The Trident Deception Read online

Six months earlier, as he prepared to transfer from the USS Alabama at the submarine base in Bangor forty miles to the south, Culver had been hesitant to accept a tour of duty at what many considered an irrelevant command. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the SOSUS arrays on the ocean bottom had been declassified and the twenty-two monitoring stations with the nondescript title of “Naval Facility” subsequently closed. Many thought the underwater arrays and associated facilities had been relegated to monitoring whale movements and underwater seismic activity, but nothing was farther from the truth.

  Culver had learned the mission of today’s Undersea Surveillance Command remained focused on detecting submarines transiting the ocean depths. The combination of fixed SOSUS arrays, shore-processing facilities, and SURTASS ships with their deployable arrays had become known as the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System, and the data was now collected and monitored at two Naval Ocean Processing Facilities, one at Whidbey Island monitoring the Pacific arrays and the other in Dam Neck, Virginia, overseeing the Atlantic. The arrival of the SURTASS ships in the 1980s and their subsequent upgrades in the 1990s and early 2000s, along with improvements to the SOSUS arrays on the ocean bottom, had vaulted the capability of the IUSS into the twenty-first century, ensuring the system remained capable of detecting the newest diesel and nuclear submarines prowling both the deep ocean and shallow littoral waters.

  With the ability to track not only submarines but also surface ships throughout the oceans without fear of losing the vessel to cloudy skies or other satellite interference, IUSS had also been integrated into the nation’s homeland defense, providing continuous maritime surveillance for the Department of Homeland Security. Culver looked up at the watch center entrance door, emblazoned with the official command slogan beneath its bronze seal:

  IN GOD WE TRUST—ALL OTHERS WE TRACK

  This morning, Culver had detected nothing in his area of surveillance just east of the Marianas, and not even his fourth cup of coffee kept him focused on the monitor in front of him.

  A few stations away, coffee cup in hand, Master Chief Ocean Systems Technician (Retired) Fred Harmon was preparing to take down one of the consoles for maintenance. Setting down his coffee, he opened the side panel of workstation seven to replace a recalcitrant AIC card.

  On the monitor in front of Petty Officer Culver, a bright white trace materialized, disappearing ten seconds later. Donning his headphones, Culver selected the affected array, rewound the recorded signal, then hit Play.

  It was a loud, metallic screech. Very unusual and definitely man-made. But it wasn’t a trawler winch, not even a jammed one, fighting miles of cable and fishing nets. This sound was something he had never heard before. “Fred, got a minute?”

  Harmon looked up from the console he was working on. “What do you need?”

  “Come listen to this.”

  Culver rewound the recording and handed the headphones to Harmon, who held one earmuff to his ear, his coffee cup back in his other hand. “Go ahead.”

  Culver pressed Play and Harmon listened intently, then put his cup down and placed the headphones properly over both ears. “One more time.”

  The retired master chief listened again, his eyes squinting as he concentrated. A few seconds later, he handed the headphones back to the sonar tech.

  “You have any idea?” Culver asked.

  Harmon nodded. “When I was stationed at NAVFAC Antigua, I heard that same noise from a Trident submarine on her shakedown cruise off Port Canaveral. You just picked up a ballistic missile submarine trying to open a jammed missile hatch.”

  Harmon pulled up a chair. “Let’s take a look at the other arrays and see if we can triangulate the submarine’s position.”

  1 DAY REMAINING

  56

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  At a table for two in the back of Whitlow’s on Wilson Boulevard, Christine sat next to her ex-husband, joining him for lunch in what was once their favorite restaurant. Now that the Kentucky had been sunk, the ordeal that had brought them back together had come to a close, and they would soon go their separate ways again. Christine had accepted Dave’s invitation; a glass of wine at their old hangout was exactly what she needed to begin letting go of the unimaginable horror that had almost occurred, and what they had done to avert it.

  “I’m glad this happened,” Hendricks said before he downed the last of his beer. As he placed the mug back on the table, he was startled by Christine’s shocked expression. “Oh, no, not that. What I meant was, I’m glad I got a chance to spend some time with you again.”

  Dave sat close to Christine, his arm across the back of her chair, his body leaning slightly toward her. She could tell he wanted to wrap his arm around her, pull her close. But instead, he was careful not to touch her. The end of their marriage had been difficult for both of them, neither wanting to admit to failure, neither willing to remain in a relationship that was spiraling out of control. They settled their differences as best as possible after the divorce, their love fading to a cool but comfortable friendship. Their jobs brought them into new and disparate social circles, and they ran into each other less and less frequently. They hadn’t seen each other for three years before Hendricks showed up, out of breath, in the Pentagon corridor.

  This crisis had thrown them together again, and Christine was surprised she enjoyed working with her ex-husband, spending time with him. She had to admit he was still an attractive man. Her hard feelings had dissipated in the years apart, and she felt drawn to him again, both emotionally and physically. He obviously felt the same way, but the barriers between them were still too strong. If she had been any other woman, she was sure he would have asked her out by now. And properly, too. Today’s lunch at their old hangout was his feeble attempt at a date; two friends catching up on the last three years, nothing more.

  Christine avoided discussing personal issues, ensuring the conversation focused on work and mutual friends. But after a glass of wine, the desire that began to surface in his office returned even stronger, and her mind drifted to the first two days of their honeymoon, fifteen years earlier.

  They had landed in Rome late that night, finally arriving at their hotel, the luxurious Rome Cavalieri in the heart of the city, enclosed in fifteen acres of lush Mediterranean parklands. But something had gone wrong with their reservation, and they had no room. After a half hour wrangling with the front desk clerk and hotel management, Dave waving their travel reservations in his hand, they reached a compromise: They would be upgraded to a suite, but not for two days. This weekend marked the beginning of the Romaeuropa Festival and every room was occupied, with the first vacancy on Monday.

  Due to the festival, all the reputable hotels were booked, and the honeymooners were forced to spend their first two days in Rome in a fleabag hotel. Dave apologized profusely to Christine for their squalid accommodations, but they really weren’t his fault.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  Christine’s thoughts returned to the present. “I was thinking about our first two days in Rome, at the Esplanade. How disgusting that hotel was.”

  Dave grinned. “You should know. If I remember correctly, you had ample opportunity to study the paint peeling off the ceiling above our bed.”

  “As did you, I seem to remember.” Christine recalled how exhausted they were after that first weekend, even though they never left the hotel room. As deplorable as their accommodations were, they didn’t venture out of the hotel until they checked out two days later.

  “I have to admit,” he replied, “I’ll never forget that weekend.”

  The waitress cleared the dishes and dropped off the check next to Christine. Dave reached across the table, snatching the check before she could claim control. His chest brushed against her shoulder in the process, his face close to hers, just for an instant. She smelled his cologne, felt the warmth of his arm against her back. Dave wore cologne only on special occasions; he had clearly hoped today’s meeting wo
uld mark a new beginning and not the end of their recent reacquaintance.

  His eyes searched hers for a moment. Then he looked away, unwilling or unable to express his thoughts. He pulled out his wallet, selected a credit card, and slid it inside the billfold with the check.

  * * *

  It was just after 2 P.M. when Dave held the restaurant door open for Christine, then followed her out onto the sidewalk. She had enjoyed their lunch together even more than expected. The conversation had flowed easily, with the exception of the brief silence after he grabbed the check, and she wondered if this was the beginning of a renewed relationship. Perhaps they would get back together, after he mustered up the courage to broach the subject.

  As they crossed the street toward Hendricks’s car, a screech of tires caught Christine’s attention. A silver sedan sped toward them, less than fifty feet away and increasing speed. The driver kept his head down, his face unidentifiable.

  Christine knew instantly the driver wasn’t going to stop. Or even swerve.

  The sedan bore down on both of them, only seconds away from crushing their bodies against its front grille. Dave stood frozen in the middle of the street. Christine lunged toward him, hitting Dave in the chest with her shoulder, knocking him back toward the sidewalk. Her momentum carried both of them just inches clear of the speeding car. Hendricks landed on his back, his head smacking into the pavement, and Christine rolled to a stop a few feet away as the sedan swung a hard right onto Fillmore Street, disappearing from view.

  She scrambled over to him. His eyes were glazed over, staring up at the sky. “Dave!” She touched his cheek gently. “Are you okay?”

  His eyes slowly cleared, eventually focusing on her. “I’m all right, I think.”

  Christine helped him to a sitting position, and he rubbed the back of his head, wincing as he found a tender spot. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “You okay?”

  “Yep.” Christine answered curtly as she pulled him to his feet.

  “Damn idiot!” Hendricks exclaimed, glaring down Wilson Boulevard. “I bet he was texting his girlfriend.”

  Christine didn’t reply, her anger building. The driver had barreled directly toward Hendricks, standing in the middle of the street, and they both would’ve been killed if she hadn’t reacted as quickly as she did. This wasn’t just a case of a preoccupied driver hazarding the public. She was certain.

  And she knew exactly who was behind it.

  57

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  After being waved through the southwest gate to the White House, Christine’s blue Ford Taurus screeched to a halt on West Executive Avenue, outside the entrance to the West Wing. As she stepped out of her car, greeted by a stiff wind and thick black clouds rolling in from the west, her eyes flickered in anger. One of the two Marines guarding the entrance opened the door for her, and the two men exchanged glances as the president’s national security adviser stormed up the West Wing steps toward the chief of staff’s office.

  Hardison looked up from his computer as Christine swept into his office like the approaching storm, slamming the door behind her. She didn’t slow down as she headed straight for him. Stopping suddenly at the edge of his desk, she planted both palms on the smooth surface and leaned halfway across the desk toward him, her face twisting in anger as she screamed at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing!”

  The president’s chief of staff leaned back in his chair, taken aback by the enraged woman glaring at him. “About what?”

  “You know damn well what I’m talking about!”

  Hardison shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Perhaps if you explained—”

  Christine’s face turned red, the muscles in her neck straining as she yelled at him. “Dave and I were almost run over by a car outside Whitlow’s! We came within inches of being killed!”

  Hardison laughed. “And you think I had something to do with it? Some idiot almost runs you over and you think I’m responsible?”

  “You’re damn right I do! You made it clear from the beginning that Dave was a threat to this administration, and I have no doubt you’ve taken matters into your own hands.”

  Hardison interlocked his hands across his waist. “I assure you I had nothing to do with this, Christine.”

  He appeared unfazed by her accusation. If anything, he seemed amused, the corners of his mouth twitching upward. His flippant attitude ignited Christine’s rage. She’d had enough of Hardison, and she was finally going to do something about him. “You’ve gone too far this time, Kevin. I’m going to Director Larson, and you’ll be done as chief of staff by the end of this week.”

  The smile disappeared from Hardison’s face as he sprang to his feet, towering over her. His voice dropped a notch as he spoke. “Don’t come in here and threaten me, Christine, especially over some paranoid delusion you’ve created about a hit-and-run driver.” A cold look settled over his face.

  Christine stood erect, taking a step back from Hardison’s desk as he continued, “Whoever almost ran you over probably wasn’t paying attention, not some assassin I hired to take Hendricks out. Now why don’t you go back to your office, collect your thoughts, and get back to work? I’m sure there’s something you’ve neglected to attend to these last few days.”

  There was an uneasy silence as they glared at each other, broken when the secure phone on Hardison’s desk beeped.

  As he answered it, Christine mulled over his reaction. He seemed genuinely surprised and offended by her accusation. But she had watched him lay it on thick before, feigning surprise or ignorance. She just couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth. He was too good a liar.

  Hardison hung up the phone, flexing his hand as he released the handset. “That was your alive-and-well ex-husband in the Command Center,” he said with a hint of sarcasm. But what caught Christine’s attention wasn’t the tone of his voice. It was the sudden fear in his eyes as he continued. “Our SOSUS arrays detected a damaged missile tube hatch being opened. It looks like the Kentucky survived. The best guess is they’re determining the extent of damage from the torpedo.” He paused for a moment before he added, “They’re not far from Emerald.”

  Christine’s anger dissipated with the news. The Kentucky hadn’t been sunk and was closer than ever to launching. “I’ll be over at the Command Center,” she said. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  58

  PENTAGON

  23 HOURS REMAINING

  “We picked up the metallic transient near the Marshall Islands.” Captain Brackman spoke quietly as he stood between Christine and Hendricks in the deputy director’s office, examining the electronic map of the Pacific Ocean at the front of the Current Action Center. Christine studied the red circle expanding slowly into a teardrop shape heading west as Brackman continued, “We’ve biased the projection of the Kentucky’s position by limiting her possible courses from two-one-zero to three-three-zero. We know she’ll continue heading west toward Emerald.

  “Unfortunately,” he added, “she’s definitely west of our naval forces.” Brackman pointed to a column of blue circles to the east of the red teardrop, “Our surface ships are too far away to catch the Kentucky, even at ahead flank. We’ve reassigned the P-3Cs to the leading edge of the Kentucky’s AOU, but their field density is porous due to limited sonobuoys, and once the Collins approaches the AOU, we’ll have to pull them out, since they could engage the wrong submarine.”

  “Where is the Collins now?”

  “The Collins is the blue half circle to the west of the teardrop.”

  On the monitor on the far wall, the forward edge of the Kentucky’s area of uncertainty was almost touching Emerald, with the Collins’s blue semicircle a few inches to the left.

  While Christine examined the display, Hendricks joined the conversation. “You need to talk to the president, Christine. We need to inform Iran. I understand the reasons for keeping this quiet up to now, hoping we could turn this off. But the Kentucky has made it past all thr
ee layers of our ASW barrier, and our main hope right now is the Collins. At this point, I doubt we can stop the Kentucky from launching. And once she does, our ballistic missile defense systems will be overwhelmed. You’ve got to convince the president to inform Iran.”

  Christine reflected on Hendricks’s words for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll talk to him. I’ll head over to the White House, then come back here until this is over, one way or another.”

  Before she left Hendricks’s office, she looked back up at the display. She wondered who would suffer and die. Would it be the innocent people of Iran or the men aboard the Kentucky? Everything hinged on whether they could find and sink the Kentucky before she launched.

  As Christine studied the monitor in front of them, Brackman correctly surmised what she was thinking. “As you can see, Kentucky will enter Emerald as early as midnight tonight, depending on where she is in her AOU. Let’s pray the Collins finds her before she does. We just sent her the news the Kentucky survived. She’ll be downloading it off the broadcast anytime now.”

  59

  HMAS COLLINS

  22 HOURS REMAINING

  Nine hundred miles east of the Northern Mariana Islands, Murray Wilson stood next to Brett Humphreys in Control as the Collins secured snorting, her battery recharge complete, the Officer of the Watch turning slowly on the periscope as they prepared to head deep. The Collins’s painfully slow pace grated on Wilson. Unlike American fast attacks that could have made the entire run east at ahead flank, the Collins spent half her time at periscope depth at ten knots, recharging her batteries between high-speed runs.

  Although the Kentucky had been sunk, the Collins was still headed east at maximum speed. Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicles were being sent from Australia and San Diego in the event the Kentucky had come to rest on a shallow spot on the ocean floor. It was unlikely, but there was always the possibility. Finding the Kentucky would be the hard part, and Wilson hoped the Collins could help. As he checked the clock on the starboard bulkhead, calculating how long before the submarine would arrive at the position the Kentucky was reported sunk, his thoughts were interrupted by an announcement from Radio.