SSN

by Tom Clancy

  The following day, as Cheyenne approached the time for coming shallow, sonar reported numerous merchant ship contacts, easily identified by their huge, slowly turning propellers. All were cavitating as if they were empty of cargo, riding high in the water.

  Mack wasn’t about to be careless, however. The Japanese supertankers had drafts of over ninety feet. Cheyenne would be cautious on going to periscope depth.

  Biologics were once again hindering the sonar search. During one of his frequent visits to the sonar room, Mack reminded the sonar operators to conduct careful tonal searches on the bearings of the merchants and the biologics. The operators had already been doing this. They remembered the submarine they had found in the biologics of the South China Sea.

  The TB-16 towed array, having been earlier deployed in exchange for the TB-23, was ordered to short stay as Cheyenne ventured inside the one hundred fathom curve southeast of Taipei. Now at periscope depth, Mack sighted an interesting cluster of smoke over the horizon. There were four different sets of smoke patterns moving north. He ordered Cheyenne to track behind them at periscope depth in the shallow water.

  Hours later, with the sea bottom once again plummeting to over two thousand fathoms, sonar reported diesel lines on the bearings of the smoke being observed. Mack went deep to catch up for a visual, running at full for the next few hours until the water started to shoal again as they approached the one hundred fathom curve of the East China Sea. He knew the contacts could not be Akulas snorkeling, but if they were Kilos Mack wanted to know what was going on.

  Cheyenne got back to periscope depth in one hundred feet of water in time to see the four sources of the now-black smoke. Four Kilos were on the surface, on a course toward the Yellow Sea, the playing grounds of China’s North Sea Fleet. Being on the surface, and apparently heading away from the battle zone of the last few days, they were no threat to Cheyenne, and Mack decided not to go after them.

  Cheyenne had done her part — for now, at least. Mack ordered the floating wire replaced. It had been flaked out in the control room, waiting to be installed.

  As the Kilos continued to the north, Mack watched them go, thinking about battles past and those yet to come. When they had steamed over the horizon, he had Cheyenne turned to the west, back toward her patrol area, and then on to Tsoying Naval Base and some well-deserved rest and recreation.

  15. Special Delivery

  Cheyenne arrived at daybreak, surfacing off Tsoying Naval Base for the slow transit among the seemingly never-ending junks. During his last underway from Tsoying, Mack had remembered the war stories, both from World War II and Vietnam, where the same type of junks were carrying large-caliber machine guns. Mack tried to put that out of his mind. This situation, this entire war, was different, and he didn’t believe that any of these Taiwanese junks posed a threat. Still, he was the commanding officer of Cheyenne, responsible for the safety of each and every man aboard, and he wouldn’t be fully at ease until they were safely away from the western Pacific.

  Just in case, however, he also had the M-14s safely hidden away on the bridge while maneuvering on the surface in these waters. This delighted their newest mess specialist, at least. He had been a maximum-security prison guard, a sharpshooter high in a tower adjoining the prison’s ramparts, before deciding to join the Navy. When the executive officer had learned this, Mack had granted him the guaranteed, cherished opportunity of being one of the maneuvering watch lookouts on the bridge, even before he was qualified in submarines. Being on the bridge of Cheyenne was akin to being back in his tower.

  Mack’s last briefing had not gone well, but he was looking forward to this one. For one thing, it was a patrol debriefing rather than a pre-mission briefing. Even more, though, he wanted an update on several other situations.

  He knew that Columbia and Bremerton were on station to provide additional ASW protection to the Independence Battle Group. In addition, Portsmouth and Pasadena had managed to make it safely to an area south of the Formosa Strait, having transited the Indian Ocean and South China Sea without opposition. Mack figured that was because General Yu was throwing everything at Cheyenne, east of Taiwan. Unfortunately, both SSNs were blind-sided by an unknown submarine contact before they could surface at the one hundred fathom curve. The hostile submarine tonals that both Portsmouth and Pasadena detected during the course of the attack did not correlate to any known submarine in the world, and Mack was very anxious to learn more about it.

  CTF 74 communications personnel had already readdressed each submarine’s CASREPT (casualty report) to Mack. The unknown assailant had inflicted major damage to each submarine’s stern area. Their screws had several blades peened over, and both the TB- 23 and TB-16 towed-array housings were damaged.

  Mack read these messages with conflicting emotions. On the one hand, he was happy that no Pasadena or Portsmouth submariners had been hurt. On the other hand, he was saddened by the damage to the two SSNs — and by what that damage meant to him and his own crew. This had been a tough time for Cheyenne; only through the grace of God was Cheyenne still fully operational.

  Upon Cheyenne’s arrival in the vicinity of McKee, he noted that Pasadena and Portsmouth had moored to port and starboard, respectively, so they would be close for diver repair services. McKee’s cranes were already busy working over both stern areas.

  Screw replacement while still waterborne had become an art, since floating drydocks were not always readily available. Plus, neither Portsmouth nor Pasadena could have made it to Subic Bay. They’d had to be towed into port at Tsoying.

  The successful attacks had to have a tremendous emotional impact on the crews of both Portsmouth and Pasadena, but Mack could see no sign of it. No one appeared demoralized, and they worked as competently and professionally as if nothing had happened. On top of that, both submarines proudly sported their brow covers, telling the world which one was which, ship logos and all. The U.S. submarine force had long supported the policy of not painting hull numbers on the sides of the sail while operating, even in peacetime, so the brow covers provided the public relations gesture.

  Cheyenne was directed to moor outboard of Portsmouth. These instructions came from the McKee CDO over their bridge to bridge radios. When they pulled into position, Mack could see that both Portsmouth’s screw and the damaged portion of the TB- 16 array housing at the starboard stern plane, the side nearest Cheyenne, had already been replaced. These had suffered the least damage of the two sister ships. When final repairs were completed on Portsmouth’s TB-23 towed-array housing on the port side, Cheyenne would swap places with Portsmouth so that the McKee cranes could reach her for reloading weapons.

  Waiting on Portsmouth would delay Mack’s next underway for at least an additional two days, but that was all right with Mack. His officers and crew — and Mack himself — needed some time to catch their breath. Besides, he had an indication of what their mission was going to be; if he was right, Cheyenne would have to wait a bit anyway while the Chinese political situation caught up to them.

  He would have liked to make a speed run up the Taiwan countryside to Taichung. There was a place there, Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, that served the most amazing four-inch-thick steaks. But he couldn’t do that — not now, anyway.

  A number of Portsmouth’s crewmen were exiting the forward escape trunk aft of the sail. Three of them had sound powered phones dangling from their necks. Watching them, Mack could tell that the Portsmouth CDO had already passed the word belowdecks, “All line handlers lay topside. Prepare to take USS Cheyenne alongside to starboard.”

  Mack waved to the Portsmouth CO and CTF 74, who were waiting topside on Portsmouth for him, and left the bridge to go on deck himself. Before doing so, he granted the OOD permission to secure the maneuvering watch when he was ready, and to take on shore power and shut down the reactor.

  As he had been trained, Cheyenne’s OOD took care of Cheyenne’s delicate landing alongside Portsmouth, gently nudging the camel between the two SSNs. Capta
in Mackey was completely satisfied with his OODs’ abilities to maneuver Cheyenne in tight quarters without his having to look over their shoulders; and the maneuvering watch OOD was the best of the best.

  When Cheyenne’s lines had been doubled, the OOD secured the maneuvering watch, passing the word on the 1MC, then ordered over the 7MC, “Maneuvering, conn, take on shore power and shut down the reactor.” His last official maneuvering watch duties completed, the OOD laid below to the control room to turn over the officer of the deck duties to the in-port duty officer, Cheyenne’s CDO for the rest of the day.

  Mack had left the ship as soon as the brow was over, and was heading for McKee officer country. He expected to meet up with the COs of Pasadena and Portsmouth and to hear the details of the attacks.

  Once aboard, but before reaching officer country, Mack expressed his pleasure to CTF 74 and the Portsmouth captain at hearing that all hands were uninjured. That was all he or anyone else said about the attacks until they were within the privacy of the McKee captain’s stateroom. Mack was a big believer in keeping his crew informed, but that didn’t mean he wanted to discuss what could be highly classified information in front of unauthorized personnel.

  The chief mess specialist on duty in the McKee captain’s stateroom departed as soon as Mack and the others arrived. When he had gone, Mack exchanged greetings with the captain of Pasadena and again expressed his pleasure at the lack of injury aboard.

  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 di
mmed 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 continued 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.