Kilo Class

Laura reacted to him as everyone who met him socially for the first time did. She and the President were soon talking about the long yacht journey she had just taken, and what fun it had been.

“You know,” he said, “I would love to do something like that. Just set off with a few good friends and vanish from civilization for a month. No phones, no faxes, no staff, no harassment, and no bullshit. Wouldn’t that be great? But it’s not going to happen anytime in the near future. I have to get back to work. Bill, Laura…I wish I could stay longer, but…I’m coming to the wedding, May twentieth, right? Tell your dad…I hope to see him, Laura.”

With that, he gulped his water and was gone. “Wow,” said Laura, shaking her head. “What a man. I adore Americans.”

Thirty minutes later, mid-roast beef, the telephone rang in the corner. “Hey, hey, hey,” said Arnold Morgan. “This could be George.”

He was right. Fort Meade on the line. “Hold it. George, let me just get a pen and a pad.”

The conversation was all of fifteen minutes long. Bill and Laura could only hear snatches. “What about the Soviets?…China?…No, that about wraps up the big players.”

When the call ended Admiral Morgan returned to the table looking serious. “They did a fast thorough job,” he said. “Checked out all of the computerized lists and all the latest overhead pictures, and drew some very sound conclusions. Mainly that every submarine in the United States, Russian, and Chinese Navies are accounted for. So is every one in the Middle East. All the small European fleets are solid, no one’s missing.

“Except for three boats. The Brits are missing a Trafalgar Class nuclear boat, Triumph, but we are nearly certain it’s patrolling off the Falkland Islands. They’re just not telling us for the moment, so it’s probably doing something it should not be doing. We can confirm if we have to, but the Royal Navy often has a submarine down there since the Falklands War, so we’re not surprised or suspicious.

“The French have a twelve-thousand-five-hundred-ton strategic missile submarine missing. She’s called Le Triomphant, number S616, based at Brest. Last detected in the Bay of Biscay, but not seen for ten days prior to February ninth. She’ll still be on the French deterrent patrol in the Bay somewhere. But from there to Kerguelen is around twelve thousand miles — even running at thirty knots, dived all the way from Biscay, there’s no way she could have gotten there in ten days or even twelve, or fourteen. I dismiss both of them.”

“And the third?” asked Bill.

“Almost too bizarre to think about. But we are showing a missing submarine from the Taiwan Navy. A small Hai-Lung Class diesel-electric. She’s called Hai-Hu.”

“As in Silver,” said Bill, deadpan.

Admiral Morgan chuckled. “No. As in Sea Tiger. Hai Lung means Sea Dragon. Anyway, this Dutch-built boat, eighteen years old, has been missing for a month and a half. She’s got a range of ten thousand miles and could conceivably have got down there. Kerguelen’s seven thousand miles from Taiwan. I can’t imagine what she was doing down there, if it was the Hai Lung you and Boomer saw.”

“Even if it was,” said Bill, “what’s it gotta do with us?”

“Plenty,” said Arnold Morgan. “If someone’s sneaking around the world’s oceans in a goddamned submarine I don’t know about, then that someone is up to something devious; and when it’s devious, I don’t like it. And when I don’t like something on behalf of this government, then someone’s gonna need to come up with a few answers. Or I might get downright awkward, instead of just curious.”

“How do you feel now, Admiral?” asked Laura.

“I’m curious. And I want to know where the Taiwan submarine is. I wanna know exactly when it returns home. I don’t expect to be told where it’s been, but I’ll be watching them all very carefully.”

Lunch ended at 1500, and Bill and Laura were driven to the airport for their flight home to Kansas. Bill’s brother Ray would meet them.

At the White House, Arnold Morgan was talking to the CIA, trying to determine the comings and goings of Taiwan’s two Hai Lung Class Dutch-built submarines. Their numbers, 793 and 794, were painted high up on the side of the sail. They were easy to identify. The officer on the Far Eastern desk promised to get someone on the case within the hour.

It was five weeks before any serious intelligence emerged. Around the second week in April a few facts started to fall into place. There did appear to be a pattern to the ships’ movements — a somewhat mysterious pattern.

Only one of the Hai Lungs left its base at a time. And when one left it did not return for eleven weeks. Each time one returned, there was a ten-day period when both the submarines were moored alongside each other, and then one would leave, again for eleven weeks. There was no evidence as to where the submarines went. But they always dived thirty miles outside the harbor and were not seen again until they reappeared off the base.

Arnold Morgan pondered. “Sounds like five weeks out, five weeks back, one on station. That little Hai Lung couldn’t make more than eight or nine knots on a long journey, two hundred to two hundred and twenty miles a day, which means it could cover seven thousand to seven thousand five hundred in five weeks. No doubt, the Hai Hu could have been the submarine they saw off Kerguelen. But was it? That diesel could have traveled anywhere in five weeks.” Morgan walked over to his computer and pulled up his world mapping program. He measured seven thousand miles and described a large arc that covered the area in which the submarine could have traveled.

The Hai Lung could have traveled almost anywhere from the Bering Strait to the Cape of Good Hope — by way of the coasts of Mozambique, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, or just about any of the islands in the South Pacific. “It could have gone to the Antarctic,” growled Morgan. “My gut tells me it went to Kerguelen. That’s where my boys saw it.”

Admiral Morgan put in a call to the Baldridge ranch. “Mr. Bill and Miss Laura are both out riding now,” he was told by the maid who answered the phone. “We lost some cattle in a storm out in the western end of the ranch last night. They both rode out of here right after lunch…and I guess they’ll be back all depending on whether they find ’em real quick or not.”

“Okay,” the Admiral said. “Please leave word that I called. I’ll try again this evening.”

They finally connected at 2100. It had been a day of searches for both cattle and submarines, and Arnold Morgan still had no confirmed fix on the destination of the Taiwanese submarines. He recounted to Bill the pattern that had emerged. “I know you’ve been there and I haven’t, Bill,” he concluded. “But you think there’s something going on down there, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure what’s going on, if anything. But I do know for sure we have two major mysteries — one missing research vessel, which may have come under attack, and one prowling submarine from Taiwan. They may be connected.”

“Two outlandish happenings in precisely the same spot are likely to be connected,” agreed the Admiral. “I’d send a boat down there if I had even a remote idea what we were looking for. But I haven’t, and I can’t really make out a very good case for taking any action.

“I think I’m going to thicken up our surveillance in Taiwan — something’s afoot, and we’re in the dark. And I need light. Lasers, preferably.”

6

0300. April 21, Fort Meade

Admiral George Morris was not normally light on his feet. He was a big, heavy man with a superior brain, and a slow ponderous way of moving. A widower, he slept flat on his back, snoring like the old Chicago Superchief running late. He slumbered only just above the level of unconsciousness traditionally associated with the dead. Telephones by night he neither heard nor answered. Hibernating grizzlies have been known to be more receptive.

Which was why in the small hours of the morning of April 21, young Naval Lieutenant John Harrison was