Attack of the Seawolf

CHAPTER 27

Pacino stood up from his stateroom’s conference table as the knock sounded at the door. He was still staring at the chart taped to the tabletop when Jack Morris, Greg Keebes, Bill Feyley and Ray Linden walked in.

All were noticeably tense as they gathered around the table. On the aft wall Pacino had taped a large chart of the Go Hai and Korea bays, the Lushun area in the center. The channel leading through the Lushun/ Penglai Gap’s forty-mile length was about twenty inches long on the wall chart. The conference table’s blown up photocopy was larger, the forty-mile-long channel taking up too much of the large table’s surface.

The chart was covered with a sheet of clear mylar. Colored grease pencils lay scattered on the table.

Pacino went up to the wall chart and took a pen from his coverall pocket to use as a pointer. The eastern mouth of the bay ended at Lushun to the north, Penglai to the south. The Lushun peninsula was a finger of land pointing southwest, the P.L.A Northern Fleet main base on the furthest south point of a bulbous tip at the end of the peninsula. Sixty miles south of Lushun Point was the northern hump of the broad

Shantung Peninsula, the blunt point of land that separated the Go Hai from the Korea Bay at Penglai, and extended further east to separate the Korea Bay from the Yellow Sea to the south. In the center of the restricted waters between Lushun and Penglai were the islands of Miaodao. The passage for shallow draft ships was fairly broad north of the islands, and there was also plenty of water for transit south, closer to Penglai. On the chart Pacino had drawn a red mark along the twenty-fathom curve, the minimum depth they would need to transit submerged through the gap.

For the twenty-fathom depth, there were two channels open to passage east. The larger of the two was the Bohai Haixia Strait, a tube of water forty nautical miles long and six miles wide at its narrow throat. The smaller channel lay to the south, the Miaodao Strait, south of the islands in the middle of the gap. Although the Miaodao Strait was wider at the mouth and the exit, it narrowed to a mere thousand yards in width north of Penglai.

Pacino said: “In less than three hours we’ll be at the mouth of the gap. In the next half hour I want to come up with our final exit plan. Our only constraint is our previous arrangement with the Tampa. The four of you consider yourselves the Chinese. Your force strength is listed in front of you. Leading the fleet is the aircraft carrier Shaoguan. It has four squadrons of Yak antisubmarine vertical takeoff jets, each jet equipped with MAD detectors.”

He looked at Morris.

“Jack, that’s a magnetic probe that senses a disturbance in the earth’s magnetic field caused by large deposits of iron, like submarine hulls. Only works when the ship is shallow and when the jet is directly overhead, but it will confirm a sub’s position when sonar probes sniff it out. The carrier also has two squadrons of Harbin Z-9A choppers, also MAD equipped each designed to kill subs with torpedoes and depth charges.”

“The fleet has five subs, three Han-class nukes, two Ming-class silent diesel-electric boats. Destroyers-seven Ludas, four Udaloys, three Luhus. Frigates-thirteen Jianghus, three Jiangweis and one Jiangnan. Thirty-four fast attack torpedo patrol boats. And two dozen land-based Hind helicopters modified for antiship service. Now, I’m going to the conn to get to periscope depth and grab our traffic off the satellite and get a final navigation fix. I’m hoping for some last minute intelligence on the deployment of the fleet. I’ll be back in, say, twenty minutes. When I get back the four of you will outline your plan to keep the two American subs from escaping your bay. You got all that?”

The officers nodded. Pacino left them, knowing that if they sweated over the plan as much as he had they would be more likely to understand his reactions over the next few hours.

In their shallow transit it took only moments to slow and come up to periscope depth. Pacino hadn’t seen the outside world since the evening before, when he had been shooting at the Chinese aircraft and the frigate.

When he raised the periscope, he was surprised by the grayness of the sky and the ugly brown of the bay water. Raindrops clouded the scope lens as a fierce wind blew on the surface. Visibility was still good, unfortunately, but the wind was blowing the wave tops to a height of two to three feet, a high sea for an enclosed bay like the Go Hai. Radio reported the satellite transmission had been received in the computer buffer. The global positioning system had swallowed their navigation fix from the GPS NAV SAT pinpointing their location with an accuracy of a few inches. Pacino lowered the periscope and ordered the ship back down, then walked to the wardroom to grab a cup of coffee. He nodded at the officers gathered around the table, most of them unable to sleep knowing that the evening watch would be a combat watch. Pacino splashed the coffee into a Seawolf cup, the steam of the dark brew rising to the overhead. He downed a sip, burning his tongue, and saw Sonar Officer Tim Turner and Communications Officer Jeff Joseph looking at him.

“What’s the word, Captain?” Turner asked.

“We breaking outta jail tonight. Skipper?” Joseph put in.

“We’ll do our damndest,” Pacino said quietly.

“Are you gonna brief us on how?” Turner asked.

“Nothing to brief. We line up our torpedoes and our Javelins and our Mark 80s and we come out shooting. At the end of the day we’ll see who’s left.”

“That’s it?”

Pacino looked at them. What more was there to say? Finally Pacino spoke: “Trust me. We’ll be back in Yokosuka before you know it, and then you’ll get Captain Duckett back.”

The two junior officers shared a look. Joseph spoke.

“Sir, we were hoping that you’d be staying on as captain.”

Pacino looked up from his cup.

“Thanks, but after this is over I’ll be run out of town on a rail. Admiral’s orders.”

“Then is it true, sir? The rumors that you’re here because you’re not afraid to shoot?”

“I don’t think so, Jeff. True, I have no career to protect, no ass to cover, but the reason I’m here is that I’ve done this before. Two years ago, under the polar icecap.”

“What happened?” Joseph pressed.

“My ship went down. Lost the crew to the sea and radiation.” Pacino said, amazed at his voice staying level.

“What about the other guy?”

“We took care of him.”

The lieutenants smiled. Pacino headed for the door.

Turner called after him: “Sir?”

“Yes, Mr. Turner.” Pacino looked into the younger man’s eyes.

“Good luck, sir. Kick their butts.”

Pacino nodded solemnly, realizing the young officers had just told him they trusted him in spite of the news about his last mission.

Pacino walked back down to his stateroom, taking the radio message board from the radioman. He paused outside his door, reading the message from the Tampa to Donchez stating the wounded ship’s status.

The line about Murphy being operated on was news-Morris had told him about the rest, and it had sickened him, making him look forward to the moment when he could release his weapons. He fought hard to keep his mind from flooding with images of the old days with Sean Murphy, the friend who had shared his whole adult life, the friend who had risked his own Navy career to go A.W.O.L. to attend Pacino’s father’s memorial service, the friend who had sat up night after night next to Pacino’s hospital bed when death was close, the friend whose wife and children formed a second family. A friend who now lay dying from two bullet wounds and the torture of men who now would try to sink them. Pacino stuffed the message into his pocket. Beneath it was the intelligence message he had hoped for, Donchez’s relay and interpretation of the deployment of the Chinese fleet. But something seemed wrong.

Either the Chinese were screwing up, or the intelligence was flawed.

The strategy room’s huge tabletop was covered with a large-scale chart of the Lushun/Penglai Gap. Northern Fleet Commander Chu Hsueh-Fan held a long pole in his hand, the end of the instrument shaped like a hoe, used for moving small ship models on the table. He had arranged a fleet of destroyers and frigates to the west of the gap, the ships organized in a forward deployed mobile force, a hunter-killer group. In the northern Bohai Haixia Strait, at the channel entrance, a large force of attack vessels was stationed. The zone in between the forward force and the channel entrance force was filled with the symbols of helicopters and Yak-36A VTOL planes.

Leader Tien Tse-Min stared at the chart from its west end.

“Give me the pointer,” he said, reaching for Chu’s implement.

“Sir, this is the way the fleet should be deployed,” Chu protested, but handed over the hoe anyway.

Tien pulled all the ships and aircraft to a corner of the table, and began setting them up his way. When he had finished, Chu nearly felt sick. Instead of having a forward-deployed force searching in the east corner of the bay at the approaches to the gap, Tien had arranged most of the destroyers and frigates at the entrance and exit of the smaller channel to the south, the Strait of Miaodao. The surface forces had been relegated to the positions of sentries, gate guards. He had put a token surface force at the throat of the wider Bohai Haixia Strait, at the exit of which the Shaoguan was positioned.

“The submarines,” Tien went on, “will transit through the southern strait, here at Miaodao. They may execute a feint to the north but they will be headed through the southern channel. I have arranged a gate-keeper force here at the entrance, another here at the exit. The center throat of the channel will be mined with acoustic and contact mines. Fast patrol boats will be stationed on either side of the mined area. And to ensure that the Americans are not tempted to change their plans and go through the northern passage at Haixia I have stationed an impressive though small force at the midpoint of the channel, with the Shaoguan at the exit of the channel.”

Chu almost laughed. It was obvious to him that Tien was placing himself out of the combat zone by ordering the aircraft carrier to the farthest point from the anticipated action in the southern passage.

“Sir, the Americans will transit through the north channel, not the south. The Strait of Miaodao is much too tight, only a kilometer wide at the throat. They will have no room to maneuver there.”

“Yes. That is why they will go to the southern passage. Since it is tight they will assume we will neglect it. But I am not assuming, Chu. My intelligence people assure me they will go to the southern passage.”

“Please, tell me how they know that, sir. We have not even been able to track the subs after they left Tianjin. One aircraft was blown up trying to follow up a possible detection. An enemy radio transmission turned out to be a false alarm. So how do you know where the Americans will go?”

“I know the mind of the American commander like my own.”

“Because you interrogated him?” He didn’t say “tortured.”

“And, sir, we know nothing of the mind of the commander of the rescue sub.”

“Or commanders, Chu. There are more than one, which is another reason we will use a gate-keeper force instead of a mobile force.”

“Sir, grouping a task force together like this in restricted waters is like lining them up in a shooting gallery.”

“No. If the Americans shoot they give away their location. When and if that happens we launch the helicopters and Yaks from the Shaoguan and together with the missiles and depth charges and torpedoes of the main and auxiliary forces we will prevail.”

Chu reluctantly nodded, seeing that even though the plan was flawed, it just might barely suffice.

“Can we at least strengthen the northern task force, just in case?” Chu calculated, betting that Tien was a coward. “That would better protect this vessel in case of an ambitious, suicidal American escape plan.”

“Yes, yes, I believe you are right about that. Perhaps a few more destroyers and frigates.”

“And this zone to the west of the northern task force — it should be patrolled by helicopters continuously. Similarly for the sea to the east, between the task force and us.”

“No,” Tien said quickly. “The area to the west is a free-fire zone for Silex rocket-launched depth bombs. If there are friendly aircraft there the Udaloy destroyers cannot launch the rocket units. And we will need to keep our aircraft in a state of readiness onboard Shaoguan, so that they will have sufficient fuel when the Americans disclose their position, which will be when they fire on the southwest gate-guard task force.”

Chu sighed, realizing Tien was using the aircraft to protect the carrier, and thereby his own hide. But then, Chu thought, what benefit would come from exposing his own son to the murderous weapons of the rescue submarine, the one that could reach up into the sky and shoot down helicopters? Again he remembered a promise to the boy’s mother that he would never allow his own son to come to needless harm.

“Very well. Leader Tien. I will deploy the fleet as you have ordered.”

“No need, Fleet Commander. I have already given the orders, the fleet is already deployed.”

Chu stared at Tien, who only smiled pleasantly.

“Well, men, what’s it look like?” Pacino asked the four senior officers bent over the stateroom’s conference table.

Keebes stood up and pointed to the chart. Instead of being covered with grease-pencil marks it was crowded with pieces from a Monopoly game. Rows of red houses and green hotels were arranged in lines, and the tin battleship and dog and iron board pieces were put in places deemed significant.

“Sir, I took the liberty of raiding Captain Duckett’s game cabinet. He used to like Monopoly. Anyway, the dog game piece is us, you know, dog for Seawolf. The battleship is the Chinese aircraft carrier, the iron is the Tampa, since it has no weapons it’s dead iron. The hotels are major combatants, the Udaloys, the Luhus. The houses are the other destroyers and frigates. Thumbtacks are choppers, paper clips are VTOL jets, and the Han and Ming subs are dice. We ran out of stuff, so where we wanted to indicate mines we just spit on the table.”

Pacino smiled.

“Go on, XO.”

“Well, sir, we put a force of destroyers and frigates out here, in the approaches to the bay, sort of a mobile search-and-destroy outfit. Then we put a bunch of choppers out there to search in open water, some over the channels. We’re assuming the northern passage is the exit point, and we put sentry task forces at the entrance and exit, including the carrier at the exit. Just a token force here in the southern passage at Miaodao, couple PT boats, a few choppers. Jets patrolling here, rotating back to the carrier in sections to get refueled. It’s leakproof, sir. You’ll never get out of this.”

Keebes must have listened to his last sentence, because his light tone vanished.

Pacino examined the chart for a long time, nodding.

“That’s pretty much how I saw it,” he said.

“So how do we get out, Skipper? And what did we tell Tampa?”

“You guys won’t believe this,” Pacino said, glancing at the intelligence message on the clipboard. He began pulling off hotels, game pieces, thumbtacks and paper clips.

“The main entrance to the northern passage at Bohai Haixia is wide open. Nothing there for twenty five miles. Then a small surface force patrolling at the throat of the channel. Two Udaloys, four Ludas, a few fast frigates. Then nothing all the way to the carrier, which is here, only five miles from international waters.

All the emphasis is on the southern channel at Miaodao. Two main surface task forces, including submarines, at the entrance and exit. The channel’s being mined here in the middle. PT boats orbiting on either side of the minefield.”

“What the hell?” Keebes said, looking at Pacino’s positions of the game pieces. “Why would they guard the tiny channel to the south and leave the north damn near wide open?”

“Maybe they’re trying to sucker us north,” Morris said. “Defense in depth. Lure us in deep, then flank around the west task force from the entrance to the southern channel here, closing in on us from the west, squeezing us from either side.”

“Goddamn,” Keebes said. “Those guys are sneaky. That beats hell out of the Chinese plan we had.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Pacino said. “The task force to the south is too far away to come in and act like a cork in the bottle of the northern passage. Those guys are two hours away from the entrance to the northern channel. They may be filling the holes in the north coverage with aircraft but I don’t think so.”

“So what do you think they are doing?”

“I think they’re convinced we’re going to the southern channel, and are setting up to catch us there. The forces to the north are tokens, just to keep us from thinking we’ve got a clean shot going through the northern channel.”

“Why in hell would they think we’d try to escort Tampa out through that little channel on the south end?” Linden asked. “That channel is so tight we’d all get hard-ons going through it.”

“They think we’ll go through the south channel because they know we know it’s too tight,” Pacino said.

“I can’t handle it,” Keebes said. “So what do you want to do, then, sir?”

“We start here at the entrance to the northern channel. We launch the Javelin cruise missiles. Each one will have the time delay set for a future launch, when we’re far into the channel. Then we launch half of the decoys, the Mark 38s designed to imitate the sounds of a 688-class sub. Most go east in the Bohai Haixia Strait, but we send a few south to the Miaodao Strait. Meanwhile, Tampa begins the transit through the strait in front of us, her passage screened by the decoys. It’ll sound like half a dozen subs coming down the channel. But before the Chinese hear them we launch torpedoes down the channel, and a few down to the south to confuse the task forces.”

“Sir, torpedoes will hit the Tampa,” Keebes put in.

“No. They’ll be in transit mode, on the run-to enable. They won’t enable and go active till they’re right on the central task force in the midpoint of the Haixia channel. Then all hell breaks loose. The decoys are spotted by the Chinese, then the torpedoes go active and hit some, maybe all, of the ships in the task force. The Javelins liftoff, and two minutes later we have ten Javelin cruise missiles and eleven Mark 50 torpedoes hitting the thirteen ships of the task force. Meanwhile, the decoys and the Tampa and Seawolf go under the trouble zone.”

Feyley asked: “Then what? They know you’re there, and the southern task forces come north to get you while the carrier launches all its ASW aircraft to put you on the bottom.”

“We increase speed to twenty knots and get the hell out. We’ll launch the remaining Mark 80s at the aircraft and we launch the standoff weapon, the Ow-sow, at the aircraft carrier.”

“Captain,” Keebes said, “it’ll take us an hour to get from the point where we dive under the sinking task force to where we get to international waters. That’s an hour since you launched a bunch of Mark 80s and an Ow-sow, an hour since the surface group got pounded by a bunch of torpedoes and cruise missiles. In that hour the decoys will have shut down. The Chinese will scramble their aircraft and their surface ships from the south and they’ll pound us. The surface forces don’t need to get close to be lethal — they have the SS-N-14 rocket-launched depth charges and the fourteen-variant rocket-launched torpedoes. We’ll be dead meat five minutes after our Javelins impact.”

There was silence in the room while Keebes’s analysis sank in. Finally Pacino spoke:

“If we were alone we would be in big trouble. But we’re not.”

“Who else is here?” Keebes said. “Did I miss someone?”

Pacino went to the desk and took up a paperweight, a chunk of heavy steel left over from the ship’s construction, with an etched inscription dedicated to Captain Duckett. Pacino slammed the steel chunk on the table, at the far corner to the east of the gap.

“The cavalry is here. Surface Action Group 57, with Admiral Donchez in charge aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, the biggest, hairiest aircraft carrier in the goddamned world. About the time our missiles start flying, Donchez will cover the bay with an umbrella of aircraft. It’ll be a ‘no-fly’ zone for the Chinese.”

“You know for a fact he’ll cover our ass here?” Morris said. “He told you this?”

“Nope. But I know Dick Donchez. When he sees the flames coming from the bay, and a bunch of angry bees buzzing over our position in the channel, he’ll know what to do.”

“You better hope you’re right, Captain,” Morris said, “or it’ll be your last mistake.”

Pacino nodded. Morris, of course, was right.

Admiral Richard Donchez shouted into the red handset of the UHF satellite secure-voice connection.

“What the hell do you mean, no air cover? Did anyone mention to the President that without air cover these subs will be sunk? They’re fish in a goddamned barrel! What the hell have we done all this for to come here and have no air cover?”

The speaker in the overhead blasted out the distorted voice of the Secretary of Defense, Napoleon Ferguson.

“DICK, THIS HAS ALL BEEN EXPLAINED TO PRESIDENT DAWSON HE IS EMPHATIC ON THIS POINT. THERE WILL BE NO PENETRATION OF GO HAI AIRSPACE BY YOUR JETS. IT’S TOO THREATENING, THE WORLD WILL THINK WE’RE STARTING A WAR WITH THE CHINESE. THE U.N. IS VOTING TONIGHT ON IMPOSING SANCTIONS ON THE UNITED STATES. WE’LL VETO IT, OF COURSE, BUT WE’LL GET A BLACK EYE. AND IT’S BECAUSE OF YOUR OPERATION THERE IN THE BAY. DAWSON DOESN’T WANT TO RISK IT. I’M STILL TALKING TO HIM.”

“No, Napoleon, you’ve done enough talking. Donchez out.”

The Admiral slammed the handset into its cradle and looked at Fred Rummel.

“Well, Fred, you still think the SAG won’t launch aircraft on my orders without authorization from Washington?”

Rummel shook his head: “Sir, we’re grounded.”

Donchez looked out the bulkhead windows, toward the west, out at the rain falling on the water of the bay.

Mikey Pacino was on his own. Donchez threw his cigar butt to the deck and mashed it in disgust.