U.S.S. Seawolf

by Patrick Robinson

  Buster Townsend had completed his first mission, two missions really, since he was active in the recon. He would never look at the world in quite the same way again, having gazed into the jaws of death on several occasions since he had first dropped into the water four days ago, right on Lieutenant Commander Bennett’s shoulder.

  And now he sipped coffee in companionable quiet with his colleagues. The young SEAL from the bayous who had twice made the journey to Xiachuan Dao, who had marched across the island hauling the heavy gear, logged the guard movements in the jail and dodged the machine-gun fire to blow off the main cell door, was suddenly incapable of conversation.

  Next to him sat his lifetime buddy, Rattlesnake Davies, who had cold-bloodedly knifed the Chinese guard who threatened the entire mission. Rattlesnake too sipped coffee, saying nothing.

  Petty Officer Steve Whipple, the iron man who had carried 80 pounds of high explosive through the jungle, who had gunned down the Chinese guards on the hill and blown up the communication center, was talking, but only to his pal Catfish Jones.

  Petty Officer Jones, another iron man who had carried the big machine gun, plus all of his other equipment, had also blown up the headquarters of the camp commandant, Commander Li. But at this time he talked only of baseball, wondering aloud how Steve could possibly waste his time in support of a team such as the Chicago White Sox.

  “Jesus, you Atlanta Braves guys are getting goddamned pleased with yourselves,” muttered Steve. “But we’ll be back, maybe not this season, but next…”

  “In your dreams.”

  It was an unconscious attempt to return to something near normality after the mayhem and the death, the bombs, the guns and the knives. They made it seem like routine. But it never was.

  Up in the wardroom, Lt. Paul Merloni was making a valiant attempt to act normally, with his customary edge of black humor. But wit came unusually difficult today for the New Yorker, who had shot down three of the Chinese outside guard patrol and then cut down the guard in the interrogation room, probably saving the life of Linus Clarke.

  Paul was talking to Lt. Dan Conway, who was never effusive but now, in the grim aftermath of the operation, deep below the surface of the Pacific, was absorbed only with thoughts of getting out of here alive. Dan too had faced death, in the thick of the fighting in the jail, and more so when he rushed the entrance of the dormitory block hurling his grenades at Commander Li’s armed guards.

  In the other corner sat Lt. Commander Rusty Bennett, looking surprisingly presentable, wearing a spare pair of Navy trousers and shirt, on the basis that he could not walk around covered in the blood of the watchtower guards. He was glad to be out of those clothes, and was already being treated as something of a celebrity by the young officers in the submarine. He had asked for special permission to bring Chief McCarthy into the wardroom, and now the two men who had scaled the towers and made the entire mission possible sat eating chicken sandwiches and trying not to think about what might have happened if their luck had run out high above the prison complex.

  What each of them knew was that this mission was not yet over. They knew they were in a submarine that could not, for the moment, go to the surface. They also knew they had been hit by a Chinese destroyer that was still out there, still trying to get at them. And they listened with both ears for any shred of information which might illuminate the situation.

  It was becoming clear that they were on a long, 600-mile ride out into the Pacific, and that the officers of the submarine were fervently hoping the Xiangtan would give up and leave. The SEALs were of the opinion that they had fought quite enough battles for one weekend, and they would deeply appreciate getting back to the aircraft carrier without being caught in the middle of another one.

  “Right now I’m overexploded,” said Paul Merloni.

  Meanwhile, out in the Xiangtan, Colonel Lee was under-exploded, and the conundrum that faced him was growing more pressing by the hour. At this stage, 400 miles east of the hunting ground off Xiachuan Dao, they were driving through pitch-black, rainy seas in the small hours of Tuesday morning, July 18.

  They were in the northern waters of the 200-mile-wide Luzon Strait, which separates the south coast of Taiwan from the Philippines. In an area strewn with shoals and tiny islands, they were in steeply shelving waters that were sometimes 4,000 feet deep, sometimes 6,000. Right now the lead American frigate, Kaufman, was heading for the Bashi Channel, which leads steadily through the shoals and out into some really bottomless water, three miles deep.

  Shantou had already expressed concern about her fuel situation, and Colonel Lee realized that even the vast tanks of Xiangtan could not last forever, especially at these high speeds. Four hundred miles from now he would have to consider turning back. Even Admiral Zhang in his current state of mind must know he could not run fast for more than three or four days.

  Also, if Shantou turned back, he would be in a very exposed position, in massively deep water. If the Americans decided to sink him way out here in these desolate acres of the Pacific, no one would ever really know what had happened. He and his crew could end up on the bottom, a mile deeper than the Titanic, and it had taken over a half century to find her.

  It seemed to Colonel Lee that the sooner he made his move the better, because the farther they went the more the advantage swung toward the Americans. The trouble was that he could not work out quite what to do. Neither could any of the officers who sailed with him. The task presented by the plainly deranged Admiral Zhang was an order formed by a madman.

  Here he was, hundreds of miles from either help or a Chinese base, surrounded by three American guided missile frigates and a monstrous American cruiser, and he was supposed to (a) find the damaged American submarine they were all protecting and (b) attack it, in the face of the superpower’s armed escort. Was this crazy, or what?

  And how to conduct his attack? He could scarcely use depth charges, because the submarine was plainly right underneath the frigate Kaufman. Mortar charges were a kind of lunatic possibility, but the mortars carried by Xiangtan were only the old FQF 2500s, which had a range of 1,200 meters. Therefore, from his current position, astern of the Kaufman, which was making 27 knots, he would somehow have to come in a mile closer and throw the mortars forward straight over the American frigate, which would then watch them plop into the water out ahead.

  At that point Lee and his crew probably would have about one minute to live, maximum, before the shuddering power of Vella Gulf’s big Harpoon guided missiles slammed them all into oblivion. Also, the chances of one of the mortar charges actually hitting Greenville, and exploding, were, by Colonel Lee’s reckoning, remote.

  The gun was no good, because the submarine was still under the water. Helicopters were no good because the Americans would blow them out of the sky in about two minutes. Which left only torpedoes. If Colonel Lee was going to put Greenville on the bottom, he would have to launch two of their Yu-2 active/passive homing weapons, and he assessed the chances of success at only fifty-fifty. The torpedoes could not go in passive because of the noisemaker off the stern of Kaufman.

  They would have to use active homing, and they still might not be fast enough. However, he could program them with a 50-foot ceiling, which meant they would not go for anything up to 50 feet below the surface. Right below that, they should find the USS Greenville.

  And the chances of the Americans NOT knowing the torpedoes were on their way in? Zero, was Colonel Lee’s guess.

  And so they all thundered on east, Shantou running out of fuel fast. By midafternoon her captain had made his decision, and he contacted Xiangtan to announce he would have to turn back. “I am, sir, reaching the point of no return. If I run for another hour at this speed I may not get back at all.”

  Colonel Lee, now almost 700 miles away from the coast of his homeland, decided that he also must make his move. He informed Shantou he would run for another 100 miles and then he, too, would try to turn back, but he had a private mission to complete f
or Admiral Zhang before he did so. He could see no point in Shantou remaining on station to go down with him.

  At 1630 the Americans saw the Chinese frigate turn away and began to head back toward the west. But they noted that Xiangtan kept right on coming, all on her own, matching them for speed. She was a big ship to be showing such singleminded hot pursuit, and the four American surface commanders wished as one that she would get the hell away, and go follow the goddamned frigate home for a nice bowl of rice.

  Kaufman’s sonar room got on the underwater telephone and informed Tom Wheaton that one of the Chinese warships had turned back.

  “The little one, I guess?”

  “Aye, sir. The destroyer’s still there, coupla miles astern.”

  The conversation was short, but Colonel Lee’s men picked it up and were grateful for it, since it confirmed that their quarry was still very much within striking range.

  And now Colonel Lee ordered an increase in speed, winding Xiangtan up to 30 knots. And as he did so, Captain Freeburg began a wide swing way out to her port side, settling in a position eight miles off the Chinese beam, the precise range he would need for an accurate launch of his McDonnell Douglas Harpoon surface-to-surface missiles with their big, ship-killing 227-kilogram warheads. Those things fire high, right out of the big stern-mounted quad launchers, then tip over and lose height before leveling off and screaming in at wavetop height at almost 900 knots, active-radar homing, just about unstoppable. Someone fires those babies at you, you need sharp eyes, a life jacket and a prayer book. And while Chuck Freeburg had no intention of beginning anything, under his present orders, one false move and the Chinaman was history.

  Kaufman had her eyes glued on the destroyer and noticed the increase in speed. They had an open line from the ops room direct to Vella Gulf, where Chuck Freeburg was preparing his Harpoon missiles for launch, if necessary.

  It was 1645 when the Chinese commanding officer decided that at roughly a mile he was close enough.

  Not that he knew precisely where Greenville was. Only the general area, under Kaufman. And even that was sheer guesswork. And to act on that guesswork amounted to his own death warrant.

  All he could do was to fire his torpedoes into that area on the outside chance they would find Greenville.

  “Left standard rudder…steer zero-eight-zero. STAND BY ONE AND TWO TUBES.”

  “Steady on zero-eight-zero, sir.”

  Colonel Lee hesitated for one split second, preparing to join his God. Then he snapped the death-or-glory command. “FIRE ONE.”

  “Number one tube fired.”

  “FIRE TWO.”

  “Number two tube fired.”

  Just two small clouds of smoke were all that betrayed Colonel Lee’s actions as the two torpedoes blasted out of the tubes, 50 yards over the water, and then dropped with a heavy splash below the surface, searching, searching, searching for the USS Greenville.

  Kaufman spotted the smoke. The control room snapped out the information to the cruiser: “The Chinese destroyer has fired two torpedoes from his starboard side.”

  Simultaneously they hit the underwater telephone to Greenville right underneath the keel, and the submarine’s ops room was, if anything, a split second ahead.

  “We just picked ‘em up. Active homers…ping interval fifteen hundred meters…I’m going on to thirty knots…full pattern active and passive decoys launched.”

  Judd Crocker, in Greenville’s conn with Tom Wheaton, said, “What’s that, Tommy? Thirty-five knots. They got five on us…range fifteen hundred…that’s a five-hundred-yard gain every three minutes…gonna take ‘em nine minutes to catch us…right?”

  “Correct, sir. But we got those Emerson Mark Two decoys out there…Christ they’re good, light-years in front of those old Chinese torpedoes…have faith…we may not outrun ’em, but we’ll definitely outsmart ’em.”

  Greenville surged forward in the water, pursued now by Colonel Lee’s comparatively primitive weapons, which were already being completely confused by the decoys. Every time the torpedo’s homing sonar pinged, the Emerson decoy pinged it right back, announcing to the iron Chinese brain, Here I am, a darned great American submarine…come right in and hit me…over here…way, way over here.”

  And Greenville had four of them in the water, which quadrupled the confusion factor.

  Over in Vella Gulf, Captain Freeburg had drawn a bead on Xiangtan a long time ago. And now he seized the moment. “Prepare to launch Harpoons One and Two…”

  “Launchers One and Two ready.”

  “FIRE ONE AND TWO.”

  The roar of the aft launch from the two fire-belching missiles was deafening, and the crew members watched them shriek skywards, higher and higher, before turning down at 800 feet to complete their deadly business.

  Captain Freeburg, still positioned directly off Xiangtan’s port beam, ordered both his five-inch guns, fore and aft, to sink the Chinese destroyer. And the shells arrived before the missiles, slamming into the superstructure of the ship, blasting havoc into the ops room, the bridge, the comms room and the helicopter flight deck.

  Colonel Lee ordered retaliatory fire, but he was too late. Both Harpoon missiles crashed into the portside of the Xiangtan and exploded with shattering force. The massive K-E-R-R-R-R-B-A-A-M! literally blew the Chinese destroyer apart in a massive fireball, black smoke rising in a mushroom cloud 100 feet high into the rainy skies. The ship vanished, leaving only traces of its sudden death and an ever-increasing oil-slick, which spread thinly over the waters of the western Pacific.

  Captain Freeburg and his team stood for a while, watching the smoke-cloaked aftermath of the gigantic destruction they had wrought. And there was not a man among them who was not conscious of some misgivings over the loss of hundreds of lives.

  “1 guess they’da done it to us, sir?” said a lieutenant junior grade, a little sheepishly.

  “Guess they would at that, Jack. Besides, they probably shoulda thought about all that before they decided to capture a crippled American submarine on the high seas, in international waters, against every kind of maritime law. Wasn’t real smart, right?”

  “Nossir.”

  Meanwhile, back on Greenville, Judd Crocker and Tom Wheaton watched the Emerson decoys do their work. The little computer screens showed the incoming torpedoes pass harmlessly by, one a hundred yards to port, the other even farther to starboard. Neither of them found a target, never even exploded.

  Commander Wheaton accessed the UWT once more, heard the news, and announced he was coming to the surface to secure the damage to his sail, “because this sucker’s making a racket which is telling me she ain’t real happy.”

  In the next 10 minutes, Admiral Barry detailed Reuben James to pick up any survivors, and set a rendezvous for the carrier to make the transfers from the submarine. After that they were heading directly to Pearl, where, for some reason, there was to be a Presidential welcome for the U.S. Navy SEALs and the rescued crew of the USS Seawolf.

  13

  Midday. Friday, July 21.

  The Oval Office.

  President John Clarke was, for the first time in a six-year association with Admiral Arnold Morgan, profoundly irritated with the man. In fact, he was rapidly being drawn to the conclusion that the fire-eating admiral was growing too big for his boots.

  Two hours previous he had issued a presidential memorandum outlining his plans to go to Hawaii early the next week to meet the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, which was bringing home his son. And almost by return of interoffice communication he had received a reply from Admiral Morgan that had only just stopped short of saying, “Don’t be a prick.”

  The actual wording had been, “Not a terribly good idea, sir. In fact, if you stop to give it serious strategic thought, a very bad idea. I’ll be along momentarily to explain precisely why.”

  The President was not used to being patronized. But more important, he knew that this was an argument he was certain to lose because Morgan did not write
memorandums like that unless his logic was flawless. However, the President badly wanted to go to meet Linus, and he was damned if this bombastic admiral was going to stop him.

  As he waited, in a dark and rather petulant mood, he was giving no thought whatsoever to the fact that Linus lived in the protection of the giant American carrier instead of a Chinese jail as the result of the determination, aggression and intelligence of one man: Arnold Morgan.

  No, President Clarke had rather forgotten that. He thought only of the injustice of the situation, that he, the most powerful leader in the free world, was being warned against going to meet his own son, his only son, for God’s sake, by some kind of half-assed military red tape. And he was not having that. Nossir. Arnold Morgan could take his rulebook and insert it in the place where the sun does not shine. He, President Clarke, was going to meet his boy in Hawaii, and that was that.