flashed him a warm smile that could melt the ice caps. “Would you have me any other way?”
9
DISCOVERY PLUS TWENTY-FOUR DAYS, SIXTEEN HOURS
U.S.S. CONSTELLATION , SOUTHERN OCEAN
“D AMN Y EATS,” cursed Admiral Hank Warren.
The short, powerfully built Warren scanned the blacked-out silhouettes of his carrier group’s battle formation with his binoculars from the bridge of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Constellation. They were twenty miles off the coast of East Antarctica, and Warren’s mission was to keep his battle group undetected until further orders.
To that end, all radars and satellite sets were turned off. Only line-of-sight radios capable of millisecond-burst transmissions were allowed. Extra lookouts with binoculars were posted on deck to sweep the dawn’s horizon for enemy surface ship silhouettes and submarine periscope feathers.
The idea was to get the battle force in close to the coast without betraying their position and then strike at the enemy without warning. A diesel-powered carrier was good at that. But who the hell was the enemy down here? He and his battle force were freezing their asses trying to avoid detection, and the only enemy they were intimidating was the penguins.
Meanwhile, an unidentified aircraft using a U.S. Navy military frequency had placed a distress call before disappearing from radar. And if the crew of the Constellation heard it, then others had heard it too.
All he knew was that this had something to do with that crazy bastard Griffin Yeats, and that made him even more uneasy.
Way back when, Warren had done some time with the U.S. NavalSupport Task Force, Antarctica. It was his rescue team that found Yeats wandering in a stupor back in ’69 after forty-three days in the snow deserts, the sole survivor of a training mission for a Mars launch that never happened. The nut insisted on dragging three NASA supply containers with him even though the navy had its own. Not a care about the three bodies he left behind. Only later did Warren’s team learn that the containers Yeats dragged out with him were radioactive. But that’s the kind of man Yeats was, unconcerned with the havoc he wreaked in other people’s lives if they got in the way of his own agenda. When Warren filed a complaint, all he got was the “classified” and “need to know” bullshit.
Now, more than thirty-five years later and bearing the rank of admiral, Warren was still in the dark when it came to Yeats. And it frustrated him to no end. His crew had just picked up a short-burst distress call from what appeared to be some black ops flight calling itself 696, which apparently crashed on approach to some phantom landing strip. Yeats’s fingerprints were all over this debacle, and Warren was personally going to see to it that the man got the early retirement he deserved.
“Conn, Sonar,” shouted the sonar chief from his console.
“Conn, aye.” Warren had the conn for the morning watch. It was important for the crew to see him in command and even more important for him to feel in command.
“Lookouts report unknown surface vessel inbound at two-zero-six,” the sonar chief reported. “Range is under a thousand yards.”
“What!” the admiral blurted. “How the hell did we miss it?”
Warren lifted his binoculars and turned to the southwest. There. A ship. The letters across the bow said MV Arctic Sunrise. It was a Greenpeace ship, and on board was a guy pointing a video camera with a zoom lens at the Constellation.
“Helmsman, get us out of here!”
“Too late, sir,” said a signalman. “They’ve marked us.”
The signalman pointed to a TV monitor.
“This is CNN, live from the Arctic Sunrise .” The reporter was broadcasting from the bow of the Greenpeace ship. “As you can see behind me, the U.S.S. Constellation, one of the mightiest warships ever made, is cruising off the coast of Antarctica, its mission shroudedin secrecy. But first, CNN has captured on video large cracks in
9
DISCOVERY PLUS TWENTY-FOUR DAYS, SIXTEEN HOURS
U.S.S. CONSTELLATION , SOUTHERN OCEAN
“D AMN Y EATS,” cursed Admiral Hank Warren.
The short, powerfully built Warren scanned the blacked-out silhouettes of his carrier group’s battle formation with his binoculars from the bridge of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Constellation. They were twenty miles off the coast of East Antarctica, and Warren’s mission was to keep his battle group undetected until further orders.
To that end, all radars and satellite sets were turned off. Only line-of-sight radios capable of millisecond-burst transmissions were allowed. Extra lookouts with binoculars were posted on deck to sweep the dawn’s horizon for enemy surface ship silhouettes and submarine periscope feathers.
The idea was to get the battle force in close to the coast without betraying their position and then strike at the enemy without warning. A diesel-powered carrier was good at that. But who the hell was the enemy down here? He and his battle force were freezing their asses trying to avoid detection, and the only enemy they were intimidating was the penguins.
Meanwhile, an unidentified aircraft using a U.S. Navy military frequency had placed a distress call before disappearing from radar. And if the crew of the Constellation heard it, then others had heard it too.
All he knew was that this had something to do with that crazy bastard Griffin Yeats, and that made him even more uneasy.
Way back when, Warren had done some time with the U.S. NavalSupport Task Force, Antarctica. It was his rescue team that found Yeats wandering in a stupor back in ’69 after forty-three days in the snow deserts, the sole survivor of a training mission for a Mars launch that never happened. The nut insisted on dragging three NASA supply containers with him even though the navy had its own. Not a care about the three bodies he left behind. Only later did Warren’s team learn that the containers Yeats dragged out with him were radioactive. But that’s the kind of man Yeats was, unconcerned with the havoc he wreaked in other people’s lives if they got in the way of his own agenda. When Warren filed a complaint, all he got was the “classified” and “need to know” bullshit.
Now, more than thirty-five years later and bearing the rank of admiral, Warren was still in the dark when it came to Yeats. And it frustrated him to no end. His crew had just picked up a short-burst distress call from what appeared to be some black ops flight calling itself 696, which apparently crashed on approach to some phantom landing strip. Yeats’s fingerprints were all over this debacle, and Warren was personally going to see to it that the man got the early retirement he deserved.
“Conn, Sonar,” shouted the sonar chief from his console.
“Conn, aye.” Warren had the conn for the morning watch. It was important for the crew to see him in command and even more important for him to feel in command.
“Lookouts report unknown surface vessel inbound at two-zero-six,” the sonar chief reported. “Range is under a thousand yards.”
“What!” the admiral blurted. “How the hell did we miss it?”
Warren lifted his binoculars and turned to the southwest. There. A ship. The letters across the bow said MV Arctic Sunrise. It was a Greenpeace ship, and on board was a guy pointing a video camera with a zoom lens at the Constellation.
“Helmsman, get us out of here!”
“Too late, sir,” said a signalman. “They’ve marked us.”
The signalman pointed to a TV monitor.
“This is CNN, live from the Arctic Sunrise .” The reporter was broadcasting from the bow of the Greenpeace ship. “As you can see behind me, the U.S.S. Constellation, one of the mightiest warships ever made, is cruising off the coast of Antarctica, its mission shroudedin secrecy. But first, CNN has captured on video large cracks in
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