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  It was purely by chance that one of the Chinese roughnecks working on the weather deck amid the forward port-quarter pipe rack saw the junk, the Ling Chow, in the fading copper sea. But he couldn’t claim credit for seeing its flag— Vietnamese, a yellow star on a blood-red background — which was flying upside down, the universal distress signal, which meant its radio must be down, or perhaps it had none. The man who first recognized that the flag was upside down — two of the star’s five points on the bottom instead of at the top— was Danny Mellin, working a hundred feet high from a monkey board and safety harness up by the derrick man’s console and upper racking arm and carriage.

  Danny pulled out his walkie-talkie, its aerial snagged for a moment in a strap of his Mae West, and told the pilothouse where Chical’s Chinese captain could get a fix on the damaged junk. The Chical’s captain, seeing the junk’s minisail shredded, ordered several Chinese and American roustabouts to go starboard amidship to lend a hand bringing the junk alongside. Of course, there was always a risk involved in the South China Sea, infested by modern-day pirates who, among other outrages, had preyed so mercilessly on the Vietnamese boat people trying to escape. While the Chical helped the Ling Chow, drilling would have to be suspended for a while as the extra pitch and roll of the disabled junk, its bamboo sail battens or stiffeners creaking in the wind, would only add to the swells, sloshing against Chical’s starboard side.

  The sick man they brought aboard the MV Chical was strapped down but nevertheless thrashing about in great pain, his face drenched in sweat. He jabbered incomprehensibly in a Vietnamese-Chinese border dialect, and the first aid man aboard the drill ship, a roughneck called Perowitz from New Jersey, was sent to have a look-see to calm him down. Apart from possible fever — Perowitz pressed the automatic thermometer’s green button and stuck it in the crewman’s mouth — there seemed to be no serious internal problems. Perowitz asked the man what he’d eaten, and his fellow seaman said some rice and fish. Had the rest of the junk’s crew eaten the same?

  “Yes,” a man who seemed to understand a bit of English replied.

  And had they all had something to drink? “I mean, drinking the same stuff?” Perowitz pressed.

  One of the men who set the stretcher on the drill ship’s deck nodded urgently. “Yes, yes, Tsing Tao.” It was the Chinese beer that everyone drank on the Chical as well.

  So the best Perowitz could suggest, seeing how much pain the man was in — the man indicating a lot of gas, his hands arcing over his belly in the shape of a huge balloon — was perhaps a good shot of Pepto-Bismol. A couple of minutes after he had given the man the dose, it looked as if it was working.

  “Ah, you’ve got a bellyful of gas — that’s all.”

  Unknowing brown faces looked at him in the twilight

  “You know,” Perowitz said, now in a pantomime mode. “Gas!”

  “You drill for?” one of the junk crew said.

  “What?” Perowitz laughed. “No, no — not gas like we drill for. You know — uh, fart!”

  They were still looking blankly at him when he bent forward and made a fart noise with his mouth. Their immediate recognition was hailed with raucous laughter and a splash off the stem. Mellin could hear the splash from high up near the derrick man’s console, since they had stopped drilling. He radioed down to the well deck foreman. “Hey, Randy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Somebody threw something over. You tell those junk boys not to dump any of their garbage. Could get caught up in our gear under the moon pool.”

  “You got it,” the deckhand said, and made his way over to the Chical’s starboard side.

  Only one or two of the dim figures he called out to understood what he meant, and the captain of the junk said it wouldn’t happen again. “Sorry.” And that impressed several of the Caucasian crew aboard Chical, because they’d always believed Asians usually couldn’t handle the r sound. At that moment oil began rushing up, spilling out like a fine spray as if it was a signal — when in fact it was pure coincidence. The rickety bamboo gangway leading to the Chical was suddenly covered in crew from the junk, and Perowitz fell — shot through the head — the crew from the junk running past his body, the twilight spiked by the barrels of their AK-74s.

  The first stutter heard by Mellin came from the radio shack just aft of the wheelhouse. The operator, another American, was dead even before his bullet-riddled body hit the deck. His blood made the decking slippery for those who quickly ran to the pilothouse, spraying its glass. Then he finished off the three men on watch once inside. One of the junk men’s AK-74s jammed as the Chical’s captain, revolver in hand, emerged from his cabin aft of the port side of the wheelhouse. He got one shot away, hitting an attacker, who fell while another brought a short broadsword down hard and fast in a sweep, disemboweling the captain.

  Even with all the noise going on, the engine room crew of the Chical didn’t hear a thing, the chief engineer checking the generating room gauges and making sure the tension on the stabilizer anchor chains wasn’t excessive, the chains helping to hold the ship as near one spot as possible. The first engine room man to know anything was wrong was a Virginian, Gary Sales. Having just emerged from a forward hatch onto the well deck, he was struck on the head by a short broadsword, as the captain had been. It split his skull, his grayish brain oozing out beneath the bright deck lights as his body slumped and fell back down to the generating room with a sickening thud.

  Danny Mellin was already on his two-way radio yelling a warning. Hearing it, several men working on the aft well deck around the pipe rack dropped what they’d been doing and retreated toward the galley. But they were slaughtered en masse by a dozen of the junk’s crew who had climbed up the stern ladder and then, taking over the heliport, raced down the gangway to the living quarters to butcher over twenty more Americans and Chinese asleep or resting off watch.

  Now, in the darkness, Mellin understood the splash he’d heard: one of the junk’s crewmen had probably jumped off into the water prior to boarding the Chical aft of the living quarters and galley. But then why hadn’t he heard more splashes? And it suddenly occurred to him, as he heard the zing and whack of 5 .45mm rounds spitting up from the deck, that they were climbing up the rig, toward him.

  He had only one way to go: not up higher into the rig— they’d keep climbing or firing until they got him — and he couldn’t go down. He’d have to jump the hundred feet into the sea instead. But it had to be timed right, when the Chical rose and shifted from port to starboard on a long swell; otherwise, if he didn’t get enough angle, he wouldn’t clear the ship’s deck. He heard another burst of AK-74, a sound which, along with that of the older AK-47s, he’d never forgotten from his days in ‘Nam, and he heard the perspex in the derrick man’s console splitting apart as it was raked by automatic fire. Then the deck lights went out. Red tongues of fire spat up into the derrick, ricocheting, zinging, and whining about.

  As the Chical rolled to port, Danny clicked the safety harness release button and, as hard as he could, pushed himself off, jumping out into the darkness that smelled now of cordite and salt air. He hit feet first but at an angle, his lower back slapping the water like hard rubber on concrete. He thought he’d broken his spine. Sighting the spray of phosphorescence as he splashed into the water, the junk crew members fired into the general area, a hail of hot, sizzling 7.6mm and 5 .45mm splattering about him.

  Mellin began a slow breaststroke away from the ship, refusing the temptation to pull the C02 cartridge on his Mae West. An inflated vest would keep him afloat but would prevent him from swimming, leaving him totally at the mercy of the current, which was flowing away from the coast of Brunei beyond the rig, back farther west toward more of the Spratlys. He’d wait and dog-paddle as long as he could, until the junk had cast off, then maybe he could swim against the current and back toward the drill ship.

  It was hopeless and he knew it. The current was too strong to swim against, and he was swept slowly but inexorably out
to sea away from Chical. His only hope now was to be picked up by one of the Chical’s weatherproof life rafts, which could hold up to sixteen men.

  This too was a vain hope, for back aboard the Chical the junk’s crew was systematically destroying every Beaufort life raft canister and lifeboat on the drill ship, mainly with grenades. Out of the sixty-four men, from geologists to cooks and drillers, roughnecks and roustabouts, crane operators and mud loggers, welders and motormen, fifty-three were dead, leaving only eleven — including Mellin — who had made it off the drill ship before the junk crew could get to them. And now only six of these were still alive, the other five already taken by sharks. The predators, attracted by the turbulence of ship bumping against ship and the smell of blood in the water, killed the five — all Americans — in a feeding frenzy around Chical’s stern.

  Now almost a quarter mile away, Mellin could hear the heavy-throated chugging of the junk under way, and nearer him he could dimly make out the jagged outline of oil-smeared planks.

  In the North Sea he would have been dead already from hypothermia, but in the warmer waters of the South China Sea his death would be a lingering one, dying of dehydration in a world of water, unless he were taken by sharks.

  Then he saw a high cone of roiling fire, its orange tongue curling hundreds of feet high, immediately followed by the thunderclap of an explosion. The wellhead had been blown, just as Saddam Insane had blown the wells in the Middle East. It didn’t make sense. What did they want?

  Now he heard popping sounds, the junk crew using the madly dancing reflections of the wellhead fire on the water to take potshots at the Chinese and American bodies floating about the Chical, the junk men making sure mat all were dead. And in the strange penumbra of firelight, Mellin could see the black scimitars of shark fins cruising just below the surface.

  Danny thought of his wife Maureen and promised God that if he were saved, he’d go back home and never leave the United States again. He hadn’t been this scared since ‘Nam, and he began to pray again, “Our Father…” for if nothing else, that would keep him awake, something in his gut telling him that if his fatigue passed into sleep, it would be the sleep of the dead.

  Now the Mae West light went on, the salt having activated it, doing what it was supposed to. Immediately Danny cupped his hand over the bulb, cutting himself somehow on a nail in the loose raft of planks, leaving blood in the water. He jerked the C02 cord and the Mae West inflated, but he kept his right hand over the bulb lest the junk crew spot the pinpoint of light in the vastness of the sea and come to kill him. He remembered a prayer he’d always said with his two daughters when they were children:

  … tender shepherd, hear me…

  Through the darkness be Thou near me,

  Keep me safe till morning’s light.

  Beneath his hand, held over the light as if he was taking the oath of allegiance, he could feel me pulsing of his heart. It was so faint that for a moment he thought it had stopped.

  * * *

  The sound of the wellhead explosion — traveling at least four times faster in water than in air — raced up east of the Palawan Trough over the two thousand fathoms on the eastern edge of the South China Basin, through Luzon Strait past Taiwan and west of the Ryukyu Islands Trench, where it was heard by a Sound Surveillance System listening post on Taiwan’s east coast and another on the southernmost tip of Japan’s southern island of Kyushu. From the SOSUS listening post on Kyushu the message passed through the chain of command from the Seventh Fleet’s command ship, Blue Ridge, the message marked immediate to CINCPAC–Commander in Chief Pacific — copy to Pentagon, Secretary of Navy, Secretary of Defense, and on to the President as Commander-in-Chief.

  1662 HOURS RECEIVED SUBSTANTIAL SONAR BLIP STOP ESTIMATE SOURCE SPRATLY ISLANDS STOP LATITUDE APPROXIMATELY 9 DEGREES NORTH LONGITUDE 115 DEGREES IO MINUTES EAST STOP SONAR TRACE INDICATES MAN-MADE EXPLOSION NOT VOLCANIC STOP MESSAGE ENDS

  CHAPTER THREE

  The White House

  The message had merely mentioned an explosion, and they’d have to wait till morning Brunei time to find out exactly what was involved, but the mention of the Spratlys had Admiral Reese, Chief of Naval Operations, already off and running. The suspected explosion, if it was manmade, could be sabotage on one of the oil rigs or drill ships. If so, it opened a hornet’s nest of geopolitical significance.

  “Mr. President,” CNO Reese said, “there are two consequences that directly resulted from the earlier administration’s defense cuts and lack of strategic overview in East Asia. Number one, they cut the budget first, as usual, then tried to figure out strategy. Back to front.”

  “Stern to bow, Admiral,” the President joshed.

  Reese allowed himself a brief smile in return, but his mood was too braced for relaxing this day. “The second point, Mr. President, is that because of our cutbacks and our loss of Subic Bay and Clark Field in the Philippines, we are perceived by the East and Southeast Asian countries no longer as ‘stayers.’ I mean by this that our loss of a solid base from which to move into the South China Sea, despite the Seventh Fleet’s berthing facilities in Singapore, creates the perception in these Third World countries — and not only in them — that this is not a United States determined to stay for the long haul. And in that mode of uncertainty, we have individual countries starting an arms race in the region. They figure if the U.S. doesn’t have a firm foreign policy — or rather, a policy determined primarily by strategic responsibilities instead of budget deficit considerations — then they have to look after themselves. Can’t say I blame ‘em.”

  The admiral turned to a wall chart on naval growth in the Pacific. “China makes no bones about the fact that she wants blue water capability. She’s been hankering for it for a long time. She hasn’t got it yet, but in our perceived absence she means to have it as quickly as possible. SIGINT tells us that the Chinese plan to be ready with carriers, the new Luhu guided missile destroyers, and the new Russian Kilo derivative submarines by 2007. That’s not far away, Mr. President. We had hoped we might continue to cut the U.S. deficit by selling them some of our used carriers and other warships. Problem is, Russia is offering bargain-basement prices in China and Southeast Asia. Most importantly, potential buyers know the Russians can establish ‘through-life’ support and maintenance, because the Russians, ironically, keep building them while we’re cutting back and are unable to promise any kind of ‘through-life’ warranty.”

  The admiral’s assistant flicked over the China chart to one of Japan. “A further measure of these Asian countries’ independence is the fact that the Japanese Defense Force, for example, now has the best ship-carrying air defense system.”

  “In Southeast Asia?” the President interjected.

  “No, sir,” the CNO replied. Maybe he was getting through at last, he thought. “The best in the world.”

  “Could I cut in here?” asked David Noyer, director of the CIA.

  “Please,” the President invited.

  “Mr. President, in addition to what the admiral says, the agency is convinced that Japan has a three- to four-month capability to develop nuclear bombs.”

  The President tried not to show any surprise, but his assistant, Bruce Ellman, spotted the telltale push of the leather-bound blotter atop the desk, where he was glancing at the cable from the SOSUS posts.

  “In twelve to sixteen weeks,” the President said, “you’re telling me Japan could field nuclear bombs?”

  “Yes,” Noyer replied. “In November ‘ninety-three they began importing over twenty tons of plutonium for their fast breeder reactors. At least that’s what they told us it was for. They already had over five hundred pounds of the stuff by the late eighties.”

  “That shipment from France?” Admiral Reese put in.

  “Correct,” Noyer confirmed.

  Reese shook his head disgustedly. “Those damn Frenchmen’d sell arsenic to their mothers if they could.”

  The President ignored George Reese’s well-kno
wn Franco-phobia, which stemmed from France’s refusal to let the U.S. Air Force fly through French airspace en route to bomb Khadafy in Libya years before.

  “And,” Reese added, “more to the point, I’ll warrant that our intelligence agency isn’t the only one that knows of the Japanese capabilities.” He looked at Noyer. “No offense to the CIA, David.”

  “None taken, Admiral,” Noyer assured him. “You’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head. Ever since Shinseito — the conservative New Life party in Japan — gained power over the socialists, they’ve helped push the Liberal Democratic party majority in support of a more active role for the Japanese Defense Force.”

  “The Japanese offense force,” the President posited.

  “Well, whatever they want to call it, Mr. President, I don’t think you can fault them, with that maniac North Korean within nuclear- and Scud-hitting distance of Tokyo.”

  “No,” the President agreed, “you can’t, but if I get your drift, gentlemen, you’re telling me that because of our lack of a firm foreign policy — compliments of the previous administration — Japan as well as the Southeast Asian countries we’ve mentioned in the area feel more vulnerable because of our withdrawal from the Philippine bases. So they’re seeking the capacity to defend themselves should North Korea or anyone else start a war. They also see Japan rearming in the face of increased Russian presence in the East China Sea, and know North Korea probably has nuclear weapons. In any case, I seriously doubt that their Southeast Asian neighbors’ intelligence agencies don’t know about Japan’s nuclear ability too — and that alone would frighten the bejaysus out of any of Japan’s neighbors.”

  Noyer and Reese nodded in unison, with Reese turning to the next info chart “Exactly. Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, China were all attacked by Japan in World War Two when her oil and raw materials ran out after FDR’s embargo. And if this Spratly Islands issue blows up and there’s a shooting gallery in and around the trade routes from the Middle East that pass through there, then Japan couldn’t last very long without acquiring new oil and raw materials that come through to her via the South China Sea.”