The Seventh Angel (41 page)

Except that the answers were all different, and
none
of them were simple. The protesters down on the Ellipse disagreed with each other about nearly everything, but they were united on one point. They all wanted Francis Benjamin Chandler to get the hell out of the White House, and make room for the kind of leader who could save the nation in its moment of peril. Of course, depending on which group you talked to, the next person in the Oval Office should either be a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian, an unaligned independent, or a pair of Wiccan Siamese Twins with the secret communications frequency of the alien mother ship.

The president snorted, and the exhalation turned to steam in the cold morning air.

“
Uh, Mr. President?” The voice belonged to National Security Advisor Gregory Brenthoven.

The president turned to see the man standing at the open door leading to the yellow room.

He beckoned with his fingers. “Come on out, Greg. I’m just having a look at the newest members of the Frank Chandler Fan Club.”

Brenthoven stepped out onto the balcony and closed the door. He looked out at the roiling crowd on the Ellipse. “What do you think they want, sir?”

“
That’s easy,” the president said. “They want world peace, unrestricted warfare, a global economy, utter severance of all foreign trading agreements, open borders, and strict isolationism.”

Brenthoven grinned. “So it’s business as usual, sir?”

The president raised his hands and let them drop. “Pretty much.”

He sighed. “What have you got, Greg?”

Brenthoven walked over to the railing. “The Russian courier, Oleg Grigoriev, is dead, sir. Medical complications from the gunshot wounds.”

The president nodded gravely, and looked back out toward the growing mob of his detractors. “That puts me in a bit of an emotional conflict,” he said. “On the one hand, a man has lost his life. As a human being, my first thought should focus on the tragedy of that loss. But I’m also the Commander-in-Chief of a nation under siege. And I have to confess that I’m more concerned about losing a possible source of critical intelligence. Because some of the secrets that Mr. Grigoriev took to the grave could drastically affect the future of this country, and the world.”

“
I understand, sir,” the national security advisor said. “But he didn’t take quite everything to the grave.”

The president turned and met Brenthoven’s eyes.

“
Mr. Grigoriev confirmed the CNO’s theory that the submarine is shooting from prepared positions, where explosives have been planted in the ice cover. There were five positions. Governor Zhukov apparently called them …” Brenthoven paused, reading the unfamiliar words from his notebook. “…
z
ashishennaja pozicija
.”

He sounded the words out clumsily. “That appears to be the Russian term for a protected position, or a hidden place to shoot from.”

“
I see,” the president said. “And did Mr. Grigoriev happen to provide us with the coordinates of any of these protected positions?”

“
He gave us approximate locations, Mr. President,” Brenthoven said. “One of them corresponded pretty closely with the first position that the submarine launched from. If the other four are in the same ballpark, accuracy-wise, we’ve got the remaining launch positions narrowed down fairly well.”

The president frowned. “Why didn’t he just feed us the latitudes and longitudes? That’s what he did the first time, right?”

“
He was too weak, sir,” Brenthoven said. “The DIA agent in the hospital room reported that Mr. Grigoriev literally used his dying breath to pass this information to us.”

“
It’s pretty tough to complain about
that
,” the president said. He paused for nearly a minute. “Are we getting this information to our Navy ships?”

The national security advisor nodded. “COMPACFLEET is sending the message out now, sir. And the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is putting together a tactical proposal for your consideration.”

“
What’s he got in mind?”

“
I haven’t seen the details yet, sir,” Brenthoven said. “But the general plan is to send Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams onto the ice pack to locate and disarm Zhukov’s explosives. If the submarine can’t blow holes in the ice, it can’t launch missiles.”

“
That could give us the opening we need to finish this,” the president said. “If that sub can’t launch, Zhukov’s nuclear threat goes down the drain.”

The national security advisor nodded. “That’s the idea, Mr. President.”

“
The upside is obvious,” the president said. “What’s the downside?”

“
Our positional information is only approximate, sir. The EOD teams are probably going to have trouble finding the explosives. And they’ll be exposed out on the ice. The longer they have to work out there, the greater the chance that they’ll be discovered by Zhukov’s people.”

The president frowned at this thought. “If Zhukov catches us trying to pull his fangs, he’s going to want to punish us.”

“
Do you think he’ll launch another attack, sir?”

The president sighed. “I don’t know, Greg. He’s certainly crazy enough.”

“
Maybe our EOD people can get the job done without getting caught.”

“
Maybe,” the president said. “We’re due for a bit of luck.”

“
Yes, sir,” the national security advisor said.

Neither man made the obvious comment. So far, every lucky break they’d gotten had arrived too late to do any good.

USS TOWERS (DDG-103)

WESTERN PACIFIC OCEAN

WEDNESDAY; 06 MARCH

0603 hours (6:03 AM)

TIME ZONE +11 ‘LIMA’

Ann watched the screen of her laptop computer, waiting for the small green icon that would appear when Mouse reported his position.

The robot was operating autonomously, following his mission program without human supervision or input. Because communications signals might reveal his presence to the enemy submarine’s acoustic sensors, he was not sending any updates back to the
Towers
. He would not report in until his mission was complete and he was clear of the ice pack, either because he had located the target submarine, or because the allotted search period had expired and he had transited to the rendezvous coordinates.

Ann glanced at the digital time readout in the lower right hand corner of her computer screen. Mouse’s search program wasn’t scheduled to end for another ten minutes yet, so she really didn’t expect to see anything yet.

There was no need to hover over the computer, but she couldn’t tear herself away. Every time she walked away from it for thirty seconds, she found herself drawn back to the little screen by an irresistible force. She felt like an overprotective mother, hanging around the bus stop a half hour before the school bus was due to bring her child home.

Ann had reason to be nervous. There were plenty of things that could go wrong. Mouse was designed to navigate safely beneath ice cover, but he’d never been under the ice for this long before. Until now, it had only been for a couple of hours at a time, for testing purposes. The conditions had been controlled then, with divers waiting to go after the robot if anything went wrong. There were no controls here. There were no divers, and there was no backup plan.

Also, several of the program modules Mouse was using now had never been put through their paces before. Ann was confident that the software code was pretty stable, but bugs were still cropping up now and then. There was no telling what the robot might do if his software crashed while he was deep under the ice. He could ram himself into an ice keel, or take a wild excursion out of the operating area, to wind up in parts unknown when the power in his battery cells ran down.

The robot might already be lying in pieces on the bottom of the sea, destroyed by an unrecognized technical defect, or some flaw in his program code. The mission could have failed ten minutes after it had started, and Ann wouldn’t find out until the robot failed to report at the end of its search patterns.

Someone leaned over Ann’s left shoulder. “Has the prodigal robot returned?” It was the red headed Sonar Chief. Her name was Mc-something-or-other.

Ann shook her head. “Not yet. He’s not due to report in for another few minutes.”

The other woman tilted her head. “The way your eyes are welded to that computer screen, I figured that he must be overdue.”

Ann felt the corners of her mouth come up just a little—that strange half-smile thing she always found herself doing when strangers tried to engage her in polite conversation. “No,” she said. “Mouse isn’t late. I’m just a little … nervous.”

“
I can understand that,” the chief said. “But don’t let it worry you if your robot comes home empty-handed the first few times. Anti-Submarine Warfare is slow. The search part is, anyway. After you find the target, things can heat up pretty damned fast. But until then, it’s mostly a waiting game.”

Ann nodded. “Thanks.”

“
My sonar gang is back in TACTASS, pulling in the towed array,” the Navy woman said. “We didn’t get anything either.” She shrugged. “I didn’t really think we would. Even the old Delta boats can be pretty quiet when they’re running slow and dark. But it was worth a shot. We could still get lucky. Maybe we’ll catch a sniff tomorrow night. Or maybe your Mouse unit will.”

“
I hope so,” Ann said.

The Navy woman extended her hand. “Theresa McPherson. Around the CPO Mess, they call me
Teri
, or
Mac
. Everybody else just calls me
Chief
.”

Ann shook the woman’s hand. “Ann Roark,” she said. “Or just Ann. I don’t have any idea what they call me around the CPO Mess. And I probably don’t want to know.”

Chief McPherson laughed and started to say something, but she was interrupted by a short burst of static from an overhead speaker box, followed instantly by a man’s voice.

“
TAO—EW, I’m tracking four I-band emitters, bearing zero-three-seven. Zaslon S-800 series phased array radars. Looks like MiG-31s. Probably two flights of two.”

A half-second later, a woman’s voice came out of the speaker in response. “EW—TAO, four I-band emitters bearing zero-three-seven, aye. Which way are the Bogies tracking?”

“
EW—TAO, Bogies have very slight left bearing drift with rapidly-increasing signal strength. The CPA is going to be right over the top of us, ma’am.”

From the forward end of Combat Information Center, Ann heard a woman say, “Damn it!”

The words didn’t come through the speaker. The woman hadn’t spoken them over the communications net.

Ann turned to the chief. “What was all that about?”

“
The Electronic Warfare techs are reporting to the Tactical Action Officer that Russian aircraft are coming our way. From the radar transmissions, the planes appear to be MiG-31 fighter jets. If they don’t change course in the next couple of minutes, they’re going to fly right over us.”

“
Will they see us?”

Chief McPherson shrugged. “Don’t know. Our stealth technology is good. We’re not easy to detect on radar, and the phototropic camouflage makes it hard to spot us visually. But the moon is up, and it’s three-quarters full. If one of those pilots looks the wrong way, he might catch our silhouette in the moonlight.”

“
That’s the best stealth technology you could get for my tax dollars?”

Chief McPherson smiled. “You didn’t pay enough taxes to buy a Star Trek cloaking device, Ann. We’re sneaky as hell, but we’re not invisible. If somebody looks right at us, he’s going to see us.”

The female voice came over the speaker again. “EW—TAO, give me a recommended course for minimized radar cross-section, and stand by to launch chaff. Break. Weapons Control—TAO, have Aegis and CIWS ready to come on line at a second’s notice if those Bogies start shooting. Break. RCO—TAO, get SPY ready to transmit on zero-notice. If the situation goes hot, we’ll need to get radar information to fire control immediately.”

As the individual stations began acknowledging their orders, a male voice came over a different set of speakers. “Commanding Officer, your presence is requested in Combat Information Center.”

Ann could feel the tension level in the darkened room go up dramatically. Men and women at electronic consoles around the compartment began pushing buttons and speaking into headsets in low voices.

She heard the clang of an opening door, and a voice called out, “the captain’s in CIC.”

Captain Bowie strode into the room, making a bee-line for a woman seated in a chair at the focus of three large tactical display screens. The captain and the woman went into a hushed conference immediately.

Ann nodded toward the woman. “Who’s she?”

“
That’s Lieutenant Augustine. She’s the Tactical Action Officer. She’s in charge of fighting the ship.”

“
Is that her regular job?”

“
She’s the Operations Department Head,” Chief McPherson said. “TAO is a watch station. It rotates with the watch turnover. OPS has got the bubble now, because she’s the best TAO we’ve got, and the captain figured things might get hairy.”