A Fierce & Terrible Storm 1.Winter Dragon by Henry Martin

Author:Henry Martin [Henry Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Blue Shark Publishing
Published: 2011-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

White House, Washington, D.C.

Sandra stood in the Oval Office with the rest of the national security team of the United States of America and watched the Harry S Truman burn. They all stood around the TV (no one sat, not even the President) transfixed by the horrible images flashed around the world by CNN.

A great black column of smoke billowed out from the carrier. She was down by the stern, Sandra noted clinically. So flooding. One of her escorts, a Perry-class frigate, had pulled alongside Truman, a desperate child trying to save her dying mother.

An utter and unbreakable silence reigned in the office. None of these men spoke, not one of them. They all just stood there, their bodies tense, watching.

The tape was horrific and unthinkable. Even while Sandra watched the images, part of her didn’t really believe it. A Nimitz-class carrier, the most powerful warship in the world, dying on national TV. It was surreal. It was impossible.

Without knowing it, she clenched her fists at her sides.

Impossible.

Then she saw one of the fig’s small boats at the bottom of the screen. The boat crew was pulling limp forms out of the ocean.

Bodies.

And suddenly that made it all too real.

Her throat tightened painfully and her face felt warm. Her chest hurt. There was a wrongness in her gut.

She’d felt this way only twice before.

Once, when she watched a pair of airliners slam into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Once, when a Virginia state trooper had come to her door to tell her about a stupid, pointless traffic accident that had taken place not half a mile from her warm, safe home.

In a low, angry voice wavering with raw emotion, Adler said, “We are going to put a stop to this.”

“Yes, sir,” said Admiral Moore crisply. His eyes never left the screen. Sandra could see the grief written in the taut lines of his face. Then he turned to look at the President and suddenly the grief vanished, replaced by a cold, unquenchable fury. “We can put Carl Vinson in the East China Sea in seventy-two hours. We can have Stennis and Lincoln there forty-eight hours after that.”

“Do it,” Adler snarled.

“Taiwan has offered to allow us to stage tactical aircraft out of Chiayi and Hsinchu,” said General Hobson.

Sandra snorted. “I bet they have,” she muttered.

Hobson shot her a black look full of hatred.

Three or four of the other men looked at her, their mouths drawn into tight lines, their eyes narrowed. No one said anything for a moment.

Then Hobson turned back to the President. “We can deploy eight squadrons of F-22s out of Nellis, Mountain Home, and Elmendorf. With back-up from Taiwan’s F-16s and Mirages,” he glanced at Sandra for a second, then turned back to the President, “we can put 500 tactical aircraft in the air.”

Adler jerked his head down in a tight nod.

“Sir, we recommend changing the rules of engagement,” said the Secretary of Defense.

“We’d like to establish a submarine kill-zone within a radius of 20,000 yards of our high-value units,” said Moore.

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