Staurulakis positioned herself beside the canvas-shrouded bulk of a machine gun as Van Gogh read off his calculations. Dan set the sextant to the elevation, sighted along the pelorus for the bearing, and found Sirius. The Dog Star. The brightest in the sky.
Muscle memory kicked in. He found the brace, tucked his elbows, and rocked the distant glitter in an arc, verniering it down with the micrometer drum until it just kissed the barely visible sea horizon. He twisted the lock nut. “Mark.”
“Time: zero four fifty-one,” Van Gogh intoned, clicking the stopwatch. “Elevation? We need to get these fast, Cap’n, sunup’s a-comin’.”
Dan hit the light button, and read it off the arm and the drum. From the pilothouse the junior officers gaped with holy awe, as if at some arcane ceremony. Van Gogh gave him the next bearing and elevation, in the hushed tones of an acolyte.
He lifted the apparatus that had guided mariners for centuries, and steadied it once more.
Dan’s pimply mess attendant, Longley, brought up a tray at 0530. Sliced ham, eggs, and coffee. Dan ate perched in the command chair, groggily watching the sun blowtorch the curved horizon from ironglowing red to lily orange, then blazing gold. He’d only gotten uneasy naps in the padded leather chair.
His operations officer, Matthew Mills, came up as the radioman arrived with the morning traffic. Tall and fair, Mills could have graced a Harlequin cover. Dan flipped through the clipboard. George Washington was still immobilized.… Franklin Roosevelt battle group was behind schedule…
And there they were, the first overt moves. The Chinese had occupied Quemoy and Matsu, Taiwan’s last toeholds near the mainland. No casualties; Taipei had withdrawn its garrisons when the crisis had begun. More inflammatory were reports of landing craft, escorted by destroyers, approaching Uotsuri Jima, a Japanese island northeast of Taiwan. China had claimed the Senkaku group for decades, and gotten more assertive since General Zhang had bullied and murdered his way into the premiership.
He scribbled his initials and handed the clipboard back. Massaged his face, fighting for a casual tone. “Okay, Ops, we’re gonna be joining in twelve hours. What’ve you come up with?”
Five straits gave China deepwater access to the western Pacific. The Soya, Tsugaru, Osumi, and Miyako straits, plus the Bashi Channel, south of Taiwan. The war plans assigned the northernmost three to Japanese forces. Dan would be responsible for holding the Miyako Strait, north of Taiwan and south of Okinawa.
“We have three missions,” Mills said. “Air and ballistic missile defense of Taipei. Closing the channel to surface and subsurface passage. And providing strike support, as directed.”
Dan shook his head. “If they wanted to sortie, they’ve had plenty of time.”
“Right, but follow-on forces, refueling, rearming… they’ll still need to transit. And if they attack Taiwan—”
“Okay, what’s it look like ASW-wise?”
Mills pulled a chart from under his arm. “I talked to Chief Zotcher. We should have had bottom-sensor data, but that’s satellite-uplinked—”
“So we don’t have SOSUS?” Dan said, referring to the worldwide underwater listening system.
“You mean Seaweb? I’m trying to engineer a work-around. So the Japanese can pass information. But I haven’t found the right button yet.”
Examining the chart, Dan reflected sourly that this must be how it had felt after Pearl Harbor. Confusion, lack of communication, and frantic, too-late moves against an enemy with a solid plan and a clear goal. The Chinese were calling their operation “Breath of the Dragon.” It was designed to send America reeling back, bleeding and dazed, leaving Beijing holding an impregnable rampart from Japan to the Philippines.
He didn’t plan to mention the Three Hundred Spartans out loud, but Daniel V. Lenson might go down in history beside King Leonidas and George Armstrong Custer.
Mills ran a fingernail from Miyako Jima to Okinawa. “We’ve got an eighty-nautical-mile gap. Strait’s wider, but that’s what’s navigable submerged. Most of it’s a thousand-plus feet, but a crooked channel to the north goes down to five hundred and fifty fathoms. The current’s from left to right across our front, at about three knots.”
“Did you talk to Rit Carpenter?”
“The sonarman?”
“He’s also an ex-submariner. In diesel boats.” And, unfortunately, one of the prime suspects in the rape. Dan leaned in his chair to hit the 21MC. “Sonar, CO.”
“Sonar, aye.”
“Ask Rit Carpenter to join me on the bridge?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
He clicked off, then back on again. “This Chief Zotcher?”
“Yes sir.”
“Can you shoot up here too? We need to get our ducks in a row. For when we get to the Miyako Gap.”
They gathered in the navigation space just behind the pilothouse. A mussed, overweight Carpenter was saying, “Absolutely, Dan. That’s where I’d position for a slow, quiet passage. Deep and silent as I could run.”
“I concur.” Zotcher nodded.
Dan adjusted the half-moon glasses he needed now for fine print, and bent to the chart. “What’s the red book say about operating depth? The new boats, the Songs, Hans, Shangs?”
Lieutenant Mills: “Max rated is around eleven hundred feet. Crush depth, the usual twenty-five percent below that. They have a shitload of diesel boats, too, Romeos and Mings, and the Kilos they bought from Russia. Depth limited, but still dangerous.”
“Because they’re so quiet. So why should they stick to this three-thousand-foot channel?”
“If they’re proceeding without active sonar, they have to worry about terrain. They can’t risk a collision. Not at max depth.”
Dan sucked a breath, remembering skating across the bottom of the Persian Gulf in a stolen Iranian Kilo. “All right, makes sense. But I still want ears on the rest of the channel. How do we maximize coverage?”
The operations officer positioned a grease-penciled overlay atop the chart. “With Mitscher and Curtis Wilbur, along with the Japanese, we’ll have enough helo assets and platforms for a sonobuoy barrier.”
Dan studied the patterns, chewing his lip. A collocated grid, staggered, ranked in depth… there’d be blind zones near the coasts, but you had to balance sensor expenditure versus probability of detection. “Yeah, but for how long? We don’t have unlimited assets.”
“Right, gonna be iffy. Also, how’re the helos going to lay without GPS? And where do we want Pittsburgh? Behind the barrier, or out front?”
“Let’s let Captain Youngblood make that call.” Dan sighed, stretching a kink out of his back. Along with the antisubmarine mission, he’d have to cover the antiair picture. Make certain Savo was positioned to intercept missiles aimed at the capital, Taipei. And hold the strait, until the FDR carrier battle group got there.
Conflicting demands, with a lot of moving parts. He’d have to juggle assets, be ready to skitter back and forth in front of the goal. Like playing lacrosse back at the Academy… “Okay, make it happen. Matt, also, I need a force balance between Taiwan and the mainland. Leave the Southern Fleet out; my guess is they’ll be deploying defensively.”
When the group broke up, Carpenter lingered. “Dan? A word?”
“Uh, yeah.” He turned back. “What you got, Rit?”
The old sonarman lowered his voice. “About Petty Officer Terranova. You gotta know, it wasn’t me.”
Dan studied the sagging jowls, the silvery hair. Carpenter had served with him before. But that didn’t mean Dan had crossed him off the suspect list. The submariner added, “Yeah, right, I brought that gang-bang game aboard. But you know I don’t go for round-eye pussy anyway.”