U.S.S. Seawolf (5 page)

“Jesus Christ.”

Admiral Joseph Mulligan, the six-foot-four-inch former commanding officer of a Trident submarine, former C-in-C of the Submarine Force U.S. Atlantic Fleet (SUBLANT), and ex-Navy tight end in the 1966 Army-Navy game, came marching through the door.

“Hey, Arnie…sorry about the lateness…been sitting in the car on the phone to Norfolk for the last twenty minutes…that damned new cruiser…Jesus, it’s more trouble than it could ever possibly be worth…got any coffee?”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure you’re getting any. I’m not good at sitting around waiting for disorganized sailors.”

“Heh, heh, heh.” The big Boston Irishman who occupied the most senior position in the United States Navy chuckled. The two men had known each other for many years. Both of them had commanded Polaris submarines, and they had been through a few scrapes together. As long as Admiral Morgan was the President’s right-hand man on military and national security matters, the Navy was not going to be looking for a new CNO any time soon.

Just then Kathy O’Brien came in with fresh coffee for them both. Admiral Mulligan thanked her graciously
while the boss muttered, “’Bout time…I was better looked after when I was an ensign.”

“He doesn’t get a whole lot better, does he?” said Joe Mulligan. “No wonder all his wives left him.”

“No wonder indeed,” said Kathy, smiling as she swept out of the door.

“Christ, she’s beautiful, Arnie. You better marry her while you’ve still got the chance.”

“Can’t. She’s rejected me till I retire.”

“Then you’ve both got a long wait.”

“Guess so. But I’m hanging in there.”

“Anyway, old pal, what’s on your mind.”

“China, what’s on yours?”

“Cookies. Got any?”

“Jesus, don’t they feed you at the hellhole you work in?”

“Only rarely.”

“KATHY!! COOKIES FOR THE CHIEF.”

“Okay, Arnie, tell me what’s on your mind, as if I don’t know. It’s that Chinese missile, right?”

“That’s the one, Joe. And whether anyone likes it or not, we are, in the end, gonna have to do something about it. We can’t have a bunch of fucking coolies running around with a ballistic missile that could flatten L.A.”

“Well, I agree. Not hardly. But you know, there really is no reason to think they could (a) build one that big, (b) aim the sonofabitch straight, and (c) make sure it goes off bang in Beverly Hills.”

“Joe, I know that. But you know they’ve been building a brand-new Xia-class ICBM submarine. We’ve just picked it up on the overheads. Damn thing’s conducting surface trials in the northern Yellow Sea right now. They got pictures at Fort Meade. Whatever else, you can bet they didn’t build it for nothing. They built it to carry a missile that could, if required, threaten the USA.”

“Can’t argue with that, Arnie. But they’re still a long way from firing a missile right across the Pacific Ocean.”

“Are they? And might I ask how the hell you might know that?”

“Mainly, old buddy, because they’ve never tested anything like that, and because every shred of intelligence we have says they are simply not that advanced.”

“If this new fucking Xia-class boat is any good, they won’t have to be that advanced. They could drive the sonofabitch way across the ocean and let one rip a thousand miles off our west coast.”

“Yeah, I suppose they could. If they owned such a missile.”

Arnold Morgan stood up and pulled out a cigar from a snazzy-looking polished wooden box on his desk. He walked slowly around the room, nodding formally at the portrait of Admiral Nimitz. He clipped the end of his cigar, and ignited it with a gold Dunhill lighter, a gift from a Saudi Arabian prince who thought, wrongly, that he might study in the U.S. to become a submariner.

“Lemme lay a few facts on you, Joe. Get one of those cigars, if you want one, but listen. By the year 2000, we actually
knew
the Chinese had stolen top-secret design information for our most advanced thermonuclear weapons, and had transferred ballistic missile technology to Iran and Libya, among others. Beautiful, right?”

“Beautiful.”

“They had also stolen our top missile guidance technology. They’ve got three thousand corporations in the US of A, probably half of ’em with lines to Chinese military intelligence, and you can’t trust politicians one fucking inch to do the right thing. Jesus, Joe, Clinton’s attorney general
denied
the FBI permission to wiretap the fucking Chinese spy’s phone, and then the President himself went on television and told a barefaced lie, denying he even knew about the leaks when he plainly did. Then they hushed up half the Cox report in order to save his ass.

“Clinton made it possible for the goddamned Chinese to get their hands on American technology
no one should
see
, and what’s worse, they’re still in here, stealing and lying.

“Joe, five years from now the People’s Liberation Army/Navy is gonna consist of around three and a half million people. They are no longer especially concerned with a major ground war doctrine. They are, for the first time in five hundred years, becoming expansionist, and have formally recognized their massive Navy as their Senior Service.

“Right now more than a third of the entire Chinese military budget is going into Navy research, development and production. They’ve finally managed to get four Russian-built Kilo-class submarines, despite my best efforts. They have this brand-new Xia-class SSBN, they have a production line of new Song-class SSKs, two new six-thousand-ton Luhai-class destroyers, they have a land-attack cruise missile program, they’re aiming for two big aircraft carrier battle groups inside the next eight years—one for the Indian Ocean, one for the Pacific.

“And how about this Burma bullshit? The Chinese have piled nearly
two billion dollars’ worth of military hardware
into that country, updating all the Burmese naval bases, which they of course will be utilizing. That adds up to a permanent Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean. Christ, Joe! These guys are on the move, I’m telling you. And I’m not proposing we make moves to stop ’em. Not yet, anyway. But I do seriously want to know if the little pricks can hit L.A. with a ballistic missile fired from the South China Sea. Is that too much to ask, for Christ’s sake?”

The President’s National Security Adviser faced the U.S. Navy Chief, and for the first time the two men were silent. Admiral Mulligan took a deep swig of coffee. Admiral Morgan drew deeply on his cigar, and then he spoke again, with equal care.

“Joe, China supports twenty-two percent of the world’s population on only seven percent of its arable land. Because of their grotesque mismanagement of their
farming areas, they’re losing millions of acres a year. In the next fifteen years their population is going to one and a half billion, and sometime in the next five years they’re gonna have an annual shortfall of two hundred and eighty-five million tons of grain, which is a lot of cookies.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling…we’re a bit short in here as well.”

Admiral Morgan grinned but ignored him. “Joe, we’re looking at a nation that sooner or later is going to have to raise a gigantic sum of money every year to buy grain and rice to feed its people. Either that, or they’re gonna steal it. Or at least frighten someone into selling it to ’em cheap. And remember, they already require nearly six million barrels of oil a day. That’s more than us, for Christ’s sake. In my view they are a very grave danger, and we have to get a grip on the situation.”

“Arnie, I agree. But are you proposing a new offensive of some kind?”

“No. But I’m proposing that we put the old one on a real fast track. Every day I’m getting reports that their Dong Feng-31 missile has been fitted with a nuclear warhead based on the designs stolen from the Los Alamos laboratories in New Mexico. Every report I get says they’ve done it, and that their new warhead is based on our ultra-compact W-88—which you know packs a punch ten times heavier than the goddamned bomb that hit Hiroshima—and the fucker’s only three feet long. If the Chinese really have stolen the technology to manufacture that warhead, they could fit it into a missile in about ten minutes.

“And we both know they could deploy it in a submarine, ’specially a brand-new one, tailor-made for it. My guys think the DF-31 might have a range of five thousand miles, which would not get it across the Pacific, but launched from a submarine they could get it damned near anywhere.”

“Well, we sure as hell can’t measure it, since we don’t
know where they keep it, so we’re not gonna find out its fuel capacity in a big hurry.”

“No, Joe. But we could measure the submarine.”

This time Admiral Mulligan stood up. And he walked over to the window and said slowly, “Arnie, we had a similar conversation at the end of last year, and I told you then that there is only one submarine in our fleet I’d risk going into Chinese waters to undertake such a mission. And that’s
Seawolf
. She’s fast, she’s quiet, and she could make a getaway if she was detected…just as long as the water’s not too shallow. She could, if necessary, also obliterate any enemy, but I know we don’t wanna do that.

“I promised you before Christmas that I’d put this thing into action just as soon as
Seawolf
came out of overhaul and finished her trials. But since then we have another real problem—you know, it turned out the Chinese got ahold of the new sub detection technology from the Lawrence Livermore lab. That little prick Yung Lee, or whatever his fucking name was, stole it.

“According to the Livermore guys, it was just about the last word in that kind of technology—low-angle polarimetric and interferometric satellite radars to pick up very small pattern changes in the ocean’s surface. The system works straight through clouds and will pick up the subtlest changes caused by a submarine’s propeller. The Livermore guys say it will even identify the type of propeller.”

“Shit. Did we throw that little Hung Ling guy in the slammer?”

“I think so…but anyway, I’m real reluctant to send the best submarine in the U.S. Navy deep inside Chinese territorial waters, because now I know they might find it, and then wipe it out, with all hands. Jesus, any submarine’s nearly powerless if it gets detected in shallow waters with enemy surface warships in the area. And you can believe me, if the goddamned Chinks caught our top submarine prowling around their trial areas deep in the northern part of the Yellow Sea, shit, they’d become enemy real fast.”

“Joe, I know the risks. Where’s
Seawolf
right now?”

“She’s at Pearl. On forty-eight hours’ notice to head west, for the Yellow Sea…and I sure hate to send ’em.”

“Joe, so do I. But they gotta go.”

1200. Saturday, June 17
.
Office of the CNO. The Pentagon
.

Admiral Mulligan was on the phone to an old friend, Sam Langer, the recently retired chief nuclear systems engineer at General Dynamics, the corporation that had built
Seawolf
and carried out her major overhaul at the Electric Boat Yards in Groton, Connecticut.

“Sam, just a small point—you remember we talked about a little device to be fitted onto
Seawolf
’s emergency coolant system, about a year ago?”

“Sure I do, Joe—small adjustment to the isolating valve on the ‘cold leg’?”

“Yup, that’s the one. I remember we talked about it, just couldn’t remember whether you did it.”

“Well, it was supposed to be, er, nonpublic, wasn’t it?”

“Correct. That’s why it doesn’t figure in the plans and billing. Anyway, did you do it?”

“Yup, sure did.”

“Remind me.”

“It was nothing, really. Just a small adjustment to that valve. In the event of an electrical failure or a reactor scram, that valve will just drift open—and I guess that will deactivate the emergency cooling system. But it will give no indication of having done so.”

“Would it kick in automatically? If, say, we had an unforeseen reactor scram or something?”

“Christ, no, Joe. The captain and his nuclear engineer would have to set it correctly. I believe the whole idea was in case the submarine should fall into enemy hands?”

“Yes, it was, Sam. Yes it was. Did you tell anyone about it?”

“Well, the guys who fitted it knew. Although they didn’t know what it was for. And I took the captain over it very carefully, just a few months ago. When he came down to see the ship. Judd Crocker, right? He and his engineer, tall blond guy, Schulz, I think his name was.”

“So Captain Crocker is thoroughly aware of it?”

“More than aware, sir. He spent about an hour in there looking at the emergency cooling system. By the time he left, he knew more about it than I did.”

“Hey, Sam, thanks a lot. Come on down and have a drink next time I’m in New London.”

Admiral Mulligan picked up his secure line and dialed Kathy O’Brien’s number in Maryland. The admiral himself answered the way he always answered: “MORGAN, SPEAK.”

“Christ, Arnie, it’d be great if I’d been Kathy’s mother or someone. You call your daughter and some gorilla says, ‘MORGAN, SPEAK.’”

“Heh, heh, heh. Hiya, Joe. I’m happy to say that Kathy’s mother, like the President, has come to terms with most of my little ways. What’s hot?”

“
Seawolf
’s reactor, since you mention it.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“I just wanted to let you know…remember that conversation we had around a year ago, about fitting some device on the big nuclear boats that would cause them to self-destruct? I just wanted to let you know, there’s one on
Seawolf
.”

“That’s the trip on the isolating valve in the emergency system?”

“That’s it. Captain Crocker knows all about it…and you remember it won’t kill the ship by itself, should it fall into enemy hands. But it would enable us to damage the ship, knowing it would self-destruct completely as soon as the reactor went down.”

“It’s a kinda gloomy subject, Joe. But it’s important to know, and I’m grateful. I just hope to hell we never have to use it. By the way, how many of those goddamned
political nuclear committees did you have to go through to get it done?”