Balance of Power: A Novel (36 page)

D
ILLON STEPPED THROUGH THE LAST KNEE KNOCKER
—what seemed like the hundredth—and opened the flimsy metal door to the wardroom. He paused and looked for anyone familiar. Even though he had been on the ship awhile and was being treated as a congressman might be, he recognized a finely defined pecking order, mostly by the obvious—rank—but there were other forces at work that he was just beginning to pick up on: air wing versus ship’s company, fighter versus attack, Navy versus Marine Corps. At first he thought it was actual animosity, but then realized it was family squabbling and rivalry. He also realized he wasn’t part of the family.

Dillon wasn’t even sure why he was still awake. It was probably because he was excited. An attack was about to take place that
he
had put in motion. As an individual. Not as a government, not as a committee. Just one person sitting in an office and discovering a power everyone had forgotten. He hadn’t foreseen it becoming so momentous, but he was glad it had. He hadn’t foreseen it driving a wedge between Congress and the President, and he regretted that—but that was President Manchester’s choice, not his. If Manchester had seen this for the opportunity it was, he would have signed the Letter and gone after these terrorists.

“You’re up late,” Beth said to Dillon as he looked around, deep in thought.

“Yeah, I’m kind of wound up. I feel like a fish out of water.”

“What are you looking for?”

He thought for a moment. “I don’t know, I guess for the operation to be in the open and approved by the President…”

“No. I meant do you want ice cream or a hamburger—a slider as we call it?”

He was embarrassed. “Ice cream, I guess.”

“You know where the auto dog is, don’t you?”

“The ice cream thing? Yeah.”

He got a glass of ice cream and sat down at the long metal table. There were several maintenance officers and aviators in the wardroom. More than he had expected this late—it was well after midnight. He could smell the cheeseburgers cooking on the grill around the corner. Someone had anticipated an unusually high turnout on a nonflying night. Some of the officers were joking quietly, but most of them seemed subdued.

“Lots of people here for one
A.M.
”

Beth looked around. “More than usual.”

“What are you doing up?” he asked.

“Trying to get the best intelligence picture I can so I can pass it on to the morning launch.”

“What more can you find out since we’ve been cut off?”

“We have an alternative plan we’re about to put in place.”

“What’s that?”

“We’ll be launching the Predator soon.”

“What’s that? That thing from the Schwarzenegger movie?
That
ought to take care of those terrorists.” He was enjoying her presence more than he thought he should. She was three or four years older than he was, but he didn’t care. He thought of Molly and felt a pang of guilt, which surprised him. “So what’s a Predator?”

“A drone. A very capable drone. Only problem is, they’ve never launched one off a ship before. I thought it
would be a good idea, and said we ought to try it. So…the admiral told me to make it happen. I’ve been trying to convince the Army men who control it. They remain unconvinced. They feel like prisoners of war on a lunatic carrier. So, we’ll see. It will be taking off shortly. If it works, we’ll have a lot to do very quickly. If it goes into the ocean, I’ll probably get an opportunity to go to the admiral’s at-sea cabin with my dancing rug and explain what happened.”

“Rug?” he asked.

“Figure of speech,” she said, as she studied his face. “It means you’re in big trouble, and you’d better start entertaining your superior
fast,
because he is currently
not
amused.”

“That’s good.” Dillon paused. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“How old are you?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“My friend and I have a theory that the entire country is run by twenty-nine- or thirty-year-olds who come up with all the ideas, all the strategy, and just hand it over to the old guys.”

She laughed. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not twenty-nine or thirty. I’m thirty-five.”

Dillon raised his eyebrows. “I’m surprised. I figured you for thirty or thirty-one.”

“It’s the skin. I don’t wrinkle, at least not yet.”

Dillon shifted his eyes away from Beth, afraid that she might read too much in them. He forced his thoughts back to business. “You seem calm. I figured everybody would be pretty anxious.”

“I’m not calm at all. I’m just good at looking calm.”

“Nice skill to have.”

“Are you ready?”

“For tomorrow? Nothing much I can do now.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You have a pretty rare opportunity for a politician. You get to see the action firsthand.
And if the Predator doesn’t crash, you may get to see it in real time.”

“Real time?” he asked, confused.

“As it’s happening. The Predator will send us live video.”

Dillon thought about that, then heard what she had said before. “I’m not really a politician…”

“Of course you are,” she laughed. “What do
you
think you are?”

“I’m just a staffer.”

“You mean you’re not an
elected
politician.”

“I guess that’s what I mean,” he said defensively.

“So you get to do what every politician does when a big decision is made, sit back and watch the results on television.”

Dillon wasn’t sure whether she was being hostile or playful. “Why are you teeing off on politicians?”

“I wouldn’t call it that. It’s true, isn’t it? They send people to war; they don’t go. They send us away on cruises for six months at a time; they never go on a cruise for six months. They might come for a day, but not six months.”

Dillon’s face reddened. “I don’t know that it’s like that at all. It’s just different responsibilities. And they go overseas sometimes.”

Beth chuckled and shook her head. “Right.” She glanced at her watch. “Well, I need to get going; don’t worry about your little Letter of Reprisal. Now it’s up to us.” She looked at Dillon, who was lost in thought. “Predator launch is in fifteen minutes,” she announced. “Want to come out on the flight deck and watch?”

“Isn’t it dark?” He envisioned himself falling off the flight deck into the black ocean, never to be seen again.

“You have no idea how dark it is. You’ll have to put on a white safety flotation jacket, helmet, and goggles, but I’ll watch out for you. Want to come?”

“Sure,” he said excitedly.

The two dark RHIBs dashed across the ocean well south of Bunaya. Armstrong anxiously watched the coxswain study the GPS receiver for the rendezvous point. They had made good time. Armstrong scanned the horizon quickly and saw nothing but water reflecting the faint light of the moon amid wispy black clouds.

The coxswain reduced the throttles of the boat and went into a gentle starboard turn. “This is it, Lieutenant. We’re fifteen minutes early.”

Armstrong nudged up next to the coxswain. “You got a good read on the GPS?”

“Yes, sir.”

Armstrong compared the coxswain’s GPS to his own portable set and saw that their fixes were identical. “Looks good to me. Let’s go DIW,” he said, instructing the coxswain to go dead in the water.

“Yes, sir.”

The other RHIB had fallen in fifty feet behind them and expertly came alongside the lead RHIB and joined up over the gentle swells of the glassy sea.

What a beautiful night, Armstrong thought, as he took in a deep breath. Almost immediately, he saw a periscope break the water immediately in front of him. “Periscope,” he said pointing.

“Yes, sir, I saw it,” the coxswain said. “We’re okay here.”

The periscope moved slowly toward them. Armstrong could make out a lens or glass top on the periscope, which seemed to be examining them from no more than one hundred feet away.

Suddenly, the periscope disappeared below the surface and seconds later the sail of a submarine emerged.

The USS
Los Angeles
rose out of the ocean depths directly in front of them.

Armstrong looked at QMC Lee standing next to him.
“That would be a rather troubling sight if we hadn’t been expecting it.”

Lee added, “Or if it was somebody else’s submarine.”

They watched the
Los Angeles
rise to its full surfaced height. The two coxswains gunned the engines of the RHIBs and headed toward the sail. As they did, four sailors in flotation vests climbed out of the sail, down the ladder, and stood on the forward portion of the
Los Angeles
. They caught the lines that were thrown to them and pulled the two RHIBs to the submarine.

The captain of the
Los Angeles
looked grimly on from the top of the sail, unhappy at having to bring his nuclear submarine to the surface for
any
reason. He looked down to the bow of the
Los Angeles
and his senior chief petty officer. “Hurry it up, Senior Chief,” he muttered.

“Yes, sir,” the senior chief responded without looking up. “Come on, men. Hustle up,” he said to the SEALs as they clambered on board the
Los Angeles
and up the sail. As soon as all the SEALs were below, the senior chief threw the lines of the RHIBs back onto the boats and went below himself.

“Take her down,” the captain said as he descended into the interior of the sail.

The
Los Angeles
immediately began submerging and heading toward Bunaya.

After only a few hours, the
Los Angeles
hovered silently off the island. It stopped and settled slowly into the sand, resting on the bottom to check for currents and stability. Bubbles began to rise from the bow as an indiscernible hatch opened in the dark Pacific waters. Four SEALs emerged from the
Los Angeles
and inflated a buoy which lurched upward, pulling a line behind it toward the surface of the ocean seventy feet above. Two of the divers followed the line up to the surface, propelled by bags that gradually filled with air.

Four more divers followed the first two, taking several satchels of gear up with them. Automatic weapons, a sniper rifle, explosives, several MUGRs—Miniature Underwater
GPS Receivers—and several CLAMs—Clandestine Littoral Acoustic Mappers. Armstrong and Lee stayed by the
Los Angeles
as they watched the rest of the platoon lock out, swim to the surface, and wait for them in a swimmer pool at the buoy. When everyone was out and all the gear had been taken up, Lee and Armstrong gave each other a thumbs-up and followed the line up to the buoy, exhaling all the way. After the gear was distributed, the platoon divided into swim pairs, attached their buddy lines, and initialized their CLAMs with a GPS fix. They turned toward the shore of Bunaya and began swimming.

They swam slowly but steadily twenty feet down, breathing through their Dräeger LAR Vs. There were no bubbles and no lights, just millions of bioluminescent particles trailing behind each swimmer.

Knowing their position was critical to map the approach. Chief Lee was responsible for operating the CLAM that had only recently been acquired by the SEAL platoon. By sending out doppler acoustic signals and reading the returns, they could precisely navigate and record a hydrographic survey chart of the ocean bottom. This was the road map that would tell the Marines where to land. Without it, the landing would be a crapshoot, the craft subject to running ashore or getting stranded on coral reefs as they had in Tarawa. The SEALs weren’t going to let that happen.

The SEALs continued silently toward the shore, then, on Lee’s signal, dispersed to their prebriefed lanes to clear the two-hundred-yard-wide approach corridor for the amphibious landing. They swam the assigned grid pattern in to the shore, looking for any obstacle, natural or man-made, that would threaten the shallow-draft boats that were to bring the Marines ashore in a few short hours.

After an hour of difficult underwater labor in the dark, the SEALs rendezvoused at the center point of the corridor. Armstrong took out his mouthpiece. “Anything?”

Lee nodded. “Coral head, sir, about fifty feet in from the left perimeter a hundred yards out.”

“Can you blow it? Is it a factor?” Armstrong asked, breathing a little harder than he would have liked.

“Yes, sir. We’ll put a little extra charge on it,” Lee said mischievously.

“Two swim pairs enough?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take swim team six with you; place the charges on the coral head and set the timers.”

“Yes, sir,” Lee said. He nodded at his buddy and swim team six, who followed him with their haversacks toward the coral.

The rest of the SEALs treaded water in a swimmer pool, scanning in every direction for any signs of life.

Ten minutes later, “All set, sir.”

The SEALs moved toward center beach and fanned out in the shallows.

Armstrong crawled up farther until his entire head was out of the water. He pulled his mask off and held his monocular night-vision goggle to his left eye. He turned it on and scanned the shore three times. He signaled all clear and the platoon removed their fins and crawled slowly onto the beach in a line, watching for any signs of defense or opposition.