company with Xia III , they charged through the night on a head of steam generated by Thompson’s sweet-running pressurized water reactor (PWR).
The other major head of steam in Chinese waters that evening was generated by a fuming Admiral Zhang, who glowered across at the lazy, gaff-rigged junks while he made the short ferry journey home to Gulangyu. No wreckage had been found, no one had reported any kind of a hit or oil slick, and his captains had been driven to the conclusion that no American nuclear boat was tracking the new Xia at this time. Each of the surface warships had kept up the barrage around the new Chinese submarine for a total of two hours, and had blown upward of 200 depth charges and the same number of ASW mortars. Result: a big fat nothing.
Zhang did not believe them. At least, he did not believe their conclusion. But he did believe they had tried and missed. Which was a personal blow to him, because in his heart he had truly hoped one of those depth charges would have blown a big hole in the hull of USS Seawolf . The fact that they had not done so merely meant they hadnot fired one close enough. It did not mean Seawolf was not there. It meant that she was devilishly hard to find, and that she was being driven by a master, with a brilliantly competent crew.
0900. Friday, June 30 .
Office of the National Security Adviser
to the President .
At one minute past the hour Admiral Morgan let fly, ignoring as ever the state-of-the-art White House telephone system.
“ COFFEE !” he bellowed.
At one minute and eight seconds past the hour, his door opened briskly and Kathy O’Brien walked in.
“Good. Nice and quick. The way I like it. Bit more practice and you’ll be just fine.”
The admiral did not look up.
“I am afraid that even I, even at my most devoted, cannot produce coffee the way you like it in under ten seconds.”
“Right,” he said, still not looking up. “Three buckshot and stir, s’il vous plaît …”
The admiral had taken to the use of occasional French phrases ever since their perfect weekend in Paris in April. Kathy hoped that one more visit would persuade him that the t in plaît was in fact silent.
“Oh, Great One,” she said, “whose mind operates only on matters so huge the rest of us mortals can’t quite get it…I bring messages from the military.”
And she scuffed his papers all over the place and told him that she loved him, even though she had only just got to work, whereas he had been at his desk since 0600.
“Where’s my coffee?” he wondered, grinning, faking absentmindedness.
“Christ, you’re impossible,” she confirmed. “Listen, doyou want me to get Admiral Mulligan on the phone or do you not? His assistant called two minutes ago and asked you to get back to him secure.”
“Of course, and hurry, will you? Goddamned women fussing about coffee when the country’s far eastern fleet may be on the brink of destruction.”
“It’s you who stands on the brink of destruction,” retorted Kathy as she marched out of the door. “Because I may of course kill you one day.”
“Now what the hell have I done?” the admiral asked the portrait of General Patton. “And where’s the goddamned CNO if it’s that urgent?”
The pastel green telephone tinkled lightly, grotesquely out of character with its master. “Faggot phone. Faggot ring. I’d rather listen to a goddamned battleship’s klaxon.” He picked it up.
“Hey, Joe. What’s hot?”
And then Arnold Morgan went very quiet as the Navy’s top man in the Pentagon outlined the recent uproar in the Taiwan Strait.
“Taipei came in right away when it started, sometime before lunch today. They reported a small Chinese battle fleet about twenty miles off their southwestern naval base at Kaohsiung, hurling hardware every which way.
“The Taiwanese have a pretty big air base down there at P’ingtung and they sent up a couple of those Grumman S2E turbo trackers…worked the place over from
The other major head of steam in Chinese waters that evening was generated by a fuming Admiral Zhang, who glowered across at the lazy, gaff-rigged junks while he made the short ferry journey home to Gulangyu. No wreckage had been found, no one had reported any kind of a hit or oil slick, and his captains had been driven to the conclusion that no American nuclear boat was tracking the new Xia at this time. Each of the surface warships had kept up the barrage around the new Chinese submarine for a total of two hours, and had blown upward of 200 depth charges and the same number of ASW mortars. Result: a big fat nothing.
Zhang did not believe them. At least, he did not believe their conclusion. But he did believe they had tried and missed. Which was a personal blow to him, because in his heart he had truly hoped one of those depth charges would have blown a big hole in the hull of USS Seawolf . The fact that they had not done so merely meant they hadnot fired one close enough. It did not mean Seawolf was not there. It meant that she was devilishly hard to find, and that she was being driven by a master, with a brilliantly competent crew.
0900. Friday, June 30 .
Office of the National Security Adviser
to the President .
At one minute past the hour Admiral Morgan let fly, ignoring as ever the state-of-the-art White House telephone system.
“ COFFEE !” he bellowed.
At one minute and eight seconds past the hour, his door opened briskly and Kathy O’Brien walked in.
“Good. Nice and quick. The way I like it. Bit more practice and you’ll be just fine.”
The admiral did not look up.
“I am afraid that even I, even at my most devoted, cannot produce coffee the way you like it in under ten seconds.”
“Right,” he said, still not looking up. “Three buckshot and stir, s’il vous plaît …”
The admiral had taken to the use of occasional French phrases ever since their perfect weekend in Paris in April. Kathy hoped that one more visit would persuade him that the t in plaît was in fact silent.
“Oh, Great One,” she said, “whose mind operates only on matters so huge the rest of us mortals can’t quite get it…I bring messages from the military.”
And she scuffed his papers all over the place and told him that she loved him, even though she had only just got to work, whereas he had been at his desk since 0600.
“Where’s my coffee?” he wondered, grinning, faking absentmindedness.
“Christ, you’re impossible,” she confirmed. “Listen, doyou want me to get Admiral Mulligan on the phone or do you not? His assistant called two minutes ago and asked you to get back to him secure.”
“Of course, and hurry, will you? Goddamned women fussing about coffee when the country’s far eastern fleet may be on the brink of destruction.”
“It’s you who stands on the brink of destruction,” retorted Kathy as she marched out of the door. “Because I may of course kill you one day.”
“Now what the hell have I done?” the admiral asked the portrait of General Patton. “And where’s the goddamned CNO if it’s that urgent?”
The pastel green telephone tinkled lightly, grotesquely out of character with its master. “Faggot phone. Faggot ring. I’d rather listen to a goddamned battleship’s klaxon.” He picked it up.
“Hey, Joe. What’s hot?”
And then Arnold Morgan went very quiet as the Navy’s top man in the Pentagon outlined the recent uproar in the Taiwan Strait.
“Taipei came in right away when it started, sometime before lunch today. They reported a small Chinese battle fleet about twenty miles off their southwestern naval base at Kaohsiung, hurling hardware every which way.
“The Taiwanese have a pretty big air base down there at P’ingtung and they sent up a couple of those Grumman S2E turbo trackers…worked the place over from
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