Attack of the Seawolf - Страница 2

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“The second was another contractor, operational name, Chu Cheng. Chu parachuted into the village of Ganyu near the seacoast in northern Kiangsu province, again very near the border of White Army occupation, but still on territory controlled by the People’s Republic. For the last two weeks his identity was working. He was set up as a teacher in a vocational school, with political relocation orders from Beijing. His cover story cast him as a former manufacturing engineer being rehabilitated for falsification of factory production statistics. We got his initial report that he was in place and intended to scout out the P.L.A positions in the vicinity, perhaps make a weekend trip over the line to the frontier. We haven’t heard from him since. He’s missed four scheduled reports. I have to presume he’s captured or dead.”

“The third?” Director Kent asked, a sour look crossing his face as he shut Chu’s file and opened the next in the stack.

“Third was Sung Yu-shu.” Jaspers continued.

“He was dropped into the village of Kangba, about one hundred and eighty miles north of Beijing. We had suspected this to be an area of future attacks by the White forces to the north. A week after Sung was inserted, we got his set-up transmission, but he reported that there was no White or P.L.A activity as we had suspected from the satellite photographs.”

“Damned satellites,” Kent grumbled.

“We’re getting less information from them than I’d have ever guessed. And they cost a half a billion each …”

“They only show things, sir, not intentions or trends. Anyway, Sung intended to head further north and find out if he could sniff out any activity. We never heard from him again.”

“The fourth?”

“Operational name, Hu To-pin. We set him up in Beijing after bringing him in by ship from the port of Tianjin and from there by rail to the capital. He took a job as a stock boy in a state-run store for party officials, which was conveniently located on Chang’An Avenue, not far from the Great Hall of the People. In addition to the KL-87, he was given some sophisticated eavesdropping gear for reception of UHF communications and microwave transmissions. The former to listen to orders from Beijing to P.L.A unit commanders, the latter for possible phone intercepts. He wasn’t going to listen or interpret, just record the intercepts for compressed burst relay to the COMMSAT using the KL-87. The western Pacific COMMSAT yesterday afternoon logged that it was being addressed by Hu’s KL-87, but after just a few seconds the transmission stopped. We haven’t heard anything more. Hu has missed three checkin transmissions since. I’m listing him as compromised.”

Kent glanced at the map of China that now occupied an entire wall of his office across from his desk.

The Chinese Civil War remained the main priority of the CIA as well as Kent’s chief personal frustration.

The map showed the Japanese-supported insurgents of the White Army occupying a wide swath of the mainland from the southern coast to the north central region, cutting Communist China in half. The Communist Chinese still held the far west and the northeast, including the vicinity within three hundred miles of Beijing. The White Army was rumored to be preparing a massive assault on Beijing, but the rumors also held that Beijing was planning a counterattack that could wipe out the White Army and take back central China.

This bloody war had the potential to torch all of Asia, Kent thought, perhaps even spread further.

There was still the question of China’s old nuclear weapons, supposedly destroyed over the last five years, but perhaps only stockpiled in a P.L.A weapons depot. If China could sever the link between the White Army of the New Kuomintang and Japan by attacking Japan itself, this struggle, a mere Shanghai rebellion just the year before, could break out into world war, which was never supposed to happen again after the end of the Cold War. With the linking of the world’s economic markets, a single air raid on Tokyo might well wipe out the computers of the world banking system, and with them start the worst depression of the century. If the Communists won, China would be sent back fifty years to the Mao era, perhaps starting another cold war, this time with the Chinese. If the democratic forces of the White Army won, China would likely be a future ally and trading partner.

America had to act, but Congress and the President had ruled out direct military intervention. The best Kent could hope to do was keep an eye on the war and make sure the White Army at least had the benefit of knowing what Beijing was doing. But how could he do that? Since diplomatic relations had been severed with Communist China, the CIA no longer had embassies or consulates to allow the operations of the station chiefs, which meant they had no way to collect intelligence from Chinese local agents. The progress of the Civil War was a complete mystery to the CIA and the administration. With Jaspers telling him that the penetration agents had failed, intelligence on the Civil War would be solely by satellite photographs, which were nearly useless without human reports from the ground. Without hard intelligence, the White Army would not have the benefit of intelligence and U.S. foreign policy would have to be made in the dark.

And the President wanted answers. Now.

Kent shut the last of the four files and looked up at Jaspers.

“So now we brief the President that we haven’t got a single idea what’s going on in goddamned China.”

Kent stood, handing back the briefing folders to Jaspers.

He pulled on his suit jacket from a hanger near the door and walked into the anteroom, Jaspers trailing.

“Your car’s waiting,” the receptionist said to Kent, who nodded, continuing out the door, Deputy Director Jaspers still following.

“Sir, just a thought,” Jaspers said, “the commander of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet, Admiral Richard Donchez, is in Washington visiting the Pentagon. I can have him at the briefing at the White House by the time you get there.”

Kent looked at his deputy from under the ridge formed by his bushy gray eyebrows.

“The Navy? What are you getting at, Steve?”

“Sir,” Jaspers said, “I think maybe it’s time we sent a submarine into the Go Hai Bay to listen to Beijing.”

Kent shook his head.

“That’d be like sailing a sub up to Chesapeake Bay to the Potomac River to eavesdrop on Washington. Too dangerous.”

“But that’s all we have left.”

After a moment Kent stepped into the limo, shut the door, and lowered the window. Jaspers crouched over to listen to Kent’s decision.

“You’re right.” Kent said.

“Get Admiral Donchez to the briefing.”

CHAPTER 1

WEDNESDAY, 1 MAY

2125 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

WESTERN PACIFIC OCEAN 300 NAUTICAL MILES SOUTH OF TOKYO BAY

0625 LOCAL TIME

The sun climbed above the horizon, its glare shimmering over the calm water of the western Pacific. The water was a tranquil deep blue, mirroring the sky above. No land was visible; there were no ships. Only the vast stretches of ocean stretching from horizon to horizon. Beneath the calm surface the underside of the waves appeared silvery, reflecting some of the light back deep. The water was so clear that the surface could be seen down to a hundred feet. Below that, there was diffuse light enough to see fifty feet in any direction, but the underside of the gentle waves above could no longer be made out.

At a depth of two hundred and ten feet, the temperature of the water suddenly changed from the lukewarm water of the Pacific in spring to the frigid cold of the sea below, the deep water unaffected by sun or waves. At three hundred feet the light was barely enough to equal that of a flickering candle. Deeper, at four hundred feet, all light from the surface was blocked and the sea was darker than a coal mine. At five hundred feet, the water temperature was a fraction of a degree above freezing, the sun above no longer a factor. At a thousand feet, the weight of the water above caused the pressure to be thirty times atmospheric pressure, enough to crush all but the most primitive life forms. Here the water was undisturbed by currents, fish, sound or light. It was a world more dead, more hostile than the surface of the moon.

The nuclear submarine cruising at this depth was invisible, no light to show the three-hundred-sixty-foot length of her hull, the thirty-three-foot diameter cylindrical black pipe narrowing to a cone at the rear and to a bullet-nose at the bow. No light showed the conning tower presiding over the cylinder of the hull. The conning tower, the “sail,” was a fin of black steel that afforded visibility for navigating the vessel on the surface and housed the periscopes and antennae — her vital sensors that could scan the world on the surface from the protection of the deep.

Inside the cylindrical pressure hull of the ship, beneath the sail, the forward compartment’s upper deck was subdivided into rooms, most of which were full of watch standers doing the routine duty of driving the huge nuclear ship deep below the surface. In the control room, the Officer of the Deck stared at the firecontrol screens and the sonar repeater monitor, bored now that no surface or submerged contacts were being tracked. Forward of the control room, the sonar room was quiet, filled with consoles and screens and enlisted sonar men one with headsets scanning the passive towed array narrow-frequency display. The radio room and ESM room were empty, both of them unused unless the ship was at periscope depth.