Sea of Shadows

Jeff Edwards Sea of Shadows

“A timeless warrior epic. Jeff Edwards spins a stunning and irresistibly-believable tale of savage modern naval combat.”

— JOE BUFF, Bestselling author of ‘SEAS OF CRISIS,’ and ‘CRUSH DEPTH’

“Unfamiliar and exciting territory — a magnificent yarn!”

— GREG BEAR, New York Times bestselling author of ‘MARIPOSA,’ and ‘DARWIN’S RADIO’

“… as close as you can get to naval surface combat without being shot at.

Jeff Edwards has penned a fast, no-holds-barred thriller that never lets up.

Highly recommended.”

— JACK DuBRUL, Bestselling author of ‘ THE SILENT SEA,’ and ‘HAVOC’

“A nerve-wracking battle of ruse, counter-ruse, and explosive ambush …

Edwards keeps the pacing brisk and the action taut … an engrossing tale of cutting-edge naval warfare.”

— KIRKUS DISCOVERIES

“Here is a writer at the top of his game. The result is a brilliant techno-thriller, the kind a young Clancy would be proud to call his own.”

— HOMER HICKAM, Bestselling author of ‘OCTOBER SKY,’ and ‘THE FAR REACHES’

“Edwards wields politics and naval combat tactics with a skill equal to the acknowledged masters of military fiction.”

— THE MILITARY PRESS

“The best naval action novel I have ever read.”

— W. H. MCDONALD, President of the Military Writers Society of America

“Smart and involving, with an action through-line that shoots ahead …

fast and lethal. I read it in one sitting.”

— PAUL L. SANDBERG, Producer of ‘THE BOURNE SUPREMACY,’ and ‘THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM’

To Josh

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the following people for their assistance in bringing this book to life:

Bill Keppler of the State Department Office of Protocol; Michael A. Petrillo, Arabic linguist and Middle Eastern cultural specialist; Cathy Monaghan of the British Embassy in Washington, DC; the staff of the Los Angeles office of the British Consulate-General; the Chinese Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego; TM1(SW) Gary D. Johnson; TM1(SW) Charles Copes; Peter H. Zindler, marine engineer; and several others, some of whom asked not to be named, and others whose names have slipped my leaky brain. The information I received from these fine people was superb. Any errors that have crept into this work are mine, not theirs.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to Master Modeler Richard Melillo of The Modeler’s Art (TheModelersArt.com) for building me an extraordinary model of the DMA-37 torpedo, and to Maria Edwards for her continual support, her excellent research, and for jealously guarding my writing time so that I could stop talking about this book and actually write it.

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my editor and close friend, Don Gerrard, for believing when I had forgotten to, and for making me go back and do the hard parts until they were right.

Missiles are fast. They’re dangerous. They’re sexy. So when we think about warfare at sea, it’s natural that missiles are the first things we think about. But we can shoot down missiles. We can decoy them with chaff — jam them — hide from them with infrared suppression systems and minimized radar cross-sections.

Our Kingfisher sonars can detect mines, and we can destroy them or maneuver to avoid them.

Our ships are hardened against chemical and biological weapons.

But how do you stop a torpedo? Thirty years of R-and-D, and we still don’t have a viable system for intercepting torpedoes. We can’t shoot them down; we can’t jam them; we can’t hide from them. And, even third- world torpedoes can do upward of fifty knots, so we sure as hell can’t outrun them.

We do have decoy systems that have shown some effectiveness, and a couple of tricky torpedo evasion maneuvers that work pretty well. But, they depend on split-second timing and perfect execution. Activate your decoys ten seconds too soon (or five seconds too late) and an enemy torpedo will eat your lunch. Hold an evasion turn a little too long, or not long enough, and it’s game over.

We build the toughest warships on the planet, but the best engineers in the business agree that nearly every class of torpedo currently being deployed has the capacity to sink one of our ships with a single shot. To make matters worse, none of our potential adversaries believe in shooting torpedoes one-at-a-time. Typically, they shoot salvos of two or three.

It’s inevitable. One day soon, maybe next year — hell, maybe next week, maybe an hour from now — one of our ships is going to end up on the wrong end of a spread of hostile torpedoes. And, when that happens, we’re going to discover that we are the poor bastards who brought a knife to a gunfight.

— Excerpted from the Chief of Naval Operations’ comments to the graduating class at Annapolis.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

Man marks the earth with ruin-his control

Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain

A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,