He had everybody’s attention now, and they were working as an efficient unit, exactly as they had been trained to do. The real test, however, Harding expected, was yet to come.
“Take Scotty and two other men and stand by the main stores hatch,” he told Paradise. “I won’t surface until they’re on top of us. But as soon as they’re aboard we’re getting out of here.”
“Are you expecting trouble?” Paradise asked. Dick Scott was their sergeant at arms.
“It’s possible, Rod,” Harding said. “Have Scotty break out the sidearms.”
2310 Local SSN 405 Hekou
Heishui was in his cabin looking at a photograph of his wife and daughter, when his XO called him.
“Captain, the American submarine is on the way up!”
“What are the conditions on the surface?” Heishui asked, putting the photograph down. Now was the moment of truth for his boat and crew; and for himself.
“We’re picking up the same small outboard engine as before, about four thousand meters out, and traffic is down to almost nothing. We show two targets, both of them outside ten thousand meters and both seaward.” Their new Trout Creek sonar suite rivaled that of just about any submarine anywhere. Heishui had a high degree of confidence in it.
“Send up the fire squad. But tell them to make certain they have the right target. If we’re lucky, we can end this right now and never have to engage the American submarine.”
“Yes, sir,” Lagao said.
Heishui took a long last look at the photograph of his family, then buttoned the top button of his uniform and went forward and up one level to the attack center.
“Flood all tubes and open all outer doors,” he ordered.
“Aye, sir.” The weapons officer repeated the orders.
“Prepare to get under way,” the captain told his chief of boat, an icy calm coming over him. It was just as good as a day as any to win or lose, he told himself. Live or die.
2320 Local On The Surface
“We’re on station,” Hanrahan said, checking his GPS navigator. The night was completely still except for the hiss of the rain on the water and the soft buzz of the idling outboard.
“They know that we’re here,” McGarvey said. He did a 360 and so far as he could tell they were completely alone on the ocean. “You’ll have to dive down, lock aboard, and bring up some more equipment—”
“But I cannot swim,” Shizong interrupted.
“You won’t have to do a thing, we’ll do it all for you,” McGarvey said. “Trust me.”
“Periscope,” Hanrahan said excitedly.
They all turned in the direction that he was looking in time to see the light at the top of the Seawolf’s periscope mast about eight feet out of the water, blinking in Morse code.
Hanrahan held up a hand. “Retreat one hundred yards. We will surface. Repeat. Retreat one hundred yards. We will surface.”
Shizong turned to say something, when a narrow pinpoint of red light appeared in the middle of his forehead. It was a weapons guidance laser and it seemed to come from somewhere to the right of the Seawolf, very low to the water. McGarvey drove forward, his shoulder catching Shizong in the chest and shoving him back.
“Get down,” he shouted.
Preston cried out in pain, blood erupting from a very large hole in his chest. He was flung to the side like a rag doll, out of the raft and into the water.
Hanrahan rolled out right behind him as they continued to take rounds from somewhere in the darkness. He grabbed a handful of Shizong’s shirt as he went. McGarvey, holding on to Shizong’s arm, followed him, the raft and the water all around them erupting in a hail of bullets fired from at least two silenced machine guns.
“Take Peter and get out of here,” he ordered urgently.
Hanrahan grabbed the floundering Shizong. “What about Tom?”
“He’s dead. Go!”
Hanrahan wanted to stay, but he started away from the deflated raft with Shizong in tow.
The gunfire stopped. McGarvey found Preston a few yards away, facedown in the water. He turned him over, but the man was dead as expected. Preston had taken a round in the middle of the back, which had mushroomed through his body, tearing a hole six inches wide in his chest. The bastards were using dumdums or explosive bullets.
He cocked an ear to listen. He could hear what sounded like a small outboard motor coming toward him. Off to his left a broad section of water for as far as he could see was boiling, as if someone had put it on the heat. It was the Seawolf on the way up.
Hanrahan and Shizong were gone in the darkness, and the motor was very close now. They were PRC, and they had been waiting out here for Shizong. How that could possibly happen didn’t matter now. They had probably scoped the raft with night-vision equipment, identified Shizong out of the four men, and had targeted him specifically. They were coming in to make sure he was dead.
McGarvey passed his hand over Preston’s chest wound, smeared the blood and gore over his face, and floated loosely on his back, his arms spread, his eyes open and fixed as if he were dead.
The motor was practically on top of him, and he had to let himself sink under the water for a second or two without blinking, without closing his mouth.
A black-rubber inflatable, almost the twin of the one they had brought up from the Seawolf, appeared out of the mist and came directly over to where Preston’s body had drifted. They slowed and circled, shining a narrow beam of light on his face. They said something that McGarvey couldn’t make out, then came over to where he was floating. They shined the light in his face, and he had to fight not to blink or move a muscle.
There were three of them, dressed in black night fighters’ uniform, their faces blackened. It came to him all of a sudden that they had gotten there the same way that he and Hanrahan had. They were off a submarine. Possibly a PRC boat that had been lying in wait just off shore for the Chinese attack on Taiwan to begin. The Seawolf coming in had missed it.
Something very large and black rose up out of the water to McGarvey’s left. One of the Chinese sailors said something urgently, and he gunned the outboard motor. As the inflatable started to pass him, McGarvey reached up, grabbed the gunwale line with his left hand, pulled himself half out of the water, and grabbed a handful of the tunic of the sailor running the outboard motor and yanked him overboard.
The inflatable immediately veered sharply to the left. McGarvey had taken a deep breath at the last moment. He dragged the surprised sailor underwater, the man taking a very large reflexive breath as his head submerged.
The sailor got very still within seconds and as McGarvey surfaced with the body the outboard was circling back.
He took the weapon, which he recognized by feel as a Sterling, from the dead man’s hands, reared up out of the water to keep the holes in the silencer casing free, and unloaded the weapon point-blank at the inflatable as it was practically on top of him.
The raft swerved widly to the right, flipping over as it collapsed from the explosive release of air from its chambers. McGarvey dropped the empty weapon and backpedaled, trying to put as much distance between himself and whoever was left alive as possible. But it wasn’t necessary. Except for the roiled water behind him, the night was utterly silent.
“Hank,” he called.
“Here,” Hanrahan replied from somewhere to the left.
“Do you have Peter?”
“Here,” Shizong called back, his voice surprisingly steady for a man who could not swim and found himself in the middle of the ocean.
A few seconds later a beam of light from the deck of the Seawolf caught McGarvey, and he turned and swam toward it as fast as he could manage. They still weren’t out of the woods. Not with a PRC submarine lurking around somewhere nearby.
2329 Local SSN 405 Hekou
“Sierra Eighteen is on the surface,” Zenzhong told the captain nervously.
“Open doors one and two,” Heishui ordered “Prepare to fire.”
“C
aptain, what about our men on the surface?” Lagao asked at his side.
Heishui turned and gave him a bland look. “It’s a moot point, Commander. Either their mission is already a success or they have failed. They can’t fight the crew of an entire submarine.”
“At least give them five minutes,” Lagao pleaded. “Some sign that they are alive and trying to make it back aboard.”
The Hekou had risen to thirty meters in order to lock them out, and then had settled back to one hundred meters behind and below the American submarine. There was no way that even an experienced diver could make that depth, nor was he going to put his boat and crew at risk by heading back up to rescue them. They knew what they were facing when they had volunteered.
“Three minutes,” Heishui said. “It will take us that long to get ready to fire.” He turned away.
2332 Local SSN 21 Seewolf
“We have three people aboard, and the hatch is sealed,” Paradise called to the captain.
“Get up here on the double, Rod, we have work to do,” Harding said. He switched channels. “Sonar, this is the captain. What’s the target doing?”
“He’s about two thousand yards out, skipper, just lying there. Bearing one-seven-five, and below us at three hundred feet,” Fisher reported. “I think he might have opened at least two of his outer doors when we were on the way up.”
“If there’s any change, let me know on the double,” Harding said. He hung up the phone. “Get us out of here,” he told the Chief of the Boat.
“Aye, sir.”
“Emergency dive to three hundred feet, come right to new course zero-six-zero, and give me turns for forty knots as soon as possible.” The submarine had to be at least one hundred feet beneath the surface before she could begin to develop her top speed submerged.
Trela relayed the orders and within seconds the Seawolf surged forward, her decks canted sharply downward and to the right.
“Don’t lose the solution,” Harding warned the weapons-control officer.
“No, sir.”
2335 Local SSN 404 Hekou
“He’s on the move, Captain,” Zenzhong shouted. “Sierra Eighteen is diving, and his aspect is definitely changing left to right.”
“He’s leaving in a big hurry; do you think that he knows we’re back here?” Lagao asked Heishui.
“Perhaps,” the captain replied. A million conflicting thoughts were running through his head with the speed of light, his family among them. But his blood was up. Serving on a Han-class submarine for any length of time meant certain death in any event from leukemia or some other form of cancer because the reactors leaked. Only the officers understood that for a fact, but most of the crews knew it, too. Love of country and the special privileges for their families were the incentives to serve. “No word from our crew on the surface?”
“No, sir.”
Heishuo gave his XO a look of sympathy, then turned to his fire-control officer. “Do we have a positive solution on the enemy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fire one, fire two.”
2336 Local SSN 21 Seawolf
“Torpedoes in the water!” Fisher called out. “Two of them, bearing onenine-five, and definitely gaining.”
“Turn left, come to flank speed,” Harding said calmly.
“Aye, sir, turning left full rudder, ordering flank speed,” Lieutenant Trela repeated.
“Time to impact?” Harding asked the sonarman.
“Ninety seconds, skipper.”
“Release the noisemakers as soon as we pass three-six-zero degrees,” Harding ordered. “Prepare to fire tubes one and two.”
“Don’t do it, Captain,” McGarvey shouted, coming into the control room directly on Paradise’s heels.
Harding’s head snapped around. McGarvey stood dripping next to the plotting tables, blood covering his face, a wild look in his eyes. “Get out of here, Mac. Now!”
“Listen to me, Tom. We have to make the PRC skipper think that he’s destroyed us.”
“He very well might do just that.”
“Sixty-five seconds to impact,” Fisher reported.
“Tubes one and two ready to fire, Captain,” the fire-control officer said.
“If it can be done without risking our own destruction, we have to try it,” McGarvey argued. “That’s the entire point of the mission. Getting Shizong out of here in secret, or making the Chinese believe that he’s dead.” McGarvey shook his head. “They were waiting for us up there. They knew we were bringing him. And I lost one of my people.”
“Captain?” the Chief of Boat prompted.
“Release the noisemakers now,” Harding said. “All stop, rudder amidships.”
“All stop, rudder amidships, sir,” Trela responded crisply after only a moment’s hesitation. He hoped the old man knew what he was doing this time.
“Fifty seconds to impact.”
Harding looked at McGarvey and Paradise. “I’m sorry that you took a casualty,” he said. “Stand by to fire tube one, only tube one.”
“Stand by one, aye,” the weapons-control officer said.
“Sonar, this is the captain. want you to pull up the BRD program that we were given in Pearl. Feed it to the main sonar dome.” BRD was Battle Response Decoy system. The Seawolf was supposed to have tested it on the initial part of this cruise, but not under actual battle conditions.
“Aye, skipper, I understand. Forty seconds to impact.”
“I’ll tell you when to transmit. Just be ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
Harding motioned for Paradise to man the ballast control panel. “On my mark I want all aft tanks explosively vented.” This would fill them with water all at once, making the boat stern-heavy. She would sink to the bottom tail first.
“Thirty seconds to impact,” Fisher reported.
“Fire tube one,” Harding said.
“Fire one, aye,” the weapons-control officer said. “Torpedo one is away.”
“Sonar, conn. Stand by, Fisher.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Send autodestruct,” Harding told the weapons-control officer.
The man looked up. “Sir—?”
“Twenty seconds to impact.”
“Autodestruct now!” Harding ordered.
The weapons-control officer uncaged the button and pushed it. Their wire-guided HE torpedo, which had not had enough time to began searching for a target, exploded less than eight hundred feet from the Seawolf, and directly in the path of the oncoming Chinese torpedoes.
“Brace yourselves,” Harding shouted as the first tremendous shock wave hammered the hull.
Both Chinese torpedoes fired almost simultaneously, slamming the Seawolf’s hull as if they had been hit by a pair of runaway cement trucks.
“Transmit now,” Harding told sonar. An instant later the water all around them reverberated with the transmitted noises of a submarine breaking up; internal explosions, water rushing, bulkheads collapsing, even men screaming, machinery spinning wildly out of control and breaking through decks as the boat was torn apart.
Paradise was waiting at the ballast control panel, and Harding gave him the nod.
“Take us down.”
Paradise twisted the controls, air was vented out of the aft tanks, and immediately they began a rapid descent to the bottom. Harding reached up to a handhold on the overhead and braced himself. Everyone else did the same.
2340 Local SSN 405 Hekou
Heishui held the earphones close. He was hearing the noises of a dying submarine. It excited him and saddened him at the same time. More than one hundred officers and men were dead or dying beneath him.
He focused on Zenzhong and the other sonar operators who had done such brilliant jobs. He felt a great deal of respect and affection for them. For all of his crew. They had gone up against one of the best ships in all the U.S. Navy and had been victorious.
“Good job,” he said, smiling warmly as he took off the earphones and handed them to one of
the sonarmen. “Our mission was a complete success, and now it is time for us to go home.”
Zenzhong was busy with his equipment. At least six distinct white horizontal lines were painted on his sonar display scopes. “We have many targets incoming,” he said. He marked them on the screen with a grease pencil as quickly as he identified them.
“Then we’ll thread the needle,” Heishui said. “And you will lead us to safety.”
Zenzhong looked up, his eyes wide, but then he started to work out the relative bearings of the incomings.
Heishui went back to the control room. His crew all looked respectfully at him. He smiled and bowed to them all. “Thank you. We have succeeded in fulfilling our orders. We will go home now.”
“What is our course and speed, Captain?” his Chief of Boat asked.
Heishui went to the plotting table and took the bearings of the incoming warships as Zenzhong gave them. They were almost boxed in, but not quite. One lane leading out to sea was somehow still open to them.
“Make our course three-five-zero, speed two-five knots,” he told the Chief of Boat, who immediately relayed his orders. At that speed they would be very noisy.
Lagao came over and studied the plots. “They have left us a way out,” he said.
“Either it’s a mistake for it’s a political decision on their part,” Heishui said, looking up. He felt at peace, but it was clear that his XO was troubled.
“Or it may be a trap.”
Heishui nodded. “Prepare a message for Admiral Pei. Tell him that we have succeeded and are en route to Ningbo.”
“When shall I send it?”
“Immediately,” Heishui said, and he turned back to the chart as his boat accelerated. There was no possibility that they would make it home this time. But their mission was a success. The traitor Shi Shizong was dead, and a war with Taiwan had been avoided. At least for the moment.
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