Warshot (The Hunter Killer Series Book 6), Don Keith [no david read aloud TXT] 📗

The ship’s captain shook his head. “No. I left a voicemail with our Los Angeles office.” He nodded toward the Tongans. “They grabbed my phone before I got through to the Navy.”

Dawn found the two ships already twenty miles away, steadily moving toward Vava’u, the nearest Tongan island and an unknown fate.

19

ORCA One threaded its way past ‘Eueiki Island and into the Ava Piha Channel. The channel was one of the passages through the scattering of coral islands that poked out of the water on the north side of Tongatapu, the main island of the Tongan kingdom. Tongatapu was also the last stop on the US Navy UUV’s mission to sow sensors around the major clusters of land that formed the nation of Tonga. Niuatoputapu, Vava’u, Pangai, and Tongatapu lay in a rough array about four hundred miles long, aligned from north-northeast to south-southwest.

Spending a few hours placing sensors at each harbor entrance and avoiding the hundreds of tiny islands and coral heads, ORCA One had finally arrived off the main island. Planting sensors off Tongatapu would be a bit more complicated, though. There were really two harbors to monitor. Nuku’alofa was the main town and had been the traditional harbor for centuries. For all that time, the island’s shipping had used the northern route—Lahi Channel—to get to the anchorages and wharves. But those anchorages were not well protected from the frequent storms in the region, so when the Chinese came—with unlimited money and manpower—they decided to build an entirely new port with a protected deep-water anchorage at Niuatoputapu. After much dredging and blasting, the Ava Piha Channel was opened to the east for access to the Chinese seaport.

Only the narrow and treacherous Makaha’a Channel connected the two ports by water. As a result, Chinese ships came in from the east and all other vessels entered from the north. Now, as programmed, ORCA One planted a row of sensors across the Ava Piha Channel where it swung south and narrowed off Talafo’ou. Then, that task finished, the UUV turned around and headed for the Makaha’a Channel. At its narrowest, the ship passage between the Makaha’a reef to the south and the Monoafe reef to the north and east gave barely four hundred yards clearance between the jagged coral outcroppings.

At that narrowest point, ORCA One encountered a coral head not plotted into its electronic memory. As designed, its system smartly processed this new information and ordered a course and depth change around the obstacle. The little submersible boat came shallow and skirted around the coral head before dropping back down.

A Tongan fisherman working the reef caught a glimpse of the black object silently appear out of the depths and then, just as quietly, disappear again. In an instant, two centuries of Christianity were lost to the fisherman and the Pulotu ‘Aka’aka—the spirit world—took its place.

The ORCA dutifully laid a line of sensors between Fafa Island and Alakipeau Island, thus completing the coverage to all entrances to Tongatapu. This part of her mission accomplished, the UUV next headed up the Lahi Channel. While transiting, the UUV came shallow and communicated back to the control center aboard the Portland. It reported the completion of the laying of the sensor fields and received a significant change in its mission profile.

After receipting for the traffic, it dropped down deep and promptly changed course to the northwest, heading out on its new assignment.

Ψ

Joe Glass was neck deep in a stack of forms and other bureaucratic paperwork, determined to find the bottom of the mess so he could get back to concentrating on the swirl of activity in the middle of which he had suddenly found himself. It took only a half-second of the annoying buzz of the secure telephone on his desk to wrench him back to the real world. He had left word with his aide to not disturb him unless it was of vital importance. He snatched the offending instrument from its cradle and growled, “Glass!”

He immediately recognized the chuckle at the other end. It was Jon Ward, his old boss when both men rode submarines. Before Glass became a CO of his own boat and then moved to his new command. And before Ward became head of Naval Intelligence.

“Joe, you need to work a bit on your people skills,” the Navy’s top spy suggested. “People will think your promotion made you a gruff old man.”

“But, Jon, I was a gruff old man long before that,” Glass retorted. “Even before sub school. And then I enhanced my gruffness skills by learning from the best, if we’re handing out credit.”

“Well, I got just the job for a gruff old man,” Ward replied. And Glass could feel the call turn in a totally new direction. Pleasantries were over. This was a business call. “I just got off a call with the New Zealand naval attaché. The Kiwis are all in a dither. It seems that the New Zealand government has lost all contact with Niue. You may remember that little island is what they term ‘associated with’ New Zealand. It’s complicated and really too much lawyer talk for a couple of old sub sailors, but basically, New Zealand is responsible for Niue’s external security. Anyway, there has been no communication with the island for most of two days now. The weekly Air New Zealand flight was refused permission to land yesterday. The pilot reported seeing what looked like armed troops on the ground as he passed over and went looking for another freeway exit that had jet fuel.”

“Wow!” Glass gasped. “Any idea what the hell is going on?”

“That’s why I’m calling you,” Ward answered. “We don’t think it’s internal. Not a coup or civil war or anything like that. We’ve seen plenty of aircraft and boat activity that suggests something different. Maybe even a small-scale invasion. Since you’re already in the neighborhood working on your suntan, I figured you could get