Attack Of The Seawolf

by Michael Dimercurio

  CHAPTER 5

  WEDNESDAY, 8 MAY

  2216 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

  Go had bay twenty-six miles south OF shaleitian dao USS tampa 0616 beijing time

  Murphy found a handrail on the periscope stand, pulled himself to his feet, ears ringing, vision receding into a black-edged tunnel. He stood up, dropping his head low to keep from passing out, felt Tarkowski’s arm pulling him up. The lights in the room came back on. The room was rocking gently and it wasn’t Murphy’s shaky condition, it was actually rolling to port and coming back to starboard.

  Which could happen only if they were on the surface.

  “What happened?” Murphy asked Tarkowski.

  “You were out of it for a minute or so, Captain.

  The last blast caused a jam rise on the bow planes maybe blew some gases into the aft ballast tanks. Plus, the damned vents jammed in the shut position. We still can’t vent aft. All that blew us up to the surface.

  With no reactor or steam plant, jammed bow planes and stuck vents, I don’t think we can get deep. Not to mention, firecontrol and sonar are dead. Likewise the nav systems.”

  “Colson, check radio,” Murphy snapped to the Pos One officer, who was still at his dead firecontrol console.

  “Get out a transmission that we’re under hostile fire by a Chinese surface force. Send it as an OP REP3 PINNACLE, straight to the White

  House. And tell them I intend to do a ship selfdestruct if we’re boarded. When you’ve got that out, get back here.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Colson replied, ripping off his headset and running aft.

  “XO, get on the line to maneuvering. See if we can shift propulsion to the EPM and check battery discharge rate. And check if we lost any cells. Get the engineer to report on the steam leak—if we can restart on one side of the engine room

  Tarkowski pulled off his headset and grabbed the phone handset to call maneuvering.

  “Griffin, get down to the torpedo room and see if we can still manually program and launch a Mark 50.

  I want to use as many of those fish as I can.”

  Griffin hurried forward and down the ladder.

  “Diving Officer, try to resubmerge the ship. Chief of the Watch, get an auxiliary man working those damned vents. Get the vents open as soon as you can. Lookaround number-two scope,” Murphy said, rotating the periscope control ring in the overhead, the same ring his head had connected with moments before. Slowly the periscope came out of the well, thunking to a halt as the six-foot-tall optic-module came out of the well.

  Murphy snapped the grips down and rotated the scope, finding the surface vessels almost immediately. They were close, within five hundred yards, closing quickly, all three of them headed directly for the Tampa.

  Murphy saw Tarkowski hang up the phone to maneuvering.

  “Sir, the Eng can’t find the leak but he’s still looking.

  We’ve got propulsion on the emergency-propulsion motor but at one-third speed, there’ll only be twenty minutes on the battery.”

  “Helm, all ahead one third, course east,” Murphy ordered.

  “XO, the Eng has got to find that damned leak, it’s our only chance to get out of here.”

  “If anyone can get this plant back. Lube Oil Vaughn can.”

  “It may be too late,” Murphy said.

  “Greg, I’m putting you in charge of doing a classified-material destruct.

  Burn it all, everything.” Murphy pulled a key off a chain around his neck and held it out to Tarkowski.

  “This is the key to the small-arms safe. Get the classified material bonfire going, break out and distribute the pistols and M-16s, then station a team of armed men at each hatch.”

  Tarkowski turned and left the room.

  “Captain,” the Diving Officer said, “we can’t get down at this speed with the vents stuck. We’re still on the surface.”

  “Get those vents open. Chief of the Watch.”

  “Stanton’s working on it. Captain.”

  Murphy turned back to the periscope. The first Chinese destroyer, the Ludaclass, was gliding to a halt only a few yards away, pulling up on the port side.

  Sailors were manning her rails, heavy manila ropes in their hands. On the starboard side a Udaloy had pulled up close and had her own lines ready. The Tampa was to be taken into port—a hostage.

  Too bad NAV SEA had banned ship-destruct explosives on U.S. submarines. Murphy thought. At least it would keep Tampa out of Chinese hands.

  Murphy ordered the engineer from aft, and in a few moments Jackson Vaughn appeared, hair soaked with sweat, coveralls stained with dirt, a Beretta 9-mm automatic stuffed into his belt.

  “Any luck finding the leak?”

  “We need more time, sir. I bypassed Main-Steam Two and pressurized the header, and we had at least three-dozen leaks, impossible to say which were minor and which were major pipe breaks. The steam-header insulation is broken in a half-dozen places. The major leak could be anywhere. Without a proper hydro test I can’t be sure. And I risk the crew if I open Main Steam-One or Two. A double-ended pipe shear would kill every man aft, maybe you guys too.”

  “Start patching the lines with seawater pipe patches if you have to, and bypass the cutout-valve again.

  We’ve got to get that system back. It doesn’t look good topside. The

  Chinese want to take us home with them. If they make a mistake and if you can get steam back in the engine room we could still make a break for it.”

  Lieutenant Chuck Griffin, the torpedo missile officer, came into the room, out of breath from running up the ladder.

  “Sir, the torpedo-room firing-panel is a wreck. And the tubes are leaking, all of them. The hydraulic rams are both out. Most of the weapons took a hell of a beating from the shock of the last explosion. There’s nothing to shoot with. Holt is working on the panel and Norall is looking at the tubes.

  And Watson is crawling on the racks looking for a working weapon, but it’ll be hours before we can give you anything. Without that firing panel, it’s … useless.”

  Murphy and Vaughn exchanged looks.

  “Keep working on it, Mr. Griffin,” Murphy said in a monotone, and turned back to the engineer.

  “Eng, split off a few of your men from the steam leak isolation and have them get ready to scuttle the ship. Find some seawater valves aft that we can open.

  When I give the word have them opened. It’ll be better to put this ship on the bottom than give it to the Chinese without a fight. Have a team standing by under the aft-hatch. Make sure they’re armed. We’ll try to hold off a boarding party as long as we can, but when I give the word on Circuit One melt down the reactor and flood the ship. Meanwhile we’ll try to rig some Mark 50 warheads for an in-hull detonation.”

  “Goddamned shame. Skipper, to sink our own ship.”

  “I’ll only give the order if there’s no other way.”

  Vaughn stood there for a moment, as if he wanted to say something.

  “Good luck. Captain,” he finally said, nodded at Murphy, then disappeared from the room, headed for the ladder to the middle-deck.

  Murphy looked back out the periscope. The Chinese warships had tied up tight on both sides. They were being towed to the Xingang piers. For a moment Murphy looked around at the crew, wondering if he were really capable of destroying his own ship. A rush of guilt overwhelmed him, guilt that he had failed them, first by getting caught, second by failing to escape once the Chinese were alerted. At least he had put one of the surface ships on the bottom. If the steam leak could be isolated before the Chinese got into the hull, if the ballast-tank vents could be repaired, if the ship had enough power to break the lines to the towing vessels, then maybe it was not over yet … except the entire Chinese Northern Fleet would be waiting for him at the Penglai/Lushun Gap, the choke-point at the entrance to the bay. Still, there had to be a better way out of this than scuttling his ship and sacrificing his crew.

  Could he even consider surrendering the me
n to the Chinese, hoping they might release the Americans?

  The thought went against two decades of military training. What had the Code of Conduct said, the Code they had all committed to memory the first week as plebes at Annapolis—I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command I will never surrender my men while they still have the means to resist. No, he would not give up the Tampa without a struggle, even if it were a death-struggle.

  Tarkowski returned to the control room.

  “Sir, the classified material burn is just about finished. But we’ve got bad news from the forward hatch. Chinese boarding party. There are flames from an acetylene torch around the upper hatch. The Chinese will get through that hatch within twenty minutes.”

  “And if they burn through the lower hatch we’ll never be able to rig the ship for dive.”

  “That’s right, sir. If they burn through the upper and lower hatches we’ll have a bunch of permanent holes to the outside.”

  “Have all the lower hatches on all access points opened. Have the fire teams ready. As soon as the upper hatches are opened and troops are coming in, open fire.

  If we can keep them out long enough to get propulsion we might still be able to break away …”

  Tarkowski pointed to the television monitor of the periscope view. The Chinese crews were doubling, tripling, quadrupling the thick lines coming over the Tampd’s hull. It would take more than Tampa’s 35,000-shaft horsepower to break through all that.

  “Look at all the lines, sir. Even at flank I don’t think we’d break away.”

  “We’ve got to do what we can, until there’s no longer hope. I’ll order the Eng to flood the aft compartment and melt down the reactor. I’ll order you to flood Auxiliary Machinery and detonate one of the Mark 50 warheads or some of the torpedo fuel. At least they won’t be taking us alive.”

  Tarkowski said nothing.

  “Greg, lay below and wait for my order to emergency destruct. Then flood the Auxiliary Machinery and detonate the weapons.”

  “Aye aye. Captain.”

  When he had gone. Murphy felt alone, even surrounded by the men remaining in the control room.

  It was not long before he could hear the loud reports of shots coming from the forward escape trunk, the pathetic short blips of the Beretta pistols, the roaring of the Chinese assault weapons that soon drowned out the sound of the Berettas. All was silent again except for the sound of a dozen Chinese voices, the odd tones of their syllables causing a rush of bile to Murphy’s stomach.

  He had already hoisted the PA. Circuit One microphone to his mouth and clicked the top button to allow him to speak, to allow him to pass word to Vaughn and Tarkowski to do the unthinkable—to destroy the ship. He had even heard his own voice blaring out of the ship’s speakers—”THIS IS THE CAPTAIN”—when the Chinese bullet hit him in his right shoulder, spinning him around and dashing his head against the pole of the number-one periscope.

  The deck seemed to rise toward his face in slow motion, ready to strike him.

  His world went black before the deck had a chance to come up.

  CHAPTER 6

  THURSDAY, 9 MAY

  0020 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

  andrews air force base suit land maryland, outside washington, D.C.

  1920 eastern daylight time

  The Gulfstream SS-9 swept-wing twelve-passenger jet touched down on the south runway, the rain on the asphalt forming a cloud behind the swift jet as it reversed its engine thrust, making its way to a halt on the diamond-cut pavement. At the midpoint of the 8,000-foot runway the jet turned off to a taxiway and headed for the hangar building, where the green Marine Corps SH-3 Sea King helicopter idled. The jet braked to a halt, its engines whining as they spun down. Almost immediately the forward port door opened, a stairway unfolded and Admiral Richard Donchez climbed out and jogged into the helicopter.

  The deck canted forward as the aircraft lifted off and climbed from the wet asphalt, heading north toward the Pentagon’s helipad. Donchez turned to the other man in the chopper, Vice-Admiral Martin Steuber, who held his glance for a moment, then looked away out the rain-streaked window.

  Donchez wasn’t happy to be pulled off the podium as he was in the middle of a speech at the launching of the SSN-22, the second of the controversial Seawolfclass submarines built by Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut. Donchez’s speech was calculated to condemn cancellation of the Seawolf program in favor of the inferior follow-on class of fast-attack submarines, the Centurion-class.

  Steuber leaned over to Donchez.

  “Sir, I’m sorry, but it seems something went wrong with the China operation. The SPEC-OP boat’s in trouble. That’s all I heard, but after we get the word in NMCC we’ve got a date at the White House to brief the President.”

  Donchez looked hard at Steuber, suddenly mindful of what could go wrong with a nuclear submarine sent into China’s restricted territorial waters.

  washington, D.C.

  white house basement—situation room 2000 eastern daylight time

  Admiral Richard Donchez would give the briefing, since he had been responsible for the China operation.

  Steuber handed him the transparencies.

  President Bill Dawson sat on the side of the large table against the curtained wall. He wore a golf shirt and khaki cotton pants, looking as if he had been pulled from a golf course. If Donchez had to guess his mood, it was one of impatience, but an impatience that was a prelude to anger. Secretary of Defense Napoleon Ferguson sat beside Dawson, looking uncomfortable in his rumpled gray pinstriped suit, his collar unbuttoned, his patterned tie at half-mast. Ferguson could be relied on to support military operations even when they went as badly as this one had. Ferguson was solid, Donchez thought. As if reading his mind, the SecDef gave him a nod. Donchez returned it, his face grim.

  On Dawson’s right sat Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Eve Trachea, impeccable in a blue suit, her face serene, her eyes on Dawson, giving him the odd feeling of being sized up. He had predicted that Trachea would be ready to say I-told-you so when the operation’s failure was reported, but now he was not so sure. Eve Trachea was unpredictable.

  On the other side of the table CIA Director Robert M. Kent sat with his deputy director and the deputies of the operations and analysis divisions. Kent looked like he had a migraine headache.

  At the end of the table, the end opposite from Donchez, sat Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Brian Bevin, who had been promoted to Chairman when Dawson was inaugurated only months earlier. The general was a big man, athletic, tough-looking—a linebacker’s jaw, a broken nose, sunken eyes beneath a pronounced brow under tightly trimmed blond hair. Donchez’s only contact with Bevin had been at a Pentagon staff cocktail party four months ago, the last time he had been in D.C. He’d seemed an amiable sort, known to his staff as “Uncle Brian.” Bevin took pleasure in his nickname, it was said, but he did not seem his jolly smiling self now-his wide face impassive, tight. Donchez suspected the Chairman was not fond of evening meetings in which his military was in a position of reporting failure. For that, Donchez could hardly blame him.

  Next to Bevin were President Dawson’s military aides, one from each service. Near Bevin, Martin Steuber had taken a seat, his eyes unreadable, staring through Donchez as if he weren’t there.

  “Gentlemen,” Donchez began, “we’re here because of a problem with the China intelligence operation, with our SPEC-OP boat, the USS Tampa, in the Chinese Go Hai Bay. About two hours ago Tampa transmitted an emergency message that she’d been caught in the bay by units of the Chinese navy and was being taken captive after a battle in which she sank one Chinese surface vessel. The message also indicated that the captain was planning to initiate a ship selfdestruct if he was unable to repel a Chinese boarding party. That was the last transmission we had from her.”

  Donchez paused, scanning the faces for reaction. No one moved. The contents of the messages had apparently already been k
nown to most of

  them. Donchez turned on the overhead projector and parted the curtains.

  “At 1645 our time, shortly after sunrise Beijing time, we had a KH-17 satellite pass over the Go Hai in the vicinity of Tianjin. That was before we got the distress call from the Tampa. But we did pick this up.”

  Donchez dropped a transparency on the top of the projector and stepped away from the picture.

  The scene was a black-and-white high-elevation view of the western bay, obviously a satellite photo from the faint appearance of the scan lines running diagonally across the picture. At the bottom of the picture three large surface warships and one small patrol craft were heading east. The wakes of the ships were white streaks across the blank darkness of the bay water. At the top of the picture two helicopters were taking off, heading in the same direction as the surface ships.

  “The satellite shot showed the three destroyers you see here and one patrol boat heading on course zero eight five. In the direction of the estimated position of the Tampa at that time. As you can see from the wakes of the ships, they are moving out at maximum speed.”

  Donchez let the image sink in for a moment before he pulled it off and went on to the next.

  “The next satellite pass was not due for another ninety minutes, and it was not going to overfly the Tianjin area. We decided to re task the satellite, to use the KH-17’s onboard fuel reserves to maneuver the unit into a new orbit that would place her over the western shore of the Go Hai Bay. In the maneuver, almost all of the unit’s fuel was expended.” Donchez paused, taking in the glares of the men at the table. He had just admitted to ruining a half-billion-dollar surveillance satellite by using all the fuel that had been intended to last five years.

  “But we did get this,” Donchez said, lifting the cover off the projector’s lens.

  The photo on the screen showed the piers of New Harbor, Xingang, China.

  One large finger of concrete, the seaward pier, extended horizontally across the picture.