Nimitz Class

like rat in a trap. Oh fuck, Ben. Yankee bastards — they kill us, no one never know. Oh fuck.”

“Georgy, shut up! Let me remind you we have as much right to be in these waters as they have. They will do nothing to usunless they are sure we are going to do something to them. Anyway, I could pass for an Indian officer. I can speak passable Urdu, but my Anglo-Indian is certainly sufficient to confuse an American commander.

“They have no right to search this ship, and we have committed no offense against anyone. So kindly refrain from panic.”

“You are a hard man, Ben. But you forget. Americans can do anything. They trigger-happy cowboys. They call everyone to find out about us. We never get out of jail. Like that French bastard Napoleon.”

071600JUL02. 21N, 64E.

Ops Room. Thomas Jefferson.

“Yeah, I heard the Sea Hawks are back, found nothing. Which at least means there’s not some spooky nuclear boat following us around.”

“Probably means there’s nothing following us around. They got nothing on the barrier. Hardly surprising in this god-awful weather. Bet it was just a big fish. If there was an SSN snooping around we’d hear him. We’d hear him for sure.”

“We would if he was nuclear. But I don’t think Captain Baldridge is very happy. He’s been down here in the ops room three times in the past two hours, asking questions.”

072300JUL02. 20N, 64E.

Course 340. Speed 3.

Back and forth on a four-mile patrol line. “We just wait here, Georgy, and stay silent. No need to go anywhere near the sonobuoys they dropped. I think the big ship will come back to us in the next day or two.

“Right now we have time to get a good charge in. We’re just about in the middle and I doubt they’ll be looking for us here. Then we’ll be okay for two or three days, smack in the right place at roughly the right time. Crew happy? What did you tell them?”

“Just what we agreed, Ben. They still think we are on special exercise, making covert test of new nuclear weapon. I tell them Indians get the blame for breaking test ban treaty. Once it gone, maybe trouble from crew. But too late then, and they not know what happen. Even Andre, he not know, but I tell officers quick, right after. They control crew. Maybe worry for first minutes, but okay I think. No choice for them anyway.”

081758JUL02. 21N, 62E.

Course 220. Speed 10.

The Thomas Jefferson.

Weather foul. Very strong monsoon gusts. On the Admiral’s Bridge, Zack Carson and Jack Baldridge were peering through the teeming bridge windows, and all they could observe was a couple of miles of murky, rainswept sea. All fixed-wing flying had been canceled for the night.

“Strange weather, Admiral. You’d kinda expect a chill when it’s so gray and wet. When it looks like this in Kansas, it’s usually as cold as a well-digger’s ass.”

“This is the southwest monsoon, Jack. It’s a warm wind blowing right across the equator, and it brings with it all the goddamned rain India is gonna get this year, from now till about next spring. Mustn’t that be a bitch if you happen to be a farmer?”

They stood in silence for a while, and the carrier was curiously quiet, with the flight deck almost deserted. Only the occasional squall slashing against the island of the carrier disturbed the peace, as the giant ship pitched heavily through the long swells, 130 feet below the two officers. They were heading back upwind, across the carrier’s 120,000-square-mile patrol zone.

If he squinted his eyes, Zack could just make-believe he was looking at a great field of Greeley County wheat in the gray half-light of a rainy summer evening. He’d hardly ever been in hilly country in all of his life. His landscapes were strictly flat, the High Plains and the High Seas. He thought about his dad, old Jethro Carson, still going strong at eighty years of age, ten years widowed now, but still the master of those hundreds and hundreds of acres. And Zack resolved to take the entire family out to visit in the fall, when the warm, sweeping grasslands of his youth were, to him, so unbearably beautiful.

“You don’t think there really is anything out there snooping on us, do ya, Jack?”

“No, Admiral, I really don’t. But when you get a contact, you gotta run the checks. It’s not my job to take anything at all for granted. Especially with those sneaky pricks. But I do believe if some goddamned foreigner was sniffing around our zone, we’da got him by now.”

“I guess so, Jack. But those Russian diesels were just about silent under five knots.”

“Yeah, but they weren’t that good. And even in this weather we’d be sure to hear them snorkeling.”

081800JUL02. 20N, 64E.

Course 155. Speed 3.

“She’s out there, Georgy, off our port bow, coming back from the northeast.”

“I guess three to four hours. You sure about this, Ben?”

“I am sure, my nation is sure, and my God is sure. I expect your bank manager would also be sure.”

“I want distance five thousand meters — not closer. This thing very stupid, very big. Work on time only. Run four minutes. We might get a more accurate distance visually. But we might not.”

“Check all systems, Georgy. For the last time. We’ve come a long way for this. I just wish we could have done it four days ago. More poetic somehow.”

082103JUL02.

On board the nine-thousand-ton Ticonderoga Class guided-missile cruiser Port Royal, operating close in to the carrier, Chief Petty Officer Sam Howlett decided to take a breather. As he stepped out onto the portside deck the murky sky suddenly lit up. A deafening blast followed seconds later. As Howlett instinctively grabbed for the rails, a thunderous rush of air took him by surprise, flinging him sideways and downward, his skull fracturing as he hit the deck. Before losing consciousness, Howlett looked up to see the towering SQ28 Combat Data Systems mast rip clean out of its moorings and crash onto the deck. The great warship heeled to starboard and the giant mast rolled with it, crushing a young officer on the upper deck outside the bridge.

Astern, on the flight deck, the blast flung the LAMPS helicopter off its moorings onto the missile deck, killing two flight deck crew. Its ruptured rotor, spinning in the rush of air, snapped in two, decapitating a twenty-three- year-old aircraft mechanic. Two other men were blasted one hundred yards out into the sea.

Below, the force of the smaller for’ard radar mast slamming into the port edge of the deck split it in two. As it caved in, the deck crashed into a fire main, rupturing it. The split fire main crashed down into a companionway, trapping two sailors while it pumped out hundreds of gallons of compressed seawater, drowning them both. A twenty-year veteran Petty Officer, with blood streaming down his face and three broken ribs, wept with rage and frustration as he tried unsuccessfully to free them.

Up on the bridge there was carnage. The top of the main mast had broken off completely, and it plummeted down, smashing through the roof of the bridge and killing the Executive Officer, Commander Ted Farrer. Every portside window shattered in the blast, one of them practically severing the right arm of the young navigator, Lieutenant Rich Pitman. The face of the Watch Officer was a mask of blood. Young Ensign Ray Cooper, just married, lay dead in the corner. The cries and whispers of the terribly wounded sailors would haunt Captain John Schmeikel for the rest of his life.

The suddenness of the disaster from nowhere temporarily paralyzed the Port Royal. No one knew whether they were under attack or not. Captain Schmeikel ordered the ship to battle stations. All working guns and missile operators sought vainly for the unseen enemy, a task rendered impossible with no radar, no communications, no contact with any other surface ship in the Battle Group.

082103JUL02.

On board the eight-thousand-ton Spruance Class destroyer O’Bannon, also working close in to the carrier, no one had time to move. The blast of air roared through the ship, heeling her over almost to