"We're not exactly sure, ma'am," he replied. "We've started picking up a group of sound contacts on the passive arrays. Multiple sources somewhere up the river, sounds like it might be a convoy forming up. You asked to be notified if we detected anything unusual, and I was wondering if this would count."
"Could be. Let's give it a listen."
They crowded in around one of the systems operators. Un jacking their headsets from their belt interphone units, they plugged into the console's audio access points. Silently, they listened for a moment.
"Hear '?"
"Yeah." Christine nodded. "How would you call it?"
"Several single and twin medium-speed screws. Maybe minesweeps or some other kind of small auxiliary. But there are three or four big, slow-turning wheels in there too."
"Do you have a blade count yet? Plant noises?"
Foster shook his head. "Not so far. The contact is ducting weird, a lot of fading and distortion. I think these guys might be coming down that smaller river that leads directly into Shanghai. What d'you call it, the Huangpu? I think we'll get a cleaner listen at them when they actually get out into the main Yangtze estuary."
"Okay, Chuck. Fa' sure, keep working it."
"Think we might have something here?"
"We'll see."
On the Five Nineteen boat Bosun Hoong looked out from beneath the scrap of tarpaulin he had been using for a storm shelter. "Looks like the raindragon is passing, Lieutenant."
On the Cunningham's bridge, a mental load-bearing relay within Amanda Garrett's subconscious tripped: It's time to go. Now! Get out of here!
She keyed her interphone mike. "Raven's Roost, this is the bridge.
Chris, I need a sitrep. Are you onto anything positive yet?"
"Nothing to write home about, Boss Ma'am," the reluctant reply came back. "I'd like to push it a little longer if we could."
"Negative. I'm not going to keep the ship at risk for a dry hole. We're sheering off."
Amanda glanced over her shoulder at Vince Arkady's dark outline behind the helm stations. "Officer of the Deck, we'll be opening the range from the coast. Stand by to come left."
"Very good, Captain. Helm and lee helm stations, stand by to alter heading."
Amanda turned back to the navigational display, selecting a departure course on the glowing coastal chart. She had formed the order in her mind and was about to issue it when Christine Rendino's voice crackled over the interphone.
"Captain! Hold it! We've got something here!"
The rain was easing, fading back into a hazy drizzle again.
Lieutenant Zhou Shan looked up sharply. Bosun as well. He had heard it too. Now that the hissing beat of the rain on the wave crests had passed, a new sound had become audible on the deck of the Five Nineteen boat: the unmistakable whispering whine of a gas turbine power plant.
"Stay with me, Captain," Christine pleaded into her mike as she dashed across the confined internal space of the CIC to Sonar Alley.
"Okay, Foster, what's going down?"
The sonar boss looked up from his panels, excitement and concern vying for control of his expression. "That group of sound contacts have exited out into the estuary. Their signature has clarified and we have a blade count! We've got three big targets up there, each running on a single, large, seven-bladed screw!"
"Are you sure!"
"Positive! We're still running ' through the data annex for a positive hull ID, but they just tacked on some extra speed, and I swear to God, I heard a series of reactor flow valves pop!"
"Ahhh, Foster. I love you and I want to have your children!"
Christine tilted the stunned j. g.'s face up and planted an enthusiastic kiss full on his lips, then she was gone, scrambling back out into the central CIC space.
"Captain, I need permission to drop EMCON!"
"What!"
"For one second! I need to use the SPY-2A arrays to conduct a single, full-power sweep upriver. That's all. The odds are that any Red monitoring station will record it as just a transitory glitch of some kind. Captain, I don't have time to explain, but this is what we came here for!"
There was a moment's hesitation. The other members of the CIC team, drawn in by Christine's exclamation, waited with her for the reply.
Then it came. "Very well."
Amanda's voice shifted from the interphone to the overhead loudspeakers.
"Mr. Hiro, execute a single surf ace-search sweep to the west with the Aegis arrays. Minimum duration. Full output."
Aboard the Five Nineteen boat, the turbine howl was growing louder, intermixed with the boiling hiss of a hull cutting water. In the wet darkness, it was hard to get a bearing on the sound.
"Hoong?" Lieutenant Zhou ordered. "Get forward and raise the anchor.
Helmsman, prepare to start engines. Radio operator, open the channel to the Flag boat ... "
"Scan complete, Lieutenant," the Aegis systems operator reported.
"Securing primary emitters."
"Imaging in storage?"
"Acknowledged, ma'am."
"Yes!"
"Lieutenant Rendino, what's going on?" Ken Hiro demanded.
"Some very-heavy-caliber shit, sir," Christine replied.
Her ebullience was fading now, as she began to analyze and project the potential of what she had just discovered. "Some very-heavy-caliber shit indeed."
Aboard the Five Nineteen boat, Lieutenant Zhou lifted the radio mike to his lips.
In the Cunningham's Combat Information Center, all hands jumped as a tense, staccato voice suddenly issued from a speaker in the intelligence bay. Of the duty watch, only Ken Hiro understood what was being said.
"Five Nineteen boat to squadron command! Contact report ... "
Topside, Christine's voice crackled urgently out of the squawk box.
"Bridge, this is Raven's Roost! Somebody's just lit off a radio transmitter out there." "Where away!" Amanda demanded.
"Close! Real close! Too close to get a bearing!"
It would have taken a superhuman not to glance up, just for an instant.
"I repeat, Five Nineteen boat to squadron command. Contact report ... "
The words choked off in Zhou Shan's throat. He saw a flash of white in the darkness, a broad, low-riding V of foam at wave-top level. A bow wave. Then a ship's stem materialized out of the night, sharp edged and radically raked, impossibly close and towering over the hydrofoil.
Zhou was the Five Nineteen's captain. He knew it was his responsibility to save his ship and crew. But he found that he had no miracles to spend.
Vince Arkady shifted his eyes back to the FLIR monitor just in time to see a shadowy form disappearing under the outline of the Cunningham's, prow. There was no opportunity to order a course change, no chance to make any kind of formal sighting call.
"Watch it!" he yelled. Lunging down over the lee-helm controls, he slammed the throttles closed and threw the propeller controls into neutral.
The Cunningham's cutwater touched the port flank of the Five Nineteen boat.
Fire blazed under the flare of the destroyer's bow and all hands on the bridge were thrown forward. It wasn't an impact as much as it was an abrupt deceleration as the Duke drove through the disintegrating hulk of the Chinese fast attack craft.
"Stop all engines!" Amanda yelled, dragging herself back to her feet.
"All engines answering stop, Captain!" Arkady replied, disentangling himself from the lee-helm pedestal.
"Bridge," the intercom speaker blared. "What's going on up there?"
"We've just PT-109ed a Red patrol boat," the aviator responded into his headset mike. "Stand by, CIC."
Amanda scrambled out onto the port wing of the bridge and peered down over the side. The Chinese hydrofoil had been torn completely in two and its bow section was rolling down the destroyer's side, rasping and scraping along her waterline. Above the crumpling-oil-can noises of the breakup came the sound of a human voice screaming.
Instinctively,
Amanda reached back over the aft bridge rail. Flipping open a cover plate, she revealed a small T-grip handle. Giving it a twist, she yanked the handle outward, then socked it back in.
An access panel in the superstructure swung open and a twelve-man life-raft capsule ejected into the sea.
As the Duke continued to forge ahead under her residual momentum, Amanda watched the raft and the wreckage swirl away aft to be lost in the darkness.
Don't foul the props, she thought feverishly. We can live with anything else, just don't foul the props.
"Main engine control!" she snapped into her headset.
"Main engines, aye," Chief Thomson's steady voice came back.
' ' full clearance and alignment check on both propulsor pods.
Expedite!"
"Will do. I think we're okay, Captain. I think you got her shut down in time."
"Damage control, report!"
"All boards still read green, Captain. Preliminary reports from DC team Alpha Alpha indicate no leakage and no buckling in the forward frames."
In the encounter between the Duke's reenforced bow and the Red Chinese FAC, the destroyer had won cleanly.
"Main Engine Control to Captain."
"Go, Chief."
"Clearance and alignment checks completed. Propellers are clear. Ready to answer bells."
Thank God. Thank God. Now to get out of here, granted the Reds would let them.
That would be an act easier said than done. Down in the stealth systems bay, Frank Mckelsie and his team watched aghast as their threat boards blazed. Surface-search and firecontrol radars were lighting off all around the mouth of the estuary. Powerful mobile and fixed emitters were intently beginning to probe the night. A series of weaker, but closer, seaborne units had also appeared, extending off to the north of their position.
"We're screwed," one of the systems operators whispered.
"Screwed, hell!" Mckelsie snarled back. "We're so far beyond screwed, they're wheeling us into the delivery room.
Stand by your jammers and decoys. We're going to need 'em."
Another outline for potential disaster was unfolding in the central CIC
work space. A new voice issued from the speaker tuned to the Communist command frequency, demanding and repetitive. Again, Ken Hiro was the only one to fathom its meaning.
' ' Nineteen boat, respond! Squadron Flag calling Five Nineteen boat. Do you receive? State your contact ... "
Abruptly, the Cunningham's exec levered himself out of the captain's chair. "Put a transmitter on that frequency," he roared, charging into the radio shack.
After a moment's fumbling, one of the sparks extended a hand mike.
"You're up, sir."
Accepting the microphone, Hiro began to speak into it urgently in Chinese. ' ' Nineteen boat to Squadron Flag.
An unidentified naval vessel has just made a pass near our location. We are proceeding to investigate."
Releasing the mike button, Hiro yelled over his shoulder.
"For Crissake, somebody get on the horn to the Captain!
Tell her to get the ship moving to the east!"
On the Duke's bridge, Dix Beltrain's voice issued from the overhead speaker. "Captain, Mr. Hiro says to get the ship moving to the east.
He's on the radio with the Chinese, and I think he's trying to run some kind of a substitution play on them."'
Amanda picked up on her executive officer's stratagem almost instantly.
Even fully stealthed, the Cunningham would produce a return on a high-powered military radar at close ranges, especially during low sea states such as they were experiencing now. However, that return would not be much different in size than that of the small craft they had just sent to the bottom.
On their screens, the Reds would be tracking only a single target, which they would think was their own picket boat.
Amanda blessed Ken Hiro, then she blessed herself for never trying to suppress the personal initiative of her officers.
"Officer of the Deck, come left to zero nine zero," she commanded. "All engines ahead full. Make turns for thirty knots."
Tightly gripping the ready mike, Ken Hiro leaned in over the communications console, totally focused on the speaker.
The command team in the Combat Information Center had reconfigured to deal with the situation. Dixon Beltrain covered both the tactical officer's and the captain's stations while Christine Rendino hovered at Hire's elbow, ready to relay status reports or instructions as needed.
"Flag boat to all squadron elements, initiate surface search sweep to the east. Flag boat to Five Nineteen. We do not show any uncoordinated targets on our screen. Can you verify your contact?"
Hire's mind raced.
' ' Nineteen to Squadron Flag. We believe that the target was an American ... " Jesus God! What was the Mandarin word for "stealth"? "...
low-observability warship.
Target has broken contact at this time. We are endeavoring to relocate visually."
"What's going down, sir?" Christine Rendino whispered.
"The Reds were wondering why they weren't picking up any bogeys on their radar. I explained it away by saying we
were in pursuit of a Cunningham-class stealth destroyer."
"Too radical! We're chasing ourselves out here."
The Duke raced away from the mouth of the estuary, holding pace with the search line of Communist fast-attack boats, an elephant using technological guile to merge in with a herd of gazelles. Vince Arkady maintained his over watch position behind the helm station. Looking ahead, he saw Amanda silhouetted against the glow of the repeater banks, studying the tactical displays with a fierce intensity.
"CIC to bridge. Mr. Hiro reports that the Reds are increasing speed to thirty-five knots and are going up on their hydrofoils."
"Acknowledged," Amanda curtly replied to the speaker call. "Mr. Arkady, make turns for thirty-five knots. Stealth systems, bring a blip enhancer on line. Increase apparent RCS and return strength by fifty percent."
Arkady quietly relayed the engine command to the lee helmsman. Just as the radar cross section of the Communist fast-attack craft would increase as they became foil-borne, so would the Cunningham as she bent on speed. Their masquerade would hold a while longer.
Arkady circled the helm station and moved up alongside Amanda at the repeater bank. Leaning forward as if to study the displays, he let his forearm brush lightly against hers for a moment.
"I've blown it, Arkady," she whispered. "I've blown it big time."
"Keep rolling the dice, babe. We've still got money on the table."
"Five Nineteen boat, shore stations have detected a radio distress beacon near your initial sighting location. Do you have further information on this?"
"They're asking about a transponder signal," Hiro reported.
"It must be the one off the raft we dropped."
"If in doubt, play stupid, sir," Christine said.
"Yeah. Five Nineteen to Squadron Flag. We have no information on this."
"Five Nineteen boat, can you yet confirm your sighting report?"
' ' Nineteen boat to Squadron Flag. We have not reacquired contact.
Continuing to the east."
Even through the filtering effect of the radio circuit, the Duke's exec could detect the growing suspicion in the tone of the speaker at the far end.
' ' Nineteen boat, are you positive on your target identification?"
' ', Squadron Flag."
"I think this guy suspects something's screwy," Hiro growled.
"Just watch it if he starts asking about who won the Chinese World Series, sir."
' ' Nineteen boat, let me speak to Lieutenant Kang."
"Ah, hell. The Lieutenant is on deck and unavailable at this time, sir."
There was a decisive click over the loudspeaker.
"We've lost the carrier, sir," the radioman reported. "The Reds have started to jump frequencies." "That's it," Hiro said, straightening.
"They've burned us."
"The penny just dropped with a loud, resounding clang, Skipper,"
Christine Rendino reported regretfully. "They've figured out that we've been faking them."
"Acknowledge. Kill the blip enhancer. Resume full stealth."
Amanda gazed down into the bridge tactical display. A repeater of the big Alpha screen down in CIC, it provided her with a full visualization of the tactical environment. Even though the Duke was currently running radar silent, her direction-finder arrays were providing the next-best thing, the range and bearing on every Chinese energy emitter radiating in the area.
On that display, Amanda could see the Chinese fast-attack craft peeling off of their search line like fighter planes, angling south toward them.
' ' of the Deck, come right to one three five degrees.
All engines ahead flank."
"Engines answering all ahead flank, ma'am. Steering one three five degrees."
There were damn few ships in the world, large or small, with legs long enough to overtake the Cunningham when she was running flat out.
Unfortunately, a Huchuan-class hydrofoil was one of those that could.
More unfortunately still, so could the big Type 53 homing torpedoes they carried.
Amanda had ordered the turn to the southeast in an effort to gain distance on her enemies. However, even as she watched, the Red hydrofoils matched the course change and continued to close the range.
A touch of the repeater's keypad and the call-up of a set of radar return strengths verified what she suspected. The Cunningham was well below the return minimums of the comparatively primitive "Skin Head"
surface-search systems aboard the fast-attack craft. The hydrofoils were being vectored in by the more powerful Communist shore-based radars.
Soon they'd have a solid enough bearing to start launching fish.
And there was absolutely nothing Amanda Lee Garrett could do about it.
She was constrained by the Fleet's current operational Rules of Engagement, the ones that stated in effect, ' Thou shall not return fire until fired upon."
Violating ROE was a sure way for a naval officer to guarantee a court-martial. But, then again, what kind of career did she have left?
She had just initiated a world-class international incident. All that remained now was the Duke and the safety of her crew.
Sea Strike Page 15