Ted Bell - Phantom

His stomping ground, SOUTHCOM, encompassed the Caribbean, Central and South America, and surrounding waters. U.S. Fourth Fleet was originally established in 1943, a time when America desperately needed a command in charge of protecting against raiders, blockade runners, and enemy submarines in the South Atlantic.

The speaker above Youngblood’s head crackled.

“Sonar contact!”

“Talk to me, Jonesie,” the skipper replied.

“Conn, Sonar, new contact bearing two-zero-one. Positive ID on her screws. It’s the Nevskiy, sir. Designate contact Whiskey 7–7.”

“Conn, aye.”

“Conn, Sonar, something really weird is going on out there. Whiskey 7–7 proceeding at periscope depth, speed eighteen knots. Looks like she’s lining up on that big cruise ship. Dead abeam, and-holy Jesus!”

“Sonar, Conn, what the hell was that sound?” the captain said to the Texas ’s sonar officer. He’d been monitoring sonar through his headphones. “Sure sounded like tube doors opening to me.”

“Aye, sir. Nevskiy just opened her number one and two forward tubes.”

“This has to be a dry fire exercise, ain’t it? Damn well better be. That or World War Three.”

“Dry fire, aye, but the outer doors were just opened. Tubes flooding now, skipper. Not like any exercise I’ve ever seen. Looks more like the real thing.”

“What in damn tarnation is that old fox Lyachin thinking about? Sinking a goddamn American cruise ship? Insane!”

“No, sir, I wouldn’t think so.”

“Hell, I wouldn’t think so either, but he’s been pinging the hell out of it.”

“Target of opportunity, sir. Gotta be just practice.”

“What’s his speed and course, Sonar?”

“Speed eighteen knots, depth sixteen, maintaining course two-zero-one and-holy mother of God!”

“Talk to me, Jonesie; tell me I ain’t hearing what I think I heard…”

“Live fire, sir! He just let go two fish!”

“ Nevskiy, Nevskiy, Nevskiy, this is the United States submarine Texas. Confirm the two fish you just launched are dummy warheads, over… shitfire, Russian bastard’s not responding. Nevskiy, Nevskiy, do you read?”

“Fish proceeding to target, sir.”

“Can you ID them as to type?”

“Negative, I can’t get a clean enough-”

“Damn it! Get me COMUSNAVSO, pronto!”

“Aye-aye, sir, coming up,” the comms officer said, putting through a flash emergency signal to the U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command.

“This is Admiral Walsh.”

Youngblood grabbed his mike and started barking.

“Admiral, this is Captain Flagg Youngblood, SSN 75, with an urgent message for the chief of naval operations. Please inform the CNO we got a Russian sub down here just fired two torpedoes at the American cruise ship Fantasy. Sending her coordinates now. These fish could be deadheads, but we’ll know that soon enough. Tell the admiral I want to report an-”

An underwater concussion rocked the Texas. Then another. Followed by the muffled sounds of two huge explosions.

“Correction. Tell him America has just been attacked by the Russian nuclear submarine Nevskiy, sir. I will notify Coast Guard Miami and USCG Air Station Borinquen, Puerto Rico, to initiate immediate search and rescue in Sector Five. I anticipate heavy casualties, sir. Over.”

“You better know what the hell you’re talking about, son,” the admiral said, and he was gone.

The captain sat back in his command seat and looked at his XO, Lieutenant Bashon Mann.

“Bash, that’s one crazy bastard, Lyachin,” he said, lighting up a fat Cohiba torpedo stogie with his Zippo.

“Insane, sir. All those poor people…”

“Take her up, Bash. We’ll pick up as many survivors as we can. Then we’re going out there to find that sonofabitch and stick a couple of firecrackers up his ass.”

“Start World War III?”

“The Russians already started World War III, remember?”

“Captain, with all due respect-”

“Calm down, Mr. Mann, I’m just… what’s that word… venting. But, by God, I’d like to get in a shooting war with that lunatic. Sonar, Conn, where the hell is that sonofabitch Lyachin?”

“Went deep, sir, three hundred meters, speed twenty-four knots, course oh-two-zero.”

“Roger, sonar. That cowboy’s headed for the trench, getting out of Dodge.”

“Roger that, sir. I would, too.”

Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin was sound asleep in the vast owner’s stateroom of his yacht, Red Star, in the Mediterranean when his private Kremlin line lit up, making a soft pinging sound that wouldn’t go away. It was three o’clock in the morning. You can run from the Kremlin, but you can’t hide, he thought. Hardly an original notion but a deadly accurate one.

He rolled over and reached for the receiver, girding himself for more bad news from his second in command, Dmitry Medvedev. No one ever called at three in the morning with good news. No one ever called at any hour with good news. The curse of power.

Exhausted, he’d just returned from Beijing. A week of grueling meetings with Premier Jintao and other high-ranking Chinese Communist Party officials, trying to bring these madmen to his point of view. The CPC was schizophrenic about forging alliances these days. The Chinese, in their new arrogance, saw themselves as the superpower heir apparent.

One day they were leaning toward their natural ally, Russia; the next, they were attending lavish state dinners at the White House, being wooed by the Americans. The Americans had one big advantage over him. They were indisputably China’s biggest market. Money, it was always money.

“Yes,” Putin said, freighting the word with icy irritation.

“Please excuse the hour, but I had to call you,” Medvedev said. “Very bad news, I’m afraid.”

“You heard from Beijing? No trade agreement?”

“I only wish. Anything from them is better than this.”

“One moment, let me turn on the light… go ahead.”

“Ten minutes ago I received a call from Admiral Vladimir Sergeevich Vysotsky. Our navy commander in chief informed me of a serious incident that occurred two hours ago in the Caribbean Sea. It seems that one of our submarines in that theater, the Nevskiy, has just torpedoed and sunk an American cruise ship carrying five thousand passengers, en route from Miami to Jamaica.”

Medvedev was met with stunned silence at the other end of the line.

“Sir?” he said.

“Yes, yes, I’m here. Who the hell is the captain of that fucking boat? I should know that, I know.”

“Lyachin.”

“Lyachin? He’s one of our best commanders. Has he gone rogue? Insane?”

“Neither, it would seem, although I cannot vouch for his sanity. Naval Operations has been in radio communication with the sub, spoken with him at length. He claims absolutely no responsibility for this action. He says the ship was the victim of some kind of ‘force,’ an inexplicable takeover of all the boat’s systems, including weapons.”

“A ‘force’? Whatever the hell that means, it was this ‘force,’ I suppose, that fired two torpedoes at an American flag vessel?”

“It sounds crazy, I agree.”

“Call Admiral Vysotsky. Tell him I want the Nevskiy to return to home port immediately. As soon as she arrives in port, I want her boarded and every member of the crew arrested and placed in a maximum-security lockdown for individual questioning by KGB political officers. I want Lyachin flown to Moscow for interrogation. A supernatural force took over his submarine? His excuse for this blunder is already reason enough to put him in front of a firing squad. Understood?”

“Completely. Is there anything else I can do at this point, Prime Minister?”