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At some point Lu Shi’s eyes ceased to register the photos as they passed through his fingers. The motions of his hands became mechanical repetition.

In the late nineteen-seventies, when Lu Shi had himself been a rising young star in the Communist Party, he had fought hard to bring China’s one-child policy into being. It hadn’t been a popular law in those days, and it wasn’t much more popular now. But it had been a necessary measure.

By 1976, China’s population had multiplied to nearly a billion, and the rate of growth had still been increasing. If the trend had been allowed to continue, the People’s Republic would ultimately have devolved into famine, and economic collapse.

The decision to limit each family to a single child had not been made lightly, and it had not been easy to enforce. As with any restrictive regulation, there were exemptions which could be exploited by the privileged elite. Several senior party members had taken full advantage of the loopholes. Lu Shi had not been one of them. The one-child policy was important to China’s future. Lu Shi could not very well espouse the benefits of the policy, while violating it himself.

So, he had obeyed the law which he had helped to create. He had fathered only one child. Now, that child was gone, and the future was gone with him.

CHAPTER 16

USS CALIFORNIA (SSN-781)
NORTHERN INDIAN OCEAN
TUESDAY; 25 NOVEMBER
1522 hours (3:22 PM)
TIME ZONE +6 ‘FOXTROT’

Captain James Patke scanned the tactical display on his command console, carefully studying the wide ring of icons that represented the frigates and destroyers encircling the Chinese aircraft carrier. Like most submarine commanders, Patke had an almost Zen-like level of patience when he was on the hunt, and the current mission was putting that patience to the test.

China was a latecomer to carrier warfare, but their defensive screening tactics were turning out to be surprisingly effective. It had taken Patke and his crew nearly two days of unhurried probing to find a weak spot in the aircraft carrier’s defensive perimeter. There had been opportunities to slip in more quickly, but Patke was determined to be even more cautious than usual.

The Chinese and Indian navies were both pretty damned trigger happy right now. If you made the mistake of spooking either one of them, you were likely to get your ass shot off.

Patke looked up from the display and glanced toward his Officer of the Deck. “Take us to periscope depth.”

The USS California was a Virginia class attack submarine, so she didn’t technically have a periscope. In place of the traditional Type 18 scopes used by other classes of U.S. attack subs, the Virginia class boats were each equipped with a pair of AN/BVS-1 photonics masts. The new fiber optic system was both technically and tactically superior to its predecessors, but no self-respecting submarine officer ever wanted to utter the phrase ‘photonic mast depth.’ As a result, much of the old periscope-related terminology remained in use, even though the periscope itself was no longer around.

The OOD nodded. “Sir, periscope depth, aye!” He turned toward the Diving Officer. “Make your depth one hundred twenty feet.”

The Diving Officer acknowledged the command and immediately relayed his own order to the Planesman. “Five degree up bubble. Make your new depth one-two-zero feet.”

The Planesman pulled back slowly on the control yoke, keeping his eyes glued to the plane angle indicator. “Sir, my bubble is up five degrees, coming to one-two-zero feet.”

The submarine began its slow and cautious ascent.

The OOD keyed the mike on his headset. “Sonar — Conn, coming shallow in preparation for going to periscope depth. Report all contacts.”

Captain Patke observed the smooth operation of his control room crew at work. This was a good team — confident, but not cocky. If any of them were nervous about penetrating the defensive screen of a foreign carrier strike group, it didn’t show.

Patke was actually a tad nervous, himself. This was not a simulation. If something went wrong here, things could turn ugly.

He wasn’t particularly concerned about the destroyers and frigates. He took pride in the superb acoustic silencing technology of his boat. The California was quiet enough to get fairly close to most surface ship sonars without being detected.

The Chief of the Boat, who held the traditional bubblehead’s opinion that all surface ships are targets, liked to claim that the California could sneak in close enough to piss on the hull numbers of any surface vessel in the world. Patke wasn’t ready to go quite that far, but the COB’s boast wasn’t completely off base.

But the PLA Navy’s antisubmarine warfare helicopters were no joke, and somewhere out there, a Type-93 attack sub was operating in support of the carrier group. Patke’s sonar team had maintained an intermittent track on the Chinese submarine for the last two days. At the moment, it was stationed on the far side of the carrier’s defensive envelope. If the California were detected, the Type-93 would come after her, and the sub would be a hell of a lot harder to shake off than the surface escorts.

* * *

The California reached periscope depth about fifteen minutes later, after a brief pause at 120 feet to check for shapes and shadows: the silhouettes caused by ships floating on the surface.

The sensor head of the California’s photonic mast rose slowly through the surface of the water. The narrow dome-shaped housing contained a color video camera, a high-resolution black and white camera, and a thermal imaging camera for infrared target detection and evaluation. All three cameras scanned continually as the sensor head rotated through a full 360 degree sweep.

The digital video feed from each camera was relayed down to the control room of the California in real-time, via high bandwidth fiber optic cables at the core of the photonic mast.

Seated at his command console, Patke jogged the pistol-grip joystick until the cameras spun around to cover the aircraft carrier. He thumbed a button to trigger the video recorders, and zoomed in for a tighter view.

The big Chinese warship had a strange history, and not much was known about her current configuration or capabilities. Built by the Soviet Union during the last years of the Cold War, she had been intended as the newest vessel of the Admiral Kuznetsov class. But the ship had been unfinished when the Soviet Bloc collapsed, and she had eventually been sold at auction to a Hong Kong-based travel agency, who supposedly intended to convert the ship into a floating hotel and gambling parlor.

The floating casino plan had never materialized, and the unfinished ex-Soviet carrier had somehow ended up in the hands of the People’s Liberation Army Navy. The PLA Navy had re-christened the ship Liaoning, in honor of Liaoning Province in northeast China.

Captain Patke nodded to himself as he watched the crisp digital video feed on his command console. This was the closest look that anyone had managed of the Liaoning since the ship had gone into operation. The intel weenies were going to have a field day when they got their paws on these video recordings. They would scrutinize every frame of video, from every available angle — examining antenna placements, weapons fixtures, and even the routing of topside cables and pipes — searching for any and all clues to the ship’s capabilities or limitations.

The operational parameters of the original Russian design were well known. But the Chinese had made extensive modifications, and no one — with the possible exception of the PLA Navy — had a firm understanding of how those changes would impact the combat potential of the ship.

So Patke was nearly as busy as the video recorders, soaking up and evaluating every detail he could lay eyes on. They were facing the port side of the aircraft carrier, from about twenty degrees aft of the port beam. From this angle, Patke noted the squashed pepperbox silhouette of an FL-3000N missile launcher, and the vaguely robotic form of a Type 73 °Close-In Weapon System. Judging from the placement of both systems, it was a fairly safe bet that each of them had a mirror-image counterpart on the opposite side of the ship.

Patke tilted the joystick forward, zooming in tighter, and beginning a slow pan down the length of the Chinese warship. “Alright, you sneaky bastards,” he said. “Let’s see what kind of surprises you’ve got up your sleeve.”

CHAPTER 17

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From: <robert.monkman@navy.mil>

Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 4:31 PM

To: <b.haster@ucsd.edu>

Subject: Missing You


My Dearest Beth,

Just another happy day aboard the mighty USS Midway. At least I think this is the Midway. I’ve taken so many wrong turns that I might be on a different ship by now. Six weeks, and I still can’t find my way around this beast. I have to scatter a trail of breadcrumbs every time I leave my stateroom, or I’ll never make it back to my bunk.

Aside from the ever-present danger of getting lost on the way to the briefing room, things are going pretty well. The guys in my squadron are great. I catch the usual ration of bullshit for being a nugget, but I won’t always be the new kid on the block. What happens down here doesn’t matter all that much anyway. What really counts is what happens in the sky, and nobody can lay a hand on me up there.

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