Terminal Run

by Michael Dimercurio

  waves. The lieutenant shivered as he engaged the computer pilot. The Mark 17 would wait at this depth, with a small buoyant wire antenna drifting upward to the surface to keep them in touch with the trawler and allow the computer to target the larger, swifter submarine during the upcoming rendezvous.

  As soon as the towed array had made a tentative detection, the trawler captain had sent an E-mail message requesting transmission repair parts for his starboard diesel. Within five minutes an ELF transmission, Extremely Low Frequency, was made from the huge radio towers in Tsing Tao, White China, transmitting only two characters, the letters A and X. ELF radio waves were clumsy and nearly useless. It took ten minutes to transmit a single alphanumeric character and an enormous amount of transmitting power. But they did one thing no other electromagnetic signal could—they penetrated deeply into the ocean. The letter A began to transmit, the waves of the ELF signal carrying past the Mark 17 HTUV and its occupants to the depths of the sea, eventually striking the ELF loop antenna of the United States submarine Leopard, the loop mast retracted in the sail. The Leopard was steaming at 546 feet keel depth on course one seven five at fifteen knots, much too deep and fast for the Mark 17 to intercept her. But as the submarine’s radio equipment began to realize that the letter A was the first character of that day’s ELF call sign an alarm rang in the radio room and in the control room. By the time the letter X began to transmit, a phone call was placed from the control room to the captain’s stateroom, and George Dixon, Commander, U.S. Navy, was awakened with the word that there was a communications emergency, and that Leopard had been urgently called to periscope depth.

  Three minutes later the submarine slowed and climbed above the thermal layer, where the Mark 17’s onboard sensors, guided by the clues from the trawler, made the detection of the submarine. The computer accelerated the underwater vehicle at maximum revolutions to intercept the American submarine. By the time Leopard slowed to five knots, ascended to

  periscope depth, and put her radio antenna into the sky, the Mark 17 was locked on in hot pursuit. The computer drove the HTUV to the aft hatch of the Leopard, then vacuum-pumped itself fast to the hull. It would ruin two patches of rubber anechoic coating, but it was vital that the underwater vehicle not fall off the hull in the slipstream of the water flow and get sucked into the submarine’s propulsor. Five knots sounded slow, but to the lieutenant and the chief, fighting five knots of current could exhaust a man in minutes. The chief withdrew a handheld tool from the vehicle, trailing a power cord from the cockpit. He aimed and fired, a harpoon like device flashing out and hitting the hull, a cable attached. The chief made the cable fast to the vehicle, then aimed again and fired a second cable. He and the lieutenant hooked their safety harnesses to both cables and made their way against the current to the hatch, each carrying several heavier tools with hoses leading back to the vehicle. It took the chief five minutes to center the hatch salvage tool over the hatch and secure it to the hull. While he worked on that, the lieutenant placed a similar tool over a salvage valve connection to the left of the hatch and another one to the right. The salvage valves would flood the interior of the escape trunk and vent out the trapped air, allowing them to open the outer hatch, assuming the ship’s crew didn’t fight them from inside. But this would happen so fast no one would expect the invasion. The chief’s salvage tool was engaged over the main salvage connection above the hatch, and it spun the hatch ring open in less than thirty seconds, unlocking the submarine’s upper hatch.

  The second tool fit under the hatch ring and lifted the heavy metal upward, resisting the powerful force of the current generated by the ship’s motion. When the hatch was up, the lieutenant lowered his legs into the escape trunk below, then disconnected his safety harnesses from the dual cables. Just before he vanished into the hatch he tapped farewell on the chief’s foot, then crouched down into the airlock.

  The lieutenant reached above to help pull the hatch down, the hydraulic cylinders above doing most of the work until the

  hatch was fully shut. He spun the hatch wheel, shutting the massive hatch. He was inside the submarine, although in a dark flooded cubbyhole of it. While he found the interior light switch, the chief was busy outside on the hull withdrawing the three salvage tool operators and the two hatch hydraulic cylinders and stowing them in the vehicle, then cutting the cables. The chief would be divorcing from the submarine within two minutes, then driving clear before the submarine could dive deep again. The chief would return to the trawler, leaving the lieutenant inside the submarine.

  The lieutenant found the escape hatch drain valve, and opened it to drain the flooded escape trunk to the bilges of the submarine far below. A second vent valve opened the trunk to the atmosphere inside the ship. The water level fell below his face, and he took off his mask, yawning to clear his eardrums as the pressure eased. It only took another half minute for the water to drain completely. He spun the lower hatch wheel operator, the metal dogs coming off the hatch ring. He braced himself and pulled open the hatch. The bright light from the ship’s interior nearly blinded him. The hatch’s spring mechanism made it easy to pull it up into the escape trunk. A hot cloud of steaming air wafted into his face, for the escape trunk they had chosen was located over the engine room The noise of the ship was much louder than he expected, the turbines screaming like jet engines. He had expected a nuclear submarine to be quiet, but this sounded like the third level of hell. The hatch latched in the open position, allowing him to put his wet suit shoes on the upper rungs of the ladder. He wondered for a moment if anyone would even know he’d invaded the submarine when he heard three clicks. With his feet finally on the solid deckplates, he turned slowly to face three Beretta 9mm pistols, all of them pointed at his eyeballs, seeming bigger than cannons.

  He raised his hands in surrender, his voice steady as he announced himself. “Lieutenant Brett Oliver, United States Navy, on temporary duty to the National Security Agency. Here by

  the order of Vice Admiral McKee, Commander Unified Submarine Command. Request permission to come aboard.”

  The heavy paw of a machinist mate grabbed him by the neck and dragged him all the way to the middle level of the forward compartment, to the captain’s stateroom.

  Captain George Dixon glared angrily at the arrested intruder, who sat at the captain’s conference table in a borrowed ill-fitting submarine poopy-suit.

  “So let me see if I got this straight, Lieutenant, if that’s what you really are,” Dixon said in a hostile South Carolina drawl. “You invade my ship and then tell me my entire communications suite is non secure and compromised, and I can’t use it to talk to anybody. And that means no one from USubCom can talk to me. And that you’ve got a handheld computer gizmo that will bypass the battle networks to allow me to talk to the National Military Command Center, except that the messages are passed by Internet Email.”

  “To be verified by the SAS sealed authenticators, Captain,” Oliver said. “There’s no way that SAS could ever be compromised. The computers and SAS are the bypass to the Navy Tactical Data System, which is now hardwired to the Chinese, and maybe the Indians.”

  “Why shouldn’t I have you arrested as a foreign conspirator?”

  “Why don’t you call for the SAS packet and verify the Email message to be authentic?”

  Dixon stroked his waxed handlebar mustache with two fingers. He was young for submarine command, a six-foot-one inch dark-haired man, but he had served early in his career with David Kane, who had rocketed to flag rank, and Kane’s recommendations made Dixon’s obstacles vanish before him. Dixon had gone from being a junior officer on a 6881 sub to a Seawolf-class as navigator during the Japanese War, then as XO of another 6881 during the East China Sea war, and finally named prospective commanding officer of the new construction Virginia-class submarine Leopard, which had finished her

  sea trials early and been loaded out and sent to sea on the emergency special operation to the Bo Hai Bay. During Dixon’s hectic operationa
l life, he had managed to fall in love with a Charleston beauty, pursue her, marry her, build a house, and have two children, both boys with the fine blond hair and blue eyes of their mother, both with the energy and enthusiasm and penetrating logic of their father, the boys and their mother a hemisphere and a half year away. As a reminder of them, he carried a gold coin his wife had given him for their first anniversary, kept perpetually in his left coverall pocket. At times when he was uncertain, like now, he liked to take it out and feel its heavy weight in his hand.

  Dixon raised the phone to the conn, pressing the buzzer. “Officer of the Deck, send the navigator and communicator to my stateroom, and get the executive officer from her workout in the torpedo room.”

  While they waited, Dixon checked the message again. The ship was still at periscope depth, rolling in the waves while the Chinese battle group the first one to sortie from the Port Arthur piers, sailed far over the horizon, getting further away every minute. A knock came at the door.

  “Come in,” the captain called.

  “Nav and Commo here, sir,” MacGregor, the redheaded navigator, said, as usual sounding like he’d been swallowing raw coffee grounds. The Scotsman habitually talked so fast he had been nicknamed “Burst Comm” by his former ship, in reference to the burst communications that came down from the satellite.

  “Gentlemen, I am ordering you to withdraw SAS eight zero-four-echo-three from the SAS safe.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” MacGregor said. “I’m required to ask why, sir.”

  Dixon looked at Oliver, who nodded. Dixon handed him the pad computer. MacGregor read Lieutenant Oliver’s E-mail letter of introduction, looked uncertainly up at the captain, then grabbed young Ensign Wilkins and headed aft to the executive officer’s stateroom. While Dixon waited, Executive Officer

  Donna Phillips knocked and entered, the thin, medium-height brunette wearing sweat-stained workout clothes and a towel around her neck, her shoulder and arm muscles still bulging from the weights she’d been lifting in the torpedo room. Normally Phillips could be found in perfectly starched coveralls, working in her neat stateroom. She wore her hair in a chin length bob, and other than when she worked out, it was never known to have a single hair out of place. The hairdo emphasized her strong cheekbones and her dark eyes, which were usually engaged in a frown. Dixon had worked with Phillips for two years, and he was well pleased with her, though he thought she would do well to lighten up on her heavy-handed command of the crew.

  “XO, meet Lieutenant Brett Oliver, detached duty to NSA, and now to us.”

  “Captain, you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Dixon handed her the pad computer to read Oliver’s note, her only expression a raised eyebrow.

  MacGregor and Wilkins returned with a foil packet, the junior man holding it as if it were a ticking bomb. “SAS authenticator eight-zero-four-echo-three, sir. Please verify that it is the correct one, sir,” Wilkins said.

  Dixon squinted at the printing on the packet, then said, “Eight-zero-four-echo-three, packet checks. Open the packet.”

  Wilkins pulled the foil tab and withdrew a card with a long string of letters and numbers written on it.

  “Navigator, authenticate the E-mail message on the pad computer,” Dixon ordered.

  MacGregor glanced from the card to the E-mail and back, finally looking up at Dixon. “Sir. the E-mail message authenticates. It’s a valid message, sir.”

  Dixon nodded. “Take the SAS packet and destroy it under two-man control and sign for it,” he ordered. The junior officers left, and as they shut the door behind them, the small computer beeped.

  “There’s a second E-mail in here,” Phillips said as she looked at the computer.

  “Let me see that,” the captain said. Another message had come in from the Internet link from the periscope antenna. “Another one needing authentication.”

  It took another several minutes to get the second SAS authenticator opened, but when it authenticated the second message, Dixon looked up at Phillips and Oliver, the sub commander’s face a hard war face but with the color drained from it. He slowly reached for a phone and buzzed the officer of the deck on the conn.

  “Off’sa’deck, Captain. Take her deep and increase speed to flank and close the Chinese surface force. Spin up all four war shot Mark 58 Alert/ Acute Mod Plasma torpedoes. Make tubes one and two ready in all respects and open outer doors. When we’re within ten thousand yards of the nearest battle group combatant slow to ten knots, downshift main coolant pumps, and rig for ultra quiet And send the navigator back to my stateroom.”

  “Captain, what is it?” Phillips asked.

  Captain Dixon looked up at both officers. “It would appear we’rein a shooting war.”

  Lien Hua walked down the rainswept concrete jetty. His black uniform with its minimal insignia became drenched. It was uncomfortable, but there would be time to change later, and the wet uniform reminded him of the hardness of this day’s task. He continued down the pier to the security barrier, where the admiral’s staff car had pulled up. Inside there was no admiral, but instead Lien’s wife and daughters.

  “Well, hello, girls,” he said, smiling in spite of the stress he felt. “What brings you here?” His eyes turned toward his wife’s beautiful face, her upturned eyes seeking his. She smiled back at him and climbed out of the car, hoisting the umbrella over her head, the wind blowing over the pier making it flap loudly. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him hard, then hugged him again. Her lips came to his ear, her voice barely audible above the storm.

  “I wanted to tell you I love you. And to tell you to be careful. And that I’m sorry we fought.”

  Lien Hua smiled, kissing her cheek, then pulling back so he could look in her eyes, the eyes of a princess. “It was my fault, dearest,” he said. He looked around sheepishly. “And I love you too. Let me say goodbye to the girls.” He leaned over their window and kissed each rain-spattered small face, touching their hair and pulling them close, the smell of them reminding him of home and safety and happiness.

  “Father, Mother says you are going to war. Is that true?”

  “Mother should not say such things,” he said, glancing in amusement at his wife. “We are going to sea for another exercise. I will be home soon. And until I do, you must mind your mother.”

  “We will, Daddy,” they chorused. He touched their noses and hugged them both again.

  “Admiral Chu let you come in his staff car?”

  “His wife thought it would be a good thing.”

  Lien nodded. “Thank you for coming, my princess, but I must go.”

  “We’ll watch your departure from here. Be safe, my love,” she said. “Come home to us.”

  He bent to kiss her, then turned to walk back down the pier, pulling his collar up against the driving rain and wiping her lipstick from his face as he approached the berth of the fast attack nuclear submarine.

  The ship was a brand-new Chinese-designed Julang-class, built on Red Chinese soil by Chinese engineers and shipbuilders in the Huludao Naval Base and Shipyard in the northern Bo Hai, now stationed at the Jianggezhuang Submarine Base, where no Westerner could spy on her secrets. Even in the gloom of the hammering rain she was a sleek, black, graceful beauty. She was so low in the water she was barely visible, her cigar-shaped hull awash to the top curving surface, her fin rising from the midsection, the shape vertical forward, curving on the upper surface and sloping back to the deck aft. The topside section sloped gently to the water aft of the fin,

  the rudder slicing upward, seeming disembodied in the black water of the slip. The vessel’s name was Nung Yahtsu, which the barbarians would translate to mean Teeth of the Dragon. It was a name conferred upon her by Lien Hua himself when she was but a helpless hoop of high-yield steel in a forlorn drydock, and the fierce name would shape the vessel’s coming destiny. This day she would sail into the seas far from her home base and bloody her teeth with the flesh of the barbarians.

  As he a
rrived near her gangway he was met by his second in-command, Zhou Ping. Zhou was the son of a friend of Lien’s father in the Peoples Liberation Army Strategic Missile Force decades before. The friend had died a slow death of emphysema, and on his deathbed had asked Lien’s father to watch over Zhou, and when Lien’s father died, the obligation passed to Lien. At first Lien had considered the upholding of that promise yet another of dozens of duties to his father, but had soon seen an ingenious talent in the younger man, and had shepherded him through five sea tours, until today when Zhou stood as his first officer.

  “It is my honor to greet you this rainy morning, Captain Lien,” Zhou said, bowing deeply. Lien Hua returned the bow and stood somberly, saying nothing for a moment, the rain falling down his collar, his black submarine force uniform drenched in the downpour.

  “Tell me about the status of the People’s ship, Leader Zhou.”

  “Nung Yahtsu is rigged for sea, my captain. The weapons load went perfectly. The Dong Feng torpedoes are tube-loaded in five tubes, the Tsunami special weapon is dry-loaded in tube six, and the remaining thirty torpedoes are rack-stowed. The reactor is in the power range, steam has been brought into the engine room the ship is self-sustaining, and the shore power cables have been withdrawn. The main engines are running at five percent power to the idle resistors, and the main motor has been tested. Lines are singled up, and the crew is at maneuvering stations. The navigation equipment has pin pointed us at the correct pier side location, and the radio equipment has received our permission to depart.”

  “Excellent, Mr. First. Are there any discrepancies?”

  “Yes, my captain. All class four and lower.”

  “Very well, Leader Zhou.” Lien Hua looked skyward, the water pouring into his eyes. “A foul day to be a mariner, my friend, but all the better to shield us from the orbiting eyes of the barbarians.”