Warshot (The Hunter Killer Series Book 6) by Don Keith (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📗

you are getting back into fighting shape. You got a drink for an old, dehydrated sub sailor?”

The bodyguards, who had been working out with Jim, discreetly disappeared into the next room, almost as if they had been forewarned about the visit from the Navy’s top spook. The SEAL stepped over to a small refrigerator and grabbed a couple of beers.

“I’m developing a real liking for these Taiwanese beers.” He offered a bottle to his father. “Here, try this. It’s called Formosa Bird Beer.”

Jon frowned incredulously but took a swig anyway.

“Hey, not bad. Not bad at all.”

The elder Ward glanced around the plush setting, then stepped over to the expansive plate glass door and out onto the small balcony. He took another big drink of the beer as he leaned against the rail and looked out over early-evening Taipei, stretched out below him like a carpet of blinking lights. Jim followed his father out onto the balcony and stood silently next to him for a bit.

“Very nice,” Jon Ward finally said. “Certainly has a better view than any of the patient rooms at Walter Reed.”

“Okay, Dad. This place is not bugged. It’s swept every couple of days. Go ahead and tell me what you need to tell me.”

Jon Ward reached into his pants pocket and handed his son a small slip of paper.

“Son, give this number and password to Li Min Zhou, then flush it. Tell her to call it, but only on a secure line. The people there will give her the URL address to a secure website. There she will find real-time location information for all of the Chinese submarines within five hundred miles of Taiwan, and that includes all those boats that have so suddenly been put to sea in the last couple of days. And tell her that several pallets are being unloaded at the Taoyuan Airport FEDEX air cargo terminal with her name on them. I suggest that she gets them to her navy.”

Jim looked sharply at his father. “Dad, how in hell did...?”

“Don’t ask. And tell Miss Li not to ask any questions about the source of the data either.”

“Understood.”

Jon Ward drained the last of his Formosa Bird Beer. He turned to his son, grabbed the SEAL’s shoulder with his free hand, and looked him directly in the eyes.

“Jim, for the first time in my life, I’m thankful you didn’t follow your old man into submarines.”

Ψ

Forty miles south and east of the Tongan island of Niuatoputapu and ten miles below the ocean’s surface, the Tonga Plate, under unimaginable geological stress, abruptly slid upward a few meters. In the process, it shoved the Pacific Plate down about the same distance. The movement occurred along a fault a few dozen miles long. The resulting tremor was enough to rattle windows in Hihifo, the small village that claimed to be the capital of Niuatoputapu. Few islanders even noticed. Such minor quakes were a regular occurrence there.

It was enough to register on seismographs in Sydney and Wellington. Even the Taiwanese seismic sensor, over five thousand miles away, detected the shock.

Geologists in those spots made notes after observing the tremble on their instruments—far from any significant human population and no threat to produce a tidal wave—but they had no way to see the other effects of the fracture at such depths. Not the new contour of the ocean floor along the plate. Nor the white-hot magma that began to ooze up through the crack in the sea floor like blood from a very nasty wound.

24

Joe Glass stepped out of his office onto the catwalk. Being up on the 05 level of the Chesty Puller gave him a real front-row seat to watch any ship coming into or departing Pago Pago. Today, he was watching the one piece of firepower that Big Navy could spare for his needs, if you could reasonably call it firepower. But the rest of the fleet, with the real ships, was flexing its muscles and churning up the waters off of Taiwan. This was all that was available unless he wanted an ocean-going tug.

The Independence-class littoral combat ship Canberra steamed past Breakers Point and into Pago Pago Harbor. The ship’s twenty-five-hundred-mile trek from Pearl Harbor had taken nearly a week, but Glass at last had a ship that he could put to good use. The mottled-gray, all-aluminum trimaran attracted plenty of attention from pleasure boaters as it slowly made its way down the channel and moored alongside the Chesty Puller. The little ship’s masts barely came level with the ESB’s massive helo deck.

Glass gazed down at the warship and mentally began to inventory its capabilities. The little fifty-seven-millimeter cannon on the bow might be useful against King Two-for-One’s ancient patrol boats but nothing any bigger. The Naval Strike Missiles she carried would be of very little use. There simply wouldn’t be any targets for those bad boys.

Glass nodded. He decided that he might at least use the Canberra as a high-speed, sea-going pickup truck, just like a long-ago Chief of Naval Operations had described it.

Ψ

The P-3C Orion anti-submarine aircraft—tail number Three-Three-Zero—taxied out to take its place in line for takeoff. They were sixth in line, behind a flight of four F-16s, each of them fully armed and heading to the fight over Dongsha Island, and yet another P-3C. Six more aircraft were soon in line behind Three-Three-Zero, awaiting their turns to get airborne.

Pingtung Air Base was the closest airfield that Taiwan had to support the fight at Dongsha. That meant it was now serving as the temporary home to most of Taiwan’s attack and fighter aircraft. Every revetment and tie-down space was crowded with planes and the equipment required to service them. Landings and takeoffs were nearly constant.

Finally, Three-Three-Zero swung onto runway two-six, spooled up the four big Allison turbos to full power, then roared down the runway and into the hazy morning air. While the F-16s climbed high into the atmosphere and headed southwest, Three-Three-Zero stayed down on the deck instead and headed