Mitch Rapp 09 - Protect and defend by Vince Flynn

Author:Vince Flynn [Flynn, Vince]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller, Fiction, General, Political, Thrillers, Suspense Fiction, Fiction - Espionage, Terrorism, Political Fiction, Rapp, Mitch (Fictitious character), American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Intelligence Officers, Iran, Mystery & Thrillers, Special operations (Military science)
ISBN: 9780743270410
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2007-10-30T07:00:00+00:00

33

U.S.S.VIRGINIA, GULF OF OMAN

Captain Pete Halberg was a prime candidate for an ulcer. The forty-five-year-old graduate of Annapolis never lost his temper. Not with his wife, not with his six kids, and never with his crew. He internalized stress by shoving it down into the pit of his stomach, where he fed it with black coffee. Usually ten cups a day or more. His only saving grace was the twenty minutes he put in on the heavy bag in the bowels of his sub’s engine room. That and the bottle of Tums antacid tablets that he went through every week. On this particular morning the pucker factor on the bridge was running high.

Command of any submarine was an intensely stressful, yet rewarding job. Commanding one of America’s newest fast attack submarines was in a league all by itself. The United States Navy had entrusted Halberg with the two-billion-dollar technological marvel and given him 134 submariners to lead. The cruise had been fairly routine up until two days prior when they’d received a flash message from Submarine Task Force Commander or CTF 54. Their orders were to leave the Dwight D. Eisenhower Strike Group, which was on patrol in the Persian Gulf, and proceed to the Gulf of Oman, where Halberg and his crew were to locate and track one of Iran’s three Kilo-class subs that had left port in a hurry.

Shortly after midnight they’d followed a Liberian supertanker filled with crude through the Strait of Hormuz and entered the deeper waters of the Gulf of Oman. At 377 feet the U.S.S.Virginiawas seventeen feet longer than the depth of the main shipping channel. There wasn’t a sub in the world, other than her sister ships, that could come even close to her capabilities, but she had her limits. Halberg and his entire crew had breathed a collective sigh of relief when they reached the deeper water of the Gulf of Oman. TheVirginia’s strength lay in her stealth, firepower, and speed. To use those, however, she needed room to maneuver. If the Persian Gulf was a six-lane divided highway on a dry sunny day, the Strait of Hormuz was a narrow dark alley on a dark rainy night. Twenty-seven miles at the narrowest point, it was dotted with islands and packed with shipping traffic. Most of its supertankers were nearly 1,000 feet long. The currents were quick and once outside the main shipping channel there were countless uncharted wrecks.

Based on the information provided by CTF 54, Halberg and his executive officer, Dennis Strilzuk, agreed on the most likely location of the Kilo. They set up a patrol grid and then Halberg turned over the command duty officer watch to the exec so he could grab a few hours of sleep. Four hours later he woke up refreshed and returned to the bridge. Traveling at five knots on an easterly heading, the lightweight wide-aperture array picked up the Kilo running at the same speed in the opposite direction, parallel to the Iranian coast.

It was a predictable maneuver that they had seen the Iranians use dozens of times.

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