U.S.S. Seawolf

“A what?”

“A PITA.”

“What’s that? You always have initials for everything…SUBLANT, SUBPAC, SPECWARCOM…what’s a PITA?”

“Pain in the ass, stupid,” he said.

Kathy’s laughter took her unawares, and she only just managed not to blow Meursault down her nose. When she recovered her poise, she said, “You are not only crude to the point of absurdity, but I feel like I’m in love with Mao Zedong. China this, China that…it’s about a million miles away. Who cares?”

“My publishers, for a start. They’re just beginning to prepare The Thoughts of Chairman Arnold.”

Kathy shook her head, smiling at the ex-submarine commander to whom she had lost her heart. She had loved him since the first time she ever saw him, three years earlier; ever since that first day he had come growling into the office as the President’s National Security Adviser and told her to “get Rankov on the line and tell him he was, is, and always will be a sonofabitch. A lying sonofabitch at that.”

Stunned by the instruction, she had inquired lamely, “Who’s Rankov?”

“Head of the Russian Navy. He’s in the Kremlin. Oughta be in a salt mine.”

Amazed that the admiral still had not looked up from his papers, she had said, “But, sir, I can’t just call him in his office and call him a sonofabitch.”

“A lying sonofabitch.”

“Sorry, sir. I actually meant a lying sonofabitch.”

Then Admiral Morgan had looked up, a faint smile on his craggy, hard face. “Oh, okay, if your goddamned nerve’s gone before I’ve been here ten minutes, I’m sure as hell gonna have to whip you into shape. How about a cup of coffee, but get the Kremlin on the line first, willya? Ask for Admiral Vitaly Rankov. I’ll talk to him.”

Kathy had retired to order the Admiral’s coffee, and when she returned, she heard him yell, “RANKOV, you bastard, YOU ARE A LYING SONOFABITCH.”

She did not, of course, hear the great roar of laughter from Arnold’s old friend and sparring partner in the Russian Navy, and she could only stand there in astonishment. Kathy O’Brien had worked in the White House for several years, but never had she encountered a man such as this. She’d worked for confident men before. But not this confident.

The relationship between the twice-divorced admiral and the spectacularly beautiful private secretary had taken months to develop, mainly because it was beyond Arnold’s imagination that any woman this pretty, this smart, with her own private money, could possibly have any interest in him.

In the end it was Kathy who made the running and invited him to dinner. Since that evening they had been inseparable, and everyone in the White House knew it, though no one ever mentioned it, mainly from fear of the admiral.

The President himself was very aware of the romance, and equally aware that the future Mrs. Arnold Morgan would not marry him until he retired. He had asked her personally about it once, and she told him flatly, “His other two marriages failed because he happens to be wedded to the United States of America. His other two wives did not, I believe, understand how important he is. All they knew was that he was in the office and not at home. I’m different. I know why he’s in the office. But I’m not waiting at home for him. I’ll marry him when he retires.”

Which was why they lived almost all the time at Kathy’s home in Chevy Chase, and found a way to have dinner together every night. And with every passing week, Kathy O’Brien loved him more, not so much for his power to terrorize global military leaders, but for his intellect, his knowledge, and always just below the surface, his humor.

Kathy O’Brien understood that even in his snarling, sarcastic White House mode, Arnold Morgan was amusing himself mightily, toying with the opposition, dazzling even himself with his brilliant nastiness.

Just then the phone rang, and Kathy, looking comfortable, said, “You better get it, darling. That’s your secure line.”

The admiral strode to the phone, and the voice at the end was deep and strident.

“Hey, Arnie. Joe. Real short. They’re on their way, cleared Pearl early this morning, their time.”

“Thanks, Joe. I’m grateful. Wish ’em well from me if you get a chance.”

“I’m afraid they’re gonna need all the good wishes we can get to ’em. That’s a dangerous spot they’re headed to.”

“I know it. But they’re in a hell of a ship…just so long as they don’t get caught in shallow water. Chinese pricks.”

2

2100. Monday, June 19.

USS Seawolf.

Judd Crocker was frowning. And when he frowned, he resembled the Pirate King. His looks were classic Black Irish, the dark Mediterranean coloring of the Spaniard, descended, as he was, from one of the hundreds of Spanish sailors who washed up on Ireland’s shores after the defeated Armada ran into a storm in 1588. You would not, however, have mistaken him for a matador. More likely the bull.

He was an enormously powerful man. In Newport, you’d take him for a winch-grinder on a major racing yacht, in Canada you’d wonder why he wasn’t wearing a checkered shirt and swinging a double-bladed ax, and outside Madison Square Garden or Shea Stadium, someone would have offered him a contract.

Judd was a major presence in a submarine. He seemed all business, but he was quick with his lopsided smile, and quicker with a droll, often teasing remark. Some might think him sardonic, but that would be an exaggeration. It was just that he was extremely thoughtful, and tended to be a couple of jumps ahead of the opposition.

Right now, bent frowning over a big white, blue and yellow chart of the northern half of the Yellow Sea, he was trying to stay a couple of jumps ahead of the Chinese. But it was not proving easy. Sitting alone in his cabin, poring over the ocean depths of a distant sea in which he had never sailed, he was exercising his mind fully.

And the air in the little room was filled with mumbled phrases like, “Damn, can’t go in there…too shallow… that’s not a sea, it’s a frigging mud flat…beats the hell out of me why they’d even want submarine bases up there…Christ, there’s nowhere within five hundred miles of the shipyards where you could even dive without hitting the bottom…beats the hell out of me…no one even knows whether he’ll run down the eastern shore or the western shore…least of all me.”

The subject was China’s new Xia-class submarine, the Type 094, 6,500-ton, superimproved version of old Number 406, the Great White Elephant of the Chinese fleet, so named because she was essentially slow and tired (20 knots flat-out, running downhill); carried largely useless missiles that mostly failed to work; was as noisy as a freight train; and spent much of her life in dry dock. The 406 made the Americans and the Brits laugh at the mere thought of her, the joke being that she was so noisy it wasn’t worth her while going underwater anyway.

But that was before Mr. Lee and his cohorts stole all the new technology, from California and New Mexico, before President Clinton held out the red carpet for China to learn anything she damn pleased, to the obvious fury of the Joint Chiefs, not to mention a whole generation of U.S. Navy admirals.

Now, according to the Chinese, the new Xia was designed to be fast and silent, her ICBMs would work, and they would have a significantly longer range than the old ones. She also carried the very latest sonar. Would the U.S. really trade Taiwan for Los Angeles?

More important, so far as Judd was concerned, the new Xia was ready to begin her trials. The American satellites had been watching her for months, nearing completion up in the remote Huludao Yards, way up the Yellow Sea on the desolate eastern shore of Liaodong Bay. The Xia was the reason Seawolf had made the journey to Pearl Harbor in the first place. And last Saturday afternoon through its probing lens, the satellite had spotted the telltale infrared “paint,” the sign of heat inside the submarine. The Chinese had begun to take Xia’s reactor critical, which explained the Americans’ hurry, leaving in the middle of the night.