The captain focused on the oncoming fighter. The thought occurred to him that the plane was going to hit the ship — then it shot past, level with him, thirty feet from his head. At a little over a thousand knots, it passed him in less than an eyeblink. The concussion of the trailing sonic boom hit him like a fist, breaking both his eardrums and rupturing blood vessels in his nose and eyes. The pain was intense. He fell to the deck of the bridge, blood pouring from his nose. He didn’t hear the glass on the bridge windows shattering or see the bridge team clapping hands to their ears … too late. Had the captain been able to look, he would have seen the fighter’s nose rise to forty degrees above the horizon, and with both burners secured, soar up into the clear blue sky.
Cracker Graham got on his radio. “Moon Glow, War Ace Three Oh Seven. I need Texaco ASAP.” Texaco was a tanker. Graham had used a prodigious quantity of fuel with his afterburner antics.
Meanwhile Mad Dog had spotted another ship only six or so miles away, dead in the water. Curious, he cut his throttles and made a slow pass by the ship at five hundred feet with his camera clicking. Then he climbed away, chasing his leader.
Back aboard the carrier, both pilots turned in their cameras so the photos could be downloaded. In the debrief to the air wing intelligence officer, Graham mentioned that he made a low pass by the destroyer and told how the destroyer had locked him up with a missile guidance radar. He didn’t tell the debriefer just how low he had gone.
The pictures of the damaged Filipino ship, sinking boat and men in the water made an immediate splash. Op-immediate messages shot back and forth between the battle group commander and Washington. The following day the Pentagon released three of these photos to the press; they were on the evening news two hours later. Another international incident.
Mad Dog’s photos were classified and not released. Photo interpretation experts concluded the stationary ship he had photographed was a Chinese seismic survey ship.
As the days turned into weeks, the oil and gas exploration ship was photographed repeatedly by carrier aircraft and several P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft operating from a base in the Philippines as it went about its business in the South China Sea near Scarborough Shoal.
CHAPTER ONE
Attack where they are unprepared. Go forth where they will not expect it.
The yacht had once belonged to a sultan’s son — his name was still on the registration papers — but now it belonged to the Chinese navy. The sultan’s son didn’t know that, of course. He thought he had sold it to a shady German who was going to flip it to a Russian mafioso. The name of the yacht was Ocean Holiday.
It was a nice yacht, over 150 feet long, with tanks for enough diesel fuel to cruise halfway around the world. Sleek, clean and white, it was equipped with two bikini babes, a South African captain and British first mate, a Chinese crew and a Russian couple in their late sixties who slept in the owner’s stateroom.
This miserable March night in Baltimore harbor, the captain anchored the yacht in the lee of a tramp freighter waiting for space at the pier to off-load a cargo of containers full of shirts made in China. The wind was blowing the rain almost sideways, and visibility was down to less than a mile.
Conditions are ideal, Lieutenant Commander Zhang Ping thought. He was the yacht’s steward and real captain. The Chinese crew was composed of picked men, divers and frogmen. Their skills in the kitchen and dining room weren’t so hot, but no one had come down with food poisoning on the voyage, and none of the non-Chinese, all of whom were being well paid for their parts in this little drama, had complained. Not that the non-Chinese aboard the yacht knew the mission — they didn’t. They had been chosen because they needed money and had flexible scruples. Especially the captain, who was a fugitive wanted on a child molestation charge in Greece … under another name, of course.
Ocean Holiday had cleared customs and immigration earlier in the afternoon. Ship’s papers and passports for everyone aboard had been inspected and entered into the laptop computers the Americans carried. Agents from the American Department of Homeland Security had also come aboard and inspected the yacht from stem to stern. They had even used Geiger counters to check for radiation. Finding nothing amiss, they had nodded at the customs officer in charge and left on a launch.
The wind was gusting, even in the lee of the freighter, so the captain had anchors lowered forward and aft to hold the yacht steady.
She was riding with only running lights and a small light on the bridge at midnight, apparently buttoned up.
Belowdecks, the Chinese were busy. They used a cutting torch to open up an empty fuel tank in the lowest part of the ship, amidships. That done, they placed the panel they had cut out to one side and entered with flashlights. A wealth of gear was hidden inside this secret compartment: scuba tanks and wet suits, diving gear, tools and an underwater sled.
Several inches of water stood in this compartment, water that had apparently leaked around the seal that encircled a hydraulically actuated door in the bottom of the ship. When it was opened, water would enter the compartment and fill it to just below the hole cut in the bulkhead.
Before the door was opened, all the gear in the empty tank had to be off-loaded into the passageway. Everything. Then the gear had to be tested. Four men donned wet suits, and the others helped to ensure all the gear was operational and ready. The scuba tanks were filled with compressed air, regulators tested, tools arranged on deck, then loaded into knapsacks, weight belts weighed one more time. The battery in the underwater sled was carefully tested. Finally the engine was started and quickly shut down. It needed water to cool and lubricate it, so a short test was all that could be done.
Zhang Ping supervised everything, checked everything. Although he was the senior diver aboard, he wasn’t going on this swim. The men who were he knew and trusted because he had trained them.
At last, at four in the morning, satisfied that everything was ready, Zhang ordered the door to the sea opened. The hydraulic mechanism opened it a crack, and water flooded in. When the compartment was as full as it was going to get, the door was opened completely.
Satisfied, Zhang opened a waterproof box lying in the passageway and extracted an automatic pistol. He picked up a loaded magazine, pushed it home and chambered a round. With the safety engaged, he inserted the pistol in his right rear pocket.
Zhang climbed ladders back to the bridge. The South African was alone there. “All quiet,” he reported.
Zhang checked the bridge inclinometer. As expected, the yacht now had a two-degree list to starboard. The naval officer swept the harbor with binoculars. Lights glowed in the fog, but nothing was moving. He walked to the unsheltered wing of the bridge and inspected the freighter lying nearby. She was also dark, with only running lights showing. No people anywhere on her topside passageways. Her containers lay stacked like children’s blocks on her deck.
Zhang lit a cigarette and smoked it in silence. He was keyed up and used iron self-control to ensure it didn’t show.
He could hear the faint rumble of distant jet engines, no doubt from airliners coming and going from the Baltimore-Washington airport. They were invisible above this fog. Now and then the distant wail of a siren. Police, perhaps. Waves lapping at the side of the yacht. Wind sighing against the half-open bridge door, which swung back and forth as the ship moved and the wind played with it. He checked the radio on the overhead of the bridge. It was tuned to the harbor control frequency, and the volume was on. It had been busy during the afternoon and evening, but now in the moments before dawn it was silent.