by Don Keith
Ψ
Joe Glass stood back and watched all the activity that surrounded him, yet he took no part in it. This was an entirely new position for him. He was in the back corner of the USS George Mason’s control room. All of the high technology and the highly trained team were working like a well-tuned race car engine. But Glass was all too aware that they were not his team. At least not directly. Nobody turned to him with a question or report. Those were all directed to Brian Edwards, the skipper of this boat, who was standing next to him. Glass’s only role was to observe and evaluate.
“We’re at the launch point, Skipper,” LCDR Jim Shupert, George Mason’s navigator, called out. “Range Control reports that the range is clear, COMEX in two minutes. Launch helo is outbound.”
Glass glanced at the electronic navigation chart. Only the Navy would saddle it with a name like “Electronic Chart and Navigation Display System,” ECDIS for short. The chart showed that they were located about ten miles west of Kauai and equidistant from Niihau to the south, almost in the center of an area marked off as the Barking Sands Tactical Underwater Range. The BARSTUR range was in deep water, safely far enough away from shipping channels, but close enough to the island to heavily instrument the bottom of the sea so as to accurately track submarines and surface ships operating there.
Glass glanced up at the large-panel command display in the center of the control room set to show the photonics mast view. The deep-blue Pacific water melted into the brilliant blue Hawaiian sky. A haze-gray CH-53 helicopter suddenly cut across the scene, bright orange torpedo dangling on a long cable below the big bird. As they watched, the chopper transitioned into a hover and the torpedo dropped away.
Almost immediately, ST1 Joshua Hannon, the on-watch sonar operator, called out, “Torpedo in the water, best bearing zero-six-five.” Within a couple of seconds, he called out, “Classified YU-9, Chinese submarine launched torpedo. Zero bearing rate. Best bearing, zero-six-five. Best range five-five-hundred yards.”
Brian Edwards nodded and turned to LCDR Aston Jennings. “Weps, launch the CRAW from the port dihedral.”
Jennings swiped through a couple of screens on the BYG-1 Payload Control System and made a selection. Almost immediately, Josh Hannon called out, “Detection of launch from the port dihedral.” The sonarman paused for a second and then reported, “CRAW did not transition to SCEPS power. Loss of contact on the CRAW.”
The CRAW, or Compact Rapid Attack Weapon, was a small, lightweight, very fast torpedo designed for close-in fights where range was not important but speed was. The torpedo was only about six inches in diameter and weighed nearly one hundred pounds. It was propelled by a sophisticated SCEPS engine that got its energy by dousing a block of lithium with a sodium hexafluoride bath. The resulting heat from that highly exothermic reaction was used to create steam from water to drive a turbine. The chemical concoction was very volatile, so the evasion-device launcher shoved the CRAW well away from the submarine before the SCEPS engine started, or “transitioned to SCEPS power.”
“Weps, launch the CRAW from the starboard dihedral,” Edwards ordered.
As Jennings manipulated the Payload Control System, Hannon called out, “Torpedo bearing zero-six-five, range four-two-hundred yards.”
Joe Glass did not need a computer to figure out that the dummy torpedo was coming directly at them at better than sixty-five knots. Even if it was an exercise fish, it had the mass of a full-size pickup truck. It would certainly give them a headache if it hit.
Aston Jennings called out, “Starboard CRAW launched.”
Hannon followed with, “CRAW launched, transitioned to SCEPS power. Best bearing zero-one-six, drawing right.”
Edwards and Glass watched the sonar tracks on the command display. The route for the torpedo was a dead straight line pointing right at them. The CRAW’s track slewed across the screen as it converged on the torpedo’s bearing.
Hannon called out, “Torpedo and CRAW on the same bearing, zero-six-five, range two-one-hundred yards.”
Just as the sonarman completed his report, a loud explosion shook the George Mason. The sonar screen blossomed in a burst on the bearing to the torpedo and then all contacts disappeared completely.
Glass turned to Edwards and smiled.
“I’d say that was a whole lot easier than some of the torpedoes we’ve run away from together, Skipper. I think I like this ‘CRAW fish.’ We just need to make it a bit more reliable.”
Edwards nodded, pleased his former shipmate and skipper—now big boss—was pleased. And especially happy this test had gone reasonably well. Still, would the day come when the lives of his crew and his submarine depended on this newly developed technology?
Maybe. Maybe not. But he knew he had to assume it would.
Ψ
The research vessel Deep Ocean Explorer bobbed easily in the calm, ink-black sea. The stars put on a brilliant display of light, stretching broad swaths of twinkling points from horizon to horizon and making deck lighting superfluous.
Dr. Rex Smith leaned on the ship’s rail and stared into the night sky, deep in thought. How many more nights would he be able to enjoy this view? How many more days could his team continue their research before the fat cats back on the mainland finally pulled the plug? His rushed trip to Los Angeles had been a limited success. The shareholders were not happy with his report on the status of their research. Investors are rarely complacent with vague promises of future finds. This was particularly true of the group who had decided to back his efforts. After some fancy footwork with interpreting the data and not a little old-fashioned groveling, Smith had convinced them to put forward enough funds to support another month. But he knew without a doubt that any return visit to this nearly dry well would be a waste of time.
Now there was only time for this one last sweep through the area. Fortunately, the bottom of the Tonga Trench was always pitch black, so it did not matter if it was day or night up here on the surface.
Mitch O’Donnell swung open the hatch and stuck his head out. “Doc, we need you in Mission Control. The Sea Raptor is acting up again.”
O’Donnell pulled back to make room for Smith to charge through the hatch and down the ladder to the next deck. The ladder opened into a brightly lit room that stretched the width of the deckhouse and nearly the length of the structure. The large space was filled with workstations and computers. Flat-panel displays hung from every available surface. The space hummed with activity.
Four of the technicians huddled around Dr. Sandy McDougal’s station, locked into an intense but quiet conversation. It was of immediate concern to Dr. Smith that the factory technician for their very expensive UUV appeared to be frantically defending his equipment.
As Smith stepped over to McDougal’s workstation, they all fell quiet and looked up at the chief scientist.
“Sandy, what is so concerning that you sent Mitch to fetch me?” Smith asked, glancing at the face of each member of the group.
“Just like that Irishman to gloat!” the fiery research scientist shot back. “Not often he gets the chance to say, ‘I told you so.’”
“Maybe so,” Smith snapped back. “But what’s our problem?”
McDougal blinked hard. “That damn Sea Raptor is acting up again. Not responding to orders and the data link on the acoustic modem is sending up garbage. Two of her primary jobs and she’s determined not to satisfactorily do either.”
The Sea Raptor, an autonomous underwater vehicle, was on a research mission to the very bottom of the Tonga Trench. At a depth of over six miles, the vehicle communicated by using an acoustic modem. A cable that worked at that depth and of that length was out of the question. And acoustic communications had proven tenuous at best.
“Now, just a cotton-pickin' minute,” the tech rep responded as he jumped in to protect his company’s reputation. “You’re asking the system to navigate along an unknown sea bottom and to report real-time data back over an acoustic data path that takes over eight seconds t
o make the trip each way. It just ain’t reasonable.”
Smith held up his hand for silence. “Sandy, we can’t afford to lose the Sea Raptor. Give it the emergency recall signal. And keep sending that signal until you get a response.”
With that order, Rex Smith knew that he had just signed the death warrant for this research venture. And very probably for his career.
Ψ
The sun was low, about to dip below the shallow rise of Garden Island and the broad Indian Ocean that stretched out like a sparkling plain to the west. Vehicles and people bustled about Her Majesty’s Australian Navy Station Stirling, winding up another busy day at Australia’s largest and busiest submarine base. But all was quiet at the moment down by the submarine jetty. The only people moving about were groups of sailors topside on the lone boat tied up alongside and a few other sailors standing by the bollards on the jetty. A curl of diesel smoke rose from the submarine’s sail and was quickly dispersed in the warm breeze.
The only evidence that anything was out of the ordinary was the platoon of heavily armed Special Air Service operators cordoning off access to the jetty. For those in the know, it was obvious that something serious was happening if these elite Special Forces soldiers were being detailed to guard duty on a submarine pier.
As the sun was finally obscured by the western horizon, the submarine HMAS Audacious cast off her lines and motored out into the broad bay that separated Garden Island from Kwinana Beach on the mainland. The Audacious was Australia’s newest Shortfin Barracuda submarine, a diesel derivative of the French Barracuda-class nuclear attack submarine. Equipped with a fuel-cell air-independent power system and all of the most modern electronics, the Australian sub was even quieter than her French nuclear cousin. And every bit as deadly. The only things she lacked were the speed and endurance afforded by a nuclear power plant.
Standing on his sub’s bridge and watching his crew maneuver the big diesel boat, Commander Geoffrey Smythe reviewed his orders in the last of the day’s light. Essentially, go north, up into the South China Sea, blunder about a bit, and do his best to see what the Chinese were up to. All seemed relatively simple and routine, but the preparations had been anything but mundane. Only a week had passed since he had been summoned to Naval Headquarters in Canberra, where Commander, Australian Fleet himself, delivered Smythe his instructions. From there it had been a mad rush to get Audacious fully ready for a deployment on very short notice, almost a month before she was scheduled to complete overhaul and return to service.
The lights of Freemantle were just blinking on as the submarine sailed past, then turned to the northwest, out into the open Indian Ocean. The officer of the deck reported the course change and crossing the one-hundred-fathom curve.
Smythe nodded to the other men on the bridge and headed below. As he passed through the hatch, he ordered the OOD to dive the sub. It was time to wring the boat out and make sure the dockworkers had done their jobs without leaving any unintentional surprises. Smythe had been in service to his country and commanding a submarine long enough to know something was up. Something serious. His crew and his vessel would have to be ready for anything.
Ψ
The USS Boise, SSN 764, was an anomaly. Although she was an older Improved Los Angeles-class submarine, commissioned in 1992, she actually had considerably less time submerged and fewer miles steamed than several of the Virginia-class submarines built to replace her and her sisters. The incongruity came about as the result of a foul-up in scheduling shipyard maintenance. That snafu had caused her to sit alongside the pier for five years, unable to dive or even get underway. That was followed by another five years stuck in a shipyard, undergoing a complete overhaul. Almost ten full years tied up while her sisters were out steaming on the open ocean.
Now, at long last, the Boise was free to ply the seven seas again, almost as new old-stock. As something of a reward, maybe, the sub was moved from the East Coast to Submarine Squadron Fifteen in Guam. As one of the four boats homeported in that most forward US submarine base, the Boise was part of what was termed a quick reaction submarine response force, or more commonly, “the tip of the spear.”
It had been less than a week since RADM Jon Ward put down the phone after speaking with COMSUBPAC, and now the Boise was clearing the breakwater off Apra Harbor and heading due west with orders to get down to the Spratlys and find out what the hell was going on out there.
Not nearly as exciting as the action typically portrayed in submarine movies, but everyone aboard Boise knew that snooping around, listening, watching without being detected, were things submarines did very well. And though she had been virtually forgotten for most of a decade, the sub’s crew were ready to get out there and go to work.
4
Yon Hun Glo stepped off the big blue-gray aircraft onto the hot tarmac. He stretched, trying to work the kinks out of his aching back. The interminable flight from the Yulin Naval Base on Hainan to Tonga had consumed more than ten hours of his busy life. Despite the Xi’an Y-20 being a very large aircraft and the most modern of its type currently being flown by the Chinese Air Force, it was still primarily a military transport. It had offered none of the creature comforts found on a commercial airliner. Even Yon Hun Glo’s shiny, new three-stars could not change that.
The heat and humidity were Yon Hun Glo’s first impression of the tropical island of Tonga. Fua’amotu International Airport, the kingdom’s major air facility, was surrounded by subsistence farms on the southern side of Tongatapu, the main island. At just twenty-one degrees south of the equator, the flat farmland broiled in the unrelenting sun.
A three-car motorcade pulled onto the tarmac from behind the ramshackle single-story building that served as the airport’s terminal. Two big, black, bug-spattered SUVs and a Mercedes limo, flying the red-and-white Tongan flag, came to a stop in front of the Chinese aircraft.
The driver jumped out of the limo and opened the rear door. A rotund, dark-skinned man emerged. He was dressed in traditional Tongan garb, a finely woven ta’ovala loukeha worn over a sarong-like tupenu that matched his tailored linen jacket. Though hardly dressed for the mid-day heat, this man was no doubt in charge. This was King Tofuwanga II.
The monarch smiled broadly as he ambled over to where Yon Hun Glo stood at the foot of the aircraft’s ladder, trying to find shade beneath the plane’s wing.
“Welcome to Tonga,” the king called out. “I trust you had a smooth flight, Admiral.”
The two men shook hands and Tofuwanga shepherded Yon Hun Glo back to his limo.
“Come out of the sun, my friend. We have air conditioning inside the car. Very refreshing. We will ride in comfort back to the palace. We have a wonderful island banquet prepared for you and then we will have much progress to discuss. But first, I want to take you up to Mua. That is where you will see evidence of how your country is helping my country build a deep-water terminal. It is a bit of a detour but well worth the trip.”
Yon Hun Glo smiled. Determining, in person, the progress in completing the terminal was the real reason for this long trip. China had proffered large loans to King Tofuwanga out of the Belt and Roads Initiative for the specific purpose of constructing the terminal and greatly expanding the “international” airport. Yon Hun Glo had already determined that there was no progress to see there. He could just make out through the weeds a row of survey stakes suggesting the new runway’s location, and that was the only activity put toward building anything there.
The man was not to be trusted. The admiral was well aware of the king’s derisive moniker, “King Two-for-One," bestowed by many of his subjects. China had loaned this potentate several billion pa’anga, the local currency. And the Chinese government had constantly made clear they expected the funds to be spent on the sea terminal and airport expansion, and to eventually be repaid, in full. So far, King Tofuwanga did not seem to be delivering on his promises.
That, of course, was no surprise at all.
The convoy swung out from the
airport and onto the main road. It appeared to be little more than crushed coral instead of concrete or asphalt, but it was reasonably smooth. A sudden rainstorm blew in from the east as they charged down the narrow two-lane road, which remained devoid of traffic. It was as if the road had been cleared for the transit of the king, his special guest, and their motorcade. Nothing but small farm fields on either side of the road were visible through the downpour.
Then, after traveling only about six kilometers, the convoy swung off onto a wide, paved road. The rain squall blew past, revealing a broad turquoise lagoon spread out on their left. Ahead lay a small village.
“We are almost there, Admiral,” King Tofuwanga said, pointing to a turn-off with a large, impressive sign that read, “Future Home of Tonga International Shipping and Cruise Ship Terminal.” They turned off onto another crushed-coral roadway. A chain link gate barred the way, but one of the uniformed guards in the lead SUV hopped out and swung it open.
They drove on, into a huge, vacant, weed-infested lot. Except for a lone, rusty backhoe parked on a tilt in a ditch, there was no sign of any construction activity.
“As you can see, Admiral,” the king offered, “we have accomplished much and will soon begin laying foundations and raising the walls of this magnificent facility you and your country’s generosity have made possible.”
Yon Hun Glo looked over at King Tofuwanga with a cold stare.
“What is this? I fully expected to see the terminal construction well underway. We have given you billions of pa’anga to erect a shipping terminal. You have had adequate time and all the resources required. Please tell me that you have at least dredged the channel into the harbor and turning basin.”