Tomahawk

 

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.

 

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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 satisfied 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.