He looked surprised to hear that there were survivors.
“Ma’am?” One of the junior officers held out one of the phones.
She took it. “Air Boss.” She wondered if she should keep calling herself by that title. She didn’t feel comfortable calling herself the captain.
“Boss, it’s Juan. What’s up? AWR1 said you wanted to talk to me.”
She turned from the group in combat and lowered her voice a bit. “Juan, I need you to be in charge back there right now. Get Caveman. Listen, you two are going to be doing the SAR flight to pick up Plug as soon as you’re fueled up.”
Silence on the other end. Juan and Caveman were junior pilots. They had never flown a Seahawk helicopter without an aircraft commander. But Victoria needed to get things done, and her normal procedures and precautions were out the window right now. Despite the dramatic chain of events, she realized that it still came as a surprise to the young pilot.
“Juan, do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Can you handle it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Tell me what you’re going to do when you take off.” She decided it might be worth making sure that he wasn’t in over his head.
“Uh… I’ll… I’ll fly opposite direction of the ship’s heading. We dropped a smoke. I’ll use the SAR checklist to calculate a starting point and then execute a search pattern and—”
“Okay, just checking. You’ll do fine. Go pick up our other HAC. We’re going to need him. Just ask for green deck when you’re ready to take off. I’ll get the ASTAC at his station again so you’ll have someone on the radio.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She handed the phone back to the junior officer and walked over to the three sonar technicians. “Tell me what you know, gentlemen.”
The chief sonar tech spoke. “Ma’am, we went over the tapes. It looks like a Han- or a Shang-class. A Chinese nuclear fast-attack submarine. She launched four torpedoes and several surface-to-surface missiles. We’ve been trying to listen for her now, but with all the noise we’re making at this speed, it’s kind of hard.”
“What would you expect a Chinese sub to do now, Chief?”
“Probably trail us. With as much noise as we’re making, she’ll be able to track us from pretty far away. She’ll probably slow down once we do, so we can’t hear her. But my guess is that we’ve created some pretty good distance. It’ll be harder for her to sneak up on us like that again now that we know what we’re looking for.”
“Sounds right to me. See if you can get air support. We need P-3s or P-8s doing ASW for us immediately.”
OPS nodded.
Victoria said, “Here are our priorities: One, stay at a safe distance from where we think the Chinese submarine is. Two, rescue Plug and any survivors from the other ships that were attacked. Three — well, we’ll get more on that once we talk to the special operations team that we just pulled out of Ecuador. Where’s the navigator?”
OPS looked down. “She was on the bridge when it happened.”
Victoria turned her head, a pained expression on her face. “Sorry. Who’s taking her place?”
OPS looked pissed. “I haven’t gotten around to staffing yet—”
The junior officer who had handed her the phone earlier picked it up when it rang again. After a moment, he said, “Ma’am, the helicopter is fueled and requesting green deck.”
“Granted.”
She watched one of the TV screens as her two young copilots, officially unqualified to conduct the mission they were about to embark on, took off, then turned back to OPS. “We need to figure out how long we’ll need to pick up all the survivors. And we need to figure out how much time it’ll take to get in helicopter range of Panama City. We have to get a piece of equipment there as soon as possible. Any gap in time is going to be taken out of our on-station time in rescuing the survivors from the other ships. Is that clear?”
“Clear.”
“Good. You guys crunch the numbers. I need to go talk to the troops we just pulled out of the jungle.”
22
David sat in his cubicle at the CIA headquarters building, waiting for the latest update from the USS Jimmy Carter. He had grown accustomed to getting updates every hour on the hour.
There it was.
The files in the Top Secret share drive began filling up with photos and other data. He scrolled through them, looking for anything of immediate interest.
A few cubicles down, Susan stood up at her desk. The look on her face was alarming. David hadn’t seen her look like that, even after the Iranians had attacked the D.C. Beltway.
“What is it?”
“Did you see the latest information from the Carter?”
“I saw that it was uploaded. I haven’t gone through all the data yet.” He wondered how it was possible that she had.
“They sent a flash summary. Alerting us about something specific. I’m looking at it now. Oh my God…”
She raced over to his desk, stopped and turned her head back and forth, looking in each direction. She was trying to decide what to do first. She said, “Come on. We need to see General Schwartz.”
They walked down the Langley hallway until they reached General Schwartz’s office. Susan told his secretary, “I need to see him now.”
The secretary nodded. “Go ahead.”
They opened the door. He was on his computer. He stood, seeing the urgency on Susan’s face. “What is it?”
“Sir, the USS Jimmy Carter just intercepted a communication from the Chinese South Sea Fleet.”
“What’d they get?”
“Sir, it was sent only to ships that were using the Red Cell crypto key. We believe that the Chinese are in the process of attacking our units operating in the Eastern Pacific. They specifically mentioned US Navy Warship 099, which is the hull number of the USS Farragut. We’re still verifying, but I would consider this information highly accurate.”
The general held up his hand. He dialed a number on his secure phone and put it on speaker.
“Director Buckingham.”
“Sir, this is General Schwartz. I have Susan Collinsworth and David Manning in here. We just got an important update, sir. You’re going to want to hear it.”
The director said, “I hope it’s good news. I just heard from our Colombian station chief — the Army Blackhawk that was sent to pick up the MARSOC team hasn’t reported in. The MARSOC group had to activate the backup plan — two Navy helicopters from a destroyer off shore.”
Susan said, “Sir, if the MARSOC group was able to get the crypto key and is headed out to sea, that may explain the information we just received. The USS Jimmy Carter just made some electronic signals intercepts that originated from the Red Cell island. The Chinese South Sea Fleet — this is the command we think is working with Cheng Jinshan — has just commanded a surface action group and a Shang-class submarine to find and sink the USS Farragut.”
The director said, “So PLA Navy ships and submarines have orders to sink the USS Farragut?”
“That’s affirmative, sir.”
“That doesn’t make sense. It would take them a month to travel across the Pacific. How—?”
“Sir, from the intercepts we received, it appears that these units are already located somewhere in the Eastern Pacific.”
The director didn’t respond at first. After a moment he said, “How did we not already know this?”