Checkmate Read online

  “Play nice, Major.” Fisher checked his watch. They were on time; the submarine was late. “How’s your fuel?”

  “We’re good. Thanks to whatever mojo you’re carrying, we’ve got a Comet all to ourselves.”

  “Comet” was short for Vomit Comet, the nickname for the KC-135 Stratotanker, which did double duty as an in-flight refueling aircraft and a zero-g simulator for astronauts—the latter achieved through rapid climbs and sudden dives that left the occupants weightless and often violently nauseous. Currently, a Stratotanker from Kadena was orbiting above them at 35,000 feet, waiting to top off the helo should it become necessary.

  Seated across from him on the bench were the Pave Low’s two gunners/specialists. As they had been for the last hour, they were engrossed in a game of gin. Accustomed to ferrying dangerous men into dangerous areas, Pave Low crew members took everything in stride and didn’t ask questions. Aside from a nod as Fisher had climbed aboard, neither man had paid him any attention.

  The MH-53J Pave Low was a special operator’s dream. Designed to covertly insert soldiers into denied areas, and then extract them out again, it was fast, quiet, and equipped with an avionics package that left nothing to chance: FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared Radar), inertial global positioning system (GPS), terrain-following and terrain-avoidance radar.

  Fisher glanced out the window. The helo’s navigation strobes were turned off, but thanks to a full moon he could see the ocean twenty feet below, its surface chopped into mist by the rotor wash. This was another Pave Low specialty—the hover coupler, which, in conjunction with the GPS, could keep the helo fixed precisely over a spot on the earth, give or take six inches.

  Ten minutes later, the pilot was back in Fisher’s subdermal: “We’ve got company, sir. Marlin is on station, ready for pickup.”

  “Roger,” Fisher said. “Tell them five minutes.”

  “What’s your pleasure?”

  “Ten feet will do. Don’t wait around.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yep, go home. Thanks for the ride.”

  He caught the attention of the two specialists, then pointed to himself and jerked a thumb downward. They went into action. The cabin lights were switched to red and life vests were donned. The first crewman motioned for Fisher to stand up and turn around for gear inspection, then patted him once on the shoulder.

  The second crewman slid open the cabin door. Legs braced at the threshhold, one arm braced across the door, he motioned Fisher forward. Fisher felt the whump-whump-whump of the Pave Low’s rotors in his belly. Cold mist blew through the door and he tasted salt on his lips.

  At the door, the crewman cupped his subdermal against his ear, then said something into the microphone. He flashed five fingers at Fisher once, then again, then laid his palm flat: Steady hover at ten feet.

  Fisher nodded.

  The second crewman pulled a chem-light from his vest, broke it open, and shook it until started glowing green, then tossed it out the door. It hit the water and started bobbing in the chop. In the darkness, the glow would give Fisher a reference point for his jump. The crewman at the door stood aside and gave Fisher an “after you” flourish.

  BODY vertical, arms crossed over his chest, he plunged into the dark water. The thumping of the Pave Low’s rotors became muffled, and for a brief second Fisher allowed himself to enjoy the quiet before finning to the surface. He raised a thumb above his head. The red rectangle of light that was the Pave Low’s side door went dark as the crewman closed it. The helo lifted up, banked left, and skimmed away into the darkness.

  Somewhere to his right, Fisher heard a rush of bubbles followed by a hissing whoosh. Thirty seconds later, a dot of light appeared in the darkness; it blinked once, then twice more. Fisher swam toward it.

  THE Los Angeles-class submarine USS Houston, SSN- 713, call sign Marlin, was sitting low in the water, deck partially awash, its sail looming out of the darkness like a two-story-tall building. A seaman was crouched on the deck at the head of a rope ladder. Fisher climbed up. If the crewman was fazed by picking up a lone man in the middle of the East China Sea, he showed no sign of it.

  “Captain’s compliments, sir. If you’ll follow me.”

  He led Fisher aft along the sub’s deck, past the sail, to an open escape trunk. At the bottom of the ladder, another crewman was waiting with a towel and a set of blue coveralls emblazoned with the Houston’s “Semper Vigilans” crest on the breast pocket.

  Once Fisher was dried off and changed, he was led past the radio room and into the Control Center. The Houston’s captain, in a blue baseball cap with gold oak leaves on the brim, was standing at the chart table. Fisher was momentarily taken aback; this was an old friend.

  “Welcome aboard, stranger,” Captain Max Collins said, walking over.

  Fisher shook the extended hand and smiled. “Permission to come aboard.”

  “Granted.”

  “Good to see you, Max. Been a while.”

  “Yeah, and as I recall, last time we didn’t have to pluck your sorry butt out of the water. You walked aboard like a regular human being.”

  “Didn’t want you to think I’d gone soft,” Fisher replied.

  Houston was home-ported in Apra Harbor, Guam, which is where Fisher had last boarded the sub for a mission. Before that, they’d worked together half-a-dozen times while Fisher was still attached to Navy Special Warfare. Arguably, Collins was one of the best “shoehorns” in the fleet, having earned a reputation for not only slipping operators into hard-target denied areas, but also getting them out alive again.

  In Fisher’s case, Collins had once sailed the Houston twenty-two miles into North Korea’s heavily guarded Nampo harbor, all the way to the mouth of the Taedong River, then waited, dead silent, keel resting on the seabed, for eighteen hours as Fisher finished his mission and returned.

  Characteristically, Collins attributed his success to his crew and to the Houston’s extraordinary “aural footprint”—or lack thereof. Driven by nuclear-powered, turbine-driven electric motors, Los Angeles-class submarines were so quiet they were known colloquially as “moving holes in the water.”

  Collins grinned. “Going soft? Hell, Sam, I know better. How about a cup of coffee?”

  THEY settled into Collins’s cabin, a cramped space with a fold-down desk, a bunk, and a small sink and mirror. As submarines went, it was luxurious. A steward knocked on the door and handed Collins a tray with two mugs and a carafe of coffee. Collins poured Fisher and himself a cup each. Fisher could feel the thrum of the Houston’s engines through his feet.

  “I just got updated surveillance shots for you,” Collins said. “I see you’re invading another island all by yourself. Shame on you, Sam.”

  Fisher sipped his coffee; it was hot and bitter and overcooked—the Navy way. He loved it. “Just being a good soldier, Max. So, how’s it look?”

  “Ugly. What’s the story?” Collins caught himself and quickly said, “Never mind, I don’t want to know. With luck, we’ll have you there in fourteen hours. Get some sleep, then I’ll show you what you’re facing.”

  39

  AS they always did, the sounds of a submerged submarine lulled Fisher into a deep sleep. The combination of the hum of the engines, the faint hiss of the water skimming along the outer hull, and the white noise of the air circulators acted as a tranquilizer.

  He needed the sleep. He’d been going hard since the Trego, and as accustomed as he was to the lifestyle, he knew the stress and lack of sleep would eventually catch up to him, slowing his reactions and his thinking. Given where he was headed, he couldn’t allow that.

  Four hours after Collins left the cabin, he returned and gently shook Fisher awake, waved a mug of coffee under his nose, and said, “Had enough beauty sleep?”

  Fisher groaned and sat up, planting his feet on the deck. “You tell me.” He took the mug and sipped. It was scalding hot and salty.

  Collins said, “Briefing in the wardroom in ten minutes.”


  FISHER was there in five. Like the rest of the sub, the officers’ wardroom was a cramped affair: three sets of vinyl bench seats, tables bolted to the deck, and a small kitchenette in a side alcove. Pictures of the Houston, from her keel-laying to the current crew photo, lined the walls.

  Waiting with Collins was his executive officer, Marty Smith. Fisher had never met Smith, but knew of his reputation. Halfway through his career, Smith had had a change of heart, leaving behind Naval Intelligence for a fleet posting, where he’d worked his way up the ladder of submariner billets—Supply and Admin, Weapons, Sonar, Engineering, to finally XO. In another five years he’d have his own boat to drive.

  Fisher sat down and Collins made the introductions. “I asked Marty to sit in because of his intel background. He’ll have some insights on the material we’ve got for you.”

  Collins opened the briefing folder and spread a series of ten eight-by-ten photos across the table. Each showed Shek’s island, Cezi Maji, from different altitudes, angles, resolutions, and formats, including infrared, EM, and night vision—all taken either by satellite or P-3 Orion flights while Sam had been en route to Kadena.

  “A little background first,” Smith began. “Cezi Mali is part of the Zhoushan Archipelago at the mouth of Shanghai’s Hangzhou Bay. It consists of fourteen hundred islands spread across seventy miles of ocean. Of those, only about a hundred are inhabited. Cezi Mali is roughly seven thousand acres, or nine square miles.”

  “Terrain?” Fisher asked.

  “A good-sized cove and natural harbor on the north side of the island; on the south, east, and west sides, the place is a fortress: fifty-foot cliffs and narrow beaches. The interior is triple-canopy rain forest punctuated by exposed rock escarpments, peaks, and ridges.”

  “Peachy,” Fisher said, taking a sip of coffee.

  “Now, the fun part,” Smith said, pushing a photo across the table at Fisher. It was from a P-3, Fisher could see, but it was color-enhanced. Using a pen, Smith traced a faint white line that seemed to follow the contours of the cliffs. “That’s a road. A dirt path, really, but wide enough for these.” Smith pointed again, this time to a rectangular object on the path.

  “Jeep,” Fisher said.

  “Yep. Six of them patrol the cliffs day and night, rain or shine. Two armed guards per vehicle.”

  “Pattern?”

  “That’s the good news. They’re on a schedule. Your people loaded the details onto your thingamajig. She said you’d know what that meant.”

  Fisher nodded. OPSAT. Good ol’ Grim.

  “Once past the cliff road, you’ll have a three-mile slog through the rain forest. More good news. No patrols and no EM emissions anywhere, which means no cameras or sensors. The wildlife probably makes them useless. More bad news. No matter which route you choose, you’ll have two escarpments and three gorges to deal with.”

  This fact, more than any other, had ruled out a parafoil insertion. Jumping into triple-canopy jungle was dicey enough, but given its thickness, there was no way to tell what lay under it. Dropping through the canopy to find yourself plunging into a gorge tended to put a damper on your day.

  “Once through the jungle,” Smith continued, “you’ll come to what I’ve named the inner ring. Whoever owns this place is diligent about his security. For a one-mile radius around the estate—which I’ll get to in a minute—they’ve cut the rain forest back to single-canopy. Mother Nature’s on your side, though. Jungle is hard to control, so there should be some cover on the forest floor—providing you don’t mind crawling.”

  “I love crawling,” Fisher muttered. “The cutback means cameras and sensors, I assume?”

  Smith nodded. “Lots of them, but they’re plotted and loaded on your . . .”

  “Thingamajig.”

  “Right. Now, guards. The inner ring is divided into zones—twelve of them, like a clock. One guard per zone, moving randomly. No patterns or consistent timing that we could see.”

  This was a mixed blessing for Fisher. Sentries on random patrol could turn up anywhere at any time, and usually, per Murphy’s Law, at the most inconvenient of moments. On the upside, sentries were only human, and the human mind subconsciously gravitates toward order and pattern. With enough patience, Fisher might be able to find a gap in the coverage and slip through.

  “Radio signals?”

  “All guards have portable radios, but it looks like there’s no scheduled check-in procedure.”

  “Probaby by camera,” Fisher replied.

  Each guard was likely required to regularly appear before a camera in his zone and give an “all clear” signal. A missed check-in would either trigger a visit from a security supervisor or raise an alarm.

  “Once through the cutback area, you’ll find yourself facing fifty yards of open, well-groomed lawn.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope One of these pics even shows a groundskeeper on a riding mower. Across the lawn is twelve-foot-high hurricane fence topped with razor wire.”

  “Of course there is,” Fisher said.

  “It’s not electrified, though. The island is on the outer edge of the archipelago, so it gets a fair number of storms, which means a lot of blowing debris. Hard to keep an electric fence running smoothly when it gets bombarded frequently. There are sensors, though, attached to the fence. There’s no way to tell whether they’re motion, touch, or beam.

  “Now, the estate itself,” Smith said, pushing another photo across the table. “There’s a central building—this one here with the red tile roof. It’s a six-story Chinese pagoda. It’s surrounded by smaller buildings, probably staff quarters, storage, workshops, utility spaces, all of them inside the fence. Lots of guards here, about eight per shift. As for the pagoda itself, we’ve got nothing. No details of the interior. Guess you’ll have to play it by ear.”

  At this Max Collins smiled. “As I recall, Sam, playing it by ear is what you do best.”

  Fisher went silent for ten seconds, absorbing the details. “How long to the insertion point, Max?”

  “We’ve only got about sixty miles to go, but there are a couple Ninety-threes in the area.”

  Collins was referring to Chinese Type 093 nuclear hunter-killer subs. Almost as quiet as the LA class, 093s boasted a sophisticated sonar package, including bow, flank, and towed passive arrays. Worse still, rumors had been floating around that Moscow had provided Beijing with enough core technology to copy the Russian Skval torpedo, which was said to travel at 200 to 230 miles per hour.

  “It may take a little time to pick our way around them,” Collins said.

  The growler phone on the bulkhead chirped and Collins picked it up. He listened for a moment, then hung up. “We’ve got ELF traffic.”

  ELF stood for Extremely Low Frequency, a band used to signal submerged submarines. Fisher followed Collins and Smith to the Control Center, where the OOD, or officer of the deck, handed Collins a sheaf of paper. “Surface for signal, sir.”

  Collins scanned the message, then handed it to Fisher. “Somebody wants to talk to you.”

  Not good news, Fisher thought.

  “Officer of the Deck, let’s poke the wire.”

  “Poke the wire, aye, sir.”

  The Control Center went into action as the crew brought the Houston up to antenna depth. It took six minutes. “Antenna depth, Captain.”

  “Very well.” To Fisher: “This way.”

  Fisher followed Collins to the radio room, where a senior chief radioman was waiting. “Link established, encrytion running. Call sign Xerxes.”

  “Thanks, Chief. Give us the room.”

  The senior chief ushered the other radiomen outside and closed the door behind him. Fisher donned the headset and keyed the microphone. “Go ahead, Xerxes.”

  “Sam, we’ve got a problem. Two hours ago there was an incident with a BARCAP,” Lambert said, referring to Barrier Combat Air Patrol. Whenever a U.S. Navy carrier was on patrol, it was guarded by a ring of fleet-defense fighte
rs, either F-14 Tomcats or F/A-18 Hornets.

  “The Iranians claim we were in their airspace. They sent up a flight of F-16s. There was furball, some missile lock-ons, and then a midair bump—one of their Falcons and one of our Hornets. Both pilots had to bail out.”

  “Good Christ,” Fisher said. Back when the U.S. was on speaking terms with Iran, the Pentagon had sold the IAF hundreds of F-16 Falcons and Tomcats. “Escalation?”

  “Nothing yet. Both pilots were recovered, which helps, but this is just the start. Next time it won’t be a bump. Next time it’ll be missiles.”

  And once that happens, we’re effectively at war, Fisher thought.

  “If there’s anything on Shek’s island that can point us in another direction, we need it.”

  40

  WITH a gentle kick of his fins, Fisher eased forward until he felt his belly scrape the soft sand of the beach. He felt a wave wash over his back and his vision was momentarily obscured by froth. As the wave receded, he lifted his head until his face mask broke the surface. Ahead, he could see the line of white beach that followed the base of the cliff, itself a vertical wall of mottled gray rock.

  He’d timed his approach to coincide with high tide for two reasons: One, the breakers would be easier to manage, allowing him to crawl into the shoals while remaining partially awash. And two, the higher the tide, the less beach he would have to cross to reach the base of the cliff, decreasing his chance of being spotted.

  True to to his reputation, Collins had expertly guided the Houston northward into the heart of the East China Sea, past the Chinese 093s, and finally to the mouth of Hangzhou Bay and the Zhoushan Archipelago. For a standard special ops insertion, the Houston’s forward deck would have been fitted with a clamshell dry dock shelter and an SDV, or Swimmer Delivery Vehicle, but the accelerated nature of Fisher’s mission had made this impossible, so he’d simply exited the sub’s forward escape trunk and swum the half mile to the island.