Shattered Trident (14 page)

“Captain,” Jerry answered.

“Skipper, CDO. We have the data from Fargo, and you’ll want to see this.”

“Very well, Engineer. I’ll be there shortly.” Jerry hung up and gratefully slid the chemistry logs back into his inbox. They’d keep.

Jerry deliberately walked casually toward the control room, taking deep breaths to help calm himself. He had to look composed, confident. “You should never look frazzled,” he’d been counseled by Kyle Guthrie, his old skipper on
Michigan
. “The crew looks to you for stability, particularly when things start getting crazy.”

Strolling past the radio room, Jerry paused and stuck his head in to see how the message was progressing. Inside he saw Thigpen, Franklin, and one of the info techs working furiously.

“How’s that message coming, XO?” Jerry inquired. He really didn’t need to ask, the three were clearly going at it with hammer and tongs, but every once in a while it was kind of fun to pull Thigpen’s chain. You never knew what kind of response you’d get. Jerry remembered, with the type of fondness that only comes with the passage of time, how often Guthrie had tugged on his line.

Thigpen was hovering over the console, twitching as he pointed toward the screen. “No! Move that part here. No, not there, here! Yes, right there. Good!” blurted the XO. Looking up and seeing Jerry in the doorway, Thigpen held up one finger as he bounced from one foot to the other. “Give us another minute, Skipper, then we’ll have something for you.”

Jerry smiled, nodded, and continued on. Upon entering control, he saw LT David Covey hard at work on the spare console. The port VLSD had the output from one of the photonics masts on it, while the electronic support system’s audible signal kept beeping in the background. Sobecki sounded a little stressed as he gave rudder orders. The track display on the starboard big screen showed a large number of contacts. It sure was busy up here.

“Command Duty Officer, report,” Jerry ordered.

“Sir, we’ve downloaded Fargo’s data and you were right, she saw the whole thing. Dave has been busy sending the highlights to the XO for the OPREP-3 message,” responded Sobecki.

Before Jerry could ask for any details, a warning alarm suddenly sounded in control.

“Conn, ESM. Have an APS-504 radar, signal strength three, bearing zero one three, closing fast.”

Sobecki didn’t acknowledge the report right away; he had to move quickly, as a Chinese Y-8 maritime patrol aircraft was getting dangerously close. The aircraft’s surface search radar was a significant detection threat to the two exposed masts.

“Lower all masts!” he cried.

The optics mast operator and copilot echoed the command as they manipulated their controls, dipping the masts below the ocean’s surface. Jerry could feel the tension rising in the air. The watchstanders had acted properly, but they were all on edge.

“Sorry, Skipper, it’s been hectic,” apologized Sobecki. “A lot of search-and-rescue traffic popped up in the last fifteen minutes. That was our second Y-8 MPA, probably one of their alert aircraft.”

“You’re doing fine, Phil,” Jerry reassured his third in command. “Now, tell me what’s going on.”

Sobecki wasn’t able to utter a word before Thigpen interrupted him, “Here you go, Skipper. This is the
Reader’s Digest
version of the story; if you’re happy with this we can send it out as soon as the airspace clears.”

Jerry took the hard-copy message from his XO and quickly scanned it. He skipped through the preamble after making sure the “Z” prosign for “Flash” precedence was present. Jerry was less interested in proper format right now than he was in the content.

Jumping to the body of the message, he noted the location of the first set of explosions—latitude 17° 54’ N, longitude 108° 46’ E—almost forty-nine nautical miles to the west; the time, 0159 local; and the tactical assessment. His eyes quickly homed in on the sentence: “ISR UUV acoustic data showed two TE-2 torpedoes fired by probable Vietnamese Kilo-class submarine at a Chinese merchant, subsequently identified as the China Ocean Shipping Company tanker
Yan Shui Hu,
25,428 gross registered tons.”

Jerry shook his head as he continued reading. The information content of the message was good; its implications were anything but. He moved on to the second set of explosions, which had far less data. However, the conclusion that it was possibly due to another submarine attack made it just as stark. Grunting his approval, he handed the draft back to Thigpen.

“Send it, XO.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Thigpen, visibly relieved. As he headed back to the radio room, Jerry called back to him.

“XO. Nice work, Bernie.”

*   *   *

Ten minutes later, with
North Dakota
back down to 150 feet, the atmosphere in control began to ease. Jerry hovered over the spare common console as LT Covey walked him through the engagement. The Kilo had positioned itself off the starboard beam of the tanker and fired a two-weapon salvo at a range of 4,500 yards. It was a textbook Russian attack, deliberate and premeditated; there was no other way to describe it.

While Jerry, Thigpen, and Sobecki dissected the Kilo’s tactics, one of the electronics technicians poked his head out of the ESM bay. “Skipper, XO. We picked up something you’ll be interested in.”

Jerry and Thigpen crammed themselves into the tight ESM shack, while Sobecki leaned in from the doorway. “What goodies did you vacuum from the ether, Petty Officer Fleming?” asked Thigpen with a lighthearted tone.

Fleming smiled as he pointed toward a young third class. “Petty Officer Kalinsky here has been going over the material we collected while we were uploading the message, and he found some pretty interesting stuff. Go ahead and tell the skipper, Gus.”

Kalinsky was one of the CT riders, a cryptologic technician attached to
North Dakota
in support of the special operations mission. Linguistic experts are often added to a submarine’s crew to provide on-the-spot information by monitoring the local radio frequencies. Many an intelligence gem had been harvested in the past by the careless transmission of someone who thought they wouldn’t be heard.

“Yes, sir, Captain,” stammered the young sailor. “While the boat transmitted the message, I picked up a lot of voice traffic from the port authority at Yulin. Most of the chatter was from rescue ships asking where they needed to go to assist. Well, one of those rescue ships was heading in the direction of the second set of explosions, and that dude was really confused. The guy at the port authority started shouting at the captain and repeated the location and identification data for another ship. I wrote it down as quickly as I could. Here it is, along with a rough translation.”

Jerry took the sheet of torn paper and looked at the hastily written notes. The top lines contained Chinese characters. Sloppily written, they looked like a child’s chicken scratches. Below them, however, were neatly printed English words—their meaning electrifying. Jerry read them out loud.

“Distress beacon transmission, merchant vessel
Chang Chi,
lat 17° 25’N, long 111° 10’ E. No response to radio hails.” Jerry handed the notes to Thigpen. “Eng, look up the
Chang Chi
.”

“Already did that, sir,” Fleming exclaimed. “It’s another tanker, Skipper. Motor vessel
Chang Chi,
crude oil tanker, 27,155 gross registered tons, owned and operated by the Nanjing Tanker Company.” Fleming handed the report chit to his CO.

“Well done, Petty Officer Fleming. You too, Petty Officer Kalinsky. That was mighty fine detective work.” Jerry was pleased with his people’s performance. He briefly looked again at the
Chang Chi
’s information, and a frown formed on his face.

“Two tankers. Just a coincidence, or an indication?” Jerry asked openly.

Thigpen chuckled. “Just a coincidence, Skipper? An ice cube has a better chance in a blast furnace. These were deliberate attacks. In my opinion, it’s an indication.” Then, deftly snatching the report chit from Jerry’s hand, Thigpen added, “Well, it looks like I have another message to write.”

“I believe you do, too,” agreed Jerry.

30 August 2016

2100 Local Time

USS
North Dakota

Off Hainan Island, South China Sea

Jerry paced back and forth in his stateroom. There hadn’t been any response from squadron on his two messages, nothing. There were snippets of information in the routine broadcasts that hinted at possible attacks elsewhere along the Chinese coast, but nothing with any substance, no details. Adding to his frustration, Fargo had lost contact with the Kilo. Whoever the captain was, he knew his business. He craftily merged with a small fishing fleet before he started snorkeling. The UUV’s autonomous detection algorithms couldn’t differentiate one marine diesel from another, and dutifully locked on to the loudest source around the Kilo’s last known bearing—a large fishing boat. The sonar techs had plowed through the last data dump and were confident the UUV had been tracking the fishing vessel for at least an hour.

*   *   *

“I don’t want to let this guy go,” he had said earlier to his XO and department heads. “He’s a known bad actor, and I’ve got a nagging feeling we’ve only seen the beginning.”

“But Skipper, why couldn’t these two attacks just be a tit-for-tat retaliation for the 093’s sinking of the
Vinaship Sea
?” asked Rothwell.

“That’s a possibility, Nav, but the dots don’t stack up very well for that hypothesis,” Thigpen argued, referring to the fire control’s visual display of a neat vertical line of bearing dots when the solution was a good one. “This would be the second rotation on the retaliation merry-go-round. Remember, the Vietnamese mined the carrier first. I doubt the Chinese will let these attacks go unanswered.”

“The XO’s correct,” observed Jerry. “But it doesn’t matter what the Kilo skipper’s motivation is right now. We need to find him, and pronto.”

“And do what, sir?” objected Thigpen testily. Jerry noted the fatigue in his XO’s voice. Both men had been up since the initial attacks some twenty hours earlier. Thigpen rubbed his forehead, then continued with a more restrained tone, “It’s not like we can shoot him to get him to stop.”

“That’s a reasonable question, XO. I don’t know what we can do, if anything. But we can still learn something by observing his actions, even if all we do is watch him kill more ships. However, the first order of business is finding the guy.” Jerry then looked down at the electronic navigation chart on the horizontal large-screen display, and motioned toward the left-hand side of a large square drawn on the chart. “So, we’ll head toward the western edge of our patrol box and look for him. Once we reacquire the Kilo, we’ll direct Fargo back into contact and then turn about and head back east.”

“But that means we’d be leaving the Chinese navy bases uncovered, won’t it?” Covey asked hesitantly.

Jerry shook his head. “No, we’ll leave Minot behind to keep the bases under surveillance while we head off to find the Kilo.”

Covey looked confused. “Sir, I thought you didn’t want to deploy both UUVs at the same time?”

For a brief instant, Jerry felt a little irritated by his weapons officer’s response. Then Jerry remembered that he too was very tired. Taking a deep breath he said, “That was the original plan, Dave. Circumstances have changed, and the plan needs to adapt accordingly. Now, launch Minot, get her on station, and then get us heading westward at best tactical speed.”

*   *   *

The electronic ring of the phone dragged Jerry back to consciousness; he’d fallen asleep while reviewing the chemistry logs. Groping for the handset, he yanked it from the cradle. “Captain,” he mumbled.

“Skipper, CDO. My apologies if I woke you, but we’ve reacquired the Kilo.”

“Ahh, excellent. I’ll be right there,” Jerry croaked.

Stumbling into the head he shared with Thigpen, Jerry nearly collided with his XO as he tried to splash some cold water on his face. Amused by Jerry’s semi-comatose expression, Thigpen hunched over and shrieked softly, “It’s alive!”

Jerry looked over the towel as he dried his face; he attempted to give Thigpen an evil stare, but failed, his eyes only opened halfway. “That, Mr. Thigpen, is a matter of debate,” he finally replied.

Thigpen laughed as he finished combing his hair. “Was that Phil?”

“Yeah, we’ve picked up the Kilo again.”

“Oh goodie! Just in time for my CDO watch,” exclaimed the executive officer.

“What time is it?” Jerry asked, confused. He still wasn’t entirely awake yet.

“It’s 2330. Give or take a couple of minutes.”

“Really? Is it that early? The Kilo must have been heading east the whole time,” said Jerry, more to himself than anyone else. His brain was beginning to process data again.

“Sounds about right. He was heading easterly when Fargo lost contact,” answered Thigpen. Looking down at his watch, he added, “I need to go do the prewatch tour with Q. I’ll see you in control in about twenty minutes.”

Jerry acknowledged the XO’s departure with a curt wave. His mind was on the Kilo. After a quick rinse with mouthwash to get rid of the old-sock taste in his mouth, Jerry headed up to control. He’d just closed the door when he heard the sonar supervisor announce, “New sonar contact. Designated Sierra-seven nine, bearing zero five one. Sounds like diesel engines starting up.”

“Very well, Sonar Supervisor,” Covey responded, then, turning to the section tracking party, ordered, “Begin tracking Sierra-seven nine.”

Walking up to the command workstation, Jerry saw Sobecki and Covey hunched over, focusing on one of the displays. The engineer was furiously moving the trackball, while Covey punched some buttons. Both looked a little worn.

“CDO, report.”

“Yes, sir. Our friend is contact Sierra-seven eight. He bears three two zero, range about eight thousand yards, drawing right.” Sobecki pointed to the port VLSD, where all the pertinent data was enlarged just above the tracking symbol. Jerry noted they were on the Kilo’s starboard beam and drawing behind him, very nice. They would soon be in his baffles and they could close from that advantageous position.