The Art of War: A Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  Peavy had to swim from the bow to the stern, watching his watch, then reverse himself and swim half that time to find the midpoint of the ship’s hull. All this took time, yet while he was doing it, other team members were assembling with explosive charges.

  The water was as black as the grave under that huge ship. The turbidity of the water prevented any light from the dangling spotlights from reaching the keel. Howie Peavy and his team members used headlamps—they had to. It was absolutely critical that they got all the explosives as close together as possible, and right on the keel, the deepest part of the ship. Determining just where the keel was in that dark, opaque water was a difficult task. The roundness of the hull certainly didn’t help, because there was no way to determine exactly where the deepest part was.

  Peavy and his team worked until they thought they had it. Every man got a vote, by gesture and light.

  When the charges were all placed, Peavy and one other diver began rigging the fuses and timer.

  *

  It was the harbor patrol boat that caused the ruckus. Joe Child sat watching it, and was appalled to see that it was coming south working right along the antitorpedo net that had been rigged to protect Liaoning.

  Of course, the coxswain of Peavy’s Sealion saw it coming. Ciliberti had a great view on his photonics display, and if he didn’t trust digital magic, he could turn in his seat and look north at the real thing coming his way. Ciliberti had already flooded his tanks and submerged the boat as far as it would go, which was down to the glass of the pilothouse, but the patrol boat was coming lazily on, perhaps at two or three knots, with the spotlight swinging back and forth, back and forth.

  He had to do something, so he got his Sealion under way and turned ninety degrees to seaward, to clear the net. Perhaps he could allow the patrol boat to go by, then turn in behind him and join on the net again.

  What Ciliberti couldn’t do was abandon the SEALs that were now under Liaoning. He keyed his portable com unit, which was in a bracket glued to the instrument panel.

  “Gold One, this is Blue Two. I have a problem. I’m clearing the net, but this boat is coming down on me.”

  “Roger,” Joe Child acknowledged. The patrol boat was only a hundred yards or so from the Sealion’s last position on the net. Child glanced at his watch. The divers had been in the water for over an hour. How much longer before they were ready to be recovered?

  “How far?” Child asked the gunner on the Browning, who was holding a laser range finder up to his eye.

  “Gonna be about eight hundred meters, sir,” the gunner said.

  Child used his com unit. “Gold Four, give them a Goose round. Gold Six, use the Barrett on those machine gunners aboard the flattop if they fire a single shot.”

  Mike clicks were his reply.

  Fifteen seconds later, the M-3 spit out its round.

  Watching through the binoculars, Joe Child saw the little shaped charge explode on the front left quarter of the patrol boat. The boat began slewing as if it were out of control. No one forward now on the gun. The spotlight wasn’t sweeping anymore. That had been an armor-piercing round, one that would kill a medium-sized tank. Child wondered what it had done to the hull of the boat.

  Now it straightened out and accelerated. Child could see the bow rise onto the plane. The boat’s heading began to wander. The helmsman was probably wounded or dead.

  “Hit ’em again,” he said on the radio.

  This rocket missed. The boat continued on, closing the distance. Captain Child tapped the machine gunner on the shoulder. “Take ’em out.”

  The machine gun began squirting short bursts. The gunner knew his stuff. Through his binoculars Child could see sparks where bullets were hitting the boat and pieces flying off. On the fifth burst the boat exploded. As the fireball rose into the night sky, illuminating the area around the boat, the wreckage drifted to a stop. The fire quickly went out as the boat sank. The harbor was dark again.

  Except on the ships berthed against the piers and quay. Searchlights came on, klaxons wailed, Oriental voices could be heard talking over PA systems. The crews were being called to action stations.

  Joe Child wondered how much more time Howie Peavy needed. He wondered how quickly the berthed ships could be gotten to sea. He wondered how many more patrol boats were sitting at a pier, ready to cast off. He wondered if he should alert the admirals in charge of the task forces.

  He decided to alert them with a message on his com unit. Typing it would keep him busy doing something productive.

  *

  USS Utah slid in behind the Chinese hunter-killer sub at about four miles distance. If the Chinese boat was towing a sonar array, Roscoe Hanna didn’t want to hit it. Once safely behind the Chinaman, Hanna accelerated a bit to match his speed. A submarine’s stern was its dead zone, the sounds behind it hidden by the turning screws and disturbed water of its passing. The boat they were trailing would undoubtedly turn sooner or later to clear his stern, his “baffles,” but probably not for a while.

  “Any other boats around?”

  “No, sir.” None had been reported, but Hanna thought it never hurt to ask a direct question and make everyone look again.

  Hanna checked the plot. The two subs seemed to be heading for the Hornet task group, which was only forty miles away. At ten knots, they would be there in four hours if they held this course. Of course, Hornet was moving, too. For whatever it was worth, they were already in Hornet’s vicinity.

  “How are the sound conditions?” Hanna asked his sonar guru.

  “Not good. Too shallow.”

  The sound conditions would be equally bad for the Chinese boat, Hanna thought.

  The clock on the bulkhead was ticking off the minutes. Captain Hanna sat on a stool where he could see the automated plot and waited.

  *

  As the SEALs got their demolition charges attached, they went back in pairs for the last ones, until all eight fifty-pound charges were attached under the keel. Then the two superfluous pairs of divers swam back to the Sealion, which had returned to the net after the passage of the harbor patrol boat.

  It was very difficult working in the blackness under the ship, with only ten feet of water between the bottom and the keel, with visibility about a foot. Howie Peavy and his mate, Petty Officer Second Class Macon George, installed the fuses in each charge, attached the timer to the ship, and ensured the clock was working. Peavy was ready to set the timer when George grabbed his arm and motioned that his rebreather was going bad. Together the two men swam upward toward the surface.

  They came up right against the hull of the ship. Lights dangling from the catwalk forty feet above lit the surface and dazzled the divers, whose eyes had not adjusted. Still, it was doubtful if anyone on the catwalk was looking straight down at the waterline.

  “We can’t stay here,” Peavy told George. “You stay here, and I’ll go back and set the timer. Then we’ll share the mouthpiece and swim back together.”

  A thumbs-up.

  Peavy turned and flippered down … just in time to feel the whap of a bullet hitting the water near him. Very near.

  He grabbed Macon George’s feet and dragged him under. George was using his hands to help get under the surface, so the two went down together.

  Peavy took a deep breath, passed the mouthpiece to George, who put it in his mouth, spit the water out around the edge, exhaled, took a deep breath and passed it back.

  The two men swam back down to the keel—and had to hunt for the damned charges. They had drifted too much toward the stern, Peavy realized, and turned George and swam back along the keel.

  Taking turns breathing, they set the timer for thirty minutes. Then Peavy checked his compass, and they swam away underwater in the direction of the Sealion.

  The cold water was getting to both men. They were very tired, lethargic.

  They couldn’t quit. They swam on, holding hands, trading the mouthpiece, checking the compass every few strokes in that dark, col
d, wet universe.

  Although they didn’t know it, the Chinese sailors at the machine guns on the catwalks had opened fire on the surface of the water. They had no target, just sprayed bullets back and forth.

  Petty Officer First Class Jack Brumlik was settled in with the Barrett sniper rifle on the mole. He was lying prone. He turned the rifle and aimed at the muzzle flashes. Touched off one of those .50 caliber rounds.

  The muzzle flashes stopped. He waited for the starlight scope to adjust, saw the gunner looking wildly about and put the crosshairs on him. Squeezed ever so gently and felt the rifle smack him in the shoulder. When he recovered from the recoil and looked again, the man was not visible.

  “The other one,” his spotter said. “Shoot him, too.”

  Jack Brumlik aimed and touched off his weapon. A first-shot hit.

  “Let’s move,” the spotter said urgently. “They’ll be shootin’ back.”

  Brumlik scrambled up and grabbed the rifle, and they ran fifty yards along the mole, closer to the Sealion and the machine gun on a tripod.

  *

  When Howie Peavy and Macon George got to the net and surfaced, they found the Sealion was fifty feet or so to the north. Holding on to the net, they worked their way along it, then climbed it to the deck.

  The hatch was open. Peavy shoved George in, then shouted down, “Count off.”

  Five men answered. Peavy made six. Plus the coxswain. Peavy took off his rebreather and mask, dropped them through the hatch, then climbed down and dogged the hatch behind him.

  “Let’s get the hell outta here,” he roared at the coxswain, and then counted heads again. Yep, he had everyone.

  He went forward and climbed up beside the coxswain. “Message the ship. Give them the code. Mission complete, exiting the area.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Peavy smacked the coxswain on the shoulder, then went aft to check on his men.

  *

  Aboard Hornet and United States, the admirals ordered the ready sorties to launch. The Sealions might need air cover on the trip back to Hornet.

  Aboard the Sealion that was clearing Qingdao Bay, Howie Peavy looked at his watch. Seven minutes to go.

  Meanwhile Captain Joe Child was supervising the reloading of the Zodiacs, then the transfer of the weapons to his ride, the Sealion with coxswain Peter Ciliberti at the helm.

  It took a while. Child was about ready to go down the ladder and dog the hatch behind him when the charges under Liaoning went off with a thud. He could feel it through the water first, then the air. Not too loud.

  He stood mesmerized, watching the carrier tied to the quay through his binoculars. Her lights were still lit. Some water had been squirted aloft, and he could see the cloud of it illuminated by the decklights. Then it dissipated.

  Nothing happened. The lights stayed lit.

  Child didn’t know what to expect. Obviously she wouldn’t go down like a torpedoed freighter in an old Victory at Sea movie. But shouldn’t she be doing something?

  Maybe they got the charges in the wrong place. Maybe they didn’t use enough explosive. Maybe—

  Then he realized the middle of the ship was lower, the bow and stern higher. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the middle settled and the bow and stern seemed to rise.

  Liaoning was only going to do a little bit of that, Child realized, before the middle of the ship hit the bottom mud.

  Her keel was broken. She was in two halves.

  Child jabbed a fist aloft, went down the ladder and dogged the hatch, and shouted exultantly, “They did it! Broke her back! Let’s get the hell outta here, coxs’n.”

  Child personally typed the success code into his com unit and hit the SEND button.

  When he finished, he turned and saw that every man there was grinning widely.

  Yessss!

  *

  Aboard Utah, the sonarman had the audio of his gear on the control room speaker, with the volume turned way down.

  It was here that Roscoe Hanna and the control room crew heard a sonar ping from one of the destroyers around Hornet. One ping, pause, two pings, pause, two more. Then silence again.

  The success signal. That meant the two Sealions were on their way back to Hornet.

  Hanna glanced again at the plot. The Chinese attack boat was still four miles in front of them, still heading a little south of east toward the Hornet task group.

  Hanna decided to wait until the Chinese boat heard the oncoming Sealions, which weren’t quiet. When the Chinese heard them, they would do something. Hanna didn’t know what, but the unknown sound coming from the direction of Qingdao might tempt the Chinese skipper to take his boat to periscope depth for a look around.

  It would be at least an hour before the Sealions were close enough to hear. Roscoe Hanna took a head break.

  *

  It was midafternoon in Washington when Rear Admiral Hurricane Carter notified the Pentagon and White House of the success of the SEAL mission. In the White House Situation Room the civilian staffers and bigwigs made a happy noise, then wandered out. Finally only the permanent Situation Room staffers were left … and Admiral Cart McKiernan and Jake Grafton. They sat side by side in chairs at the back of the room.

  Those two didn’t get excited when the news was announced. They wouldn’t get excited until the SEALs were back aboard Hornet. They wandered over to the coffeepot, helped themselves and inspected the stale doughnut and bagel selection.

  McKiernan paused to whack Grafton on the arm with his fist. Grafton gave him a grin. Then each took a chunk of carbohydrates and a cup of sour coffee back to his seat and tried to get comfortable.

  *

  Utah heard the Sealions at least ten minutes before the Chinese attack submarine in front of her reacted by turning so her right flank was fully exposed to the noisemakers. Silently, slowing carefully, Utah entered a gentle turn so that her bow remained pointed at the Chinese sub, which was heading off to her right. The helmsman kept the turn in. The result was that the angle between their headings increased.

  Roscoe Hanna knew precisely what he was going to do. The only thing he worried about was the timing. When? So he waited until the oncoming Sealions were about five miles away at two o’clock relative to him. They were going to cross in front of the Chinese boat, with the closest point of approach being three miles.

  “Now,” Hanna said, and the sonarman flipped the switch to active pinging. Ping, the sound went out, and returned. The Chinese sub blossomed on the screen. Another ping. And another, regularly. The Chinese sub was pinned.

  “Noisemakers,” Hanna ordered, and three acoustic bouys were launched from small tubes in the sail. They shot away from Utah, then slowed and began making wonderous amounts of noise, noise that would overwhelm the sensitive listening sensors of the Chinese sub, at least for a few moments.

  The result of all this, Hanna hoped, was confusion. At the least, he thought the Chinese skipper would forget about the surface contacts he had detected and worry about the origin of all this noise. No doubt it was from another submarine, but where?

  “Open outer doors on Tubes One and Two.”

  The fact that Utah was going to shoot two torpedoes had been briefed and rehearsed. Now the sailors went right down the checklist. The torpedoes would travel a buttonhook path so that they approached the Chinese submarine from her beam.

  “Fire One.”

  Everyone in the control room felt the jolt of the big torpedo being ejected.

  Ten seconds later, “Fire Two.”

  The second torpedo went into the water.

  Now Hanna ceased pinging and turned his boat to port to present its stern to the Chinese boat and open the distance.

  *

  Aboard the Chinese sub, confusion reigned. The active pinging of a subsurface sonar so near had come as a shock to the entire crew. Then the noisemakers.

  They knew where the other sub was, or thought they did. But why all the noise?

  While the skipper was trying to figure
it out, the sonar operator called, “Torpedo running. Active homing. Approaching…”

  The Chinese sub wasn’t even at action stations. The OOD in the control room smacked the collision alarm with his palm and the noise rang in every compartment in the boat.

  The captain grabbed the headset from the sonarman. Put one pad against his ear. He could hear the distinctive gurgle of the approaching torpedo. He grabbed the volume knob and turned. The torpedo was close. Seconds from impact. He could hear the pinging of its seeker head.

  “Surface,” he shouted. “Emergency surface.” He tossed the headset back to the sonarman, who flipped a switch to put the audio on the loudspeaker system.

  Bedlam in the control room. Everyone shouting and reaching for knobs and buttons as the torpedo closed. The sound of the approaching torpedo was rising in pitch and volume as it sped toward the submarine. The pinging from the seeker came faster and faster as the range diminished.

  Then … whump! A noise like the impact of a huge hammer. The torpedo struck the outside of the boat and didn’t explode! The noise from the seeker head and the pump-jet propulsion system fell silent.

  But …

  There was another torpedo in the water! Like the first, it roared in with its pinging head probing for the sub, whining louder and louder.

  Whump!

  Silence.

  Two duds.

  Or two practice torpedoes …

  “Level off at this depth,” the captain roared. “Get the boat under control. And where is that Yankee sub?”

  *

  While the ocean floor was shallow here, Roscoe Hanna thought he could safely take Utah a little deeper, so he had the chief drop her down another hundred feet. Perhaps he would get a bit of help from a thermal layer, if there was one, or a discontinuity in salinity.

  A minute passed, then two. “More speed,” Hanna told the chief of the boat. “Twenty knots.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Twenty knots.”

  The noisemakers had hidden the sound of the practice torpedoes, but he figured he got two hits at the end of running time. And gave the Chinese skipper the thrill of his life.