few minutes before midnight and walked down to the Treaty Room. He couldn’t get the bizarre conversation with President Jiechi out of his mind, and the news that the ghost sub had actually fired torpedoes at Vinson and damaged her, however small, had kept him tossing and turning. He hoped to God that his navy guys in the strait could get that carrier moving again and blow that damn sub to hell — and also that Prost’s hunch might pan out. His DNI, as well as the rest of the motley crew, were due to meet again at five in the morning.
After ordering coffee and doughnuts from the kitchen, he browsed through a folder containing the latest in a long list of Chinese infractions from the summer of 2006 to the present.
The US Treasury Department had frozen the assets of the state-owned China Great Wall Industry Corporation for brazenly assisting in the modernization of the Iranian ballistic missile program. Beijing had been providing highly classified US guidance systems for the Shahab-3 intermediate range missile.
The extended-range variant of the Shahab-3, the 3ER, was an available delivery system for nuclear weapons. Israeli defense officials were deeply concerned that the 1,600-mile range missile could destroy Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. And if those Qader cruise missiles fired at Lincoln were any indication of the caliber of the guidance systems in the Shahab-3ER…
Macklin sighed in frustration. His eyes drifted to Healy’s The Peacemakers. But as his tired eyes drifted from the equally tired face of Abraham Lincoln to the calmly poised General Grant, the intense General Sherman to the stoic Admiral Porter, the president could think of one thing only: coffee. He needed lots of caffeine, and he needed it now.
What’s taking so damn long?
He considered calling the kitchen but decided against taking out his frustration on his hardworking staff. Instead, he returned to the documents. In addition to the Iranian ballistic missile concerns, China had helped Tehran build several underground production facilities for the Shahab series. US space-based assets had identified numerous deeply buried targets in Iran.
Macklin carefully studied an enlarged schematic diagram of the classified Massive Ordnance Penetrator. Short of a nuclear explosion, the MOP was a thirty-thousand-pound behemoth designed to overwhelm underground targets in Iran and North Korea. Where reinforced tunnels connected various research and development facilities, several MOPs would be dropped at the same time on vulnerable sections.