“At this point, sir, there’s no way he can make the 4:00 A.M. deadline unless he pushes that monster way, way beyond her approved performance parameters.”
“You tell Pokey Fraser I said forget the goddamn parameters. The taxpayers gave him a two-billion-dollar undersea Ferrari. Tell him it’s time to damn well use it.”
“Yes, sir. I suggest it’s also time to tell him about the nuclear device aboard Leviathan.”
“Does he have a Wild Card ticket?”
“No, sir.”
“He does now. You tell him to move his ass.”
Chapter Sixty-three
The North Atlantic
3:34 A.M., EST
A THIN RED SLAB OF LIGHT LIT THE RIM OF THE BLACK world. USN Commanding Officer Persifor Fraser, standing in the bridge position atop the fairwater of SSN-21, the nuclear attack submarine Seawolf, was not happy. His command wasn’t the usual boat on the New London waterfront. She was the quietest, fastest submarine on the planet. No submarine, and few surface boats, could cover more ground more rapidly than Seawolf. En route to Block Island Sound, she’d gone halfway across the Atlantic in roughly forty-eight hours!
Suffice it to say that CDR Pokey Fraser was a man unaccustomed to being late for an appointment. Now the president himself was on his ass and justifiably so. The Red Chinese had embedded a goddamn nuclear device in an ocean liner’s keel and were threatening to blow up New York City.
And his beloved Seawolf might be just three minutes too late to stop them.
The huge bow wave rode halfway up the sub’s fairwater. The sharp salt spray stung his eyes, whenever he lowered the heavy binoculars to look at his watch. Goddamn it! He had the pedal to the frigging metal and he still might not make it!
Fraser had to make it. Aside from the enormity of this mission, he owed it to his men.
His crew of fourteen officers and 124 sailors had been at sea at the time of September 11. Because of the nature of submarine operations, his boys had extremely limited access to real-time events. Crew emotions had been all over the map. Many had friends and family in New York and at the Pentagon. Their country had been attacked, and they were in a good position to do something about it. The ship had sortied from Scotland, moved halfway back to the East Coast, when she received urgent orders to move directly to the Med to increase the number of Tomahawks and launch platforms in that theater of operations.
She’d acquitted herself admirably.
Now, Fraser’s destination was the “Wall,” an area of the Atlantic due east of the Ambrose Light, seventy-one degrees longitude, forty degrees latitude, right at the undersea edge of the continent. The seabed dropped off dramatically there and a deep underwater canyon known as the “Wall” gashed the slope, plunging to a depth of two and a quarter miles.
If you had to get rid of a large nuclear bomb in a big hurry, it was as good a place as you were going to find.
Fraser cast a sidelong glance at the two young sailors standing alongside him beneath the small forest of search-and-attack periscopes, the ESM, radar, and communications masts. The fresh-scrubbed and eager faces of his topside watch captured his entire crew’s present mood perfectly. Just like their comrades half a world away in the Taiwan Straits, they planned to stick it, in very short order, to those who would terrorize America. The goddamn Red Chinese.
Fraser gripped the rail, his knuckles white. Six miles. That was the outside range of his Mark 48 torpedoes. He just needed to close within six miles. That wasn’t too much to ask for, was it? Six lousy miles? He leaned into the stinging spray, willing his submarine onward.
3:39 A.M., EST
The president stood erect, helplessly watching the seconds disappear from the digital mission clock on the wall. Until he took Leviathan off the table, his hands were tied. The long knives were out. The Pacific Fleet and the Chinese fleet were at each other’s throats, waiting for him to make the next move. How fascinating it was to be held to account by history. To realize that a wrong word, even a wrong gesture, had enormous consequences. It took every ounce of concerted effort he could muster to keep his true feelings out of his voice when he spoke.
“John?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Twenty minutes. Somebody has to blink. Talk to me.”
“Everything’s up for grabs, sir.”
“Granted. What do they want?”
“They want us out of Iraq.”
“Tell them to get out of Oman. What else?”
“Commander Fraser reports he has closed to within twenty-one miles of the target area.”
“And the target?”
“We’ve got an SH-60 Seahawk helo en route now, sir. That chopper should have visual contact with the liner shortly. If she maintains her current speed, Leviathan will arrive at the ‘Wall’ eight minutes from now at 3:47 A.M.”
“Range of Seawolf’s torpedoes?”
“Mark 48ADCAPs, sir. Heavyweight torpedoes. Range six miles.”
“Tell Commander Fraser to launch two torpedoes the second he closes to within ten miles of the target. Knock her wheels off right over the canyon.”
“Sir? Ten miles is pushing the—”
“You heard me.”
“With all due respect, sir, we’ve got three good men on that boat, Mr. President, and I think—”
“You think I don’t know that! Damn it, man. Do all you can to warn Hawke. Keep trying to get him. But I can’t risk the lives of hundreds of thousands for—just do as I say.”
“Yes, sir!”
Gooch watched the man scurry away and then caught the president’s eye.
“We’re looking at rapidly evolving time and distance calculations here, Mr. President. Leviathan will have barely reached the ‘Wall’ at that point. If we miscalculate even slightly and she goes down on the lip, or in shallow water, the nuclear explosion will trigger a wall of dirty water fifty feet high. People will be swimming down Fifth Avenue. And glowing in the dark.”
“We’ll just have to take that chance, John. I need that vessel on the bottom.”
3:47 A.M., EST
“What’s his bloody problem?” Hawke asked Mariucci. Hawke had sounded the recorded “Abandon Ship” alarm repeatedly throughout the ship beginning at 3:30 A.M. Word of the impending nuclear disaster had spread throughout the ship rapidly. Chinese nuclear reactor technicians, reluctant kamikazes all, had been ordered to remain hidden aboard by their superiors in Beijing. Now they came crawling out of the woodwork—and made a mad dash for the promenade deck. Bright orange-topped, motorized lifeboats, thirty on each side of the ship, hung fifty feet above the water.
Two full lifeboats had already been dispatched and disappeared over the horizon. The third and last one was ready to be lowered away. Captain Dechevereux, who had originally stated he was staying with his ship, had
