Nightwatch by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.

33

Four-star General Drake Nason, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, slammed the phone into its flight-secure cradle in midsentence.

Shit! He should have said something more to Lizzy before hanging up. They’d both heard the alarm, and now she’d be left to wonder if her husband was about to be shot out of the sky.

Maybe he was.

Or just had been.

As he didn’t disintegrate into a fireball and could still breathe the cabin air, he cautiously decided that the latter hadn’t happened. And he sure wasn’t going to find the answer to the former sitting here in his cabin.

Yanking on his jacket out of habit, he buttoned it as he hurried aft—a habit from years of having to present command authority in every situation. Past the small conference room where Miranda’s team had spread out to attack the plane crash investigation. He didn’t know anything, so he didn’t slow down, only saying, “Stay here!” as he continued through the empty briefing room.

“What have we got, Bill?” He pulled up short beside the watch officer’s desk.

“Desk Eight. Area security. Picked up a sub-launched missile.”

Drake moved to the closest open seat. If they were in for hard maneuvering, he’d be battered to a pulp for standing here like some jarhead—he was a former 75th Ranger and he knew what action meant. He sat and snapped in the full five-point harness.

Everyone else was doing the same as they hit their seats. Several were still rushing to their desks. At least he was ahead of them.

“Not at us,” Brigadier General Bill Mitchell informed him. “At least not yet. Hit a Chinese container ship down below us.”

“Can we see it?”

Bill tapped a knuckle on the screen at his desk as he continued holding the intercom phone to his ear.

Drake took a slow breath and looked down at the screen.

Bill leaned over. “Sharp operator. On her way to being our best. That’s a sub-fired missile, which she picked up visually at two hundred klicks. Harpoon, IDAS, a Russian SS-N-19 Shipwreck, who can tell. Wait, what?” He was listening on the phone again.

Drake spotted the man on the other end of the line, about halfway down the cabin. But he appeared to be interpreting for whoever sat beside him, all Drake could see was the top of the woman’s head as she bent down, studying her screen.

“She says the launch, acceleration curve, and that the homing radar only lit up during the last four seconds of the terminal flight phase strongly indicates a UGM-84 Harpoon.”

“One of ours?”

“We sell those to a lot of people, Drake.”

“The question stands.”

Bill picked up a second line and punched the button for Sub Ops before holding it to his other ear. “Who do we have in the area?” He asked it without preamble, then grunted at the reply. “No one, Drake. Nearest is fast-attack Virginia-class boat half a thousand kilometers south, unless we have a rogue boomer up here.”

The ultimate nightmare. Missile sub captains were under orders to go out there into the deep dark—and get lost.

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