Seawolf Class

21

"Conn, Sonar! We're passing Master Four-one to starboard."

"Thank you, Sonar. Stand by."

That the sonar shack had been able to pick up anything as Seawolf sped through the water at thirty knots was little short of astonishing… that, or the Chinese Kilo was very close aboard indeed and making a lot of noise where it rested on the shallow bottom.

The tension in the control room now was slowly rising to an unbearable pitch. At this speed Seawolf could easily ground in the rapidly shoaling water, broach to on the surface, or even slam headlong into the twisted wreckage of the sunken Kilo.

"Maneuvering!" Garrett called. "Slow revolutions! Do not, repeat, do not cavitate, but bring us down to steerage way."

"Slowing to steerage way, aye aye, sir."

"We're slowing, Skipper," Tollini announced after a moment, as the massive bulk of Seawolf dragged more and more slowly through the water. "Fifteen knots… twelve… "

"All hands, this is the captain. The bad guys just saw us sprint for the wreckage of that Kilo we plugged. Beyond that is the channel between Kinmen and Liehyu Islands. With a bit of luck, they'll think we're going through that channel. Let's not do anything to disabuse them of the idea. Maintain silence throughout the boat."

Steerage way was slow — a knot or two, just enough to maintain steering control of the Seawolf as she crept along the bottom. This was the moment when her silence truly was golden, rendering her acoustically as a hole in the otherwise noisy water.

"Helm, come left ninety degrees."

"Helm coming left nine-zero degrees to new heading, two-seven-eight degrees, aye, sir."

"You have the conn, Mr. Ward," Garrett said. "I'll be in the sonar shack."

"I have the conn, aye, sir."

Walking aft and port to the sonar room door, Garrett looked in. The tension there was, if anything, greater than on the control deck. The three sonar techs and Chief Toynbee were hunched over their glowing console screens, heads encased in earphones. The sonar officer, Neimeyer, stood by the sound spectrum analyzer, his eyes wide, sweat beading his face.

"Mr. Neimeyer," Garrett said quietly. "Have your people keep their ears sharp. You are our eyes now."

"S-Sir?" Neimeyer looked as though he hadn't understood. Garrett frowned. The young j.g. did not look good.

"Are you all right, son?"

"They're… they're out there, Captain, moving into attack position!"

The quaver in Neimeyer's voice told Garrett what he needed to know. The sonar officer was at the breaking point.

"Mr. Neimeyer, you're relieved. Chief Toynbee, take over as acting sonar officer."

Toynbee met Garrett's eyes. He looked both relieved and scared. "Aye aye, sir."

"What do you have?"

"Sierra One-eight-five is closing, sir. Redesignating now as Master Four-two. He's a diesel boat, making revolutions for eighteen knots, on a heading of zero-four-zero. Straight for us, Skipper."

"Keep on him, Chief."

"Captain?" Queensly said, touching his headset, eyes still closed.

"What is it, Queenie?" He'd heard the others calling the young ST "Queenie" and used the nickname now to help reduce the tension.

"I have a second contact, sir. Designate Sierra One-eight-six, bearing one-seven-eight, range twenty-seven thousand. And… "

"What is it?"

"I can't be sure, sir, but I think there's another contact behind the first. Very, very quiet, but I thought I was picking up some low-frequency tonals for a second there."

"Tonals from Sierra One-eight-six, maybe? Or a bottom echo?"

"No, sir. A second contact, farther away than the first." He shook his head. "It's gone now. But it might have been a third boat cavitating as he picked up speed."

Garrett frowned, picturing the tactical situation. One boat coming at them from the southwest, another from almost due south. He'd been expecting a third boat boxing them in to the east, but this new ghost contact was to the south, behind Sierra One-eight-six. Was it a third boat caught out of position, on its way to the east? Or might it be the hunter himself, the mastermind behind the Chinese attack boat deployment, following behind his hounds?

Neimeyer turned on Garrett, grasping his shirtfront with surprising strength. "They're closing on us!"

Garrett broke Neimeyer's grip with a twist and a straight-armed block. "Get hold of yourself, son!"

"Don't you understand?" His eyes were wild now. "Don't you understand

Garrett took a step back, cocking his fist for a blow to Neimeyer's jaw. Before he could swing, though, Chief Toynbee had dropped his headset, risen from his chair, and grabbed Neimeyer from behind. The young officer twisted, then screamed. Toynbee felled him with a single, brutally hard elbow smash at the base of the man's skull.

"COB!" Garrett snapped as Neimeyer slumped in Toynbee's arms. "Yessir."

"Get this man out of here. Get him to sickbay."

"Aye aye, sir." Dougherty took Neimeyer's limp form from Toynbee. "Upsy-daisy, sir. Here we go. Eisler! Snap to! Give me a hand!"

"Have the doc take a look at him."

"We'll take care of him, sir."

Garrett stepped aside as they dragged Neimeyer out of the sonar shack, then locked eyes with Toynbee. "Striking an officer, Chief?"

"It goes harder on officers who hit their men. Sir."

"I see." He grinned. "Well, it's a good thing no one hit anyone."

Toynbee nodded. "Yes, sir, it sure is! Thank you, sir."

"For what? Listen… we're going to be creeping along this new course very slowly for some time. We can't trail the towed array, but it should give you a chance to listen hard to port. Keep me updated."

"Aye aye, sir. That we will do!"

"Captain?"

"Yes, Queenie?" The young ST seemed oblivious to the small and violent drama that had just been played out a few feet away from him.

"We're getting… transient noises, sir. Kind of like a rumble, far off. It sounds kind of… "

"Yes?"

"Sir, it sounds like gunfire. Heavy gunfire, like artillery or something. I think someone is shooting at someone else."

Which made sense. If the PRC had declared war on Taiwan, one of their first targets would most likely be the ROC garrison on tiny Kinmen.

"Thank you, Queenie."

"I'm also getting what might be a number of surface contacts. Too confused yet to make out anything certain. There are a lot of bottom echoes, sir."

"Great work, son. Stay on it. If you hear them goddamn sneeze, tell me."

"Aye aye, sir."

Garrett returned to the control room, where several sets of eyes followed his movements. He couldn't tell whether those looks expressed fear, respect, or hostility after they'd seen Neimeyer dragged from the sonar shack. At this point it scarcely mattered. It was vital that Neimeyer not make any noises loud enough or persistent enough to carry past Seawolf's hull and into the surrounding ocean, and vital, too, that he not panic and possibly hurt someone, or accidentally engage some piece of machinery that would tip off the enemy.

Walking over to the chart tables, he joined Lieutenant Simms, studying the high-resolution map of Kinmen and Liehyu. Seawolf was now passing the gap between the two islands, traveling slowly west. The fact that Queensly had picked up the sounds of surface vessels and gunfire here suggested that the sounds were being funneled through the narrow strait from the north, from the far side of Kinmen.

An invasion of Kinmen by the PRC? Or simply a close-in shore bombardment?

COB joined them a few moments later.

"How is he, COB?"

"He's doin' okay, sir. The doc is giving him something to sedate him."

"Thanks, COB. Have Ritthouser keep me informed."

"Already told him that, sir."

"Outstanding."

He was sorry about Neimeyer, but there'd been no alternative. The safety of the boat and of the entire crew had to take precedence over any one man.

He thought about Captain Lawless, alone on the weather bridge.

In silence, then, Seawolf drifted slowly west.

Now, again, came the waiting. Some wit with undeniable military experience had once remarked that life in the wartime military was ninety-nine percent boredom, one percent stark terror. On board a submarine that was even truer, with hours spent stalking the enemy, or listening for him, or hiding. Once the order was given to fire, there were a few minutes of high-riding excitement, as torpedoes flashed through the water… but then the noise and excitement were gone, replaced once more by tedious waiting, by listening, by slow, gentle, and above all quiet maneuverings. Somewhere out there at least three more submarine skippers were ordering their sonar crews to comb the ocean for Seawolf, to pick out any scrap of noise she might make, to close on her for the kill.

Toynbee appeared at his side. "Skipper?" the sonar chief whispered. "Master Four-two and Sierra One-eight-six pulled a sprint and came up close to the wreck of Master Four-one. They're passing astern of us now."

"And the ghost?"

"If he's there, he's still out there to the south." Garrett nodded. Not much longer before this was settled, one way or another.

Jorghensen suggested calling the patrol boat the "Runcible Spoon," and somehow the name stuck. Morton wondered, though, who was the owl and who the pussycat.

With the engines fired up and Chief Bohanski at the wheel, they'd maneuvered the little craft in close to the shore. The Second Squad SEALs and the rest of the Chinese commandos had waded out to meet her, bringing along the wounded and the two bodies of the commandos killed at Tong'an. In minutes they were motoring away from the shore, steering for the middle of the strait.

The seven prisoners, all of them fully clothed now, had been secured hand and foot with plastic ties the SEALs carried with them for prisoner handling. Zhu had argued that the captives should be killed — a necessary combat expedient in a desperate situation, but Morton wasn't ready to go that route yet.

"Damn it, Zhu," he'd said, furious. "There are alternatives to murder."

At his orders, the prisoners were hauled below deck to the boat's tiny mess area and lounge, where they now took up all of the furniture and most of the available deck space. Under other circumstances he might have killed the combatants — American Special Forces operatives were prepared to kill civilians when it was absolutely necessary to preserve a mission — but things hadn't reached that point yet. The desperate, terrified expressions in the eyes of the prisoners, military and civilian, had been enough to convince him they wouldn't have much trouble from the captives…not for the moment, anyway.

Her diesel engine chugging fitfully and belching smoke from the water exhaust aft, the Runcible Spoon steered for the center of the channel, then turned east. Dead ahead, smoke rose in black pillars from the fires burning on the island of Kinmen.

Artillery rumbled and boomed from Xiamen.

"They do it again," Zhu explained, pointing to the island. "When Mao try to take Kinmen before, he put big guns on Xiamen… called Amoy by West. Fire half-million shells at Kinmen."

"A hell of a bombardment. It's amazing that little island is still above water."

"Yes. Just so. Someone calculate all those shells something like ten percent of all artillery shells in PRC inventory then. But Kinmen hold."

"Do you think it will hold this time?" Morton asked.

"It will. It must." There was a moment's hesitation, a darkness behind the eyes, a hint of deep pain. "I from Kinmen. I have wife and three children there. Also mother, father, sister, other relatives."

He'd been angry with Zhu for suggesting that the prisoners be summarily killed, even though he understood the hard, cold, rationale behind it. Zhu's expression, though, reminded him that the most bitter of wars were civil wars… and that over five decades of hatred between Taiwan and the mainland had left some very deep scars indeed.

What must it be like for Zhu to be here, he wondered, relatively safe aboard the captured patrol boat, while his family tried to survive that holocaust of fire and steel on the eastern horizon? He understood now why Zhu had elected to return instead of staying with Tse. He wondered if the other Taiwanese aboard had similar motives.

How long could the PLA be held at bay?

"We're updating Sierra One-eight-six to Master Four-three," Toynbee said softly. He pointed at the chart between them. "And we're calling a new sonar contact Sierra One-eight-seven, due south, range forty thousand. About here."

"The second ghost?"

"Yes, sir. He sprinted for just a few minutes, long enough for us to nail him by his tonals. Then he went quiet again. Vanished."

"What about Masters Four-two and Four-three?"

Toynbee grinned, a crooked showing of teeth. "That's the good news, sir. They kept going right on past us. We lost 'em in our baffles, but a few minutes later Queenie picked 'em both up on the starboard array. It looks like they're moving into the channel between these two islands." He looked up at Garrett, respect softening his weathered features. "Damn it all, Skipper! You planned it that way! You suckered 'em!"

"We just encouraged them to think the obvious, Chief."

But he was pleased by Toynbee's praise. Seawolf had made a mad and noisy dash at thirty knots straight toward the noisy wreckage of the first Kilo — and toward the channel between Kinmen and Liehyu just beyond.

The enemy might expect to lose the 'Wolf momentarily in the noise from Master Four-one. They would look at their charts and see the channel just beyond, an apparent escape route for the trapped American sub. At least two of the hunters were moving into the channel, trying to track the fleeing Seawolf, unaware that the American had gone death-silent and changed course, creeping off to the east.

Too bad all of the Chinese boats hadn't come to the same conclusion, he thought. The ghost, Sierra One-eight-seven, was still hanging back, a good twenty miles to the south. He might be waiting to see if the American had really gone through the strait. He might be hanging back to keep an overview of the whole situation.

Or he could have continued creeping forward at dead slow, maintaining silence just as Seawolf was, in order to close the range.

That thought deflated Garrett's pleasure a bit. He felt the tension building again, like a cold, clammy giant's grip on throat and heart and gut. His head throbbed beneath the bandages he wore. The stress of the moment was gnawing at him, and he could feel the fluttering beginnings of an anxiety attack. Shit, he was no better than poor Neimeyer, scared half to death, broken by stress, by battle tension, by the sheer responsibility of his command.

These men were looking to him to get them out of this mess. And here he was, playing it by ear and relying on sheer, cussed luck.

Fuck that! He didn't have time right now, didn't have the luxury of being human.

He walked over to the helm station, where Dougherty stood just behind and between the two enlisted ratings manning helm and planes. The planesman had precious little to do in such shallow water, but he sat bolt upright, hands gripping the control yoke, eyes riveted to the plane angle indicators. The helmsman sat to his right, gripping the steering yoke, his eyes on the heading indicator.

"Steady as we go," Garrett said, and hoped the order was enough. For all of them.

"What the hell is going on over there?" Morton asked aloud. He was on the Runcible's bridge, a pair of binoculars raised to his eyes as he studied the islands and surface ships across perhaps eight miles of sea.

Zhu stood at his side, also watching through binoculars. "Helicopters," he said. "ASW warfare, yes?"

"That's what I'm thinking."

The Runcible was cruising slowly south, rounding the gently curving coastline of Xiamen Island and passing between that island and the twin ROC islands of Kin-men and Liehyu to the east. The shipping lanes south from the port of Xiamen lay somewhere a few miles ahead and farther around the island itself, to the west.

Sounds like express trains warbled overhead — artillery shells on the way from Xiamen to Kinmen. Nothing, Morton thought, like an afternoon cruise through no-man's land.

From here, the northern end of the strait between the two ROC islands was just visible. There were several surface ships in the area, including a big Luda-class destroyer and several patrol boats of various sizes and descriptions. Two helicopters — from here they looked like American Kaman SH-2Fs but with PRC markings — circled above the strait between Kinmen and Liehyu like hungry buzzards.

A thuttering roar sounded from astern. The two men peered up through the bridge windshield, watching as a large Zhi 8—a licensed copy of the French Frelon heavy helicopter — rotored low overhead. Very low. The pilot, evidently, was trying to keep below the arc of artillery shells passing overhead on their way to Kinmen.

"The American submarine," Zhu said. "Perhaps enemy find."

Morton didn't reply. If the American sub that was supposed to pick them up was over there…

As he watched, something dropped from the belly of one of the Kamans, and Morton recognized the sawed-off cylindrical shape of an ASW torpedo. They were hunting a submarine over there. Morton felt a hard, cold lump growing in his throat.

Their chances out here alone were not good. For the moment, no one was paying any attention to them, a solitary patrol boat cruising off the coast of Xiamen Island. If they approached the ROC islands, though, they were sure to be given a thorough look-over by the Chinese forces of both sides of the battle. Hell, it wasn't like they could just cruise into the port of Kinmen and tie up at the dock, even if they could make radio contact with the defenders on the island and make themselves believed.

For a long moment he watched the smoke crawling up against the sky. A geysering fountain of water erupted from the sea. A hit!

If the American sub was sunk, the only alternative Morton could think of was to round Liehyu and make for Taiwan, a hundred-and-something miles across the Strait of Formosa.

Waters no doubt patrolled by trigger-happy PRC warships that would be suspicious of a lone coastal patrol craft…as well as by ROC and American forces that would be just as suspicious and just as eager at the trigger.

His pirate ruse was beginning to look like a singularly bad idea.

"We're here, Captain," Simms said, pointing at the red wax marker line drawn on the chart. "Three miles southwest of Liehyu Island. Xiamen Island is here, about eight miles northwest. The shipping channel is here…ten more miles." He shook his head. "We don't know the SEALs could have made it out there, though."

"I intend to find out, Mr. Simms. We're not leaving our people behind."

"No, sir. But how the hell are we supposed to find them?"

"Captain?" Toynbee stood at his elbow. "Whatcha got, Chief?"

"We're not sure, sir. Something is going on over in the channel between the two ROC islands. We've picked up pulses from dipping sonar… and an underwater explosion."

"An explosion! A mine?"

Toynbee shook his head. "Queenie thinks it was a small torpedo, sir. Probably a 400mm ASW fish dropped from a helo."

"The devil you say!"

"Confusion to the enemy," Toynbee said, grinning his crooked grin.

The old naval toast was appropriate here. Unless Garrett was mistaken, the Chinese surface vessels near Kinmen had picked up one of those Kilos moving north through the channel and attacked it.

"That gives us a chance, gentlemen," he said.

"My God, that gives us a chance," Morton said, watching the spectacle unfold through his binoculars.

Several long minutes had passed since the explosion of a helo-dropped ASW torpedo on an underwater target. Morton had been about to give up the vigil when he'd seen a long, low, dark gray rectangle breach the surface. From here he could make out the periscope mast. Several surface ships were moving in close alongside now.

One submarine conning tower looked frustratingly like another, especially when there wasn't anything else visible to allow a guess at length and height. But that conning tower looked odd… and hauntingly familiar, considerably longer than it was high.

He studied the scene a moment longer, warm hope growing. "Yes!" he announced. "The sons of bitches scored an own goal!"

"Sir," Logan said. The 2IC didn't have binoculars and could only see a confusion of smoke and tiny, distance-blurred shapes on the horizon.

"That's a goddamn Kilo that just surfaced! One of theirs! I think they just put a torpedo into one of their own submarines!"

There was no mistaking that squat silhouette now, not when he'd stared down at an identical sub's conning tower in the North Pacific just a few years before.

"Then that means… " Zhu said.

"It means our sub is still out there and probably raising a hell of a row. Break out the signal gear, boys. Go!"

They might just be able to get out of this….

"Captain!" Toynbee was breathless with excitement, leaning out of the sonar shack to pass the word. "We have Blue Dragon!"

"Jesus!" Garrett hurried to the sonar shack.

"Where? How far?"

Juarez was standing over the WLR-9 Acoustic Intercept Receiver, a console at the far end of the sonar shack behind the BSY-2 consoles that picked up incoming sonar signals from other ships or enemy weapons, warning Seawolf when she was under active sonar observation. "Approximately five miles, sir," Juarez told him. "Bearing two-nine-five. They're using a hand-held transponder and Morse."

"What message?"

"Just their call sign, Blue Dragon, and a coded request for extraction, with wounded. They appear to be at sea in a small boat, approximately two hundred tons. We're tracking it now with the Busy-Two. Designated Sierra One-eight-eight."

"Shit." Wounded personnel meant that they wouldn't be able to swim down to the Seawolf while she remained safely submerged. And if the 'Wolf dared to surface, she'd be picked up by every shipping and coastal radar on this part of the China coast.

And there was worse. It was at least another two hours and more until sunset, and every Chinese ship in the region, including those stalking submarines, were going to pick up that Morse sonar transmission and home in on the source at flank speed. It was going to be extremely crowded around those SEALs very soon.

"Maneuvering!" he called. "Come to new heading, bearing on sonar contact with Sierra One-eight-eight. Make revolutions for forty-two knots."

They were abandoning all pretense of stealth now. Seawolf was now in a deadly, flat-out race, with the SEALs at the finish line…

… and with survival as the prize.