Seawolf Class

20

"Conn, Sonar," Toynbee's voice said over the intercom. "Updating Sierra One-eight-three. Redesignating contact Master Four-one." When sonar contacts, designated "sierra," were identified through more than one signal or set of sensor data, they were given "master" numbers.

"Definitely a Kilo-class diesel boat running submerged on snorkels," Toynbee continued. "Range now estimated at thirty thousand yards. Target heading two-six-niner."

"Very well." Garrett keyed the sound-activated ship's intercom. "Now battle stations torpedo, battle stations torpedo. All hands, man battle stations torpedo. Torpedo Room, Fire Control. Make Tubes One and Three ready in all respects, including opening outer tube doors."

"Make Tubes One and Three ready in all respects, open outer doors, aye," the weapons officer replied from the fire control console.

"Conn, Torpedo Room, loading Tubes One and Three, aye aye."

In fact, six of Seawolf's eight torpedo tubes had been warshot-loaded since Hong Kong — one through four with Mk 48 ADCAP torpedoes, and Tubes Five and Six with Tomahawk cruise missiles, in case they were called on to strike at a land target. It would take only a few moments to flood one and three and open the outer doors preparatory for firing.

But Garrett wanted to get closer, and he also had some tactical planning to do. He walked over to the starboard chart table, joining Lieutenant Simms and Master Chief Dougherty.

"How accurate are these charts, Lieutenant?" he asked.

Simms frowned. "Not as accurate as we'd like, though the Taiwanese have been pretty good about helping us update old charts. The bottom here's at about thirty meters."

"About isn't good enough. Not if we have to run. Where's Master Four-one?"

"Right here, sir." Simms pointed to a red grease pencil track, updated with new sonar reports every few minutes. The target was running almost due west several miles south of Kinmen Island.

"Kinmen," Garrett said, thoughtful. "That's Quemoy, isn't it? Nationalist Chinese?"

"Well, the Nationalists are out of power, sir," Dougherty said. "But it's Republic of China and not People's Republic."

"That's what I meant. The good guys." On his chart Kinmen was an inch-wide blob. "You have something that shows Kinmen up close?"

Simms pulled out a finer-scale map, showing a bow-tie-shaped island — Kinmen — with a smaller island— Liehyu — two kilometers to the west.

"Looks like it gets real shoal here," he said, pointing to the bite on the south side of the big island. Soundings there, in meters and in feet, showed water only a few meters deep in places.

"Yessir," Simms said. "That's Liaolo Bay, and we'll want to avoid it."

Garrett pointed to the strait between Kinmen and Liehyu. "This channel looks passable."

"Barely, sir. It's deep enough for the local shipping. Eighteen meters. We'd be broaching on the way through."

"But it gets deeper north of the island."

"Yessir. Twenty-five meters. And even deeper to the west, off Xiamen."

"Okay. Thank you."

"Yes, sir."

Garrett caught the glance Simms exchanged with the COB, a look that might have been translated as What the hell does he have in mind? And COB gave a slight shrug, as if to say, Beats the hell out of me. In fact, Garrett wasn't entirely sure himself what he planned to do, but he wanted to keep his options open.

His major decision at the moment was a tactical one: whether to spend one torpedo on Master Four-one, or two. The usual practice was two, just in case the guiding wire broke on one, and just in case the targeting and range data weren't as accurate as hoped. A careful skipper would slightly lead the target with one shot and slightly trail it with the other, to guarantee a good lock once the fish acquired the target.

But there was also the ghost contact off to port, Sierra One-eight-four. If that was a Chinese sub — and Garrett was willing to bet money that if it wasn't a Kilo, it was the Akula-class Nevolin—then things were going to get damned interesting as soon as he took his first shot. It might be wise to save a couple of fish for a snapshot reply. The worst aspect of the unfolding combat situation was the feeling that Seawolf was in a pocket. The target was now almost due north, just this side of Kinmen Island. West was the ghost contact. Garrett had already decided that if he were skipper of a Chinese boat out there, he would be working together with at least two other submarines to trap Seawolf against a hostile coast.

Yeah, if he was coordinating this hunt, he'd have one boat about where that ghost contact was…and another here, to the south, and another here to the east, neatly boxing the Seawolf against shore and shoal water.

And Garrett never assumed that his opposite number on an enemy sub was any poorer at tactics than he was. That kind of half-assed thinking could get you and your whole command dead, fast.

Returning to his station by the periscope stage, he hit the intercom switch again. "Sonar, Conn. Estimated range to Master Four-one."

"Conn, Sonar. Estimate Master Four-one now at twenty-eight thousand yards."

"Very well. Alert me when we're at twenty thousand yards."

He wanted to be at knife-fighting range for what he now had in mind.

"Twenty thousand yards?" Neimeyer said, eyebrows raised.

"I think the skipper wants to put our fish right down the guy's throat," Toynbee replied, not taking his eyes off his console screen. "Sir."

Craig Neimeyer swallowed. He was a thin, gangly kid from Kansas City, Missouri—"Misery," as he'd always called it, until he'd finally left home for good and joined the Navy. Seawolf was his first sea duty, and he was still in the process of finding his legs.

He knew that, and he knew he would have a year or so of paying his dues before he could wear the coveted submariner's dolphin on his uniform above his ribbon rack — before he was accepted as a real submariner. And he knew it would take that long to learn all of the boat's systems. At twenty-seven, he was quite a bit younger than many of the experienced hands, like Toynbee and Grossman, and only a handful of years older than the youngest newbies, like Queensly.

In fact, not counting his four years of Annapolis, Neimeyer had about the same level of experience as Queensly did. In other words, he was a raw kid, wet-behind-the-ears newbie, still fair game for orders to requisition a skyhook, a left-handed wrench, or a bucket of camouflage paint, or the old nuke-submariner hazing gag of Nair in the shampoo bottle.

The hell of it was, while he'd trained in sonar and associated electronics systems at New London after his graduation from Annapolis, he still wasn't entirely sure what he was supposed to be hearing when he actually stood a sonar watch. People with as much experience as Toynbee left him feeling completely inadequate, and a talent like Queensly's left him in awe. He knew how to swap out the circuit boards of a BSY-2(V), but sorting anything useful out of that colored-light cascade on the screen or, worse, from the hiss and gurgle and whoosh he heard over a set of sonar headphones, felt forever beyond him.

The best he could hope for was to stay out of the way and try to be useful.

He watched Queensly, who was sitting at his console, eyes closed, an almost beatific expression on his features as he reached out with his mind, with his very soul, into the surrounding darkness. His life, Neimeyer realized, depended on the keenness of Queensly's hearing at least as much as it did on the ability of the skipper to make good tactical decisions… perhaps more so at this point.

"Conn, Sonar," Toynbee said after a long pause. "Estimated range to Master Four-one, now twenty thousand yards."

"Sonar, Conn, stand by… "

Neimeyer closed his eyes, his knuckles whitening against the edge of the spectrum analysis console.

All his life, he had been very much in control — of his emotions, of his life, of his decisions.

Not being in control was a decidedly uncomfortable proposition.

"Firing point procedures," Garrett said at last. "Master Four-one." The whole boat was silently waiting on him, on his orders, and it felt now as though a vast weight had been lifted.

"TMA complete," Ward said sharply, referring to the target-motion analysis conducted by the BSY-2 operators and the fire-control coordinator. It sounded like he'd been counting the seconds until he could say his piece. "Target now bearing three-five-five, range twenty thousand. Target course two-seven-one, speed ten knots."

"Very well," Garrett said. He drew a deep breath. This is it. "Match sonar bearings and shoot, Tube One."

"Match sonar bearings and shoot, Tube One."

There was a silent pause. In the old days, aboard diesel fleet boats, they would have heard the hiss of the torpedo exiting the tube in a burst of compressed air, have felt the bow-upward lurch as the submarine lost the torpedo's weight. Seawolf was big enough, was massive enough, that there was no sensation of having fired at all.

"Tube One fired electrically," Ward announced, reading the arcane shift of lighted panels on his combat systems board.

"Conn, Sonar. Torpedo running hot, straight, and normal."

"Sonar, Conn, aye. Fire Control. Set unit one off-course twenty degrees to the right."

"Set unit one off-course twenty degrees to the right, aye, sir," one of the ratings at Ward's combat systems panel said. He was a young third class, steering the ADCAP torpedo at the end of its unspooling wire through a joystick on his console. He looked for all the world like a teenage kid playing a video game.

And in a sense, that was exactly what he was. Most of the men on board the Seawolf were kids; the average age was twenty-one.

"Running time to target," he said.

"Running time to target, nine minutes, thirty seconds," Ward replied.

And this was the toughest time in an attack run. Up until the point where the torpedoes were actually fired, the captain of a submarine was insanely busy, coordinating data coming in from the TMA board, the sonar shack, and the torpedo room. Now, though, there was nothing to do but wait for an agony of unholy minutes…wait, knowing that at any moment the enemy might hear the approaching torpedo and realize they were under attack, knowing that the ghost out there— or other, unheard enemy submarines — might have heard the launch and be closing now to firing positions… knowing that he could not turn or maneuver the Seawolf at all, or even close the outer doors and reload the torpedo tubes, because doing so would cut the slender wire that was fire control's link to the speeding fish. Break that electrical link, and the torpedo would be lost, too distant, as yet, from the target to find it on its own.

And Garrett was mindful that his primary mission at the moment was not the sinking of that Kilo out there, but the rescue of a team of SEALs on the Chinese beach somewhere ahead beyond Kinmen Island.

But the Kilo was standing squarely in Seawolf's path, and that, Garrett thought, was the Kilo's very bad luck.

Nothing was going to block Seawolf from her rendezvous.

Jack Morton was tired of waiting. One of the Chinese commandos was in a bad way, his belly torn open by a finger-sized scrap of shrapnel, and Doc McCluskey didn't think he would last out here another twelve hours.

More than that, however, the PRC attack on Kinmen had thoroughly screwed things for the SEALs. Even without wounded men in tow, swimming back to Kin-men beneath the keels of enemy frigates, amphibious ships, and patrol boats was not exactly his idea of a good time.

"We've been trying to dispatch a Mark V package to your area," Captain Randall had told him over the satellite link. "But the fighting off Kinmen makes deployment a problem. You're going to need to get offshore a ways."

"Copy that," Morton had replied. "We have a couple of options there. Then what?"

"A submarine is operating in your area. They have orders to pick you up, if you can get far enough offshore to make contact."

"And how far is far enough?"

"The bottom's pretty shallow between Kinmen and the mainland," Randall had replied. "But if you can make it into the Xiamen shipping channel… "

Morton had led First Platoon down a wooded, brush-covered slope to see about doing just that. He'd left them at a temporary camp, well hidden from the air and the water, and with Sergeant Zhu Fengbao, the senior Taiwanese commando remaining with the SEALs after Tse's departure, worked his way down the slope to a vantage point overlooking the shore.

West of Kinmen, and within sight of that island, was another island, almost perfectly round and connected to the mainland in the north by a causeway bearing a road and a railway line. Once called Amoy, Xiamen Island had been designated a special economic zone, and in the past few years it had gone through something of a building boom. The Beijing government had been trying to lure foreign investment there, especially from the "rebel province" of Taiwan. The hope had been to attract overseas Chinese to live out their retirement on the island; in fact, wealthy Chinese investors had been buying up property at a rate guaranteed to send housing prices soaring.

From the spur of mainland northeast of Xiamen and within sight of the causeway, Morton and Zhu had a clear view across several kilometers of water of the low, gray sprawl of Xiamen Island, dotted with new high rises and construction. A steady stream of military vehicles was moving across the causeway bridge from the north, and Morton could see several large artillery pieces being set up in a clearing on the island.

The city of Xiamen itself was invisible on the far side of the island, on the west coast, and the shipping channel ran south to the open sea, its location clearly marked at the moment by a pair of freighters and a PLA frigate.

This side of the strait was thickly forested, with channels and inlets beneath the heavily drooping branches of mangrove and thick stands of bamboo. The water was shallow and muddy, more like a tropical river in appearance than a seacoast, with steep banks and very little surf. An armed trawler idled in the channel, perhaps thirty yards offshore.

From the cover of the heavy foliage above the shore, Morton studied the craft through his binoculars. It was typical of the trawlers used along the mainland coast by militia, police, and customs agents, with a six-meter hull, a displacement of perhaps two hundred tons, and mounting two 12.7mm machine guns, one forward of the squared-off, midships superstructure, one aft. He counted about ten men on board, then passed the binoculars to the man beside him, who studied the crew's uniforms for a moment.

"I think they militia," Zhu said. "Only pieces of uniforms. No police. No immigration. More like fishermen."

"They're not real squared away in the discipline department," Morton said, taking the binoculars back. "Looks like they're having a party over there."

Zhu shrugged. "There nothing they can do while battle is fought," he said. "They wait for outcome."

"Are those women they have on board?" Morton asked. Several people were gathered on the forward deck, and three of them wore brightly colored garments that looked anything but military.

"Local girls, maybe," Zhu said. He grinned. "They think, 'Might as well have fun while we wait.' "

"And we might be able to use that to our advantage," Morton said. "Come on, Sergeant. Let's get back to the others."

Quietly, they slipped away through the underbrush and back up the hill.

The gods of war had just handed the SEALs a golden opportunity, and Morton was determined to take advantage of it.

"Captain!" Ward announced. "Unit one has acquired the target."

"Outstanding," Garrett said. That meant the torpedo was now picking up the target's acoustical signature with its own on-board sonar homing system. "Bring the unit left to bearing on-target."

"Bringing torpedo left seven-nine degrees, to bearing on-target, aye." The third class at the weapons console brought his joystick hard over to the left. After firing, Garrett had ordered the course of the torpedo offset behind the Kilo-class submarine up ahead, with the result that the torp was now passing astern of the target. Turning now, the torpedo was bearing once again directly on the target, but coming in from astern.

"Unit one now bearing on target," Ward announced. "Unit one has acquired target."

"Range to target."

"Range to target estimated at twelve hundred yards." About thirty seconds to target. "Torpedo Room, Conn! Cut the wire! Close outer door on Tube One. Reload Tube One with Mark 48 ADCAP."

"Conn, Torpedo Room. Cut the wire. Close outer door on Tube One. Reload Tube One with Mark 48 ADCAP, aye aye."

"Conn, Sonar! Master Four-one has just fired a torpedo! Correction, two torpedoes now in the water!" There was a pause. "Torpedoes are changing aspect. Looks like a snapshot astern."

Garrett grinned. Ward looked at him from the weapons console and tossed a jaunty thumbs-up. The Kilo had heard Seawolf's torpedo coming in from a stern quarter and just loosed two fish of its own — the technical term for an unaimed shot was "snapshot" — back along the course taken by the incoming torp.

"Conn, Sonar. Master Four-one is now making revolutions for twenty knots. Snorkeling has been secured. He may be trying to descend."

"Good luck to him in thirty meters of water," Garrett said. The enemy skipper had a shockingly limited number of tactical options open to him right now. He could try to outrun Seawolf's incoming torpedo, though the Mk 48 had three times the Kilo's speed. He could try turning into the torpedo, hoping it hadn't yet armed. He could pop noisemakers to decoy the torpedo. He could hope that his snapshot would frighten the firing submarine into changing course, thereby cutting the wire early… not realizing that the wire was already cut and the torpedo was on its own.

"Conn, Sonar. Target has released countermeasures. Our unit has just gone active."

Which had just convinced the Kilo's skipper that his only hope now was to outrun the torpedo, unless he could decoy its sonar with a noisemaker. Seconds dragged past….

"Conn! Sonar! Unit one has detonated. Sir… " There was a hesitation.

"Go on, Sonar. Don't keep us in suspense."

"Sir, we're getting breakup noises. We got him!"

Several of the men in the control room grinned, and two mimed a high-five. Their training and discipline kept them from giving a cheer, though, and Garrett was proud of them.

"Sonar, Conn. Reel in the towed array." They were about to be pulling some high-speed maneuvers, and they would lose the towed array if they tried it with the cable dragging astern.

"Conn, Sonar. Retrieving towed array, aye aye."

"Helm, steer directly for Master Four-one."

"Steering course three-five-five, directly for Master Four-one, aye, sir."

"Conn, Sonar," he heard at last. "Towed array is retrieved and stowed."

"Very well. Maneuvering, make revolutions for thirty knots."

"Make revolutions for thirty knots, aye aye."

He saw Tollini's left eyebrow creep higher on his forehead and the glances exchanged by other officers and men in the control room. Thirty knots was damned fast for water this shallow. It also all but guaranteed that the enemy would hear them in these confined waters, while at the same time making it impossible for them to hear the enemy.

"Conn, Sonar!"

"Sonar, Conn. Go ahead."

"Sonar contact, designated Sierra One-eight-five, bearing two-six-four, range approximately forty thousand yards. Possible Kilo, moving at two-zero knots." A hesitation. "Sir, we're losing him in our wash."

The ghost to the west had just come out to play.

Morton slipped quietly into the water beneath a big mangrove tree overhanging the edge of the bank. He'd donned his Draeger rebreather, mask, and fins, and was carrying his H&K. The water was almost opaque, but he'd taken a compass bearing on the target from the shore and swam now in the indicated direction with a slow, steady beat of his fins, guided by his wrist compass.

Unseen around him in the murky water were the seven SEALs of First Squad, along with two Taiwanese commandos, Sergeant Zhu, and a corporal named Chen Huiexin. Moments after beginning the swim, he sensed the looming shadow of the PLA militia patrol boat ahead and above; putting out his hand, he touched the rough, barnacle-encrusted steel hull.

He waited, checking his dive watch, counting down the seconds, sensing his comrades gathering about him and around the hull. At the agreed-upon moment, he moved to a point just left of the patrol boat's single screw and lifted his head above the water.

He found himself looking up into the surprised face of a Chinese sailor, who was standing on the patrol boat's fantail, leaning against the aft railing. Morton brought his H&K up out of the water, but before he could trigger it, the sailor's expression of surprise turned to one of pain as he twisted back from the railing, his throat and upper chest opening like the bloom of scarlet flowers.

Morton hauled himself up over the fantail one-handed. Other SEALs were clambering onto the deck as well; MN1 Curt Hauser had cut down the militia sailor with a silent, three-round burst from his H&K and now was sweeping the patrol craft's after deck with deadly suppressing fire.

Morton swung over the railing and dropped to the deck beside Hauser, where they were joined a moment later by Knowles, Bohanski, and Zhu. A Chinese crewman lunged for the aft 12.7mm mount and was shot down. Another man emerged from the pilot house with an AK but didn't make it all the way up the ladder and onto the deck before a sound-suppressed burst punched him back through the deckhouse door.

Other SEALs were swarming over both sides of the anchored boat — hulking, black-clad figures in masks and rebreather gear that gave them a terrifyingly anonymous deadliness. A Chinese sailor on top of the deckhouse pitched over the side and plunged into the sea. Another threw up his hands, begging in a high-pitched singsong before Chen slammed him down with the butt of his M-16 carbine.

Screams and shrieks erupted from forward and from inside the deckhouse. A naked woman emerged from the doorway and raced on bare feet for the aft railing. Morton reached out, grabbed her wrist, and took her feet out from under her with a sweep of his left foot, knocking her facedown to the deck. A naked man emerged from the deckhouse with an automatic pistol and was killed.

Morton signaled, and two SEALs plunged through the deckhouse door, heading for the engineering spaces below. Chen and two more SEALs from forward took the bridge.

In seconds the patrol craft was secure. Of twelve Chinese militiamen on board, nine were dead and three were prisoners, along with four terrified civilian women. No SEALs or Taiwanese commandos had been hurt.

"Yar, my captain!" Knowles said with a grin, brandishing his H&K. "We be pirates… and the ship be ours!"

"Let's get her under way, then," Morton replied. "Meadows! Valienti!"

The two SEAL snipes, both enginemen first class, stepped forward. "Sir!"

"Fire her up. Hauser, you and Jorghenson raise the anchor."

"Aye aye, Skipper!"

"Knowles, with me. The rest of you, secure the prisoners." He looked across the water toward Xiamen Island, then east, toward the low, shadowy shoreline on the horizon that was Kinmen, now darkened by a rising pall of smoke. "We have to find an American submarine out there, somewhere," he said, "and it would be nice to find her and get the hell out of here before the bad guys do."