“No, John. Let’s give him ten more minutes. Talk to me about Carter and Taiwan.”
“Yes, sir. In the spirit of pushing every possible Chinese button, former president Carter is arriving for a courtesy visit in Taipei. He was on vacation in Bali and we’re flying him in. We’ve invited all the worldwide media. A symbol of American commitment to Taiwan independence. Ratchet up the pressure on the Mandarins.”
“That will rattle them. Good idea. What else?”
Kevin O’Dea from NSA spoke first. “Mr. President, NSA has redirected our satellite over the emerging battle zone in the Taiwan Strait. We have real-time battle management, sir.”
“But no battle yet, I trust?”
“We’re muzzle to muzzle with the Chinese fleet. Three French destroyers and two of their cruisers are steaming alongside the Chinese. We are just waiting for the tipping point, Mr. President.”
“Gentlemen, and ladies,” McAtee said, “until when and if a Chinese laser decides to interrupt satellite communication, you’ve all got a front seat at the next world war. Charlie? You’re up.”
General Moore stood. “Sit report from the admiral of the bridge, USS Kennedy, sir. He reports PLA missile batteries on the Chinese mainland coast are lighting up, sir.”
“Response?”
“We’ve got waves of recon flights going in over the top. Low-level haircuts, Mr. President. Right down on the deck.”
“Shave ’em close. That’ll keep their heads down. Good.”
The door was opened and the Marine guards admitted a very anxious-looking young navy officer from the Pentagon, Captain Tony Guernsey.
“Mr. President,” Guernsey said, “I am receiving word now that Chinese surface-to-surface missiles are locking on to the fleet. We could lose—Christ—we could lose—”
“We’re not going to lose a goddamn thing, Tony,” the president said. “Charlie, step up the fighters going in over the mainland coast. One hundred feet. Let those bastards know we mean business.”
“Yes, sir!”
“What the hell are they thinking right now, John? The boys in Beijing.”
“Five or six in the room, sir. Total panic over Wild Card. But they think they’ve got us by the short ones with that ocean liner.”
“They haven’t got us yet. What about the goddamn tankers? Who’s on that?”
“I am, Mr. President,” an attractive blonde NSC staffer, Pam Howar, said. “The Happy Dragon was boarded by a Coast Guard cutter off Fort Jefferson in the Florida Keys en route to Miami. The captain and crew put up fierce resistance. The survivors were off-loaded immediately and she was towed to deep water and scuttled. Jade Dragon met a similar fate off Port Arthur, Texas, sir. It took three cutters and two choppers to subdue her. She’s already gone to a watery grave in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Well, that’s some good news isn’t it, Pamela?” the president said. “What about the other one? The Super Dragon?”
“That dragon has been slain, Mr. President. Local fishing fleets report a huge explosion in the North Atlantic. One hour ago, one hundred miles due east of Cape Farewell, Greenland. She simply disappeared off the screen.”
“Accidental?”
“I doubt we’ll ever know, sir.”
“This tanker explosion had a nuclear signature?”
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
“Okay, so nobody’s blowing smoke. General Sun-yat Moon and the Mandarins are sending us a very clear signal. Anything else? Anybody?”
“Captain Mariucci just calling from Leviathan, sir. He says they’ve got her two gas turbines up and running. She’s making for the Ambrose Light. Their current speed is almost thirty-one knots.”
The president looked up and smiled.
“Well, God bless America,” he said.
The room burst into loud, sustained applause.
“Uh, Mr. President?” John Gooch said when the room fell silent.
“Yes, John?”
“It’s Seawolf, sir. Her skipper reports he is flat-out en route to the Continental Shelf rendezvous.”
“And?”
“At this point, sir, there’s no way he can make the 4:00 A.M. deadline unless he pushes that monster way, way beyond her approved performance parameters.”
“You tell Pokey Fraser I said forget the goddamn parameters. The taxpayers gave him a two-billion-dollar undersea Ferrari. Tell him it’s time to damn well use it.”
“Yes, sir. I suggest it’s also time to tell him about the nuclear device aboard Leviathan.”
“Does he have a Wild Card ticket?”
“No, sir.”
“He does now. You tell him to move his ass.”
Chapter Sixty-three
The North Atlantic
3:34 A.M., EST
A THIN RED SLAB OF LIGHT LIT THE RIM OF THE BLACK world. USN Commanding Officer Persifor Fraser, standing in the bridge position atop the fairwater of SSN-21, the nuclear attack submarine Seawolf, was not happy. His command wasn’t the usual boat on the New London waterfront. She was the quietest, fastest submarine on the planet. No submarine, and few surface boats, could cover more ground more rapidly than Seawolf. En route to Block Island Sound, she’d gone halfway across the Atlantic in roughly forty-eight hours!
Suffice it to say that CDR Pokey Fraser was a man unaccustomed to being late for an appointment. Now the president himself was on his ass and justifiably so. The Red Chinese had embedded a goddamn nuclear device in an ocean liner’s keel and were threatening to blow up New York City.
And his beloved Seawolf might be just three minutes too late to stop them.
The huge bow wave rode halfway up the sub’s fairwater. The sharp salt spray stung his eyes, whenever he lowered the heavy binoculars to look at his watch. Goddamn it! He had the pedal to the frigging metal and he still might not make it!
Fraser had to make it. Aside from the enormity of this mission, he owed it to his men.
His crew of fourteen officers and 124 sailors had been at sea at the time of September 11. Because of the nature of submarine operations, his boys had extremely limited access to real-time events. Crew emotions had been all over the map. Many had friends and family in New York and at the Pentagon. Their country had been attacked, and they were in a good position to do something about it. The ship had sortied from Scotland, moved halfway back to the East Coast, when she received urgent orders to move directly to the Med to increase the number of Tomahawks and launch platforms in that theater of operations.
She’d acquitted herself admirably.
Now, Fraser’s destination was the “Wall,” an area of the Atlantic due east of the Ambrose Light, seventy-one degrees longitude, forty degrees latitude, right at the undersea edge of the continent. The seabed dropped off dramatically there and a deep underwater canyon known as the “Wall” gashed the slope, plunging to a depth of two and a quarter miles.
If you had to get rid of a large nuclear bomb in a big hurry, it was as good a place as you were going to find.
Fraser cast a sidelong glance at the two young sailors standing alongside him beneath the small forest of search-and-attack periscopes, the ESM, radar, and communications masts. The fresh-scrubbed and eager faces of his topside watch captured his entire crew’s present mood perfectly. Just like their comrades half a world away in the Taiwan Straits, they planned to stick it, in very short order, to those who would terrorize America. The goddamn Red Chinese.
Fraser gripped the rail, his knuckles white. Six miles. That was the outside range of his Mark 48 torpedoes. He just needed to close within six miles. That wasn’t too much to ask for, was it? Six lousy miles? He leaned into the stinging spray, willing his submarine onward.
3:39 A.M., EST