“Joe China thinks these Islands are his. China does possess a large part of the islands of the South China Sea. Most of The Paracels, The Spratlys and the Scarborough Shoal are de-facto Chinese territory.
“Back in the seventies it was the cold war, and we were able to listen in to Soviet communications by tapping into underwater cables. We targeted the cable running under the Sea of Okhotsk, from the Soviet navy base at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka peninsula to the Pacific fleet HQ in Vladivostok. The idea worked; we’d tapped into an intel goldmine. The submarine Halibut had done it. She returned to the cable with a recording device they could leave on the seabed for up to a year.
“Well, you know what? We’re going to do it again. We’ve got three bugs we’re going to leave out there. Joe China won’t be able to take a dump without us knowing about it.
If the PLAN discover us, they’ll be looking to sink us. Stonewall Jackson won’t let ‘em.
This boat will have ‘em running around like a monkey fucking a football. We’ll be in Pearl laughing our asses off and listening to Joe stroking off.
“Just as an add on: there’s also been a change to the galley’s menu tonight. Ok, stop groaning. I know it’s pizza night, but we’ve taken on board a meal to go, from Jeff’s Pirate’s cove. So tonight, it’s a 16 oz Porterhouse steak, fries, salad and italian, all courtesy of the Navy. Or the big blue dick, as many of you know it. As you know, we’re not allowed to bring beer on board; but nobody told Jeff’s that. There’s one for everyone. I know you’ll do your duty and get rid of it down the pisser. Captain out.”
A cheer went up from the men and women aboard.
THE NEXT DAY NATHAN summonsed Innes and Alves to the control room.
“XO, Kaminski, let’s go to the torpedo room. You have the Conn, Weaps.”
“So Innes, this is CPO Hugo Alves, you two will be dive buddies. Alves, this is Lieutenant Commander Sayers, my XO and this is Lieutenant Kaminski, Navigation officer. She sits on it. On my war committee.”
Nikki leaned back so no one else could see her face, and grinned at Nathan. He realised what he’d said, and managed to suppress a smile.
“So Alves, let’s get up to speed on these bugs. We just need an overview; Innes will need whatever detail you can provide.”
“Ok sir, let’s get them out of the boxes.” They placed the four bugs on a stillage.
“Innes, after we’ve finished, see the COB, ask him if damage control can use this wood. If not, throw it over the side when we rendezvous with the replenishment vessel.”
“Sir.”
The bugs were about ten feet long with stainless steel end caps, one end with a large but thin eight-sided nut. On the other end was what looked similar to an old-fashioned water tap handle. The main body length was dark and hexagon shaped, and it looked like it was made from some composite material. Nathan ran his hand over it. It wasn’t metal, it was a composite like carbon fibre.
“Ok sir, here’s the overview,” said Alves. “The bugs were built by the nerds of underwater deception, L-3 Chesapeake Sciences Corp and Raytheon. They work by magnetic induction like the cold war devices, but are much more sensitive. They’ve got them to the point where, if you were tapping a message out on your touch screen cell phone, from ten yards away, they could read your message before you’d sent it.”
“Lord help us,” said Larry Sayers.
“How deep can they operate?” asked Nathan.
“That won’t be an issue, as you’ll see. But 650 feet.” Alves walked to the ‘tap’ end of the bug. “To deploy, we place them parallel to the cable, but twelve or fifteen feet away, eighteen will do. The outside surface will adhere to all types of sand or sediment, so we heap it on and that helps to disguise it. That way any diver or ROV inspecting the cable probably won’t see them. Then we unscrew this tap.” He unscrewed the tap and pulled out a thin wire cable.
“This cable is thirty feet long, we pull it all the way out and place it wherever we want. It can be parallel to the cable or at right angles or anywhere else. It just has to be straight.”
“So what’s it do?” asked Nikki.
“It’s got two purposes, well three, really. The geeks at L-3 came up with a thing we call Cuckoo Fish. It’s like a small torpedo and is deployed from a torpedo tube. It swims to the bug and can read the bug’s recordings via the cable. It then returns to the submarine and swims back into the tube. It’s retrieved, and the recording read. Cuckoo Fish can travel 12 miles. So, the submarine can stand off six miles from the bug and retrieve the recordings. The thing can also be deployed from a fishing boat too, if that’s a better platform.”
“That’s some piece of kit,” said Nathan.
“Also, Cuckoo Fish can talk to the bug and get it to insert a message into the cable. So if we know their codes and procedures we can fool them into thinking our message is real. It’s not just a message. The Chesapeake Science sickos put an artificial intelligence into it. Depending on what the Chinese say or ask HQ for, it can reply to them, with whatever we tell the AI to say to deceive them. We can lead them a merry dance.”
“So this AI can be updated by Cuckoo Fish?” asked Nikki.
“Yes, Ma’am. It can tell them that the year of the rat’s come early or Mao Tse-tung’s come back to life. We can listen to what they say, and feed them shit back.”
“That’s one evil motherfucker we’ve got there,” said Nikki.
“You said there were three uses?” asked Nathan.
“Yeah, this end of the bug contains 97lbs of PBXN-103. The same warhead as the Mk 46 Torpedo, sir. As long as the bug is in less than 300 feet of seawater, we can detonate it by satellite. It will sever the cable.”
Nathan smiled. “So we find water less than 300 feet deep and we’re good to go.”
Alves took on a sheepish look. “Not really, sir.”
Nathan frowned. “Work has been carried out on satellite images and dives carried out by the Republic of China navy and the Taiwan Navy. They found that the Chinese cables are shielded. They’re clad with an electrified braided metal sleeve that prevents them being read by a bug type device.”
Larry shrugged. “So what are we doing here with these then?”
“The cladding ends within 300 feet of the termination point.”
“So let me get this straight,” said Nathan, folding his arms, his eyebrows raised, “we need to deploy this bug less than 300 feet from some of the most heavily defended and fortified places on earth.” He shook his head. “In shallow waters, where we don’t like to operate. With the fucking PLAN sat above us?”
Alves nodded. “It’d be easier to place a webcam in the Party Chairman’s wife’s bathroom,” said Larry.
“At least we could sell pictures of her butt to the newspapers.” Nikki laughed. “You couldn’t make it up, could you?” she smirked. “You know what this reminds me of? President Kennedy’s speech, ‘We choose to go to the Moon,’ let me butcher it.” She grinned. “We choose to go to the Spratlys in this year and do the other Islands. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will organise and measure our ability to face down the regional bully. Because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one that we are unwilling to postpone, and one that we intend to win.”