The Weapon (31 page)

Hines said, “There's one outside agency that might have an interest in frustrating our efforts.”

“Sir?”

“The DCI.”

Dan looked from one face to the next. He'd expected Hines to say the CIA. But apparently they all understood the acronym. “What's that, sir? I'm sorry, I don't—”

“The Defense Council, International—the French national corporation for arms sales.”

“Oh.” The light went on. The outfit Christophe de Lestapis de Cary had said he worked for.

Hines said, blinking at the ceiling, “The information we have is that the DCI's preparing to market a Gallic version of the Shkval. To follow up on their success exporting Exocet, I assume.”

“Uh-huh,” said Dan. “But why would that make them pass information to the other side—I guess in this case, either the Russians or the Chinese?”

“We're just exploring possibilities,” Mullaly said. “But I guess the idea would be, if the U.S. doesn't have a countermeasure, it'd make this new French weapon that much more attractive to third-world buyers.”

Dan thought this was scant evidence on which to accuse
an ally, and de Cary hadn't seemed like a back-stabber. They might not have gotten Byrne out of Moscow without his help. The French didn't always see eye to eye with the U.S., and they seemed abnormally concerned with demonstrating it, but that didn't make them an adversary. “That seems far-fetched, sir. They operate carriers, they need a countermeasure, too. De Cary seemed eager to help in Moscow.”

“Well,” said Hines, “That's all over the dam. Maybe the Chinese just changed their mind and decided to ship it by air, and we're obsessing over a nonproblem. The upshot is, what you tried didn't work. But the tasking's getting more urgent every day. Ted?”

Mullaly turned from the urn with coffee. He added creamer and swirled it. “TAG's not a well funded entity,” he said mildly.

“You need more, we can sweeten the pot. But we already funded two tries and they didn't work.”

“Blood in the scuppers?” Mullaly said mildly. Which was Navy for, Will heads roll?

“Higher wants the Shkval,” Hines said.

“Dan, what are your thoughts?” his CO asked him. “What I'm hearing is, TAG's in the toilet, we failed to deliver. How do we get out?”

Dan sat so enraged he didn't dare separate his teeth. Team Charlie had failed? They'd done all they could. Taken too many risks, without any backup. They were in the toilet? And it was up to him to get them out? Fuck this.

He was about to say so when Spangler cleared his throat. The deputy pushed back his chair and rose. The others scrambled to their feet. “Thanks for the briefing, Carrol. Very interesting, but I've got to make a flight.” He nodded to the rest of them. “Gentlemen.”

They stood till the door closed. Dan sat slowly; Mullaly went to the sideboard and refilled; Hines leaned against the table, chewing his thumbnail. “Dr. Pirrell?” Hines said at last, to the civilian scientist, who up to now had said absolutely nothing.

Pirrell took a breath and sat up. “We've done some of the spadework at NUWC. After Commander Lenson met with us. OPNAV got the funding from CNO. PMS-415's asked us to do an initial countermeasure analysis.”

“How significant's the funding level?” said Hines.

“Half a million for initial analysis, and we can go back when we need more.”

“So, have you come up with anything?” Dan asked him.

“Dr. Chone and I envision a three-track approach. The first is to reverse engineer what you may recall his calling the simplistic solution—tuning passive transducers to low frequency noise in the water, primarily the 20–100 Hertz range where the main output from a carrier's screws falls. We did a couple of simulations. Remember we said the transducers would have to be either on canards or on some sort of deployable boom? To keep them out of the turbulent flow?”

“I think so.”

“Well, now we're looking at putting them up front, on the cavitator. The flow always stays laminar there.”

“You said, three tracks,” Hines put in.

“The second track's the countermeasure. Which should be the same, we think, at least so far, no matter what the K's guidance system is. Our alternatives are hard kill, or a seduction system—a soft kill.”

“Like a decoy?” said Mullaly.

“A decoy's a seduction system, yes. The downside to soft kills are that they don't work if the incoming weapon's unguided. The hard kill system nails the threat either way, so that might be the best bet. Now, bear in mind two facts: first, we have less than thirty seconds to react after launch. Second, hydroreactive vehicles are very susceptible to puncture damage. Anything that perforates its skin will stop it, from a propulsive standpoint, and probably in a very spectacular way.”

“That's going to take time. To field, I mean.”

“Well, sir, we're not starting from white paper. ONR and Grumman have a program to fire SCPs, supercavitating projectiles, from a helicopter, to destroy mines. We're looking
at how to adapt those SCPs to the carrier's Phalanx self-defense suite. And there's a joint U.S./UK program, the Multi-Sensor Torpedo Recognition Acoustic Integrated System, that we've been evaluating in the Weapons Analysis Facility. So we've already got some of the building blocks.

“Our plan is to simulate our guided Shkval in the WAF. Then use the MSTRAIS to model the underwater fire-control system. The AN/SLQ-25 has a torpedo alertment capability we can add another acoustic processor to. We'll put the algorithms together and crank it through the mainframe and see how much of a P-sub-K comes out and whether there's any way we can bump up our localization. Lab-test it—we need in-water data to validate the simulation. Then proceed to a test-analyze-fix of the integrated system on a carrier.”

He smiled as if apologizing for the blizzard of technical language. “If the concept's valid, we could have an interim capability out there in six months at around fifteen million dollars. Those are tight constraints, but technically it's medium risk. We'd only need to hand-build two systems; each carrier could turn them over to its relief as they outchopped—”

Mullaly said, “Do you still need the weapon itself, then? Are we trying to accomplish a tasking we don't need to anymore?”

“No, sir. I mean, yes, unfortunately, we do.” Pirrell eyed Dan with regret. “We need at least a gross idea of the guidance system's sensor and maneuver envelope to design the predictive portion of the fire-control software. The more data we have, the more accurate our predictions will be. Right now our first run-through on the back of the envelope's telling us we can't pump out enough projectiles to guarantee a kill. So—I'm sorry, but the answer's yes.”

“Thanks, Doctor.” Mullaly checked his watch. “Okay, we should be getting sandwiches pretty soon. I figured we might as well eat here, get through everything so we can agree on what has to be done next. Because based on what I'm hearing, they still want us to proceed with the tasking.”

Hines heaved himself up. “Smoke break for me.”

“You can excuse me, too,” said Pirrell.

When he and Mullaly were alone Dan cleared his throat. “I thought about this on the plane back, Captain. I have a proposal, but I'm not sure I should present it.”

“Why not?”

“I'm sure Dr. Pirrell's cleared all the way up to Compartmented Ridiculous—”

“But he doesn't need to know this? All right. I'll tell him we're done with the technical side, he's free to go.”

Dan got coffee. He looked out the window, down at the mud flats near ACU 5. Then at his hand. He tried to make it stop shaking. That wouldn't make a good impression, if anyone noticed it. But he was only partially successful.

 

Now it was just him and the four-stripers. “All right,” Mullaly drawled. “Dan's got a proposal for us. But he's not sure we're going to like it.”

“Let us be the judges of that, Commander,” Hines said. “In any case, whatever it is, we'd need SURFLANT and AIRLANT approval. Since your CO here seems to be using the requirement to squeeze more funds out of us.”

Dan said, “My advice is not to tell either of them. Or put it on secure Internet, or distribute it in any other way, either.”

Mullaly grimaced. “Enough drama. Let's have it.”

It might not be the best idea. But it was all he had to offer, the only road that might get them where they wanted to go. He plunged. “I'm tired of having Higher tell us how to go about this. Go to Moscow. Go to the Malacca Straits. The way I figure it, the straightest line from not having a Shkval-K to having one is to go where we
know
there's an operational weapon.”

“Which is where?” Hines watched him closely. “The Russian Navy?”

Someone knocked at the door; the lieutenant, carrying Styrofoam sandwich containers; Mullaly waved him off.

“No, sir. Iran. They're buying all the arms they can get. We know one of them's the Shkval-K. You've seen this on
the secret JWICS. They're making the first installation in a Juliet-class submarine. A former cruise missile sub.”

The intel officer frowned and sat back.

“You're proposing—what?” Mullaly shook his head. “I don't think—”

“Wait, sir. Think about what we'd get. The weapon. Plus any guidance computers, software that comes with it. And as an added bonus, it's a preemptive strike. Dr. P's just told us it'll take him at least six months to generate an initial countermeasure.
At least.
Which could mean a year, two years—who knows?”

“Right,” said Hines, his tone the essence of noncommittal.

“For that whole time, Tehran's got our nuts in a vise; all they have to do is spin the handle. But if we got the testbed installation out of Iran's hands, we preserve the viability of our carriers in the Gulf until we can get a defensive capability to sea.”

“You're not seriously proposing we hijack an Iranian submarine,” Mullaly said.

Dan turned to him. “Not hijack it, sir—no. We don't need the sub. But we've got a team already trained to take over a ship and offload a weapon.”

Mullaly looked to Hines. The N2 touched his lips, then shook out a cigarette. “Can't hurt to look it over. But that's the kind of thing we'd have to kick
way
upstairs.”

“I'm glad you mentioned that,” Dan told him. “That was my next question. Actually, I asked it before and I didn't get a straight answer. I'll ask it one more time. Has there been a covert action finding? Has the president authorized us to do this? Or are we tearing off on our own here, doing an Oliver North for you, or for Admiral Olivero?”

“To be perfectly honest, that's a VUCA situation,” said Hines.

“A VU what?”

“It's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. You ask, has there been a finding? The trouble is, I don't remember.”

“You don't
remember?
”

Hines tapped his forehead. “I have a memory problem. Documented in my medical records. Head injury, Desert Storm. So, you ask me questions like that—”

“This is ridiculous.” Dan stood. “I could have lost guys aboard that freighter, if the crew had resisted. We came this close to getting napalmed on Mindanao, when the Philippine Army hit the rebel camp. Looking for kidnapped Americans
I
wasn't told were there.”

“There's no diplomatic way to say this, Commander. But the Navy's not being supported by the civilian intelligence structure on this issue. Including DIA.”

“But that's DIA's mission,” Mullaly said mildly. “How can they back away from it?”

Hines said, “Oh, there's very little our national intelligence structure can't back away from, Todd. But don't get me started on that. The current chief of DIA's a lieutenant general. An
Air Force
lieutenant general. Does that help?”

“I'm still not clear exactly what ‘not being supported' means, Captain,” Dan said. “Can you find it convenient to tell me? If you remember?”

“Sure. To the extent you need to know. Does it mean you have an official finding, a blessing out of the West Wing? You worked for this president. You seriously think he'd find for something like this? You and I both know the answer.

“On the other hand, is keeping Hormuz open vital to the national interest of the United States? It is. So vital, we'd have to send that carrier in whether there was a threat or not. So then what happens?”

Dan said after a moment, “We might lose it.”

“Yeah. A carrier. And an air wing, and five thousand sailors, worse case.” Hines looked at the door again, and his face was calm but his eyes moved this way and that. “I hardly remember half of what they tell me. But from the CNO on down, the Navy's squatting and straining to shit out a solution here. If that means we have to do it ourselves, our own intel, our own operations, and our own countermeasures, then the phrase that comes to mind is, ‘Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.' ”

“Dan, that answer your questions?” Mullaly murmured.

He didn't even need to nod. But he kept his hands away from his coffee cup. If he reached for it now, there'd be a real mess.

Fifty feet down, Teddy Oberg floated in a turquoise haze that stretched lightfilled above, below, around, without bound or limit. Bubbles tumbled upward in silvery floods. The sun poured down golden torrents that shifted and shimmered across the flat black paint of the massive cylinder he was slowly hand-jockeying out of a black archway into the light.

He and four other divers hung like strange gourds from the slowly writhing loops of hookah hoses inside the Dry Deck Shelter. The nine-foot-wide DDS was bolted to the main deck aft of the sail. Below it, out ahead of him as he faced aft, was the far more massive curvature of
San Francisco
's afterbody, then the towering black blade of its rudder.