Tipping Point: The War With China - the First Salvo (Dan Lenson Novels) (22 page)

“I couldn’t tell much … I was sort of in shock … and he was behind me, feeling me up, and we were behind the darken ship curtains, with the door closed. The lights were off.”

He was turning to go, but halted. “Wait a minute … the door was closed, but the lights were off?”

“Yessir.”

Staurulakis was frowning too. “But when the doors giving onto the main deck open, the lights automatically go off. And on again, when they close. You’re sure the vestibule light was off?”

“Check and see if the switch was broken, or maybe fucked with,” Dan said, then immediately regretted the last phrase. “I mean, interfered with. If so, this wasn’t spur-of-the-moment. It was planned.”

Staurulakis said she’d check it out with the compartment petty officer. Dan hesitated, was contemplating where this could go, when she said, “Shouldn’t we add some … horsepower to this, Captain? To, you know, help the chief master-at-arms with the investigation?”

“Um, I guess so,” he said reluctantly. Remembering ex-USS
Gaddis,
the mutilations and murders that had followed her from port to port. And how fruitless his own investigations had been, and why. “What d’you suggest?”

“A joint investigation. Chief Toan and a female officer. Somebody sharp. With an inquiring mind. Say … Lieutenant Singhe.”

“Amy,” Dan said slowly. True, she was one of the keenest minds aboard. On the minus side, she’d already estranged the senior enlisted, and something like this could get messy fast. “Okay, but warn her not to play bull in the china shop … throw around blanket accusations, accuse people of sexism, et cetera. This is an assault investigation, not a chance to work an agenda. Or write her next article.”

Staurulakis nodded, and Dan patted Terranova’s shoulder. “We’ll get this asshole, Terror. Like the XO says, you did the right thing, reporting it. But just for the present … try to stay with your friends, or in your work spaces. No more hanging out alone.”

The exec’s expression made him feel as if he’d just said something wrong. He was about to try again when Staurulakis’s Hydra beeped.
“XO, OOD. Know where the captain is? I buzzed his at-sea cabin and tried his Hydra, but no joy.”

“He’s here with me.”

A hesitation.”Discussing ship’s business,” Staurulakis added in an icy tone.

“Yes ma’am. Commander, just tell him we have USS
Pittsburgh,
reporting in VHF voice.”

The exec double-clicked.
“
Did you get that, Captain?”

He nodded. Youngblood was early; the sub wasn’t supposed to join up until tomorrow. And the day after, they’d start the exercise, though he’d barely glanced at the op order.

But that wasn’t his major problem. Not now. As of today, he had a molester in the crew, one not afraid to use a knife. And every male was a suspect.

Just fucking great. He only hoped they could find him before Singhe split the crew down the middle.

He climbed heavily back to his sea cabin, undressed again, coughing, limbs feeling like waterlogged wood and his eyelids lead-loaded. He rolled into his bunk. Then stared at the overhead, his anxiety program rebooting. He rolled over, snapping it off. Remember the albatross. The castaways they’d rescued. Both seemed like good omens. Maybe they’d find the molester. Lock him down, get him off the ship. It could happen.

The creak and sway of a seaway, the muffled voices, the hiss of radios, faded. And gradually, imperceptibly, he became one once more with the blackness that surrounded them all.

III

IO

10

On the Hash Highway

SEVERAL
days later, and five hundred miles farther out. Monsoon season still, with sealed-off skies and growing seas.
Pittsburgh
was in company, making three units under his tactical command. His empire would be short-lived, though.
Carl Vinson
was on its way, to join up en route to the Malabar exercise area. U.S. participants would be
Savo, Mitscher, Pittsburgh, Vinson,
an oiler,
Tippecanoe,
plus antisubmarine aircraft out of Djibouti and Jamnagar. Mills and Staurulakis had put together an exercise package to get them spun up, and sonar runs with the sub would feel out the hydrography of the western Indian Ocean.

He was catching up on traffic in his in-port cabin. A long analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agency said that India was abandoning its traditional defensive orientation. It had just concluded a major exercise, Divine Weapon, testing its ability to mobilize forces if another flare-up occurred over Kashmir. The plan was to rapidly destroy Pakistan’s military potential, without a lengthy period of preparation or warning.

It sounded eerily like the Schlieffen Plan Tuchman was describing in
The Guns of August.
Rigid, aggressive, depending on speed and shock to occupy territory and destroy an adversary. But Pakistani counterexercises in Sialkot, Cholistan, and Sindh had mustered heavy tanks and drilled self-protection procedures after use of a tactical nuclear weapon.

He scratched his chin, staring into space as
Savo
rolled and something in his closet went
clunk. Clunk … clunk.

For half a century, the U.S. Navy had served as a balancer between Pakistan and India, to be thrown into the scales one way or the other to preserve peace. But the subcontinent’s economic growth, plus the drawdown in the fleet, meant it mattered less and less.

At some point, the U.S. would finally have to choose. One ally or the other. And the spurned partner would automatically become an enemy.

In international news, Premier Zhang had warned “outside powers” against interfering in the South China Sea dispute with the Philippines. As Blair had said, the financial markets were getting nervous as the Chinese continued to liquidate and transfer their U.S. debt holdings. The dollar had dropped against the renminbi, and the stock market was tanking.

His J-phone beeped. It was Cheryl. “We’re ready for you, Captain.”

He coughed hard and long into his fist, until he had to pant for air. “Be … be right down.”

*   *   *

IN
the passageway outside the mess decks, he flicked lint off his coveralls and made sure he had his BlackBerry. Coughed again, cleared a thick throat. Checked his Hydra. Fully charged.

When he pushed the door open Chief Toan cried, “Attention on deck!” and the ranks of men and women surged to their feet. The food service attendants had cleared, but a tang of disinfectant lingered. He waved them down, muttered, “At ease,” and took a seat in the front row with the department heads. One of the messmen brought a paper cup of bug juice; he nodded thanks and sipped at it, though he didn’t really care for the pink flavor.

Matt Mills started. The first slide was the western Indian Ocean. An enormous blue triangle, with the Pakistani and Indian coasts at the top, Saudi Arabia to the west, India to the east. Five thousand miles of empty sea rolled to the southward, reaching down to the Antarctic.

The ops officer began with the weather. “The Southwest Monsoon sets in towards the end of May, shortly after it establishes over the western Arabian Sea. Conditions persist through June, July, and August. South-southwest winds. Typically ten to sixteen knots to about 52 degrees east, becoming 22 to 27 knots in the area of 52–54E. As the exercise moves east, around midocean, we can expect increased wave and swell heights, the farther toward India we operate.”

Dan sat back, massaging his neck, half listening—he knew this already from the pre-exercise messages and the briefing book Cheryl had put together—while he stared at Amy Singh’s erect head. She’d braided her hair. His gaze trailed down the smooth long neck, to firm shoulders … he jerked his eyes away.

As he’d expected, and half dreaded, Singhe had taken hold of the Terranova investigation with a death grip. She’d interviewed every woman who’d been on the steel beach that day, along with the compartment petty officer for the access trunk, the electrical officer, even the laundry personnel. (They’d complained to the supply officer about being asked to log semen stains on coveralls.) She’d reinterviewed Terranova, trying again to come up with anything that could lead them to the groper.

But all, so far, without success. He shifted uncomfortably. They had to file a follow-up report today. If they made no progress, there’d be an NCIS investigation the next time they made port.

But the guy was still out there. Sex crimes had a way of escalating, as the perpetrator sought to re-create whatever twisted kick he got from humiliating and frightening his first victim. Next time, he might not be satisfied with holding someone at knifepoint and ejaculating on her.

The deck rolled. The steel around them creaked. The crew shifted and coughed. Mills was explaining the scenario. “Exercise Malabar 10 grows from exercise 9, which explored responses to extremist threats to shipping during the assembly of a multinational convoy. Building on that, this year’s exercise will validate procedures and tactics in assembling a mixed-nationality naval force in response to a major Pacific crisis, and moving it through a narrow strait against surface, air, and subsurface opposition from Orange forces.”

Dan stopped his leg from bouncing. It was obvious who Orange was meant to be. He was reminded of the bastion-penetrating exercises NATO had done in the eighties, testing ways to get through Soviet defenses. But Malabar 10 would be conducted while real-world tensions to the north, as per the DIA message, were escalating by the day.

“Also, we may have an audience,” Mills droned on. “A three-ship Chinese task force is heading our way. The overt justification is to provide security for their merchants in the Gulf, like that tanker that went through at the end of our freedom-of-navigation, uh, exercise.” The next three slides showed the three modern, high-tech surface combatants.

Dan lifted a hand. “Address the Iranian involvement, Matt.”

“Yessir.
Savos’
been the subject of hostile comment on Fars, the Iranian news agency. They say the castaways we picked up are escaped murderers. They demand them back for execution.”

That was interesting. Given that the trio claimed to be fleeing religious persecution, CentCom and ComFifth would not have given out which ship had picked them up. Dan half turned, scanning the faces behind him. Usually they’d have offloaded any refugees stat, but given the time frame and the upcoming exercise, it hadn’t happened yet. Hermelinda had them scrubbing out pots in the scullery for now. The refugees had asked to be taken into the crew, but certain of the chiefs had balked, saying they might be spies. One dude in particular, Behnam Shah, had seemed more inquisitive than his sea daddy had felt comfortable with.

Mills said, “So this reignites the Hormuz transit issue. They’ve personally dared us to try it again, and threatened that if we do, they will destroy USS
Savo Island
with a, quote, new weapon, unquote.”

“We’re not turning them over, of course,” Staurulakis said calmly. “These threats are probably just the usual bluster. But we’ll have to keep an eye over one shoulder while we’re operating in the IO.”

Mills sat down, and the ASW officer, Winston Farmer—a colorless guy, old for his rank, who looked a likely candidate for early baldness—took over.

Modern ASW wasn’t like the World War II movies. Active sonar, pinging, gave away your own location, and only worked at short ranges. Machinery noise from a submarine propagated by three pathways: direct path, convergence zones, and deep channels. “Direct path” meant straight from the source to the receiving hydrophone. But over long ranges, sound curved up toward the surface.

So that after about thirty miles, the sounds hit the surface and bounced down again. If you had good equipment, a trained team, and proper positioning, you could hear your quarry thirty, sixty, ninety miles away. The “deep channel” could extend the range even more. But Chinese nukes were getting quieter, and their latest conventional boats were often less noisy than the sea around them.

Farmer said, “So our major job in this exercise will involve keeping Orange subs clear of the transit lanes through which the convoy will move. The IO’s new territory for us. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing how well we can pick up
Pittsburgh
today.”

Dan nodded; the sub would be running slowly in on the ships at varying angles and depths, letting them calibrate sensors and estimate detection ranges. He sipped bug juice and massaged his neck. If he could break away and lie down, that would be great. He hadn’t slept well since Hormuz …

He suddenly realized everyone was looking at him. “Excuse me?”

“Sir, I asked if you had anything to add.”

“No, Winston, nothing. Just keep careful notes for the hot washup.” He coughed into his sleeve. “Okay, let’s get to the transit phase. XO?”

Staurulakis stood, and a laser pointer pulsed red. “This slide shows the entry point for the transit of ‘Yellow Road’ to the destination port in the country ‘Oz.’ As you can see, given constructive depths along the route, there’ll be numerous opportunities for Orange force interdiction…”

“Sir.”

Dan flinched at a nudge. The duty radioman, holding the aluminum clipboard with the red and white stripes that meant top secret. Staurulakis fell silent. Dan rose. “Uh, go ahead, Exec. I’ll take this offline.”

He read the message leaning against a stanchion by the juice bar. It was from Fifth Fleet. CentCom Intel reported that M/V
Patchooli,
Pakistani-flagged, was reported to be carrying a hidden cargo of drugs from Karachi to Europe. The same ship had been boarded the year previously by an Australian destroyer on antidrug patrol, but nothing had been found. Since the
Savo
task group was operating in the smuggler’s transit area, Dan was directed to board and search, if it didn’t interfere with ongoing operations.

He checked the coordinates, course, and speed. Then plucked the J-phone off the bulkhead for a conversation with CIC.

*   *   *