Goliath

“Conn, sonar, sir, that explosion … it was the Hampton.”

“Skipper, contact has launched two more torpedoes, both active—”

Two hundred and fifty yards to the west, the Jacksonville’s two Mk-48 ADCAP torpedoes have slowed to forty knots. Onboard sonars ping, searching the sea for the enemy contact, the weapon’s real-time computers sending highly processed data back to the sub via a trailing fiber-optic wire.

Two consecutive returns. The torpedoes accelerate, pinging faster—

—before slamming nose first into two antitorpedo torpedoes.

The concussion wave from the double detonations sends reverberations through the Jacksonville’s interior hull, as it rolls the submarine hard to port.

“Conn, ship’s own were struck by antitorpedo torpedoes! Both ADCAPS destroyed—”

Captain O’Rourke stares at his XO, a cold chill running down his spine. His sub, one of the finest in the world, has been outgunned and outmaneuvered.

“Skipper, incoming torpedo! Impact in ten seconds—”

“Brace for impact!”

A resounding double explosion from beneath the hull cracks open the Jacksonville’s keel. A massive jolt—the sub suddenly blanketed in suffocating darkness. Shouts, screams, and yells rise above an insane chaos of shearing metal and ripping bulkheads. Steam bursts from unseen pipes. A shower of sparks illuminates a gallery of ghostly faces—petrined, confused, their shattered minds screaming in the terror of one final, unified thought—I’m going to die—as Death reaches for them.

It breaks through the hull with sonic speed, crushing its victims with an icy embrace.

Aboard the USS Ronald Reagan

Captain Hatcher rushes into the Command Information Center, grabbing hold of a console as his ship lurches beneath him. “Report!”

Rocky Jackson stands. “It was a series of underwater munitions, four in all, very powerful. Totally blew out three of the four props and compromised both layers of the hull’s torpedo-protection system. The engine room’s taking on water, with water already reported as high as deck four—”

“My God …” Hatcher feels the blood drain from his face. An American supercarrier sinking? Impossible …

“Sir, it’s not just us, the entire fleet’s under attack, and I’ve lost contact with both subs.”

“Goddamn it.” Hatcher looks around. “Where the hell’s Strejcek?”

“I don’t know.”

“Commander, order everyone but the catapult and Pri-Fly crews on deck. Launch as many birds as you can while we still have electricity for the catapults—”

A groan of metal drowns out Hatcher’s last order. The ship’s steel plates wail in protest, straining to support the floundering carrier’s rising bow.

“Hatch—”

“I need to get to the SSES. You have your orders, Commander.” Hatcher grabs the watertight door of the CIC to keep from falling, then turns to face his wife. “Rocky, get your team out on deck—now!”

Two decks up in Pri-Fly (Primary Flight Control), Air-boss James “Big Jim” Kimball and his miniboss, Kevin Lynam, bark out commands to their LSOs (landing signal officers), who are frantically working on the flattop six stories below. The control tower is electric with activity. Kimball, the choreographer for the chaotic jet-fighter ballet taking place on the flight deck, is demanding his crew launch no less than twenty aircraft within the next six minutes, an impossibility from which he refuses to back down.

“Heads up on deck. Get ready to shoot Hornets five, six, and seven. Clear shoot lines. Clear catwalk—”

Beneath a turbulent atmosphere of noise and exhaust, four hundred men and women attired in team colors scramble across a lurching flight deck that has suddenly become more carnival ride than airport runway.

Twenty-year-old Ensign Rogelio Duron swears luridly in staccato Spanish as he tugs the parking blocks from the front tire of a Joint Strike Fighter—then screams as he is lifted off his feet and sucked headfirst into the engine inlet, blood and brain matter spraying the deck.

Kimball slams the control tower window with a futile fist. “Goddamn sonuva bitch!” The Air Boss looks up to see an air wing returning from the east. “Shit—Kevin, get those two CSAs in the air before our Tomcats start dropping out of the fucking sky.”

Belowdecks, frightened catapult technicians rush about in ankle-deep water as they hurriedly reset each cable, near panic with the horrible realization that they are involved in a high-stakes game of Russian roulette. Communication between the flight-deck crews and the tower is coming in too fast; it is just a matter of minutes before another deadly mistake happens. Precise prelaunch pressure loads must be fine-tuned to each aircraft’s weight, but there is no time for the usual measurement—nominal values being hurriedly guessed and set manually. Settings too low will fling a pilot and his aircraft straight into the water, too high and its structure will fail.

Circling the melee is the E-2C Hawkeye Early Warning Aircraft, identifiable by the flat radar rotodome affixed horizontally atop its fuselage. Within the air-watcher, a team of operators use the APS-145 radar to organize the returning jet fighters’ midair refueling. From the Hawkeye’s cockpit, pilots and copilots stare in disbelief at the surreal disaster taking place below—warship after American warship sinking with inglorious rapidity beneath the lead gray waters of the Atlantic.

Back on the carrier, another Joint Strike Fighter races down the runway as the bow of the Ronald Reagan heaves upward from the sea like a breaching humpback. The JSF pilot veers off the rising deck, airborne, until the dark ocean rushes up at him and his jet smashes nose first into a ten-foot swell.

Jim Kimball sees the runway splinter as sections of the fractured prow fall back into the water. “That’s it, everyone out! Everyone on deck in life preservers on the double!”

Rocky Jackson grabs an orange flotation vest from an officer, then hurries out on deck. “Has anyone seen the skipper?” She turns to the officer directing the crew into the lifeboats. “O’Malley, have you seen—”

Shrapnel rains down upon her, a fragment of hot metal grazing her forehead as a helicopter blade shatters across the heaving deck, the rotor craft bursting in flames.

Men race to save the pilot.

Rocky is in a daze. “O’Malley, where’s the skipper?”

“You’re bleeding, Jackson, now get in the goddamn boat!”

Strong arms lift her into the life raft.

“Fuck this, I gotta find Hatch!” Rocky jumps out of the life raft, reenters the superstructure, and races down a listing gray corridor in search of her husband.

The water has reached Captain Hatcher’s waist by the time he enters the Ships Signals Exploitation Space, a top-secret chamber containing data links to all national and theater-level intelligence systems. The SSES anteroom is dark, the ship’s power out.

Hatcher stumbles across three bodies, two officers and an MP. All floating facedown. All dead.

“Admiral?” Hatcher rolls Brian Decker over, blood pouring from several bullet wounds. “Oh, Jesus …” He glances up at a flashlight’s beacon coming from within the SSES operations room, his security reflexes taking over.

Hatcher removes the sidearm still holstered to the dead MP. He sloshes forward, peering into the high-level security chamber.

Commander Shane Strejcek lurks by a computer terminal. Images flash rapidly across the screen, a remote palm-sized device attached to the hard drive downloading the sensitive data.

“Strejcek? What the hell are you doing?”

The XO turns. An explosion of heat slams Hatcher back against the far wall, a warm wave of blood pouring down his shirt, quenching the fire burning in his chest as a numbing paralysis sends him slipping to his knees in the crimson water.

Strejcek approaches, Hatcher unable to raise the gun from the water. He has no strength to move, let alone speak.

Strejcek stares serenely at his dying commander. “I’m sorry, Skipper, but I serve a higher calling.”