U.S.S. Seawolf am-4

by Patrick Robinson

  Also, if Shantou turned back, he would be in a very exposed position, in massively deep water. If the Americans decided to sink him way out here in these desolate acres of the Pacific, no one would ever really know what had happened. He and his crew could end up on the bottom, a mile deeper than the Titanic, and it had taken over a half century to find her.

  It seemed to Colonel Lee that the sooner he made his move the better, because the farther they went the more the advantage swung toward the Americans. The trouble was that he could not work out quite what to do. Neither could any of the officers who sailed with him. The task presented by the plainly deranged Admiral Zhang was an order formed by a madman.

  Here he was, hundreds of miles from either help or a Chinese base, surrounded by three American guided missile frigates and a monstrous American cruiser, and he was supposed to (a) find the damaged American submarine they were all protecting and (b) attack it, in the face of the superpower’s armed escort. Was this crazy, or what?

  And how to conduct his attack? He could scarcely use depth charges, because the submarine was plainly right underneath the frigate Kaufman. Mortar charges were a kind of lunatic possibility, but the mortars carried by Xiangtan were only the old FQF 2500s, which had a range of 1,200 meters. Therefore, from his current position, astern of the Kaufman, which was making 27 knots, he would somehow have to come in a mile closer and throw the mortars forward straight over the American frigate, which would then watch them plop into the water out ahead.

  At that point Lee and his crew probably would have about one minute to live, maximum, before the shuddering power of Vella Gulf’s big Harpoon guided missiles slammed them all into oblivion. Also, the chances of one of the mortar charges actually hitting Greenville, and exploding, were, by Colonel Lee’s reckoning, remote.

  The gun was no good, because the submarine was still under the water. Helicopters were no good because the Americans would blow them out of the sky in about two minutes. Which left only torpedoes. If Colonel Lee was going to put Greenville on the bottom, he would have to launch two of their Yu-2 active/passive homing weapons, and he assessed the chances of success at only fifty-fifty. The torpedoes could not go in passive because of the noisemaker off the stern of Kaufman.

  They would have to use active homing, and they still might not be fast enough. However, he could program them with a 50-foot ceiling, which meant they would not go for anything up to 50 feet below the surface. Right below that, they should find the USS Greenville.

  And the chances of the Americans NOT knowing the torpedoes were on their way in? Zero, was Colonel Lee’s guess.

  And so they all thundered on east, Shantou running out of fuel fast. By midafternoon her captain had made his decision, and he contacted Xiangtan to announce he would have to turn back. “I am, sir, reaching the point of no return. If I run for another hour at this speed I may not get back at all.”

  Colonel Lee, now almost 700 miles away from the coast of his homeland, decided that he also must make his move. He informed Shantou he would run for another 100 miles and then he, too, would try to turn back, but he had a private mission to complete for Admiral Zhang before he did so. He could see no point in Shantou remaining on station to go down with him.

  At 1630 the Americans saw the Chinese frigate turn away and began to head back toward the west. But they noted that Xiangtan kept right on coming, all on her own, matching them for speed. She was a big ship to be showing such singleminded hot pursuit, and the four American surface commanders wished as one that she would get the hell away, and go follow the goddamned frigate home for a nice bowl of rice.

  Kaufman’s sonar room got on the underwater telephone and informed Tom Wheaton that one of the Chinese warships had turned back.

  “The little one, I guess?”

  “Aye, sir. The destroyer’s still there, coupla miles astern.”

  The conversation was short, but Colonel Lee’s men picked it up and were grateful for it, since it confirmed that their quarry was still very much within striking range.

  And now Colonel Lee ordered an increase in speed, winding Xiangtan up to 30 knots. And as he did so, Captain Freeburg began a wide swing way out to her port side, settling in a position eight miles off the Chinese beam, the precise range he would need for an accurate launch of his McDonnell Douglas Harpoon surface-to-surface missiles with their big, ship-killing 227-kilogram warheads. Those things fire high, right out of the big stern-mounted quad launchers, then tip over and lose height before leveling off and screaming in at wavetop height at almost 900 knots, active-radar homing, just about unstoppable. Someone fires those babies at you, you need sharp eyes, a life jacket and a prayer book. And while Chuck Freeburg had no intention of beginning anything, under his present orders, one false move and the Chinaman was history.

  Kaufman had her eyes glued on the destroyer and noticed the increase in speed. They had an open line from the ops room direct to Vella Gulf, where Chuck Freeburg was preparing his Harpoon missiles for launch, if necessary.

  It was 1645 when the Chinese commanding officer decided that at roughly a mile he was close enough.

  Not that he knew precisely where Greenville was. Only the general area, under Kaufman. And even that was sheer guesswork. And to act on that guesswork amounted to his own death warrant.

  All he could do was to fire his torpedoes into that area on the outside chance they would find Greenville.

  “Left standard rudder…steer zero-eight-zero. STAND BY ONE AND TWO TUBES.”

  “Steady on zero-eight-zero, sir.”

  Colonel Lee hesitated for one split second, preparing to join his God. Then he snapped the death-or-glory command. “FIRE ONE.”

  “Number one tube fired.”

  “FIRE TWO.”

  “Number two tube fired.”

  Just two small clouds of smoke were all that betrayed Colonel Lee’s actions as the two torpedoes blasted out of the tubes, 50 yards over the water, and then dropped with a heavy splash below the surface, searching, searching, searching for the USS Greenville.

  Kaufman spotted the smoke. The control room snapped out the information to the cruiser: “The Chinese destroyer has fired two torpedoes from his starboard side.”

  Simultaneously they hit the underwater telephone to Greenville right underneath the keel, and the submarine’s ops room was, if anything, a split second ahead.

  “We just picked ‘em up. Active homers…ping interval fifteen hundred meters…I’m going on to thirty knots…full pattern active and passive decoys launched.”

  Judd Crocker, in Greenville’s conn with Tom Wheaton, said, “What’s that, Tommy? Thirty-five knots. They got five on us…range fifteen hundred…that’s a five-hundred-yard gain every three minutes…gonna take ‘em nine minutes to catch us…right?”

  “Correct, sir. But we got those Emerson Mark Two decoys out there…Christ they’re good, light-years in front of those old Chinese torpedoes…have faith…we may not outrun ’em, but we’ll definitely outsmart ’em.”

  Greenville surged forward in the water, pursued now by Colonel Lee’s comparatively primitive weapons, which were already being completely confused by the decoys. Every time the torpedo’s homing sonar pinged, the Emerson decoy pinged it right back, announcing to the iron Chinese brain, Here I am, a darned great American submarine…come right in and hit me…over here…way, way over here.”

  And Greenville had four of them in the water, which quadrupled the confusion factor.

  Over in Vella Gulf, Captain Freeburg had drawn a bead on Xiangtan a long time ago. And now he seized the moment. “Prepare to launch Harpoons One and Two…”

  “Launchers One and Two ready.”

  “FIRE ONE AND TWO.”

  The roar of the aft launch from the two fire-belching missiles was deafening, and the crew members watched them shriek skywards, higher and higher, before turning down at 800 feet to complete their deadly business.

  Captain Freeburg, still positioned directly off Xiangtan’s
port beam, ordered both his five-inch guns, fore and aft, to sink the Chinese destroyer. And the shells arrived before the missiles, slamming into the superstructure of the ship, blasting havoc into the ops room, the bridge, the comms room and the helicopter flight deck.

  Colonel Lee ordered retaliatory fire, but he was too late. Both Harpoon missiles crashed into the portside of the Xiangtan and exploded with shattering force. The massive K-E-R-R-R-R-B-A-A-M! literally blew the Chinese destroyer apart in a massive fireball, black smoke rising in a mushroom cloud 100 feet high into the rainy skies. The ship vanished, leaving only traces of its sudden death and an ever-increasing oil-slick, which spread thinly over the waters of the western Pacific.

  Captain Freeburg and his team stood for a while, watching the smoke-cloaked aftermath of the gigantic destruction they had wrought. And there was not a man among them who was not conscious of some misgivings over the loss of hundreds of lives.

  “1 guess they’da done it to us, sir?” said a lieutenant junior grade, a little sheepishly.

  “Guess they would at that, Jack. Besides, they probably shoulda thought about all that before they decided to capture a crippled American submarine on the high seas, in international waters, against every kind of maritime law. Wasn’t real smart, right?”

  “Nossir.”

  Meanwhile, back on Greenville, Judd Crocker and Tom Wheaton watched the Emerson decoys do their work. The little computer screens showed the incoming torpedoes pass harmlessly by, one a hundred yards to port, the other even farther to starboard. Neither of them found a target, never even exploded.

  Commander Wheaton accessed the UWT once more, heard the news, and announced he was coming to the surface to secure the damage to his sail, “because this sucker’s making a racket which is telling me she ain’t real happy.”

  In the next 10 minutes, Admiral Barry detailed Reuben James to pick up any survivors, and set a rendezvous for the carrier to make the transfers from the submarine. After that they were heading directly to Pearl, where, for some reason, there was to be a Presidential welcome for the U.S. Navy SEALs and the rescued crew of the USS Seawolf.

  13

  Midday. Friday, July 21.

  The Oval Office.

  President John Clarke was, for the first time in a six-year association with Admiral Arnold Morgan, profoundly irritated with the man. In fact, he was rapidly being drawn to the conclusion that the fire-eating admiral was growing too big for his boots.

  Two hours previous he had issued a presidential memorandum outlining his plans to go to Hawaii early the next week to meet the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, which was bringing home his son. And almost by return of interoffice communication he had received a reply from Admiral Morgan that had only just stopped short of saying, “Don’t be a prick.”

  The actual wording had been, “Not a terribly good idea, sir. In fact, if you stop to give it serious strategic thought, a very bad idea. I’ll be along momentarily to explain precisely why.”

  The President was not used to being patronized. But more important, he knew that this was an argument he was certain to lose because Morgan did not write memorandums like that unless his logic was flawless. However, the President badly wanted to go to meet Linus, and he was damned if this bombastic admiral was going to stop him.

  As he waited, in a dark and rather petulant mood, he was giving no thought whatsoever to the fact that Linus lived in the protection of the giant American carrier instead of a Chinese jail as the result of the determination, aggression and intelligence of one man: Arnold Morgan.

  No, President Clarke had rather forgotten that. He thought only of the injustice of the situation, that he, the most powerful leader in the free world, was being warned against going to meet his own son, his only son, for God’s sake, by some kind of half-assed military red tape. And he was not having that. Nossir. Arnold Morgan could take his rulebook and insert it in the place where the sun does not shine. He, President Clarke, was going to meet his boy in Hawaii, and that was that.

  The door was opened and the admiral was shown in, breezily remarking, “Hello, sir. Hey, you look kinda gloomy. What’s up?”

  “Arnold, 1 thought your little note was insensitive in the extreme, given that you above all others understand how the capture and possible torture of my son affected me these last couple of weeks.”

  “Note, sir? What do you mean?”

  “Hawaii, Arnold. Going to Hawaii.”

  “Oh that, sir. Right. Just forget all about that. You can do more or less anything you want, sir. But you can’t go to Hawaii.”

  “Arnold. Might I ask why not? And who might take it upon themselves to stop me?”

  “Sir, I’m just trying to stop you from committing suicide. Politically.”

  “Then perhaps you had better explain yourself.”

  “Sure. The main issue is USS Seawolf…as you know, we just lost it under highly mysterious, but not too sinister circumstances. Nuclear accident, after collision in the South China Sea, okay? Now, until this moment, the media have taken only a passing interest, because there has not been drastic loss of life, and accidents can happen. Also, they cannot find out much, because when they ask us, we say we’re still awaiting full report from velly solly Chinese pricks. And in Canton and Beijing they will be told nothing.

  “Which means it’s all gone fairly quiet. The media have not been told anything about the crew, or the crew’s return, but they presume there will be a Navy statement when they arrive back in San Diego. In the meantime, we’re playing down any kind of drama. Just an accident. Chinese tried to help. But there was a fault in the reactor core.

  “Just a valve. We’re secretly pleased it did not happen here. And the Chinese have very gallantly apologized for any part they may have inadvertently played. Not much harm done.

  “Now, sir. We know the facts are very, very different from that, correct? We actually blew Seawolf to bits, causing a huge nuclear accident in Canton. We then damn nearly went to war with China over your son, Linus. Because, sir, I assure you, we would never have gone that far unless he had been on board. We blew up a jail on a Chinese island, killed up to one hundred Chinese military personnel, and blew up two other ships, one of them the biggest destroyer in the Chinese Navy. We blew up two helicopters, and took this country to a naval standoff out on the edge of the South China Sea. A real, shooting, missile-firing standoff. And in the very first case, we were spying on them with a major American nuclear boat in deepest Chinese national waters.

  “That, sir, is without doubt the biggest single military story since Schwarzkopf clobbered the towelheads in the Gulf.”

  “I still do not see what that has to do with my going to meet my son.”

  “Because, sir, if you go, you will inadvertently take two hundred American media people with you, all of whom will have guessed that Linus either was or may have been on Seawolf. They’re gonna want statements, photo opportunities, and God knows what else. And you will have led them right into the middle of the biggest story any of them could imagine…right into the middle of sixty returning U.S. Navy SEALs, and one-hundred-plus returning former captives of the Chinese, all of whom witnessed a full-blooded military battle between the USA and China, with many dead. Make no mistake. This was a small, secret, classified war.”

  “Well, I guess we can’t keep the lid on it forever.”

  “Sir, we most certainly can. Because the Chinese do not want it publicized any more than we do. For them, it looks like the most terrible loss of face. For us, it looks like reckless military adventurism, bullying on a global scale. Also, we don’t know our own casualties yet. But more important, sir, much more important…you as Commander-in-Chief are going to have to explain the loss of a billion-dollar submarine — a billion dollars to build, plus another billion on research and development. Taxpayers’ money. Is this the most incompetent Navy and the most dubious administration in the entire history of this country? That’s what they’ll ask.

  “And you,
sir, are attempting to take two hundred of the Fourth Estate’s finest, right into the one place on this earth where they can nail that story right down. Sailors talk. You can try and shut ’em up, but it only takes one with a few beers on board, and you’re looking at a prairie fire.

  “If you don’t go to Hawaii, none of them will go either, because they don’t even know the carrier’s calling at Pearl. But if you do go, you will find yourself in a storm of controversy. And the left-wing press will kill you — especially if there’s American dead.”

  “But Arnold, Linus will expect me to be there. And after all he’s gone through…just imagine how bad he’ll feel.”

  “Probably not as bad as if he were still in the slammer on Xiachuan Dao.”

  “Arnold, with the greatest respect, I do not think you are hearing me.”

  “Sir, if you still wish to make that point, you are most certainly not hearing me…in which case I will have to be blunt. Mr. President, if this little lot somehow gets into the media, it could bring down your administration. It would just be a matter of time before someone asked, Did this President actually go to war in secret with the People’s Republic of China in order to save his son’s ass?

  “Sir, I cannot let you do this. You cannot go to Pearl to meet the carrier. And if you attempt to do so, the carrier will be diverted and head straight back to the USA. I cannot let you do this to yourself. Do you really want to be up there on the goddamned television explaining how we managed to LOSE a nine-thousand-ton nuclear submarine…sir, please…I promised you I’d get him back…now you have to promise me you’ll let us handle the aftermath. Remember, sir. I did it for you.”

  The President stood and nodded gravely. “I understand, Arnold. Truly I do. And I am grateful to you. And I would like to ask you one favor.”

  “Sure.”

  “Will you go and spend the next twenty minutes trying to think of a way for me to go and meet my boy? With no harm done. Not like you just explained.”