Sea Strike

by James H. Cobb

  We got a leak!"

  "Verify it."

  "We got a rise in the gearbox temperature. Shit! We got transmission fluid all over outside the canopy back here! This is for real, Lieutenant! We're going to lose it. We got maybe ten minutes at this throttle setting."

  Arkady kept his hands steady on the pitch and collective.

  There was only one card left to him now. He had been afraid to try bringing it into play again. He had been afraid that SEA STRIKE 325

  there would still only be dead air on the other end of the radio circuit.

  "Gray Lady, this is Retainer Zero One. Do you copy?"

  "Retainer Zero One, this is Gray Lady. We read you."

  It was her voice. Arkady suddenly found himself believing in a future again. It felt great.

  "Gray Lady, what is your position?"

  "We had a degree of difficulty in the minefield, Retainer.

  We are clear of it now and are proceeding upriver to pickup point. What is your situation?"

  "Better than it was two minutes ago. We are towing the Moondogs out into the central channel with the tether of our dunking sonar. We've had shooting problems. We are having systems problems, and we need to get these guys out of the water now."

  "We will be up with you in ten minutes," the weary, static-ridden, and incredibly beautiful voice replied.

  "That'll be just about right."

  "Lieutenant, you will wish to see this."

  Zhou Shan ducked into the low deck house and crouched down beside the radar operator. Together they peered at the grainy sweep crawling around the circular screen of the torpedo boat's

  "Skin Head" search radar.

  ' ' surface target, Comrade Lieutenant. It just appeared in Beicao Hangcao channel. Large target. Proceeding upriver at eighteen knots.

  Estimated range at this time, eight miles."

  "Comrade Lieutenant," the radio operator spoke up from the other side of the cramped compartment. "Some of the enemy jamming has cleared. I have acquired contact with Army coastal artillery command. They are reporting that a hostile warship has forced passage of the estuary mine barrier.

  It, too, is reported as proceeding upriver."

  Shan spoke no reply. He only returned swiftly to the cockpit.

  Taking up his night glasses, he braced his elbows against the rail of the bridge combing and peered downstream. The blaze that had marked the hulk of the river-patrol gunboat had abruptly gone out a few moments before, the Hainan's agony ending as it had settled beneath the river's surface.

  The only light to the east came from the intermittent showers of starshells still falling out at the estuary mouth.

  326 James H. Cobb One of them flared exceptionally bright, and Zhou Shan momentarily made out a shadowy shape. A silhouette too sleek for any ordinary ship to have, and the narrowed outline of a tall shark's-fin mast.

  "Radio Operator." Shan's voice was totally level as he spoke. The voice of a true commander. "Contact Army Artillery Command. Request they continue to fire illumination shells. We will need the target backlit when we attack."

  "Bosun Hoong!" he continued more loudly. "Signal all boats to start engines!"

  "Stealth systems, RCS status?" The bridge-wing repeater panel on the port side was intact and functional, and Amanda had shifted her point of operations there.

  "We have no stealth capacity, Captain. The Wetball systems are grounding out and we can't isolate the shorting point. We are also reporting heavy RAM damage to the front facing of the superstructure."

  "Well, it's not as if they don't know we're here. Carry on, Mr.

  Mckelsie."

  The Duke was well clear of the artillery now and was running fast through shadows again. Aboard the destroyer, the only transitory noises were the quiet clink of tools and the murmur of voices from the wheelhouse and the foredeck as the damage-control parties and rescue details went about their grim tasks. The only steady-state sounds were the moan of the turbines and the hiss of the bow cutting the river's surface. Over them, Amanda thought she could just make out helicopter rotors.

  "Lieutenant! High-temperature warning light on the rotor transmission gearbox! We got almost zero fluid pressure now!"

  Arkady didn't bother to comment. "Moondog, you guys still with us?"

  "Still down here, Retainer." The strained voice over the CSAR was almost drowned out by the fed-back thunder of the helo.

  "Almost home, Moondog. Almost home. Hang in there.

  The ship's almost up with us."

  "Or at least I hope she is," Arkady muttered under his breath. "Gray Lady, Gray Lady. This is Zero One."

  "We read you, Zero One." Amanda's voice had lifted slightly. "We have just acquired you visually. We are preparing for pickup."

  "Roger, Gray Lady. Request helipad be prepared for immediate recovery following pickup.", "Do you have a problem, Retainer?" she demanded sharply.

  "Not yet."

  The drag and the searing agony eased away as the towing helicopter returned to a hover once more. Digger Graves clung to the sonar tether and drew down great, gasping lungs ful of air. Trying to keep Bubbles's face out of the water, he had come close to drowning himself. At least out here, they weren't being shot at.

  "Hey, Moondog!" This time. Retainer Zero One's voice sounded jubilant as it issued from the CSAR. "You want to see something pretty? Look downstream."

  It took a moment to orient himself, and then a moment more for the shades of night to differentiate themselves. Then Graves made out the ghostly slash of a bow wave and a curved prow blotting out a growing number of stars.

  He didn't realize it then, but he was becoming part of a masterpiece--the eventual masterwork of noted naval artist Wilson Garrett: The Lost, Found. An image frozen for posterity.

  The pilot clinging protectively to his wounded comrade, the helo hovering in a black sky like a guardian falcon, and the great dark ship looming out of the night before them.

  "Aegis systems manager, do we have anything coming off the forward SPY-2A arrays yet?" Ken Hiro demanded from the CIC command chair.

  "Negative, sir. All three forward planar arrays are nonfunctional.

  I'm getting an intermittent feed off of some of the cells in number two, but it's not enough to process.

  "Deck teams are reporting heavy fragmentation damage on the front face of the superstructure," one of the DC officers called forward from his station to the Cunningham's exec. "Look's like she's trashed, sir."

  Hiro frowned. At the moment, the Duke was radar blind in her critical forward arc. She couldn't see upriver, and that was just where the threats would be coming from.

  "Go to visual surface-search sweep with the Mast Mounted Sighting system," he ordered. "Cover the forward arcs. Aegis Systems Manager, do we have any alternatives?"

  "Yes, sir." The S.O. looked back from her station in the command cluster. "Have the Aegis access the navigational radar and process a tactical overlay from that. The Nav set is still fully functional. Range and bearing only and no fire control, but we will be able to produce a surf ace-search image off of it."

  "Very well, make it happen and make it fast."

  She did. On the Alpha screen, the glowing details of an active radar display began to flesh out the computer-graphics chart of the estuary.

  "Multiple surface contacts!" the radar operator called out.

  "Bearing two seven zero at ten thousand yards. Four targets!

  Speed, thirty-eight knots. Range is closing!"

  "Get the MMS on that!" Hiro commanded, straightening.

  "Threat boards, what do we have on these guys!"

  "Stealth systems have no data!" Mckelsie called back from the Spook bay.

  "We lost our receptors with the SPY array."

  "Signal Intelligence?"

  "We have shock damage!" Over in the intelligence bay, Hiro heard a fist slam down on the top of a console chassis.

  "Work, you son of a bitch!" Christine Rendino snarled.

  "Okay
... we are now reading four Skin Head search radars active in that arc. Given their speed and aggressive maneuvering pattern, I'd say we've got a group of Huchuan torpedo boats out there."

  "I concur. Bridge, we've got a problem! ... "

  The rapid hammering of the waves faded away as the Five Sixteen boat lifted smoothly onto her hydrofoils. Lieutenant Zhou Shan felt the surge of elation that he always did at such moments. This night, however, the sensation lingered on.

  All hands were at their battle stations. Bosun Hoong crouched at the base of the portside torpedo tube, his strong hand ready at the launching lever. Over the martial drumbeat of the racing engines Shan could hear the cracking of China's

  SEA STRIKE 329

  flag in the slipstream. Ahead awaited his nation's enemies.

  This was the war he had searched for.

  "... got a problem! Four hostile torpedo boats bearing two seven zero upriver. Closing the range. Attack posture. Intent is hostile."

  Amanda dialed the tactical display up on the bridge-wing repeater. "I see them," she replied, holding the heavy handset of the sound-powered phone in place against her ear with a shrugged shoulder.

  "Captain, this is the tactical officer cutting in. I have no fire-control designation capacity remaining in the forward arcs! Advise we maneuver to unmask the functional arrays."

  "Acknowledged, Mr. Beltrain. We're doing it now. Designate targets as you bear. Stand by to fire."

  "Helm," she yelled in through the open bridge-wing hatch. "Hard right rudder. Engines ahead slow. Bring her around to three five zero."

  The ship began to ware about. As the Duke began to turn, Amanda snatched a set of low-light binoculars from a rack inside the hatchway. Switching them on, she lifted them to her eyes.

  A mere hundred yards away, Retainer Zero One station kept low over the river. Two dots were afloat directly beneath the helo: the two downed aviators. And beyond them, upstream, were another row of pale dots: bow waves out at the limits of the binoculars' imaging.

  Lieutenant Zhou Shan buried his face into the foam-rubber eyepiece of the torpedo sight, focusing the lenses on his target.

  The coastal guns were still hurling their illumination rounds, and now a new cluster silhouetted the enemy perfectly.

  They were turning! They were coming broadside-on to give him a perfect shot! There was no mistaking that sleek, uncluttered design, that rakish mast array. It was an American --Cunningham And Shan somehow knew that it was the same one that had decimated his squadron and that had killed his first crew. He felt the hand of destiny rest upon his shoulder.

  "Stand by, torpedoes!"

  330 James H. Cobb On the Cunningham's bridge, Amanda Lee Garrett was feeling the touch of destiny as well. The Red Chinese were launching a classic Jeun Ecoulle torpedo-boat attack, possibly the last one ever to be attempted. It was the equivalent of witnessing the last great cavalry charge at Omderman or the last clash of the dreadnoughts at San Bernardino straits.

  She was seeing the turning of a page in the history of warfare.

  Historic or not, however, they threatened her ship.

  "Captain, this is the tactical officer. We have designated the torpedo boats. Harpoon flights are hot. Ready to fire!"

  "Shoot!"

  The sound of the booster ignition startled Amanda. With her eyes narrowed and her hands pressed over her ears, she let the golden light and hot breath of the missile launch surround her.

  Zhou Shan recognized his death, the four cometlike streaks of flame leaping from the foredeck of the American destroyer.

  Yellow fire that changed to blue as the antishipping missiles converted from rocket to jet propulsion.

  He had only seconds to act. One move left to him.

  The first Harpoon struck the northernmost boat of the squadron. Fused for anti-small-craft use, it detonated instantly on impact--a rifle bullet striking an eggshell filled with nitroglycerin. The hydrofoil vanished in the heart of a cataclysmic explosion.

  The second boat disintegrated. The third ... a wave of annihilation rolling down on the Five Sixteen.

  "Shoot!"

  The magnificent Hoong wrenched upward on the manual firing lever. The propulsive charge fired and the cold, greased length of a Type 53

  torpedo lunged out of the portside tube.

  It seemed to hang suspended for an instant, then it plunged beneath the waves like a leaping fish returning joyfully to its home. It was the last sight Zhou Shan's eyes recorded before his world vanished into the fire.

  In the CIC, the last target symbol blinked off the Alpha screen. But an instant later, a hostile torpedo hack materialized.

  SEA STRIKE 331

  "Fish in the water!" Charles Foster yelled from Sonar Alley. "Torpedo data annex has identified a Type 53 in active acquisition mode.

  Convergent bearing! We are targeted!"

  "Mister Beltrain!" Hiro barked. "Initiate Mark 50 antitorpedo program.

  Set range safeties to minimum and set for intercept shot!"

  The Exec tore the phone handset out of its clips.

  "Captain! The Reds got a torpedo off! They've got us boresighted!

  Propping Mark 50 for antitorpedo intercept!"

  "Execute intercept! Fire at will!"

  She had to protect the ship. Above all else, she had to protect her ship. Then the rumble of helo rotors again shouldered past her surge of concern to register on her awareness.

  "Oh, my God! Radio room! Patch me through to Zero One! Expedite!"

  "Arkady! Get them out of the water! Now!" He knew which "them" Amanda was referring to, and the urgency in her voice brooked no questions or even an acknowledgment.

  Swiftly he toggled over to CSAR. "Moondog! Hang on to the sound head!

  For Christ sakes, hang on!"

  He squeezed the throttle trigger on the collective and poured power into the helo's failing rotor system. Slowly, the Sea Comanche started to lift away from the river. Arkady could feel a load come on the sonar tether. The Moondogs were coming with him.

  "Lieutenant!" Gus yelped in pure terror. "The fucking gearbox is going to come apart!"

  "Do fucking tell!"

  Something was going on. Graves had watched the Harpoons launch from the Cunningham and had seen them hit. Now something else had torn past him submerged, heading out in the same direction as had the missiles. He had felt the turbulence wave of its passage and the vibration of its propulsor through the water.

  Then had come the yell over the survival radio. Graves felt the tether start to slide through his fingers and the sound head shoulder up against him. Frantically, he embraced it and 332 James H. Cobb Bubbles both, locking his arms tight. As they lifted out of the water their full, sodden weight came onto his dislocated shoulder. Graves screamed and clung to his consciousness as tightly as he had hung on to his systems operator.

  "Unit is tracking, sir," the torpedo operator reported.

  Dix Beltrain, nodded, silently looking on over her shoulder.

  What they were attempting was still as experimental as all hell.

  Theoretically, the Duke's sonar system was accurate enough and her fire-control processors fast enough to steer one of her own Barracuda torpedoes into the path of the weapon that had been fired at her. Also, theoretically, the American unit would then recognize the hostile fish and score a proximity-kill with a warhead detonation.

  Even if everything worked as planned, it would be the equivalent of two dynamite trucks running headlong into each other.

  "Get a good hold! This is going to be close!"

  Out on the bridge wing, it was as if a giant flashbulb had gone off just beneath the surface of the Yangtze. A blue white glare, and then the river ripped itself open. There wasn't enough water over the explosion to dome. Rather, it sprayed into the night sky in a thousand berserker jets, an ear-shattering thunderclap radiating outward from its core.

  Amanda grabbed for the bridge railing as the Duke leaned away from the blast. "All stop! Initiate s
tation keeping!"

  she yelled. "Hold us in the channel!"

  As the destroyer rolled back on an even keel, she lifted her binoculars and feverishly swept the night. The ringing in her ears was too loud for her to focus on the sound of the Sea Comanche's rotors, but she reacquired the helo in only a few seconds.

  Amanda could see a misshapen mass at the end of the sonar tether, four legs dangling. He'd done it! Arkady had gotten them out of the water before the shock wave. They all still had a chance!

  Amanda was granted a single heartbeat's worth of relief.

  Then she saw the helo lurch in midair, a fireworks stream of sparks belching from its engine.

  "Lieutenant! The rotor drive's going!"

  SEA STRIKE 333

  Arkady didn't bother to try to answer over the vibration rattle and the squalling of the engine warning alarms. In the vernacular of the helicopter aviator, the Sea Comanche was "starting to lose the Jesus nut." It was entering into the first phase of a catastrophic main rotor assembly failure. Short of flying into the side of a mountain, things were suddenly as bad as they could get.

  More so because of the Moondogs. Arkady could feel their weight swaying at the end of the tether.

  The book said that he should be getting down out of the sky just as fast as possible, which would mean setting down right on top of the two aviators. Instead, Arkady did just what the book said not to. He fire walled his throttles, forcing the power from the turbines through the incandescent wreckage of the disintegrating transmission and up to the rotors.

  Hemorrhaging, the helo staggered toward the Cunningham.

  "Gus, stand by to jettison the sonar pod!"

  No time for subtlety. No time for care. Maybe just enough time to get his charges to safety.

  They were coming up on the ship with just enough altitude for the sonar head to clear the rail. Arkady had the briefest glimpse of a slender figure looking up from the bridge wing, and then they were over the foredeck.

  "Gus, cut ' loose!"

  Arkady felt the sonar pod detach from beneath the snub wing, falling to the deck below. Please God, don't let the damn thing land on the poor bastards.

  Shedding the sonar pod had gained them a scant decrease in weight and boost in maneuverability. But now the gearbox was literally going to pieces. A new volley of screaming systems alarms heralded an incipient turbine failure.