Don Pendleton - Red Frost

“What do you mean by ‘holes’?” Tokaido asked.

“There’s an overlap of radar bounce-back, called a shadow or convergence zone, that creates a blind channel thirty-three nautical miles wide. Subs can hide in it and evade detection. The Russians have perfected the welding of titanium for their sub hulls, which makes them harder to locate through magnetic anomaly. Some of their ships can make forty-two knots submerged to three thousand feet.”

“Our ships are fast, too, and our people are absolutely top notch,” Price countered. “In fact, there’s no comparison.”

“No argument there,” Kissinger said. “Equipment and personnel aren’t the problem. It’s mission creep. Between the end of the cold war and the start of the second Iraq war, our fleet’s patrol duties were reevaluated and redefined. The hostile threat from Russia was downgraded, and some of our subs were taken off SSBN patrol and converted into platforms for launching conventionally armed missiles against military targets in the Near East. Fewer patrols means bigger holes.”

“Sorry, it still doesn’t compute,” Kurtzman said. “Harder to detect isn’t the same as undetectable.”

“I can’t explain why UDAR and resonance scatter didn’t pick up that ship well out to sea,” Kissinger said. “At this point there’s not enough data to know what happened. After Able Team arrives on scene we’ll have more to work with.”

“Their ETA isn’t until 9:15 a.m., PDT,” Brognola said. “We can’t just sit here and twiddle our thumbs. From what the President told me, the Russians are denying all knowledge of the sub or the nature of the incursion. They are denying it’s even their ship.”

The chief of the cyberunit spoke up. “Hunt and Carmen, let’s search the DOD’s secure database and try to ID the ship from the hull configuration. Pull up everything about sub designers and shipyards. I’ll check the satellite surveillance library and backtrack all departures from the known SSBN and SSN bases. Maybe we can figure out where this sub came from and when it left its home port.”

“We don’t know its route after it entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca, either,” Tokaido said. “I’ll go over the sat-feed system replays, second by second. That might tell us something about the sub’s mission.”

“Did the President make it clear why he was calling in Able Team on this?” Price asked Brognola.

“He wants all means at his disposal.”

“Able can do things the white ops can’t,” Wethers said.

“Like shoot reporters?” Delahunt joked.

“Too many talking heads, not enough bullets,” Kissinger said.

“John’s right,” Kurtzman said. “This is going to be a three-ring circus. You can bet news helicopters from Seattle are already en route. There’s no way to stop the media even if the Navy seals off the airspace. You can see that wreck from Vancouver Island in Canada, twenty-six miles away.”

“Able’s mission isn’t a cover-up,” Brognola told his people. “The President wants someone on the ground who can cut through the bullshit. He anticipates problems with overlapping responsibilities in this crisis.”

“Turf wars between Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, Navy, Coast Guard and state and local police?” Delahunt asked.

“You got it,” Brognola said.

“Under the circumstances, Able Team is bound to step on some toes,” Kurtzman said. “And they never step lightly.”

“The President doesn’t care about that. He wants the job done fast, and he wants it done right.”

Tokaido pointed at the wallscreen. “Here come the good guys,” he said.

Live-feed video showed four Navy helicopters descending on the Hook in tight formation. As soon as their wheels touched the Coast Guard air station’s landing pad, men in black jumped from the bay doors.

They hit the ground running.

Port Angeles, Washington,

7:02 a.m. PDT

As Commander Reuben Starkey and his ENR crew hurriedly off-loaded gear from their helicopter onto a pair of handcarts, the thirty-two-man SEAL team closed on the grounded sub with autoweapons up and ready. Half of the commando unit took up bracketing-fire positions along the Hook’s riprap, the rest leapfrogging each other to the underside of the looming black bow.

A tight, excited voice crackled in Starkey’s communication headset. It was the SEAL team leader, Captain Bradford Munsinger. “ENR, we’ve got severe crush damage forward,” he reported. “Background rads are within acceptable limits. We’re going up.”

Commander Starkey and his four subordinates stopped shifting equipment; they turned and watched the SEALs in rapt silence. Like Starkey, the others were all career Navy men. In the seven years they had worked together at sub base Bangor, they had handled various highly classified and potentially catastrophic nuclear emergencies in Puget Sound, along the western seaboard and in the Pacific theater. Despite that experience and expertise, Starkey found himself cotton-mouthed by what lay before them this morning.

Spitless.

As far as Starkey was concerned, the unheard-of incursion into U.S. territorial waters and breach of national defense systems took a backseat to more immediate and pressing problems. A little slice of America, the Olympic Peninsula mill town, stood utterly defenseless behind them. The nuke-powered vessel was on the beach and on fire. There was no way of telling what kinds of armament the ship was carrying. The commander could feel the vibrations of the rampaging engines and prop through the airstrip’s tarmac, even though the submarine was three hundred yards away.

Stepping out from under the protection of the hull, the SEALs took turns firing grappling hooks onto the deck, more than four stories above them. With the sub’s sail and escape-trunk hatches zeroed in by flanking fire, black-gloved men shouldered automatic weapons and scrambled up the knotted ropes. The first SEAL to land boot soles on the steeply slanted deck was Bradford Munsinger. Following his hand signals, the others covered the forward and aft escape hatches point-blank with their 9 mm H&K machine pistols.

“Radiation is still within acceptable limits,” Munsinger announced into his mike. “Come on up, boys, and join the party.”

ENR stayed put. He wasn’t talking to them.

Starkey and his crew watched the commandos under the bow start shinnying up the ropes. As they did so, Munsinger mounted the sail’s exterior ladder with two SEALs following hard behind him. After a rapid ascent, the trio disappeared over the rim of the bridge into the uncoiling black smoke.

A moment later the captain said, “ENR, we have position and control. The bridge hatch is closed.”

A head and shoulders appeared above the sail on the windward side, a tiny pimple on the enormous silhouette.

“The view from up here’s nice, but the air quality sucks,” Munsinger joked, his voice breaking, his breathing hard and ragged.

The man standing next to Starkey shielded his mike with his hand and said, “Cap sounds like he’s been huffing helium.” Dave Alvarez was a tall, lanky, fish-white nuclear engineer, and he spoke with a heavy New Jersey accent.

“Munsinger’s way pumped,” Chuck Howe agreed, turning his head to spit a gob of brown tobacco juice onto the tarmac.

“I know just how he feels,” Alvarez said. “That sound you hear isn’t castanets. It’s my knees knocking.”

“The smoke seems to be coming through vents in the deck plating up here,” Munsinger continued after a pause. “The sail’s hull is hot to the touch. Still no substantial radiation.”

“Initial rescue procedures are a go, then,” Starkey said into his mike.

“Roger that, ENR,” Munsinger said.