He looked at their display. Relayed to the cabin by a member of the three-man sensor team in the rear of the plane—Airman Aldrich, Sensor One—the Triton drone’s optical real times were picking up fluctuations in the surface current consistent with a submarine to a near hundred percent probability. Triton’s magnetic anomaly detector had reinforced that appraisal with its own readings.

Something was clearly down there. And that wasn’t all. Like a high-tech Etch-a-Sketch, the integrated AI aboard the drone had drawn a picture of the sub on-screen, and it was a class apart from any boat in its digital memory archive. In essence, what they had was an underwater UFO. A big one. And one that definitely wasn’t of American origin.

“Roger—what the hell do we do?”

Archer checked his distance readouts. Triton was now about three hundred miles southwest of Oahu. Their own position was a hundred miles closer to the island. They could cover the distance to the boat in minutes.

“We get over there, drop our sonobuoys and contact base,” he said. “Then we wait to see if we’re going to be heroes.”

It was four-thirty in the morning.

President Fucillo took the call through a White House operator at four forty-five. On the private line with her was Admiral Francis P. Kealey, Commander of the US Pacific Fleet at his Pearl Harbor headquarters complex. Also patched in from their residences were SoS Tanner Woodrbridge and NSA Josh Urias.

“OK, everybody’s here,” Fucillo said. “Get right to it, Frank.”

“Yes, Madam,” he said. “One of our Tritons has located a submarine. About three hundred miles southwest of Oahu. Shallow depth—six hundred feet. It’s presently stationary.”

“Have you identified it?”

“The boat’s signature is anomalous. But we’re certain it’s a Chinese drone.”

“Because?”

“Fourteenth District put two subchasers and a UAV in the air when the Kono Head landing station was hit. All three have the new multifunction radar pods. Also one of the planes is already on-site and dropped its sonobuoys. A hundred and forty of them. It gave us a clear acoustic profile and we ran it by ONI.” A pause. “Beijing calls it the Silent Dragon. It’s the damn hypersonic they’ve crowed about for years.”

“Nuclear capabilities, yes or no?”

“Yes, Madam. That’s the bad news. Probably it has Yu-9s. Light torpedoes. They’ve got two fifty-kilogram warheads—and the way they work gives them a wide blast radius. One would erase the island. I don’t want to think what two would do.”

Fucillo took a breath.

“What do you think it’s waiting for?”

“Best guess—the group that broke into Kono’s there to take out the Sentient offshore surveillance system. So we can’t track the sub if it moves within range of the coast.”

“Which is?”

“About twenty miles. Could be closer to thirty.”

“Options, Frank.”