by Clancy, Tom
Once seated around the table, with cups of fresh coffee at their elbows, the COs of Pasadena and Portsmouth attempted to explain what had happened, but there simply wasn’t much hard information they could provide. The first clue either of them had that they were in trouble was when they found torpedoes in their baffles. In both cases, neither of the torpedoes had gone active until it was too late, and they had detonated at a standoff distance. The skimpy bit of sonar data that had been collected over their towed arrays was only enough to determine that tonals from their attacker could not be correlated to any specifically known submarine.
Mack wasn’t surprised at that. The standard tonals that correlated to nearly every Russian, Chinese, and Third World country ships were little help in differentiating submarine classes. Plus there was no screw-blade information.
Mack said, “Sounds like what saved you was a fire-control placement or detonation planning error. That would fit with Cheyenne’s recent experiences: newly built submarines with newly trained Chinese crews sent to attack experienced U.S. submarine crews.”
CTF 74 agreed with Mack’s assessment, but he had a further question: If the crews were so inexperienced, how did they detect Pasadena and Portsmouth? And in an aspect that allowed passive torpedoes to home undetected, for a while at least, on what must have been a reasonably good solution.
“I hate to suggest it, Admiral,” Mack said, “but maybe someone needs to go back and re-evaluate our position on non-acoustic ASW. Were their any unusual Chinese or Russian aircraft in the area around that time?”
It was a sobering thought for every officer in the room, and the CTF 74 admiral promised to get right on it. He would see what he could learn, and hoped to have an answer before any of his SSNs put to sea.
Mack hoped the admiral could turn something up. He knew that the submarines would not wait for an answer before returning to their patrols. There was a threat out there, and Cheyenne and her sister ships would have to deal with it, whether they could put a name to it or not.
While Mack was at his debriefing, discussing Cheyenne’s recent patrols and learning what little information was available about this new threat, his officers and crew were overseeing Cheyenne’s refit.
The sonar men on Pasadena and Portsmouth brought their last sonar tapes leading up to and following the torpedo explosions. These tapes were fed to Cheyenne’s sonar consoles and her BSY-1 computer consoles, while the sounds were played over both the sonar room and control room speakers. This was not virtual reality. It was in situ reality, stark reality of a new foe—a chilling new foe.
Cheyenne’s sonar operators and BSY-1 operators put seven different computer consoles, four in sonar and the three in control, to work analyzing the sparse data. They played the tapes over and over again, enhancing them with the computers each time and then starting the cycle again. They were even able to merge the tapes from both SSNs, a feat made possible by the accurate timekeeping systems on U.S. submarines, but they weren’t able to learn anything useful.
Then they slowed the tapes, and got their first break. When the tapes were slowed enough to produce subharmonics of the main electrical frequency line, the chief sonar man noted a warbling that could not be attributed to slowed tapes, or even merged tapes. The chief sonar man had never heard that particular sound before, but he knew what it was: the sound of a previously unknown submarine. More than that, he knew that it had to be an anomaly of the new submarine’s signature, which was masked at higher frequencies, even at the base frequency.
In order to be certain, the chief sonar man, along with Cheyenne’s executive officer and the sonar men from Pasadena and Portsmouth, applied this same technique to previous Cheyenne recordings of other Chinese and Russian submarines. They found no matches. This anomaly was new, and it was unique. Even better, it was a low, low frequency, something the TB-23 thin line array would thrive on if they let it search that low.
When Mack was informed of the anomaly, he immediately dubbed it, “a slowly varying constant.” He’d picked up that term in a “pure math” class, and it seemed more than appropriate for this war with the Chinese.
It was several days before the McKee captain notified Mack that the next war patrol briefing would again be at the naval base headquarters. Mack had expected that. He had been alerted earlier that Cheyenne had been selected as the obvious choice for this next—and hopefully last—mission: to move President Jiang into Zhanjiang Naval Base.
Prior to the briefing, Cheyenne was moved next to McKee as planned, except that she didn’t actually swap locations with Portsmouth. CTF 74 had decided to move Portsmouth outboard of Pasadena on the other side so that there would be one less move when Cheyenne was finally loaded and ready to sail for southern China with President Jiang aboard.
With all Cheyenne’s preparations completed prior to this briefing, Mack decided to make it a nearly “all hands” evolution. All officers definitely needed to be there, and with the promise of information on the new foe lurking out there, somewhere, waiting to take on the famous Cheyenne, the entire sonar division also needed to be present. And with President Jiang and his two heavies taking up berthing space, Mack invited the COB to meet the space intruders.
The chief of the boat also needed to figure out how to keep the president and his heavies out of sensitive spaces. Being on good terms with them would be easier than trying to force the cooperation of the heavies, especially since no one aboard Cheyenne could match the sheer bulk of Jiang’s bodyguards. The COB already had formulated an initial plan: lots of food, desserts, and movies in the “goat locker.”
Mack had informed the executive officer to take care of the president himself. The executive officer’s stateroom had two bunks, and so he would share his space with the Chinese leader. The second bunk had been used by the NSG OIC, but he and his detachment had been off-loaded prior to this last trip, acting as the couriers to Yokosuka with Mack’s latest war patrol report under their guard.
It had been difficult for Mack to agree for the detachment to be transferred prior to this patrol. He was concerned about possible non-acoustic ASW aircraft, and had agreed mostly because he knew that if Cheyenne remained fully submerged for the entire transit they wouldn’t be able to detect ESM contacts anyway. But he did add Cheyenne’s ESM operators to the list of briefing attendees, just in case.
The briefing turned out to be one for the books. It started off dramatically when the briefing officer opened the meeting with, “Captain Mackey, our commander-in-chief sends his greetings.” Then he dimmed the lights and nodded for the video tape recorder to be started.
Mack had half expected the briefing officer to be kidding, or to be referring to someone else, but he wasn’t. As Mack and the assembled officers looked on, the face of the President of the United States filled the screen.
“Captain Mackey,” the President said, speaking from the Oval Office, “the State Department will soon release a report of an impending summit between me, President Jiang Zemin, and Premier Li Peng in Beijing. Premier Li Peng is expected to relinquish his claim to power at that time.” He paused for a moment before going on. “However,” he said, “in all fairness to Cheyenne, no mention of your involvement in this historic event is authorized, at least not until you have successfully delivered the rightful Chinese president to Zhanjiang Naval Base.” He paused again to allow his words to sink in. “Captain Mackey, the First Lady and I would like to wish you Godspeed, fair winds, and a following sea. Good luck to you, and to the heroic men of USS Cheyenne.”
The briefing officer ordered the monitor turned off and the room lights brightened, but few people noticed. Everyone was talking, with an excitement that was rare even in wartime mission briefings.
The President hadn’t really said anything that they didn’t know about, but the simple fact of the President talking directly to them added to the importance of Cheyenne’s mission.
It took several minutes for the room to quiet down. When it did, the briefing officer co
ntinued with his presentation. And it didn’t take him long to drop another bombshell.
The decommissioning of USS Los Angeles (SSN 688) had been canceled, the briefing officer said, and Los Angeles was nearly on station south of the Formosa Strait. There had been no traffic addressed to Cheyenne concerning Los Angeles, but the CTF 74 admiral confirmed her presence. Her mission, pending routing instructions that would prevent mutual interference between Los Angeles and Cayenne, was to assist in escorting Cheyenne and President Jiang.
That was a serious mistake, Mack thought, but he kept his mouth shut. Los Angeles was the first of the 688s. He’d heard that her decommissioning had been postponed due to a lack of funds, but he didn’t know that she still had enough crew left to even get under way, much less to fight the Chinese.
On top of that, she had the “old” fire-control and sonar systems and no TB-23 thin line array, which meant that Los Angeles had little chance to detect the new Chinese submarine. Mack was afraid she would be sunk before Cheyenne even got under way.
This briefing was turning out even worse than the last one, Mack thought.
The briefing officer informed him that a Chinese North Sea Fleet Alfa class SSN, the Chung, would also escort Cheyenne and President Jiang. Chung’s orders were to stay to the west and eventually to the north of a specially constructed track from the Formosa Strait to Zhanjiang Naval Base, and to proceed at an SOA (speed of advance) of six knots.
Outwardly, Mack didn’t react at all, but he couldn’t help thinking how quickly that Alfa would disappear at the hands of the hostile submarine. That didn’t really matter, of course, he realized, not as long as Chung stayed out of Cheyenne’s sector as ordered. In fact, it might help to flush out the new foe, whatever it was.
Mack would trade the Alfa for the new enemy submarine with pleasure. But Los Angeles, that was a different story. The two 688s could talk to and protect each other, but that would also be difficult at best.
When the room once again quieted, the briefing officer finally got to the subject that Mack and his officers were most interested in: the new threat, and what it might be.
The briefing officer said that, according to the CIA, the unknown submarine was believed to be the culmination of recent Sino-Soviet research and development into a next generation nuclear attack submarine. Deployment of the Mao, as they believed it to be called, had not been expected anytime soon. But now, with the damage inflicted upon Portsmouth and Pasadena and the evidence of the sonar tapes, it was obvious even to the CIA and naval intelligence that the Mao was out there waiting for Cheyenne.
When it looked like the briefing officer had no more to say on the subject, Mack asked the other question he desperately needed answered. “What about the non-acoustic ASW?”
“Sorry, Captain,” the briefing officer said, obviously prepared for the question. “CIA still does not believe that an aircraft can use lasers to detect submerged objects and to communicate with their submarines.”
Mack hated that answer. He hated it because the answer wasn’t, “The CIA checked this out and found no evidence.” Instead, the answer was simply, “The CIA cannot believe this, and so they won’t check it out.”
Changing the subject, Mack asked if either the Hainan class mine layer or the mine-laying Romeo that Cheyenne sank last patrol could have laid mines near Zhanjiang Naval Base before they proceeded up the coast from Mandarin Bay. The briefing officer answered that Chinese minesweepers had scoured the area and found none.
The other COs in the room seemed satisfied with that answer, but Mack wasn’t so sure. He would actually have felt better if the minesweeper had found some mines and disposed of them. Either way, though, he knew that there might be mines strewn along the last leg of Cheyenne’s route. They would simply have to take appropriate precautions, either with MIDAS or an off-board sensor. If, that is, any Mk 48s remained by the time they entered that last hazard zone, the shallow-water leg en route to the Zhanjiang Naval Base.
The pre-mission briefing came to an end shortly after this, but Mack soon found that there were more unpleasant surprises waiting for him. When he returned to Cheyenne he learned from the combat systems officer that McKee, on the orders of CTF 74, was still restricting his torpedo loads, even though, to date, Portsmouth and Pasadena had expended none.
He thought of asking for a few from Pasadena and Portsmouth, since they wouldn’t be putting out to sea anytime soon, but he didn’t want to get into interfleet hassles. Once again only twenty Mk 48 ADCAP were on board Cheyenne.
Three hours after the briefing was over, President Jiang and his two bodyguards were led belowdecks by the executive officer and the COB. Mack could have allowed them to remain on the bridge, but he didn’t. It was too crowded already, and he was still angry over the loadout.
Cheyenne’s underway was uneventful, and the M-14s Mack had on the bridge stayed safely in their racks.
After submerging, Mack ordered the OOD to stream the floating wire. He also ordered the TB-23 towed array deployed far enough to ensure that the 960 feet of hydrophones were clear of their housing. After that, Cheyenne headed for the three hundred-fathom curve, which she would follow at the established six-knot SOA until she was due east of the Zhanjiang Naval Base. Then she would have nearly three hundred miles of westerly transit across the widest part of the continental shelf, all in less than one hundred fathoms of water.
The Chinese Alfa, Chung, was presumably in board of Cheyenne, where it belonged, more than 20,000 yards away according to its sector restrictions. And Los Angeles was outboard in the deeper water to the east, where she would remain until the turn to the west. Then Los Angeles would watch Cheyenne’s 180, as President Jiang had quipped earlier.
Mack’s biggest concern was the Mao. The TB-23 was their best bet for detecting it, and if they didn’t encounter the unknown submarine before they had to switch to the TB-16 towed array, they could be in trouble.
Cheyenne, Los Angeles, and Chung heard nothing but fishing fleet and other merchant traffic. All three captains were relying on their contingent to do what and when they were supposed to do.
A day and a half later, as Cheyenne was nearing the turning point, sonar reported several conformal-array submarine contacts to the northwest, two at high speed on converging bearings. Mack manned battle stations and launched one of several SSIXS buoys, with pre-arranged reports just in case something like this were to happen. That was the safest way to communicate events to Los Angeles—SSIXS to CTF 74 for turnaround to Los Angeles for copying on her floating wire.
By the time battle stations were manned, sonar had four sonar contacts to the northwest. Only one was Chung, as determined by the Alfa tonals. The other three were Akulas. Chung was also communicating by underwater telephone, which was being answered by only one Akula.
Without a Chinese linguist aboard—or a Russian one for that matter—Mack could only guess at what was being said, but he assumed that the Chung captain was trying to talk himself out of a bad situation. The Chinese captain’s answer came in the form of three torpedoes, one from each of the three Akulas, which were tracking on the bearing of the still-squawking Chung.
Mack shook his head. The Chung captain had not been inept. He had been ambushed by three of his fellow commanding officers, who were under the command of the still-at-large General Yu Quili, and he had done the best he could against them. His talking with the Akulas on the underwater telephone may have given his position away, but it also gave his Alfa submarine fire control system the ranges and bearings of the Chinese bullies.
He managed to launch two of his ET-80 torpedoes before Chung was hit by three 65cm torpedoes.
The Cheyenne control room and sonar room were in total silence as they witnessed the carnage. They had seen their share of enemy ships destroyed, but there was something about the spectacle of Chinese submariners killing themselves that made this especially poignant.
Five explosions and four submarines had been involved in the fray, and only one A
kula survived it unscathed.
After the explosions, Mack turned to the south to head for the five hundred-fathom curve, where he could fully deploy the TB-23. He hoped that the rapid turnaround promised by the CTF 74 communicators had happened by now. The SSIXS buoy instructions were for moving haven changes to the south for both Cheyenne and Los Angeles.
Los Angeles had received the instructions and had executed the turn as directed, not knowing that she was heading toward the Mao. The Sino-Russian sub was laying in wait thirty degrees to the left of her track, expecting the attacking Akulas to cause Cheyenne to turn away to the south.
The Mao captain did not know that Los Angeles was in the area, so when the Mao gained sonar contact he assumed that it was Cheyenne and the notorious Captain Mackey. Within minutes, four Mao torpedoes were heading in a depth and azimuth spread at the target.
Los Angeles got off a snap shot. Then she launched countermeasures, turned away toward deep water, and increased speed to flank en route to one thousand feet.
The Mao captain had expected this. He had read the reports from the few surviving commanding officers who had tangled with Mack, and he felt he knew the American’s tactics. Even before Los Angeles launched countermeasures, the Mao captain was swinging his submarine to starboard. As soon as his ship was in position, he launched four more torpedoes, leading the U.S. SSN perfectly.
He had sprung his trap exactly as he’d hoped, and if the ship he had targeted had, indeed, been Cheyenne, Mack’s ship would have been destroyed. As it was, the Mao captain’s ambush became his own deathtrap.
Cheyenne’s sonars had picked up the first set of torpedo launches from the Mao. The noise from the second set finalized the range, bearing and course. Mack launched the two Mk 48s from tubes one and two, and followed them with the two from tubes three and four.