Contents

About the Book

About the Author

Also by Patrick Robinson

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Cast of Principal Characters

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Copyright

About the Author

PATRICK ROBINSON is the author of four previous international bestselling novels: Nimitz Class, Kilo Class, HMS Unseen and USS Seawolf. He is also the author of several non-fiction bestsellers including True Blue (with Dan Topolski) and Born to Win. He is the co-author with Admiral Sir Sandy Woodwood of One Hundred Days. He can be reached through his web-site at www.patrickrobinson.com.

About the Book

It is 2007, and three supertankers are ablaze in the Strait of Hormuz. World oil prices skyrocket. US Military Intelligence concludes that behind this catastrophe at the gateway to the Persian Gulf stands Iran, assisted by an expansionist China. Joined by new, young naval intelligence officer Lt. Jimmy Ramshawe, Admiral Arnold Morgan threatens the Iranian Navy with annihilation, deploying the US Navy to Hormuz along with the nuclear submarine, USS Shark, carrying two teams of Navy SEALS. With the US Navy distracted, China is able to unleash an attack on Taiwan, America's weak ally. The situation is critical as mutiny occurs onboard the USS Shark, jeopardising the entire operation by preventing the SEALS from assisting the increasingly desperate Taiwanese Air force ...

Also by Patrick Robinson

Classic Lines

Decades of Champions

The Golden Post

Born to Win

True Blue

One Hundred Days

Horsetrader

Nimitz Class

Kilo Class

HMS Unseen

USS Seawolf

This book is respectfully dedicated to everyone who opposes the reduction of US Naval budgets, especially those politicians willing to reverse the process.

Acknowledgements

As usual I have a list of serving officers who have no desire whatever to be formally acknowledged as my advisers. The subject is always too secretive, too classified in its nature, and my sources too senior for identification.

Do I want to be named in one of YOUR books? Are you kidding! And yet they help me every year, ensuring that I am able to tell my story, handing me advice and detail, which they believe will give the public a greater appreciation of the armed heroes of the United States military.

Mostly my land attacks are planned with the help of former Special Forces officers. My insights into the diabolically secretive Intelligence world of Fort Meade are provided by a couple of former spies who seek only to highlight the sheer professionalism of the place.

However, at sea, my principal adviser, as always, is Admiral Sir John ‘Sandy’ Woodward, the Task Force Commander of the Royal Navy fleet which won the Battle for the Falkland Islands in 1982.

On, and under, the surface, Admiral Sandy plots and plans with me to help bring readers right into the control room of the submarine. Without him, I could not bring reality to the subject of underwater warfare.

I did not trouble him with the final details of the court martial, but rather relied on legal sources in the US Navy, who again did not wish to be named.

They joined a whole range of new advisers who wished to protect their anonymity: the oil tanker captains who expressed their opinions on their highly combustible cargo; the oil company executives who tried to guess what they would have done in the face of crisis; the Aeroflot exec who told me all about the Andropov, not knowing the purpose for which it was being used!

One of my rare identifiable sources is the excellent geopolitical writer, traveller and scholar Charles Stewart Goodwin of Cape Cod who provided research on the ancient Chinese fleets and the contents of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. He knows how grateful I am. His own writings on global politics provide for me an unfailing guide.

For insights and expertise on the subjects of reincarnation and post-traumatic stress, I have to thank Dr Barbara Lane of Virginia, whose own book, Echoes from the Battlefield: First-Person Accounts of Civil War Past Lives, is probably the best of its kind. Dr Lane’s wide knowledge of these two subjects, plus a certain sure-footedness in planetary matters, provided research of the highest order. In matters of battle stress, her own views dovetailed almost precisely with those of Admiral Woodward.

I also thank my friend Chris Choi Man Tat, whose suave and courteous manner running Kite’s, Dublin’s best Chinese restaurant, quite conceals the fact that he was once bosun on a gigantic crude-oil tanker plying between the Gulf and the Far East. His insights on the great ships were constantly helpful.

Finally I thank my friend Olivia Oakes who thought she was coming for a quiet weekend with my family, and ended up reading this manuscript for almost 15 hours, checking spelling and punctuation. Any errors in this regard I intend, unfairly, to blame on her.

The Shark Mutiny is a work of fiction. Every character in it is a product of my imagination only, though there may be certain College baseball players who recognize their names but not their lives, nor any other connection with reality.

–Patrick Robinson

Cast of Principal Characters

Senior Command

US Navy Senior Command

USS Shark

USS John F. Kennedy

US Navy SEALs

National Security Agency, Fort Meade

The Court Martial

Chinese High Command

Civilian Oil Tanker Masters

Fiancées

Prologue

Summer 1987.

Hunter Valley Farms

Lexington, Kentucky.

It was pretty damn hot for baseball. Only a light breeze ruffled the sweltering Blue Grass paddocks in this big thoroughbred breeding farm along the old Iron-Works Pike, out near the village of Paris.

Young Dan Headley couldn’t hit Rick Hunter’s fastball to save his life. ‘Easy, Ricky. Take something off it, I can’t hit that.’ But again and again the baseball came screaming in, low and away, and slammed into the base of the red barn wall behind the hitter.

The giant sixteen-year-old pitcher kept howling with laughter as his best buddy swung and missed yet again. ‘You gotta concentrate, Danny.’

‘On what?’

‘The baseball, stupid.’

‘How can I, when I can’t even see it? Nobody could see it.’

‘Pete Rose coulda seen it,’ said Rick solemnly, referring to the former Cincinnati Reds legend.

‘Pete Rose coulda seen a howitzer shell.’

‘Okay, one more?’

‘Nah. I’m all done. Let’s go back and get some lemonade. I’m sweating like a bull.’

Rick Hunter pulled off his glove, stuck the ball into the pocket of his jeans and tied the sleeves of his warm-up jacket around his waist. He jumped over the post-and-rail fence into a wide paddock containing a half-dozen mares and foals. Dan Headley followed him, swinging the Louisville Slugger bat, looking over at the foals, at the Kentucky-bred baby racehorses, the best of whom might one day hear the thunder of the crowds at Belmont Park, Royal Ascot, Saratoga and Longchamp. Perhaps even Churchill Downs.

‘Still beats the hell outta me why you don’t just stay here and get rich,’ said Dan. ‘Raisin’ the ye’rlings, sellin’ ’em for fortunes, just like yer daddy. Jeez, Rick. You got it all made for you, right here.’

‘Danny, we been havin’ this particular conversation for the biggest part of three years and my answer ain’t varied none. I just ain’t interested. ’Sides, in my judgement, this bull market for thoroughbreds ain’t here for ever.’

‘Well, it’s been here for more’n ten years. Ain’t showing no sign of flagging.’

‘It’ll collapse, ole buddy. Bull markets always do in the end and right then there’s gonna be a whole lot of penniless ole hardboots around here, guys who thought their good luck was some kinda birthright.’

‘Yeah, but that ain’t why you plan to leave. You’re leavin’ because it bores you, even with all that money swilling around. But why the hell you want to be an officer in the US Navy instead of riding around here like some goddamned czar – master of the Hunter Valley, right here in the thoroughbred breeding capital of the world – well, like I said. Sure beats the hell outta me.’

‘Well, you’re planning to leave with me, right?’

‘Sure I am, Ricky. But, Christ, my daddy’s just the stud groom here. Your ole man owns the whole place. And you don’t even have any brothers and sisters. It’s all gonna be yours. All 2000 acres of it and all them goddamned blue-chip brood mares.’

‘Come on, Danny. You understand the horse-breeding business better’n I do. You could make a real go of it yourself if you wanted. Your daddy’s got a coupla mares of his own. Everyone has to start somewhere.’

‘Ricky, I couldn’t save enough money for a place like this in a thousand years. I’d just end up another stud groom. Anyone could see why I’d rather be Captain Dan Headley, commanding officer of a US Navy battle cruiser than Danny Headley, stallion man at the Hunter Valley.’

‘Raisin’ horses bores you too, don’t it?’ said Rick, grinning, in the sure knowledge that he had a soulmate.

‘Some. But I just don’t have the advantages.’

‘Wouldn’t change nothin’ in my opinion. You just want adventure, I guess, like me. Fast horses take too long to raise. We just ain’t got the time, right?’

Dan grinned. He was much shorter than the towering Rick Hunter and he had to walk about half a stride faster to lay up with his lifelong friend. They moved steadily across the magnificent grassland, walking on a slight uphill gradient, watching the foals edging towards them, eager, curious, the mares moving at a much slower pace behind.

‘Who’s that chestnut filly by?’

‘Which one, Danny? The one in front with the white star?’

‘Yeah. She’s gonna have a backside like a barmaid when she grows up.’

‘Guess she could have a motor. She’s by Secretariat, out of a halfway decent daughter of Nashua.’

‘That’s real local, right. Nashua’s next door and the Big Horse is just up the road.’ Kentucky horsemen always referred to the 1973 Triple Crown winner as the Big Horse, despite his unspectacular performance in the stud.

‘Dad owns the mare, swears to God Secretariat’s gonna be a great sire of brood mares. We’ll be keeping that filly for sure.’

‘How about that little bay colt over there, the one who keeps pushing the others around?’

‘He’s by Northern Dancer. Typical, kinda boisterous and small. He’ll go to the sales, probably end up in Ireland with Mr O’Brien. Unless the Arabs outbid everyone. Then he’ll end up in Newmarket, which ain’t quite so good.’

‘Guess the dark gray is by the Rajah, right?’

‘That’s him. He’s by our own Red Rajah. Bart Hunter’s pride and joy. That stallion is one mean sonofabitch. But my daddy loves him and your daddy copes with him. Bobby Headley, best stallion man in the Blue Grass. That’s my old man’s verdict.’

‘Well, I been around the Rajah for five years and I ain’t seen nothin’ mean about him.’

‘I have. Trust me. He just don’t like strangers, Dan. But he acts like an old dog when your daddy’s with him.’

They walked on to the fence, climbed it and came around into the main yard, walked right into Bobby Headley, hurrying down to the feed house. He was a slim, hard-eyed Kentucky horseman of medium height, not so instantly handsome as his dark-haired sixteen-year-old son, and he had a deep, resonant voice, which seemed out of place in a man so lacking in bulk. ‘Hey, boys, how you doin’?’ he said, looking at the baseball bat. ‘Still gettin’ that fast ball past ’im, eh, Ricky?’

‘Yes, sir. But it ain’t easy. Lose your concentration and that Danny can really hurt you.’

Bobby Headley chuckled. ‘Hey, Dan, do me a favor, willya? Run along to Rajah’s box and pick up my brushes. I left ’em right inside the door.’

‘Sure. Rick, will I see you back at the house?’

‘In five, right?’

Dan Headley jogged along to the three big stallion boxes at the far end of the yard, unclipped the lock on the eight-year-old Red Rajah’s door and slipped inside, muttering softly, ‘Hey, Rajah, ole boy, how you bin? They still treatin’ you good?’

The big stallion, just a tad under seventeen hands and almost milk-white now with the advancing years, did not have a head collar on and he was not tethered on a long shank to the sturdy iron ring on the wall. This was a bit unusual for a stallion of his hot-blooded breeding. The massive ex-California stakes winner was a grandson of the fiery Red God, out of a fast daughter of the notorious English sire, Supreme Sovereign. To a professional horseman this was an example of breeding made in hell, a recipe for a truly dangerous stallion. Supreme Sovereign was so unpredictable, so lethal to any human being that they kept a high-powered fire hydrant in his box in case of an emergency. Red Rajah himself had several times attacked people, but he’d been a high-class miler in his time, a good, tough battler in a finish, and he was a highly commercial sire, standing for $40,000. In the last couple of years Bobby Headley seemed to have him under control.

The Rajah gazed at young Dan Headley moving softly behind him. He betrayed no anger, but those who knew him would have noticed his ears set slightly back and his eyes flicking first forward, then back; far back, looking at Dan without moving his head.

The boy bent down to pick up the brushes and, as he straightened up, the stallion moved imperceptively. Dan, sensing a shift in the horse’s mood, reacted like the lifelong horseman he was, lifted up his right arm like a traffic cop and murmured, ‘Whoa there, Rajah, good boy, easy, ole buddy.’

Right then Red Rajah attacked, quite suddenly, with not a semblance of warning. He whipped his head round and slammed his teeth over Danny’s biceps, biting like a crocodile, right through the muscle and splintering the big bone in the upper arm, and he didn’t let go. He dragged the boy down, pulling him on to the straw, preparing for the killer stallion’s favorite trick, to kneel on his prey, like a camel or an elephant, crushing the ribcage. The thoroughbred breeding industry is apt to keep this kind of savagery very quiet.

Dan Headley screamed with pain and terror, and his scream echoed into the yard. Rick Hunter was on his way down the walkway towards the main house when he heard it. No one else did and a thousand dreads about the true nature of the grandson of Red God flew through his mind.

Back in the barn, Danny screamed again. He was facing death. He knew that and he kicked out at the stallion, but it was like kicking a pick-up truck.

Rick Hunter was by now pounding across the grass quadrangle towards the boxes. He heard his friend’s second scream and flew over the ground straight to the first box where Red Rajah lived. When he got there he searched instantly for a weapon and saw the trusty Louisville Slugger against the wall. Grabbing it with his right hand, he whipped open the door and faced with horror the scene before him: Danny, blood pouring from his smashed right arm, trying to protect himself against the onslaught of the stallion glowering over him, preparing to kneel. Rick never hesitated, wound back the bat and slammed it into Red Rajah’s ribs with a blow that would surely have killed a man. It did not, however, kill Red Rajah. The great white horse swung his head round, as if deciding which of the two boys to attack first. So Ricky hit him again, with all his force, crashing the bat into the ribs of the stallion, simultaneously yelling, ‘Get out, Danny! For Christ’s sake get out. Shut the door but don’t lock it.’

Dan Headley, half in shock, maddened by the pain, rolled and crawled out of the box. Still flat on the ground, he kicked the door shut and sixteen-year-old Rick Hunter turned to face the raging killer horse again. By now he was in the corner fifteen feet from the door, watching the Rajah backing off a stride or two. Rick held the bat in both hands, not daring to swing in case he missed the head and the horse came at his throat, or, much more likely, his testicles. In a split second he got his answer. Red Rajah came at his face, mouth open. Rick shoved the bat straight out in front of him, still holding the handle with both hands, and the Rajah’s teeth smashed down on to it, splintering it like matchwood.

Outside, Dan Headley had passed out with the pain.

Now Rick was on his own. Again the Rajah moved away a stride, his ears flat back, his wicked white-rimmed eye still flicking back and forth. Rick’s mind raced back to a conversation he had once with an old local hardboot, who had told him there’s only one way I know to stop a stallion who’s bent on killing you. Rick Hunter dropped down on to all fours, knowing that if this ploy failed he might be as dead as Danny would have been if he hadn’t arrived in time.

Rick flattened himself into the pose of the horse’s most ancient and feared enemy, the lion. He tried to assume the crouched, threatening stance of a big cat preparing to pounce, trying to reawaken thousands of years of unconscious phobia in the psyche of the horse. He burrowed his boot into the straw, made a scratching noise on the concrete beneath, snarled deeply under his breath, staring hard into the horse’s eyes. Then he moved his head forward, let out a roar and then another, crawling one step nearer.

Red Rajah stopped dead. He moved a half-step backwards, a slight tremor in both shoulder muscles. He backed up some more, dipping his head as if to protect his throat. It was an instinct, not a reaction.

Rick roared like a lion again, all the while trying to get the warm-up jacket from around his waist. The fight seemed to have gone right out of the Rajah, who was now standing stock still. He was not prepared when the 6ft 4in heir to Hunter Valley jumped up and dived at his head, ramming the jacket hard down over his eyes and face. Red Rajah was in the pitch dark now and no horse likes to move when he’s unable to see anything. He just stood there, stock still, trembling, blind, with the jacket over his head. Rick carefully edged towards the door, eased it quietly open and made his escape, slamming the lock shut as he went.

Outside, Dan was conscious again. Rick hit the alarm bell and sat with his buddy until help arrived minutes later.

He, and both of their fathers, remained with Dan all night in Lexington Hospital, while two surgeons meticulously restitched the muscle, reset and pinned the shattered right arm.

In the morning, when Dan was in the recovery room, the patient finally came to, slowly focusing on the young lion from Hunter Valley. He shook his head in silent admiration of his friend’s courage, grinned and said, ‘Jesus, Ricky. You just saved my life. I told you we’d be better off in a warship.’

‘You’re right there, ole buddy,’ said Rick. ‘Screw this racehorse crap. You can get killed out here. I’d rather be under fire. You think Annapolis is ready for us?’

One

January 23, 2007.

The White House, Washington DC.

ADMIRAL ARNOLD MORGAN was alone in his office contemplating the two major issues in his life at this particular lunchtime. The first was his decision to stay on as the National Security Adviser to the President for one more year, against all his better judgement. The second was a Wagnerian-sized roast beef sandwich, fortified with heavy mayonnaise and mustard into a feast he would never have dared to order had his secretary and wife-to-be, the gorgeous Kathy O’Brien, been anywhere near the precincts of 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue. Happily she was out until 4 p.m.

The Admiral grinned cheerfully, circling his desk like a mountain lion poised to pounce upon his prey. He saw it as a richly deserved gastronomic reward for having succumbed to weeks of being badgered, harassed, coaxed and ultimately persuaded to remain in this office by some of the most powerful figures in American politics and the military.

His decision to hang in there had been wrung out of him, after nine weeks of soul-searching. The decision to hit a roast beef sandwich el grando, before Ms O’Brien came sashaying back into the office, had been made with much less anguish: nine weeks’ less. The Admiral, sixty-one years old now, was still, miraculously, in robust health and not more than eight pounds heavier than he had been as a nuclear submarine commander twenty-seven years previously. Immaculately tailored, wearing a maroon and gold Hermès tie Kathy had given him for Christmas, he tucked a large white linen napkin into his shirt collar and bit luxuriously into his sandwich. Through the window he could see it was snowing like hell. The President was, shrewdly, visiting southern California, where the temperature was a sunlit seventy-eight degrees and here, in the West Wing of the White House, there was absolutely nothing happening of any interest whatsoever to the most feared and respected military strategist on planet earth.

‘I still have no idea what the hell I’m doing here,’ he muttered to himself. ‘The goddamned world’s gone quiet, temporarily, and I’m sitting here like a goddamned lapdog waiting for our esteemed but flaky leader to drag himself out of some fucking Beverly Hills swimming pool.’ Flaky. A complete flake. The words had been used about the President, over and over at that final meeting at the home of Admiral Scott Dunsmore, the wise and deceptively wealthy former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Arnold Morgan could not understand what the fuss was about. Plenty of other NSAs had resigned, but apparently he was not permitted that basic human right.

Christ, everyone had been there and no one had even informed him. He’d walked, stone-cold, into a room containing not only General Scannell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but two former chairmen, plus the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the United States Marines. The Defense Secretary was there, two senior members of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, including the vastly experienced Senator Ted Kennedy, whose unwavering patriotism and endless concern for his country had always made him a natural leader among such men. Altogether there were four current members of the National Security Council in attendance. Their joint mission was simple: to persuade Admiral Morgan to withdraw his resignation and to remain in office until the Republican President’s second term was over. A few weeks previously, at the conclusion of a particularly dangerous and covert naval operation in China, the President had demonstrated such shocking self-interest and lack of judgement, that he could no longer be trusted to act in the strict interests of the USA.

The world was presently a volatile place and no one needed to remind Admiral Morgan of that. But the man in the Oval Office was prone to appoint ‘Yes Men’ to influential positions and now, in the final two years of his presidency, he tended to think only of himself and his image and popularity. Without Admiral Morgan’s granite wall of reality and judgement in the crucible of international military affairs, the men in Admiral Dunsmore’s house that day were greatly concerned that a terrible and costly mistake might occur.

Looking back, Arnold Morgan could not remember precisely who had put into words the hitherto unspoken observation that the President was a ‘goddamned flake, and getting worse’. But he remembered a lot of nodding and no laughter. He also remembered their host, Admiral Dunsmore, turning to his old friend the Senator from Massachusetts and saying, ‘The trouble is he’s interested in military matters and we cannot trust him. Talk to Arnold, Teddy. You’ll say it better than anyone else.’ He had, too. At the conclusion of a short but moving few words from the silver-tongued sage of Hyannisport, Admiral Morgan had nodded and said curtly, ‘My resignation is withdrawn.’

Now he was ‘back at the factory’, ruminating on the general calm that had existed in the world’s known trouble spots for the past month. The Middle East was for the moment serene. Terrorists in general seemed still to be on their Christmas break. India and Pakistan had temporarily ceased to threaten each other, and China, the Big Tiger, had been very quiet since last fall. Indeed, according to the satellite photographs they were not even conducting fleet exercises near Taiwan, which made a change. As for their new ISBM submarine, Xia III, there was no sign of it leaving its jetty in Shanghai.

The only halfway interesting piece of Intelligence to come Admiral Morgan’s way since Christmas was a report put together by the CIA’s Russian desk. According to one of their field operators in Moscow, the Rosvoorouzhenie factory on the outskirts of the city was suddenly making large quantities of moored mines. This was regarded as unusual since Rosvoorouzhenie’s known expertise was in the production of seabed mines, the MDM series, particularly the lethal one-and-three-quarter-ton ship-killing MDM-6, which can be laid through the torpedo tubes of a submarine. Rosvoorouzhenie was now, apparently, making a lot of updated, custom-made PLT-3 mines, moored one-tonners, which can be laid either through torpedo tubes or from surface ships. The CIA man had no information where the mines were going, if anywhere, but their man had been certain this was a very unusual development. Most Russian-made mines these days were strictly for export.

Admiral Morgan growled to himself, now who the hell wants a damn large shipment of moored PLT-3s, eh? He would have growled it out loud, but for the fact that his mouth was full of roast beef and mayonnaise. As it was, he chewed and pondered silently. But on reflection he did not much like it. If the goddamned penniless Russians are building several hundred expensive mines, someone has ordered ’em. And if someone’s ordered ’em, they plan to lay ’em, right? Otherwise they wouldn’t have ordered ’em. Where? That’s what we wanna know. Who’s planning a nice little surprise minefield?

He finished his sandwich, sipped his coffee and frowned. When Kathy came back he’d have her call Langley and make sure he was kept up to speed on Russian mine production. And if the overheads picked up any large mine shipments leaving any Russian seaports, he wanted to know about that. Immediately. Just don’t want some fucking despot in a turban getting overly ambitious, right? The Admiral glared at the portrait of General MacArthur which hung in his office. Gotta watch ’em, Douglas. Right? Watch ’em, at all times.

0900 (local) January 23, 2007.

Renmin Dahuitang, The Great Hall of the People

Tiananmen Square, Beijing.

The largest government building in the world, home of the National People’s Congress, was locked, barred and bolted this Tuesday morning. All 561,800 square feet of it. Business was cancelled, the public was banned and there were more armed military guards patrolling the snow-covered western side of the square than anyone had seen since the 1989 massacre of the students.

Inside, there were more guards, patrolling the endless corridors. Sixteen of them stood motionless, with shouldered arms, in a square surrounding the only elevator which travels down to the brightly lit Meridian Gate, the spectacular entrance once reserved for the Emperor alone. Tiananmen Square itself was under an immense blanket of white. The total absence of thousands of government workers gave the heart of Beijing a look of abandonment. It was windswept, quiet, deserted, like a great stadium after the games were over.

Inside the ops room there was an atmosphere of high tension. Standing at the far end of the room, next to a ten-foot-wide illuminated computer screen, was the formidable figure of Admiral Zhang Yushu, recently resigned from his position as Commander-in-Chief of the People’s Liberation Army/Navy and now installed, by the Paramount Ruler himself, as the senior of the four vice-chairmen of the all-powerful PLAN Council. Eight weeks previously Admiral Zhang had leapfrogged clean over the other three highly experienced members and now occupied a position of such authority that he answered only to the State President, the General Secretary of the Communist Party and the Chairman of the Military Affairs Commission – and that was all the same person. The Paramount Ruler had once occupied these three highest offices of State and there were those who thought it was just a matter of time before Admiral Zhang himself rose to such eminence. The Paramount Ruler would hear no word against him.

Now the Admiral addressed his audience for the first time, speaking carefully, welcoming them all to the most secretive meeting ever assembled in the forty-eight-year history of the Great Hall – a gathering so clandestine they’d shut down the entire government for the day to avoid eavesdroppers.

Admiral Zhang’s three elderly colleagues on the Military Council, all ex-Army commanders, were in attendance. The new Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral Zu Jicai, was there, seated next to Admiral Yibo Yunsheng, the new Commander of China’s massive northern fleet. The Navy’s powerful Political Commisar, Vice-Admiral Yang Zhenying, had arrived the previous night from Shanghai in company with the Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice-Admiral Sang Ye. The most influential of the Chinese Navy’s deputy commanders-in-chief, Admiral Zhi-Heng Tan, was seated next to Zhang himself at the head of the broad mahogany table. Behind them was a single four-feet-high framed print of Mao Zedong, the great revolutionary whose only wish was for a supreme China to stand alone against the imperial West. The print was a replica of the giant portrait of Mao which gazes with chilling indifference across the square from the Tiananmen Gate. Today, it served to remind the Chinese High Command in this brightly lit room precisely who they really were.

The other three men in the room were Iranian: the most senior a black-robed, bearded ayatollah, whose name was not announced. The two naval officers accompanying the holy man were Rear-Admiral Hossein Shafii, Head of Tactical Headquarters, Bandar Abbas and Rear-Admiral Mohammed Badr, the Iranian Navy’s Commander-in-Chief Submarines.

Admiral Zhang, who stood six feet tall, was by far the biggest and the most heavily built of the Chinese. But he spoke softly, in an uncharacteristic purr, a smile of friendship upon his wide impassive face. The language was English, which all three Iranians spoke fluently. The words were translated back into Chinese by Vice-Admiral Yang who had, in his youth, studied for four years at UCLA.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Admiral Zhang Yushu. ‘As you are all well aware, the new Sino-Iranian pipeline from the great oilfields of Kazakhstan will come on stream within a few weeks. Thousands of barrels will flow daily out of Russia, right across your great country, south to the new Chinese refinery on the shores of the Hormuz Strait. ‘This, gentlemen, should herald a new dawn for all of us, a dawn of vast profits for Iran and, thank God, an end to China’s endless reliance on the West in the matter of fuel oil. The alliance of the past ten years between our two superb nations was indeed made in heaven.’

Admiral Zhang paused and opened his arms wide. He walked round to the right side of the huge table and stood beaming at the men from the desert. The Ayatollah himself stood first and took both of the Admiral’s hands in his own, wishing everyone the everlasting peace of Allah. Then the two Admirals from Bandar Abbas stood up and embraced the legendary Chinese Navy Commander.

Zhang walked back to his position at the head of the table and glanced briefly at his notes. He allowed a flicker of a frown to cross his face, but then he smiled again and continued, ‘I have no need to remind anyone of the enormous cost of building this 1000-mile pipeline and the construction of the refinery. It ran, of course, into billions of US dollars. However, as of this moment, there is but one dark cloud on our horizon and that is the extraordinarily low cost of a barrel of oil on the world market. Last night it was down to $13 and falling towards a ten-year low. The Arab nations cannot be controlled because of their reliance on American protection and commerce. Which leaves us to sell at a half, or even a third, of our oil’s true value. Now, Iran is earning twenty per cent of every barrel to reach the new refinery and at present that’s under three dollars. It will thus cost your country millions and millions in unearned revenue every month. Gentlemen, I ask you. What is the solution? I must remind you this is a plot, a diabolical Western PLOT to devalue our great economies, to allow them to dominate us, as they have always tried to do.’

Admiral Zhang’s voice had risen during this delivery, but now it fell very softly again to the calm, gentle tones of his welcome. ‘We have the solution, my friends. It is a solution we have discussed before and I believe it is one that will find much favor with both our governments.’

The Ayatollah seemed genuinely perplexed and looked up quizzically.

Admiral Zhang smiled back and, without further ceremony said flatly, ‘I am proposing we lay a minefield deep in the historic national waters of the Islamic State of Iran. Right across the Strait of Hormuz.’

Admiral Badr looked up sharply and said immediately, ‘My friend Yushu, you have become a tried and trusted confidant of my nation. But I feel I must remind you that we have considered many times a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. We have been frustrated for the same three reasons every time: one, the far side of the Strait belongs to Oman, a country which is totally influenced by the American puppets in London. Two, we could never lay down a minefield quickly enough without being seen by the American satellites, which would surely bring down upon us the wrath of the Pentagon. Three, well, ultimately the Americans would clear it and paint us as lawless outcasts, enemies to the peaceful trading nations of the world. No good could come of it, not from our point of view.’

Admiral Zhang nodded and asked for the forbearance of the meeting. ‘Mohammed,’ he said. ‘All your reasons are correct. But now times have changed. The stakes are much higher. You and I have different oil both to sell and to use. We also have an unbreakable joint interest, our own oil routes from the Strait to the Far East. You, Mohammed, have the entire backing of the People’s Liberation Army/ Navy. Together we could most certainly lay down a minefield, using both submarines and surface ships, and we could achieve it so swiftly that no one would have the slightest idea who had done what.’

‘But they would find out, surely?’

‘They would not find out. Though they might guess. But they would not be in time. Because one day a big Western tanker is going to hit one of the mines and blow up, and for the next year oil prices will go through the roof, except for ours. Which will, of course, cost us just the same – almost nothing. But that which we sell will be worth a fortune, while the world’s tankers back up on both sides of the minefield, all of them afraid to go through. For a while we’ll very nearly own the world market for fuel oil.’

Admiral Badr smiled and shook his head. ‘It’s a bold plan, Yushu. I’ll give you that. I suppose it just might work. But my country and my Navy have been on the wrong end of the fury of the Pentagon before. It is not a place we want to go again.’

‘So has mine, Mohammed. But they are not invincible and in the end they are a godless society interested only in money. They will raise heaven and hell to free up the tanker routes to the Gulf, but I think they will see it as a business problem, not cause for armed conflict. Besides, they will not want an all-out shooting war in the Gulf because that will just compound the oil problems and send prices even higher, and the sacred New York Stock Exchange even lower.’

‘But Yushu, if they suspect China is behind it they may become very angry indeed.’

‘True, Mohammed. True. But not sufficiently angry to want a war with us. That would send their precious Stock Market into freefall. No, my friends, the Americans will clear the minefield, open up the tanker routes again and send in heavy US naval muscle to make sure they stay cleared. By then we will have made vast sums of money, China and Iran, and, hopefully, many new friends and customers, who will perhaps prefer to do business with us in future. One little minefield, Mohammed, twenty miles wide, and we open a gateway to a glittering future together.’

Same day.

Headquarters, National Security Agency

Fort Meade, Maryland.

Lieutenant Jimmy Ramshawe downloaded his computer screen for the umpteenth time that afternoon. As SOO (Security Ops Officer), his tasks included designating printouts to selected officers all over the ultra-secret labyrinth of the US Military Intelligence complex; a place so highly classified that the walls had built-in copper shields to prevent any electronic eavesdropping.

The Lieutenant had been routinely bored by the entire procedure since lunchtime, sifting through screeds of messages, reports and signals from United States surveillance networks all over the world. But these two latest documents just in from the CIA’s Russian desk caught and held his attention:

Unusual activity in Rozvoorouzhenie mine production factory outside central Moscow. Three heavy transit military vehicles sighted leaving the plant, fully laden. Sighted again at Sheremetyevo II Airport, Moscow, two hours later. Then again leaving the airport 1400 EST, empty. Destination unknown.

From the same source another signal came in ninety-four minutes later at 1534 EST. Langley had so far offered no comment. Just the bald fact:

Russian Antonov 124 took off Moscow 2300, believed heading due east. Aircrew only, plus heavy cargo. AN-124 took 3000 metres to lift-off. CIA field officer traces no flight plan. Inquiries continue.

To Jimmy Ramshawe this was food and drink – a complex, slightly sinister problem which wanted studying, if not solving. He knew the gigantic Antonov freighter – known as the Ruslan after a mythological Russian giant – could carry a colossal 120 tons of freight 35,000 feet above the earth’s surface. He had a good imagination and did not need to utilize much of it before he could visualize 120 big sea mines hurtling through the stratosphere at 550 knots, bound for some distant ocean where they could be primed to inconvenience US Navy fleets.

At the age of twenty-eight, Jimmy had been selected by the Navy to serve in the Intelligence Service. A tall dark-haired young officer, he possessed an acutely analytical mind. He was a lateral thinker, an observer of convolutions, complications and intricacies. As a commanding officer he would have developed into a living nightmare. No team in any warship would ever have provided him with quite sufficient data to make a major decision. But he had a superb intelligence, the highest IQ in his class at Annapolis and his superiors spotted him a long way out. Lieutenant Ramshawe was born for Intelligence work at the highest level and, while his young fellow officers went forward, following their stars as future commanding officers of surface or sub-surface warships, the lanky athletic Jimmy was sent into the electronic hothouse of America’s most sensitive, heavily guarded Intelligence agency where, to quote the admissions admiral, ‘there would be ample outlet for his outstanding talents’.

He was an unusual member of Fort Meade’s staff for the simple reason that he looked and sounded like an Australian. The son of a Sydney diplomat, he had been born in Washington DC while his father served a five-year tour of duty as Military Attaché at the grandiose Australian embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. They’d returned to New South Wales for just two years before Admiral Ramshawe accepted a position on the Board of the Australian airline, Qantas, working permanently in New York.

Young Jimmy, with his US passport, went to school in Connecticut, starred for three years as a baseball pitcher who sounded as if he should have been playing cricket and followed his father into a career in dark blue – American dark blue, that is. He’d been in the US Navy now for ten years, but a couple of weeks earlier he had still brought a smile to the lugubrious face of the NSA’s Director, Admiral George Morris, by announcing, ‘G’ day, sir. I picked up that stuff you wanted. Gimme two hours and she’ll be right.’

Ramshawe was always going to sound like Banjo Patterson and other members of Australian folklore, but he was American through and through, and Admiral Morris valued him highly, as highly as he valued his long-time friendship with Ramshawe senior, the retired Aussie diplomat/admiral. The trouble was that Admiral Morris had just been admitted to the Bethesda Naval Hospital with suspected lung cancer and the deputy director, Rear-Admiral David Borden, was a more remote, formal figure, who was not instantly available to young Lieutenant Ramshawe’s observations. That might prove difficult for both of them – the Acting Director because he might miss something, Jimmy because he might not be listened to.

He stared at the two signals in front of him and attacked the problem as he always did: going instantly for the obvious worst-case scenario. That is, some foreign nutcase has just bought several hundred sea mines from the bloody Russians with a view to laying the bastards somewhere they want to keep private. Lieutenant Ramshawe frowned. It seemed unlikely that the Russians were using the mines themselves. They had nowhere to mine and these days they rarely manufactured naval hardware unless it was for export. So who the hell did they make ’em for? Jimmy Ramshawe ran the checks swiftly through his mind. One of those crazy bastards in the Gulf? Gaddafi? The ayatollahs? The Iraqis? No reason really for any of them, but the Iranians had threatened a minefield more than once. But then the AN-124 would have been running south, not east. Or else the mines would have been transported by road. China? No. They’d make their own … I think. North Korea? Maybe. But they make their own.

Lieutenant Ramshawe deemed the puzzle worthy of careful consideration. He gathered up the two signals, muttering to himself, I don’t think we better fuck this up, because if ships start blowing up, somewhere in the Far East or wherever, we’re likely to get the blame. ’Specially if an American ship was lost. Bloody oath there’d be trouble then. He stood up from his screen, pushed his floppy dark hair off his forehead and walked resolutely out of the ops area down to the Director’s office.

He was still reading the signals when he arrived in the hallowed area once occupied by Arnold Morgan himself and he walked through absent-mindedly, still reading, tapped on the door, pushed it open and walked in, as he always did. ‘G’day, Admiral,’ he said. ‘Coupla things here I think we want to take a sharp look at.’

David Borden looked up, an expression of surprise on his face. ‘Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you could bring yourself to give me the elementary courtesy of knocking before you enter my office?’

‘Sir? I thought I just did.’

‘And then perhaps waiting to be invited in?’

‘Sir? This isn’t a bloody social call. I have urgent stuff in my hand which I think you should know about right away.’

‘Lieutenant Ramshawe, there are certain matters of etiquette still observed here in the US Navy, though I imagine they have long been dispensed with in your own country.’

‘Sir, this is my country.’

‘Of course. But your accent sounds like no other US officer I ever met.’

‘Well, I can’t help that. But since we’re wasting time and I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot now you’re in the big chair, I’ll get back outside and we’ll start over, right?’ Before Admiral Borden could answer, Jimmy Ramshawe had walked out and closed the door behind him.

Then he knocked on it and the Director, feeling slightly absurd, called, ‘Come in, Lieutenant.’

‘Christ, I’m glad we got that over with,’ said Jimmy, turning on his Aussie-philosophical, lopsided grin. ‘Anyway, g’day, Admiral, got something here I think we should take a look at.’

He handed over the two signals and David Borden glanced down at them. ‘I don’t see anything urgent here,’ he said. ‘First of all we do not even know the mines were on board the Russian aircraft. If they were, we don’t have the slightest idea where they might be going and, wherever that might be, it’s going to take a long time for anyone to unload them, transport them and then start laying them in the ocean. At which point our satellites will pick them up. I shouldn’t waste any more time on it if I were you.’

‘Now, hold hard, sir. We got possibly several hundred brand-new sea mines almost certainly packed into the hold of the biggest freight aircraft on earth, now heading due east towards China, maybe India, maybe Pakistan, Korea, Indonesia? Brand-new mines specifically ordered and manufactured. And you don’t think we want to trace the bloody jokers who own them right away?’

‘No, Lieutenant. I think we’ll find out in good time without wasting any of our valuable resources and, in particular, your energies.’

‘Well, I suppose if you say so, sir. But that’s a lot of high explosive and, well, I mean some bugger wants it for something pretty definite. I think Admiral Morris would want it investigated, maybe alert the Big Man in the White House.’

‘Lieutenant, Admiral Morris is no longer in command of this Agency and from now on I trust you’ll respect my judgement. Forget the mines. They’ll come to the surface in good time.’

‘Just hope they don’t bring a pile of bloody wreckage with ’em, that’s all.’ Lieutenant Ramshawe nodded curtly, turned on his heel and left, muttering to himself an old Australian phrase, ‘Right mongrel bastard he’s turned out to be.’

Evening. Same Day.

Ops Room, Great Hall of the People.

The big computer screen had been switched off now. The Iranian delegation was heading north-east out along Jichang Lu towards Beijing International Airport and Admiral Zhang was talking with Zu Jicai. Everyone else had gone. The two great friends and naval colleagues sat alone, sipping tea, which Yushu had coerced a guard to produce, in the absence of any staff whatsoever in the Great Hall. It tasted, he thought, like a leftover thermos from Mao’s Long March of 1935.

‘I am still slightly mystified, Yushu. Do you really think there is enough advantage in this for us to become involved in a worldwide oil catastrophe?’

‘Ah, Jicai. You are ever the tactician, ever the strategist. Always the battle commander. You see things very clearly, the immediate crunch, the immediate aftermath.’

‘Well, don’t you?’

‘I used to, when I was C-in-C of the Navy. But I must be political now and I have changed my perspectives. I am trying to look at a wider picture.’