"Yes, sir!" The voice carried the sharp edge of fear.
And well it should. Yinbi was still in terrible danger.
"Captain! This is sonar! We're picking up sounds of a submarine surfacing. Close aboard — one hundred meters or less to starboard."
Jian turned, looking toward the south. Yes… perhaps seventy meters away, something was breaking the surface.
Odd. A pair of slender, rounded heads not at all like any periscope Jian had seen were rising from their wake. They were followed moments later by the submarine's sail, black and forbidding.
Jian found those periscope heads fascinating. The whole sail was of an unusual design, much farther forward on the deck, so far as he could see it, and with a sloped, curving step at the sail's foot. What was it?
Throughout this operation, Jian had assumed he was facing one of the new American Seawolf-class submarines, but this vessel — while it shared some outward features of a Seawolf — was considerably smaller, and showed some key differences. He'd read reports of a brand new American design, a sub they'd named Virginia. Intelligence reports suggested it was as stealthy as the Seawolf, not as well armed, not as capable in some respects, not able to dive as deeply… but quite probably more maneuverable and more advanced technologically.
Jian had seen evidence of that maneuverability, and the technology — that sonar-pinging drone — had ended the contest between them.
Technology and maneuverability, however, were not the whole story.
He found himself wondering about the man who commanded that vessel.
He raised his binoculars, studying the other vessel's weather bridge. A man had just appeared there, wearing a khaki shirt, a billed cap, and sunglasses. His opposite number was staring back at him now through his own set of binoculars.
Slowly, Jian lowered his own binoculars, faced the other submarine, and saluted.
Even without the binoculars, he saw the figure on the Virginia's sail return his salute.
"Open VLS tube one," Garrett said. "Stand by to fire."
"Open VLS tube one," Carpenter replied. "Tube ready to fire."
Virginia cruised at periscope depth. The control room monitor showed the view above the surface — a night-shrouded ocean brightly lit by an almost-full moon high in the sky. Moonlight sparkled and danced from a calm sea.
Not the best night for this type of operation, but it would have to do.
Garrett wasn't worried so much about Virginia as he was for the ASDS, released with its full complement of SEALs some six hours ago. SEALs, Lieutenant Hal-stead had explained, didn't like moonlight. It cramped their style.
Which was why Virginia was preparing to launch a Tomahawk.
"Confirm targeting data and GPS link," Garrett said.
"Targeting data uploaded and confirmed," Carpenter said from the CCS-2 console. "GPS link confirmed. We're ready to shoot."
"Two more minutes," he said.
The BGM-109 Tomahawk was a submarine-launched cruise missile. Twenty-one feet long and just twenty-one inches in diameter, it could be fired from a submarine's torpedo tube. The preferred launch mode, however, was vertically, through one of Virginia's sixteen Vertical Launch System tubes.
The missile now being prepared for launch was one of the new "TACTOM" birds, a "Tactical Tomahawk" designed expressly for the land-attack role, and supplementing the older TLAM, or Tomahawk Land-Attack Missile. The TACTOM had an improved loiter capability, and a new twist — an on-board camera with a satellite link back to the firing vessel.
The two minutes passed swiftly as the control room crew waited in tense silence. The first Tomahawk to be fired from a submarine during wartime had been launched from a Los Angeles boat operating in the Red Sea, the opening salvo of the 1991 air war against Iraq. Since then, they'd been used in numerous wars and military operations, a means by which a submarine's tactical reach could be extended far, far inland.
This was the first operational launch of the TACTOM variant. Satellite data links were feeding a complete picture of everything that was happening back to the Pentagon. A lot of people back there were very interested in the new weapon's performance.
"Ten seconds," Carpenter announced. "Eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one… "
"Fire!" Garrett said.
With a hiss and a slight shudder through the hull, the Tomahawk rose from the submerged submarine. On the control room monitor, a moonlit patch of foam exploded suddenly as the encapsulated weapon broke the surface. The protective shroud fell away, the solid-fuel boosters kicked in, and the Tomahawk rose on a dazzling flare of white light from the tortured surface of the sea.
Automatically, stubby wings deployed as the weapon's on-board brain dropped it into its flight configuration.
The booster burned out, but the missile's air-breathing turbojet engine kicked in. Flying level ten meters above the water, the Tomahawk banked right and vanished toward the southwest.
The TACTOM variant had a range of 1,500 miles, which meant the Virginia could have hit a target in Japan — or deep inside China — from its firing point off the Philippine island of Palawan. Its programmed flight path, however, was only eighty miles or so, a vast loop going southwest, then southeast, and finally east, approaching the target from the west. At Mach 7, just under 550 miles per hour, the flight would take eight minutes, thirty seconds.
Mark Halstead checked the luminous dial of his watch, then cautiously raised his head above the surface. He was in the shadows here; the ocean was bathed in moonlight, but he was clinging at the moment to one of the massive support pylons that held the Chinese naval base above the partly submerged reef of Small Dragon Island. Here, deep in the shadows beneath the south end of the elevated four-story building, he remained effectively invisible.
The base, however, was on full alert. Several small boats and one of the Hainan-class patrol craft were circling the base constantly, obviously on the alert for any incursion from the sea. He could hear voices in singsong Chinese coming from an external railed walkway some yards above his head.
Yeah, the submarine dogfight that afternoon had stirred these guys up like a stick in a hornet's nest. That didn't matter, however. In a very short while, Virginia was going to provide the SEALs with one hell of a spectacular diversion.
He checked his watch again. Eight minutes to go, if the Virginia was sticking to schedule. He submerged again to join the other SEALs, hovering in the darkness above the submerged ASDS.
Eight more minutes, and the SEALs — with some help — would demonstrate just how the United States felt about people who aided and sheltered the agents of global terror.
Carpenter had switched the monitor view to the satellite feed from the Tomahawk's on-board camera. There was nothing more to be done now, save maintaining combat vigilance. That there were other Chinese submarines in the area, Garrett had no doubt, and launching a Tomahawk was a damned noisy business.
But except for that Kilo that had surfaced earlier after the battle, there'd been no sign of them. The Kilo, dogged now by relays of ASW Seahawks off the Roosevelt, was still motoring slowly toward the north on the surface, away from the AO.