U.S.S. Seawolf

by Patrick Robinson

  Before he closed the door behind him, the guard lieutenant looked back inside and said with a wide smile, “Captain Crocker, please be quiet. You have been completely abandoned by your government. They, too, understand your criminal, unauthorized acts. They have given us permission to treat you as we would any other criminal. Good night.”

  And the captain felt upon him the melancholy chill of loneliness such as he had never experienced before. He could not believe what the lieutenant had said, but in his weakened state, starving, parched with thirst, his wrists throbbing from the chafing of the handcuffs, he had, for the first time, doubts. What if the Chinese were telling the truth? What if the U.S. Navy was furious with him for being detected? What if they believed it was he who had wrapped the prop around the towed array? Maybe the sacrifice of him and his crew was the only way out for the American government, save for some kind of war with China? “That little bastard sounded pretty damn sure of himself…Jesus Christ!”

  Bruce Lucas, Cy Rothstein and Kyle Frank were marched across the courtyard through the warm rain and into the big, deserted building in the southwest corner of the jail complex. Inside there was one room to the right-hand side through which they could see a half-dozen Chinese guards. To the right was a long, brightly lit corridor down which they were directed. At the end were three or four rooms, each brightly lit, each containing two or three chairs. Each of them was disgustingly filthy, the walls and floor stained a deep ocher brown, the unmistakable marks of blood.

  And now the Americans were separated, each of them ordered into one of the rooms and told to sit until further notice. Thirty minutes later the door to Cy Rothstein’s room opened and through it came Commander Li, in company with two guards, carrying only their machine guns and dressed just in dark blue uniform shorts and shirts, with white socks and black shoes. A fourth man wore a white laboratory coat, and he carried with him a large sheaf of papers.

  He and the commander occupied the two chairs, while the guards took up station in the corners of the room in full sight of Cy Rothstein.

  “Now, Lieutenant Commander,” said Li. “You are the combat systems officer of the submarine Seawolf, I believe?”

  Cy said nothing.

  “Silence is futile. We have plainly examined all of the ship’s documents. We know you are the combat systems officer…please, do not be foolish.”

  Cy still said nothing, at which point Li ordered one of the guards to remove the American officer’s handcuffs.

  “Now listen to me, Lieutenant Commander. We are both adult officers of great national navies. You and your colleagues have transgressed all the normal rules of behavior on the high seas. Your own government has accepted this, and they have given us permission to put you on trial like any other international terrorist. Because, you see, that is what you are. Disowned by Washington, reviled by the peace-seeking Chinese people…you are entirely at our mercy.

  “Lieutenant Commander…I am offering you a reasonable compromise. Help us, we help you. If you and your senior colleagues are prepared to give us the information we need concerning the. working and running of Seawolf, there will be no trial. You and all of your colleagues will be set free and returned to the United States…probably in your own ship. No one will ever know what you have told us…certainly not from our side. No one admits anything, no one will ever know what you said in this private room.”

  For the first time, Cy Rothstein spoke. “I’ll know,” he said.

  And so the two men sat on either side of an unseen line, Cy Rothstein wondering if he had the courage to take the physical beating he knew must be inevitable in this torture chamber, Li wondering about the wisdom of actually torturing a helpless American naval officer.

  Commander Li decided to try one more time. “Lieutenant Commander,” he said, “let me give you an example of the very simple questions we need to ask…TLAM-N…we know the range is about fifteen hundred miles, but we have questions about the inertial navigation system.…Also, we are uncertain of its speed through the air. We want you to tell us the circular error probability. Our scientists think Seawolf carried two versions, one of them the TLAM-C/D.…Does this missile have added GPS backup or can it work just on its own inbuilt system?…Come, Lieutenant Commander, think how much easier it will be for all of us if we just sit here and have a talk…Why not tell me now a little about that high-explosive warhead…What is it? Four hundred kilograms? Maybe five hundred…why not tell me and make it easy on all of us?”

  Cy Rothstein said nothing. He stared directly ahead, at which point, Commander Li stepped over the unseen line, and nodded to one of the guards.

  Cy Rothstein saw him coming, slowly, a half-smile on his face, just to his left side. They say a soldier never sees the bullet that kills him, and the lieutenant commander never saw the vicious punch that slammed into his mouth, splitting open his lower lip and dislodging his two upper front teeth.

  Stunned, unprepared for the pain, he briefly closed his eyes and gasped for air through his bleeding lips. He thus did not see the butt of the guard’s gun come slashing into his ribs, fracturing two of them with one blow.

  He fell sideways off the chair, crashing to the floor, feeling the crunch of the guard’s boot raining kicks into his righthand ribs, feeling the staggering blow to the back of the head, which mercifully robbed him of consciousness. The lights went out in his mind, as well as the cell, as Commander Li left, in company with his two henchmen and the visiting scientist.

  Out in the corridor there were now loud recordings being played of men screaming in agony. Linus Clarke had never been so afraid. And now his door crashed open, and Commander Li, with the two guards, made a swash-buckling entrance, all business. They siezed ropes from one of the three chairs and bound his legs to the legs of the chair. Then they bound his manacled hands to the bar across the backrest of the chair.

  Commander Li stood in front of him and said, “Lieutenant Commander Lucas. You will answer each of my questions accurately and immediately, otherwise I am going to have you killed, not by summary execution, in the way I believe you witnessed with one of your colleagues, but in a more slow and deliberate way, which you will not enjoy…”

  Linus was unable to stop trembling. Relentlessly Li continued, “Bruce Lucas, I understand you are the executive officer of the ship…correct? The second-in-command?”

  Linus was too petrified to answer. He sat there unable to believe what was happening to him, an American naval officer in the opening years of the twenty-first century. He debated just telling the truth, answering the damn questions, then revealing who he really was in an attempt to save his life. Surely they’d never dare harm him if they knew who his father was?

  But Li was becoming impatient. “BRING THE TOWEL!” he snapped. And the guard fetched a large white bath towel from the other chair, walked forward and draped it carefully over the head of Seawolf’s XO. For an insane moment Linus felt like a member of the Ku Klux Klan, without the eye slits.

  He knew there was a large water barrel in the corner of the room, from which he had not been able to steal even a mouthful. And now he sat here under the towel, parched, hot and afraid, and he heard the tread of the guard’s shoes as he walked across the room and dipped something into the water.

  He heard the slow walk of the man back toward him and then he felt the cool splash of water on the towel, right at the top of his head. Generally speaking it was not unpleasant. And then he heard the ladle dip in again, and again the water poured onto the towel. Then again, and then again.

  By now the towel was becoming waterlogged, and it started sticking to his face, and he was trying to jerk it off his mouth and nose in order to suck in air from below. The more water, the heavier the towel became. And the heavier it became the harder it was to get it away from his mouth. Every time he sucked in, the towel sealed off his mouth and nostrils.

  Linus began to panic. He understood he was in danger of either choking or suffocating, because by now the towel was so wet that
the water was getting into his mouth and nose. Desperate now, he tried to stand, but that was impossible. He managed to get the towel off his mouth for a split second and gulped air, but the towel instantly smacked back across his face.

  He had barely any air in his lungs, not sufficient even to blow the towel off his face. He flung his head forward and gasped air into his lungs. But it took all of his strength, and there was not enough air to exhale with any force.

  “Jesus Christ!” he thought. “They’re trying to choke me, and they’re doing it…they’re just going to watch me die.”

  He used the last of his energy to jolt forward and get the towel briefly off his face, enough for some air. But it came back, sealing his mouth and nose, and he somehow was pulling water out of the fabric and into his lungs. He tried to cough, but he had no air. And the towel was rammed against his face, and they were pouring more water.

  Linus could not cry out. He could not breathe, and he could not fight the iron-hard clinging of the sopping wet bath towel. He lolled his head back and hurled it forward, but the towel was too wet now and it stayed right where it was, over his entire face. Suffocating him, very fast.

  At which point Linus blacked out, toppling sideways, cracking his forehead on the floor, still tied to the chair. Only then did Commander Li stoop down and pull the towel off the bleeding head of Seawolf’s XO, in a truly grotesque sense saving his life.

  7

  1600. Monday, July 10.

  Zhanjiang Naval Base.

  Admiral Zhang Yushu now had his message of thanks and courtesies from the U.S. Navy’s CNO. But he remained in a state of general disquiet. It was all so utterly uncharacteristic of the arrogant men who ran America’s armed services. In his mind he believed it impossible that the admirals who had so imperiously removed his very own Kilo-class submarines from the face of the earth a couple of years earlier were now going to stand up for the plain and obvious kidnapping of a big United States attack submarine and its entire crew.

  Zhang was nobody’s fool. He knew the American satellites were photographing Seawolf every few hours, and he knew the American admirals must be absolutely seething with anger. And yet they were now treating Ambassador Ling Guofeng like an old friend, believing messages from the People’s Liberation Army/Navy that no one in their right mind would take seriously.

  But there was a ring of authenticity to the American communiqués. Almost as if they were willing the Chinese explanations to be true, as if trying to avoid the possibility of confrontation, as if trying to avoid at all costs any harm coming to their precious crew. The West, he thought, so childishly preoccupied with the one disposable asset they too have by the millions and millions.

  It was a bewildering situation, but the senior crew members were proving to be stubborn. Except for one. And he had insufficient technical data in his mind. Time was of the utmost importance. Zhang could only go on lying to the Americans for maybe another 10 days. Either that…or the Americans might attack, storming the Canton dockyard, with world opinion on their side. Admiral Zhang knew he could mount some kind of defense, but in the end the Americans would smash their way in using vastly superior weaponry.

  Zhang never removed the thought from his mind of the war 15 years earlier in the Gulf of Iran. After all the precombat talk of the strength and battle-hardened skills of the Iraqi elite commandos, the Americans made them look like children, obliterating their forces, their land, their bridges, their armaments, and anything else that got in the way. He was struck with fear at the prospect of the Pentagon turning serious attention to the naval base at Canton, and then possibly Zhanjiang, Haikou, Humen and perhaps even Xiamen. But he wanted a fleet of Seawolves, and he had the wherewithal, right now, to achieve that aim. But he had to be very, very careful and take no chances. Especially with American prisoners. They must never be allowed to get out of China alive. And, above all, the Americans must not find them.

  Zhang paced the office of Admiral Zu. “Are you still sure, my Jicai? Still certain the Pentagon believes us?”

  “Yushu, I have said it many times before. You have in your hand the personal message from Admiral Mulligan, conveying to you his compliments, thanking you for your assistance, assuring you of his friendship. It’s like the old days when President Clinton was in power. They seem to value our friendship, they want our support and trade. And will do anything to avoid offending us.”

  “Zu, I cannot explain to you strongly enough the vast gulf there is between this Clarke administration and the one led by President Clinton. It’s two different worlds. One friendly, appeasing, cooperative, and soft. This one hard, suspicious, protective, and cynical in the extreme. This man in the White House listens to his military commanders, and as we all know, military commanders, at least the best of them, are the only people in either country who are truly worth listening to in international politics. Unless the politicians happen to be ex-revolutionaries, like the great men who shaped the Republic of China. There haven’t been proper revolutionaries in the United States for two hundred and thirty years.”

  “Then, Yushu, I do not think my advice and instincts are of any value to you. Because I believe you are deeply troubled by the situation. I see in you the ancient Chinese saying, reguoshang demayl…like ants on top of a hot stove…you are full of worries. And I have known you for many years. When you are so worried, you have to make your own actions. And I understand you. If the chances of a sudden American reprisal are, in my estimation, ninety-nine to one against, you are simply not concerned with the ninety-nine, only with the one.”

  Zhang smiled. “Jicai, I cannot leave the prisoners in the jail on Xiachuan Dao. It is vulnerable to the sea. To an attack from the sea.”

  “But we have an entire Navy an hour or so away to fight them off. We have many troops. Land-based attack aircraft. What can they do that we cannot rebuff? The most they could do, thousands of miles from their own shores, would be to bring in a carrier battle group. But we now have four Kilo-class submarines. We could sink the damn thing. It’s been done before. We would surely overwhelm them.”

  “Perhaps. But that CVBG has the fire power to wipe out half of China.”

  “But Yushu, they aren’t going to do that. They will not bring the world to the brink of a world war for the sake of one submarine and a few sailors.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But I have to move those prisoners fast, somewhere deep in the interior…where no one will ever find them. Because if the Americans can’t find them, they won’t attack. Because they are soft, and they value each human life in a way we would regard as absurd. So long as we have that crew, and they have our word no harm will come to them, I think they will keep their distance. But if they find them somehow…that’s what I’m afraid of. I cannot think we have more than ten days’ use of Xiachuan Dao. By then we must have another alternative prison camp. Away from the sea.”

  Admiral Zhang had been in the office since 0500 pondering his problem, a jail in the interior, so far from anywhere that its inhabitants would simply cease to exist, and over the years they could be silently removed without anyone ever knowing their fate. It was strange, but all day long he had drawn a complete blank. But now, stimulated by his own thoughts about the possibility of an American attack, he came up with a plan.

  Zhang did not know the word “Eureka!” but if he had he would have exclaimed it right here in the office of the Southern Fleet commander. Because Zhang was presently so utterly absorbed with the chance to copy the Seawolf, he had entered an ancient Chinese condition known as zuojing guantian, which means, looking at the sky from the bottom of a well, not seeing the whole picture.

  And now he moved into a higher gear, focusing his mind on a place he had only once visited—Chongqing, the great gray Chinese city that clings to the mountains above the confluence of the wide Yangtze and Jialing rivers, more than 650 miles northwest of Zhanjiang where he now stood. This was the deepest interior, a city of 15 million people in the innermost province of Sichuan, 700 miles f
rom Shanghai, 800 from Beijing, bordered to the west by the massive 1,000-mile-long range of mountains that separate China from much of the Asian world.

  Chongqing was for centuries almost inaccessible except for those who could navigate the Yangtze for 1,000 miles. Blisteringly hot in the summer, the city spends almost the entire winter under a deep blanket of fog. Its airport, set between mountains, is unsuitable for international flights, and even now it takes an excellent domestic airline pilot to make a landing there. The train takes 12 hours running south down the Tuo River and through the mountains from Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu, a distance of 180 miles. From Kunming, 400 miles to the south, it takes 36 hours by train, because you have to go all the way north to change at Chengdu.

  Chongqing was the capital of China during World War II, headquarters of Chiang Kaishek’s Kuomintang military, and what those ruthless anticommunist twentieth-century tartars needed was jails in which to incarcerate hundreds of political prisoners. They built them well outside the city, mostly to the west, and Admiral Zhang Yushu knew precisely where they were.

  He knew also they were a sprawling archipelago of prisons, some more remote than others. Tourists were admitted to see some of them on bus trips from the city, but it would take the C-in-C of the Navy one phone call to isolate an entire complex.