Attack of the Seawolf mp-2

by Michael Dimercurio

  “Goddamn,” Keebes said. “Those guys are sneaky. That beats hell out of the Chinese plan we had.”

  “I don’t think that’s it,” Pacino said. “The task force to the south is too far away to come in and act like a cork in the bottle of the northern passage. Those guys are two hours away from the entrance to the northern channel. They may be filling the holes in the north coverage with aircraft but I don’t think so.”

  “So what do you think they are doing?”

  “I think they’re convinced we’re going to the southern channel, and are setting up to catch us there. The forces to the north are tokens, just to keep us from thinking we’ve got a clean shot going through the northern channel.”

  “Why in hell would they think we’d try to escort Tampa out through that little channel on the south end?” Linden asked. “That channel is so tight we’d all get hard-ons going through it.”

  “They think we’ll go through the south channel because they know we know it’s too tight,” Pacino said.

  “I can’t handle it,” Keebes said. “So what do you want to do, then, sir?”

  “We start here at the entrance to the northern channel. We launch the Javelin cruise missiles. Each one will have the time delay set for a future launch, when we’re far into the channel. Then we launch half of the decoys, the Mark 38s designed to imitate the sounds of a 688-class sub. Most go east in the Bohai Haixia Strait, but we send a few south to the Miaodao Strait. Meanwhile, Tampa begins the transit through the strait in front of us, her passage screened by the decoys. It’ll sound like half a dozen subs coming down the channel. But before the Chinese hear them we launch torpedoes down the channel, and a few down to the south to confuse the task forces.”

  “Sir, torpedoes will hit the Tampa,” Keebes put in.

  “No. They’ll be in transit mode, on the run-to enable. They won’t enable and go active till they’re right on the central task force in the midpoint of the Haixia channel. Then all hell breaks loose. The decoys are spotted by the Chinese, then the torpedoes go active and hit some, maybe all, of the ships in the task force. The Javelins liftoff, and two minutes later we have ten Javelin cruise missiles and eleven Mark 50 torpedoes hitting the thirteen ships of the task force. Meanwhile, the decoys and the Tampa and Seawolf go under the trouble zone.”

  Feyley asked: “Then what? They know you’re there, and the southern task forces come north to get you while the carrier launches all its ASW aircraft to put you on the bottom.”

  “We increase speed to twenty knots and get the hell out. We’ll launch the remaining Mark 80s at the aircraft and we launch the standoff weapon, the Ow-sow, at the aircraft carrier.”

  “Captain,” Keebes said, “it’ll take us an hour to get from the point where we dive under the sinking task force to where we get to international waters. That’s an hour since you launched a bunch of Mark 80s and an Ow-sow, an hour since the surface group got pounded by a bunch of torpedoes and cruise missiles. In that hour the decoys will have shut down. The Chinese will scramble their aircraft and their surface ships from the south and they’ll pound us. The surface forces don’t need to get close to be lethal — they have the SS-N-14 rocket-launched depth charges and the fourteen-variant rocket-launched torpedoes. We’ll be dead meat five minutes after our Javelins impact.”

  There was silence in the room while Keebes’s analysis sank in. Finally Pacino spoke:

  “If we were alone we would be in big trouble. But we’re not.”

  “Who else is here?” Keebes said. “Did I miss someone?”

  Pacino went to the desk and took up a paperweight, a chunk of heavy steel left over from the ship’s construction, with an etched inscription dedicated to Captain Duckett. Pacino slammed the steel chunk on the table, at the far corner to the east of the gap.

  “The cavalry is here. Surface Action Group 57, with Admiral Donchez in charge aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, the biggest, hairiest aircraft carrier in the goddamned world. About the time our missiles start flying, Donchez will cover the bay with an umbrella of aircraft. It’ll be a ‘no-fly’ zone for the Chinese.”

  “You know for a fact he’ll cover our ass here?” Morris said. “He told you this?”

  “Nope. But I know Dick Donchez. When he sees the flames coming from the bay, and a bunch of angry bees buzzing over our position in the channel, he’ll know what to do.”

  “You better hope you’re right, Captain,” Morris said, “or it’ll be your last mistake.”

  Pacino nodded. Morris, of course, was right.

  KOREA BAY, 130 MILES EAST OF LUSH UN SURFACE ACTION GROUP 57

  AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS RONALD REAGAN

  Admiral Richard Donchez shouted into the red handset of the UHF satellite secure-voice connection.

  “What the hell do you mean, no air cover? Did anyone mention to the President that without air cover these subs will be sunk? They’re fish in a goddamned barrel! What the hell have we done all this for to come here and have no air cover?”

  The speaker in the overhead blasted out the distorted voice of the Secretary of Defense, Napoleon Ferguson.

  “DICK, THIS HAS ALL BEEN EXPLAINED TO PRESIDENT DAWSON HE IS EMPHATIC ON THIS POINT. THERE WILL BE NO PENETRATION OF GO HAI AIRSPACE BY YOUR JETS. IT’S TOO THREATENING, THE WORLD WILL THINK WE’RE STARTING A WAR WITH THE CHINESE. THE U.N. IS VOTING TONIGHT ON IMPOSING SANCTIONS ON THE UNITED STATES. WE’LL VETO IT, OF COURSE, BUT WE’LL GET A BLACK EYE. AND IT’S BECAUSE OF YOUR OPERATION THERE IN THE BAY. DAWSON DOESN’T WANT TO RISK IT. I’M STILL TALKING TO HIM.”

  “No, Napoleon, you’ve done enough talking. Donchez out.”

  The Admiral slammed the handset into its cradle and looked at Fred Rummel.

  “Well, Fred, you still think the SAG won’t launch aircraft on my orders without authorization from Washington?”

  Rummel shook his head: “Sir, we’re grounded.”

  Donchez looked out the bulkhead windows, toward the west, out at the rain falling on the water of the bay.

  Mikey Pacino was on his own. Donchez threw his cigar butt to the deck and mashed it in disgust.

  CHAPTER 28

  MONDAY. 13 MAY

  0920 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

  GO HAD BAY, LUSHUN/PENGLAI GAP ENTRANCE TO THE BOHAI HAIXIA STRAIT

  USS SEAWOLF

  1720 BEIJING TIME

  Pacino hunched over the chart table in the control room, checking the plotting of the Chinese task forces and Seawolf’s position at the entrance to the northern passage at the Bohai Haixia Strait. The Tampa had already entered the channel and was on the way east, the dot on the chart marked with the time of her position. Pacino stood and looked at Lieutenant Tim Turner.

  “Tim, you ready?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Off’sa’deck, man silent battle stations.”

  “Man silent battle stations aye, sir. Chief of the Watch! Man silent battle stations.”

  The COW acknowledged and spoke into his headset:

  “All spaces. Control, man battle stations.”

  The control room filled with men, each taking his watch station and putting on cordless headsets with boom microphones. Usually manning silent battle stations took ten minutes before the space’s phone talkers could get everyone out of bed with the verbal announcement that the ship was manning battle stations then it would take the men two minutes to dress and get to their watch stations another two minutes to relieve the watch, a minute for a relieved watch stander to go to his own battle station and relieve that watch stander. By the time the daisy chain of watch reliefs ended it could be fifteen minutes later. But when Turner reported battle stations manned it was less than sixty seconds later — the on-edge crew had been waiting for the order.

  Pacino leaned over Bill Feyley’s weapon-control console, checking the tube-loading status indication on the CRT display.

  “Weps, I want tube eight to be loaded at all times with a Mark 50 torpedo for a quick reaction firing — our insurance. Tube eight i
s mine — one through seven are yours.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “I want a thirty-second firing interval, no more. When I shoot a tube I expect the crew to be reloading immediately, and I want that operation to be quiet. You pass the word to your people below. What have you got in one through seven?”

  “Tube-loaded Block III Javelin encapsulated cruise missiles with time-delay systems. All weapons powered up and self-checks nominal.”

  “Very well.” Pacino checked the time. He was ahead of schedule. He moved up on the elevated periscope stand and looked out over the faces in the crowded control room, one of them belonging to Commander Jack Morris, who covered his nerves with a war face.

  “Attention in the firecontrol team.” The room became instantly quiet, the only sound the whine of the spinning ESGN ball and the booming of the ventilation system.

  “Operation Jailbreak is now into its second minute. Here’s the deal.”

  “In a few minutes we’ll be launching Javelins set for delayed launch. When they’re all gone we’ll be putting out a salvo of Mark 38 decoys down the channel and a few to the south. Then a salvo of Mark 50 torpedoes, most down the channel. Then another round of decoys. The Tampa will be beginning her run down the strait any minute now. At approximately 1900, everything happens at once. The surface force will detect the initial wave of decoys, the torpedoes will go active and seek out targets, the Javelins launched between 1730 and 1830 will liftoff, the torpedoes will acquire and detonate, the Javelins will impact, and Seawolf and Tampa will transit beneath the distracted surface force.

  “The only thing between us and freedom will be the Chinese aircraft carrier guarding the exit of the channel. I expect an aircraft attack, which we’ll answer with our remaining Mark 80 SLAAMs. When we get close to the carrier we’ll launch the Ow-sow, and with luck the ship will be damaged enough or too distracted to attack us on the way out. I hope you’re all ready for a tough watch tonight. It’s now 1732 Beijing time. Our ETA at the channel exit in international waters is 2115. We’ve got some shooting to do between now and then.”

  Morris went up to the conn and looked out at the activity in the room. Pacino nudged him, noticing he had his holstered Beretta pistol with him. What the hell, Pacino thought, it was probably his security blanket.

  “Ready’ Jack?”

  “Just get us the hell out of here, Cap’n.”

  “Helm, right fifteen degrees rudder, steady course south, all ahead two thirds. Weps, pressurize all tubes and open all outer doors. Confirm targeting vectors to all Javelins and report status.”

  “Aye, sir,” Feyley said. “All tubes pressurized and equalized to sea pressure. All outer doors coming open now. Target vectors tubes one through seven confirmed, targets bearing one zero five to one one three, range fifty-two thousand yards. All time delays set for liftoff at time 1900 local, an hour-and-a-half from now. All outer doors now open. Ready to fire, Captain.”

  “Very well,” Pacino said, glancing at the chronometer.

  When it clicked over to 1735:00, he gave the next order: “Weps, shoot tube one.”

  “Fire,” Feyley called. Down below the tube barked, the noise loud in the room.

  “Tube one fired electrically, Captain.”

  “Shoot tube two.”

  The firing sequence continued. When Feyley launched a tube, the torpedo room crew shut the outer door, drained the tube, opened the inner door and rammed another Javelin in, connected the power and signal leads and shut the door so that when the tube’s turn came up three or four minutes later the weapon was spun up and warm and ready to fire. By 1750 the room’s Javelin missiles were gone, all of them floating silently in their watertight capsules below the surface of the bay, waiting for their timers to reach zero hour, 1900, when they would broach, open their nose cones and unleash the rocket-powered cruise missiles. By that time, Seawolf would be far down the channel, within a few hundred yards of the northern channel’s task force. Pacino ordered the ship to enter the channel and proceed east at twenty-five knots while the crew began to load Mark 38 decoys, the torpedo-sized noisemakers programmed to radiate the same noises as a Los Angeles-class submarine, able to be programmed to maneuver in set patterns or follow a channel. By 1812 the initial volley of Mark 38s had been fired and the torpedo room was set up to launch Mark 50 Hullcrusher torpedoes. When they were all gone, except the one earmarked for tube eight, the final volley of Mark 38 decoys was launched.

  By 1830, less than an hour after he had started, Pacino’s torpedo room was empty, all weapons gone except tube eight’s Mark 50 and the ASW Standoff Weapon. Pacino took a deep breath and leaned against a railing of the periscope stand, his ears aching from the forty-three tube launches. He checked the chart. Seawolf was twelve miles into the channel, the boundaries of the restricted water narrowing on either side. The throat of the channel was another thirteen miles ahead. Somewhere further down the channel, eleven Mark 50 torpedoes, twelve Mark 38 decoys and the Tampa were making their way east. To the south, there were eight decoys and two torpedoes heading for the entrance to the southern passage at Miaodao, designed to confuse the southwest surface task force.

  Pacino couldn’t help wondering what was going on inside the Tampa. At least he had, more or less, control of his destiny. Those guys were passengers, along for the ride. Pacino looked at Jeff Joseph’s Pos Two display at the circle marking Friendly One, now ahead of them by six miles to the east. Pacino plotted a dot on the chart, the position of the Tampa, then stared at the dot, as if by looking at a mark of pencil on the paper on the chart table he could project his mind into the hull of Murphy’s submarine.

  At 1851 the first decoy’s acoustic emissions alerted the surface force at the channel midpoint that the intruder submarine was inbound. From that moment on, Pacino had no more time to think about the Tampa or even about Sean Murphy.

  BOHAI HAIXIA STRAIT

  USS TAMPA

  Lieutenant Bartholomay looked up from the chart table in the control room, hoping to see in Lieutenant Commander Vaughn’s face that what showed on the chart was not real.

  “Eng, what are you doing here?” Bart asked, his finger pointing to the chart.

  “I’m driving down the channel,” Vaughn said, leaning on the periscope pole.

  “But you’re driving straight for the surface ships. Can’t they detect you? Won’t they depth-charge us or something?”

  “Come and look at this.”

  Bart joined Vaughn in front of the Pos One console.

  Set into the overhead was the sonar display console, the broadband waterfall display selected off the sonar spherical array in the nose cone.

  “See the waterfall? Those vertical streaks falling down the screen are noises, each noise a contact, and their horizontal positions on the display are their true bearings from us. The vertical position is time, the new at the top, the old at the bottom, the new replacing the old. The old falls off the screen, giving it the name waterfall. How many vertical streaks do you see?”

  Bart counted: “Twelve. No, thirteen with this dark trace at one hundred degrees.”

  “The one zero zero trace is the surface force directly ahead. The other twelve traces are twelve Tampas.”

  “Say what?”

  “Every one of those noises is a 688-class submarine. At least so it will appear to the Chinese. Those are Mark 38 decoys. They are torpedo-sized, with large fuel tanks and a computer brain that steers them on a programmed course. In the nose cone of the unit is a sonar transducer that emits noises sounding exactly like this submarine. To the surface ships, it will look like there are thirteen subs coming.”

  “So?” Bart said. “So they shoot a dozen more depth-charge things than normal, and kill us a few seconds later. Is this the great plan you and Lennox have been hatching?”

  “Only part of it.”

  Vaughn pressed a sequence of touch keys on the lower face of the monitor panel, dividing the waterfall display into two waterfalls.

  �
��The upper screen shows the last thirty minutes of history instead of just the last thirty seconds. The dark traces are the Mark 38 decoys. Look here at these lighter traces, the ones that sloped flat about fifteen minutes ago.” Eleven new traces were visible, each vertical at the bottom, sloping flat in the middle and vertical again at the top of the display.

  “Those are torpedoes. They came out of our baffles and passed us here, where the traces are horizontal, then drove on ahead of us. They are now catching up to the decoys. In another twenty minutes or so the first wave of decoys will swim into the task force zone. The Chinese will detect them — I hope — and get confused, since there are apparently several submarines. Then the volley of torpedoes will reach them, and after that, we and those closer decoys will reach the task force. By that time the Chinese should be sinking.”

  “Won’t you be shooting at the surface ships?”

  “Can’t. None of the torpedoes are working. We thought we had some healthy units but they all failed their self-checks. Two tubes work, but without an intact torpedo there’s no chance. We’ve got vertical launch tubes for cruise missiles, but without the firecontrol computer they’re just useless scrap metal.”

  “So what happens after the Seawolf runs out of torpedoes? Will we be out of hot water?”

  Vaughn pushed the function keys on the sonar monitor, returning the original waterfall display, and turned to Bartholomay.

  “Who the hell knows? Look, Bart, either we get out of the bay or we don’t.”

  “I just don’t like being along for the ride. On an OP at least I have a finger on the trigger. Here, all I can do is wait inside this sewer pipe for you to drive us out.”

  Lube Oil Vaughn looked at the SEAL, his face a mask of confidence, his stomach a nest of butterflies, his hands in his pockets to prevent anyone seeing them shake. He was one of only — two officers who could get the ship out, and if he didn’t look steady it would be that much harder to keep the men’s trust.

  But the truth was, Vaughn was just as much a passenger as Black Bart.