Victoria suspected this might be coming. “I understand.”
“… Multiple liberty incidents. El Salvador, Panama, Colombia. As an O-4? Come on.”
Victoria’s face remained impassive. “I agree that this is unacceptable.”
The captain frowned and lowered his voice. “And as I understand it, there are rumors that he’s had overly familiar relations with two female junior officers on the ship.”
“I see.”
“I don’t want to make a big deal about this, Victoria. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d just assume you give me a new airboss and we call it a day.”
Victoria sighed. “There’s a famous quote from a football player my dad used to like.”
At the mention of her father, the captain said, “I’m sorry about the admiral’s passing.”
“Thank you.” She paused. “The quote. I’m going to butcher it… but it went something like… ‘On third and ten, I’ll take the whiskey drinkers over the milk drinkers every time.’”
The captain smiled. “You trying to tell me I should be happy Plug drinks so much?”
“Jim, I’ve flown with him for several years now. He’s got flaws. Bad ones. But when the rubber meets the road, he’s the guy you want to be fighting with. I’ve flown in combat with him on multiple occasions. He will make sure that…”
The captain snapped his head to one side, looking alert. At first Victoria didn’t understand why, but then she felt it. The ship’s engine vibrations had picked up. They had changed speed, and now the deck was listing as the ship turned hard to port.
The captain lifted his phone just as it began to ring. “Captain. Uh-huh. When? Very well, go to GQ.”
A jolt of adrenaline shot through her veins. GQ. General quarters. Battle stations. On the overhead speaker, the ship’s 1MC, whistles and bells began blaring. A voice called the ship to general quarters.
The captain stood. “ESM. We just picked up a Chinese periscope radar.”
Victoria followed him out of the stateroom and into the ship’s combat information center, a dark room illuminated by dim blue lights and a dozen digital screens. Radars, tactical displays, and weapons systems. The ship’s Tactical Action Officer began bombarding the captain with information.
“Bearing cut from zero-three-five, approximately three minutes late…”
“No range?”
“Negative, sir, we weren’t able to triangulate the position.”
Victoria silently cursed. The submarine must have popped its periscope up, conducted a sweep, and submerged.
The captain turned to Victoria. “Can the helicopter you just landed perform ASW right now?”
She nodded. “Give us fifteen minutes and we’ll be ready and airborne.”
The captain nodded and turned back to his crew, rapid-firing orders.
Victoria began jogging aft, her steel-toed boots joining the rest of the ship’s crew pounding through the passageway.
The entire ship was a mass of men and women hurrying to close hatches and man their battle stations.
Victoria’s mind raced through a dozen different scenarios and memories. She thought about the last time she had flown an ASW mission. They had just participated in sinking an enemy submarine stalking the USS Ford. Or so they thought. Victoria had spotted her father on the admiral’s bridge aboard the carrier. Then a submarine-launched missile detonated a few yards from where he stood.
As she reached the hangar, she felt her legs grow heavier.
Was this Chinese submarine getting ready for an attack? Or had it been there all along, silently following its target?
Plug said, “Skipper, we’ll get a Mark-50 and sonobuoys loaded. You and I are flying.” He was standing next to the maintenance chief, both men issuing orders and cracking the whip. The ship was maneuvering wildly now, and Plug’s team was working fast to get the aircraft ready. Seeing this, Victoria felt a bit of reassurance. At least she had trained him well.
She threw on her helmet and flight gear as ordnancemen rolled a six-hundred-pound “lightweight” torpedo toward the aircraft.
Some of the men wore the proper general quarters attire while others looked like they had just awoken in their racks. Messed-up hair, T-shirts, and sneakers. One of Victoria’s first actions as commanding officer was making sure that her squadrons understood the importance of being battle ready at a moment’s notice. She held mock alerts at all hours, wanting the aircraft to be ready to fight and launch without error. That decision was paying off now. An evolution that she had seen take hours would now take minutes.
“Sonobuoys loaded!”
The ship turned hard to starboard. Victoria saw the panicked ordnancemen and other maintenance personnel leveraging their bodies against the torpedo trolley like football players leaning into a sled.
Plug yelled from inside the cockpit, “Boss, we gotta go!” He was already linked into the ship’s communications system, hearing whatever was going on.
A loud bang, and then the thunder of a rocket engine emanated from the destroyer’s forward section.
Through the sun’s glare, Victoria could see white smoke streak upward and away from the USS Stockdale. She could barely make out a tiny parachute and a splash of white water in the distance.
Their ship had just fired an ASROC torpedo.
Plug was screaming bloody murder, trying to get her attention. She looked at the ordnancemen. They were fast, but no one was that fast. The helicopter’s own torpedo still wasn’t attached. They would need more time. Time they didn’t have. She started to connect her helmet communications cord to hear what Plug was yelling about.
But she didn’t need to. The ship’s alarm rang out as a terrified voice on overhead speaker yelled, “All hands, brace for impact!”
An earthquake hit, and Victoria’s legs buckled beneath her.
White and gray smoke and water rose up from the ship’s forward section as the deck pitched up and then fell back down. The back of her helmet hit the flight deck, and everything went black.
6
Chase rode in the passenger seat of a small Toyota sedan as it raced through the streets of Lima. They were headed toward the CIA safehouse, checking their mirrors for any possible tails. No time for a surveillance detection route, after the news they’d just received.
The driver, a CIA ground team member, said, “Any luck?”
Chase looked down at his mobile phone. “No joy. Cell signal is down.”
The car radio, which had been broadcasting the local news a few minutes earlier, had transformed into a static hissing. Chase tried to find another station. Nothing.
It had already started.
“Turn right here,” Chase said.
The car lurched to the right, and soon they were driving up curvy dirt roads on the outskirts of town, kicking up clouds of dust behind them as they sped past neighborhoods built into hills that surrounded the city. Kids playing soccer in the dusty street stared at them as they drove by. Chase looked back at them through his wraparound sunglasses.
The CIA emergency flash cable had been issued less than thirty minutes ago. It read:
INDICATIONS OF IMMINENT CHINESE MILITARY OPERATIONS IN THE VICINITY OF COLOMBIA, ECUADOR, PERU, AND CHILE. ALL EMBASSY-BASED PERSONNEL ASSIGNED TO THESE STATIONS MUST EXPEDITE DESTRUCTION OR REMOVAL OF CLASSIFIED MATERIALS. BEGIN IMMEDIATE PREPARATIONS FOR CHINESE OCCUPATION OF HOST NATIONS.
The driver made another sharp turn and Chase saw a group of locals standing on a balcony, pointing at something on the horizon. They were shouting, and their faces were twisted with concern.
“What are they pointing at?” the driver asked.