Attack of the Seawolf mp-2

by Michael Dimercurio

  Collins’s skin stretched aft, his body thrown into the seat as the big jet accelerated. The deck and the dark sea flew toward him as if he were falling through a blurred tunnel. At the end of the cat the jet was doing one hundred and fifty knots, enough to stay airborne, but barely. Collins felt the jolt as the catapult disconnected, freeing his nose wheel of the deck, and the ship faded astern as he retracted the landing gear, the jet surging forward as the gear pulled up out of the slipstream.

  The jet continued accelerating as Collins pulled the stick back, and the sea and the carrier shrank behind as the fighter clawed its way skyward, the airspeed and altimeter needles winding up on the panel. Collins smiled at the sheer joy of flight, pulling the jet over into a tight turn, entering the pattern to wait while the other pilots in his squadron took off and joined him. As soon as they were aloft he would lead the way to their hold-point two nautical miles east of the line from Lushun to Penglai, the line of Chinese international waters.

  With luck, once they were there, they would get the word to fly in and kick ass.

  P.L.A NAVY AIRCRAFT CARRIER SHAOGUAN

  The ship had taken on a fifteen-degree list to port and had begun to settle noticeably into the water. Fleet Commander Chu Hsueh-Fan continued to stare out the port bulkhead glass windows toward the west, hoping to catch sight of the fleet sinking the American submarine. The ship seemed quiet now, the engines long since dead, the fires continuing to rage but the firefighting given up by order of Ship Commander Sun Yang. The flooding was uncontrollable, the damage extending through four major compartments to port and amidships. The abandon-ship routine was almost complete. All the lifeboats and rafts were over, all the survivors floating in the boats watching the crippled vessel.

  Somewhere far below an explosion rumbled through the bowels of the dead ship, the detonation sharp at first, then settling into a sustained roar. Chu shivered at the sound, the carrier’s death-rattle. The ship’s heel increased suddenly to twenty-five degrees, the deck becoming a steep ramp. Ship Commander Sun Yang broke into the room, the door slamming against the bulkhead, the tilt of the ship keeping the door from latching open, as Yang stared at Chu.

  “Fleet Commander, our helicopter is waiting. It can’t hold onto this deck much longer. The ship is about to capsize.”

  Chu turned around, his face lit only by the dim battery-powered battle lantern. His face was deeply lined.

  “You go. Transfer the flag. Get that submarine. I will stay here—”

  “Sir, you can’t do this. Tien is already waiting in the helicopter. This is Tien’s fault. If you go down with this ship his story will be the one they believe.”

  “You tell the story. I let Tien botch this operation … I will join my men who suffered for it. Now go.”

  Sun Yang was about to speak when the deck began to roll further to port, now a dangerous thirty-degree angle. He shook his head, turned and made his way up the steep deck to the door.

  “At least try to swim out of here, sir. My helicopter will circle the water to find you …”

  Sun ran down the steps to the flight-deck level, the passageways barely illuminated by the battle lanterns, emerged from the superstructure and paused while his eyes adjusted to the dark. He made out the gaping hole in the deck, a brief hellish impression, the torn steel girders, the ripped piping, the dangling cables, mangled deckplates, the jet-fuel fires and reflections of fires from the lower decks, and the sight of some two dozen torn bodies. Another distant rumbling explosion shook the deck, the energy of it more a feeling than a sound, the bass of the shock vibrating Sun’s chest, the treble barely registered in ears already abused by the earlier explosion when the missile hit the ship.

  He became aware of the sound of beating helicopter rotors and ran toward the sound, skirting the deep gash in the ship, and found the Hind helicopter hovering over the ship, no longer able to idle on top of the deck because of the steep angle. Sun threw himself toward the door, and men grabbed him as the helicopter lifted off the ship.

  Just as the Hind cleared the deck the huge carrier, now inert scrap metal, began to capsize, its huge form rolling to port, the splash a phosphorescent burst of foam as the superstructure hit the water on the port side. Soon the entire superstructure vanished into the sea and the deck became vertical, exposing the flank of the ship’s hull. For a moment the hole in the hull revealed itself as the ship continued to roll, then stopped, the ship completely upside down, the bow deeper than the stern. After another minute, all that was left of the ship was her four huge brass screws, the blades waving mournfully toward the sky. Finally the stern went down, and the P.L.A Navy aircraft carrier Shaoguan vanished into the rain-swept water of the Go Hai Bay.

  The pilot of the helicopter flew around the bubbling turbulence of water where the ship had once been, but finding no survivors outside the lifeboats and rafts, flew on to the west.

  Tien Tse-Min looked out the window at the foam marking the spot where the aircraft carrier had been.

  “Stupid fool. He should have listened to me. I tried to tell him the submarines would be coming out of the north passage, not the south…”

  In the darkness Tien could not see Sun Yang’s eyes glaring at him.

  * * *

  Forty meters under the dark water of the Go Hai Bay, the strategy room of the Shaoguan was now upside-down and flooded with water. Fleet Commander Chu Hsueh-Fan was still conscious, still aware of the water around him. He had been a strong swimmer all his life, and even now he instinctively had held his breath. The room had toppled quickly, and he remembered taking his last deep breath as the windows shattered and admitted the flood of bay water, the water cold as it smashed him against the starboard bulkhead.

  The room had rolled completely over, leaving the battle lantern on the floor instead of the ceiling, its weak light insistently illuminating Chu’s too real nightmare.

  The ship had gone down so fast that the pressure rise had ruptured Chu’s eardrums. He held onto the hood of what had once been the radar repeater, which now hung from the ceiling. It was almost a welcome event when the crushing grip of sea pressure smashed his ribcage and he gave up his last air to the sea. The battle lantern failed, leaving darkness. Chu lost consciousness, and four minutes later was brain-dead. The corpse of the Shaoguan came to rest on the bottom of the deep passage of the Bohai Haixia Strait. One last explosion sounded from one of the boiler rooms, and then she remained quiet.

  USS SEAWOLF

  Michael Pacino shut his eyes in concentration as Jeb’s announcement came over his headset.

  “Conn, Sonar, multiple aircraft overhead circling our position. If you put up the scope I think you’ll see about five of them. Most of the contacts are helicopters but I’ve got a definite jet in the mix. And that’s not all. The two destroyers are close now and slowing. I’m guessing they’re inside of their weapons range.”

  “Jeb called it. Skipper,” Keebes said. “Firecontrol range to Target Fourteen is twenty-six thousand yards. He’s within SS-N-14 range.”

  “What now. Captain?” Morris asked, an edge in his voice.

  Pacino ignored him.

  “Conn, Sonar, the aircraft overhead are backing off.”

  “Say again?”

  “The aircraft are flying away, they’re bugging out.”

  “That’s good,” Morris said.

  “No,” from Keebes, his face grim. “It means the Udaloy destroyer, Target Fourteen, has decided he’s the senior man and wants to fire the killing weapon. An SS-N-14 will be on the way any minute.”

  Morris stepped close to Pacino, who was staring into space in deep thought. Morris tapped his shoulder.

  “Pacino, what are you gonna do?”

  Michael Pacino blinked and looked at Jack Morris for a long moment, his face blank and hard. When he spoke his tone was that of someone stating the obvious.

  “We surrender.”

  CHAPTER 31

  MONDAY, 13 MAY

  1153 GREENWICH MEAN TIME
<
br />   BOHAI HAIXIA STRAIT

  1953 BEIJING TIME

  Aircraft Commander HuaFeng’s radio headset crackled with the voice of the squadron commander:

  “ALL UNITS, SQUADRON ONE LEADER, THIS IS TO ADVISE YOU THAT THE CARRIER HAS BEEN SUNK BY THE AMERICAN MISSILE. WATCH YOUR FUEL AND BE READY TO DIVERT TO LUSH UN OUT.”

  Chu HuaFeng’s jaw muscles tightened as he listened to the flat tone of the squadron leader marking the sinking of the flagship, and very possibly the death of his father.

  “What’s the status of the Type-12, Lo?”

  “Armed and ready. We have a good estimated depth of the submarine.”

  “Prepare to drop,” Chu said, jockeying the jet directly over the position of the submarine.

  “ALL AIRCRAFT UNITS BOHAI HAIXIA STRAIT, THIS IS UDALOY DESTROYER ZUNYI APPROACHING ESTIMATED POSITION OF ENEMY SUBMARINE SUSPECTED OF FIRING MISSILE ON FLEET FLAGSHIP. WITHDRAW TO A SAFE POSITION NO CLOSER THAN THREE KILOMETERS FROM SUBMARINE POSITION. I SAY AGAIN, WITHDRAW TO A SAFE POSITION NO CLOSER THAN THREE CLICKS FROM THE SUBMARINE. WE HAVE IMMEDIATE SILEX MISSILE LAUNCH PENDING IN THREE ZERO SECONDS, COMMANDER DESTROYER ZUNYI, OUT.”

  “You ready, Lo? Drop on my mark.”

  “Chu, we’ve just been ordered out of here, you need to clear the area—”

  “No. We’re dropping the Type-12.”

  “Chu, the commander of the Zunyi obviously wants a piece of this action. Let him have it. After he fires his damned Silex we’ll come back and let this submarine have a real treat. Come on or we can be taken out by that Silex—”

  “This guy down there may have killed my father. I don’t care about Silexes—”

  “You’d better, he just launched the damned thing and it’s incoming — Chu, don’t be an idiot, get us out of here.”

  Chu, hating it, knew Lo was right. He throttled up the cruise engine and flew the Yak away from the position of the submarine. As the jet flew outside the one-kilometer radius from the sub, the bright flame trail from the Silex missile illuminated the cockpit.

  USS SEAWOLF

  “Conn, Sonar, incoming missile—”

  “All ahead flank!” Pacino shouted.

  The helmsman rang up the flank order. The deck began to tremble with the power of Seawolf’s main engines as the turbines spun at maximum revolutions, accelerating the ship away from the missile launch position.

  The crew held onto consoles and handholds, waiting for the detonation, except for Pacino, who looked from the firecontrol display to the chart to the sonar repeater. The wait for missile impact seemed to stretch on and on. Pacino looked over at Jack Morris.

  Sweat had broken out on the SEAL’s forehead. This wasn’t his game, waiting instead of acting. The ship continued accelerating to 44.8 knots as the reactor plant reached one hundred percent power. Pacino looked back toward the firecontrol geographic display, calculating … With a missile average flight speed of Mach 1, firing range of thirteen nautical miles, the missile flight time would be a little over one minute.

  With Seawolf’s average speed since he accelerated thirty knots, in the one minute of flight time he would have the ship a thousand yards from her position at launch. If sonar had only given him half the flight time’s warning, and if the commander of the Udaloy had fired at his future position instead of his actual position, the ship would perhaps only be two hundred or three hundred yards from the missile impact point, maybe less. In a worst case, only a hundred yards, three hundred feet.

  Now, Pacino thought, would three hundred feet away from a rocket-launched depth charge be enough to save the ship?

  BOHAI HAIXIA STRAIT

  The Silex missile lifted out of the quad launcher of the destroyer Zunyi and accelerated away from the sleek warship, its tailfins moving slightly in response to the onboard processor’s commands. The missile reached apogee and arced back down toward the dark sea, the inertial navigation system aiming the missile for the position of the submarine, not its position at launch but the position it was calculated to be at time of impact. After forty seconds of rocket-powered flight, the rocket motor cut out, exhausted, the explosive bolts in the ring separating the motor from the depth charge below, jettisoning the inert rocket-motor canister.

  The warhead flew on, the surface ahead approaching at Mach 0.95.

  The impact of the water jarred the missile’s warhead.

  The accelerometer tied into the arming circuit felt the negative four g’s of deceleration and completed the circuit to the depth-charge arming-circuit.

  The depth indicator felt the pressure increase of the water as the unit sank, the pressure rising as it fell to ten meters, twenty, thirty … At a depth of forty-five meters the depth-indicator output matched the limits set by the processor’s set point and the detonation circuit software logic interlock was satisfied. The detonator went off, exploding the depth-charge warhead in an underwater fireball. The shock wave of the explosion traveled outward, seeking the hull of a submarine.

  Which it did not take long to find.

  WASHINGTON, D.C. WHITE HOUSE

  The White House basement’s situation room was walled with painted cinder block, full of Formica-topped tables and cheap carpet. An entire wall on the west side was lined with communication and crypto gear. The east wall was filled with television screens, some of them selected to cable feeds from Langley, CIA Headquarters; Ford Meade, home of NSA; or the Pentagon. But two were selected to CNN, since the open media often got stories as quickly as CIA, DIA or NSA. The north wall of the room was reserved for charts and maps, in this case the Go Hai Bay. The south wall had a table filled with stale sandwiches and donuts and another one with a large coffee urn on it. Coffee cups filled the waste cans and cigarette butts were piled high in the ash trays. A door in the east wall led to the situation room’s conference area, lined with curtains, where the President would meet with the National Security Council. The press or the White House photographer often captured the NSC in situation-room meetings, the conference table neat, the curtains pressed and clean. But this morning, the table was strewn with top-secret briefing papers and the curtains were drawn.

  Secretary of Defense Napoleon Ferguson stood in the conference area, chewing on a tasteless donut and washing it down with cold coffee, waiting for President Dawson and Secretary of State/ National Security Advisor Eve Trachea to arrive. He had been in the situation room all night. He had hoped he could catch Dawson’s ear when Trachea wasn’t around, but that seemed more and more difficult in recent months. Trachea was apparently becoming Dawson’s favored advisor, and Ferguson had begun to wonder why the hell he continued in the job. He had begun to feel Trachea’s guiding philosophy was to disagree with anything he wanted, which tempted him to argue for what he did not want and count on Eve to disagree. But now Dawson relied so heavily on Eve Trachea’s guidance that often Department of Defense personnel weren’t invited to meetings. NSC meetings had grown less frequent, as had Cabinet meetings.

  When Dawson and Trachea arrived, Ferguson checked his watch, then sat down. He only took a few moments updating them on the situation in the Go Hai Bay, ending with his request to allow the Reagan’s air wing to overfly the bay and escort the subs out.

  Dawson seemed inclined to go along, but then Trachea spoke up:

  “Mr. President, this course of action would be an all-out attack against the Chinese fleet. Our agreement with your admiral was to use the Seawolf to get out the spy sub. Now there’s pressure to escalate. Why does that sound so familiar. Secretary Ferguson? “Just give us a few troops now,” you say, and later it’s ‘we need to support the troops we already have.” We cannot commit to a killing air war …”

  Ferguson looked from Trachea to Dawson, who clearly was unhappy with his choice.

  “She’s right, Napoleon. I only authorized the use of force for the Seawolf. The country can’t go to war over this …”

  Ferguson pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, spread it on the desk and smoothed it out b
efore handing it to Dawson. Dawson began to read, with Trachea, who sat next to him, reading along with him. The paper was the message transmitted from the Tampa describing the torture the men had undergone when the Chinese had taken the ship. Dawson’s face went pale at first, then changed to the flush of anger.

  “These are the people we’re dealing with,” Ferguson said.

  “Is it possible this is exaggerated, Napoleon?” Dawson asked, the certainty on his face from a moment before seeming to evaporate.

  Ferguson tried to control himself. Somehow he needed to find something to shock this well-meaning but misguided president into unleashing the aircraft.

  But what …

  USS SEAWOLF

  “Chief of the Watch, prepare to emergency blow all main ballast tanks,” Pacino ordered, his eye on the chronometer.

  “What are you doing?” Morris asked.

  “Sonar, Captain, report the splash of the SS-N-14 as soon as you have it.”

  “Captain, Sonar, aye.”

  “We’re going to surface,” Pacino finally told Morris.

  Morris began to protest when the overhead speaker blared out the report from sonar:

  “SPLASH FROM THE MISSILE DIRECTLY ASTERN!”

  “Emergency blow fore and aft!” Pacino shouted.

  “Take her up, ten degree up bubble! All stop!”

  The emergency blow system levers were thrown upward to the BLOW position, forcing ultra-high-pressure bottled air into the ballast tanks of the Seawolf, blowing them dry of sea water. At her already shallow depth, it took only a moment to blow the tanks dry, and the sudden increase in buoyancy forced the ship toward the surface, her nose rocketing upward.

  A split second before Seawolfs sonar dome broached the sea, the depth charge from the Silex missile exploded directly astern of the ship.