U.S.S. Seawolf (8 page)

Seawolf’
s Operations Area

Judd Crocker slowed to 20 knots as they picked their way through the tiny Japanese islands, with 1,500 feet of water beneath their keel. Up ahead was the unseen line of the south-flowing Japanese current that forms the seaward frontier of the China Sea.

Seawolf
was not going that far, and when Pearson called out their position at longitude 129 degrees, the CO ordered, “Right standard rudder…make your course three-six-zero…speed twenty knots…depth two hundred feet.”

To Clarke he added, “We’ll make our patrol area just south of the entrance to the Korean Strait—the water’s deep and Japanese. We can hang around here until something shakes loose, then we can creep up to the one-hundred-meter line and wait for the Chinaman. That’s if I’m right about the course he’s bound to take over here to the east. If he’s on the other side, we’re in trouble, because we can’t track him underwater. Alternately, if he’s over there he’ll be on the surface anyway, so the overheads can track him, and we’ll catch up with him later.”

And so they slid along the eastern side of the Yellow Sea, off the far southern coastline of Japan’s 130-mile-long province of Kyushu. This is the last major land before the flag of the Rising Sun peters out into its lonely chain of remote Pacific islands, running southwest for 540 miles, almost to Taiwan.

But around these islands is the only deep water in the entire area, before the great continental shelf of the People’s Republic of China rises up to meet incoming submarines, driving them inevitably to the surface, or at least forcing them to leave behind the giveaway trail of a swirling wake.

Seawolf
’s CO planned to do neither, and in 350 feet of water they patrolled silently below the surface, their speed now down to only 10 knots, the senior officers hop
ing to God the Chinese had not yet mastered the satellite sub-spotting techniques they had hijacked from the laboratories in California.

The weekend passed without any change. Four times they accessed the American satellite, and each time there was confirmation that the
Xia
had not moved. At 0900 on Monday morning, June 26, however, one of Frank’s sonar operators thought he picked up something out to the west: “Hard to explain…just a slight rise in the background level…doesn’t sound much like weather.”

The CO joined Frank standing behind the operator’s chair, and several minutes went by before they picked up any further sight or sound. “There it is again, sir…right there…we got faint engine lines coming up. Relative one-twenty-five…”

“Come right to one-thirty-five to resolve ambiguity.”

Seawolf
swerved around while the sonar men tried to resolve the bearing. It took more than 10 minutes because the lines continued to be faint. Kyle Frank called it at 0922: “Bearing two-eight-zero.”

By now the “waterfall” screen was showing a much more definite picture of the engine lines, and the computer was scanning and comparing at high speed, trying to pinpoint the exact ship they were locating.

“It’s a submarine, sir, no doubt about that,” said Frank as his eyes darted from one screen to another. For a few moments he was silent, and then he blurted out, “Jesus, sir, it’s Russian…right, here we got ourselves a real live Russky…look at that. It’s a Kilo-class boat, I’d guess ten thousand yards off our starboard quarter…what the hell’s that doing here?”

“Possibly the same as us—waiting for the
Xia
?” asked Rothstein.

“I doubt it,” replied Judd. “The damn thing’s stacked with Russian technology anyway. I’d be surprised if there was anything they don’t know about it. They’re all best friends these days. They don’t need to spy. I’d say the Kilo
was Chinese—I think they have about five of them now, and one of them is out here on some kind of exercise.”

“Shall we go a little closer, sir…see if we can learn anything?”

“I think we might, Linus. But I don’t want to go too close, maybe five thousand yards off track. Steer course two-five-zero…make your speed six knots…”

Seawolf
edged in closer, and as she did Kyle Frank’s man picked up a new sound, machinery noise only, bearing one-four-zero.

“This is possibly a surface ship, sir, moving left slow or stopped, with a diesel engine running…puts us right between the Kilo and him.”

“I’ll have a look down the bearing, Sonar.”
Seawolf
’s CO kept the periscope up for a span of about seven seconds. He instantly identified the contact as a 5,000-ton Dazhi-class support ship. The computer told the sonar room it was 40 years old and carried four electrohydraulic cranes and a large stock of torpedoes.

“Know what I think?” said the captain.

But before anyone could answer, Kyle Frank’s sonar operator had picked up another passive contact very close to the Kilo.

“
Jesus Christ
!” said the operator to himself. “
Bastards’ve opened fire on us
.” But he was all pro when he made his announcement.

“TORPEDOES…INCOMING…POSSIBLY TWO…BEARING TWO-EIGHT-THREE…BEARING STEADY…”

Lt. Commander Clarke said, “My God, sir…what if they have warheads…STAND BY FULL DECOY PATTERN…we ought to be firing back…these bastards are shooting at us…trying to sink us, sir.”

“Negative, XO,” replied Captain Crocker.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, NEGATIVE!” Linus Clarke’s voice was almost out of control. “I’M LOOKING AT TWO TORPEDOES INCOMING FROM A CHINESE SUBMARINE!”

“Sure, Linus. Just shut up for a minute, willya? I’m gonna let ’em go right by. RIGHT STANDARD RUDDER…MAKE YOUR COURSE TWO-EIGHT-THREE.”

“But how the hell do you know they’re going right by, sir?”

“Well, first of all they haven’t gone active. Second, it’s gotta be about a hundred to one against the torpedoes being at the same depth as us. And five hundred to one against them being on the exact right course to hit us. That’s an acceptable risk.”

“POSITIVE TWO TORPEDOES BEARING TWO-EIGHT-THREE…BEARING STILL STEADY, SIR,” called the sonar operator.

“’Course it is,” replied the captain. “We’ve just wandered into a torpedo test-firing exercise. That old Dazhi support ship I saw is acting as a TRV, torpedo recovery vessel—and none of the Chinese on either ship has the remotest idea we’re here. We’d sure know if they did.”

Right now, not for the first time in this submarine, the CO and his XO had totally different mindsets.

Judd Crocker’s thought process had told him with great clarity,
Up range from us is an obvious torpedo recovery vessel. The Kilo has loosed a couple off. Neither of them is aimed at me in this small patch of water. I assess it’s at least 5,000 to I against either of the weapons hitting us, and even if one did, it plainly does not have a warhead, and it would not be in any way terminal
.

Linus Clarke’s view was diametrically opposed:
We are virtually in enemy waters. These bastards are shooting. Jesus Christ! My captain has placed our submarine right in the path of the torpedoes. He refuses to put out decoys. HE ACTUALLY DOES NOT WANT TO DO ANYTHING…HE MUST BE OUT OF HIS MIND. It’s a basic law of the universe…cover your ass. My God, a minute from now we could all be dead
.

And even as the tortured thoughts of the XO thudded through his brain, the big TEST 96 missiles came cleav
ing through the water, not increasing in speed from 30 knots, not going active, but nonetheless coming nerve-wrackingly close to USS
Seawolf
’s position.

“Bearing’s still almost steady, sir…I now have two separate weapon tracks…but they’ll pass either side of us…the first one out to starboard, the second a little farther away to port…no danger, sir, unless they switch on active homing.”

And everyone in the control room area heard the sonar reports.

“WEAPON ONE MOVING RIGHT TWO-NINE-FIVE…LOUDER…CLOSING…NO TRANSMISSIONS ON THE BEARING.

“WEAPON TWO MOVING LEFT TWO-SIX-ZERO…LOUDER…NO TRANSMISSIONS ON THE BEARING.”

A minute later: “WEAPON ONE MOVING RIGHT FAST ZERO-ONE-FIVE…” The tension in his voice was dying. An air of calm was returning. “Weapon two moving left fast two-zero-five…”

Then, “Weapon one moving right, zero-six-five…slightly fainter…Doppler opening…weapon two moving left, one-six-three, fainter. Doppler opening.”

“Guess you called that one, sir. They just went right by as if we were just a little old hole in the water,” said Rothstein, smiling and, as he often did, contemplating the complexities of the human mind.
Here we had a scenario, not four minutes long, not one minute ago, and we had two highly educated people simultaneously seeing that scenario from totally opposing perspectives. If they’d been in a courtroom giving evidence, the jury would have been in complete confusion. And rightly so
. “Almost all evidence,” said Cy to no one in particular, “is colored by opinion. Therefore it should largely be ignored because it is unreliable in the extreme.”

“Well, my reasoning wasn’t that difficult,” said the CO. “The Chinese obviously did not have a warhead fit
ted or the Dazhi wouldn’t have been right in the path of the weapons. They were just testing tube functioning, or maybe something more complicated, maybe even some kind of a tactical trial. I don’t think anyone’s ever seen a full-functioning explosive trial. Certainly not with a TRV downrange.

“Also, there’s no sign of a target. And if there were, there would be a lot of ships out here monitoring the whole event. My conclusion, therefore, was it was a non-warhead trial…but meanwhile I’m going a bit further off-track. I want to creep around behind that Kilo, hang around for a bit, ready for a second firing if there’s gonna be one. I’d like to get a full recording of the noise of the tubes being prepared and the firing sequence.

“And Linus, old buddy, have faith, willya?”

270100JUN06
.
32.10N 128.OOE
.
Speed 9. Depth 150
.
Bearing three-six-zero
.

Judd Crocker was trying to catch three or four hours’ sleep in his sparse, but private, cabin when someone knocked sharply on the door three times and then came straight in, the light from the companionway outside shining in on the sleeping CO.

“Sir, wake up,” called Frank. “I think you should see this. The
Xia
’s moved…cleared Huludao at nine last night. She’s making twenty-five knots through the Yellow Sea heading southwest on the surface, straight for the choke point.”

The captain’s brain whirred. “What time is it, Kyle?”

“’Bout oh-one-twenty, sir.”

“That means it’s been running for, what? Six hours. That’s one hundred and fifty miles. She’ll be right off Dalian now. What’s that…four hundred and fifty miles
north of us…we wanna be looking for her around eighteen hours from now, right? Say around nineteen-thirty this evening.”

“Yessir. That’s what I have on this piece of paper, ’cept it took me ten minutes to work it out.”

“Okay. Access the satellite again at oh-six-hundred, check her course and speed. Call me at oh-five-fifty-five.”

“Yessir.”

By midday it was apparent that the
Xia
was running toward the eastern reaches of the Yellow Sea, down the shores of South Korea, and on into the first reasonably deep water, where Judd Crocker and his men awaited her.

1400. Tuesday, June 27
.
Chinese Eastern Fleet Naval Base, Shanghai
.

Five hundred miles west of the lurking
Seawolf
, Admiral Zhang Yushu, Commander-in-Chief of the People’s Liberation Army/Navy (PLAN), had placed the entire Eastern Fleet on high alert for a prowling American nuclear submarine. His own overheads had seen
Seawolf
clear Pearl, but they had not spotted her since, which was not a great testimony to their skill with the stolen American sub-spotting system from the satellites.

And now he sat in the office of the Eastern Fleet Commander, Admiral Yibo Yunsheng, himself a former commanding officer of the first, disastrous
Xia
. They were ruminating, over endless cups of fragrant China tea, on the problem of getting the gleaming new 13,000-ton
Xia III
safely under the water, away from the prying eyes and, they hoped, the sonars of the U.S. Navy.

“You just know they’re going to be out there somewhere,” said Admiral Zhang, scowling, his dark eyes at the same time hard and irritated behind his heavy, hornrimmed spectacles. At the age of 59 he was, without question, the most forward-thinking C-in-C the People’s
Liberation Navy had ever had. A tempestuous man of six feet, he was tall for that country, and he wore his thick black mop of hair longer than is customary in the Chinese military.

But he had the ear and the trust of the Paramount Ruler of China. Zhang was enormously powerful, and if he had a mind to mobilize the entire fleet, to seek out and destroy any American interlopers, then that command would be carried out to the letter.

A former commanding officer of a Luda-class guided missile destroyer, Zhang was a worthy opponent for Captain Judd Crocker, and indeed for Admirals Arnold Morgan and Joe Mulligan, half a world away, strangers at arms, their minds locked on to the precise same subject, China’s new submarine, with its menacing cargo of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

“Where do you think they’ll wait?” asked Admiral Yibo.

“We have to assume in the first available deep water, out east off the Japanese coast…but it’s a vast area, and if they have sent the
Seawolf
, she’ll be extremely hard to locate. That’s a very, very quiet ship. They say she’s virtually silent under twenty knots.”

“Hmmmmm,” replied Admiral Yibo. “Not good.”

Just then a uniformed secretary came in with a single sheet of paper that she handed to the Eastern Fleet commander. “For you, sir, I think quite important, from Naval Intelligence, Ningbo. Captain Zhao.”

The memorandum was brief: “
Received signal from Kilo 366 1700 yesterday June 26. ‘Suspected transient 10-second contact from nuclear underwater boat while tracking torpedo test firings.’ We have no data on Chinese submarine in area. No further contact. Alerted all surface ships in East China Sea
.”