Fifteen minutes later he was updating the Secretary of Defense. “We have to do something to stop China!” Billingsly insisted. “We can’t let an irresponsible country like that have such a powerful weapon. We just can’t.”
“Unless you’ve come up with a way to stop them without leaving any trace that we were behind it, I just don’t see what we can do,” the Secretary said. “Look, I’m sympathetic to your position, but as I said, we’re not starting World War Three over this. If the Chinese use this technology to attack us, then maybe — and I mean maybe — I can get something through Congress. Until then, there’s nothing I can do.”
Billingsly looked down at the floor. “I’ve been wracking my brain for the last two months and asking every expert I know. There’s no way we can do this and leave no trace.”
“Then it’s settled.”
“Yeah,” Billingsly said quietly. “We’re sitting ducks.”
“Sometimes that’s the price you pay for being a superpower. You just have to sit there and take it.”
That evening Billingsly and Jessica sat somberly and watched the weather report. The low pressure area where the Chinese antenna array was focused was upgraded to a tropical depression.
“This is what you were worried about, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said in a depressed tone. “I can’t really explain in detail, but this storm represents an extreme danger to our country. Something has to be done.”
“You’re a strong and powerful man. Something will come to you, James; it always does; you’ll see.”
Her reply was unsatisfying at best, but under the circumstances, there didn’t seem to be anything else he could do.
“I can’t take watching this storm anymore, I’m going to bed,” he said.
“I’ll be up later, dear,” she said. “You’ve been working so hard lately that I think a good night’s sleep will do you some good.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Maybe it will.”
CHAPTER 30
Guang Xi woke suddenly. The internal sounds of the sub had changed. He dressed as rapidly as he could and set off for the control room.
“What happened?” Guang Xi asked.
“We have entered an area where the United States has a system of underwater hydrophones. We have slowed our speed to 8 knots and taken certain precautions for silent running,” the Captain explained. “We will be in this area for the next six hours.”
Guang Xi hobbled over to the doorway of the sonar room and looked in. Two men sat in the tiny room, one wearing a set of headphones and the other staring at a computer screen filled with wavy lines cascading down from the top of the screen.
“Anything?” Guang Xi asked.
The sailor looking at the computer screen looked over at him. “Oh, hey, nothing yet but we’re just now coming into the hydrophone field. If they do hear us, we will probably get pinged. If that happens we will know they are after us. As quiet as this boat is, we shouldn’t have any problems. Just don’t drop anything or make any loud noises.”
Guang Xi looked back into the control room. Everyone seemed to be at ease, but he felt agitated and nervous inside. This was a critical part of the mission. If they were discovered here, the mission would fail and his revenge on America would not happen. He felt like he was holding his breath, and six hours seemed like an eternity. He leaned against the door jamb and watched the computer screen. After a while the Lieutenant in charge of communications walked by and saw Guang Xi awkwardly braced against the door jamb. He went back to the dining area and brought a metal and plastic case to Guang Xi so he could at least have something to sit on. Guang Xi was thankful and sat down. He continued to watch the computer screen for the full six hours. Nothing had happened; no pings were heard. The sonar technician leaned over and notified the Captain in the control room that everything was clear. The sub slowly picked up speed and the sound level returned to normal. In twenty hours they would turn north and begin their approach to the Mendocino Triple Junction and the placement of the first of the thirty-five mini-nuke mines.
Guang Xi visited the torpedo room and found it full of sailors. “What’s going on?”
“We are entering enemy waters,” the Torpedo Officer replied. “We are loading four TU-8 anti-submarine torpedoes in tubes one through four. Your mines will be loaded in tubes five and six. We will be ready.”
Yes, we will, Guang Xi thought. For all practical purposes, we are now at war.
CHAPTER 31
The two knocks on his cabin door woke Captain Paul Jacobs. “Enter,” he said. The door opened.
“Excuse the interruption, Sir,” Daniel Adams, the Chief of the Boat, referred to as the COB, said quietly. “We picked up a notice of encrypted radio traffic on the long antenna. XO is taking us up to periscope depth and wanted you to know.”
“Thanks, I’ll be right there.” Jacobs rose and dressed quickly.
“What have we got?” Jacobs asked as he entered the control center.
“Encrypted message and file from COMSUBPAC coming in now, Sir,” Commander John Silverton, the Executive Officer replied. “Here’s the message. The file is being forwarded to the sonar room.” COMSUBPAC was the office of the Commander of the Submarine fleet in the Pacific, based in Hawaii.
Jacobs read the intriguing message a second time and handed it back to Silverton. “Someone was trying to sneak across the hydrophone network.”
“Yes, they were,” Silverton agreed. “Whoever they are they didn’t succeed. They were picked up on the Low Frequency Active system and the SOSUS net. What do you make of the sound signature?” The SOSUS, or Sound Surveillance System analyzed the sounds recorded by the hydrophone network resting on the floor of the Pacific Ocean and identified everything from nearly silent submarines to migrating whales and other undersea life.
For decades the U.S. Military had been combining the visual images of ships and submarines leaving their home port with the sound signatures of those ships and subs collected by U.S. nuclear submarines lying in wait outside their harbors. The result was a comprehensive computer database able to identify any warship in the world by the sound it made in the water.
“That’s the thing,” Jacobs replied. “The SOSUS says the prop signature matches an old Alfa class Russian sub that according to this message was decommissioned in 1996 and cut up into scrap. Obviously that didn’t happen. But why an old Alfa? The Russians certainly have newer subs that would do the job. Why resurrect something that old?”
“Somebody’s running a covert op,” Silverton said. “What we don’t know is whether the op is intelligence based, or operational based.”
That’s what we have to determine,” Jacobs replied. “In order to do that, we have to find the damned thing.” Jacobs picked up the microphone for the 1MC, the main communications system on the Massachusetts. “This is the Captain. A ghost sub has entered U.S. waters on a covert mission. Our job is to locate that sub and determine what it is doing in our back yard. This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill. Rig for silent running.”
Jacobs turned to Silverton. “Any ideas?”
“The location where it crossed the hydrophone net is quite a ways north of our current position, so if we assume a covert mission will take it closer, rather than farther from the coast, we should move close to the coast and work our way north until we find it.”
“Good choice,” Jacobs replied. “With our flank-mounted, passive sonar arrays, we can cover a wide swath of water. Send a request to COMSUBPAC in Hawaii to have a Virginia Class sub sweep the coastal area in parallel to us. The Virginia class is better suited to coastal operations while we’re best suited to deep water. Between the two subs we can cover more of the ocean and we stand a better chance of finding this ghost sub.”