Seawolf Class

16

"Jesus H. Fucking Christ!" Toynbee exploded as he, Queensly, Grossman, and Juarez filed into the sonar room and took their seats. "You guys should have seen Commander Garrett in action! The guy was fucking incredible!"

"Queenie here was already telling us," Juarez said. "He was hot to trot, huh?"

"He put those local cops through the hoops, let me tell ya! I ain't seen the like since I was a third class on the old Grayback!"

"I thought he was going to eat us for breakfast," Queensly put in. "Having us stand at attention like that? Chewing us out like a Marine D.I.?"

"That, my boy, was pure theater," Toynbee said, "and brilliantly done, too, I might add! He was doing it to let that Hong Kong police lieutenant know we would get our just desserts back on the boat and also to give the guy a way to save face."

"Are you guys gonna get any fallout?" Grossman wanted to know.

"Ah, we might get some shit details. Mr. Garrett hasn't confided in me. But I'll tell you what. Right now, I would follow Commander Garrett any damned place on Earth or off of it, just on his say-so. That man is okay in my book!"

"You guys said you were going to show me an interesting time," Queensly said, flicking on the switches on his sonar board and adjusting his headphones. "You weren't kidding, though I had kind of a different idea of what to expect."

The waterfall came to life on his screen, a glowing cascade of yellows and greens. The harbor was noisy with small craft engines, the throb of diesels, the clatter of submarine metal, chains, lines, creaking hulls, and all the rest, making it the acoustical equivalent of opaque.

"Yeah. The ol' Fuk Wai has changed management or something," Toynbee said. "Didn't use to be a rip-off joint. That's really pretty disappointing. Now, when we get back to San Diego, we'll have to take you to this place we know on the main drag in from the waterfront. Man, I tell you, the girls there are so—"

"Chief Toynbee?" Captain Lawless was standing in the doorway to the sonar shack. "When you're through with your dissertation, I would appreciate some work from you for a change. We're supposed to be listening to noise here, not making it."

"Sir. Yes, sir."

"You other gentlemen squared away all right?"

"Yes, sir," Grossman said. "Can't hear shit out there, though. Harbor crap."

"Understood. But keep a close watch anyway. Once we get under way, we might have some interest from the harbor patrol, if nothing else. And I want you to be especially sharp on the lookout for other subs. This is the perfect place for us to pick up a tail."

"Could a sub follow us submerged in here, Captain?" Queensly wanted to know.

"I don't know, Queensly. I wouldn't want to try it if I didn't know the channel well and have some damned good charts. But we can expect that the Chinese have just that, and I don't want to be surprised."

"We're going to have the devil's own hell of a time picking up a tail in that clutter, sir," Toynbee pointed out. "And the channel's so narrow, we won't be able to clear our baffles."

"I know. Do your best. I don't expect miracles out of you people. Just magic."

"Aye aye, sir."

When the skipper had left, Toynbee let out a whoosh of pent-up breath. "Man. He does not sound happy."

"Would you be, Chief?" Grossman pointed out. "You're in command of the most expensive submarine in the U.S. fleet, and your bosses tell you to take it into a potentially enemy harbor just as sweet as if-you-please. Then some of your people screw up and get the locals mad, and you have to get out before things turn ugly. How would you feel?"

"Yeah. I see what you mean."

"Kind of like steering a brand new Rolls-Royce into a demolition derby, huh?" Juarez said with a grin. "Or the local megamall at Christmas rush!"

"Submariners need blue water," Toynbee said philosophically. "And lots of it. Let's see what we can hear out there for the skipper, guys."

"Man, it is so good to hear your voice," Garrett said, pressing the telephone handset against his ear. "Thanks for making the call."

At the other end of the line, Kazuko laughed. "I'm just sorry our good-byes were so…abrupt!"

The line crackled with static. Kazuko had put the call through from a phone on board the JAL jetliner that was at this moment passing out of Chinese airspace and over the South China Sea. The call was being routed to the U.S. Consulate and then to the Seawolf by a ship-to-shore line, and the numerous connections made for bad hearing.

Still, it was so good to hear her voice.

"I'm just glad to know you're off the ground and on the way home, hon."

"Yes. My office put me on the first plane back to Tokyo. I'm flying as a passenger, no less! I feel like a queen!"

"You are one, love."

"Flatterer. Anyway, there's talk of them giving me some time off, with pay, because of what happened."

"I'm jealous."

"So… when are you getting out of Hong Kong?"

"I… don't know." It was a lie, of course, the typical submariner's secrecy reflex. There was no telling who might be listening in on this line, even if it was supposed to be secure. "Pretty soon, I imagine." In another two hours or so, in fact.

"I was hoping we could pick up on unfinished goodbyes back in Tokyo."

"You know I'll call as soon as I get in, hon. As soon as I can. But I don't know when that will be."

"I know." He heard the sadness in her voice. "I know. I've been listening to the news. Have you?"

"They have CNN going on a box in the wardroom."

"The negotiations are going pretty well, they say. Maybe there won't be a war after all."

"That," he said with heartfelt warmth, "would be wonderful." He'd read, once, that no one loved peace more than the warriors who had to do the fighting. He could not have agreed with that sentiment more.

"I'm looking out the window now," she told him. "We're above the ocean. I'll be home in a few hours. I'll… be waiting for you, Tom."

"And I'll be with you just as quick as the situation permits, love."

"What did you say?" Her voice was very far away, thick with static.

"I said I love you!"

"I'm having trouble hearing you, Tom… and this call is really expensive. I'd better go. I love you."

"Love you!" he practically shouted. And then she was gone.

He hung up the handset and turned to find Captain Lawless standing in the passageway outside. "Your girl okay, Commander?"

"Yes, sir."

"I, ah, didn't mean to eavesdrop on a private conversation."

"It was hardly that, sir. Not when I have to shout to be heard."

"I just wanted to be sure she was squared away and safe."

"Thank you, sir. Her airline is flying her out. She's in the air now, in fact."

"I'm glad. That sounded like a hell of a bad experience you two had last night."

"It wasn't fun, sir," he said, lightly touching the gauze wrapped around his head. His body ached all over. "I feel like I've been through a meat grinder."

"And you look worse."

"Thank you, sir, so very much. That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all day."

"Well, let me say something else nice… and that will be my quota for the month. You did good, getting our people out of that Kowloon jail. Well done, Tom."

"Thank you, sir. Just doing my job as XO."

"A boat's executive officer has the responsibility of looking after the men of his command, of seeing to the discipline, morale, training, and smooth functioning of all personnel on board," he agreed, as though reciting from a naval officer's textbook. "Absolutely correct. But a lot of XOs would have let the COB take care of bailing the men out of jail. They wouldn't have bothered to get their hands dirty."

"I was close to the police station, sir. And I'd already talked with one of the cops. It just seemed like the right thing to do."

"Well, I appreciate it. If we'd waited and tried to go through channels, God knows how long we would have been tied up here in port."

"Yes, sir."

"Do you have recommendations for disciplinary action?"

"Sir, from the sound of it, our people were being hustled. If you want a captain's mast—"

"I want to know what you think should be done."

"Captain," he said formally, "it is my opinion that ignoring the whole incident will not have an adverse effect on the discipline of this vessel."

"I'm not sure we can ignore the incident. They were drunken and disorderly, and we had to damn near hijack three port authority trucks to get them out of there. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to explain sending an armed shore party into Kowloon on my report."

"Yes, sir. But the days of Americans letting themselves get shoved around by the rest of the world just because we're Americans, because we're supposed to be the good guys, are over. And a damned good thing, too, if you ask me. Sir."

Lawless nodded, and sighed. "Agreed. Well, I'll take that under advisement. I do want a complete report from you on what happened to you and your friend at the hotel last night, and another report on what happened at the police station. I will also expect you to debrief the men involved, get their official versions of the story down on hard copy."

"Yes, sir."

"God knows what CINCSUBPAC is going to make of this mess."

Garrett grinned. "With luck, sir, there'll be a war, and no one will care."

"In which case, God help us all."

Tse's men left the commando hide in the afternoon, long before sunset. Twice, PLA helicopters — big, lumbering Mi-8 transports — passed overhead, circling above the hills as if carrying out a search. Tse thought that those transports might be looking for the commando team and ordered his men to move off through the woods. "We cannot wait any longer, Commander," he told Morton. "If we stay here, the enemy will sniff us out. I strongly recommend that you get your people back to the beach as quickly as possible. Wait for dark, then swim across to Kinmen. You have the passwords and security information…."

"I don't like this, Commander Tse," Morton told him. "We're trained not to leave our own behind."

Tse smiled. "Thank you for including us with your company, sir. We are honored. However, this is something my people must do… for ourselves, whether we have your country's help or not."

"I understand."

Morton watched the Taiwanese commandos slip off into the woods, almost invisible in their bracken-camouflaged jackets and gear, as silent and as tightly disciplined as any SEAL platoon. He was still waiting to hear from the World but had little hope that Washington or SOCOM would be able to clarify this muddle. From the sound of it, the SEALs had been deployed across the Formosa Strait, then forgotten.

Or were they part of some larger picture, something SOCOM hadn't bothered to share with the men on the ground?

The worst of it was, the SEALs were not equipped to fight a major battle. The whole idea of covert ops was to stay covert, to stay hidden, to carry out your mission and, ideally, never even let the enemy know you'd been there, until it was too late.

And nothing could screw a good covert op faster than a cluster fuck somewhere back in the rear echelons. That was what every SEAL, every SEAL commander, dreaded above all else: being sent into a hot operations area with bad intelligence, with no clear idea of what was going on, with a poorly conceived or fuzzy set of mission parameters, without adequate backup and support.

Morton and the SEALs were now running completely blind, deep in hostile territory with no idea what their status might be. Their contact with the folks back home was intermittent and frustratingly piecemeal, and from the sound of it, they didn't know what was going on either. Not good. Not good at all.

They waited. Tse's advice — to pack up and move out — was good, but Morton didn't want to dismantle the satellite dish until he'd heard from Randall. It was a lot safer to move at night in any case. The SEALs didn't know the ground here the way the Taiwanese did.

Damn it all, what was going on back in the States?

A loud clatter sounded overhead, coming from above the woods to the east. A moment later another Mi-8 transport thundered low above the SEAL OP, flying toward the town of Tong'an. What the hell was going on down there?

He didn't think they would have to wait much longer to find out.

"Cast off all lines, fore and aft," Lawless said over his radio headset. He and Garrett stood in Seawolf's narrow weather bridge, high atop the sail, looking down on the deck party in their bright orange life jackets as they took in the mooring lines.

"Cast off all lines, fore and aft, aye, sir," the response came back over the radio speaker on the small sail console.

It was late afternoon, and the sun was hovering low above the mountains to the west — Victoria Peak and Mount Davis. The harbor, as always, was crowded with small craft, junks, yachts, sailboats, fishing craft, and shipping of every size and description.

"Maneuvering, Bridge. Slow astern."

"Bridge, Maneuvering, aye. Slow astern, aye aye."

Three blasts from Seawolf's whistle warned craft astern that she was backing down. Gently, the Seawolf began moving away from the pier. The trucks they'd used to escape from Kowloon had been left on the dockside. A cursory radio message had just been sent to the Hong Kong Port Authority informing them that Seawolf was under way. A longer and far more detailed message had been sent to COMSUBPAC, informing them of the incident in Kowloon and of the need to get Seawolf clear of the harbor and into the safety of deep water. No submariner felt truly secure on the surface, and Seawolf would not be able to submerge until she reached open blue water, around the curve of Hong Kong Island and well past Cape Collinson.

There was no reason to think that the authorities would try to stop the Seawolf now. And yet…

"It'll be good to be in blue water again," Lawless said. "What did you think of Shtyrov?"

"He seemed to be a decent enough sort. He was trying to warn us that the Russian GKS had given the Chinese our signature. I'd guess that they sold them the data, along with that boat. Part of a package deal."

"Yes."

Seawolf might be the most silent of all submarines in the sea, but all vessels made some noise, simply by having their screws turn through the water. GKS acoustic listening vessels like the one in Victoria Harbor now were designed to make recordings of the sounds other ships made, specifically for the libraries in Russian sonar shacks. Evidently, the Russians had sold the Sierra to the Chinese Navy and included sound tapes of various American vessels the sub might one day soon be facing in combat. They would, of course, have recorded the Seawolf's acoustical signature as she entered the harbor on Sunday, and that would have been part of the package.

If the Chinese had Seawolf's signature, it would be easier for them to track her, to pick out the little sound she did make from the background noises of the sea. It would also help them with weapons targeting, by giving acoustical homing torpedoes a specific sound to track.

Seawolf was well out into the harbor now. "Maneuvering, Bridge," Lawless said. "Left full rudder. Come to zero-nine-zero. Make revolutions for five knots."

Seawolf began churning slowly forward through the crowded harbor.

"Listen, sir!" RM2 Knowles said. "Gunfire!"

Morton heard it, a far-off chatter of automatic weapons fire. A lot of it.

Among SEALs and other Special Forces operators, it was an axiom that, for most missions, if you had to open fire, the mission was already a failure.

At a guess, Tse and his parafrogs had just put their collective webbed feet deep in the middle of it.

Morton crawled out of the communications hide and made his way across the forested slope to another roofed-over trench, where his 2IC was waiting. "Hey, Jammer."

"Yessir. I hear it."

"We can't stay here. Chinese helos have been circling around all day. I don't want to wait for the word from SOCOM."

"Roger that, Skipper. What about Tse's men, though?"

He nodded. That was the problem. Technically and officially, the Taiwanese parafrogs were on their own, especially after they'd strayed from the operations plan.

But the SEALs and the commandos had worked and trained together, shared the mission this far together, sweated out the wait together. It would be just plain wrong to light off for the sea, abandoning Tse and his men to their fate.

"Jammer, we're going back to help Tse."

"Aye aye, Skipper. I don't like it, but aye aye."

"Good man."

"Are you going to tell headquarters?"

Morton grinned in the darkness of the hide. "Why? It would just confuse them some more." He was still angry at the confusion, and the fact that the SEAL Team appeared to have been left dangling in the breeze.

"When do you want to move out?"

Morton listened for a moment to the crackle of gunfire. If anything, it was increasing in intensity. "Immediately," he decided. "Tse's men don't have the expendables for a sustained battle, and we can't afford to wait. Tell your people to saddle up. We're moving out now."

"Roger that, Skipper."

Another helicopter flew overhead from the east, banking north, toward the sound of the gunfire.

Morton wondered if the SEALs were going to be in time.

A mournful whistle sounded to starboard. Garrett and Lawless both turned, raising their binoculars. The Russian GKS vessel was still moored in the harbor; through the binoculars, Garrett could see several officers on the ship's weather bridge staring back at them through binoculars of their own. One of the Russians raised his cap in salute.

Lawless replied with the same gesture. "Seems kind of strange being buddies with those guys, doesn't it?" he said.

"Times change, Captain. And we're still facing their technology, if not their animosity."

"You got that right. Uh-oh, they're flashing us. How's your Morse?"

"Rusty, sir, but passable." He trained his binoculars on the flickering pulse of the Russian vessel's semaphore lamp. "Looks like… 'you… have… tail.' "

"What the hell?" Lawless said, lowering the binoculars.

"A Chinese sub, Skipper. Has to be. Following in our baffles. We can't hear her, but that GKS over there has some pretty sensitive listening gear. They may have a sonar track on our shadow."

"Figures they would have a sub waiting to follow us out."

"This could be a problem, sir."

"Not so long as we're still at peace, Mr. Garrett. And please God we stay at peace until we're clear of this damned harbor…. "

Garrett turned in the cockpit, raising his binoculars and scanning the waters aft of the Seawolf. He couldn't see anything. And yet… "Do you think a submarine could follow us through this channel submerged, sir?"

"Queensly asked me that. I wouldn't care to try it myself. But it's possible."

"Let's see. The main channel's marked at twenty to twenty-five meters' depth. Seawolf carries an eleven-meter draft, and our sail adds ten meters or so on top of that. It would be damned tight for us."

"What about an Akula?" Lawless said.

"About the same. Ten meters' draft. The Akula's sail is pretty squat, though. Maybe five, six meters? They'd have a bit more room to play in."

"Not much. Especially with harbor traffic this heavy, I wouldn't want to try it."

"No, sir. But I'll tell you what does worry me… "

"What's that?"

"A Kilo, sir. Six and a half meters' draft. Five meters or so on the sail. And only seventy-three meters long."

"Hmm."

"If I was skipper of a Kilo, and my orders were to keep tabs on the Yankee-dog Seawolf submarine in my harbor, I might gamble that by following in his baffles, submerged, I could trust him to clear the surface traffic out of the way."

"He'd have to tuck in real close."

"Yes, sir, he would."

Both men trained their binoculars aft again, searching for a periscope, a swelling on the surface of the harbor, anything that might hint at an unseen companion astern.

"Lookouts! Keep a close watch astern. We may have a tail."

"Aye aye, sir!"

"I'll tell the sonar crew," Lawless said, picking up the handset.

"Even knowing," Garrett said, "I don't know what we can do about it."

"Try prayer," Lawless replied.

It sounded reasonable. There wasn't a whole lot else available to them right now.