Sea Strike

48

Retainer Zero One blazed low over the night-darkened waves. It was a repeat of their previous crisis flight to Task Force 7.1, except that this journey had been instigated at Amanda Garrett’s insistence. Likewise, this time the Sea Comanche carried a third passenger.

“This would be a lot more fun if one or the other of us were male,” Christine Rendino grumped. She was wedged in beside Amanda in the rear cockpit, lacking the room for even a deep breath.

Amanda was in no mood for levity. “Will you be able to spot what we need, Lieutenant?”

The Intel sobered swiftly. “I can’t make any guarantees, Boss Ma’am. I have a pretty good idea of what we should be looking for, and I think that Fleet Intelligence should have the assets we need to get the job done. Beyond that, I can’t make any promises. You might want to give me a little more time to develop this before you beard the brass in their den.”

“We may not have a little time to spare. Arkady, how long to Task Flag?”

“I’ve got everything wide open but the glove compartment,” the aviator replied from the front cockpit. “We should be down on the flattop in another twenty minutes.”

“This is damn unusual procedure, Captain,” Admiral Tallman said.

Admiral Tallman and his chief of staff had been waiting for them in the briefing room on the carrier flag deck. Vince Arkady accompanied Amanda, standing behind her at parade rest, awaiting her call forward. She would need his input presently. Christine was already involved down in the carrier intelligence section, making serious medicine with her Fleet level counterparts. Hopefully, she also would be available when the time for her input came.

“I know, sir,” Amanda replied. “This is out of the ordinary. However, I believe the situation warrants it. I think I know where the Xia is.”

“What?” Commander Walker came half out of his chair. “You’ve had a contact that you haven’t reported?”

Amanda shook her head emphatically. “No, Commander, that’s just the problem. We haven’t. No one has. For the past six days, we’ve been scouring the East China Sea with the most sophisticated ASW assets available in the inventory and we haven’t produced a single solid contact.”

“I wouldn’t quite say that, Captain,” Tallman interjected. “We’ve accounted for both of the Hans.”

“Yes, sir. We have. We were able to get fixes on both of the Red attack boats in pretty short order. But we haven’t been able to even get a sniff of the larger and — theoretically — more vulnerable boomer. The reason for it is simple. It’s not out here. It never has been.”

“Oh, for Christ sakes!” Walker exploded. “Need we remind you, Captain, that you were the one who originally claimed to have seen the damn thing sortie!”

“Stand easy, Commander!” Tallman’s voice was stern. “Go ahead, Captain. Where do you think she is?”

Amanda called up a coastal chart on the horizontal flatscreen built into the surface of the briefing table. “We saw her sortie from Shanghai, all right, but she never headed out into the open ocean.”

Her finger came down on a point on the chart. “She’s right here, lying on the bottom of the Yangtze estuary.”

Walker didn’t say a word. Admiral Tallman had reined him in with a single sideways glance. “Let’s see your evidence, Captain,” he said quietly.

“I don’t have anything physical yet, sir, just a chain of logic. However, my intelligence officer is working the problem and should have the proofs shortly.”

The Seventh Fleet C.O. nodded again. “Okay, then let’s hear your logics.”

Amanda paused for a moment to organize her thoughts, then began. “All along, we have been making a critical error in our projection of the Red Chinese intent. We have been assuming that we both think the same way.”

“How do you mean, Captain?” Tallman prompted.

“What has been our primary assumption about the Red intent?”

“That they’ve been trying to break out into the open Pacific.”

“Exactly, because that’s what one of our subs would try to do. But we’re not the Chinese. We’re a blue-water navy. When we think operations, we think open ocean. The Chinese don’t! They’re a brown-water navy. They think coastal. All of their history, doctrine, and orientation trends that way. They would no more think of sending a major fleet unit out into the open ocean than we would of sending a carrier task force up the Mississippi River.”

“Those attack boats sure seemed to be trying.”

“They were decoys, Admiral. They were sacrificed to draw our attention away from the Shanghai area. The same basic tactic they’ve been using all along during this operation.”

“That’s some kind of sacrifice, Commander,” Tallman mused. “Those Hans were probably the most powerful units left in the Red fleet.”

“They’re playing for maximum stakes here, sir. All the chips are on the table. When we interrogated the survivor off the boat we killed, he as much as said that he knew that he was on a suicide mission.

“Then there was the puzzle of what happened to the other Han.” Amanda stepped back from the table and paced a couple of steps in her agitation. “We’re fairly certain now that its loss off of Yaku Shima was an operational accident. But how could a handpicked submarine crew make the elementary error of running into the side of a seamount? The answer is simple.

“They didn’t know it was there! They didn’t have a decent set of up-to-date submarine charts for those waters, because they were outside of the Red Chinese Navy’s usual zone of operations.”

Amanda returned to the table and leaned in over it. “That boomer is the PRC’s last roll of the dice. They would not risk it out in open water where we could get at it. It has to still be in Shanghai.”

“Where?” Walker demanded. “God knows that our recon has scoured every inch of that area ever since those subs sortied, and we haven’t seen a sign of anything that resembles a fleet ballistic-missile boat.”

“As I said, it’s on the bottom of the Yangtze. The charts indicate that there are several holes deep enough for a Xia to lie submerged in. That’s a heavily polluted tidal estuary out there. A sub would be totally invisible.”

“But we’d still spot the thermal plume coming off of its reactor.”

“If it were on line,” Amanda replied levelly. “But he’s sitting on the bottom in the shallows. He doesn’t need an operational reactor. He can just stick a snorkel up every couple of days to refresh his air and recharge his batteries using his auxiliary diesel.”

Tallman frowned. “You’re making a large degree of sense, Captain, but I’m going to need some concrete evidence on this.”

“You’ve got it, sir.”

A new voice sounded in the briefing center. Christine stood waiting in the doorway. Amanda motioned her forward.

“Admiral Tallman, this is my intelligence officer, Lieutenant Rendino. Hopefully, she’s been able to find what we need.”

“I have, Captain. Once we knew what we were looking for, it wasn’t too hard to spot.”

Christine looked over at Tallman. “With your permission, sir. Your intels have some imaging ready to pipe up here.”

“Carry on, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, sir.” Christine claimed the briefing room’s control pad from the center of the table. “I think you’ll find this interesting.”

Tallman gave an acknowledging nod, and Christine began her report.

“I’m sure Captain Garrett has explained our theory about where the Red boomer has been laying low. Now, the mouth of the Yangtze River is a very heavily silted and polluted tidal estuary. Lots of thermal gradients, highly opaque water quality — it’s a great place to hide something if you’re worried about satellite or aircraft recon. Accordingly, we had to look for peripheral indications of the sub’s presence.”

Using the control pad, Christine called up an admiralty chart of the Shanghai approaches. “We started with the potential hiding places. Number one is this big deep hole just east of the point where the Huangpu River empties into the main estuary.”

Using the integral track ball pointer, Christine indicated the area. “Even at low tide, you’ve got twenty-two meters of water out there, just about enough to keep a bottomed-out Xia concealed.

“When we checked the event annex for that area, we found something interesting. A little over a month ago, three heavy antiaircraft batteries were resited to cover this stretch of the river. Two here on the mainland near Waigaoqiao and one out here on Zhongyang Sha Island. In addition, a number of light antiair gun and missile mounts were emplaced out on the end of these two long quays here at Waigaoqiao.”

Christine looked around the space. “Now, Waigaoqiao is a fishing-village suburb of Shanghai. Supposedly, nothing more impressive than the local trawler fleet ever ties up at those quays. I put it to you that the Reds have deployed a heck of a lot of heavy firepower into that area just to defend their squid supply.”

“What else do you have, Chris?” Amanda asked quietly.

“A smoking gun, or at least a reasonable facsimile.”

“Let’s see it.”

Christine began to call up a series of images on the briefing center’s bulkhead screens. “Here’s how it works. Before we cross-decked over from the Duke, I contacted Fleet Intel here on the Enterprise to see what they might have on Waigaoqiao.

“Come to find out, a high-definition photography file was available. The thing is, until now it had not undergone a full photo analysis. Nobody had ever had a reason to really take a good long look at the area. Once we did, we began to turn up all sorts of interesting stuff.”

She directed attention to the first screen. “First, over on the westernmost of the quays, nothing much seems to be going on. Business as usual. The only military presence noted were the gun crews and some armed People’s Police. However, over on the eastern quay, these guys are all over the place.”

The monitor held the overhead image of what appeared to be a pier side security checkpoint. It was manned by a trio of tough-looking PLA troopers clad in steel helmets and camouflage, all carrying slung Type 56 assault rifles.

“We’ve identified them as being naval infantry,” Christine continued. “The Red Chinese Marines, the best they’ve got.”

The Intel moved on to the next screen. “This is a low angle oblique shot of some of the buildings at the shoreward end of the pier. Circled are what appear to be several military vehicles parked undercover to protect them from direct overhead observation. The vehicles, here and here, seem to be command-and-communications vans of some kind.”

“Now things get really interesting.”

Her presentation had the undivided attention of everyone in the compartment. The third repeater held a view of the quay deck, cluttered with a scattering of worn fishing gear and busy with the passage of numerous Chinese seamen.

“As you can see, in spite of the increased security, the pier is still being used for fishing operations. No doubt to help maintain cover for what they’re really up to. But take a look down here in the corner.”

The onlookers’ eyes followed Christine’s pointing finger.

Running down the edge of the pier, partially concealed by the jumbled stacks of sea stores and equipment, were a pair of thickly insulated cables, one half the diameter of the other.

“Those weren’t there two months ago. We think one of them is a telecommunications link, while the other is a power line. Both are the kind of heavily armored cable used for underwater work.

“One of these lines run all the way out to a building at the head of the quay. And from there … “

The image shifted to another oblique shot of the pier head.

The cables curved down from the deck to disappear beneath the surface of the Yangtze.

“You were wrong about one thing, Captain.” Christine chuckled. “They’re not even using their diesel. They’ve just got that sucker plugged into the world’s longest extension cord.”

“Damnation,” Admiral Tallman breathed.

“We’ve got to be sure,” Commander Walker said slowly. “I’ll admit it. This looks good. But we have got to be absolutely certain.”

“A final piece of evidence. Commander. When your Fleet Intelligence officer started to get interested in this situation, he started yelling to the National Security Agency for more data flow on this area. Given the ultimate mission priority we have, we were granted real-time access to a specialized ferret satellite they had passing over Shanghai. What you are about to see can be classified as RSS. Real secret shit.”

Christine changed the screen image again. “This is an electromagnetic emissions scan of the Waigaoqiao quay area. Please don’t ask how we can do this from near-Earth orbit. I could tell you, but then, as the saying goes, I’d have to kill you.”

It might have been a piece of modern art: clusters of intricate multicolored geometries on a black background, some of them interconnected by yet more glowing lines. Then again, it more resembled a circuitry diagram, which, in a way, it was.

“What you are seeing here,” Christine said, “is the leakage coming off every active electrical circuit within our area of interest. Let’s put in the outline of the shore and the quays next, just to give us some point of reference.”

She manipulated the screen control pad, calling up the appropriate graphics overlay.

“Next, we do some filtering. We eliminate all the stuff that we know should normally be out there. Boat and car ignition systems, the urban telephone and power lines, that kind of thing. Now, let’s see what we have left.”

What was left was a single pair of luminescent treads, running down the edge of the quay, dividing, and then extending on beyond the head of the pier into the estuary.

“The passive emission signatures on these cables verify that they are a telecommunications line and a high-tension power line. While the emissions trace is lost out in the deeper water, no cables with these specific signatures emerge from the farside of the river.”

The Intel straightened and turned to face her audience.

“Fa’ sure, those lines have got to be going somewhere.”

Amanda picked up the line of the briefing. “Definitely, the Reds know that they can’t match us out in open water. They don’t have the technology levels. By concealing their boat in the Yangtze estuary, they can not only keep it hidden, but they can keep it protected by the Shanghai city defenses. They also gain the advantage of a direct and secure landline communications link between their boomer and the PLA high command. It only makes sense, sir.”

Admiral Tallman looked silently down at the table for a long minute. Everyone in the briefing center maintained their peace as well, giving him right of first speech. Finally, he glanced over at his chief of staff. “Well, what do you think?”

There was a new and growing tone of respect in Commander Walker’s voice as he replied. “Captain Garrett makes a very strong case, sir.”

“Yeah, I’m sold too. I think we’ve got the Xia.”

Walker continued, “The question is, sir, now that we’ve got it, what are we going to do about it?”

“We stick to the basics, son. Find it. Fix it. Kill it. Let’s assume we’ve got it found. Now we have to take care of the other two aspects.”

Tallman looked back to the Cunningham’s officers. “My first thought would be a SEAL team insertion. We follow those cables out to see where they lead. Lieutenant Rendino, just how big is that deep hole you’ve been looking at?”

“A couple of square miles. And you’re looking at strong tides, heavy currents, and zero-range visibility. It’s stinkin’ water for divers, sir, and that’s even before you start looking at the river defenses.”

“There’s another point to consider as well, Admiral,” Amanda added. “If the Reds even suspect that we’ve found their missile boat, they could order an immediate launch. Any action that we take will have to be fast and certain. We will have to make a clean kill with the first shot. We probably won’t get another.”

Tallman cocked an eyebrow. “Anybody have any suggestions?”

“I do, sir.” Vince Arkady stepped forward to the table. “Covering that patch of water wouldn’t be any problem at all for a couple of LAMPS helos. I could take my Sea Comanches in there, locate the boomer with Magnetic Abnormality Detectors, and verify the target with a dunking sonar. After that, we kill it with scatterpack V-ROCs launched from outside of the estuary mine barrier. That whole end of the operation would be a piece of cake.”

“And the Reds are just going to let you waltz in there and look the place over?”

“That’s the other end of the stick, sir. Chris, what all do they have covering that section of the estuary?”

“Those three heavy AA batteries that I mentioned. They have a triangular field of fire set up with one battery here, to the west of the quays, one to the east, and one across the channel here on the island. Four radar-directed hundred millimeter mounts per battery. Their radar probably wouldn’t give you too much trouble, but they’ll probably have optical sights and searchlights.

“In addition, out on each of the pier heads, there’s a twin mount fifty-seven-millimeter porn-porn and an HN-5 tactical antiair missile launcher.”

“No way in hell a helo could get past all that,” Tallman said flatly.

“That’s right, sir,” Arkady replied. “Those gun batteries would have to be taken out before we could go in. And that doesn’t begin to address stuff like Combat Air Patrols, the coastal defenses, the other antiaircraft batteries deployed around the city, and the gunboats on the river.”

“This is building into a major operation, people.”.

“Yes, sir.” Amanda took over the line of the conversation.

“In order to successfully carry this mission off, we would have to break down the entire Shanghai defense net. It would require a full Baghdad package, a whole series of coordinated suppression and diversion strikes. We would not only need to disable their defenses, but to confuse them as to what our true intent is until it’s too late.”

Admiral Tallman steepled his hands on the table and stared at his interlaced fingers as if they were the most important things in the world. He held that posture silently for almost a full minute before speaking again. “Captain Garrett, do you have any idea of the scale of escalation we are talking about here?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” Amanda replied quietly. “And I’m very glad that I’m not going to be the one to have to make the final decision on this.”

“Me, too, Captain. Do you feel comfortable with staying away from your ship for a little while longer?”

“I have every confidence in my executive officer, sir.”

“Very good. I’d like Lieutenant Rendino here to keep on working with my intelligence people for a while. I want a few more proofs on that boomer being there in the estuary.

“As for you and Lieutenant Arkady, I’d like you to talk with my planning staff. You sound like you’ve done some thinking about this thing. I want to start assembling a formal mission outline. We’ll put a situation-and-response package together and kick it on up the line to CINCPAC. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll tell us all to go to hell.”

Tallman glanced over at his chief of staff. “Commander Walker, set it up.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The Admiral returned his gaze to Amanda Garrett. “This operation looks like your baby. Captain. What do we call it?”

“Stormdragon.”

Amanda smiled in response to Tallman’s raised eyebrow.

“I’ve been reading a lot of Chinese maritime lore,” she said. “Stormdragon is a beast out of classic Chinese mythology. It lives off the coast of China and gives birth to the typhoon. It’s considered to be the harbinger of all death and destruction from the sea.”