“There never was an American technology being developed on Johnston Atoll.”
Chase said, “What are you talking about?”
David said, “As part of a deception plan, this information was put out to the Chinese. Susan’s network of Chinese agents put lots of information out. Some true, some not true. But the whopper was about the American plan to defend Hawaii. At first, our scientists thought we might have a way to counter the Jiaolong air defense by developing our own directed-energy weapon. That’s the black hole system you heard us talking about. It was this plan that the Chinese mole, Luntz, was briefed on at Raven Rock.”
Chase said, “And you’re saying that wasn’t true?”
“After a few days of working on it, we realized that even under the best-case scenario, a weapons system like that was years away from development. We never would have had it up in the time that it took the Chinese to bring the Jiaolong warship from Guam to Hawaii. But we did have some new jamming equipment that could cloak a small group of aircraft from Chinese radar. We mounted this jamming equipment on a pair of Navy helicopters and designed an air assault on the Jiaolong. We came up with a plan to overwhelm the Chinese while this air assault was going on. It worked. And now the Jiaolong has been sunk…”
“So you guys were briefing all the military and intelligence leaders at Raven Rock with a bullshit plan about this black hole system?”
“We had to. We didn’t know Luntz was the mole until recently. We only knew that Lena was headed to the US to meet with a mole, and that the mole was most likely at Raven Rock. It took us a while to narrow down the list of suspects, and we couldn’t risk that the mole would find out we knew about him. Once we knew Lena was coming here, we saw an additional opportunity. She’s one of the few that Jinshan really trusts, right? So if we’re going to deceive Jinshan, we have to deceive her. We have to make her think that she’s sending good information back to Jinshan. That’s why we needed to keep you and everyone but a select few on the counterespionage team members in the dark on the real plan.”
Chase was starting to understand. “You were feeding Luntz bad information. You were telling him that this black hole system was going to be operational. You basically had a backup in case your lookalike agent didn’t… wait a minute. Why the hell did you need to swap Luntz with a lookalike agent? If you were already feeding him bad information, why not just let him pass that on to Lena?”
Susan said, “It would have been too risky. We couldn’t be certain that Luntz didn’t know we were on to him. If he or Lena suspected that he was being misled, then they would no longer trust the information. We were pretty confident that our deception was working on Luntz, but we didn’t want to take the chance.”
Chase was floored. “That could have gone so many different ways. What if…?”
Susan said, “It didn’t go as expected. We didn’t expect you to go in there, for example.”
“So what information got transmitted?”
“Luntz’s original transmission.”
“Was that intentional?”
“It wasn’t our first choice, no. But it appears our deception worked. It corroborated the story that some of our captured Chinese spies at Eglin were sending back to Beijing. And the Chinese bit. Luntz must have sent Lena the information that the minefields were being laid, and that the Johnston Atoll project was still not operational. Lena then must have transmitted the message, because their fleet changed course over the past several hours. They maneuvered where we wanted them to be. And this allowed us to attack their precious new ship.”
Chase leaned back in the leather seat of the jet cabin. “Holy shit. You did it.”
David smiled. “Not quite yet. But we took a big step.”
Chase glanced at the back of the aircraft. Lena was looking at him again. She saw that Chase’s expression had changed. And then slowly, so did hers. Concern on her face now. Then horror, as she realized what Chase’s look of triumph must have meant. She was an amazing talent, Chase had to admit. She could read him like a book.
Chase turned back to his brother, frowning. “I still don’t understand something. You could have sent the helicopter assault team in like that no matter where the Chinese fleet was sailing. I mean… from any direction. But Lena’s message transmission…”
David nodded. “When we saw what the Jiaolong technology was capable of at Guam, we knew that we would have one shot to defeat their fleet. Now that they know how we destroyed the Jiaolong, they won’t make that mistake again. They will be able to make more of those ships. It’s replaceable. But the entire Southern Fleet… now that is not replaceable. If they knew that we could defeat the Jiaolong-class ship, they wouldn’t risk blue ocean combat against our submarines. But they didn’t expect their Southern Fleet to be exposed without the Jiaolong.”
Chase frowned. “What are you saying?”
“When Lena sent that transmission, she gave the Chinese a reason to direct their fleet over a certain stretch of ocean, near Johnston Atoll. It would still take them towards Hawaii, but it would move them through an area that we wanted them to transit through.”
“But why?”
Susan was smiling. “Your brother is a genius, Chase.”
David reddened. “It wasn’t all my idea,” he said. “One of the things we learned about the new Chinese ASW capability was that it didn’t do as well in detecting submarines that were bottomed. And our plan really does use a lot of mines. Just not the way we described.”
Chase said, “I still don’t understand.”
David said, “Brother, they’ve sailed right into our trap.”
“Magnum one, two and three are forming up on your right side.”
“One,” Plug said into his helmet’s lip microphone. Victoria had handed him the controls again, and together they were doing their best to navigate through the maze of hostile Chinese warships.
“I’m taking off my goggles.”
“Roger, me too,” said Plug. The sun would be up over the horizon any moment now, which meant the Chinese ships could see them clearly. They had only been flying for a few minutes after the Jiaolong explosion, but she was honestly surprised they had survived this long. Victoria expected surface-to-air missiles or antiaircraft gunfire to end their lives any second now. She only had one remaining part of her mission.
“Is the buoy ready?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Send it! And signal the others to do the same!”
Inside each of the helicopters, an aircrewman threw a heavy white cylinder out the open cabin door. The SUS buoys hit the surface of the ocean and were activated upon contact with the seawater. Each of the buoys exploded a few seconds later, emitting a distinctive-sounding noise.
The noises were detected by US Navy submariners in sonar rooms scattered throughout the shallow ocean floor that surrounded Johnston Atoll.
It was time for the hunt to begin.
“There’s the signal, Captain.”
Commander Wallace said, “Conn, get us off the bottom as fast as you can.”
“Aye, sir.”
The USS Columbia had been thought destroyed before the battle of Guam, several weeks earlier. But in reality, Columbia had only been slightly damaged. In the confusion, and after suffering several casualties from a near-miss torpedo, Commander Wallace had ordered his crew to bottom the submarine. It was a last-ditch effort, and his only option.
Miraculously, the Chinese had not reattacked the Columbia. And they hadn’t redetected it either, even though the sonar techs had picked up multiple sonobuoys and dippers being deployed above them for the hours after bottoming.