Moon’s brow inched up again. “And what do you think it is, Mr. President?”
Ryan opened the door for her. “The same thing you do. A Chinese submarine that has gotten itself into trouble.”
29
It seemed a simple assignment. Pick three names, one of which would be randomly selected for a suicide mission.
Wan Xiuying sat alone in his quarters, curtain drawn, listening to the terrified sobs of the young crew, smelling the stench of melted metal and the cloyingly sweet odor of cooked flesh. Hunched over his small, fold-out writing desk, the thirty-one-year-old executive officer of the PLAN nuclear ballistic submarine Long March #880 clutched at his forelock with one hand while he tapped his pencil on the blank sheet of paper.
The captain’s only criteria were that the candidates be brave, calm under pressure, and physically fit enough for the mission.
Wan pushed the pencil so hard with his thumb that it snapped in half. How could he pick the next men to die? Most of them were mere boys. Fifteen were already dead, burned to death or killed by smoke inhalation when PLAN nuclear ballistic missile submarine Long March #880 suffered an engine room fire. A dozen more were sick or injured. All of them were terrified. One seaman’s apprentice who had witnessed the fire had gone out of his mind, screaming “Sixty-one, sixty one,” over and over as he ran back and forth in the narrow passageways. In 2003, all seventy crewmen aboard the Great Wall #61, an older, Ming-class sub, had suffocated at their stations when the diesel generator failed to turn off and used up all the oxygen on board. Any submariner in the fleet who denied having dreams about the disaster was lying.
This should not have happened to Wan Xiuying. He was an up-and-coming star of PLA-Navy’s relatively nascent blue-water submarine force. He’d wanted to be a submariner since he was a small boy, reading every book and watching every movie about submarines that he could get his hands on. Most of the movies were in English, which had afforded him a perfect opportunity to study American idioms. Though they were meant to make the Americans look heroic, they almost always showed the captain and the first officer at odds over command of the vessel. Commander Wan hoped that was the truth. It would make beating the Americans easier in a pitched sea battle if the two men who were supposed to be in charge of the ship were constantly at each other’s throats like they were in Crimson Tide—or in the book Run Silent, Run Deep … In U-571 the captain did not trust the XO to make difficult decisions—decisions like Commander Wan now found himself facing. The list of conflicts was almost endless.
Wan revered and respected Captain Tian. He felt certain the feeling was mutual. Were it not so, Captain Tian would have, no doubt, personally stuffed his XO in a torpedo tube and gotten him off the boat.
Tian was a senior captain, would have certainly been promoted to admiral after this tour. He had quite literally grown up with the Chinese Navy and understood the pressing need not only to build excellent submarines, but to build excellent submariners. He worked very hard to pass on his knowledge to those next in line. From the time Wan had come aboard, it was clear to him that Captain Tian demanded strict discipline, a hard-as-ironwood boss who was focused not only on the command of his submarine, but on making certain his new XO was equal to the task when he got his own boat.
But none of that would happen now.
The experimental Mirage silent propulsion system was a twisted heap of charred metal. Fifteen men had died horrible deaths, including the ship’s medic. Twelve more were too severely burned to work. Worst of all, the chief engineer and three of the five engineering mates were dead. The remaining two, still in their teens, were from poor counties that still used oxen in the field. They’d only recently graduated from submariner school in Qingdao, but their training specific to the engine operation and maintenance was to have taken place aboard the boat. Even then, with a new, experimental propulsion unit, they could do little more than stare at the mess while holding a wrench, clucking to themselves like a husband who did not want to admit to his wife he had no idea how to fix a stalled car.
When it had become apparent that the fire involved the submarine’s propulsion unit, Captain Tian had considered an emergency blow—that is, sending compressed air into the ballast tanks and blasting them to the surface. Both the United States and Russia provided periodic analysis of ice and possible open water. The United States called theirs a FLAP analysis—Fractures, Leads, and Polynyas (the Russian word for open water surrounded by ice). But the ice here was moving, a flowing solid, with jagged keels that hung down like ax blades, capable of chopping the 880 in half during an uncontrolled ascent.
Fortunately, the nuclear reactor was in the compartment forward of the Mirage drive. The reactor itself and all but two of the pumps were still operational.
If the charts and calculations were correct, the 880 lay belly-down on a rocky ledge, one hundred and seventy meters below the surface, with an undersea mountain rising to starboard. Collision with the rock face on the way down had ripped a four-meter gash in the outermost hull of the double-hulled vessel. The inner hull was still intact, keeping the crew alive—for the moment—but with the ballast tank damaged, an emergency blow was now problematic.
To port, off the edge of the ledge, the seabed lay some eleven hundred meters below—well beyond crush depth, even for a powerful double-hulled submarine like 880. If the baby-faced engineering mates were able to somehow get the boat moving in any direction other than up, she might simply shuffle off the ledge and plummet straight to the bottom.
Of course, that would solve Commander Wan’s problem.
At first it seemed like they had one ace in the hole. Professor Liu Wangshu should have been able to fix the drive. It was his design. That’s why he was on the boat, to make sure it worked. And work it did. When the pumps—one of the loudest parts of a nuclear submarine—were rigged for ultra-quiet, the gearless Mirage drive proved to render the 880 all but invisible. The fire appeared to have started in one of the pumps, some sort of lubricant ignited by a spark, one of the youngsters surmised. Wan wondered if they would ever know. Over and over, history had shown that it was often a string of simple, relatively minor mistakes and seemingly insignificant design flaws that led to catastrophe.
Liu Wangshu could have seen the problem at once, had he not been sick. Sick was not nearly a strong enough word to describe what was wrong with him. Only a handful of the crew knew Professor Liu’s background. He dressed in regular engineering officer’s coveralls, and he spoke with the authority of a professor, which was not uncommon among officers in any branch. He had the shoulder boards, so the crew obeyed him, even though he was new and unknown to them. Oddly, the fire itself had not hurt him. His lungs appeared undamaged by the toxic smoke. No, this was something else. The XO guessed it was a stroke, judging from the man’s sagging face and the gibberish he spoke. Probably brought on by the sudden stress of seeing his life’s work destroyed by fire.
They’d given him aspirin and confined him to bed with two junior submariners watching him. Either he would get better or he would not. If he did not get better, then everyone on the sub would eventually die. Some sooner, when they went insane and began to kill one another. One of the sonar techs had already gotten into a fight with the cook. Some later, when their food ran out.
As long as the reactor continued to function—decades, if no pumps broke—they had power for heaters, the amine CO2 scrubbers for clean air to breathe, the water maker, and the pumps to take waste off the submarine. Commander Wan anticipated they had almost three months of food—now that there were fewer mouths left alive to eat it. Marooned in their bubble island, they would simply starve to death.
There was an alternative—that only Commander Wan and the captain knew about.
Rigged against bulkheads in the 880’s nose and tail were two explosive disks, each over two meters in diameter. The experimental Mirage drive was the only one of its kind. Ordinarily, Professor Liu, the only person who could re-create the mechanism, would ne
ver have been allowed on the submarine. But he’d somehow pulled strings. He wanted to see his creation work in the real world.
Command wanted the drive and the professor protected if at all possible, but their orders were clear. In the event of an emergency, Long March #880 was not to end up in American—or even Russian—hands. The Mirage drive was Chinese technology, not stolen through tradecraft or purchased from a disgruntled U.S. Navy scientist. It had been developed by China and tested by China, and would eventually be utilized by China. It was a point of national pride—and Beijing wanted it to stay that way.
The self-destruct disks were alarmingly simple to operate. Unlike the nuclear missiles on board, which required the simultaneous use of keys carried by both the captain and the XO to activate the command-and-control system, the self-destruct system could be initiated by the captain alone, or, in his absence, the executive officer.
The captain had met with Wan in private, discussing their options. Tian was no coward. He would detonate the disks if ordered to do so. But he was a patriot and did not want to deprive China of technology that put them ahead in a race that they’d lagged in for so long.
He felt certain command would want to salvage what was left of the drive, and, if possible, nurse Professor Liu back to health. If he destroyed the vessel, the United States would not get it—but, without the professor, China might not be able to re-create it, either.
For years.
Hydrophones had remained operational. The sonar tech listened to the screws of the surface vessel almost directly overhead. Oblivious to what was occurring five hundred feet below, it departed the area shortly after the accident.
Tian waited four hours, and then, when it became apparent the drive was inoperable, he released the rescue buoy affixed to the exterior of the ship. It was programmed to release after six hours anyway if the timers were not continually reset by each oncoming watch. That way, if all on board were killed in an explosion—or, as in the case of the 61, died at their stations, China could come and retrieve her submarine.
The distress buoy was attached to the submarine by a long cable that reeled out when it deployed.
Had the buoy made it to the surface, the fleet would have received coded satellite transmissions and then sent someone to rescue the 880 or destroy them. Either way, the captain would have his answer.
But heavy ice had moved in above. The hydrophones picked up the burble of the buoy’s departure, and the unmistakable thud as it impacted the ice. Moving ice tugged at the cable, finally separating it completely and carrying the buoy away without it ever having seen the sky to make its call. A remote underwater autonomous vehicle met the same fate in the unforgiving ice. The Americans had ALSEAMAR SLOT 281s, buoys the size of baseball bats that carried a recorded message to the surface and then scuttled themselves. The 880 was too secret to be equipped with such devices.
The captain decided to try one last option before detonating the self-destruct disks. It was low-tech, and the odds of success were practically nil, but the odds of everyone dying if he did not try were one hundred percent.
He would send a man to the surface.
A torpedo would blast a hole through the ice, hopefully pulverizing a good portion of it. This would almost certainly bring nosy Americans, but he always had the explosive disks as a fallback if that occurred. A volunteer would use the escape trunk to leave the submarine immediately following the fish, rising to the surface in a neoprene escape suit—with a satellite phone in a waterproof bag.
Commander Wan had thought the idea insane, but one did not confide such feelings to a submarine captain. It was either this, the captain had explained, or they all died immediately when the captain initiated the self-destruct mechanism, taking the priceless Mirage drive with them. In time, Wan saw that this was the only way forward—the last way.
And so Wan Xiuying found himself hunched over his desk, clutching his forelock, trying to decide which of his men he would volunteer to climb into the escape trunk, wait for it to fill with water equalizing pressure with the sea, all the while waiting for the horrific banging of the hammer that signaled it was time to open the outer hatch and swim into the cold, dark water … one hundred and seventy meters—five hundred and sixty feet—below the surface.
He used the edge of the desk to carefully tear the paper into three equal pieces—and then wrote his own name on each one.
30
“Your request must be denied out of hand!” Captain Tian snapped, pulling the second, and then the third folded paper out of the cup in Commander Wan’s hand. “I need you here, by my side. These are incredibly important decisions that must be made. If, by some chance, any of us survive this, it should be you. You are the future of our Red Star, Blue Water Navy.”
Wan kept his voice low and even, knowing full well that he would never win an argument with the captain. The man simply did not argue. He would discuss, he would listen to reason, but if for one moment he believed that someone was arguing with him, he would, as the Americans said, pull rank, or, more often than not, simply walk away.
“I understand,” he said. “But if I may, you have said many times that you depend on my counsel. I humbly give you that counsel now. You know how important the Mirage drive is. I am in full agreement with you that if there is any way to save it and Professor Liu, then we should attempt it. Honestly, the chief engineer would have been the best candidate. He was extremely fit, and knew more about the drive than anyone besides the professor. But, sadly, he did not survive the fire. Considering our options dispassionately, I am the next logical choice. I am older than almost any of the submariners, so I am less likely to panic, and in much better physical condition than any of the more mature division chiefs. I swam competitively in secondary school and am a trained scuba diver, accustomed to the water.”
Tian took a long breath, puckering, as if smelling his top lip—it was what he did when he thought and was often copied by the men, though never in his presence.
“This is a suicide mission,” he said. “A one-way trip. No return. One way or another, you will die when you leave this boat. No question about it. In all likelihood, your lungs will rupture during ascent, or you will drown, hopelessly trapped beneath the ice. If you reach the surface alive, there is a better-than-average chance that you will be ground to flotsam by jagged pieces of floating ice. If, by some miracle, you are able to drag your broken body onto the ice and make the call, rescuers may save the ship, but the chances of anyone arriving in time to save you are almost nonexistent.”
“So,” Wan smiled, “there is hope?”
“You will eventually freeze to death.”
“If we do nothing, we all die. It would be my great honor to give my life for the crew and for China.” He shrugged, hoping it looked humble rather than haughty. “And I have heard that dying from cold is not at all unpleasant,” Commander Wan said. “They say one falls asleep.”
“A pleasant way to die indeed, unless your slumber is interrupted by a passing polar bear.” The captain pursed his lips again. “Soviet cosmonauts were issued shotguns to take into space for the eventuality that their capsule landed in Siberia when it returned to earth.” He shivered, trying to shake a memory. “I once saw the body of a man who had been partially eaten by a bear, in Siberia. The beast had broken the poor man’s neck and then eaten his kidneys. I believe he was alive during—”
“With all due respect,” Wan said, smiling, “I would just as soon die as imagine such horrible things.”
The captain took him by both shoulders, tears of pride welling in his eyes, calling him by his given name. “Xiuying, it has been my great honor to serve as your captain …”
“Thank you, sir!”
Tian stepped away. “But if we are to do this, then we should do it without delay. I am sorry that there is no more time for you to prepare.”
“I assure you, Captain,” Commander Wan said, “I would rather not linger. I was prepared from the moment I wrote my name on the pa
pers.”
The PLAN Submariner Academy in Qingdao ran every student through egress exercises. Wan still remembered his experience putting on the full-face mask and “horse-collar” flotation aid before crawling into the modified torpedo tube and waiting for it to flood. When the hammer clanged three times on the hatch, he opened the flooded tube and kick-floated his way through a few feet of slightly cool water to the surface, into the arms of waiting instructors who wore scuba equipment to save him if he got into trouble.
This was not going to be like that.
The ungainly orange suit was a Chinese copy of the Submarine Escape Immersion Equipment, or SEIE, suit, designed and manufactured by RFD Beaufort Limited and utilized by, among others, the U.S. Navy. The operation was relatively straightforward. He would enter the lockout trunk wearing his suit, and attach the tube from his suit to an air connection that, when the time came, would fill the enclosed hood and provide him with flotation and breathing air on the way to the surface. The function of the trunk was exactly the same as that of the training tube in Qingdao, with the exception that this one was much larger, to accommodate several Special Forces divers, should the need arise. There were no Special Forces divers on this trip, or one of them would have had this honor.
Because of the unpredictability of the ice after it was broken—if it broke at all—it was decided that Commander Wan would enter the lockout trunk and flooding would begin as the Yu-6 torpedo was fired. Coordinates were plotted and the 880’s fire control guided the fish via its trailing wire umbilical, sending it as close to straight above their heads as possible.
Sweating profusely in the waterproof suit, Wan opened the escape trunk’s inner hatch. He saluted the crew, who had crowded into the forward torpedo room, and then hung the rubber pack containing the satellite phone around his neck, clipping it to a belt around his waist to keep it from becoming an entanglement hazard.
Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon Page 22