Interrupt (7 page)

SOUTH CHINA SEA

L
ieutenant Commander Drew Haldane stepped onto a dark catwalk on the towering edge of the USS
America,
a new Ford-class supercarrier. His watch read 00:06.

She’s late,
Drew thought.

Ship’s time was synched with Hanoi, fourteen hours ahead of San Diego. It was the middle of the night on this side of the world. The
America
was blacked out. So were the rest of the ships in the strike group. Few stars sparkled through the cloud cover, and yet Drew couldn’t ignore the huge drop from the 03 Level, no less than six stories above the waves.

The ocean clashed with the ponderous movements of the ship. The
America
was larger than many skyscrapers if those buildings were laid sideways, displacing one hundred thousand metric tons of water. Drew felt the conflict between the ocean and the
America
in the swirling updrafts of cold salt air against the hull. Damp wind brushed his hair.

He was thirty-three, hard and fit. The young woman who joined him was twenty-five. Her hourglass physique looked neat and crisp in
her uniform as she ducked the storage canisters bolted overhead. This sponson—a narrow, open catwalk beneath the flight deck—was crowded with gear. It was also exposed to the weather, which made it unpopular with the crew and an ideal place to meet.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Julie Christensen stepped close to Drew, starlight gleaming in her brown hair. She smelled like clean laundry, a good, fresh, feminine smell.

But this wasn’t a romantic interlude.

“The satellites are up and down, sir,” she whispered. “We’re getting a lot of static. That’s why you went red. Most of the conventional systems pulled through, but special ops were the first to go.”

“That’s scary as hell.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How much of the solar activity is real?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry, sir.”

Sunspots routinely disrupted global communications, but military satellites were far more expensive than civilian equipment and hardened against solar flares. Drew wasn’t buying it. He assumed the sunspots reported by the Armed Forces weather service were a rusty lie to minimize any appearance of weakness.

He said, “Did the Chinese launch anything new?”

“No, sir.”

That means they already have a pulse weapon in orbit,
he thought. What if they were targeting U.S. frequencies specifically? The best estimates he’d heard put the U.S. military at least a decade ahead of China with narrowband transmissions. China shouldn’t know about ROMEO at all.

Could they have hit the right frequencies by accident?

Drew didn’t look at Christensen as he considered his options. They weren’t supposed to be friends, and their meeting was outside normal protocol. He was an aviator. She was a communications officer on the flag bridge.

If they were caught, it might blow their cover. Tonight was their first encounter in person. Drew had read her file back in the States, nothing more. The two of them had no relationship except that when his sat phone went dark, dropping its link, Christensen was his fail-safe to reestablish contact with the Pentagon.

Nevertheless, Drew was a warrior and an athlete, extra-attuned to his body and his surroundings. That he felt attracted to this bright young woman was predictable—but from the way she stood too near, her gaze flickering from his eyes to his mouth, he thought she felt it, too.

They were paired in a unique way. Aside from himself and Christensen, Drew had been told only one other ROMEO agent was aboard the
America,
which meant the three of them were alone on this foreign sea. They needed to protect each other.

“We were picking up a lot of interference today,” he said. “New stuff. I think the Chinese have a ground-based weapon plus whatever they’ve got in orbit.”

He had a flash drive and handed it to Christensen down low against her hip. Her gaze connected with his as their fingers touched.

“You can send this for me?” he asked. She would need to be careful when she uploaded his data through the ship’s normal transmissions.

She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“We’ll need to meet again.”

“I can get away whenever you want me,” she said.

Good,
Drew thought. With her neck-length brown hair and freckled nose, Christensen was achingly cute. Her eyes were enormous hazel pools in the dark. Drew glanced away, although beyond the catwalk was utter darkness. He didn’t need to see the strike group to know the ships were there, like a floating city.

Within the
America,
the
Harry S. Truman,
and the carriers’ support craft, hundreds of men and women reached in every direction through radar, sonar, and other sensors, creating an electronic umbrella around the fleet.

The umbrella had been compromised. The Chinese attack on U.S. satellites was more than a prelude to war. It was the first shot. And if China could selectively hit the U.S. intelligence agencies’ encrypted communications net, they must also have the capacity to paralyze the strike group in a wink.

What else can I do?
Drew thought.

He’d been sent to Vietnam to act as additional eyes watching for new weapons tech in the battlefield: bio, nano, cyber, pulse.

The race for EMPs had become a top priority. Electromagnetic pulses were an unstoppable method of crippling technology-dependent militaries. Every circuit and computer chip was a weak point. Most of their systems were hardened, though not EMP-proof.

Both sides could generate an electromagnetic pulse with a nuke, but missile launches were impossible to hide. Even if one side managed to outwit the other, nuclear attacks would create untold amounts of fallout, most likely enough to poison both sides of the world. Clean EMP weapons like high-powered microwaves or loop antenna devices were the answer.

“I—” Drew said.

He heard boot steps on the deck.

Christensen pressed herself against him, stretching up to cover his mouth with her own. She startled Drew. Then he wrapped his arms around her.

She was pretending they were lovers. Drew wasn’t above making the most of their predicament. He ran his hand down her side into the curve of her waist as they kissed. She didn’t fight him. He thought she was smiling.

Sexual relationships were forbidden. Four thousand men and women couldn’t be locked together without some mischief, so fraternization between two sailors might be overlooked on land, in port. Good order and discipline were the rule at sea—but smooching was a lesser crime than espionage.

The boot steps walked closer, then stopped. “Hey, break it up,” said another man, a chief petty officer making rounds. He passed a red-lensed flashlight over their torsos, yet deliberately avoided their faces. He didn’t want to see who they were.

Drew turned to the CPO as Christensen slipped away. “Sorry,” Drew said.

The CPO looked at Drew’s flight suit, a green one-piece made of fire-resistant Nomex. Pilots never wore anything else. The suit identified Drew as one of the elite groups aboard the ship, and, while the CPO wouldn’t report them, he might gossip.

Christensen was gone. The CPO had done the gentlemanly thing.

“Appreciate it,” Drew said. Then he ducked inside through one open hatch and another, moving into the dry, recycled air of the ship.

The steel corridors were empty. Christensen hadn’t waited. Drew headed aft because she would have gone forward. Then a man rounded a corner behind him and four more appeared in the direction he was walking. Had they seen her?

Drew was due to launch. He’d follow up with Christensen later. The wardroom was also on the 03 Level, and he beelined for it, making a hole for the other sailors with the ease of habit. They turned their shoulders and passed without touching. Their footsteps were light on the white-tiled deck.

The voices behind him were also quiet, although Navy personnel learned to work and sleep through anything. The catapults and thundering jets on the flight deck could be heard throughout the ship. Even so, the best sailors tried not to disturb each other.

Drew’s guilt felt like a brand. He and Christensen were Navy in every way, loyal and competent, and yet they’d deceived the good people around them.

If the other crew members were the ship’s blood, he was a white blood cell. They had the same purpose, but he was fundamentally
different. These were men and women who would die for each other. They were a team.

I should warn them.

Unfortunately, he had his orders. Christensen probably outranked him, too. She wore j.g. insignia, but she was the one on the bridge. ROMEO would want her to call the shots even if she said
sir
to Drew.

She kissed me. Why? We could have been holding hands or hugging when that dude came along. But she kissed me.

Feeling harried and distracted—and glad—Drew entered the wardroom’s familiar noise. Despite its low ceiling, the wardroom was a wide space with faux wood paneling, real linen, silverware, and dozens of aviators and crew. On an HDTV tuned to ESPN Classic, the Chargers and Steelers slugged it out.

“There he is! That’s the guy!”

The brash voice of Lieutenant Ted Buegeleisen caught Drew before he reached the buffet.
This is the last thing I need,
he thought, but he allowed himself to be waved over.

“You love me, you love him,” Buegeleisen declared. Sharing his table were two female helicopter pilots. One was brunette, the other sandy-blond. She wore a ring, which hadn’t stopped Buegeleisen from chatting her up. It never did.

“Bugle” was Drew’s friend and partner, again on multiple levels. Drew flew a two-man EA-18G. Bugle was his electronic warfare officer and a ROMEO agent, a tall, happy guy who considered himself catnip with the ladies. In reality, Bugle was a six-foot-three horse-faced dork. Drew had difficulty imagining a less likely prospect for a secret agent.

“Did you know this maniac saved four people from a deck fire?” Bugle asked the women.

“How’s mid rats tonight?” Drew said. Going on one in the morning, they were served midnight rations left over from dinner, but Bugle was not to be deterred.

“It’s true,” Bugle said. “You’re looking at him. A few years ago we had a fire on the
Lincoln
when some idiot was sneaking cigarettes by the fuel hoses.”

Drew left their table to grab a tray, two hamburgers, and a scoop of canned pineapple. He wished he was more like Bugle, fuzz in the brain, peaceful at heart, although he realized some of his disquiet was purely physiological.

The
America
and the
Truman
split every twenty-four hours into two “fly days” of thirteen hours each, creating some overlap at midnight and at noon. Drew’s launch cycle was the second. He expected to fly from two a.m. to four a.m., but it was tough to eat when his belly thought it should be asleep and even tougher to sleep when his body thought it should be in the sun. Three weeks ago, Drew had been stationed in Guantanamo. Five weeks ago, he’d been in Seoul. His biorhythms were more out of whack than those of the crew members who’d already been with the
America
in San Diego.

Could that explain the tick of anxiety in his head? Despite everything he’d said to Christensen, he had no evidence of a Chinese attack.

“This cowboy ran into the fire four times!” Bugle said as Drew returned with his tray.

Christensen.
Drew recalled the warmth of her body as he sat down and dug into his chow. If she was like him, she was lonely. ROMEO training meant less downtime, less dates, less family, less everything.

He admired her dedication. Twenty-five years old and a ROMEO agent… What had caused her to give up any semblance of a normal life? Were her motives like his own? Drew hadn’t gotten over his sister’s death—maybe he never would—but personal scars weren’t the main reason people chose to serve.

“Every time he comes back with someone else!” Bugle said. “We’ve got two jets on fire and smoke as thick as water, but he keeps going back in.”

“No way,” the brunette said.

“Bugle makes it sound good,” Drew said. “The smoke wasn’t as thick as water.”

“It was like the Amazon!” Bugle insisted.

Drew laughed.
He’s an idiot, but he’s
my
idiot,
he thought. Bugle’s blabbermouth style was the perfect disguise. The two of them had been last-minute additions to the crew, yet they’d made fast friends across the ship with Bugle taking the lead on the social scene.

ROMEO was a clandestine division of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a hand-picked group trained to blend with standard forces. Bugle claimed that was why they were code-named after the greatest secret lover of all time. ROMEO wasn’t an acronym. Bugle said they were supposed to get intimate with their shipmates. Drew believed there were similar groups called ALPHA, BRAVO, and so on.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We need to fly.”

“We’ll see you later!” Bugle said. Both women chuckled at the eagerness in his face.

For Drew, the waiting was the hardest part, waiting and wondering if he could rely on anyone else. Once he’d quit accepting things at face value, life had grown complicated in a hurry. Maybe they were all spies.