“Compelling and visionary. DiMercurio’s characters run as deep as his submarines themselves!” --Joe Buff, author of Crush Depth and Thunder in the Deep "DiMercurio really knows his subs...his characters step right off the sub deck and onto his pages." --Larry Bond "A Master Rivaling Tom Clancy." --Publishers Weekly "Terrific." --San Francisco Examiner "Thrilling." --Associated Press "Superb storytelling." --Virginia-Pilot/Ledger Star

Excerpts of THREAT VECTOR,
a novel by Michael DiMercurio, 1999

Chapter 1 Preview

The battle raged all day and well into the night.

The sun had barely risen over the mountain when it began. She took her first sip of the steaming cup of coffee he handed her, sitting deep in one of the old leather chairs in front of the fire he'd stoked to warm the cabin. The old Wyoming family mountain house that had been presumed lost in the lawsuit surrounding Grandfather Earl's estate had landed in his lap after he returned from a long sea voyage. The cabin was so remote that the electricity worked only sporadically, water came from a hand-pumped well in the grassy town square, and the nearest phone was an hour's walk away, or a drive taking almost that long over a rutted dirt road replete with craters, mud and protruding roots. The valley was more of a canyon, where no satellite phone would reach, no pager would beep, and no handheld computer would uplink to the Web. That was the idea; to escape from all that. The resulting peace promised to make this a perfect place to make it right with Diana.

Her cheeks were rose-colored in the glow of the fire. Her fine blonde hair fell uncombed over her blue eyes, and her full lips smiled at him over the rim of the cup. He poked up the fire, settled into a chair opposite Diana's, and looked into her eyes.

"You said you had something important to say," he prompted.

"Kelly, I want you to leave her," she said over her coffee, no longer smiling. "This affair has gone on long enough."

He almost choked on the coffee. He'd held his hands apart and protested innocence, babbling.

"I don't mean a woman," she said, a frown forming on her brow. "It's the other her."

"The ship," he said, his voice dead.

"The ship. I want you home. With the baby coming, you need to do something else with your life. The time for Boy Scouts is over, Kelly."

She'd never understood. The sea wasn't just what he did. It was who he was. It defined him. It was as much a part of him as his voice or the shape of his face.

Though the argument began gently enough, it escalated over the course of the day. He didn't care about her or the baby, she accused. She didn't give a damn about his point of view, he shouted. His point of view should be for the welfare of the child, she shouted back. As if the kid would stop breathing the instant he went to sea, he said, and then more came. This was her insecurity talking. She was being selfish and childish. She returned fire that the ultimate in childishness was clinging to a seafaring career when he could easily make a fortune working for her father. He let loose on her: that was what this was really about, that he wasn't making enough money for her, or enough to suit her father, the industrial baron who'd brought three-dimensional projections to the marketplace. Why the hell had she brought this up now, when she was pregnant? She'd known who he was when she married him.

He left to let things cool off, taking a long walk across the river on a century-old trestle bridge, the rails long removed for scrap. He returned as the sun began its descent toward the western range. He found her silent and annoyed. He tried to apologize, but made the mistake of restating his insistence that the sea was part of his identity, that it was his career.

She interrupted that when they were newlyweds he'd planned to leave the sea behind to seek a job elsewhere. How the hell, he shot back, was he to know he would be so good at this? The core of his argument came to him, landing in his mind with a thump. He looked at her swollen belly, and said, "It would be like me telling you I don't want you to be a mother, that I want you to be like you were before." An expression of shock flashed across her face as if he'd slapped her. Her face closed like a fist. Her eyes shut, tears leaking from them. She ran to the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. Her disappearance was so sudden and so final that a sense of unreality flooded him. One moment they were having a disagreement -- the next their relationship was dead. It was as if, after carefully constructing his argument, his logic building on the idea before, one step after another, that the last step had led him over a cliff, and he was plummeting headlong, stunned. And when it happened, he began to wonder whether it was the last step he regretted or the entire tortuous journey.

He started after her, pounding on the door, calling her name, begging her to come out, to forget that last thing he'd said -- he'd only meant that the sea was as important to him as the baby to her, not that he didn't want her to be a mother. The only thing she said in a choked voice was – "If the fucking sea is so important, go back to it and leave me alone." After that no amount of pleading would bring her out. He knew it was useless, and with darkness overtaking the valley, he retired to the back bedroom, the cabin's addition behind the kitchen.

In the light of the moon, he stared up at the knotty pine paneling. His marriage was a tomb. Like pulling over a refrigerator, it would rock back and forth hard before it would come down, and their marriage had been rocking hard. This might just be more than an argument. It could be Diana's last straw.

To remain with her meant leaving the sea, and he was not sure he could give that up. He stared at the ceiling, wondering if he could live life without the boat, and it was as hard as thinking about living without Diana. He knew he had to choose. But how could he? He drifted in and out of sleep, his dreams torture, awakening in a sweat. He pushed off the blankets, close to a decision. He was a husband and father first, he told himself. He sat up in bed, scratching the back of his neck, and wondered whether he should tell Diana now or wait for the morning. He found his diving watch by the bed, its luminescent dial reading shortly after two am, mountain time. He yawned, then froze.

A sound, a sound that had no business here -- a chopping noise, coming from the wider part of the valley, distant helicopter rotors. As soon as he thought he'd heard it, it faded away, and he knew he'd been dreaming. He checked the watch again, and it read 2:30. He must have dozed sitting up in the bed. He tried to blink back the sleep, then stood. He had to tell Diana.

The floor creaked under his feet. A shadow passed across the moon, just for a moment. He paused, scanning the hallway in the moonlight, then shrugged. He stepped toward the front room on the way to the master bedroom. He was almost at her door when something hit his face, a spider or a bug. He reached up to bat it away, but it was wet. A rushing noise sounded, and the air near his face was filled with mist.

An aerosol spray, part of his mind reported. Inexplicably, he felt himself go limp and begin to sink to the floor, yet his mind was fully alert. Was he having a stroke? Did he need to go to a hospital? Almost in slow motion he reached the floor, his head striking the wood, the ceiling panels in view, and he could not move his arms. He couldn't move his legs. He could barely blink his eyes. He could feel his limbs, but they would not respond to commands. He could still breathe, and his heart was racing, the fear pumping through him. Paralyzed, perhaps dying, he tried to see through the moonlight, tried to move so that he could make a noise, to wake Diana, to try to get her to take him to the nearest doctor in Saratoga.

As he looked up at the ceiling, a black shape came into view and then came closer to him. The man wore a black ski mask, and black gloved hands reached out for him, a rectangle of something in his hands. Duct tape was slapped over his mouth. The big man rolled him over and taped his hands together and his paralyzed legs. Strong arms lifted him up and he felt himself carried by the first man and three more, out the door.

Slowly the men carried him across the grassy center of the town past the old log town hall, past the wellwater hand pump to the other side where the trail dead-ended. Ahead in the moonlight was a buggy with a roll-bar and a rear deck, like that of a pickup truck. The man he'd seen first gave a hand command, and the buggy rolled quietly, perhaps powered electrically, bouncing up over the trail and on into the thick woods. Some time passed, perhaps five minutes, before the vehicle came to a halt. The men came out and pulled him from the back, carrying him again.

A fugitive thought flashed through his mind: what about Diana? What would she think when the sun rose and he was gone? Would it ever occur to her that he'd been kidnapped? Of course not, she'd assume he had left her. But there was no time to consider that, because looming ahead in the moonlight high over his head was the biggest helicopter he'd ever seen. It was a flat gray color, with a large star inside a circle with stripes on either side, and beside the logo were block letters spelling U.S. NAVY. As he was carried toward the gaping door in the flank of the aircraft, the engine turbine began to spool up, whispering, whistling, screaming in a high-pitched shriek. The second engine came up to full revolutions. He was lowered into a canvas seat and strapped into a five point harness, the duct tape still on his mouth, wrists and ankles.

The men who'd carried him to the helicopter took off their balaclava hoods, wiped the black makeup off their faces and donned flight helmets, taking their positions. The first one he'd seen climbed into the pilot-in-command seat. Overhead the rotors slowly began to turn. The huge blades moaned as the pilot engaged the clutch, and the aircraft shuddered as the rotor came up to idle. The jet helicopter took off, the mountainside shrinking below, and the pilot glanced at the copilot and climbed back to the cabin.

The man pulled the duct tape off as gently as he could, saying in a deep voice over the roar of the rotors: "Commander McKee, sir, I'm Lieutenant Commander Sonny Sorenson, Second Platoon Commander, Seal Team Seven. Sorry about the black bag job to get you here. Very specific orders from Admiral Phillips. The aerosol should be wearing off in a few minutes. We're taking you to the Saratoga airport. The admiral has a supersonic transport for you with some weird spooks onboard. I don't know anything else, sir, but it must be damned important."

Commander Kyle Liam Ellison "Kelly" McKee, U.S. Navy, stared at the Seal commando, his mind racing. He had been on leave, and no one, not even his relatives, knew where he had been going. Feeling returned to his neck, and he could move his head, the muscles spasming and aching. Then his arms and legs, pins and needles running through him. When he could move his arm, he checked his watch. It was three in the morning. Out the window the mountains rushed by, too close and too fast. The noise was too loud to shout over and be heard. McKee kept his peace, waiting for the chopper to land. It took less than ten minutes to reach the Saratoga airport. When the chopper settled, the Seal officer handed McKee a naval air service jumpsuit, socks and combat boots. McKee looked down realizing he was wearing only boxers and a T-shirt. The Seal commander grabbed McKee's arm and led him to the Gulfstream supersonic private jet in the shadow of a hangar.

In the dim light of the parking lot lamps McKee climbed into the jet. The twelve seats were empty, and two men in dark suits stood in the aisle with grim expressions on their faces. The Seal officer saluted and withdrew.

"What's going on?" There was no sign of a flight crew, just the yellow glow of the cabin lights and the two stiff men.

"Commander McKee, sit down, please." The older one pointed to the mid-cabin seat. "I'm Special Agent Calvert, NIS."

Naval Investigative Service, McKee thought, trying to piece the puzzle together but coming up blank. He sat in the seat and looked up at the spook.

"Read and sign," Calvert said, handing him a folder with a document full of tiny print. McKee squinted at it.

"Million-dollar fine? Death sentence or a hundred years in prison? What is this?"

"Release Twelve security clearance paperwork. The term 'Release Twelve' is top secret code-word, by the way. I'm sure you're aware of the punishment for release of TS code- word material?"

"You guys drag me out of my vacation house at three in the morning to threaten me? Excuse me, I'm making a phone call." As he stood to go to the front of the plane he felt four hands forcing him back into his seat. Calvert's coat came open, revealing a shoulder holster and MAC-12 machine pistol.

For the next half hour the spooks read him the harsh government regulations surrounding the Release Twelve security clearance, then made him stand and raise his right hand and swear he would never divulge Release Twelve information on pain of execution. He signed the paperwork, they signed as witnesses, a notary seal was applied, and the NIS agents left. As they filed off the plane, a Navy pilot in a jumpsuit similar to McKee's climbed on, a younger one behind her. She threw a salute at McKee, said her name was Lieutenant Davis, and vanished into the flight deck.

"Give me the phone," McKee said, leaning in the flight deck door. His wife would be furious when she woke up to an empty cabin. She had to know he hadn't left her. If he were unable to get through to her, she'd assume he was finished with her, with their marriage.

"No phone, Commander," the pilot said. She reached into the overhead console and snapped a breaker, bringing the cockpit avionics to life. "Express orders of Admiral Phillips." A second breaker caused a hum to the left of the cockpit -- the hatch coming shut with a thud. The outside wind noise was replaced with a sudden quiet. "I recommend you take a seat and strap yourself in, Commander," she said, her ponytail flipping as she looked over her shoulder at him. "We'll be airborne in two minutes, transonic in three." She turned back to her console and hit the starter button on the port engine. The jet growled as it turned, then caught and whispered to life. Within a minute the plane tilted dramatically toward the black sky. The cabin became whisper quiet as the Mach indicator changed from 0.99 to 1.00, the numerals scrolling up to Mach 1.80. When the supersonic jet leveled off, McKee was loosening his belt to get up to ask the lieutenant where they were going, but she walked back down the aisle instead, a black portfolio in one hand.

"Here," she said, tossing the folder down on the table in front of McKee. "You should be cleared to get into that. Admiral Phillips' instructions were for you to enter your midshipman number from the Academy when the computer asks for a password." She headed aft to the bathroom, leaving McKee staring at the portfolio.

He opened it up, finding a small WritePad handheld computer inside, but with an elaborate passkey system, one part reading his fingerprint, a second scanning his retina, then lighting up and asking his password. He typed in his midshipman number from sixteen years before, a number so ingrained in memory he used it for all his personal passwords.

The computer didn't come to life with the usual Windows/Linux 2017 display, but just a flat white sheet with black print, almost as if he were looking at a sheet of paper. Past the first paragraph, a definition of Release Twelve. The next line identified the code-word, "Alpha." This was defined as information about developments in the Ukraine.

Alpha information went beyond recent Ukrainian history, to a war between Argentina and Uruguay in South America, a subject McKee hadn't heard about. The next page of computer text revealed that both had acquired nuclear weapons in large quantities and had been threatening each other for the last five years. In 2013, both nations had manned up their conventional militaries, mostly land armies.

The next page reported the intentions of Argentina, gathered from electronic eavesdropping of phone conversations and computer e-mail. The country had struck a deal with the ever insolvent Ukraine involving their Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine had agreed to sail south to the coast off Montevideo, Uruguay, and attack from the sea while Argentinean forces crossed the border on land.

McKee whistled aloud -- none of this had ever made its way to the New York Times. He'd assumed the massive Ukrainian Black Sea Fleet was rusting away in mothballs at the Sevastopol piers. Yet he certainly believed that they'd want to get some use out of all that fire-power.

McKee looked up and found the naval air lieutenant sitting opposite him, watching him intently.

"Yes?" he asked.

"Can I get you anything?" she asked.

"Coffee would be great," he said. "And I'd like to smoke, but I don't imagine you have a stock of cigars."

"Admiral Phillips said to give you whatever you need," she said, standing. From an overhead compartment she withdrew a small humidor and opened it to reveal a half dozen Cuban Montecristo cigars, a cutter and a lighter, then moved aft to the bar.

"What I really need is a phone," McKee growled.

"Except for a phone," she called back from the bar, smiling.

"Goddamn it," McKee muttered. Clipping the tip from the torpedo-shaped cigar, he fired it up with a lighter with the skull-and-crossbones emblem of the U.S. Unified Submarine Command on it. When the coffee landed in front of him, he waved at the lieutenant and paged the computer display through another page of dry text.

The next section was a file of e-mails and encrypted radio messages, going as far back as 2013, five years ago. They detailed the hostility breaking out between the two South American countries -- over trade, border disputes and what seemed to boil down to a personality conflict between the respective heads of state. Then in 2014, Uruguay detonated an underground nuclear test. Early in 2015 Argentina blew up four test warheads. A cargo ship sailed from Red China and made port in Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina, offloading twenty missile bodies, ready for warheads. In 2016 Uruguay's army was a paltry 30,000 men. By 2017 Uruguay had put a whopping 700,000 in uniform, out of a population of five million. And by that time Argentina's army had grown to two million, but Uruguay had imported over three hundred of the newest Indian Madras battle tanks. Argentina's sparse navy had been ordered to maximum readiness, while the Argentinean talks with Ukrainian President Dolovietz progressed from the theoretical to compensation details. As Argentinean money was wire-transferred to Swiss accounts, the Black Sea Fleet's maintenance went from poor to substandard to fair. Over the course of two years the destroyers, frigates, cruisers and aircraft carrier of the Black Sea Fleet were tended to with loving care, being prepared for action.

There was one lengthy e-mail to the president from the Secretary of State, acerbic Lido Gaz, going over the five year history of the failed American diplomatic initiatives to bring the Uruguay-Argentina feud to an end. This included the recent intervention in the Ukraine, when Gaz had gone to speak to – or threaten – President Vladimir Dolovietz, but the entreaty had been ignored.

The messages in the file grew recent. On April 14 of this year, three Ukrainian destroyers had transited the Bosporus Strait and Dardanelles and made their way into the Mediterranean Sea, on an exercise. They made port in Toulon, France, for what they called a foreign exchange port call. On April 20, another squadron of three destroyers left the Black Sea, also stopping in France. On April 25, all six destroyers departed Toulon and transited Gibraltar to the deep Atlantic. U.S. satellite reports showed them conducting exercises in a square block of ocean two hundred miles off Spain.

On April 28, the engine-room of the huge nuclear powered aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov lit off, the heat blooms captured in American spy satellite passes. Later that day the nuclear reactor of the Severodvinsk fast attack nuclear submarine Tigr was started. On April 29, four cruisers departed Sevastopol, Ukraine, and headed west, followed by four fast amphibious attack ships, all of them stuffed to the gills with Ukrainian marines and tanks. Following them were two oilers loaded with fuel for the fleet, enough for a long voyage. On April 30, three squadrons of frigates made their way to the Mediterranean. That same day the Severodvinsk submarine departed the Sevastopol pier and within 20 kilometers dived and disappeared. On the first of May the aircraft carrier tossed over her lines and made for the seaway behind the frigates and cruisers. On May 10, satellite scans showed the late departing flotilla going westward through Gibraltar into the Atlantic, one ship at a time, casually, so as not to attract untoward attention. By May 11 the entire fleet was in the Atlantic, conducting independent maneuvers in the square of ocean off Europe.

On May 12, a flurry of e-mails, phone-calls, and radio messages passed between Buenos Aires, Argentina and Kiev, Ukraine. On May 13, the Ukrainian Black Sea Fleet formed up and headed south-southwest at maximum speed, 30 knots. On May 14, three squadrons of Flanker supersonic attack fighter-bombers took off from Sevastopol and landed on the deck of the Kuznetsov, followed by a dozen attack helicopters. By May 16, the Ukrainian battle group had crossed the Tropic of Cancer en route to the equator, the headlong rush to the South Atlantic still in progress.

McKee looked down at his fist, where the cigar had gone out. His coffee had long gone cold, but he slurped the remainder down anyway and relit the cigar. He returned to the message file, where he found the name of one particular American ship mentioned more and more, the USS Devilfish. This was the prototype ship of the NSSN new attack submarine class, designated SSNX, SSN standing for submersible ship nuclear, the X for experimental. The NSSN program was designed to replace the Seawolf-class and take the fleet into the twenties and thirties. And as a prototype, SSNX was a one-of-a-kind ship, not quite the same as the follow-on USS Virginia, the true first NSSN on the building ways in Groton, Connecticut, at the DynaCorp New Construction Facility. Three other NSSN hulls were in various stages of construction, but until Virginia joined the fleet a year from now, Devilfish was considered the most formidable submarine in the world. The messages began to suggest that Devilfish might be tasked to intercept the Ukrainian task force. The suggestion originated at a low level, then made its way higher, becoming recommended by Admiral Bruce Phillips himself. As commander of the Unified Submarine Force, Phillips' opinion carried tons of weight in the Pentagon. The next few messages were e-mails exchanged between Phillips and Admiral Kane, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations for Submarine Warfare, then a few exchanges between Phillips and the Chief of Naval Operations, the commanding admiral of the entire U.S. Navy, Admiral Michael Pacino.

Pacino's messages were full of questions about tactics, survivability, purpose of the operation, exactly how Devilfish would be employed. What kind of weapons she would fire, whom she would target. The e-mails then went to even higher levels, Admiral Pacino's recommendations to Fleet Admiral Richard O'Shaughnessy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and to Freddy Masters, the Secretary of War, that Devilfish be loaded out with surface ship- and sub-killing weapons and sent at maximum speed to intercept and sink the Ukrainian battle fleet. The next e-mails in the file were from Freddy Masters to President Warner herself, the reply the convening of the National Security Council at Camp David that weekend. The meeting transcript from the Saturday meeting was 32 pages long, the meat of it that the Black Sea Fleet should be put on the bottom of the Atlantic to attempt to defuse a possible nuclear war.

The message traffic grew heavy on May 15, four days ago, when the upper levels of the Pentagon suddenly realized that the commanding officer of Devilfish had gone on leave, to parts unknown, and could not easily be called back. Glitches like this became commonplace when information was as tightly controlled as Release Twelve, since even Admiral Phillips was unaware of the coming conflict when he had approved the Devilfish captain's vacation plans. On May 17 the executive officer, the second-in-command, of the Devilfish was ordered to set sail for the Atlantic, making a maximum speed run for the equator. When the captain was located, he would be taken to a rendezvous point and reunited with his submarine. May 19, the captain was traced to a remote Wyoming location. Today, May 20, he would be airlifted to the rendezvous point, the operation already three days old.

May 23, three days from now, was the date set for the interception of the Ukrainian battle group, at latitude thirty degrees south, off Porto Alegre, Brazil, just out of Ukrainian aircraft range. It would be cutting it close, but the submarine was in a tail chase at flank speed, and would need all the time the White House could grant her to speed ahead of the enemy fleet and ambush it.

The last message was from the Seal Team Seven commander, reporting that the Devilfish commander had been located and was being airlifted to his ship. McKee shut off the computer and closed the portfolio. Out the window the morning sun was glimmering over the deep blue water of the Caribbean Sea, or at least what he imagined was the Caribbean Sea.

So that was why he'd been pulled out of the cabin. But couldn't they just knock on the door like anyone else? he wondered. But then, after seeing what Release Twelve meant, he began to see that they couldn't afford to have him say no. Someone would have to say, 'You have to, it's war,' and at that point Release Twelve codeword Alpha information would be compromised. What a tangled web, McKee thought.

He stared out the window some more, amazed that a week ago he was doing little more than political infighting in a peacetime Navy. Now he was going to war. It was too much to process. Despite the queasiness he felt from the aftereffects of the drug the Seals had used on him and the jitters from the coffee and cigar tobacco, he decided to try to sleep. He reclined the seat, pulled down the window shade and shut his eyes.

What sleep he got was troubled. He kept seeing Diana's face, her cheeks wet with tears. He woke after less than an hour, feeling deeply disturbed, and promised himself he'd quit the Navy as soon as this operation ended.

USSDEVILFISH.COM Michael DiMercurio Princeton, New Jersey E-mail: readermail@USSDEVILFISH.COM