Piranha: Firing Point

Bruce Phillips had a narrow face, strong chin, a flattened boxer’s nose, with several days’ growth of beard.

His hairline was so far in retreat that he wore a tight crewcut. As a quirky consolation prize, he had a nicely shaped head, or so Abby had always maintained, back in the past that seemed like another life. Phillips was short, barely breaking five feet, but muscular, his deep chest and narrow waist somehow compensating for his lack of vertical stature.

Phillips splashed water on his face, wondering if it made any sense to shave, then decided not to. He went into the head between his stateroom and Roger Whatney’s, his executive officer, where he stepped into the shower, letting the heat of it on his shoulders bring him back to life. To an empty life, he thought.

Through the rush of the water he could hear Whatney’s south-of-London accent: “Skippah, we’ve got an urgent call to periscope depth. Seems the admiral wants a little chat with us.” He paused. “Captain, are you okay? Sir?” “I’m okay, Roger,” Phillips said, shutting his eyes, feeling a headache starting behind his eyes. “I’ll shave and dress and meet you in my stateroom in three minutes.”

“Aye, sir, I’ll set up the video.”

ford island pearl harbor naval station pier 5

“I don’t think I believe this,” Captain Paul White said as he looked at the thousand-foot-long garbage barge.

Trash was piled up forty feet high the full length of the barge, tied to an oceangoing tug by several thick lines. “It looks like garbage. It smells like garbage. It has seagulls all over it, like garbage.”

“It is garbage,” Pacino said. I told you I could sneak the SSNX out of here right under the cameras of the news-hounds.”

“You’re telling me that — thing — is a security cloak for the sub?”

“Grab your bag and follow me,” Pacino said, stepping on the gunwale of the huge barge. A few feet into the garbage pile Pacino reached for a sheet of waste plywood — which came open on a hidden hinge like a door.

He disappeared inside, his voice calling for Paully to follow him. A tunnel fabricated of plywood and sheet plastic extended deep under the garbage pile, lit by light bulbs hung from the overhead. The tunnel ended in a tall doghouse over the circle of a hatch. A sentry came to rigid attention and saluted Pacino. Turning to the control panel against the plywood wall of the doghouse, the sentry punched a mushroom button. The hatch, propelled by hydraulics, opened, the circle of it shining in a warm yellow light. Pacino yelled, “Down ladder!” and tossed his bag down, then lowered himself out of sight into the submarine.

“I don’t believe it,” White said.

PACIFIC OCEAN

578 MILES EAST OF TOKYO, JAPAN

ALTITUDE: 47,000 FEET

“Didn’t anyone say what this was all about?” Captain John Patton asked, his voice distorted by the oxygen mask and the acoustics of the intercom.

“Sorry, sir,” the pilot said from the forward seat of the swept-wing F-22 supersonic Navy fighter. “They just told me to get you to Pearl Harbor ASAP.”

“So who gave you those orders?”

“Air Boss.”

“Did he say where he got them?”

“Supercinc-Pac, sir.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Supreme Commander-in-Chief Pacific, the admiral in charge of the entire U.S. military in the Pacific and the invasion force on the way to White China. The second force, anyway.”

“Sorry to sound stupid, but I’ve been out of it for a while. I was socked away in a bare room with no TV, and goddamn it, I have no idea what’s going on. Who is this admiral?”

“You ought to know, sir. He’s one of you bubble-head submarine guys, Pacino.”

“Pacino’s the supreme commander?”

“Yessir.”

And he wanted to see Patton badly enough to fly him out on a supersonic fighter, Patton thought with a sinking feeling. How would he explain the loss of the Annapolis’!

Pacino and White had set themselves up in the VIP stateroom aft of the executive officer’s stateroom.

The room was multipurpose. The aft wall was taken up with two large bunks that went into the bulkhead like Pullman compartment sleepers, with a pulldown door that covered up the clutter of them. On the opposite end was a double desk. The center of the room was taken up with a table surrounded by six leather seats, and on the wall opposite the door was a full-width videoconference console. The widescreen television was on, the sound muted, the channel selected to Satellite News Network, which showed a reporter in a studio reading news.

Pacino had commandeered the large leather seat directly opposite the videoconference console, his papers, chart displays, and Writepad computer laid out on the table surface. He was studying the charts, dictating quietly into the Writepad, writing messages to the fleet, occasionally glancing up at the video widescreen. Paully White moved about the room, barking into a phone, bringing in fruit and Cokes, talking to people in the passageway outside the room while Pacino worked. The tactical problems revolved through his mind, over and over again. From this a plan was starting to evolve.