Hendrick feverishly kicked his way toward the small sub. He pulled the noisemaker from his belt and slipped the rope through a convenient slot on the device, then put the rope around the thick metal cage that surrounded the small vehicle. He quickly tied the rope in three knots and reached for the noisemaker to activate the device. He pressed a protruding tab with his thumbs, and the device began to generate very loud sounds, which Hendrick judged to be varying in frequency and in volume. Hendrick let go of the noisemaker and swam for the airlock with all his strength.
Golubev leaned over Malik as they both stared at the TV screen, which displayed the view of the ROV’s camera. They caught a glimpse of Hendrick’s swim fins as they inadvertently collided with the camera lens during his scramble to get back inside the submarine. Golubev tapped Malik on the shoulder.
“It is working,” said the Russian as he listened to the noise coming through the hull.
Malik immediately grabbed the control joystick and turned the ROV around. He cranked the remote sub up to maximum speed and sent it on a course away to the northeast. The sounds generated by the noisemaker rapidly faded away. Malik and Golubev listened intently for any sound near the airlock. Malik glanced at the dive elapsed time clock that was mounted on the bulkhead in the passageway. The second hand just passed four minutes.
HAN 405
“Conn, Sonar. Captain, we’re getting screw noises with a slow bearing change from left to right,” said the sonar supervisor over the intercom. Captain Tse was quickly out of the conn and down the hallway to sonar.
“He’s moving?” asked Tse with anticipation in his voice.
The sonar supervisor’s face showed some uncertainty. “The noise is indistinct because of the disturbed water from the depth charges, sir, but it sounds like a sub moving slowly away from the area.”
Tse reviewed his orders in his mind. He was to force the contact to the surface by any means at his disposal. If that failed, he was to attack and sink the contact. The ship above had made several sweeps with depth charges, and the contact hadn’t moved. Tse made a decision. He would interpret the situation to mean that he was allowed to attack the contact. Tse always erred on the side of aggressiveness, which in the Chinese Navy was no error at all.
“Bearing to the contact,” asked Captain Tse.
“Two, eight, five degrees true,” replied the sonar supervisor.
Tse strode back to the conn and began issuing orders. “Weapons, do you have a firing solution?”
The weapons officer answered immediately in a loud voice. “Yes, Captain.”
“Left standard rudder. Come to course three, zero, zero,” ordered Tse. “Flood tube number One! Prepare to launch torpedo One!” His conning crew jumped to comply with his orders.
“Torpedo Tube One is flooded, Captain!” said one of his telephone talkers.
“Open outer doors,” commanded Tse in a booming voice.
Thirty seconds later a phone talker spoke up. “Outer doors open on tube number One.”
“Fire One,” commanded Captain Tse.
KURCHATOV
Golubev looked up from his post in the conn when he heard the excited voice of his sonarman over the intercom.
“High speed screws, bearing zero, nine, five, true!” said the man from sonar.
Golubev leaned back his head and groaned. He knew beforehand that if the Chinese launched torpedoes at his submarine, there was nothing he could do about it. He would just have to wait and hope that the torpedo would not be able to discriminate between his vessel and the wreck of the Awa Maru. Now he would hope that the Chinese had launched at the ROV with the noisemaker tied to it.
Joe Malik stood at the bottom of the ladder below the airlock and prayed that Hendrick would arrive quickly. Too many things were happening too fast. The Chinese would renew their depth charge attack very soon, and he had just gotten word from Captain Golubev that they had launched a torpedo. Golubev didn’t know yet where the torpedo was headed.
Malik heard a clanking sound and imagined that it was Hendrick’s tanks banging against the hull as he hustled back into the airlock. His heart leaped with excitement as he heard other telltale sounds of his partner entering the chamber above him.
The unexpected blast from a depth charge just above the submarine sent shock waves through the ship and through Malik himself. He staggered with the blast, rebounding off the bulkhead and shook his head to clear it. He hurriedly climbed the ladder to put an ear next to the hatch, hearing nothing but the roiling water that surrounded the submarine. He waited impatiently for the sound of the outer hatch being shut and sealed but waited in vain.
Was Hendrick knocked unconscious from the depth charge explosion? Malik felt helpless. His partner and best friend could be lying just feet above him, and there was no way he could help him. Hendrick had to close the upper hatch before Malik could enter the airlock. Malik heard a metal-to-metal sound just before another depth charge went off, knocking him to the hard deck below.
Malik pushed himself to his feet and shook his head again. He glanced at the airlock control board and saw that the status light for the outside hatch went from red to green. Hendrick had somehow closed the hatch and sealed it. He quickly hit the switch that pumped seawater out of the chamber and simultaneously pumped air in. A minute and four depth charge detonations later, the light for the airlock itself went from red to green.
Malik went to the bottom of the ladder and didn’t wait for Hendrick to open the inner hatch by himself. Malik spun the handwheel, immediately encountering resistance as he tried to open the hatch. He pushed upward but the hatch only opened a crack, allowing Malik to see only a black suited leg. Hendrick was lying across the top of the hatch. Malik could hear him moaning.
“Need a hand?” asked Ian Howard who stood at the bottom of the ladder.
Joe Malik grunted a ‘yes’ and together the two men pushed the hatch open and looked into the airlock. Hendrick was nearly unconscious. Malik got into the airlock and lowered Hendrick legs first down to the physically bigger Englishman. Howard ripped the flippers off Hendrick’s feet and threw them aside, then the two of them maneuvered Hendrick down the ladder and laid him on the deck.
The submarine began to move. Malik and Howard looked around in surprise. Golubev was going to make a run for it.
Golubev felt his submarine lift off the bottom with some satisfaction. Now he was free to maneuver. But he would also make noise as the sea ran past his vessel and its screws. He gave orders to trim up the boat’s attitude by pumping fuel aft to compensate for the still uneven load of gold in the bow. The Russian sub captain wanted to be prepared to move out quickly in case the Chinese torpedo was headed in their direction.
“Bearing to the torpedo is moving from left to right,” said his sonarman excitedly. Golubev breathed a prayer of thanksgiving. Apparently the torpedo was passing behind them, heading for the ROV. Now was the time to move.
Golubev cocked an ear upward and outward. The depth charges had set up a pattern, and his mind had subconsciously counted off the seconds between the explosions. When the pattern was altered, his conscious mind immediately knew it. The last two depth charges hadn’t gone off yet. He moved to the intercom.
“Sonar, course, and speed for the surface ship,” Golubev said. He could imagine the sonarman spinning the wheel that changed the direction of his hydrophones.
“I have them moving off to the northeast,” said the sonarman. “Speed is about twenty-five knots. Bearing is zero, three, zero.”
The surface ship was moving in a directly opposite heading from his submarine. Yes, now was the time to move.
“Engines, ahead dead slow. Make turns for three knots,” commanded Golubev into a sound powered phone. The engine room answered up and the submarine slowly began to move away from the wreck of the Awa Maru.
HAN 405
Sonarman Yi smiled widely as he turned to his sonar supervisor.
“Torpedo has gone into its active sonar mode,” Yi sa
id to a hushed sonar crew. They all broke into tense smiles. The sonar supervisor informed Captain Tse over the intercom.
Captain Tse took the information and looked at the weapons officer who nodded, then moments later appeared puzzled.
“Weapons, what is wrong?” asked Tse.
“Captain, the torpedo has gone back into passive search mode,” replied the officer.
“Why? Did it home in on the screw sounds?” asked the captain.
“Yes sir, but then it went back to passive mode almost immediately,” answered the weapons officer.
Tse gave him a stony look as he thought over the anomaly in his mind. The torpedoes were designed to home in on noise, then switch to active sonar for its terminal homing to make sure that the target was really a submarine and not a noise decoy. There were two possibilities: the torpedo was defective, or there was no submarine near the screw sounds. The torpedo transmitted its own sonar pulses and may not have received the correct returns to indicate that the noise contact was a submarine. If that was true, then where was the enemy submarine?
“Sonar, make a sweep of bearing two, two, zero to three, one, zero,” ordered Tse.
Sonar came over the intercom and acknowledged the order as Tse mulled over the situation. Did this phantom submarine somehow send a decoy in one direction and then try to escape in another direction?
“Sonar has a slow speed contact bearing two, three, five,” said a phone talker. The young man listened intently as the sonarmen gave him more information. “Identification estimate is a submerged Russian Golf class submarine.”
Golf class? Tse wasn’t sure of what to make of the curious information. The Russians supposedly didn’t have any more operational Golf class submarines. But they did export quite a few of them to various countries, North Korea being one of them. Tse relaxed a little. Going up against an experienced Russian crew would be enough to keep him anxious, but the rest of the countries that had Golf class subs had very inexperienced crews. Tse would stack his new nuclear attack submarine against any Golf class submarine. His country’s navy had one Golf class submarine, but he knew with certainty that it was still in port.
“We will follow this new contact for the moment,” said Tse under his breath. He raised his voice to a level appropriate for issuing orders. “Left full rudder. Come to course two, three, zero. Ahead two thirds, make turns for fifteen knots.”
KURCHATOV
Steve Hendrick slowly opened his eyes and looked at his surroundings. Joe Malik leaned over him with a concerned face. He and Ian Howard had lifted the big American onto a low table that they had covered with life jackets.
“Did you get the number of that truck?” mumbled Hendrick as he struggled to sit up. Malik helped him up then shook his head disapprovingly at his partner.
“One of these days you’re not going to come back from one of your little adventures,” grumbled Malik.
Hendrick looked at his partner with a pain stricken face. “Did it work?”
“Did it work?” echoed Howard. “It worked like a charm. The Chinese sub fired a torpedo, and it went after the ROV like a sailor after a skirt. You were magnificent!”
Hendrick smiled at the Englishman then winced. “Did we get away?”
“We are in the process of doing just that,” replied Howard with a wide smile. “Captain Golubev has us heading south in the strait at slow speed to keep as quiet as possible.”
Hendrick nodded then got shakily to his feet with the help of his companions.
“Let’s go to the conn to see how Golubev is making out,” said Hendrick.
“Whoa, wait a minute,” protested Malik. “You’ve got to get into decompression.”
“For five minutes? Don’t make me laugh,” replied Hendrick. His gaze lingered on Malik’s stern face. “If I feel the bends coming on, I’ll get into one of the portable chambers. Okay?”
Joe Malik shook his head as they walked down the passageway.
Golubev studied the chart while silently wondering where the Chinese ship and submarine were. How long would they stay in the northern part of the channel searching for him? In a few minutes they would turn on their powerful sonars and discover that he was long gone. At the moment he was creeping away from the wreck of the Awa Maru, and when he had put some distance between his and the Chinese ships, he would speed up to get to the southern end of the Taiwan Strait. Once there he would head southeast toward the Balintang Channel and their rendezvous with the ship Hendrick had sent from the United States, which would take his part of the treasure back to the States with him.
Golubev pushed the talk button on his sound powered phones. “Engine Room, increase speed to six knots.” The engine room acknowledged the order, and the captain could feel the vessel’s speed slowly build up to the ordered amount.
Hendrick entered the conn with Malik helping him. Golubev went over to him and helped him to a chair.
“So, how are you feeling, my friend?” asked Golubev with genuine concern in his voice.
“Better,” replied Hendrick. “I thought one of those damned Chinese depth charges was going to crush my skull. But not this time.”
“I think you saved all of our lives,” said Golubev with emotion. “Spasiba, Tovarich!” He grabbed Hendrick and kissed him on the cheek.
Hendrick looked around with a twisted smile on his face. “It’s not like we’re going steady or anything.”
Joe Malik stifled a laugh and gave an amused glance at Golubev who was puzzled at the Americans’ reaction. “Captain, how far away from the Chinese sub are we?” asked Malik.
Golubev went to the chart and pointed to the last known position of the sub, which was about fifteen miles due east of the island of Niushan Dao. He indicated that their own position was about ten miles south of the Chinese sub almost in mid-channel.
“Captain, the enemy submarine has changed course and is paralleling our own course,” said a hushed voice over the intercom.
Golubev groaned and translated the sonarman’s statement for Malik.
“Now what?” Malik asked, giving Hendrick a troubled glance. Hendrick walked over to the chart and studied it, noting Golubev’s pencil marks near two islands in the middle of the strait.
“Are you familiar with these islands?” Hendrick pointed to the twin islands of Wu-ch’iu Yu and Hsiao-ch’iu Yu, which were in the People’s Republic of China’s territorial waters but were owned and occupied by Taiwanese.
“Yes. I thought you would find them interesting,” said Golubev. “I have used them more than once in the past when I was conducting intelligence missions along the Chinese and Taiwanese coasts.”
“How did you use the islands?” asked Malik.
Golubev shook his head and grimaced. “You will not want to know.”
HAN 405
Sonarman Yi turned to the sonar supervisor. “Contact has increased speed to an estimated six knots.” The supervisor told the captain over the intercom.
“Communications depth!” ordered Tse. “We will tell our comrades in the surface ships that we have relocated the enemy submarine.” He turned to his second-in-command. “Compose a message disclosing our position and the estimated position, course, and speed of the contact. Tell them we will immediately engage the contact.”
Tse’s executive officer got to work immediately and quickly had the message ready for the captain’s approval.
“Good,” said Tse as he looked over the wording. “Raise the communications antenna and transmit it.”
Ten minutes later Tse had his vessel back to combat depth and increasing speed to close the distance to the contact.
“Sonar, go active,” ordered Tse who wanted to make no mistake this time. Sonar acknowledged and seconds later the crew could hear the widely spaced pulses of sound from their sonar transmitter.
“Weapons, do you have a firing solution?” asked Tse several minutes later. He knew what the answer would be.
“Yes, Captain,” replied the weapons officer in a loud
voice.
“Flood tube number Four,” commanded Tse. The order was relayed with alacrity, and a minute later Tse received the report that the torpedo tube was ready to be opened.
“Open outer door,” said Tse and listened as the heavy metal door of the torpedo tube rumbled open.
“Fire Four,” ordered Tse in a firm voice.
KURCHATOV
“High speed screws, bearing zero, six, zero!” came the excited voice over the intercom.
Golubev’s head snapped upright at the news from sonar even though a torpedo launch was expected since hearing that the Chinese sub was using its active sonar. Golubev had a plan, one desperate plan that stood between life and death for the twenty-three men on board. He had done this maneuver before, but never to escape a live torpedo.
As Golubev swung around to give the necessary orders, his gaze swept over his two American companions. Malik was giving him a quizzical look - he didn’t understand much Russian. Hendrick had a look of frozen fear on his face - by this time he knew the Russian language well enough.
“Launch acoustic decoy!” Golubev shouted into the sound-powered phone. He knew the decoy wouldn’t do much good when the enemy was using active sonar, but it was something to do. He looked up at Hendrick as his voice thundered another order into the phone. “All ahead flank! Give me as much as possible without blowing up the engines!”
Golubev ran a transparent ruler from his sub’s position on the chart to the islands of Wu-ch’iu Yu and Hsiao-ch’iu Yu, then transferred the angle of the ruler to the compass rose on another part of the chart.
Hidden Sun Page 18