But right now Judd had to decide what to do himself. Until they unlocked the prop shaft they were trapped, so the decision essentially made itself. There was no point submerging again, with no propulsion. They could not get away, and in the end they’d have to return to the surface.
So the CO ordered a diving team to prepare for immediate action. Master Chief Brad Stockton selected eight men, four for the initial dive, with four more for backup on the casing behind the prop. Within minutes, the men were being suited up in wet suits and flippers. Brad ordered scuba gear to be brought out, along with oxyacetylene cutting equipment, big double-handed wire cutters, even axes, anything to hack the array off Seawolf’s prop.
The team made its way to the sail door, starboard side, hidden from the Xiangtan, and one by one they moved along the casing toward the stern, where they would begin the work. However, the first man around the aft end of the sail instantly came into the view of the Chinese gunnery team, and in a hail of small-arms fire the entire diving team was driven back, bullets slamming against the one-inch-thick steel of the sail, and ricocheting in all directions. It was a miracle no one was killed. But no one was, and they retreated safely back into the submarine.
So the first guideline was laid down: The Chinese were not about to let the American submarine break free, or even allow its crew out of the hull.
Judd Crocker appreciated the situation, and reconsidered his narrowing options. If he had any mobility, he could have considered taking out the destroyer with torpedoes, but more Chinese ships and aircraft were surely on their way.
The captain of that goddamned destroyer won’t be keeping this little epic to himself, he thought. Unlike my fucking XO.
Since he could not get to the screw and then get away, they were, by any standards, already prisoners of the Chinese. But the Xiangtan was not trying to sink them, and they were in international waters with several miles to spare.
It seemed for a few moments that no one on either ship knew quite what to do, but suddenly the Chinese made the first move, launching one of their Haitun helicopters off the stern. Judd watched it through the periscope, clattering low over the sea and hovering right above Seawolf’s bow. Then its door opened, and four men were lowered onto the submarine, each of them carrying what looked like heavy-duty gear on his back.
“What do you make of that, Brad?” asked the CO, handing over the periscope.
“I don’t know what they’re doing, but that’s not a diving cylinder he’s using…it’s metal welding gear…you know what I think? These guys are planning to weld a couple of big iron hooks on our bow so they can tow us into shore.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No…that’s what they’re doing.”
“Well, why don’t we drown ’em…just submerge again?” offered Shawn Pearson.
“Good call,” replied the CO. “Open main vents…Officer of the Deck, take her down.”
Seawolf’s ballast tanks flooded up again and she commenced her rolling motion, wallowing down into the sea rather than sliding into it with full propulsion. Judd kept the periscope up and watched the Chinese helicopter come in fast and low and take the men off. But he could not go on doing this indefinitely without running out of air. So he ordered the submarine back to the surface, back to the standoff, which in a world of bad options was probably his best.
He drafted an immediate signal to Pearl Harbor: “Seawolf surfaced in position 20.30N 113.35E. Immobilized by towed array around propeller. Chinese destroyer Xiangtan in company. Small-arms fire prevents work on propeller. For’ard gun mounting continues trained on my sail. Surface and air assistance required soonest.”
The satellite signal from SUBPAC was back in 15 minutes: “LRMP arrives 1200. CVBG arrives within air range 24 hours. Surface support 48 hours. Diplomatics in hand.”
“Well, that all sounds a bit slow. Six hours for a long-range maritime air patrol to get here, a day for a carrier group, two days for surface ships. I suppose we can just about stop the Chinks doing anything major to our bow for that long. But it’s not likely to be easy.”
Meanwhile, on the stern of the destroyer there was a lot of activity. And at a little after 0600, both Haitun helicopters got into the air, carrying between them a heavy steel hawser in a huge U-shape beneath them. Judd watched them lower it deep into the water right behind the stern of the submarine. Then they towed it forward of the propeller, then even farther forward, still deep-submerged below the ship, until it was right in front of the rudders and the after-planes.
Then the two Haituns went back to a height of around 100 feet, and slowly began to fly in a tight circle, almost overlapping each other, though staying well clear of each other’s blades. This had the effect of twisting the hawser into a steel knot around the narrow stern of the submarine. It could not slide forward because of the massive bulk of Seawolf’s hull. And it certainly could not slide aft, past the huge bottom rudder and twin after-planes.
The Luhai quickly began to reverse, and the two ends of the hawser were lowered onto the aft deck where the helicopters landed, and it seemed to Judd that about 10,000 Chinamen took over. He guessed what was coming next, and he was right. The ends of the hawser were made fast on the deck. And at 0730 on the morning of July 5, 2006, in the South China Sea, USS Seawolf, the pride of the U.S. Navy’s Silent Service, began a long tow, backward, into captivity. For how long, no one knew; for what purpose, Judd Crocker had a very fair idea, particularly since there was now a Chinese escort of two aircraft overhead and a fast patrol boat close aboard on either side.
Cy Rothstein assessed that the Chinese would tow them into Canton and try to strip-search the entire ship, copying every one of Seawolf’s secrets, the sonar, the radar, the computers, the propulsion machinery, the nuclear reactor, the combat weapons, the cladding on the hull. Never had China been so lucky. Never had she had such a supreme opportunity to create an underwater fleet in the absolute image of that of the USA.
The only question left, in Cy Rothstein’s opinion, was the fate of the crew. Would they release them? Or would they subject the principal officers and crewmen to a searching interrogation, enlisting the help of the best submariners in the U.S. Navy to assist them in their quest to match the West in terms of modern sea power?
Cy did not, obviously, know the answer to that one. Nor did anyone else. But at this point Judd Crocker was forced to reconsider his scuttling options—i.e., getting the crew off and into the water with life jackets, then sinking the boat.
He realized the catastrophic potential of his boat falling into the hands of the Chinese. Now, only scuttling could prevent this, sinking her in international waters where the U.S. Navy could protect their secrets. But such a drastic course of action carried too high a price. The Chinese had opened fire on his men once, and for all Judd knew they would probably do it again. The cost of scuttling Seawolf might be killing the entire American crew.
Judd Crocker realized they were effectively prisoners of the Chinese, and that they might be subject to interrogation. However, he did hold out reasonable hopes that the diplomats might sort something out, and that some horse-trading on behalf of the U.S. government might gain their release. In the meantime, they could do nothing except wait for the next move from their new hosts.
And an uncomfortable wait it would be, already close to Chinese waters. Xiangtan was dragging them toward Canton at four knots, which meant a journey of 20 hours. And with no propulsion, they rolled back and forth all the way, despite the calm seas. All other power systems were working, so they had light and air-conditioning from the reactor. They also had plenty of food and water, and they had their communications, so the CO was able to keep SUBPAC up to speed with each development.
But there was little to report. They could either seal themselves in the mighty steel capsule of Seawolf, defy the Chinese to the end, and keep the hatches tightly battened down in the hope of release. Or they could surrender to the Chinese and feign outrage at being arrested in intern
ational waters during the perfectly peaceful conduct of their business.
Surrender or not, he ordered all evidence of the photographs, including the camera and the film-developing material, destroyed and then jettisoned out through the torpedo tubes. The passport of his XO was shredded and went with them.
Judd more or less rejected the possibility of a policy of sealed-in defiance, on the basis that the Chinese at some point would try to smash their way into the submarine, and that would entail a significant battle in which a lot of people would most certainly die, both Americans and Chinese.
One way or another, it was deeply frustrating to be sitting in one of the most powerful combat systems on earth, a nuclear boat with the capability of sinking not only Xiangtan but many of her seaborne colleagues, too. She carried the ADCAP Mk 48 torpedoes for just this sort of task, in case the U.S. went to war during one of her tours of duty.
She also carried the long-range Hughes Tomahawk land-attack missiles with nuclear warheads. One of these things could probably knock down Beijing, never mind Canton. Under pressure they could take out a sizeable chunk of southwest China.
And yet Captain Crocker was powerless, since he was not permitted to start World War III off his own bat.
Nor was he in any position to fight it out with the destroyer, because if Xiangtan was sunk, there were plenty more warships to replace her. And in the end Seawolf would surely go down fighting.
But the last signal from Pearl Harbor had forbidden him to open fire. SUBPAC was playing this one down for the moment, trying to reason with the Chinese Navy, expressing alarm that an American ship should have been apprehended in this way in international waters.
The Chinese were, predictably, stonewalling: “So very sorry about this unfortunate incident. Extremely upset that you should have your ship carrying big thermonuclear weapons of war crashing into our peaceful destroyer, which was testing new engines in the South China Sea.…We have merely answered a request from your Commanding Officer for assistance.…We mean no one harm.…We will help to get your submarine going soon, then we will talk. Very, very sorry.”
Midnight. July 5, 2006.
Office of Southern Fleet Commander.
It had been without question the happiest day of Admiral Zhang Yushu’s eventful life, more joyful than the magical day when he had married Lan, more hopeful than the day they had purchased their lovely summer home on the water, more exciting than the day he had been appointed to the highest possible command in the People’s Liberation Army/Navy.
And now he strode around Admiral Zu Jicai’s large private office, banging his right fist into the palm of his left hand, throwing back his head and laughing, congratulating himself heartily on the great prize he had secured for China: Seawolf and her crew.
Maybe one day the Paramount Ruler would feel obliged to return it to the Americans, but not before Chinese Navy scientists had wrung her dry for every last piece of technology the ship possessed.
“Oh, my friend Jicai,” he exclaimed, “this is a wonderful day for us. A few hours from now, they’ll be here. Is everything ready, the biggest submarine jetty? We have a detention center for half the crew? Put the rest in civilian jail with military guards. Then we go to work on that ship, hah? This is beautiful, just beautiful.”
Zhang was ecstatic, but he appreciated the strong element of luck that had put the submarine into his hands.
However, he was a supreme pragmatist who knew what he knew. And right now he knew he had captive, perhaps for only one month, the last word in world submarine technology. He knew he would have among his prisoners men whose expertise in the field of sonar, radar, computers and weapons was the envy of the world.
There would be, in his power, American engineers and technicians who could demonstrate every working part down to the last, the subtlest detail. He would have nuclear experts, electronics experts, missile experts, modern United States warlords who knew how to hurl a big ICBM farther than anyone in China had ever dreamed. And above all he knew he would have captive the top submarine commanding officer in the U.S. Navy.
What he did not know was that among the captured officers of Seawolf was the only son of the President of the United States of America.
4
0300. Friday, July 7.
Pearl River Delta. Nine miles southeast of the port of Macao.
They changed course from zero-one-three to a more westerly three-three-four two miles off the headland of Zhu Zhou Island at the gateway to the delta, Xiangtan dragging her giant black steel prisoner backwards through the navigation lanes.
Signals from SUBPAC during the past six hours confirmed to Judd Crocker only that the American cavalry would arrive too late. There could be no rescue now. And no one knew what their fate would be after this miserable, slow journey to the port of Canton.
It was raining again outside the hull, and two Chinese Navy tugs came out of the darkness to meet the destroyer they had escorted outward the previous morning. The captains conferred briefly and the tugs took up positions on either side of Seawolf for the long push back up the river to the base.
They could go more quickly now in the dead, flat, near-deserted water, and the Chinese destroyer pushed on immediately, increasing speed to seven knots all along the wide expanse of the Delta, which is 15 miles across in some places west of Hong Kong.
Inside the submarine, Judd Crocker handed over to Linus Clarke a brand-new identity: an American passport, bearing his photograph, issued under the name of Bruce Lucas, born in Houston, Texas, in 1972, son of oil company executive John Lucas and his wife Marie. Bruce’s service papers showed entry to the Naval Academy in 1990, promoted to Lieutenant Commander in 2004. Second tour of duty in Seawolf as Executive Officer. Torpedo specialist. The next-of-kin register listed his parents in the Houston suburb of Beaumont Place
as those to be contacted in the event of accident.
Bruce Lucas was also the name that had always been on his U.S. Navy dog tags. The laundryman had been correct.
Well aware that the submarine was in the Delta, Judd Crocker broadcast to the ship’s company, outlining the predicament they were in and assuring them that SUBPAC had the matter well in hand. He explained that both Navy and government policy, under these circumstances, was to negotiate through diplomatic channels.
For obvious reasons they did not want a really hot battle to develop, nor did they want any heroics. The Chinese had no right to the submarine, no right to arrest the crew. However, since the submarine was unable to move, and it did contain weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, not germ, well…the Chinese probably had a case for taking it into custody in their waters while the diplomats argued.
“And that brings me to an extremely important point,” he added. “As many of you probably already know, Lieutenant Commander Linus Clarke, my Executive Officer, is the son of the President of the United States. He has been a career naval officer for all of his college and working life, and it sure was not his fault his dad decided to run for office and won. When that happened, Linus was already on his way up the ladder, a lieutenant on the carrier John C. Stennis. There was never any reason for him to give up his career just because his father was in the White House for five years.
“But nonetheless, the Navy has a procedure for such matters, particularly if we find ourselves in an awkward spot like now, with Lieutenant Commander Clarke in a vulnerable position, and his father somewhat compromised. He thus has a brand-new identity that I would like you all to memorize.
“He is no longer Linus Clarke. He is Lieutenant Commander Bruce Lucas of Houston, Texas. Please commit that to memory. Should we be interrogated, remember not to let either Linus or me or your President down. Our executive officer is Lieutenant Commander Bruce Lucas as of right now. His dog tags say it. His passport says it. His Navy papers say it. And our next-of-kin records confirm it. He’s never even met anyone who lives in the White House. He’s Lieutenant Commander Bruce Lucas. Understood? That’s all.”
Th
ere really was little for anyone to do while Seawolf was under tow. Communications accessed the satellite every half hour seeking new orders from SUBPAC, and the cooks were providing a very few meals for those who felt sufficiently well. But generally, the submarine had turned into a ghost ship. Officers sat in the wardroom drinking black coffee. Most of the engineers and electronics teams sat around belowdecks, playing cards or dozing, and the turbines were not driving anything.
The systems that provided air-conditioning and fresh water were working normally, and of course Lt. Commander Rich Thompson had the nuclear reactor, from which all power stemmed, running correctly. Master Chief Brad Stockton patrolled the boat ceaselessly, checking and encouraging the younger members of the crew.
The key to the immediate future rested in the reception the Chinese Navy gave the Americans when finally they arrived in Canton. If they were treated reasonably and permitted to remain on board their ship while the diplomats argued, that would be perfect, because it would mean no damaging announcements admitting that the finest submarine in the U.S. Navy had been hijacked by the People’s Liberation Army and all the crew were held captive in Canton.
U.S.S. Seawolf Page 13