Red Shark

On the status board Scott had posted that he wanted flank speed maintained all the way to their op-area except during passage through Osumi Strait at the southern tip of Kyushu. He had no search plan in mind yet, but both instinct and the reports he’d received told him they’d likely find the Red Shark somewhere east of longitude 124 and north of the Shanghai-to-Taipei trade routes. Now, after standing out from a ship-congested Osumi Strait, the Reno had resumed her headlong sprint to her op area.

“Captain, care for some coffee?”

Scott accepted a cup from his exec, Rus Kramer. Scott liked the way Kramer had handled himself during the Matsu Shan insertion and was glad to have such an experienced officer aboard to back him up. “Thanks, Rus. Appreciate you getting us squared away and to sea in record time.”

Kramer appraised Scott’s haggard looks, the fresh dressing on his hand, the bruises and scrapes on his face. What he saw underscored the seriousness of their mission. “Captain, every man aboard knows what we have to do and how important it is that we find the Red Shark. Our families are at home and, well, it’s personal now.”

It was personal, Scott thought, personal for himself, Kramer, the officers and enlisted men aboard the Reno; for Radford, Ellsworth, the president, and the thousands of Americans who would die if the attack succeeded; for the millions who would survive and whose lives would be changed forever; for the cities that would be left in smoking ruins after nuclear attacks by terrorists.

He thought about Tracy, hopefully safe in Tokyo, surprised yet not surprised that he cared and felt a sharp pang of guilt. The bond they’d re-formed in the short time they’d been together in Tokyo was tenuous yet real, even though he’d forgotten all about her in the rush to save Fumiko and break open the terrorist plot. He could have called Tracy from Yokosuka, told her to wait for him, but why should she? Now it was too late for him to do or say anything that would change her mind.

“Captain, excuse me.” It was the Reno’s plot-control coordinator, Lieutenant Rodriguez. “Request a nav fix.”

The Reno had steamed west of the Ryukyu Trench and was now speeding over a region of deep ocean bottom faults and uplifts. In another hour they would cross over into the wide continental shelf, a relatively featureless and flat abyssal plain under the East China Sea. Ocean bottom contour position plotting, which relied on feature-matching for its accuracy, was at a disadvantage over smooth surfaces. A nav fix from global positioning satellites would update the Reno’s inertial navigation system and thereafter provide extremely accurate plotting data that would prove essential if and when the Reno made contact with the Red Shark.

“Let’s take a look,” Scott said.

He and the two officers moved to one of the two plotting tables aft of the watch station. The quartermaster of the watch had taped tracing paper over the navigation chart and on it had penciled in the Reno’s track. The quartermaster pointed to a dot that represented the Reno’s current position on the track.