PROLOGUE
The four-car motorcade scarcely slowed as it turned into the West Executive Avenue entrance to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Guards waved the cars through, and the four Secret Service agents in the lead automobile nodded curtly. Behind followed two Pentagon staff limousines. A carload of Secret Service agents brought up the rear.
At the entrance to the West Wing, four more of the thirty-five White House duty agents were waiting. As the men from the Pentagon stepped from the cars, each was issued a personal identification badge, except for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs himself, Admiral Scott F. Dunsmore, who has a permanent pass. From the same limousine stepped the towering figure of Admiral Joseph Mulligan, the former commanding officer of a Trident nuclear submarine, who now occupied the chair of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), the professional head of the US Navy. He was followed by Vice Admiral Arnold Morgan, the brilliant, irascible Director of the super-secret National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland.
The second staff car contained the two senior submarine Flag Officers in the US Navy — Vice Admiral John F. Dixon, Commander Submarines Atlantic Fleet, and Rear Admiral Johnny Barry, Commander Submarines Pacific Fleet. Both men had been summoned to Washington in the small hours of that morning. It was now 1630, and there was a semblance of cool in the late afternoon air.
It was unusual to see five such senior military officers, fully uniformed, at the White House at one time. The Chairman, flanked on either side by senior commanders, exuded authority. In many countries the gathering might have given the appearance of an impending military coup. Here, in the home of the President of the United States, their presence merely caused much subservient nodding of heads from the Secret Service agents.
Although the President carries the title of Commander in Chief, these were the men who operated the front line muscle of United States military power: the great Carrier Battle Groups, which patrol the world’s oceans with their air strike forces and nuclear submarine strike forces.
These men also had much to do with the operation of the Presidency. The Navy itself runs Camp David and is entrusted with the life of the President, controlling directly the private, bullet-proof presidential suite at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, in the event of an emergency. The Eighty-ninth Airlift Wing, under the control of Air Mobility Command, runs the private presidential aircraft, the Boeing 747
When the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs arrives, accompanied by his senior Commanders, they are not mere visitors. These are the most trusted men in the United States, men whose standing and authority will survive political upheaval, even a change of president. They are men who are not intimidated by civilian power.
On this sunlit late summer afternoon, the forty-third US President stood before the motionless flags of the Navy, the Marines, and the Air Force to greet them with due deference as they entered the Oval Office. He smiled and addressed each of them by first name, including the Pacific submarine commander whom he had not met. To him he extended his right hand and said warmly, “Johnny, I’ve heard a great deal about you. Delighted to meet you at last.”
The men took their seats in five wooden captain’s chairs arrayed before the great desk of America’s Chief Executive.
“Mr. President,” Admiral Dunsmore said as he sat down, “we got a problem.”
“I guessed as much, Scott. Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s an issue we’ve touched on before, but never with any degree of urgency, because basically we thought it wouldn’t happen. But right now it’s happening.”
“Continue.”
“The ten Russian Kilo Class submarines ordered by China.”
“Two of which have been delivered in five years, right?”
“Yessir. We now think the rest will be delivered in the next nine months. Eight of them, all of which are well on their way to completion in various Russian shipyards.”
“Can we live with just the two already in place?”
“Yessir. Just. They are unlikely to have more than one operational at a time. But no more. If they take delivery of the final eight they will be capable of blockading the Taiwan Strait with a fleet of three or even five Kilos on permanent operational duty. That would shut everyone out, including us. They could retake and occupy Taiwan in a matter of months.”
“Jesus.”
“If those Kilos are there,” said Admiral Mulligan, “we wouldn’t dare send a carrier in. They’d be waiting. They could actually hit us, then plead we were invading Chinese waters with a Battle Group, that we had no right to be in there.”
“Hmmm. Do we have a solution?”
“Yessir. The Chinese must not be allowed to take delivery of the final eight Kilos.”
“We persuade the Russians not to fulfill the order?”
“Nossir,” said Admiral Morgan. “That is unlikely to work. We’ve been trying. It’s like trying to persuade a goddamned drug addict he doesn’t need a fix.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We use other methods of persuasion, sir. Until they abandon the idea of Russian submarines.”
“You mean…”
“Yessir.”
“That will cause an international uproar.”
“It would, sir,” replied Admiral Morgan. “If anyone knew who had done what, to whom. But they’re not going to know.”
“Will I know?”
“Not necessarily. We probably would not bother you about the mysterious disappearance of a few foreign diesel-electric submarines.”
“Gentlemen, I believe this is what you describe as a Black Operation?”
“Yessir. Nonattributable,” replied the CNO.
“Do you require my official permission?”
“We need you to be with us, sir,” said Admiral Dunsmore. “If you were to forbid such a course of action, we would of course respect that. If you approve, we will in time require something official, however. Right before we move.”
“Gentlemen, I trust your judgment. Please proceed as you think fit. Scott, keep me posted.”
And with that, the President terminated the conversation. He rose and shook hands with each of his five senior commanders. And he watched them walk from the Oval Office, feeling himself, as ever, not quite an equal in the presence of such men. And he pondered again the terrible responsibilities that were visited upon him in this place.
1
Captain Tug Mottram could almost feel the barometric pressure rising. The wind had roared for two days out of the northwest at around forty knots and was now suddenly increasing to fifty knots and more as it backed. The first snow flurries were already being blown across the heaving, rearing lead-colored sea, and every forty seconds gigantic ocean swells a half-mile across surged up behind. The wind and the mountainous, confused sea had moved from user-friendly to lethal in under fifteen minutes, as it often does in the fickle atmospherics of the Southern Ocean — particularly along the howling outer corridor of the Roaring Forties where
Tug Mottram had ordered the ship battened down two days ago. All watertight doors were closed and
