Warshot (The Hunter Killer Series Book 6) Don Keith (red seas under red skies TXT) 📖

World War II.’ Some might not find it all that fascinating of a read, but I certainly did. And remarkably on target.”

“I spent most of the term in the Nimitz Library researching that bad boy,” Ward told her. “While my buddies were chasing girls. But the truth is, I found it fascinating, how China has built and maintained such a strong military after falling to the Japanese, even with such obvious and rampant corruption within. But how did you find...?”

“You had one particular source I assume you relied on heavily.”

Ward looked hard at her. She had found his term paper. She had read it. She remembered it. Surely, this enigmatic spy lady did not know his top-secret source for some of the paper’s best conclusions.

“I listed my sources. That’s an academic requirement.”

“But you neglected to credit one. Your godfather. Admiral Tom Donnegan. Who, at the time, just happened to be head of Naval Intelligence.”

“But how would you know that?”

“He told me.”

Jim Ward blinked, trying to clear his head. “You do, indeed, have some good sources, Miss Li. It is ‘Miss Li,’ right?”

She ignored his question.

“Indeed, I do. And some more of my very reliable sources assure me that Yon Ba Deng actually created this entire episode as a double-reverse trap, one set to catch Soo Be Xian. President Tan Yong actually bought this ploy and he is now setting up Soo for destruction. And when you are the President of China, that is easily accomplished. My sources also tell me that Tan Yong is planning to move Yon Ba Deng further up the ladder to power. He appreciates Yon’s network and willingness to do whatever is necessary to accomplish his own goals. The president is perfectly happy to enable him to do so as long as they mesh with his own purposes.”

“So, Yon Ba Deng is our target?”

“My, aren’t you the eager one?” she chided him. “There is much to Yon Ba Deng’s game that we don’t know yet, and certainly far more to President Tan Yong’s. But first we need to bring an end to this war being fought for nothing, the attack on Dongsha. And that, Lieutenant Commander, is where you...”

The Taiwanese doctor suddenly stood and stepped from his seat at the other end of the compartment, far enough away he could not have heard their conversation.

“Please excuse me, but the pilot has informed me that we are fifteen minutes out from landing at Taipei Songshan Airport. I need to make certain that our patient is ready for landing.”

The physician was already pumping up the blood pressure cuff on Ward’s arm.

Li once again showed Ward those intense eyes that the SEAL had already classified as mysteriously alluring.

“Get well quickly, Mr. Ward,” she told him.

There was still not even a hint of another smile.

20

The moonless night had been especially dark as the USS Cheyenne glided silently past Breaker Point, which marked the mouth of Pago Pago Harbor. Even running on the surface, the submarine was all but invisible as it headed out to the open sea. She had quickly cleared the near-shore reefs before reaching deep water. There, Cheyenne had immediately dived and disappeared.

The short run over to Niue took eighteen hours. As was typical in this part of the world, the sun set very quickly just as Cheyenne’s periscope broke through the smooth surface of the sea. Bart Knox, Cheyenne’s skipper, looked around only long enough to make sure they were alone in this patch of ocean. A few minutes later, a tiny Black Wing Submarine Launched Unmanned Aerial System popped up and rose vertically into the darkening sky. The SLUAS’s two X wings unfolded while the twin tails rotated upright and the device’s tiny pusher propellor sent the bird high into the air above the submerged vessel.

Weighing barely four pounds and with a wingspan of just thirty inches, the drone was all but invisible against the night’s canopy of stars. Nearly silent, too. The battery-powered electric motor hardly made a buzz. For all practical purposes, for anyone who might be watching, the Black Wing was not even there.

A fire control technician sitting in front of the command-and-control system module onboard the Cheyenne communicated with the Black Wing using a secure digital data link. The drone was directed toward the island of Niue’s south shore.

The bird’s sophisticated EO/IR system could see through the gathering gloom of night even better than an owl searching for prey. Images of the Chinese marines and their Tongan allies popped up on the submarine’s large screens and were immediately relayed back to Naval Intelligence, to Jon Ward and his intel analysts in Washington, DC. The armored vehicles and the AAW missiles that had been brought ashore were also clearly visible, and those images were also sent at the speed of light to those in Washington who knew precisely what they were seeing.

The little bird made several passes over Hanan Niue Airport before starting a thorough recon of the rest of the island, using a pre-programmed grid-search pattern. Four hours later, Jon Ward had a thorough idea of what US Marines would encounter should the decision be made to send them in.

Since the Black Wing had completed its mission and its batteries were waning, the quiet little bird was headed back out to sea to crash in deep water where it would never be found.

And Jon Ward had already conferred with the necessary people and was on the phone to Joe Glass.

Ψ

The KH-11 Advanced Keyhole satellite passed two hundred and fifty miles above the Western Pacific Ocean, sending its imagery to a geostationary communications satellite hovering twenty-three-thousand miles higher up, over the equator. From there, the data was linked back to the National Reconnaissance Office in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The NRO then fed their images, at near real time—and as they were being simultaneously archived to several server farms around the world—to the White House situation room, buried deeply beneath the familiar building located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Inside that room, President Stanley Smitherman