Red Shark

The Type-18 hummed out of its well. Deacon snapped the handles down, then put the crosshairs on the White Dragon. He pressed the red bearing transmitter button on the focusing grip. “Bearing — mark.”

“Zero-four-two.”

“Final bearing and shoot — tubes one and two.”

Kramer repeated and confirmed the command from the weapons-control panel, then ordered, “Fire One.” A moment later he ordered, “Fire Two.”

Forward, a surge of compressed air and a whine like two runaway buzz saws confirmed that the Mk-48s had surged out of their tubes.

“Tubes one and two fired electrically,” Kramer confirmed.

“Down scope!”

Like the classic shooting of fish in a barrel, Scott thought as he swallowed to equalize the rise in air pressure from the release of the two torpedoes.

“What’s the time to run?” Deacon asked.

“Under three minutes,” Kramer said.

Time inched forward. Deacon, who was worried that the torpedoes running in tandem might premature, glanced at Scott and said, “So far so good.”

Two minutes after launch, Kramer reported, “Both torpedoes have acquired Sierra Two.”

Deacon ordered, “Cut the wires; shut the outer doors.” He gave Scott a thumbs-up, then issued a command that swung the Reno away from the doomed junk.

Wu Chow Fat backed into a chair designed to accommodate his girth and sat down behind a rosewood desk bolted to the deck in the White Dragon’s main cabin. As big as a corporate boardroom, the cabin was outfitted with handwoven carpets, antique ceramics, porcelains, as well as all the latest electronic gadgets, including HDTV.

Fat drank chilled white wine and tried without success to calm down while he watched his two female consorts primp and preen for their arrival at Pearl Mountain, the private estate of his friend Heung Kim Wong. The assault on his compound by an unidentified force had left him badly shaken. Not pirates, not a rival, certainly not Chinese. Americans. His world was in tatters, and he had been lucky to escape alive! Fat glanced at the gleaming brass compass repeater mounted on gimbals by his desk. Its needle, hovering over the lighted compass card, indicated that the White Dragon was heading toward a cluster of small islands off Mainland China at Sensha Wan, where Heung Kim Wong would give him refuge. Fat had to warn Marshal Jin and Tokugawa, but not while at sea, where enemy ears had been pricked. Instead he’d use Wong’s overland network.

Fat turned his attention to the smashed micro air vehicle laying on his desk, along with two hard drives and a stack of mini-DVDs. He examined the MAV, turning it over in his hands, marveling that something so small could fly like an insect and capture video images while doing it. The perfect spy machine, he thought. And made in the USA. Friends of his in Beijing would pay a fortune to lay hands on it.

Then a curious thing caught his eye: Two brilliant, white-hot balls of fire had mysteriously blossomed in the center of the cabin. He had only a nanosecond to grasp their significance before they expanded and consumed everything in their path.