U.S.S. Seawolf

by Patrick Robinson

  In Greenville, Commander Wheaton, clattering along now at 17 knots, decided to go for another speed increase, since there appeared to be nothing wrong with either the reactor or the turbines.

  “Make your speed nineteen,” he said. The battered submarine surged forward, and the only discernible result in the control room was an even greater racket coming from inside the shattered sail. But she kept going.

  Up on the surface the American operators in the frigates were unable to pick up any radio contact from the Chinese, but every time they looked back over the stern, there was Xiangtan running through the fading wake of the frigate Kaufman. The unnerving presence of the big Chinese destroyer seemed to increase as the day wore on, because they ran eastward for hour after hour, and nothing changed. Where Kaufman went, Xiangtan went, and by early afternoon the Americans were beginning to wonder if they should do something to discourage this strange game of follow the leader, particularly since the Shantou had now caught up and was steaming along 200 yards off Xiangtan’s starboard quarter.

  Commander Carl Sharpe opened up his encrypted line to the Flag at midday, informing Admiral Barry that the destroyer from Zhanjiang, which had summarily opened fire on Greenville sometime before 0700 that morning, had now been tracking the submerged and damaged submarine for the best part of five hours. It was also in the company of a Chinese antisubmarine frigate.

  He added that he had no idea what the plans of either Chinese captain were, but they had made no attempt to fire on either of the American frigates. “They seem, sir,” said Commander Sharpe, “to have an exclusive interest in the submarine, and a total disregard for our surface ships.”

  Admiral Barry asked if the Kaufman’s CO had any recommendations. But the frigate captain said he could not come up with anything more constructive than perhaps firing a shot or two across the Xiangtan’s bows. But this seemed extravagant, and Admiral Barry told him just to proceed back toward the battle group, but to keep him posted, on the hour, as to the precise movements of the Chinese warship. “Remember, you are not authorized to shoot, Commander, except in self-defense. That’s straight from Washington. She’s a big ship, and we’d have to sink her to disable her, and I’m not sure Washington would be crazy about that.”

  Commander Sharpe returned to the bridge and ordered the helmsman to hold course and make their best speed back toward the carrier, which was of course only the best speed Greenville could make, rattling along underneath with virtually no sonar. However, Commander Wheaton had now wound her speed up to 27 knots and they were clattering along extremely smoothly, though you would never have known it, judging by the shrieks of tortured steel from the sail.

  Two miles astern, still following with bland, impassive determination, were Xiangtan and Shantou, pitching through the rising ocean swell, as apparently innocent as a couple of tourist ferries, but with menace in their gun turrets.

  The Ronald Reagan was now positioned eight hours away to the east, and for every one of those hours the Chinese warships kept a constant vigil on the American frigates and her unseen underwater colleague Greenville. Every hour Commander Wheaton checked in on the UWT to check if they still had company, and the answer was always the same: “They’re still there, two miles astern, same speed.”

  It was five o’clock in the evening when Commander Sharpe again contacted the giant aircraft carrier, which still steamed 200 miles east in company with her battle group.

  He knew both Cheyenne and Hartford had transferred their big cargoes of SEALs and former prisoners to the Ronald Reagan, but he did not yet know how Greenville was ever going to conduct a similar operation, since the destroyer seemed determined to follow them until she was able to open fire again on the American submarine she had already hit and almost crippled with a sizeable shell.

  Commander Sharpe was now convinced they should put the goddamned destroyer on the bottom and have done with it. And he relayed these thoughts to the distant Admiral Barry in forceful terms.

  But the battle group commander had been told this had not been authorized. His instinct was to avoid a confrontation with China if possible. But right now, with Greenville damaged, he opened up the line to CINCPAC in San Diego to report.

  Again there was great caution in the American camp, and CINCPAC emphasized no shooting unless fired upon. However, they did believe that the heavily gunned Xiangtan was showing an obdurate interest in the submarine, and they developed a new plan…to send two more ships back to join Kaufman and Reuben James, surround Xiangtan, and try to ride her off—Navyspeak for forcing the destroyer away, under the IRPC rules governing international waters.

  Admiral Barry detailed the frigate Simpson to head back and resume station close aboard Xiangtan, which was of course by far the most menacing of the two Chinese ships. He also ordered the big 9,000-ton Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser Vella Gulf, under the command of Captain Chuck Freeburg, to join them and to take overall charge of the operation.

  And two hours later, the four American warships moved into position for a complicated maneuver that carried with it the danger of a collision. However, the veteran commanding officer of Vella Gulf knew precisely what he was doing, and he ordered Kaufman and Simpson to make a wide sweep and then come in fast, with Simpson spearing in on Xiangtan’s starboard quarter, and Kaufman coming in at a right angle straight at her starboard bow, with full right of way.

  Under the laws of navigation, as laid down in the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea (IRPC), the ship that can see a red portside navigation light coming in on her starboard side must give way.

  They even have a poem for it:

  If to starboard red appear,

  It is your duty to keep clear.

  In instances like the one now unfolding in the China Seas, it was not much more than a very grown-up game of chicken. Chuck Freeburg had Simpson blocking the Chinese captain’s escape route on her starboard quarter, while Kaufman came straight at her bow on the same side.

  Right in front, off Xiangtan’s port bow, angled in on course zero-seven-five, would be the massive bulk of the Vella Gulf, which would prevent her swerving away and still somehow holding her easterly course. Which would leave Xiangtan just one option: a hard left turn, forcing her right away. Captain Freeburg had Reuben James in prime position making four knots right on the American cruiser’s starboard quarter, ready to run in and force the Chinese destroyer around in a half-circle.

  All of the above were slick, operable, time-honored Navy tactics in such circumstances. But all of it was entirely dependent on the Chinese captain’s willingness to obey the rules.

  Thirty years previous, Great Britain’s Royal Navy found itself in a total “bugger’s muddle” when trying to force Iceland to allow British trawlers in their fishing grounds. To Iceland, this was economic life or death. Their patrol craft, completely outgunned by RN frigates, used their hulls instead of guns, smashing into Royal Navy warships, simply refusing to alter course.

  In the end, the Navy had to turn away, to avoid serious damage to expensive warships a long way from home. It proved what every Navy CO knows; if you want to win a fight at sea, you’d better be prepared to sink your opponent, otherwise you have a very sporting chance of losing.

  It was a little after 1900 when Captain Freeburg’s particular game of chicken began. All four of the American ships were in position, and Kaufman made its run-in, driving forward from a quarter-mile out, straight into the precise same square of water where Xiangtan was headed, from her starboard side.

  On the bridge of the destroyer Colonel Lee assessed the situation: “Are they going to ram us? We’re badly boxed in.…I can’t turn to starboard because of the second American ship.…The port side is my only chance…but if I turn, they will force me right around.…I can’t drive through the cruiser…and the fourth American ship will have me under the same starboard rule…what now? They’re going to turn me right around.”

  Colonel Lee made his decision. There w
as, he knew, a get-out clause that applied to the “burdened” ship, in this case, Kaufman: If collision is inevitable, you must alter course.

  The get-out clause meant, of course, that the entire rule did not work, not if a particular CO decided he was not going to be ridden off. And Colonel Lee, who this day had been on the wrong end of a tongue-lashing from the C-in-C himself, was a lot more afraid of Zhang, who plainly did not care if he and all his crew perished, than he ever was of the USS Kaufman.

  He said quietly, “Maintain your course and speed.”

  Which put Commander Carl Sharpe in a difficult spot, as he drove his frigate straight toward Colonel Lee’s much bigger destroyer.

  “They’re not going, sir!”

  “He’s holding course…”

  “Jesus, we’ll slam right into him…sir…sir, we have to bear off…and it’s gotta be to starboard…”

  “HARD RIGHT TO ZERO-NINE-ZERO!”

  On Xiangtan’s bridge they could only watch as the knife-edged bow of the American frigate came arrowing in toward their hull…and then fractionally began to turn away. They all watched through the bridge windows as Kaufman slewed right around from a southerly course to an easterly, fetching up right alongside the Xiangtan with a grinding of steel as the two hulls slammed into each other, and then locked.

  Sailors on deck looked right into each other’s eyes, two sets of men, all trying to do the same job as best they could. Two sets of men from either side of the planet Earth. Two sets of men from different worlds.

  On Kaufman’s bridge, Commander Sharpe could scarcely believe what had happened. The Chinese CO had simply held course, nerve and helm. And now Xiangtan was pulling away again, passing Vella Gulf and moving right on toward the submarine she so obviously still sought.

  Captain Freeburg ordered the cruiser hard to port, flank speed, his 86,000-horsepower gas turbine engines driving her back level with the Chinese destroyer, into a position out off her starboard beam. The other American frigates also closed in, more or less ignoring Shantou.

  There was, however, one shining fact emerging here: Nothing was going to stop the Xiangtan, short of sinking her. And Captain Freeburg was not about to allow her to break free without demonstrating once more that the U.S. Navy meant business. And he ordered his big five-inch forward-mounted gun into action.

  “TWO SHOTS ACROSS HER BOW…NOW.”

  The Mk 45 shells, programmed for much greater distances, exploded out of the barrel aimed loosely at the airspace in front of Xiangtan. They whistled across her bow, 40 feet above the foredeck. For a split second Captain Freeburg thought the Chinese would return fire, and he said quickly to his XO, “If she shoots, sink her.”

  But Colonel Lee had no intention of deviating from his allotted task, which was to sink the submarine. “To the ends of the earth.” The words of Admiral Zhang refused to leave his mind, and he ignored the obvious warning shots and pressed on forward into the waters where he knew the damaged Greenville must still be lurking beneath the surface. The sonar might be inoperable, but the underwater telephone was decisive, and the Chinese knew what they were hearing.

  Captain Freeburg immediately accessed the Flag and spoke directly to Admiral Barry. “Right now, sir, we have a stalemate out here. We tried to ride her off, in fact Kaufman crashed right into Xiangtan, just a sideswipe, a lotta metal grinding, but only minor damage. But that Chinese ship refused to be intimidated. She never altered course by one inch, just kept going forward on her easterly bearing, right through the middle of all four of us.

  “I put two warning shots across her bows, which she most certainly saw, but offered no response, just kept on her course, easterly, possibly picking up Greenville on the UWT. Sir, I am forced to conclude that this destroyer is either under the command of an absolute fanatic, or her CO is under orders from an absolute fanatic. Either way, I don’t like it. In my view, sir, you should let me sink the sonofabitch before he sinks one of us. It would only be tit-for-tat, since she’s already put a shell into Greenville.”

  Admiral Barry was inclined to agree with all of that, because he did not want this obsessive Chinese destroyer to suddenly open fire and cause serious damage to one of the Battle Group ships, which she plainly could. But he considered that he was not yet empowered to start sinking heavy-duty Chinese warships, and he told Captain Freeburg to form a threatening “escort” around the two Chinese intruders while he contacted CINCPAC.

  At this point they were beginning to run out of ideas. CINCPAC opened a line up to Admiral Mulligan, who did not want to be a party to a real big-ship shooting war against China, and his orders were still not to sink either destroyer or frigate unless they opened fire first, now in international waters.

  The solution, when it came, was relatively simple, dependent only on Greenville’s ability to continue submerged at speed: just keep heading home right across the Pacific. “The two Chinese ships cannot refuel,” said Joe Mulligan. “And sooner rather than later, one of ’em is going to run out of gas. We can keep going all the way to San Diego if we so wish.”

  Admiral Barry quickly grasped the sense of that, and announced that he would steam the carrier another 600 miles east, by which time at least one of the Chinese ships would have to be considering turning around. The range of the frigate was only 2,700 miles at 18 knots, and she’d been traveling a lot faster than that for several hours.

  At this moment, in the gathering darkness, they were almost 200 miles offshore, and the two Chinese ships had already made a fast 120 miles before that. The range of Shantou at high speed was probably much nearer 1,800, maybe less, which meant 900 miles out and 900 back. And with 320 already under her belt, she could not have more than 1,480 miles in her fuel tanks.

  And so Admiral Barry ordered the entire Battle Group to continue heading east for another 30 hours at 20 knots, 600 miles, every one of which would drain the Chinese frigate’s fuel supply. The admiral had shrewdly kept one of his tankers well to the east.

  He doubted whether the destroyer had much more than 3,000 miles at these speeds, even if she’d started with full tanks. The issue was, would the Chinese high command be willing to risk their newest destroyer, all alone, way out in the Pacific, within striking range of an angry U.S. Navy CVBG?

  “I wouldn’t, given the current climate between China and the U.S.,” was the considered opinion of the admiral. And with that, both Captain Freeburg and Commander Carl Sharpe agreed.

  And so they all headed east for the next day and a half, running fast, draining the fuel out of the Chinese ships. Hour after hour they charged through the Pacific, driving the ships forward, knowing the carrier and her escorts were way out in front.

  Somehow Greenville kept going right underneath Kaufman’s keel, still rattling along underwater in a thoroughly alarming way. But her turbines never faltered and she ran smoothly at 27 knots, her reactor running sweetly. God knows what she must have sounded like in the sonar room of the pursuing Chinese destroyer, but the ability of the 7,000-tonner to take a hit and keep going was a mighty testimony to the engineers at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.

  Down in the crew quarters, the SEALs had done their best to rejoin the human race, removing the camouflage paint, trying to wash off the grime, the blood and the sweat, removing their bandanas, trying to look again like trained U.S. Navy personnel, rather than hired killers and demolition men.

  Several of the younger members of Greenville’s crew were quite anxious to talk to the hit squad that had freed their fellow submariners. But in the hours following a tense and dangerous mission it is unusual for the participants to have anything much to say, except to each other. Men who have killed ruthlessly in the service of their country often need time to adjust, to regain inner peace, reexamining their respective role in the operation. And the first place they tend to turn is to each other, to other participants who will understand the pressures, in the face of which they had all brought home the bacon.

  The great saving grace about an oper
ation like Xiachuan Dao was that the Chinese would most certainly have killed them had they not struck first. Nonetheless, all of the key SEALs in Operation Nighthawk were very much within themselves as the men of the USS Greenville attempted to get them home.

  Most of the SEALs had been privately scared when the shell had ripped into the submarine’s casing. And the journey had been, from their point of view, somewhat worrying—locked in a damaged underwater ship, running through the dark and endless depths of foreign waters where the seas of China finally wash into the immense Pacific.

  None of them knew much about submarines, and there’s something forbidding about being deep underwater if you are not used to it. Plainly one major leak, far less a torpedo, could wipe out the entire ship, condemning them to the endless black silence of the deep. And the SEALs’ iron discipline and amazing skills could not save them from that.

  The fact that Greenville was obviously hit and hurt made matters considerably more tense, and tired as they were, it was difficult for anyone to sleep for long. Lt. Commander Rick Hunter had been in long conversations with Judd Crocker and was more or less approaching the point where he understood the massive safety systems in a nuclear submarine. He now understood that Xiangtan might open fire on them again, should they go to the surface, and that generally speaking it was a whole lot better to stay deep and comfortable. Greenville’s nuclear reactor would give them all the warmth, air and power they could need.