Red Shark

Scott frowned. “Computer model, eh?” It always sounded so easy, so clean. But it never was. Computers didn’t fight back and kill people for real. “You say Fat’s not going to be expecting visitors… how can you be sure?”

“Would you be?” Jefferson said. “Hell, it’s his private island. He and Jin think no one knows what’s going down. It’ll be over before they know anything happened.”

“Fat’s a drug runner and knows better than to let his guard down. And if you think we can run this on a fast clock, that’s a prescription for disaster.”

Jefferson gave him a hard look and was about to speak when Ellsworth said, “There he is.”

The monitor flickered. A grossly obese Wu Chow Fat appeared on a white sandy beach. Points of light reflecting off water glimmered like miniature donuts, proof that the digital photo had been taken with a mirror telephoto lens from long range, possibly a sub.

Fat’s tiny head, perched atop a mound of blubber, bobbled. He was assisted by a lithe young woman as he moved with heavy plodding steps through the sand. Fat hanging from his body in thick folds all but hid a pair of gargantuan yellow swim trunks. His arms and legs, their girth enormous, looked like overinflated balloons that might burst at any moment. He continued down the beach, supported by his companion, until out of camera range.

“Well, they got his name right,” Scott said.

“Don’t be misled by what you see,” Fumiko said. “Fat is smart. He’s also a cold-blooded killer.”

Scott munched a sandwich while Fumiko squared away her computer gear and tidied up cables.

Radford, smoking, said huskily, “According to the information Ms. Kida has from JDIH intercepts, this meeting on Matsu Shan is scheduled to take place in fifteen days. That doesn’t give us much time, so Admiral Ellsworth has worked up a schedule that has absolutely no room for slippage but will get the job done.”

“Right.” Ellsworth looked up from a document he was reading and said, “We have a SEAL team on standby at Pearl Harbor. Colonel Jefferson will fly on ahead tonight and join them. You, Scott, will follow him out ASAP, go over the plan, then do a workup with the team for an over-the-beach op. You’ll get all of this in your op-orders from ComSubPac. For now, consider yourself detached from the Tampa and reassigned to the Reno in Pearl. She’s been fitted out with an ASDS and everything else you’ll need for the job.”

The ASDS was the Navy’s Advanced Seal Delivery System, a 65-foot mini-sub designed to covertly insert SEALs ashore from a nuclear attack submarine.

“The Reno? Sir, she’s one of the oldest Los Angeles — class boats we have. What kind of shape is she in?”

“The Reno’s had a refit and she’s like new. Quieter than a Seawolf. And she’s got a new BSY-2 sonar suite and BQG-5D wide aperture array. She’s been through the pre-overseas movement and is surge-ready.”

“Weapons load-out?”

“Mark 48 ADCAPs.”

“Tomahawks?”

“Can’t give you everything.”

“Crew?”

“Sam Deacon’s troops.”

“Who’s exec?”

“Rus Kramer.”

“I hear Kramer’s good.”

“Tops. Now, you’re senior to Deacon and in charge of the mission, but you know Navy regs — he owns the ship. He’ll work with you, just don’t put his nose out of joint. Any questions?”

“No, sir.”

Scott knew it would be a close-run op with no margin for error. Success would turn on the application of a new weapon, the MAV. He also knew that little time had been allocated for training with Jefferson and the SEALs, to form a bond with them, to check out on weapons he’d not handled in a long time, and to prepare himself for the rigors of insertion from an ASDS. He hoped that his prior Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, or BUD/S, undertaken at the Naval Special Warfare Center in Coronado, California, would see him through any crisis. Like riding a bicycle or driving a stick shift, it was in-grained, a thing you never forgot how to do.

The others went on ahead. Jefferson lugged Fumiko’s gear, which was packed in black aluminum cases, to one of the cars. She stopped Scott in the town house’s foyer and said, “I know you have doubts about the mission.”

Scott, pleased by her show of concern, said, “I always have doubts about a mission like this one.”