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  HIGH PRAISE FOR DAVID POYER

  TOMAHAWK

  “An absorbing narrative that whips along at the author’s usual firecracker pace… TOMAHAWK is very much a book of today.”

  —Norfolk Virginian-Pilot

  “Sharp-edged… [a] tense tale.”

  —Florida Times-Union

  “TOMAHAWK is a book of many levels. On the surface, it is a book of suspense—spies, secret missile strikes, murder … Dig a little further, and there is an officer who is troubled deeply by the effects of the weapons that he is developing.”

  —Naval Institute Proceedings

  “The intrigues of bureaucracy have a ring of authenticity … If you’re into military thrillers, you’ll like this book.”

  —Wisconsin State Journal

  “A gritty thriller.”

  —Microsoft Network

  More…

  THE PASSAGE

  “The suspense and danger practically leap off the pages.”

  —Miami Herald

  “[Poyer] makes one hope this is not the last Dan Lenson novel, all the more because the first four together constitute one of the outstanding bodies of nautical fiction in English during the last half-century.”

  —Booklist

  “Where other writers of sea thrillers succeed with escapism, Poyer succeeds with realism … THE PASSAGE is a superbly crafted story about people in the most stressing of life situations.”

  —The Virginian-Pilot

  THE CIRCLE

  “THE CIRCLE may well become a cult novel, for buffs on Navy lore and Navy life. It delves incredibly deep into the U.S. Navy psyche—as deep as I’ve ever seen anyone go. It also manages to tug at the heart. A real achievement.”

  —Thomas Fleming, author of The Spoils of War

  and Time and Tide

  “Movingly depicts the unforgiving triad of command at sea: authority, responsibility and accountability.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  THE GULF

  “David Poyer has written the best candidate for great American Navy novel since The Sand Pebbles … THE GULF has an incredibly deft touch with subtle comedy, tight drama, a plot that is richly adventuresome but never intrusive on its characters, and exhilarating naval action moving and driving right up to the very end.”

  —Florida Times-Union

  “Breathtaking, from the first page to the last. THE GULF is one of the very few military thrillers by a man who not only knows his subject thoroughly but who is also a genuinely talented writer. Despite the author’s stunning command of technical and tactical details, THE GULF is as clear as a good day at sea and quick as a twenty-four-hour pass.”

  —Ralph Peters, author of Red Army

  THE MED

  “David Poyer pulls no punches. THE MED is an honest, gritty tale of the real Navy. I loved it.”

  —Stephen Coonts, New York Times bestselling

  author of Fortunes of War and Cuba

  “Everything works in this first-rate, unsentimental, and thoroughly accurate look at the present-day Navy. For once there is nothing of the bogus missile-rattling that is usually at the heart of such efforts. These are believable adults with real minds.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  OTHER BOOKS BY DAVID POYER

  TALES OF THE MODERN NAVY

  Black Storm

  China Sea

  The Passage

  The Circle

  The Gulf

  The Med

  THE HEMLOCK COUNTY NOVELS

  Winter Light

  Thunder on the Mountain

  As the Wolf Loves Winter

  Winter in the Heart

  The Dead of Winter

  THE TILLER GALLOWAY NOVELS

  Down to a Sunless Sea

  Louisiana Blue

  Bahamas Blue

  Hatteras Blue

  OTHER NOVELS

  Fire on the Waters

  The Only Thing to Fear

  Stepfather Bank

  The Return of Philo T. McGiffin

  Star Steed

  The Shiloh Project

  White Continent

  TOMAHAWK

  DAVID POYER

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, companies, and organizations in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously, without intent to describe their actual conduct.

  TOMAHAWK

  Copyright © 1998 by David Poyer.

  Exerpt from China Sea copyright © 2000 by David Poyer.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-37121

  ISBN: 0-312-96561-3

  EAN: 80312-96561-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  St. Martin’s hardcover edition /April 1998

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / January 2000

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  Let this be dedicated to them both.

  To those who forge the weapon,

  Trusting in strength,

  And those who renounce it, *

  Trusting in faith.

  Those who lived through the time of trial warn us:

  Better to have and not require

  Than to grasp and find the scabbard empty.

  But let us never cease to ask

  If the time has come

  When we no longer need the sword at all.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Ex nihilo nihil fit. For this book, I owe thanks to James Allen, Roddie Alvar, Robert K. Anderson, Steve Baggarly, Lorrie and Tom Belke, Eric and Bobbie Berryman, Stan Bialas, Kenny Bryson, Randy Carrier, Horace Chamber, David C. Clink, T. Ray Colemon, Y. P. Cooper, Dave Daigle, Doug Geddes, Herb Gilliland, Vince Goodrich, Frank Green, Kay Hart, Scott and Kate Hedderich, Richard Hobbs, Robert Holsapple, Thomas Hudak, Tim Jenkins, Joshua Kendall, Robert W. Klementz, Walter M. Locke, Gary Moretti, Gail Nicula, Caroline Orr, Dave Peterson, Joseph Platt, Lenore Hart Poyer, Sally Richardson, Linda Roberts, Ken Roffler, Rich Romano, Rose Ann Shelton, Mardi Snow, Edward Speck, Robert Spiker, Paul Stillwell, K. J. Thomson, George F. A. Wagner, George Witte, Don Young, and others in the defense and peace communities who preferred anonymity. As always, all errors and deficiencies are my own.

  Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow in the sky!

  A young man will be wiser by and by

  And old man’s wit may wander ere he die.

  Rain, rain, and sun! a rainbow on the lea!

  And truth is this to me, and that to thee,

  And truth or clothed or naked let it be.

  Rain, sun, and rain! and the free blossom blows;

  Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who knows?

  From the great deep to the great deep he goes.

  —The Coming of Arthur, Tennyson

  Prologue

  Griffiss Air Force Base,

  Rome, New York

  The perimeter fence was wire, veneered that morning, after weeks of subzero weather, with slick, clear ice that smoothed everything but the steel barbs.

  The station wagon stopped not long after 3:00 A.M. When it pulled back onto the road again, taillights bleeding into the roaring darkness, it left two shadows crouched against that first barrier.

  The wind buffeted them as they stood motionless in the knee-deep snow, peering around. The storm obliterated the hills. It wrapped a gauzy curtain around the perimeter floodlights. When they were s
atisfied they were alone, they lowered their heads. All around them, writhing and howling, the darkness seethed.

  When they finished saying the prayer of abandonment, they hooked the figurines on the fence. The copper cutouts clattered as the wind caught their wings, rattling against the steel.

  Then they pulled out the cutters.

  The second fence, a few meters inside the first, was higher and stouter, of hardened chain link. They bent again over the tool. One held the section to be cut. The other pumped the handles. The howl of the wind obliterated the clack as the jaws closed.

  Beyond them that same wind was stripping up long veils from the powder snow that blanketed the airfield. Red lights occulted above the tower. White and blue glowed deep in the storm. Occasionally, headlights wheeled near what might be terminal buildings, or hangars.

  They didn’t look up. They knew the layout of the base. They’d watched it for hours through binoculars. They’d eavesdropped with scanners till they knew the patrol schedule and the habits of each security team—when they stopped for coffee, how often they got out to check the fence, even some of their names. They had time, but not much. So they kept working, puffing out white clouds into the wind. It mixed their warm breath with icy snow and flung it all away into the night.

  A three-foot-square section of the second fence fell away.

  They dropped to the snow and wriggled through, the larger shadow first, then the smaller.

  The third fence was chain link, too, but this time with an insulated wire knitted into it. There was no way to get through without breaking the white wire. The lead figure hesitated, fingering it in the darkness. A flashlight probed, shielded with a mitten. Then the cutters went to work again.

  When they stood again on the, far side, flat open space stretched away. The tarmac had been plowed the day before, but inches of drift had covered it again. Above that to a height of three or four feet, the snow seethed restlessly. They plodded forward, heads bent.

  Slowly the great shapes grew, until they could make out the immense down-slanted dihedral of wings, the underslung pods of engines, the long, straight lines of fuselages.

  Headlights dawned on the far side, sending snow-blurred shadows fleeing across polished aluminum. They hurried their steps, reaching into their coats. A moment later, they were beneath the wings.

  The slam and clatter of metal on metal was faint at first, muffled by the storm. But it kept on, now growing louder.

  The headlights swept past, dwindling down the runway. Then they dipped as the vehicle carrying them braked suddenly.

  They swung back, probing toward the undercarriage of the bomber.

  When the security force’s truck slid to a halt in a flurry of snow and its doors flew open, the two intruders dropped their arms from a pyloned cylinder. Guards tumbled out of the vehicle. Their mouths made black O’s in the white howl of the storm. Cartridges snicked into rifle chambers.

  The headlights showed a dark red patch on the snow. They pinned the man and woman under the plane like animals on a highway. The two backed away, letting go of their hammers, which vanished instantly under the driven whiteness.

  “Raise your hands. Now!” a sergeant shouted.

  Instead, the intruders reached into a tote bag. The guards’ rifles leveled.

  A banner unrolled from gloved hands, whipping out into the wind. In the glare of the headlights, it read NOT BY MIGHT, NOR BY POWER, BUT BY MY SPIRIT.

  The sergeant of the guard hesitated, then lowered his pistol. The Jeep’s radio crackled. He reached in and seized the handset.

  “They’re peace activists,” he said. “Yeah… call the ready maintenance people. They’ve been hammering on one of the fuel tanks.”

  A question. “No. Not armed….Yes, sir, threw some

  blood or something…. Right. Search ‘em, cuff ‘em, and bring ‘em in. You got it. Better call the officer of the day. And scramble the on-call squad. Might be more of them out there.”

  A few hours later, in the cold white light of dawn, a security policeman approached the first break in the wire. He stopped several feet off, lifted a camera, and began taking photographs: the tire marks leading off the perimeter road; the scuffle of tracks, still faintly visible: the bent-back, snipped-off steel barbs. Then blinked at what hung above the gap in the fence, swaying and dancing in the cold raw wind.

  “What the hell’s that?” said another, behind him. “Don’t touch it. Don’t take a risk, man.”

  “I don’t think we need to worry,” said the photographer. He aimed the camera again, framing them carefully in the viewfinder, and snapped off three shots from different angles as they hung there. Then he stood back as another man flipped open an evidence bag.

  Carefully, holding them by the tips of their wings, they detached the handmade copper angels from the wire and dropped them into the black nylon sack.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  I

  THE PROGRAM

  1

  Slowing for the exit off 395, Lcdr. Daniel V. Lenson, U.S. Navy, squinted into a sparkle like the sunlit sea. It came from ten thousand parked cars, surrounding the five-sided building like breaking surf around a high island.

  Lenson had gray eyes and sandy hair. The top ribbon on his short-sleeved whites was the blue and red on a white field of the Silver Star. Above that was the ship and wave insignia which meant Surface Line. The oldest, the proudest, but in some ways the least forgiving community in the Navy.

  When a horn blared behind him, he snapped his attention back to the off-ramp. Eight A.M., and the summer air was already hot. He cranked his window shut and turned the air conditioning on full.

  Today, he was starting his first tour of shore duty. No more six-month deployments. No more in-port duty sections. Time to relax, start postgraduate work, have his daughter visit—in short, get a life after four stressful atsea tours.

  Parking was horrendous. He searched for half an hour before he found a space out in the wasteland. At the south entrance, lines of buses idled, waiting to discharge passengers. A jet roared overhead, taking off from National Airport. A handful of demonstrators stood holding signs, the arriving mass dividing to stream in around them.

  He remembered all at once, as if he’d blocked it out till now, the last time he’d been here. The court of inquiry. He’d been so doped up, he didn’t recall it well. Just hour after hour sitting in the anteroom, waiting to testify. Seeing a man in the cafeteria he’d known was dead. He still didn’t have an explanation for that. Then those iron minutes facing four admirals across a green baize table, while he spoke the words that had cauterized his pain but crippled his career.

  A lot had changed since then. Susan was gone, and their daughter, Nan, with her. Bringing Barrett back from Cuba outweighed the fitness report Ike Sundstrom had nailed him with after the Syrian incursion. But with nine years in, he had to decide soon whether he was going to get out, try something else, or go for a full twenty. Before it was too late
to start over.

  He took a deep breath. Turning from the rising sun, he joined the throng of uniforms and suits and dresses heading up a long stairway. A moment later, he was lost in the hurrying crowd.

  Off the main corridors the Pentagon became narrow 1940s-tacky passageways ceilinged with rusty air ducts and dripping pipes and sagging cable runs. He wiped sweat off his forehead as he compared room numbers with his orders. When a second knock brought no response, he let himself in.

  A tiny front-desk area held an enlisted man and a computer. A daisy-wheel printer clattered. Dividers of frosted glass hived minuscule offices.

  “Lenson, Lenson,” the petty officer muttered. He stared at the orders, then turned them over, as if they might have something on the back.

  “Actually, I’m not due for a couple days yet, but I thought I’d start getting checked in.”

  “Been to Navy Annex yet? Up on the Hill. They’re gonna want to see you about your medical records, service records.” The second-class looked at the front of the orders again.

  “Something wrong?” Dan asked him. ‘This is Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Surface, right?”

  “Oh yeah. But I didn’t get any—let me make a call, all right? You want to sit over there, there’s a paper you can look at.”

  He lost himself in Navy Times, a discussion of the bloody stalemate in the Iran-Iraq war. Then flipped to an article about the six-hundred-ship fleet. Congress was wavering in their support of the buildup, now that they’d seen the price tag.

  “Commander?”

  He looked up, then rose. The other officer didn’t introduce himself. Instead, he said, fanning himself with Dan’s orders, “There’s some kind of glitch here, uh, Lenson. I remember talking to the detailer about you, but my confused and vague impression was that you dropped out early in the selection process. Trouble is, we got a body already reported in to this billet.”