The 4th Strike

By Thom Tate

A team of North Korean Special Forces has attacked the LORAN station on Attu Island in the Aleutian Islands and stolen a nuclear warhead that wasn’t supposed to exist. Special Agent Blake MacKay and SEAL Team 5 have been tasked with searching the North Pacific to track them down and recover the warhead.
After a disastrous rendezvous with a trawler that they thought contained the warhead, Blake and his team of SEALs discovered that the search was about to get much harder.
The nuke had been loaded onto an old Whiskey Class Soviet Submarine. Their biggest challenge: force the North Korean sub to the surface so Blake and his team can recover the nuke. If they sink the sub, the nuke will be impossible to recover.
With the help of the North Pacific fleet, Blake and his team of SEALs engage in an underwater game of cat and mouse as they tread through the icy waters, hundreds of feet below the surface in search of their prey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thom Tate
• Release date: Dec 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310109973

Thom Tate

I am an emerging writer in the Spy Thriller space. All my stories revolve around my main character, Blake MacKay. He has been described by reviewers as a cross between James Bond and Jason Bourne. Young, intelligent, and very deadly. Blake works for the Office of Clandestine Affairs at the CIA. My series, "Covert World" is currently made up of five ebook novellas and one full-length novel that can be purchased as a paperback or downloaded as an ebook. I am currently working on my second novel, Deep Rising and hope to have it finished this year (2023) If you like Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, and the like, then I think you'll enjoy these. The books, in order, are; "CzechMate", "Meltdown", "The 4th Strike", "Intercept" and "Red Storm" (avail. now on Amazon). "Intercept" and "Red Storm" are my personal favorites. My full novel called is "Spear Garden", and gives you a full experience into the world of clandestine operations. I am currently an independent author and do my own marketing by using Facebook, Twitter, and independent author sites. Any help that I can get is sincerely appreciated. If you've read any of my books and you enjoyed them, please write a review on the site that you've purchased them from. This helps me in more ways than you can imagine. Look for "Deep Rising", coming late 2023 Thank you for your support.

Book preview

The 4th Strike

By

Thom Tate

Published by Thom Tate on Smashwords. Copyright 2012 Thom Tate. Edited by Alex Stoddard. Cover by S.A. Hunt

Follow Blake on his missions on Twitter @bmackay40

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Chapter 1

Sea of Okhotsk

Western Russia

April 13th

22:30 Local Time

Erik Drevnerussky brewed a fresh pot of coffee and poured a cup. He added his special ingredient, a shot of vodka, and walked up to the bridge to monitor his ships progress. At fifty-nine years old, Erik had over forty years’ experience at sea. He still had a full head of hair. It was thick and curly but had turned mostly grey-- with brief glances of his younger times here and there-- years ago. With his beard and thick greyish white sweater he was wearing, he looked like the spokesperson for the Gorton’s Fisherman brand of products. He was the captain of a 190 foot trawler that delivered supplies from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur to the small village of Tilichiki, in the Kamchatka Krai region of western Russia. It was a run that he’d traveled every other week for the past seventeen years and so far, it had been a typical and uneventful trip. Little did he know what was unfolding just 300 yards off of his stern.

The submarine S-187, built by the former Soviet Union in the mid 80’s and purchased by the North Korean People’s Army in 2001, cruised just below the surface in the icy waters just a short distance behind the trawler. It was diesel-electric and carried a complement of 54. At just under 250ft in length, it could cruise submerged at 13 knots and nearly 19 knots on the surface. However, that wasn’t fast enough to catch the trawler that cruised ahead at 22 knots.

The ships control team used the bow and stern planes to breach the surface just enough to allow the outer hatch to be out of the water. Skillfully, they used the various ballast tanks and filled and emptied them with water to make the sub hover in place.

The hatch hissed as the staleness was replaced by fresh, cool air that rushed in. Lt. Commander Min-Ho, the man in charge of the North Korean SOF (Special Operations Forces), slid down the ladder after opening the hatch, got on the line and confirmed with the captain that the hatch was open and he was ready to deploy his team.

Excellent. Deploy both teams immediately. The trawler gets father away every second, said the captain.

Yes sir! Lt. Commander Min-Ho hung up the receiver and gave his team the nod to proceed.

All stations were manned while the SOF team deployed their boats. Even though the smallest part of the sub barely broke the surface, depending on the Russian trawler’s outdated radar technology, there was still a chance that the sub would be picked up by the small ship and the SOF team’s advantage of surprise would be lost.

By the time the last SOF commando made it to the surface, both Zodiac boats had been inflated and the team had just finished attaching the second outboard to the last boat. Each boat had a six-man team and within minutes they left the sub and were on their way to complete their mission. They carried Heckler & Koch MP5SD Sub Machine guns with integrated silencer elements: excellent for night operations. Lt. Commander Sang gave the command to start the engines and head toward the trawler.

Seaman Kwok sealed the watertight hatch and reported to the bridge, saluted the commander and said, Commander Nam, both teams have deployed successfully. The hatch is closed and locked securely. We are ready to dive on your command, sir.

The commander dismissed Kwok with a wave of his hand. Chief of Watch, status of the board?

We have a straight board captain. All hatches are closed and secured. Ready to dive on your command.

The straight board is a board with lights. Each light represents a separate hatch on the submarine. The board has an upper row and a lower row, with the top row representing when a hatch is secured and the bottom row indicating when one is not. If all the hatches are secure, it is called a straight board.

Dive now. Make our depth three zero zero and head to our rendezvous point bearing zero seven zero at half speed.

The dive officer repeated the order and continued, "Aye sir, make my depth three zero zero, bearing zero seven zero, half speed.

The internal alarms sounded indicating that the submarine was about to dive, and within a minute the Whiskey class submarine was deep below the dark waters of the Sea of Okhotsk.

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