Kilo Class (1998)

by Patrick Robinson

  The Hai Lung was holding a course to the right-hand side of the mile-wide deep-water channel, and Boomer was not surprised when the Kilo headed resolutely after her down the Baie du Repos. He took another fast look through the periscope as he came under Pointe Bras, and again the Taiwanese lookouts were unable to spot him…in contrast to Cuttyhunk, which they had spotted.

  Eight miles down the ever-narrowing dead-end fjord, with a freezing south wind whipping the snow off the peak of Mount Richards, and pawing the water out in front of Columbia, the Hai Lung suddenly stopped snorkeling and went silent. Boomer cursed under his breath and raised the periscope just as the Taiwanese Sea Tiger burst out of the water, now only three miles distant, and continued her journey on the surface.

  The Kilo appeared to stop but remained dived at the entrance to the last narrow three-mile section of the fjord. Boomer stayed two miles north of the Kilo but could still see right down the length of the channel. He decided to risk another furtive look, always aware he just might be observed. And out in front he could see the Hai Lung head off to the right. He could also see two old rusting, gray buoys spaced about four hundred feet apart off the rocky western lee shore. The sonar chief was reporting the unmistakable signature of a pressurized water reactor at power…and it was echoing down the fjord.

  He guessed from right between the two buoys, moored to which, under the water, there had to be a nuclear submarine.

  “That’s their power source,” muttered the Commander. “Where’s the goddamned factory, or whatever it is?” And then in the distance he could see the Hai Lung slow almost to a complete stop, drifting in toward the shore. From where Boomer watched, it looked like the submarine would collide with the cliff. But very slowly, without any sign of panic, the submarine just vanished, slipping behind what Boomer realized must be some kind of overhang, or steel curtain. He stared at the high granite cliffs which lined the shore and called out for a depth check.

  “Three hundred and sixty feet, sir.”

  “That’s what we came for, guys,” said Commander Dunning. “Right over there, right-hand bank…one mile on the chart from the end of Baie du Repos.” Boomer pronounced it to rhyme with rip off.

  “Good job everyone. Let’s get the hell outta here—real careful, real slow, and back the way we came to Choiseul.”

  Columbia headed once more for the big bay at the head of the Kerguelen fjords, leaving the Kilo to do its worst. It was 1915 and still bright, but windy along the surface of the water as they approached the mouth of Baie Blanche. Boomer proposed to hold here for an hour, and then head out into clear seas to access the satellite and send a signal to SUBLANT, notifying them that he had located the Taiwanese factory at 49.65N 69.20E at the far end of the Baie du Repos. He also proposed to inform headquarters that he had observed the Hai Lung docking there, and that the facility was being powered by a nuclear reactor moored out in the bay. There was, furthermore, a Russian-built Granay-Type Kilo patrolling in nearly four hundred feet of water close to the factory.

  Boomer put Columbia into a holding pattern and assessed that it would take the Chinese boat about five minutes to accomplish its plain and obvious task.

  As educated guesses go, that one was not bad. At 1955, Columbia’s sonar picked up a succession of almighty explosions as the Kilo sent in a barrage of torpedoes splitting asunder the rock in which the Taiwan factory was built, obliterating the facility, the Hai Lung, and the French nuclear-powered Rubis Class submarine. The underwater bombardment lasted ten minutes.

  What the American sonar men could not have known was that the Kilo had immediately surfaced afterward and fired six successive SA-N-8 SAM missiles from the launcher at the top of the fin. From point-blank range. Straight through the steel curtain, which had obscured the factory for so long. All of the weapons and launchers had been provided by the Russians.

  On board Columbia the sonar operators were incredulous at the length of time the Chinese Captain had spent blasting away at the cliff. The Americans would have expected to achieve a similar result in less than a minute. But Captain Kan was not just a driven man, he was a fanatic, with a psychopathic edge to his mind. He enjoyed killing, and the instinct had been suppressed for too long.

  Now, with every thundering explosion, he struck a blow on behalf of his late mentor Madame Mao and his Commander in Chief against the traitorous Taiwanese and their American allies. Every hit was one back for the Kilos they had lost. Every echo, an echo from the rising military dragon of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy. Kan smiled the uneasy, slightly crazed smile of the psychotic as his missiles wiped out every last possibility of life in Taiwan’s secret nuclear plant.

  “Shit,” growled Boomer Dunning. “These crazy bastards really mean it. Guess that’s sayonara Taiwan…back to the drawing board, right?”

  “What now, sir?” asked Lieutenant Commander Krause. “You wanna head back to open water, update the signal to SUBLANT? I got a draft right here. We sure found what they were looking for.”

  “Yes, Mike…I want to get out of these enclosed waters now. If I’m not mistaken the Kilo is going to be coming right through here in less than a couple of hours. We don’t want to get caught with our shorts down. Specially with the mood that fucking Chinaman’s in!”

  Columbia turned away, sliding below the surface of the calm, dark waters. There was moonlight again tonight, and through the periscope Boomer could see the shape of Point Pringle and Cape Feron, the huge black granite cliffs between them. They increased speed to eight knots, and Boomer ordered the Watch Officer to make a holding point between Îles Leygues and Cap D’Estaing.

  It had been a long day for the crew and especially the officers, few of whom had enjoyed much of a break since the late Hai Lung first came sneaking into range the previous evening.

  But Boomer did not feel sociable. He delayed sending his signal and sat alone in his cabin and sipped coffee. He wished to hell his Kansan buddy Bill had been there—would have liked a chat with a friend. But that was not a luxury to which he had access. Instead he took out the signal sent to him by the CNO and stared again at the coded zinger from the NSA. “Well, I sure know what he thinks of me right now,” he muttered.

  The clock ticked on. At 2140 he was still pondering the draft signal to SUBLANT. Columbia ran her familiar slow racetrack pattern, awaiting a decision from the Commanding Officer.

  At 2200, Boomer was back in the control center, just as the sonar operator picked up the Kilo, running due north at eight knots, snorkeling away from the scene of its crime, bound for the nearest open water, and eventually Canton.

  “Captain…Conn…Kilo bears 180, sir…gotta be heading toward…range six miles. She snorkels now, sir. Good contact on ghoster. I’m opening off track to the northwest. Track twenty-eight.”

  “Captain, aye.”

  Boomer ran his hands through his hair and returned briefly to his cabin. Four minutes later he went back to the control center. He hesitated for a few seconds.

  He then took his entire career in his hands and snapped, “I intend to sink the Kilo as soon as he’s clear of the shoal water. Estimate one hour. Ready one and two tubes…forty-eight ADCAP.”

  Lieutenant Commander Curran, the Combat Systems Officer, never blinked and strode back into the sonar room.

  Deep in the ship the torpedomen prepared two weapons as ordered.

  Fifteen minutes later the sonar room called, “Track twenty-eight bearing 178, sir. Range six miles.”

  Down in the torpedo bay, weapons were loaded into both number one and number two tubes in case of a malfunction. The Guidance Officer was at the screen murmuring into his pencil-slim microphone while Jerry Curran watched the sonar with Bobby Ramsden and the Chief. It seemed everyone was on duty right now. Lieutenant Commander Krause had the conn as the CO concentrated on the task that might very well see him court-martialed.

  The time inched by and the black hull of the Chinese Kilo pressed on through the water, running south of the American nuclear tro
ubleshooter. The Columbia sonar team checked her approach, calling out the details, softly now, in the high-tension calm that grips a submarine before an attack. Boomer Dunning glanced again at the screen…then he ordered:

  “STAND BY ONE…Stand by to fire by sonar.”

  “Bearing 120…range five thousand yards…computer set.”

  “SHOOT!” ordered Commander Dunning. Everyone in the area heard the thud as the heavyweight Mk 48 swept away. The faintest shiver ran through the submarine as the torpedo set off.

  “Weapon under guidance, sir.”

  Boomer Dunning ordered the weapon armed, and another minute passed. Columbia seemed to hold her breath. There was just the hum of the air in the ventilation, and outside the hull the only sound was at the approximate level of a computer or word processor.

  Fifteen hundred yards away the Mk 48 was searching passively as it ran fast through the water at thirty knots.

  Now, eight minutes after firing, the American Mk 48 picked up the Kilo and switched to active homing as it was released by Columbia. The torpedo accelerated and came ripping through the water straight at Captain Kan’s submarine. Kan was an experienced commanding officer, but his ship was full of elation, their guard was temporarily down, and Kan was still giggling nervously at what he had done. Some of his officers were concerned at his demeanor, and they were in no way prepared for an attack. K-10 was at periscope depth, and the Mk 48 was only three hundred yards away when a cry came out of the sonar room.

  “TORPEDO…TORPEDO…TORPEDO…RED ONE SEVEN FIVE…ACTIVE TRANSMISSIONS…INTERVAL 500 YARDS…BEARING STEADY…”

  Too close and too late. The pressure hull of the Kilo split as the big American torpedo blasted its way into her port quarter. The Kilo was known to be able to absorb a pretty good hit, but not one from a weapon like this. Boomer Dunning’s perfectly aimed Mk 48 blew a gaping six-foot hole in K-10 at exactly 1921 on the evening of November 18. Captain Kan died, still grinning at his own malevolence; there were no survivors and no witnesses. No one lived longer than thirty seconds after impact.

  The entire crew was either drowned or slammed to pieces against machinery by the onrushing water, which roared through the compartments, crushing bulkheads one by one as she went down. The submarine, upon which the far-distant Admiral Zhang Yushu had staked so much, sank slowly to the floor of the Southern Indian Ocean in two thousand feet of freezing water. No one would ever quite know where she rested. Or indeed what had happened to her. Though there would be those in Moscow and Beijing who might make educated guesses.

  A half hour later, Commander Dunning sat down to write his signal yet again. He kept it short: “Russian-built Kilo arrived Kerguelen 172224NOV. Hai Lung arrived 182148NOV. Believe Kilo destroyed Taiwan factory we located 49.65N 69.20E one mile from dead-end Baie du Repos. In accordance with my original orders, issued 011200AUG03, I sank K-10 at 2221 on 19 NOV, off northern KERGUELEN—Commander Cale Dunning, USS Columbia.”

  It was 1350 in SUBLANT when Boomer’s signal arrived. Admirals Mulligan and Dixon were in a meeting awaiting news from Kerguelen, and they contacted Arnold Morgan immediately, requesting assistance in drafting the response.

  Columbia’s commanding officer read the reply at 2315 local: “Not a bad shot…for a D-A SOB…Morgan.”

  The message was addressed to him, direct from the office of the President’s National Security Adviser in the White House. And it started with the one phrase Boomer thought was lost to him forever: “Personal for Captain Cale Dunning, Commanding Officer, USS Columbia.”

  EPILOGUE

  Cape Cod Times, November 25, 2004

  Port-Aux-Français, Kerguelen. November 24. The mystery of the vanished Woods Hole research ship, Cuttyhunk, was finally solved last night when six of the missing scientists were rescued by meteorologists at this remote French weather station.

  The group, attempting to walk across the ninety-mile-long Antarctic island, were picked up by helicopter on the shore of the Baie de la Marne after their radio transmissions were received by one of the station’s fourteen electronic masts.

  They had been missing for twenty-three months and are believed to be the only survivors of the twenty-nine-strong expedition, which is thought to have come under attack on December 17, 2002, at the entrance to one of the island’s northwestern fjords.

  Last night none of the group was prepared to give an interview, save to confirm that Cuttyhunk is still floating, damaged by gunfire but moored in deep water in a sheltered cove at the end of the Baie du Repos on the northern end of the island. One of them stated the research ship had been their prison.

  Staff at the weather station last night confirmed the names of the six scientists: Professor Henry Townsend, Dr. Roger Deakins, Arnold Barry, William Coburg, Anne Dempster, and Dr. Kate Goodwin.

  Tonight, the Times’s syndicated columnist Frederick J. Goodwin, a cousin of one of the rescued scientists, is flying to the US Base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, to join a Navy frigate going south to evacuate the group from the almost inaccessible island. Mr. Goodwin, who has campaigned for many months to instigate a search on Kerguelen, has been granted exclusive rights to talk to the scientists.

  Their amazing story will be transmitted from the frigate to the Cape Cod Times and will begin in these pages next week.